Joined at the Muse
By David Niall Wilson, Brian A. Hopkins,
Patricia Lee Macomber, Brett A. Savory,
Stephen Mark Rainey, Richard Rowans,
John B. Rosenman & Brian Keene
Smashwords Edition published by David Niall Wilson at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 by David Niall Wilson, Brian A. Hopkins, Patricia Lee Macomber, Brett A. Savory, Stephen Mark Rainey, Richard Rowand, John B. Rosenman & Brian Keene
&
Macabre Ink Digital Publishing
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A Poem of Adrian, Grey
by David Niall Wilson & Brian A. Hopkins
He met her in the back room of the Weeping Violet. He'd paid half a week's salary and a special dose of chemical stimulus for entry. She was worth it, every penny. Her hair draped over slender white shoulders like the satin vestments of a priest. Her lips, nose, and ears were pierced and pierced again with slender hoops and intricate jeweled studs, and yet she shone through, blending to flesh, metal, and back again until she was one surreal image of dark desire and wanton abandon. She pursed her lips, black lipstick with a gloss coating that caught the faint illumination of the club petulantly, beckoning to him. Her voice was hypnotic, fascinating, and he basked lethargically in the heady depths of her deep green eyes, not really listening to her drone on and on about the music, or the club; saying nothing — only concentrating on the moment.
Of course, the moment ended. Such is the nature of moments. He was compensated for the loss by the exquisite sensation of her body insinuating itself between his arm and his side, pressing close, and by the heady perfume of her — proximity. He didn’t speak, only lent his arm to the embrace and pulled her closer.
“I’m a poet,” she said. Those words seeped through, even as others slipped in and out and away. “I want to write you.”
The novelty was his undoing. They were up and moving, passing through ranks of leather, chains, makeup, and angst, pressing forward toward — what? She wanted to write him. Nonsense that etched itself in his mind with perfect clarity. He drank in the envy of others as they passed, radiated contempt for their failure. She pressed even closer, and blessedly, she did not speak.
For the briefest of moments, he regretted leaving. He saw the brute at the door, the glazed look courtesy of his own chemical expertise. He heard the pulsing sound of the music and felt the fresh air driving away the incense-soaked ambience of the Weeping Violet. It might be months before he could afford to bribe his way inside again.
She pulled him closer and the images dissipated — leaving him to savor present tense and imminent pleasure. She chewed at the black on her lips, lost in thoughts he could not decipher. They walked in silence, she purposeful, he uncertain of their destination, but unconcerned with that particular lack of knowledge.
She wanted to write him.
* * *
Morning found her sampling the kitchen-made designer drugs stacked on their shelves outside the bathroom. He studied the splendid contour of her ass as she bent to snort a pale blue line of his best, the way her small breasts seemed larger suspended beneath the supple arch of her spine, the way the tendons stretched rubberband tight across the backs of her knees. He scratched beneath the covers at the encrusted remains of their passion, caked like dried paint in his pubic hair, and found that he was getting hard watching her. For the moment, however, he preferred not to let on that he was awake. He watched. He wanted (and wasn’t wanting sometimes the very best of highs?). And he wondered.
Who was she? How had she come so suddenly into his life?
His eyes strayed to the wall on which she’d “written him.” The letters were small and incredibly precise, seeing as how they’d been written with her lipstick. She’d used the same black lipstick that now marked his neck like cancerous bruises, like the damp, dark stain spread across the roof of his bedroom, compliments of a leaky faucet in the apartment above. The poem was legible, even from across the room.
First Verse:
endless spirals
ending
don Quixote tilting windmills
of loneliness and doubt
against a sunrise backdrop
of hope
sliding relentlessly
toward hopelessness
Pretty bleak stuff. Was it him? She’d said she wanted to write him. Did she? And what made her think she knew him that well after one night in which they’d spent more time grunting and moaning than actually talking? What had made her think to write it there, where he couldn’t help but see and wonder over it?
She turned and caught him staring at the wall. She wiped a smudge of blue from beneath one nostril without the slightest indication of guilt for having been at his stash.
“You didn’t tell me your name,” he said, sitting up in the bed. The sheets pooled in his lap and he was suddenly conscious of the erection there, concealed and yet made obvious beneath the tented sheet.
“I need to go,” she said, reaching for the clothes scattered across the floor.
“Dante,” he said, expecting but not receiving the usual raised eyebrow for his mother’s perversion for The Divine Comedy. “My name’s Dante Penzant. I wish you wouldn’t leave.”
She paused with panties hooked over one dangling foot. “You a drug dealer, Dante?”
“No.”
She cocked an eye at the overloaded shelves.
“It’s a hobby,” he confessed. “I don’t sell them.”
“Oh?” She glanced around the elaborately furnished apartment. The high-dollar entertainment center, a shadow of the truly expensive setup in the living room, but still out of the reach of most people. The heavy oak furniture. The paintings on the wall — originals, every one. The thick and luxurious carpet. The crystal light fixture suspended from the ceiling (where that dark stain served as the room’s only flaw). The fine wine, now just an empty bottle, abandoned on the night stand. Despite the skeptical tilt of her brow, he knew — how did he know? — that she believed him.
“I trade them for things.”
She pulled her panties up and started on her black leather skirt. “I don’t think we should see each other again.”
“Why?”
Her blouse was draped over the bedside lamp. When she reached for it, he caught her wrist. “Why?” he repeated, his heart suddenly trip-hammering in his chest and his throat dry.
With a neat twist she pulled away from him. He was reminded of a past summer’s interest in Tae Kwon Do, of the way they’d taught him to exploit the weak link between thumb and forefinger. “Don’t ever grab me like that, Dante. I can hurt you. I can hurt you bad.” Though her eyes were threatening, the anticipated follow-up roundhouse kick didn’t come.
He almost made the mistake of laughing, but pinched it off. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want you to leave without telling me your name and when I can see you again.”
“I don’t want to see you again. I wrote you, and I don’t like the words I found.”
He was momentarily at a loss, incapacitated by confusion. She slipped on both her shoes, found several pieces of jewelry that had been cast off, and was on her way out when he finally sprang from the bed and blocked the door. “The poem? You mean that?” he asked, thumbing at the lipstick letters on his wall.
Second Verse:
solitary fortress
fortified by brief glimpses
synaptic images
of dreams half-feared
and desires
molten through indecision
to the soul
“You don’t like me because you don’t like the poem you wrote about me?”
“The poem is you,” she said.
He frowned. He wasn’t qualified as a critic. Was it artsy to avoid punctuation and capital letters? Wasn’t something supposed to rhyme? Or was this what he’d heard called free verse?
Why was it suddenly so damned important to know?
And how the hell was it him?
She read his confusion. “You live all alone, fearing tomorrow, fearing the mistakes you’ve made and the things you’ve overlooked. You trade drugs for friendship, drugs for sex, drugs for anything you haven’t the money to buy.”
He bit his lip, thought about letting her through the door. Who the hell did she think she was? She’d had nothing bad to say about his drugs a minute ago when she was at his stash. But he was more intrigued than angry. How the hell did she know these things?
“You’re Don Quixote tilting against impossible odds, because the demon you fear is just around the corner and the people who pay you to do what you do have waited too long. The world will come crashing down around us all when the numbers roll over and you’re the only one who believes it.
“Because you know that you can’t stop it.”
Third Verse:
dangling carrot perfection
slides easily through
timorous groping talons of
self-imposed
inadequacy
chemical bandaged mind
driving drained and broken frame
buying time/love/nothing
until the 2000th time
a day is born
and truth and reality
merge-reform-destroy
and twist in endless spirals
ending
She slipped past him and through the door. He heard the echo of her footsteps in the hall, the slamming of the front door. He stumbled to the window in the living room and watched her hail a cab. Watched as it swept her away on Fifth. Behind him, in the bedroom, his computer came on and played a dirge, reminding him that it was time to get out of bed and go to work. Reminding him that it was pointless and inevitable to go to work. This week it was an investment firm whose clients could count on losing every penny they owned when the firm’s computers encountered the new millennium . . . unless he fixed their software.
The sun leeching between the buildings downtown was bloated and brown. A sign of rain or maybe even snow. A sign of impending winter. Impending doom.
* * *
“How did you find me?”
He slid her bracelet across the table. “You left this at my apartment.” Her name was engraved on the inside, all in lower case, like the poetry on his bedroom wall: Adrian. He’d asked around at the Weeping Violet and several other clubs until someone connected the name with his description of her. The bartender there had known someone who thought they knew someone who knew where she lived. Three connections later, he’d finally gotten a phone number. It had cost him most of the drugs he had in reserve, and he didn’t have the money to make more. But he’d managed to get hold of her.
She’d agreed to meet him here — though it was growing late in the year for such places — at this sidewalk café. A public place, as if she had something to fear from him.
“I had to see you again, Adrian.”
“You should have listened to me. You should have stayed away.”
“It wasn’t my idea for you to write me, it was yours. You come to me, turn my life on end, throw my problems in my face like you’ve lived with them all your life, then you disappear. ‘We can’t see each other again.’ Bullshit!”
“Less than two years,” she whispered. Her eyes gave away nothing. There was no intonation of emotion in the tones of her voice. He felt her fear.
“Two years is enough time to do something.” he countered. “I can make a difference.”
“You are tilting at windmills.”
“What about you? You’re writing about me tilting at windmills — lots of satisfaction in that.”
“You aren’t the only one I’ve written.”
“Yeah? Well, have you written yourself?”
She stared at him. Her eyes grew suddenly fearful, then returned to the blank, emotionless stare. Things had been going poorly since he sat down, but suddenly Dante felt a slight advantage, and he pressed it.
“If things are so bad, why not write yourself? If the words that are me are so repulsive to you, what are the words that are you? Who are you?”
Her lip trembled, but he saw that he was getting through. To where or what he couldn’t tell. The tremble was working its way through her body — he’d have sworn she was vibrating. A tear had formed at the edge of one eye, catching the sun’s light like a tiny prism, sending multi-hued beams to glitter across the surface of her face for an instant — then away. She dabbed at the moisture with a napkin, afterward tucking the napkin away in her purse, as if she feared to leave something as vulnerable as a tear behind.
“Hold me.” She said it quickly and so softly, he wasn’t certain he’d heard her correctly.
He took her in his arms and she sank into him, burying her head against his chest. He held her like that for a long moment, then pulled away to gaze into her eyes, savoring the sensation of her flesh against his own. He rose, leaving money on the table, and they left in silence. The chill in the air forced them closer. The silence grew deeper and threatened to swallow them whole.
* * *
The steam rose around them, and the soap slid down his body, the soft press of her skin softened further by the lather. When she slipped through the shower curtain, he hung back, reluctant to leave the warmth so soon. He felt it draining the tension from him. Images of the past few hours swam before his eyes as he closed them against the heat of the water. He barely resisted the urge to touch himself.
The water swirled down and away, and he forced his mind back. He twisted the knobs and pulled the curtain aside, groping for a towel. He imagined her, naked, combing her long hair and staring at the words she’d written on his wall. He imagined a great many things, but not the empty room he stepped into, the door to the hall still ajar and a slight breeze wafting through.
He stumbled to the bed. She’d dressed and gone. Nothing remained of her. Nothing except . . .
On the table beside the bed, held down by a vial of yellow powder that he noted was half-empty, was the napkin from the cafe. There were words scrawled on it, but he turned from them, moving toward the front window. He looked into the night, stood naked in the glare of the street lights and stared through moonlight after nothing. Gone. Dripping and chilled through bone and soul, he picked up the napkin and began to read, the moisture from his fingers dampening the paper.
First verse:
muse’s curse
to see this clearly
so that every broken promise
lies on the surface
and wearing your insides out
with no shelter from the vacant wind
you fall farther in
. . . always farther in
Unlike the piece she’d written on his wall, this one appeared to be titled. Scrawled at the bottom of the poem, rather than the top, was simply: grey. But was it, he wondered a second later, really a title? Or was it her signature? He’d never asked for her last name, but she might be Grey. Adrian Grey.
Muse’s curse? He suddenly recalled mindless conversation (or so it had seemed to him) from the night before, he dosing off after whispering some empty flattery about how talented she was, how lucky that she could write such beautiful verse.
“It’s not a gift,” she’d replied, her voice all but lost in the dark. “It’s a curse.” He’d wanted to laugh at the absurdity of that remark, but his mind was already slipping away, succumbing to warmth and fatigue and a welcome night that promised her by his side. He hadn’t heard the rest of it. Not then. Not consciously at least. But it had been recorded in his mind, and it came back to him now.
“You don’t understand,” she’d said. “You don’t see what I see. The beauty — the lives and loves — the very words fall short. I close my mind and imagine lives dripping onto the paper through my pen, but I always fail, always fall short of the vision. It always fades to grey.”
Second verse:
grey-clouded eyes
that see reality
and much farther
that capture beauty
but fail to tell of it
that break every moment
over the back of one’s failures
“Once a thing is written, it goes grey. The words become the reality. The truth is lost. Don’t you see? What I write is a pale shadow of the truth I see — a failure. The more I write, the more of myself I put into my writing, the more I lose. Everything goes grey. Eventually that’s all there is. Grey. Your world loses its color. Your life loses its purpose. You lose your heart . . . one word at a time.
“I’ve written you. Doesn’t that scare you? Don’t you feel it all fading — rearranging? I can see it in your eyes, feel it, but . . .” She bit her lip. “ If I write myself, what will happen? You ask too much, Dante, but, God help me, I can’t refuse you. What if I cease to exist? What if I am replaced by a pale shadow, a shard of grey that the world will see as Adrian, but that will fall far short of what I’m meant to be? What if you don’t even notice...?”
Third verse:
and all that you fear
all that you hide
all that you carry deep inside
isn’t enough
for you
for them
for the salvation of your soul
There, where she’d written the word soul, a tiny wrinkled circle of ink lay diffused and striated along the veins of the paper napkin . . . the spot where she’d collected that single tear.
Dante folded the napkin and clenched it in his fist, certain of nothing save the fact that he was rapidly losing his heart to this strange, too-serious girl. He knew he had to find her — didn’t know why he was so frightened, or wouldn’t admit it. His walls loomed about him, grey and colorless, broken by words in black lipstick.
* * *
He mixed the chemicals carefully, keeping his mind focused despite the urge to lose himself in the words on the wall — in the words on the napkin. He had the vials color-coded, but was finding it difficult to follow his own instructions. They seemed faded. For the first time in years he had to hold each one close, reading the label carefully to be certain he didn’t botch the mix. He blamed Adrian. He blamed himself. Blamed his lack of understanding and his foolish demands that she turn her talent on herself. He flipped the top on his Zippo and brought the Bunsen burner to life, sifting three types of crystals into a tiny metal pan and adding a drop of sugar water. He watched until it had melted together, watched it coalesce, and pulled it away from the heat, setting it aside and moving on to the next mixture.
He needed to catch up on his supply, needed enough reserve to be certain he could find her without being stopped at some closed door. The drugs were his keys to the city, and behind one of those locks she waited. Blinking on his computer monitor, in mocking silence at his back, the screen-saver countdown to the millennium ticked away slowly. He needed to work, but desired more to find her. He needed to finish the damned mix before his shaking hands wasted it in flames. Nothing seemed to work. Focus was illusive.
Trent Reznor banged at the back of his skull with a voice raspy and clear: Without you, everything falls apart... The last of the mix slid into the now bubbling solution, and he lifted it carefully from the flame, moving it quickly to the dish where it would cool, where the crystals would form. He needed it as much for his own nerves now, as for his search. The damned screen-saver was so loud — How could he possibly hear that?
He gritted his teeth, snuffed the flame, and staggered to his bedroom to change. He would have to cut and chop the crystals, would have to pour them into the little capsules. All in the name of chemical bliss. All hail better life through modern chemistry! He slipped into tight black pants, a ragged, time-worn t-shirt with an LSD molecule on the front in neon green, ran his hand back through hair long past helping, and took a deep breath. She was out there. She needed him. That was his mantra.
He pulled the napkin from his pocket with shaking hands and held it up, sweat-coated fingers tearing at the edges of it as he tried to read through salty tears of frustration.
First verse:
muse’s curse
to see clear
so that every broken
lies on the
He held it closer, thinking it was blurred, that he’d be able to read it. The paper was moist and torn, and his shaking hands nearly ripped it in two as he concentrated, trying to remember, trying to put back what had been lost. Muses curse — to see . . . to see what clearly?
and wearing your insides out
with no shelter from the vacant wind
you fall farther in
. . . always farther in
He folded the napkin carefully, putting it in his pocket. It was just getting dark, and the Weeping Violet would be opening soon ...
* * *
The brute at the door was the same he’d slipped past before, so many nights in his past that it was hard to reconcile it with the moment at hand. He remembered well enough the chemical key to this door, and was inside within a matter of minutes, far too much given for what had been received, unless one counted the price of the poem disintegrating in his pocket. He was certain the cost wouldn’t matter at all, however, if he didn’t find her.
Making his way to the central bar, he ordered in a daze, something green and cold, ice melting and cracking in its depths. He sipped it once, shuddered, set it on the bar and spun in a slow circle, searching the shadowed booths and alcoves, sifting through the twisting, twining bodies on the dance floor. There. Between the dancers. A fleeting glimpse: wide, vacant eyes, hair wild and unkempt, dressed in black, as if in mourning.
He left the drink on the bar and hit the dance floor at a run, pushing through and jostling several couples from their chemically induced visions long enough to earn a quick curse, or an elbow in the ribs. He staggered through the far side of the writhing mass of arms and legs, pierced flesh and altered minds, regaining his balance with a lurch, just in time to see her duck into a booth near the very back of the room.
He slid soundlessly in across from her, watching her search a half-empty glass of wine with lowered eyes. His hand slipped into his pocket, dragged free the napkin and slid it across the table to her. He realized with a shiver that in his haste, he’d pushed it across a spot of condensation.
“What did it say?” he asked, voice strained.
She did not look up, but her gaze swung slowly to the napkin. He saw her shoulders tense, saw her shudder just once before growing very still. He pressed it closer to her, leaning down to follow her gaze. There was a dry napkin sitting near the back of the booth, and he grabbed it frantically, slapping it down beside the first.
“Fix it,” he demanded. “I messed it up...” His words trailed off, but hers did not fill the vacuum left by his inability to explain what was happening. The poem shouldn’t matter. That the words were fading should be trivial. They were only words, with no more power than what was lent them by the reader. Adrian was sobbing softly, her shoulders shaking, staring at the napkin. Dante leaned close again.
“Adrian,” he whispered. “What . . . ?”
And he saw. The words were smeared in an alcohol-scented smudge on the table between them.
“No.” His voice no more than a whisper. “God . . . no.”
She looked up then, her eyes lost, empty. What color were they? He remembered other eyes: green, deep, powerful. Had they been hers? Did he remember her at all? The eyes that regarded him were now were a smokey grey. Perhaps it was the lighting. It could have been the heavy fog of cigarette smoke permeating the bar. It could have been...
“Fix it!” He was pleading now, hands trembling on the napkin. “Adrian, please, write it again.”
She looked up, with those eyes so shallow and grey and dead. She looked up and said very softly, “I can’t.”
The second line was smeared beyond recognition. The third had the words every and promise. The fourth . . . “Fuck!” he growled. “It’s just a poem. Just a poem. I can write this. I can write this stupid poem.” He stared at the napkin, reached frantically to his pocket, then to another. No pen.
He rose, clutching the soggy paper in his fist and lurching toward the bar. He slammed through dancers and servers alike, coming within inches of smacking his face into the back of one man’s head. He needed a pen, pencil...marker. Anything. He moved toward the bar, stopped on the edge of the dance floor, wheeling and snatching the pen from a waitress’ tray and lurching back toward the table.
Which table? His eyes scanned the shadowed bar, but he could not make out Adrian’s face. He crossed the dance floor again, the waitress’ high pitched whine boring through his thoughts–ignored, but even as he drew closer to where they’d sat, where he knew...thought...they’d sat, he did not see her.
“Fuck...” his words trailed off as huge, ham-like hands, fueled by his own chemicals, gripped his shoulder and yanked. He saw angry faces, heard the waitress’ whine grow louder and more petulant, managed a soft curse before he was propelled across the floor, head smacking painfully into the wall. His sight didn’t clear until he was stumbling down the stairs to the street, falling in a heap. His hand still clutched the pen, and the wadded, crumpled napkin. He stared at both numbly. The paper was a dingy shade of grey in the dim lamplight.
* * *
Dante stared at the endless rows of characters and codes on his computer screen, squinting to keep them in focus through the chemical fuzz that had kept him upright for so many days . . . so many lifetimes. He was typing with just two fingers, the fragments of Adrian’s napkin clutched in either hand. The digital clock in the upper corner of the screen ticked away, winding down, endless spirals, ending. His fingers moved mechanically. He knew the programming languages, the subroutines, the codes that could save a world if only he were Legion — if only he remembered why it mattered. His fingers tapped away rhythmically, and the beat of the music returned to him . . . the sight of her moving through the crowd at the Weeping Violet . . . the empty, vacant hole that ate away at his insides now that she was gone. He knew he could track her down, could find her again – thought he could. That last glimpse, colorless eyes and expressionless face. He could not face what he might find.
Her words were so much ink, pulped, faded into the palm of his hands. A single word remained, indelible, despite his mangling of the rest. Grey. That, and nothing more. His fingers flew. His thoughts melted slowly to shades without color or form.
Behind him, coming from an unknown leak in the plumbing of the apartment above his, water flowed down the surface of the wall where her black lipstick reflected absolutely nothing. The letters began to run, to mingle, to blacken his carpet at the base of the wall, leaving vague shadow-images of her words to stain the white wall.
The words on the computer screen blurred. His fingers slowed. The clock ticked:
Ending.
The Purloined Prose
By Patricia Lee Macomber & David Niall Wilson
The Swan. To most the name conjured images of pristine white feathers, a graceful neck, motion so fluid it mocked the very water in which the bird itself swam. To Edgar, it was an oasis, a hideout, and his temple. He sat at the worn oak and brass altar, folded over a chalice so fogged from age that the light barely penetrated it. His thoughts were turned inward, though his ears were trained on the conversation four stools down. He had no idea he was sitting at the bar with a dead man.
Flickering gaslights dueled with the shadows, chased them across timeworn and tattered walls until they threatened not to exist at all, and then retreated as long dark fingers reached toward the tenuous threads of illumination and threatened to choke the life from them. Edgar's hand trembled, poised over a scrap of paper on which he scribbled hasty words, some of them his own, some gleaned from the hushed conversation that floated to him from the others. The barman drew near, though he regarded Edgar not at all, and Edgar, the scribbler of stolen words, turned on his stool and put his shoulder and arm between the barman and the paper.
"It has to be a heart, don't you see." The words were slurred and punctuated with spittle but the small, ferret-like man was adamant.
His friend, a large, hulking fellow in a dark coat, his hat slumped in a shapeless mass on the bar at his side, shrugged and downed the rest of his drink in one great gulp. "You are the wordsmith, not I. But I'll tell you this: You'd have a much better time of it if you actually wrote down some of your grand ideas instead of hammering me with them night after night."
"Ah, but I have!" the smaller man said with a wink, patting his jacket with one hand. Something crinkled beneath the pressure of his hand. He finished his drink and set the glass down with a clunk. "Every last one. And you'll be laughing out the other side of your face when you see them published, my friend." He slapped the big man on the back and withdrew from the stool, letting his body settle carefully onto his legs and drawing in a large breath to steel himself against the effects of gravity.
"Yes, yes! So you keep saying," the big man retorted, eyeing his tottering companion with a mixture of amusement and concern. “Only if you are more adept at writing than you are at walking, though. Now, let’s be on our way.”
The smaller man nodded. “And while we walk, I shall finish the tale of the heart."
Edgar watched as they made their way to the door, weaving among tables and chairs, dodging other drunken patrons and tilting inward until their shoulders nearly touched. He watched their backs as the door opened, and then slid his eyes around to the barman's pockmarked face. He pressed his hand to the bar for a moment, and then slid it into his pocket, the paper tucked neatly into his fist. He pushed the paper to the bottom and a wrinkled bill was neatly substituted. It was more than the drink had cost; a tidy tip left for the barman's keen inattention.
Edgar’s mind whirled in a bourbon fog, but the small man’s words had imbedded themselves deeply in his mind, and they helped him to focus. Written down – all the stories—written down.
Edgar glanced down the bar and stared at the empty stools the two had vacated, then turned to follow them out of the bar. The words he’d collected rubbed against one another on the crumpled paper in his pocket. Edgar could almost hear their soft scraping, trying to get free and not quite managing it.
The man had talked about the beating of a heart – loudly, like a clock, like a drumbeat pounding behind plaster walls. Edgar never sat too close to the two men, so he never got entire stories—only the words. Stolen words. Now darkness had seeped in that threatened to blot those out as well. If they were written down, he was too late. If the words had been captured and structured, what was left for him?
The sun was long gone from the sky, and without The Swan’s dim light to do battle with them, the shadows closed in tight. It was chilly. Edgar pulled his jacket up, turning the collar so that it wrapped about his neck and broke the wind. He kept his eyes to the ground, watching for potholes in the street, and he walked as quickly as the bourbon would allow. As he walked, his footsteps on the cobbled street found the rhythm of his heart. His pulse grew louder, rushing in his ears, and he stopped, closed his eyes, and tried to gather his thoughts.
He needed to get home. He still had enough oil left in his lamp to write for a few hours, until his bleary eyes could no longer sustain their own weight and the darkness claimed him. His head pounded with the deep resonance of a phantom heart. Edgar turned down an alley that cut off from the shadows of the street into even deeper darkness, and staggered toward his rooms as quickly as his thin, bourbon-clumsy legs could carry him.
Halfway down the alley’s length, he caught sight of something lying in his path. It was too far from the walls to be garbage, unless some children had come by and toppled it as a prank. Edgar slowed warily, swinging his gaze to either side as he approached. Then he stopped and stood still as a stone, and the pounding that had threatened to blank his mind grew louder still, pressing up into his throat and, thankfully, choking off a scream.
It was a body, and, as he stepped closer in fascination, he saw that it was a familiar body. The small, ferret-like man lay face down in the dirt. His arms were flung out to the side, not as if to catch himself when he fell, but in reaction to something. That something glittered in the dim light, and Edgar saw that it was the blade of a very long, very thin dagger. The hilt stood out from the man’s back like a planted cross, and blood ran down the sides of the body to pool on the alley floor.
Then Edgar saw the manuscript, and he forgot the body. The words whispered softly to him, and a stray breeze caught the top corner of one page and threatened to spirit it away. The man’s head rested on a pillow of words. Blood had splattered on the paper, and the pool beneath the body seeped upward, encroaching on the white, word-speckled pages.
Edgar took a last glance around and saw no one. He leaned down, lifted the man's head by its greasy hair, and yanked the pages free. He released his grip and watched as the head fell back with a soft, wet thud. A low, wet moan bubbled over the man's thin lips and Edgar drew in a quick gulp of air. It was the last sound Edgar heard as his heartbeat sped and roared. He ran off down the alley, tucking the papers beneath his jacket and fighting to clear the image of that knife, stark and final, pinning the small man’s jacket to his spine.
Back in his rooms, Edgar slammed the door behind him and collapsed against its worn wooden surface with a groan. He clutched his coat, and the sheaf of papers, tightly to his chest. The room was sparsely furnished with no more than a bed, a chair, and a small desk upon which rested a stack of clean paper, his ink well and a quill. Edgar made his way across the darkened room, banging his shin smartly on the foot of the bed and crying out softly. He knew better than to make too much noise and risk awakening the other tenants of the building. Grouchy old men flanked him, and down the hall was an old woman with hearing so keen she would sometimes complain that the scratching of his quill on the paper was too loud.
He’d filed away her words. He’d filed away the images, as well. He could see her, lying awake, late into the night, her eyes wide open and glaring at the wall that separated them, flinching at each stroke of ink on his paper and dreaming of ways to make him stop.
Edgar flipped the thumb switch on the gas lamp and urged the flame higher, chasing the shadows back into their corners and illuminating the surface of the desk. There was enough fuel for a few hour's work and no more. He couldn't afford to waste a single minute.
He pulled the papers out of his coat and dropped into the chair, smoothing the top sheet out with the palms of his hands. He bent over the page and read, his head cocked to one side and resting on the heel of his hand. The fingers of that hand tugged at his hair as he read, his face trapped between amazement and revulsion.
The tales were wondrous, but the words were lacking. Edgar himself could never have concocted such frightening images from his own limited experience, but the man who’d written these pages had an equal inability to distill the images into words.
Now, Edgar reflected, he lacked even the ability to sit on his barstool and speak the words for another’s benefit. Pity.
Edgar fingered his quill and scowled at the pages. Some of them were spattered with the man's blood, entire words obscured by the thickening goo. Edgar shuddered and tried to read more quickly.
When he had read every word, he sat back in his chair and stared off through the one window in his apartment distractedly. Edgar knew he could do better. He could bring these tales to life. He could bring them to the world.
He glanced at the lamp and saw that the reading had cost him nearly half of his oil. He turned the wick down just a touch, hoping to preserve a few extra minutes of light. Edgar carefully stacked the dead man’s pages and glanced around the room. The lack of furnishings also provided a decided lack of good places to hide things. His impatience got the better of him, and he rose, lifted the corner of his mattress, and slipped the manuscript beneath it. He knew he’d have to find a better place eventually, on the off chance they traced his steps from the alley, but for now this would have to do.
He returned to the desk and slid a fresh sheet of paper into the pool of flickering light. He unstoppered his ink, poured a small amount into the well, and tapped the tip of a battered quill against the surface of the desk to clear it.
The dead man’s words whirled through his mind. So many images beckoned to him that it was difficult to sort them, or his thoughts, coherently. He decided to go with what was clearest in his mind, and that would be the events of the evening, what he’d heard in the bar. He dismissed the image of the dagger-hilt cross and the small man’s back and he began to write.
“The Tale of the Heart.”
Edgar stared at the words he’d written, and then frowned. With a quick flourish he dragged the quill through the title and wrote another beside it.
“The Tell-tale Heart.” He smiled at the subtle re-arrangement and wished, just for a moment, that he could grab the small man from the past, drag him to the desk and show him. It wasn’t just the words – it was the way they were used – the art was in their arrangement.
As the flame guttered, threatening to blow out every time he moved, Edgar dipped his quill again, and continued to write.
Morning found him sprawled across the desk, his head resting on the paper and the quill still in his hand. The ink had dried on the tip and the lamp had gone out. As he righted himself, his stiff back crying out in protest, he recalled just when that lamp had betrayed him.
One story done, the next begun. The lamp had given up its last before he'd had a chance to finish. Edgar had plowed ahead, willing his brain to fight through the sleepless fog and finish that second story in the dark. His hand rested on the desk still, awaiting further orders.
No, he could recall no more than a bird, a man and a chair. His brain spun its wheels, trying to wrap itself around that fragmented memory. The lone window admitted a small square of sunlight, which fell upon the paper, taking the place of the lamplight. Edgar smiled a smile that was not his own and chuckled. He cleared the detritus from the pen and began to write. His smile widened with each word.
He wrote through breakfast and lunch, ignored all but one cry for his body to relieve itself of the day's doings. He wrote straight up until two, when he slammed down the quill and gathered together the pages, which now comprised four stories.
He had to eat. He knew he had to rest, and he had other work to do. He stared at the pages grasped tightly in his hands, and frowned.
It wasn’t odd for him to drop by the offices of the printer late, and he considered whether, along with the criticism that lay half complete on the desk, buried under the pages, and the blood, he should submit one of the stories. He itched to see them printed, to see the typeset words on better paper than the poor stuff he scribbled on, but.
There was the other man. The stories were changed; there was no doubt of that. The words were Edgar’s. Still – there was the matter of the heart. There were the images, the blood-soaked, too-vivid images, not the least of which was the recurring visage of the small man, gesticulating wildly at his friend and spouting his ideas like a madman. What if that friend read the papers? What if that friend, even though he’d never so much as turned in Edgar’s direction, knew who he was, and had seen him scribbling the stolen words, night after night. If that man were looking for his friend’s killer – or, worse yet, if that man was his friend’s killer – what would he do when he read that story?
Edgar’s brow broke out in a cold sweat, and he brushed his sleeve across it. He gathered together the sheaf of bloodstained papers and ordered them as neatly as he could, then glanced around the room. There was so little furniture that, under close scrutiny, he saw the close resemblance to a cell. He moved to the bed, lifted the hard mattress, and tucked the papers carefully beneath it. Then, with the stories tucked neatly under his jacket, he headed out of his room and down the stairs.
The sunlight assaulted him, brighter somehow when unhampered by glass. Nevertheless, he lowered his head, squinted shut his eyes, and trudged up the street toward the printers, trying to pry his mind from thoughts of the stories brushing up against him through the linen of his shirt, or the soft moan the man had uttered when his head struck the alley floor.
* * *
That night, Edgar dreamed.
He dreamed of New York City. He sat in a chair, facing an older man – an editor. He wasn’t sure how he knew this, but he did.
Edgar sat nervously in his chair. He fussed with the pleats of his pants and slicked back his hair, watching the broad-shouldered man in the expensive suit read his stories. They were his stories now and no other's. The only man who could say otherwise was cold and stiff. Besides, while the ideas had not been born in Edgar’s imagination, the words certainly had. That made the stories his and thus the fame would be his, as well.
The man read on, eyes widening at one word and narrowing at another. Edgar found it impossible to gauge the man's true response – his vision was oddly vague. Sounds were louder than he could ever remember. As he read, he put each finished page down on the desk face up, in order. Edgar thought of how this stack would mount up, of how he would have to re-order the pages when the man was done. He wondered which story the man was reading, and why his eyebrows went up and down – why his lips pursed, then frowned, and then went back to a fine hard slit. Edgar fidgeted with his shoe and frowned.
And then he saw it.
The top page on the stack, the one the editor had just set down, had a small red mark on the upper left corner. It was not a fingerprint, for surely he had seen the man grasp the page by the top right corner. Edgar frowned and looked more closely.
The bottom page in the man's hand sprouted a red spot of its own. It blossomed before Edgar's eyes and grew larger as he read. Edgar swallowed and looked away, blinked three times in quick succession. When he looked back, the red spot was still there and it had grown larger.
More spots broke out on the pages in the editor's hands. Still more popped up on the stack upon the desk. Edgar twitched inside, his stomach tying itself into a huge knot and his eye beginning to spasm. The editor’s expression continued to shift through emotions, following the words on the page, but his hands dripped with blood. His fingers smeared the pages, and a steady drip had begun at the edge of the desk, falling from where blood pooled beneath the pages.
Edgar could barely breathe, and that drip became louder. He watched each droplet form, release from the congealed miasma on the desktop, then fall, quivering through the air to PLOP into the puddle beneath the desk.
Then the editor scanned the final page and looked up. He grinned at Edgar. It was the big man. The man who’d been with the smaller one in the bar – and he was smiling. His smile widened impossibly and the teeth it revealed were long, sharp, and hungry.
Edgar screamed.
He sat up with a start. He was shaking and drenched in sweat. It was still dark, and the soft glow from the gaslights shone through the windows, illuminating galaxies of dust motes as they danced in the darkness. Then he heard the PLOP and his heart nearly stopped.
* * *
Edgar had made tea, and though it would be hours before the city would awaken, he could no longer sleep. He had managed to stop the leak in his sink with an old rag, but the echo of that last PLOP gave him no peace. He still felt clammy from the sweat-drenched nightmare, and he sat at his desk, pen in hand, brooding.
He was trying to pen a criticism of the latest work by Mr. Charles Dickens, whom he admired, but the words would not come to him. Not those words. The others would not leave him alone, but Edgar had to eat, and he knew he could not sell the stories. Not yet.
“Who is he?” he muttered.
The image of the big man, shaking his head in bafflement at the end of the bar as his friend spewed forth those amazing images in a constant stream, came to Edgar again and again. He tried to remember details. Had the man’s hands been calloused? Had he ever come into the tavern with any particular item in his hand that might give a clue to his profession, or his home? Had Edgar ever heard their names?
Bleary eyed, he returned to the work at hand. He had a deadline, and if he missed another, he would no longer have to worry about finding the words at all, because he would be finding a job – and a home – instead. As the sun rose slowly over the city, the scratching of his quill ticked off the moments on the clock, first hesitantly, and then in a steady stream.
* * *
It was three days later when he finally saw the man, alone at the end of the bar in The Swan. Edgar watched him carefully, trying not to be obvious. He wanted to walk over, offer his hand, and ask where the man’s friend was. Get it out in the open. Instead, he watched as the man morosely nursed a half-pint and stared at the mirrored wall behind the bar in silence.
It was like being in the theatre and watching a play enacted with one of the main characters missing. The big man’s hat sat, just as it always had, on the bar at his side. The stool beside him was pressed tightly against the wood base of the bar, empty with the aspect of having been empty for a very, very long time. The barman brought pint after pint, but the two men exchanged no pleasantries, and none of the regulars dropped by to ask questions, or offer condolence.
Edgar drew forth a small sheet of paper from his pocket and placed it on the bar beside his own drink, but when he took his pen in hand, there was no urge to write. The room was filled with subtle sound, low-pitched conversations and clinking glass, the clatter of carriage wheels on the street outside, and the cries of merchants as they closed their shops and carted their wares off the main thoroughfare.
No words. There was nothing for him to borrow, nothing to steal. The empty barstool mocked him. He began to hallucinate forms and movements in the clump of felt the big man called a hat, and each winking crystal goblet signaled to him, and then ignored him when he turned to see.
Then it started. Edgar turned his gaze to the blank sheet of paper, and was horrified to see that it had a spatter of blood near the upper right corner. Had he grabbed this from the wrong sheaf of paper? Had it soaked from his desk somehow, or been shaken free of his clothing after he left the alley?
But no, it was fresh, wasn’t it? It was too red to be dried on the paper, and it was spreading. Edgar glanced up to see if the barman had noticed, but he had not. No one had seen – yet. No one knew.
Edgar glanced down the bar at the big man, and as he did so, he felt something on his palm. Alarmed, he glanced down again and gasped, unable to contain the exclamation. The blood had pooled, not soaking into the paper, but leaking out of it. There was a gelatinous globe of deep, red blood quivering atop the paper. It had sprung an inner leak along one side and the trickle that ran out across the bar was what had touched Edgar’s hand.
He glanced up again wildly. The barman had begun to walk toward him, and Edgar’s heart pounded. He found that he couldn’t breathe, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the big man at the end of the bar had spun in his seat and had fixed him with a cold stare. When the man slowly rose, Edgar could take no more. He leaped back from his stool, toppling his beer, and spun crazily, nearly veering into a table and two men playing chess on his way out.
* * *
Shaking his head, the barman swiped his cloth across the counter and mopped up the spilled pint, cursing under his breath and vowing to charge the odd little man who’d spilled it double the next time he came in.
* * *
Edgar crashed out into the growing twilight and lit off for home. Everywhere he looked things were tinged in red. There was no sound of pursuit, but how far behind could they be?
He reached his rooms and slammed in through the door. The hinges complained, and the knob jiggled wildly about from the sudden fury of his entrance. He shut it just as quickly and ran to the bedside. He grasped the edge of the old mattress and pulled it upward. The pages were still neatly pressed beneath mattress and frame and Edgar let go an audible sigh of relief. Then he grabbed the stack and sorted it roughly. He pulled free those pages from which he had already written and set them aside in a rough stack. As he turned away, the mattress fell back into place with a solid thud.
He crossed to the old fireplace by the door, the room's one ounce of charm. It was sweltering outside, but tonight, the fireplace would add its own heat to the already jungle-like summer night.
Edgar set match to paper and sat back on his haunches, watching as the papers went up in a swift puff of smoke. Cheap paper, it had been, as rough and feeble as any he had seen. And now it curled and charred and wasted away to ashes.
Just before the blackened edges spread inward, Edgar caught site of a small stain on the bottom of one page. Blood. Black devoured red and the stain disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Then another arose on the blackening surface. And another. Another.
"No," Edgar mumbled into his right fist. "No, no…"
He sank back onto his haunches and rubbed the palms of his hands into his eyes until the pressure nearly made him pass out.
He came slowly back to his senses as evening’s shadows lengthened to night. He had not, he realized, bought more oil for his lamp. There was a stationary shop around the corner he knew to keep late hours, and to carry small jars of oil. He might make it there and back if he hurried. The flash of flame in the fireplace had long since died away.
Edgar glanced into the ashes on the hearth, but there was no sign of blood, or dampness of any kind. Only the bone-dust of words. Turning away, he slipped out into the night.
He walked through the moonlight, his head bent low and eyes on his shoes. As luck would have it, the stationary shop was open and the gentleman with the tight mustache and careless hair admitted him long enough to purchase one small bottle of oil. He clutched it tightly to his chest and turned toward home, letting the light of the moon guide him.
By the time he reached his own door once more, he felt immensely better. Surely the words would flow and his review would be complete. No more purloined stories or nonsense about bleeding paper.
Once the lamp was refueled and the match struck, the shadows receded and all that remained of the day's madness was a tangy odor of smoke that teased at his nostrils and made him think of fat Christmas sausages. Edgar settled into his chair, took up his quill, and began to read what little he'd written already. Still, his eyes shot to the stack of stories on the back corner of his desk. They were hard to avoid and even harder to remember.
He reached out toward the pages, meaning to just glance at the top page for just a moment, and then paused. He had the distinct and terrifying impression that there was something behind him, something just begging him to turn and see it. He resisted; he tried to force his mind back to the business at hand. The sensation was too strong, and Edgar turned.
A red stain crept out from beneath the mattress and sheet. It gathered at the bottom of the sheet, and then traced a thin line to the bottom of the bed frame.
Drip! One drop hit the floor, and then another, and the stain worked steadily out from some deep pool of red within, seeping through the aged material until it had spread out to cover the bottom corner of the mattress and formed a large, dark puddle on the floor.
"No! Nonononooooo…” Edgar shut his eyes. He ground his teeth until the sound of it deafened him, and he fought the growing tide of terror for control of his mind.
It’s not real, he thought. It’s all in your head, man – there is no blood
He turned and faced the desk once more, reaching as calmly as he could manage for the quill. The steady drip of the blood at his back was deafening, and he wondered if the woman who could hear the sound of his quill on paper in the early hours of the morning could not hear this as well. Perhaps she was out now, calling the constable to report the dripping sound
“Not so quick as dripping water, it weren’t, sir,” she’d say, “but thick-like. Like blood, not so much a drip as a bleeding cut. I heard it through his WALLS.”