One's Own Life

by John Williams

RARELY DO I receive letters anymore but for the most mundane correspondences with higher institutions, family, and creditors who mistake me for various other Williamses, each requesting a service I cannot provide. Sometimes my grandparents, who have long passed, write to inform me of duties I continually neglect, the same duties they neglected and hoped to find exoneration from via a strengthening of the bloodline. I write none of them back. So it astonished me to receive two letters this week marked with  the addresses of childhood friends, both of whom recently suicided. The first, whom I once trekked blizzardy Northeast winters with to attend grade school, had become an impassioned wordsmith, an editor of the first caliber, who left one of the larger publishing houses to establish his own press, which the letter claimed had teetered on the cusp of bankruptcy and of greatness.  So devoted to a new manuscript he’d decided to publish, which held, in his opinion, the finest literary voice to emerge from the continent since so-and-so, or at least since some other name, and which he dreamed would launch his press into the international market, that my friend steadily and over the course of months became the book, or, in his widow’s words, “a page in someone else’s story.” With the letter, she included a picture of their young son, whose face also seems made of paper, as well as a copy of the celebrated manuscript, in which my friend seems stunningly absent.

The following day I discovered the second letter, addressed “To Whom It May Concern.” I assumed it would not concern me. But in fact it told the story of a college friend, who once wore his youth like an uncaged bird and who all our peers agreed would never live past twenty-five. Upon graduation, he accepted the first and only job offered him, which he coined temporary and beneath him. Ten years later, still shifting papers between filing cabinets, he become known as someone who speaks over water coolers about past glories. Ceremoniously, from thumb tacks on skin-hued cubicle walls, hung a photograph of us all, arms bound like a fence, smiles honest and hair full—a photograph I’d forgotten. My friend spent entire days staring into his lost face, as his hands without error shifted their paper, until one day coworkers noted he had vanished into the photograph, which did not distress them as the work was still completed on time. The letter, whose author still eludes me, included a copy of his obituary torn from the local newspaper, which concluded with the words, “He is now living his dream alongside those he loved, and he leaves behind not a single regret or uncherished memory.”

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John Sibley Williams is the author of six chapbooks, winner of the HEART Poetry Award, and finalist for the Pushcart and Rumi Poetry Prizes. He has served as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and Publicist for Three Muses Press and holds an MFA in Creative Writing and MA in Book Publishing. Some of his over 200 previous or upcoming publications include: Bryant Literary Review, Cream City Review, The Chaffin Journal, The Evansville Review, RHINO, Rosebud, Ellipsis, Flint Hills Review, and Poetry Quarterly.

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Another bold figure launched itself forward, armed only with the shattered remnants of a glass bottle. David delivered a further arrow and the man crashed to the tarmac. The watching horde roared with outrage.

“Nine,” said David quietly after quickly peering into the quiver at his side.

They started to come at him, bellowing hatred and throwing projectiles.

From within an upturned car, a long knife in blackened hands. “Eight”.

From the side of a burning shop, a rock held high and set to throw. “Seven.”

From behind, bicycle chain viciously spinning. “Six.”

Straight ahead, baseball bat raised. “Five.”

Fists flailing. “Four.”

Jagged teeth. “Three.”

Screaming. “Two.”

David ran quicker. A stone struck his cheek and he stumbled. A fist hammered into his shoulder. He heard someone shout “Goaty”, and someone else scream with joy. He got up, somehow, and ran on, kicking and pushing his way through the growing mob.

“One” was spent into the eye socket of a bald and thickly-set brute, whose corpse fell onto him, knocking the wind from his lungs and slowing him down. The hundred-strong pack howled with delight to see David struggle and they surged forward, so their gathered weight might crush him into the ruined street.

David dropped the spent bow and drew his sword. Red rain began to fall as he slashed this way and that, thrust up and down. Wherever there was snarling, thrashing, ram-marked flesh he put his blade. The wet handle became slippery, but he gripped tighter, moved quicker, ducked and ran, jumped and parried until they retreated.

They swore and growled as they fell slowly away, washed with the innards of their kin. David, exhausted, breathing air like a parched man drinks, carefully stepped over the bodies he had created, rapier still raised. He could see, through the corner of one blackened and weeping eye, his goal. He dashed forward, kicking aside those too slow to get out of his way.

The library doors were smashed, as were all the doors in this ghost of a city. The horde followed him, watched him enter the darkly ornate Victorian building, keeping their distance from him, from that blade. David knew they would have him, that it was just a matter of time.

With the dripping red sword held in front, he moved quickly through the long and deserted corridors. What little sun remained could not penetrate the small windows and rusting, befouled skylights. He knew this building well, knew what turns to make and when, knew what stairs to climb in the dark and even knew what book case to run his hands over.

He heard a cry from below, from within the building. The ram-pack had grown impatient; their anger had bubbled over their caution. They were coming for him.

David retrieved the wind-up torch from his backpack, span the crank several times and pressed the switch. By the faint light he began to scan the shelves before him. “B. Be... Bl... Bo... Br...”

His eyes found the author and his fingers found the book. David slipped from the shelf a plastic coated, well-read paperback. He opened the book and turned to page 210. A smile, something unfelt for a long time, came into being across his lips. By the light of the torch David saw that he still had another fifty pages to read. He could manage that. He hoped.

A wail of hatred echoed up the nearby stairwell. Dropping the book into his bag he sprinted down the shadowy aisles just in time to see the hallway erupt with screaming bodies. They’d seen him, they were on him, on his heels.

David stomped over the hard stone floors, raced across worn carpets. He rounded an unfamiliar corner and crashed into an overturned bucket and mop. Skidding on the wet floor he noticed the door to a small, dim room lay ajar but intact. He entered, slamming the door shut behind him. The torch revealed this to be a cleaning cupboard. Small, cramped and with a strong tang of bleach in the air, the room had no other exit.

“This is it.”

Pulling a heavy set of metal shelves, each crammed with vats of thick, noxious fluid, he shoved it against the closed door. Broom handles became rods and mops became bars

as David barricaded the room as best he could. How long would it hold, he wondered, as he heard them gathering in the hallway beyond.

He sat cross-legged on the floor, as he had done in school, leaning the sword against a cobwebbed brick wall. He watched for a moment as blood ran down the length of the blade and joined with the many puddles of mysterious liquid around him. Taking the book, he opened it at page 210.

Could he finish it? He hoped he could. Fifty pages before the hammering and thudding became too much for the old wooden door. Fifty pages before they got in, got him, and the epilogue to his own story would be read by angry, cruel voices.

Kicks and blows rained down upon the door, shouts and cries upon his ears.

He began to read.

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Howard Moseley-Chalk has worked as an actor, stand-up comedian, cinema usher and Roman history tour guide. His influences include H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, Alan Campbell, the creepy cycle path near his house and the month of October. He writes science fiction, fantasy and slipstream. He lives at www.howardmosleychalk.com and welcomes you to visit. He has a wife and a baby daughter who likes to point at him. His work has been published in a number of US and UK magazines and websites, including Starburst Magazine and inclusion in a forthcoming print anthology by Knightwatch Press.

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Three People Dancing

by Peter Volpe

She stood facing him, leaning against the desk, one small hand resting on her slim hip, the other gripping the gilt picture frame. “Who’s this?”

He cleared his throat. “Gail. My ex-wife.”

She’d closed the door behind her when she’d entered; now he got up and opened it.

“She’s very pretty,” Cassidy said, crinkling the corners of her eyes.

He rested his eyes on her in a way he knew he shouldn’t. In a black body hugging sheath, black hose with darker seams running up the back, and black pointy-toed heels she looked to be in mourning. After a moment he gazed past her, out the window over the desk shoved against the wall, into the storm.  

The fluorescent light in the ceiling flickered and then went out. The cubby-hole office felt like a small underwater cavern.

He turned on the lamp on the far corner of his desk. In doing so, he almost disturbed the necklace that lay in a perfect golden puddle at the lamp’s base. The light cast a dim pall over the office and threw shadows on the wall.

“Why are you here?”

Cassidy smiled and set the picture on the desk, angling it away from him. She slid into the small wooden chair beside him, the only other seat in the tiny office; as she did, her knee brushed against his. She crossed her legs, dangled a high heel shoe off the toes of her right foot, and leaned back.

“You’re all dressed up for a Monday. Going somewhere?” he said.

“I am somewhere,” she said slowly. “But I must say these heels are killing me.” She let her shoe drop off, and massaged her toes with one hand.

He shifted in his chair. “Can I do something for you?”

She stopped rubbing her foot and put her shoe back on. “You know what I think?” she asked, drawling the last word.

“What do you think?” His mouth was getting dry.

“Do you want to know? Do you really care . . . to know?” she said in a sultry voice, leaning her elbows on the desk and resting her chin gently on her knuckles.

“You’re my student. I’m always interested in what my students think.”

“I have this sense about you. I think you’re a bad guy trying to be good,” she said, in a confident tone that implied she knew things about him she couldn’t possibly know.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, I think you’re a bad guy trying to be good.”

Her round emerald eyes mesmerized him, penetrated him. He wanted to ask how she’d come to that conclusion, for though there was some truth to it, it wasn’t the kind of observation a student should make about her professor.

“I can’t allow this—”

She shook her head softly and placed a polished fingernail against his lips. “I just wanted you to know that I’m proud of you.”

And she was dressed in black, her terrible beauty so similar to Sarah’s, the words so familiar. . . .

I’m proud of you . . .

I’m proud . . .

Of you . . .

Sarah’s dying words to him.

Suddenly he was back in that sickening spring. 

He’d been teaching a creative writing course while Gail worked full-time. Sarah had been having trouble breathing. When she said she’d quit smoking, he knew she was dying. He told her if she didn’t start to feel better he was going to call an ambulance. She must have gotten scared because she went to the doctor. . . . And the news was bad.

He packed his best suit in anticipation of the funeral.

Gail went with him to the big, impersonal hospital up north. It was a long drive. On the way Nina Simone sang “Wild is the Wind” in a wailing, mahogany voice that sounded like dying trees. As they neared the city, the sky turned bruise-colored.

Inside the bright hospital he and Gail made their way through coffin-narrow halls. The antiseptic attempt to cover the smells of sickness and death failed miserably. When they got off the elevator, his stomach roiled and he wanted to retch. It was as if he’d just gotten off some obscene roller-coaster at an amusement park in hell. They found the room and he peeked hesitantly through the doorway, uncertain whether he should be seeing this.

All of a sudden, he didn’t want Gail there. Knowing it wouldn’t sound good and that it’d hurt Gail’s feelings, he asked her to go find some coffee, and something that would pass for food. Gail walked haughtily away, like an empire in decline. He knew he’d pay for it, she always made him pay for it. She wouldn’t let him near her for days, as if withholding carnal pleasure would somehow serve to crucify him, make him pure, cause him to thank her for her glory.

Sarah lay on her back; her hands were folded and rested gently on her stomach. He went to her bedside. The once flaming hair was now the color of banked ashes. Her celadon eyes were now as dull as wilted plants. 

He heard his name from far away. 

“Yeah, it’s me,” he answered.

“There’s something I want you to have.” She raised herself on one elbow and tugged open the nightstand drawer. With a trembling hand she reached in and pulled out the pendant, the golden calyx with mother-of-pearl set in the center. “I want you to have it. Keep it. Forever.” She placed it in his palm and closed her hands around his fist. He raised it to his lips and kissed it, smiling gently at his mother.

Though her breathing was labored, she was conscious the last day of her life. She kept asking for Gail, who sat on a small, plastic chair at the foot of the bed. It seemed very important to her that Gail was there. In the end it fell to him to decide what to do.  He talked to the doctors and nurses and decided Sarah's suffering couldn't continue. That was when he gave his consent. 

She lapsed into a coma. The nurse said she could still hear and urged him and Gail to continue talking, to give her permission to let go. The whole thing was absurd. Sarah had given him life, and he’d repaid her by killing her. And now he was to tell her she had his permission to die . . . words of encouragement from the executioner.

At the end, she sat up, and stared directly into his eyes. “I’m proud of you,” she said, then died. He buried her with pictures of him, and a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth—in the last couple years he and Sarah had shared a love for Beethoven.

With Sarah gone the world went flat. Sounds dimmed, colors blanched, life became black and white, like an old movie or words on a page. Sorrow was deeper than joy could ever be. There were no sacred mysteries, no possibility of redemption, or salvation, the day of resurrection was just a myth. From then on, the “Ode to Joy” sounded like a dirge. He heard it while lecturing, drinking, and making love. It played in his dreams and seemed eternal—unlike joy, marriage, or Sarah, but exactly like his pain.

“I’m proud of you,” Sarah had said.

“I’m proud of you,” Cassidy said, sitting beside him, legs crossed, knee touching his. She stared at him intently, as if there were nothing else in the world to see. There was no shame, no embarrassment, nothing self-conscious in her look.

“I’m writing a paper for our class. I’d like to tell you about it,” she said.

The lightning flashed outside the window, illuminating her face, making her look like something holy and unholy.

She folded her hands on her knees, and leaned closer. “Mnemosyne is the goddess of memory in Greek mythology. She slept with Zeus, and over the course of nine adulterous nights, they created the Muses.” Her voice was low, gentle, caressing.

“I know the story,” he rasped, in a voice barely audible, wondering why it seemed so damn dry in the office.

Cassidy closed her eyes. “You know the river Lethe in Hades?” He caught a faint scent of lilacs drifting from her. An empty stillness permeated the room. Staring at her greedily while her eyes were closed, he felt the hot sting of shame. 

“Yes,” he breathed slowly. “Dead souls drank from the river Lethe to forget their past.” It was easier for him to speak now.

“And then?” Her eyes were still closed.

Open your eyes, he whispered in his brain, for the love of God, open your fucking eyes!

“And then the dead souls were reborn,” he answered, in a way that was almost a chant.

She lifted her eyelids as if raising the curtain on a play. “Actually the dead souls were reincarnated.”

“Reincarnated . . . reincarnated.”  Somehow he found the rhythm of the word soothing.

She went on: “Mnemosyne had a pool in Hades. Souls aware of Mnemosyne’s beauty and power were urged to drink from her water, so that they might remember their past lives before returning to the world in a different body. How about you?” she asked, raking a hand through hair the color of hell fire. “If given the choice, would you drink from the river of forgetfulness, or from the pool of memory?”

He wanted her at that moment more than he’d ever wanted anyone. He put his face in his hands to block the vision of what he coveted. Then he exhaled, and rubbed his eyes. When he looked, she was staring at him. He bowed his head is if in prayer, and then said in a whisper: “I’d drink from Lethe, so I couldn’t remember.”

“What are you trying to forget?” Her face was close now.

He jerked away, sat up straight in the chair. “Nothing. Everything. None of your business. Just, never mind.”     

The room started to spin. He covered his face with his hands again. It’s much better here in the dark, yes, the dark is easy, peaceful, natural.   

Her voice cut through his thoughts.  “You know who my favorite Muse is?”

Now she was standing next to him, leaning over his shoulder, typing on his keyboard in the ghostly blue glow of the computer screen.  

“Terpsichore, the goddess of dance.” She found what she wanted. And as “The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” began to play, she took his hand and pulled him out of the chair. He refused to open his eyes. She held his left hand and placed his right hand on her waist. He felt her warmth, smelled her vernal fragrance, and it was good.

“Dance with me,” Cassidy said in a low breath.

“Dance with me,” Sarah said, the night before he returned to grad school, after a two and a half-year leave. During that time his stepfather had hung himself just like Sarah’s father had when she was ten. . . .  So Sarah would always be ten. 

“I haven’t danced in ages, and you’re all I have left,” she said. 

She wore a pair of faded blue jeans that night, a white blouse and leopard-print flats. Her long red hair was done up in a careless chignon.  He held her stiffly, the way you’d feel embracing a Christmas tree in February. A jazz record played on an old turntable in the dark hallway, its tinny warped chords sounding as if it came from underwater.                                                                                                   

Sarah leaned close and whispered into his ear, “You and me, we’re like rainbows, like gasoline rainbows.” 

The record started skipping and they laughed.  But Sarah’s laughter soon turned to tears. Finally, she’d separated from him and, with a hand over her mouth, staggered to a chair at the dining room table. She sipped her gin and tonic and lit a Pall Mall. He thought how wherever she went, she projected an aura of an empty, smoke-filled barroom. And at that moment he knew his deepest fear was to end up like her, alone, with no one to love, and no one to love him back. Emptiness stretched in front of him like an abyss, yawning, threatening, beckoning. He felt achingly hollow, and for a moment he wanted to run screaming for fear of losing his mind. But then the feeling passed. He went behind her chair and draped his arms around the top of her spare frame: anything to lessen her loneliness. She squeezed his arms greedily. Then she arose as colorful and glorious as the dawn, went into the bedroom, and shut the door. He stopped the record player, and searched through the cabinet until he found what he wanted. Patsy Cline sang “Crazy,” and her haunting voice filled the hallway. Just then the bedroom door opened. Sarah stood in the frame like a portrait.

She was wearing the aubergine dress. 

He took her by the hand and led her to the dining room floor, and he held her close, and they danced until the sun came up.

Now it was dusk, and the storm continued, and the office was dim except for the lightning, and it was dark in the hallway. The music played softly, the rain pattered, the thunder resounded, and there was the scent of lilacs. 

His dance partner broke away gently and lifted her head. A bolt of lightning illuminated her face, and for a split second it was Sarah in the aubergine dress. But then the bright light subsided and it was Cassidy.

He stepped over to his desk, picked up the necklace, and placed it around Cassidy’s neck. Then he led her to the door and closed it behind her.

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Peter Volpe is currently working on a novel. He belongs to the Writers at Blueridge Group in Carrboro, North Carolina. The appearance of Three People Dancing in Zodiac is his first publication of short fiction.

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