Authors: John Grant
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Fantasy, #Short Stories (Single Author)
Take No Prisoners (16 page)
Today, of course, he doesn't see the ducks and the swans, and nor the way the sunlight makes the disturbed waters look as if they were, each instant, new-formed from sharp-edged glass.
But you see all of this.
Soon the shops and the pubs are far behind. There are still too many people on the towpath; after he's passed the Double Locks it'll get quieter, and eventually he'll reach the stretches where people hardly ever go.
You don't know why it is that you're singing, but you are. No one can hear you, of course: most certainly not Dave. It's "Vampire Café" that you're singing, but he's hearing "History Book," which soon he'll hear for real. He recorded it over and over again onto the rest of this side of the C90, and he covered the whole of the other side with it as well. It was the song he wrote for you, he said; you'll never be able to make him listen to you telling him that it was the song he wrote so he wouldn't be able to hear "Vampire Café."
At long last a place where the estuary is broad and where the only signs of other human activity are on its far side. The ducks gave up following him hopefully along the bank some while ago, the swans even before that.
He spreads out his old leather jacket on the coarse grass and sits down on it. He's been curbing his desire all this time, knowing that he's not allowed to play "History Book" until he gets here. But it's all right now: it's permitted; indeed, the rules are that he
must
play the song.
He presses the play button, then pulls his knees up to his chest and puts his arms around them. His eyes close as he listens to himself sing.
But now he can see the chopped surface of the water in the unwarming light. This is the way that it's been all the other years, even those times when it's rained or the mist has been opaque. He knows what is about to happen.
And so do you, for you pull yourself free of him, as you do every year, and you sweep out over the river, playing with the air in front of him, drawing threads of sunshine and hues of breeze in towards you until, fifty or a hundred yards from the bank, rapidly weaving your body for yourself, you touch the water.
He sees that touch, watches as the surface is struck by a gust of wind that causes it to start swirling in upon itself. Reeds are torn from their place along the riverbank and are dragged, accelerating, across the oblivious face of the water. There are autumn leaves around him, and now the breeze picks these up from the grass and carries them out towards the place where you're troubling the water. You need the leaves for the color of your hair. The yellow-green of your remembered eyes exists nowhere in nature and so you have to create it specially.
Your body, rising from the brown water, is still not fully formed; the arms and thighs are irregular columns of bundled reeds, the head a blurred, eyed mass. You teeter like an unstrung puppet. But now you are pulling to yourself strands from that ancient recording of "History Book." The plosives of Dave's frenetic voice, exaggerated by the tinny crystal mike built into the cheap cassette recorder he used, become your joints and vertebrae; the stretched penultimate syllables at the ends of alternate lines are appropriated as your fingers; the inadvertent taps of his fingernails on the guitar's soundbox swiftly paint in the details of your face and the lines of your ribcage showing through your smoothing skin; once, twice, there is the sound of his indrawn breath, and your small breasts are pinkly present; his slurred sigh each time your name occurs becomes the v of your pubis and the roll of your hips cradling it; his clumsy strumming is your feet.
Your body finally bound together by the lines of chord progressions, the corners of your mouth quirked into a smile by a D-minor accidentally played where there should have been a D-major, you walk towards him across the powerful, ponderous flow of the river's current.
Time passes. Now you stand, naked and dripping, beside him. You put the palm of your hand on his forehead, and the two of you exchange the substance of yourselves. He can feel you and see you very clearly, even though his eyes are still firmly locked closed, as if shut against a spotlight. His lips are moving soundlessly to the only song he now knows:
~
and who could touch her
and who could teach her
that truth's no one's dominion?
there are no such things as facts any more
(well, that is my opinion)
~
And all the rest of the afternoon the two of you are together, talking and singing together and making love in the warmth of the past.
Here in the place where, fourteen years ago, you lost your life and were born. Here where Dave will never remember the words you screamed in your fury and your despair and your revulsion ... and your pity.
"You
can't
love me. You're not
allowed
to love me.
"I
exorcised
you."
The Dead Monkey Puzzle
It was probably Johnsie who first suggested it, he being either the soberest of the three of them or the least drunk of the three of them – at the time they couldn't decide which he was, and afterwards, of course, it didn't matter.
~
"Say, willya take a look at the knockers on
her
! Man could die happy suckin on one o they babies."
"Cute ass."
"Too tight."
"Nah."
"Too tight for
me
."
"Oh yeah? Don make no difference how big the thing is when it's down. It's when it's ..."
"Shurrup. I've dropped the fuckin bottle."
"More in fuckin back."
"Woulden min fuckin fuckin her, know?"
"Yeah. Cute ass."
"Too tight."
"Shurr
up
, willya!"
"Stop the car, Dude."
"Why?"
"Wanna see she wantsa bitta fun, know?"
"Wit
you
, Johnsie? Gotta be jokin."
"Yeah, stop the car, Dude."
"See, Dude? Stonko wans stop car as well."
"Oh fuckin kay."
"There's my boy."
"Who's gonna ask her?"
"No need ask her. Tits like that, ass like that, she's a fun-lovin gal, sure thing."
"An look at the face, Dude. See them lips? They been wrapped round more cock than ..."
"Yeah. OK. Jeez, I gotta hardon just lookin."
"Go get her, boys."
~
She is dreaming as she walks along – not dreaming of anything in particular, although maybe there are castles and white horses mixed in with the rest of it, and pennants a-flutter on high turrets. It's a bright summer's day, and she has nothing much to do until the evening comes, then some homework and maybe a while on the computer losing at XBox.
A battered old Plymouth pulls up ahead of her and two guys get out. White, middle-aged, both with stomachs sprawling over their belts. Even from here she can tell they're drunk – they stagger like Daddy does sometimes on Friday nights. Suddenly she's very frightened of them, and looks around for anyone else who might be nearby. But the front yards are empty, the mowers silent: the day's too hot for gardening and there's a ball game on the tv.
Elayne knows she can't run. Most other fifteen-year-olds could leave fat middle-aged drunks gasping in their slipstream, but not her – not with her ankle that never healed right.
So she just stands there watching helplessly as the two fat men stumble towards her, false grins and real spittle on their lips. She wishes she were not so small for her age. She wishes her ankle had not betrayed her all those years ago.
A bird in the hedge beside her chirrups.
~
"You gonna have a good time with us, girlie."
"Stonko, wait'll we get there before you start feelin her up."
"Get where, Dude?"
"Wherever we're goin, shithead."
"Say, Stonko, you can've one tit and me the other. See, girlie, diffren man on each tit? You gonna've wild time with us, time like you never had before."
"I ever told you I don like bein called Stonko?"
"Bout billion times, Stonko."
"Well, I don. Was OK back when, but not dignified now. How'm I sposed to go sellin cars to Nips if people callin me Stonko whole time? Fuckin make them little yellow guys laugh me."
"Fuckin little yellow guys can' speaka da Inglees, Stonko. They don know what your name means."
"Fuckin might. Anyhow, I don like it. Tol you plenty I wanna be called my right name, kay?"
"Rupert-de-poopert-de-fuckin-scoopert?"
"You wan fuckin fist your fuckin face, Johnsie?"
"Shurrup in back there. Whadya think the little lady's gonna think of us, you keep talkin like that?"
"Yeah, Dude, kay. Say, honey, your tit's real soft and squeezy, know that?"
~
None of this is really happening. The guy in the front, who's fat as well, and the two who're squashing her between them on the rear seat, bruising her thighs and breasts with their pudgy fingers – they're not really there, and, if they are, they're not really
people
. Elayne knows they can't be. She is a beautiful princess and she lives in a fairytale land where handsome knights and princes ride on quests, in the end to win the hands of fair ladies like herself. Overweight, over-liquored, over-rich, overage, twenty-first-century pigs like these do not exist in the world she lives in, except as ogres and trolls. Though even the ogres and trolls aren't so vile as these creatures.
Nor as dangerous.
She knows they are dangerous. She knew they were dangerous the moment two of them fell out of the car onto the sidewalk and started wallowing drunkenly towards her.
Her mother told her years ago she was a princess just like the ones in the brightly colored books she couldn't then figure out quite how to read. As she grew older, and the books got fatter, and the colored pictures disappeared from everywhere except the covers, she discovered how right her mother had been. Every fair virgin lady in the stories was really just another guise of herself, every prince or knight or highborn kitchen-boy was the suitor who would eventually, through sterling deeds, win her hand. She had been Rapunzel. Later she had been Alice. Now she recognized herself as who she truly was: the Princess, or Lady, Elayne.
The world of school and honking trucks and tv and bitching about the thickwit boys wasn't the real world: it was a dream in which she let herself be imprisoned for just enough of her time that she could survive it until next she entered the true world.
But events in the dream world and those in the true world often mirrored each other, ran in parallel, the true events being rendered as symbols within the dreams.
Very substantial-seeming symbols, like the sweaty hands pawing her, paining her, under her T-shirt, and like the stink of bourbon and vomit in her face.
But only symbols for all that.
Only
symbols, however much the pain seemed to hurt.
In truth she had been seized by dragons. In truth a knight in shining armor riding a horse of snowfield white, or a whole posse of such knights, would come to slay the dragons and rescue her from their dying clutches. In truth all that was going on was a rigor to be easily borne because it was but part of the difficult road that had to be walked if she were to reach union with the prince of her destiny.
~
"You guys in the back, wha's goin on?"
"Lil gal actin all prissy-missy, like she ain done this a hunnerd times fore, like she not enjoyin this, fuckin stuck-up whore."
"Wait'll she see what I gotten stick up her."
"Kay, kay, Stonko. Keep the fucker zipped till we get there."
"Get where?"
~
The dragons halt in the middle of the countryside, far from the nearest hamlet. By the side of the old winding track there is a crumbling wall, and beyond that a sward of green that seems to stretch to the horizon. Just over the wall stands a huge but dead tree, an araucaria, a monkey puzzle tree. Its limbs are black with death; its complex arrays of spiky blades have lost their nut red-brown, becoming gray, but are obviously just as sharp and hard as ever, like stabbing implements designed to be couched in the palm of the hand.
Two of the dragons clamber over the ancient stone wall while the third holds the lovely Princess Elayne aloft in its scaly claw-ended forelimbs, then hurls her across to the other two. Their long teeth are ivory yellow, looping over their thin reptilian lips. Their breath fills the air with flame. Their savage shrieks split the skies. Birds swiftly wing away from those terrifying cries. Small meadowland animals flee from the thunder of dragon feet.
But the dragons do not know – cannot, with their small brains, know – that the beautiful Princess Elayne has long ago made friends with the spirits of trees. They do not even know that trees
have
spirits, that they are as alive and aware as any being that walks the land. They believe the dead monkey puzzle is no more a witness to her torment than is the dry stone wall or the blue, cloudless sky. They do not know that its ghost watches them.
They do not know that within the ghost of the dead monkey puzzle lies all of the true world.
~
"Fuckin bitch jus fuckin bit me, bitch! Wha the fuckin hell?"
"Go get rope from trunk, Dude."
"I only jus fuckin
got
here ..."
"Jus fuckin get it, right? Stonko n me can' hardly fuckin hold her, lil bitch, fuckin kickin and fuckin bitin, lil fucker."
"Hey, you sure we doin the right thing, Johnsie? You sure she fun-lovin gal, whore, y'know?"
"Yah. Gals like her, kickin n strugglin part of the fun, like it that way, sorta tigress wannin be tamed, y'know? She enjoyin herself, I know, I know women, Stonko. Ain gotta four-foot dick, but known plenny women. Shit! Lil fuckin bitch fuckin bit me gain."
"Kay, Johnsie."
"Fuckin wans slappin roun."
"Fuckin hell, Johnsie! You haveta hit her that hard?"
"Fuckin she liked it. Where's fuckin Dude?"
"Here. Got the fuckin rope."
"Well, fuckin tie her up then."
"Kay."
"Not her fuckin
feet
, asshole! How we goin fuckin fuck her if her legs tied together? You learn nothin school?"
"How stop'r kickin then?"
"Tha's how."
"Jeez, Johnsie, you gonna fuckin kill her you keep hittin her that hard."
"Fuck you, Stonko. I know women, tol you."
"Kay."
"Tie'r arms while she out, Dude. Oh, shit, I'm comin my pants."
"Asshole."
"Liketa be comin
her
asshole. Oh,
fuck
."
"Jeez, Stonko, you right. Tha's
twice
size mine."
"Hyuck, hyuck."
"You go las, righ? You stick that fuckin thing in her firs and she goin be loose's Lincoln Tunnel for Johnsie n me."
"Too late for Johnsie."
"He got time. Oh, fuck. Lil pisser's pissed herself."
"So fuckin what? Lub-ric-ate the spot, y'know?"
"Wan more that?"
"Wha talkin bout, Johnsie?"
"I bustin, not got hardon no more."
"Yeah, sure. Go on. Pee on her. Go on."
"Kay. Jeez, tha's bedder ..."
"Say, lemme do her'n mouth while you two fucker."
"Jeez, Stonko. Don go breakin her fuckin jaw, y'know?"
~
The fair Elayne wakens to a vile stench and to something enormous in her mouth. Her nose is bleeding, is possibly broken; once she is with her prince it will heal slightly askew to give her face a distinctive and interesting cast. She gags, can hardly breathe, with her nose clogged by blood and her mouth filled with the claw of a dragon.
She reaches out her mind to the ghost of the dead monkey puzzle tree and begs it to give her lungs air, to help her ignore the pain.
The ghost of the tree hears her, but is sluggish to respond. The spirit has been many years dead, and none have called upon it in all that time, although it has seen many pass by here and some of them stop to rest awhile. It has resigned itself to the fact that none will ever call upon it again, and can scarce believe, now, that the exquisite Princess Elayne seeks its aid.
But stir it eventually does. It breathes its cool air into her, and it soaks away the pain from her arms, her head, her ears, her ribs – even the new, searing agony that starts in the private place between her legs. But the spirit gives her more than this. Even with just this first touch of it on her, in her, through her, it brings her also the small and distant sights and sounds of the real world, where fairies fly silently on their mysterious ways, where sages cast their timeworn spells, where good is good and evil is evil, where a stout heart and a strong sword-arm can shape the future.
Princess Elayne calls out to the ghost of the dead monkey puzzle tree again, beseeching it to send her the noble prince who will save her from these vicious dragons and the tribulations they are inflicting upon her, and who will thereafter be her soulmate as, hand-in-hand, they rule wisely over The World.
And the ghost hears, and knows, and issues a summons all through the true world that lies within it.
~
"Fuckin tight as a fuckin virgin! Can hardly get my fuckin dick in. Sure is tighter'n any fuckin whore I ever fuckin fucked fore."
"Mouth's smooth n easy, like fuckin velvet. Bitch knows wha she's doin, this one does. Fuckin bes fuckin blow I ever fuckin felt."
"Fuckin hurry, willya Dude? I ready gain. Ain ever got a fuckin hardon gain that fuckin quick. Bad nough havin fuckin soggy secons thout fuckin
waitin
for it."
"Aw, poor Johnsie."
"Fuck
you
, Stonko!"
"Go n fuck the fuckin tree, dickhead."
"Asshole."
"Shit."
"You fuckin done yet, Dude."
"Aw. Aw. Aw. AWWWW."
"Well, fuck off and fuckin lemme on."
"Awwwww."
"Oh jeez."
"FUCK!"
~
Without warning there is a pouring of some noxious excretion from the claw into the fair Lady Elayne's throat, choking her anew. She tries to retch the fluid up again, but the claw blocks its passage. Instinctively she bites down on the claw, and hears a dragon's screech of pain overhead. Then the harshest buffet yet numbs the side of her head, seeming to crunch bones and crush muscle. It is as if the loudest thunderclap there ever was had torn the earth apart right by her, deafening her. The claw is tugged out of her mouth, and as she forces open a swollen eye she can see with her graying vision the biggest and fattest of the three dragons lurching backwards, clutching its abdomen with its forelimbs, kicking divots out of the grass of the meadow.
But she sees also the sudden explosion of the spirit of the dead monkey puzzle tree, and of the brightly colored true world, into the world of dreams. At the fore of the swiftly expanding rainbow bubble of reality there rides her silver-armored prince, his golden sword outstretched, her white kerchief flying high upon his upraised lance, his noble stallion foaming at the mouth as it rears on its hind legs, eyes rolling, launching itself at the nearest dragon.
The dragon called Johnsie screams as the prince's lance takes it in the throat, ripping away its adam's apple in a spurting outburst of blood. The golden sword whoops around in a great circle to cut right through the dragon's head just below the ears, and there is a spray of bone-bits and blood and pink jelly.
