Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
InterText Vol 03 No 02
--
** *******
* * * *
* *
* ** * ******* ***** **** * ***** ** ** *******
* ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * *** **** * *** * *
* * ** * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * **** * * * **** * * *
==========================================
InterText Vol. 3, No. 2 / March-April 1993
==========================================
Contents
FirstText: One Dozen Down... .....................Jason Snell
SecondText: Suitable for Framing ................Geoff Duncan
Short Fiction
Fructus in Eden_.............................Robert Devereaux_
Snapper_...........................................Mark Smith_
What Are You Looking For, China White?_..........Kyle Cassidy_
Drop-Lifter_...................................Jim Vassilakos_
Dreamstock_..................................Dorothy Westphal_
....................................................................
Editor Assistant Editor
Jason Snell Geoff Duncan
jsnell@etext.org gaduncan@halcyon.com
....................................................................
Send subscription requests, story submissions,
and correspondence to intertext@etext.org
....................................................................
InterText Vol. 3, No. 2. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this
magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold
(either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire
text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1993, 1994 Jason
Snell. Individual stories Copyright 1993 by their original
authors.
....................................................................
FirstText: One Dozen Down... by Jason Snell
==============================================
It's been two years since I took the plunge, made the long walk
off the short pier, jumped into the abyss that is electronic
publishing. Two years since the first issue of _InterText_ got
mailed out to the remains of Jim McCabe's _Athene_ mailing list
and a few hundred other brave souls who heard about the magazine
from Usenet news postings or Dan Appelquist's _Quanta_.
Two years, and amazingly enough, I'm still in free-fall. There's
no bottom in sight -- unlike so many not-for-profit "hobby"
enterprises that fall by the wayside after just a few months,
_InterText_ is still here after two years.
At the time I started the magazine, I thought that we were
fairly unique in what we (Dan Appelquist and _Quanta_ included,
of course) were doing. And I guess we were. But there are plenty
of other electronic "artifacts" out there -- from the disk-based
_Ruby's Pearls_ to the e-mail distributed Mac newsletter
_TidBITS_.
Speaking of _TidBITS_, I should mention that Assistant Editor
Geoff Duncan (whose annual column appears below) spoke with that
publication's editor, Adam Engst, just the other day. Adam
suggested that we might be underestimating our magazine's
audience. He figures that since it's so hard to measure just how
far a publication gets disseminated in the net, our confirmed
readership of 1,100+ is probably between 8,000 and 12,000.
Well, I'll believe that when I believe it. But _InterText_
certainly has been cropping up in some odd places, including
random bulletin board system transfer sections all over.
The more readers the better, I say.
Now back to that issue of being a unique enterprise. That may be
so, but the "outside world's" knowledge of events here in
computer- land seem to be growing. I'm not just talking about
our mention in _Analog_ magazine (see Geoff's column for more on
_that_), but about a general recognition of computer
technologies and the way they change us all.
A new entry in the print publishing game is _Wired_ magazine,
based out of San Francisco. The magazine is concerned with
technology and its impact on us all.
The premiere issue of _Wired_ included, along with a cover story
featuring author Bruce Sterling's voyage into the U.S.
military's world of virtual war, a thoughtful piece by John
Browning about the future of libraries and publishers. The
question Browning asks is essentially this: how will publishers
and libraries deal with questions of copyright and royalties
when everything that is published is available via computer,
instantaneously?
A good question, with few answers -- yet. But I think the answer
will be coming sooner than one might guess. In any event, here
we are, a magazine that's _always_ available, in multiple
formats, instantaneously. Is this the future? Could be. We'll
have to see about that.
One of the heartening things about a magazine like _Wired_ is
its net connectivity. It has its own Internet node -- wired.com
-- and its editors claim that in the next few months, text-only
versions of its issues will be available via anonymous FTP and
other free net sources.
Now, don't flood _Wired_ with questions about this. When they're
ready to put their issues up for FTPing, they'll announce it --
and so will I. But the idea that a national magazine is
considering putting all its stories up on the net to be
downloaded (albeit without _Wired_'s unique layout and
fascinating graphics) is a breathtaking one.
Compared to _Wired_, we're a little fish in a mighty big pond.
But so what? We've been swimming around for twelve issues now.
And the water's still fine.
SecondText: Suitable for Framing by Geoff Duncan
===================================================
Readers of Jason's column may recall him mentioning
_InterText's_ recent recognition in the first annual "Digital
Quill" awards sponsored by the Disktop Publishing Association.
For those of you who missed it, _InterText_ was judged first
runner-up in the "Regular Literary Publication" category -- also
recognized were Dan Appelquist's _Quanta_ and Del Freeman's
magazine _Ruby's Pearls_ (which took first place). The point of
the contest was to focus more attention on electronic publishing
-- the Disktop Publishing Association recruited outside judges,
coordinated press releases, and offered a wide range of contest
categories to recognize accomplishment in all areas of
electronic publishing. Prizes were awarded for stories and
novels, literary publications, software packages, as well as
non-fiction publications, articles, and books.
Even though we (unexpectedly) won a prize, I found the results
of the competition a little disappointing. We received "a
certificate suitable for framing" and some congratulatory
messages from readers and from other publications. We sent
similar messages to other winners we knew how to contact, and
that was the end of it. No checks appeared in our mailboxes, no
one called from the _New York Times Literary Review_ or
_Saturday Night Live_, and, aside from the smattering of letters
we received, no one seemed to have noticed that the competition
took place, much less that a few upstart network magazines had
gotten away with some goods. So much for publicity. I was
getting ready to write off the whole experience.
That is until Jason and I were talking one day and he mentioned
that Tom Easton, a columnist for the science fiction magazine
_Analog,_ had confessed to being one of the judges for the
Disktop Publishing Awards. "Maybe he'll write it up," I thought.
"Then again, maybe not." A few months later, Rita Rouvalis sent
us a note saying that Mr. Easton's column in the March 1993
issue of _Analog_ contained a section called "Books on Disk,"
that discussed the winners of the Disktop Publishing Awards.
"Hot damn," I thought, and bummed a ride to the nearest magazine
stand to get a copy. And there we were: the name _InterText_ had
finally appeared in a magazine that did not require its
readership to be computer-literate. Yes, yes -- it was a cursory
mention near the end of a column at the end of a magazine. But
it still evoked a certain feeling of pride. Mr. Easton's remarks
were generally positive, and he gave electronic publications a
pat on the back, saying that we were a "young medium" with "a
great deal of vigor and promise."
As I read Mr. Easton's remarks, I wondered how electronic
magazines are perceived in the world of traditional print
publications. On one hand, Mr. Easton seemed impressed that
_InterText_ and _Ruby's Pearls_ don't focus on one
genre--although both magazines publish science fiction, neither
publish it exclusively. On the other hand, Mr. Easton seemed to
consider electronic publications another "small press" format,
with an appeal only to those who were "techy" enough to feel
comfortable with the medium. Now, I'll be the first to admit
there are definite parallels between _InterText_ and small press
publications: we distribute in a "niche market" and we aren't
concerned with procuring the "first North American serial
rights" to a piece (as demonstrated by this issue's "Fructus in
Eden," we'll consider any work that we may legally publish). But
I think Mr. Easton is missing the point when he implies
electronic publication is just another "medium" of small press
publication.
First, there are obvious technical differences. Unlike
traditional small press magazines, _InterText_ does not have
distributors and resellers stock our material. We have no
overhead from bookstores, no buybacks to guarantee. We don't pay
printers to produce an issue. We don't have advertising costs
and we don't sell advertising space. Furthermore, we can
distribute an issue worldwide in a matter of hours, correspond
almost instantaneously with authors, proofreaders, and
production staff, and make our issues accessible twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week, for free.
I don't think these technical considerations truly differentiate
us from on-paper publications, but I know people who do. Many of
my acquaintances in the publishing industry feel threatened by
electronic media and the "information revolution" -- and I
suppose it shouldn't surprise me that most of them don't know
the first thing about computers or computer networks. "It's so
easy to copy," they say. "There's no way to guarantee that
someone won't take your stories, put their own name on it, and
send it to me." While this is true, I hardly think this is an
overwhelming concern. Photocopiers, scanners, and plain
old-fashioned typewriters will make copies of on- paper
materials -- they only require a little more perseverance. I
think it's been proven that if there's a way to violate a
copyright, someone will do it. Every year there's a new story
about how a high- school student typed up his or her favorite
mystery novel and got it published under an assumed name. It
probably happens all the time--it might even be the reason
writers say there's no such thing as an original story.
But one aspect of electronic publishing makes something like
_InterText_ fundamentally different from a traditional magazine:
_InterText_ makes no pretext of being a "paying publication."
This means that _InterText_, and electronic publications like
it, are immune to many of the forces that govern the style and
content of traditional print publications. We have no publishers
to please, no advertising or sales goals to meet: we exist
because of our readers' interest.
We receive submissions because writers want to have their
stories appear here, not because they hope to receive monetary
compensation. In the print industry, good stories -- wonderful
stories -- are routinely glossed over and rejected by editors
who don't have the time to read them or simply don't want to
take a chance with an unpublished author. This is because
traditional publications have no choice but to think about their
financial "bottom line." _InterText_ doesn't have to worry about
any of that -- our budget is almost non- existent, and so are
our financial concerns. While our slush-pile may not be very
large, the material we receive is fundamentally different from
that received by commercial magazines _because it is freely
given_. While authors may hope for commercial recognition and
success, we promise none of that. The "bottom line" is that our
authors (and our staff) are freely contributing their work. With
few monetary or commercial concerns intruding on the production
of the magazine, electronic publications are arguably a "purer"
form than traditional publications.
Now, I know many of you are thinking that's a fine thing for me
to say, but it doesn't _mean_ anything in a world dominated by
traditional media. But I think it does mean something, and I
think (in his own way) Mr. Easton recognized it when he noted
that electronic publications don't have to conform to a single
genre of writing. Traditional publications have spent years
building the barricades between genres: they've built them so
well that even the most established authors have enormous
difficulty crossing them. That electronic publications have been
able to sustain themselves -- and grow -- without regard to
genre is proof of the fundamental difference between electronic
and printed publications.
As we embark on our third year, _InterText's_ possibilities are
brighter than ever. I hope you, _InterText's_ readers, are proud
of what you've helped create -- as you can tell, I think it's
unlike anything you'll be able to pick up at a magazine stand. I
hope you enjoy the journey we've started, and thanks for staying
around for the ride.
Fructus in Eden by Robert Devereaux
======================================
...................................................................
* In this story, you already know the characters, the setting,
and the way things turn out in the end. But this might be a case
where history was re-written by the victors... *
...................................................................
Cringing naked and ashamed in the bushes, they could hear above
the hammering of their hearts the dread rud and thumble of His
footfall. Guilty as sin they were, thought Adam; as guilty as
the fruit had been good.
Yet, though in the foulest depths of fear and remorse the first
father cowered, even so, half-pendulous with new cravings was
he, squatting there thigh to thigh beside the long-tressed Eve,
his "beloved lovecunt" as he called her in their moments of
dalliance (for in the first days, that word held no pejorative,
but partook rather of the sensual beauty inherent in words like
"zephyr" or "stream"), those precious moments when they lay
together on beds of moss in the full perfection of the sun.
But now the sky roiled with stormclouds, and useless knowledge
clouded their brains. The Serpent had done his damnedest, their
incisors had wantonly penetrated the taut fruitskin, and they'd
torn, tongued, chewed, and swallowed the bitter pulp of divine
wisdom. Now had come the moment to pay for their disobedience.
"Where are you?" He boomed from everywhere, feigning ignorance.
The swish of His robes against the tall grass struck terror in
them. Then, they beheld as though draped over spirit the
sandaled feet of God, His holy ankles, the hem of His robes, the
towering majesty of Him, and lofted far above the trees His
face, a face of patience and love and the terrible indifference
of divinity. His beard was full and off-white, like tinged
fleece. His eyes shown at once ancient and newborn. Upon His
brow, the crown dazzled.
Adam took Eve's hand. Together they rose and quitted the refuge
of the underbrush, falling to their knees and humbling
themselves before Him. Adam felt his tumescence deferentially
shrivel to near nothing.
"My children," came the heart-rending voice of their Maker,
"lift up your eyes and look at Me." They did so, feeling their
souls cringe within. His eyes brimmed with betrayal. "Did I not
leave you free and unfettered in this delightful paradise, free
to wander where you would, to give names to My creations, and to
conjoin with all the abandon appropriate to creatures in the
perfect enjoyment of their carnality?"
"You did, Lord," mumbled the first couple.
"And did I not suffer you to satisfy your natural craving for
food with the fruit of any tree in the garden, any of the
thousand trees that spill over so profusely with fruit which,
until this moment, knew neither how to overripen nor to spoil?"
"All but one, Lord," they said, feeling like specks of shit
beneath his sandals.
"Yes, all but one. That one tree in whose shade you now kneel,
the tree that bestows the knowledge of Good and Evil. The fruit
of this tree only did I deny you, and you agreed willingly and
with good cheer never to eat of it."
"We did, Lord."
God's words were thick with sorrow: "Why then have you disobeyed
Me?"
Adam looked at Eve, Eve looked at Adam.
Then began the recriminations, choking the air like flames in a
furnace. Adam blasted Eve; Eve tore into the Serpent; neither
thought to blame themselves.
Their guilt gave way to anger, their anger to sorrowful
repentance and pleas for clemency, and thence to silence, the
silence of a prisoner watching his judge's lips slide, syllable
by syllable, along a sentence of death.
Once more their knees sank to the dust and their gaze fell past
their genitals. Adam's penis drooped earthward, shedding one sad
tear of pre-ejaculate. No more would he bury his mouth in Eve's
bush, no more feel her tongue upon his testicles, no more cup
her delectable breasts as she straddled him and melted her labia
about his manhood.
And God said, "I ought to smite you. I should strike you down
where you kneel, take back your heartbeats, suck out your
breath, lay waste your limbs, and pulverize your bones even unto
the marrow. However. There are times in this universe when
justice must yield to mercy. And as I know that, because you
truly believed Me full of wrath and all unbending, your
repentance was sincere, I shall, this one time, spare your
lives."
Doubting his ears, Adam looked up. A beatific smile hung from
God's lips. "Let us forget, My children, that this ever came to
pass. Promise never again to partake of the fruit of this tree,
and I shall wipe the slate clean."
Adam, though stunned, seized the moment. Helping his wife up, he
said, "Dear sweet Lord, we give Thee bounteous thanks." Eve
stammered out her gratitude as well. Her fair face looked
blasted as by a great wind, Adam thought, wrapping an arm about
her waist and gripping her hand.
And God laughed a rich, fruity laugh that washed away their
terror. By the time He dismissed them with a wave of His hand,
turned on His heel, and moved away, brushing the treetops with
His robes, our first parents too had caught God's laugh in their
throats, feeling it reach up into their skulls and down through
every limb and organ. Still frantic with laughter, they joined
genitals and fucked the stormclouds, the rest of the day, and
much of the evening away. If they paused to feast, it was more
often upon each other than upon some luscious piece of fruit
freely plucked from one licit tree limb or another.
So at last they sank, stuck flesh to flesh, into the deep sleep
of those who have transgressed and somehow, but who can say how,
gotten away with it.
Morning sun upon her belly. Slither of an erection moving up one
thigh. Eve winked an eye open and gazed past her golden breasts,
fully expecting Adam, finding instead the dry wrinkled skin of
the Serpent exciting her. In the distance, Adam gloried in the
dawn, his arms raised to a brilliant sky.
"Quite a hunk, your hubby."
She sighed. "Yes, he is." Then, remembering, Eve's face raged:
"Listen, snake, you have a little explaining to do. Your smooth-
tongued arguments in favor of eating the forbidden fruit nearly
got us killed."
"Killed?" The Serpent recoiled and hissed a smile. "You don't
look dead to me, my dear. Quite the contrary. You look
deliciously alive, good enough to eat, decidedly succulent,
something to sink one's teeth into."
"Dream on," she said, and rolled over, tossing her hair behind
her. She plucked a tall blade of grass and placed it between her
lips.
Insinuating itself onto a rock near her right shoulder, the
Serpent coiled, watching warily the first mother's face. "Just
as I imagined," it said. "Eating from the tree has given you a
thoughtful air you lacked before. It's really quite fetching."
Eve grunted and looked away.
"You may not know this -- it's something I didn't tell you
yesterday, since, if I may be candid for a moment, I fully
expected God to banish you from Eden -- but the more fruit you
eat from that tree, the wiser you'll grow. And the more lovely
you'll become not only in your husband's eyes, but in the eyes
of man and beast alike."
She whipped her head around. "Save it. We're wise to you, me and
Adam. Yesterday we barely escaped with our lives. But we've
learned our lesson. From now on, we'll tend that tree, but we're
not going near the fruit."
The Serpent shook its sad head, clucking its tongue. Looking
past Eve, it saw Adam turn toward his mate, noted the concern on
the first father's face at the sight of her tempter, watched him
sprint toward them. "Still, you must admit it's a lovely taste,
a taste one really oughtn't to do without. And where once
forgiveness comes, my lovely, who's to say it won't come again?"
The Serpent had more on its mind, but Adam's rough hands reached
down and fisted its tail, hefted it into the air, swung it like
a heavy weight thrice round his head, and let it fly deep into
the outlying thickets of Eden.
"Good riddance to bad rubbish," said Adam, "to coin a phrase.
Whatever coins might be."
Eve gazed thoughtfully up at the tree. "Adam," she said, her
eyes coming to light on the tantalizing fruit, "I've been
thinking."
The second time, He was angrier than they'd ever seen Him. Into
the garden He swept, riding upon a whirlwind. His hair was
tempest- tossed, His eyes flashed fire. "Down on your knees!" He
trumpeted, blasting their ears. "Nay, flat on your bellies, you
miserable excuses for humanity!"
Adam pressed his belly into the dirt, arms thrust out before
him. Grovelling washed like balm over his soul. He was amazed
how sensuous the earth felt along the length of his body. No
wonder the Serpent warped and wriggled from place to place, he
thought. He stole a peek at Eve, who was stretched out beside
him, her long hair atumble down her shoulders, her breast-mounds
bulging out beneath, lovely as all of her. Adam wondered, as his
flesh began to weave and grow beneath him, if this would be his
last vision before death swallowed them up.
"Cease your vile thoughts, O miserable man, and heed the words
of your Maker."
God, He sounded pissed.
"By all rights, I ought to end your lives at once. It's clear
that neither of you is capable of obedience to any law I lay
down. Set up a barrier, turn My back, and you'll scratch and
claw to be the first to o'erleap it!"
Thunder blasted them flat. Lightning rent the earth not six
yards from their heads. They cried out in terror. Across their
backs, a cold, drenching rain juddered down. "Yes, be fearful,
My poor dear creatures. And repentant. For these raindrops are
the tears of God, My tears, shed for what I must now most
reluctantly do."
"Mercy, dear Father," sobbed Adam. "Mercy upon Your sinning
children. Grievously have I sinned, choosing yet again to
disobey You and eat of the fruit. Take my life, if You must. But
spare the gentle Eve, whom I convinced to taste what she should
not have tasted."
Then Eve spoke up, protesting that she alone was at fault, that
her husband was blameless in all things save in taking her blame
upon himself.
While his wife spoke, Adam raised his chin and peered through
the rain at God's sandals. He shut his eyes in disbelief, then
reopened them. It was true. The divine Maker, though He still
dwarfed them, had diminished in stature since His last visit.
His big toe, which before had come up to their chests as they
knelt, now rose no higher than their prostrate heads.
God rocked upon His heels, hands clenched behind His back. The
silence that had fallen between Him and his recalcitrant
creatures was broken only by the noise of His incoherent fuming
and muttering.
Adam knew their lives hung in the balance.
Abruptly the rocking stopped. "Get up!" He boomed at them. And
up they got. Craning his neck, Adam stared into God's index
finger, which stabbed like death through the Edenic air. "One
more chance," came the raging voice. "One more. That's all you
get. If you so much as squint at that tree the wrong way, it's
over."
Trembling to the bone, Adam looked into the fiery eyes of God
and did not blink, though the blast of divine rage seared his
face and threatened blindness. When the Holy of Holies stormed
off at last, red and green blotches danced in the sight of Adam.
Now when the Serpent returned, Adam, wiser than his years,
brought him into their deliberations. For hours they weighed
alternatives, debated issues of freedom and slavery, mapped out
and discarded grand strategies.
In the midst of one of Adam's perorations, Eve cut him off with
a simple "Husband." She pointed up into the branches of the
tree. "I'm hungry. For that."
The Serpent looked at Adam.
Adam raised an eyebrow.
Then, setting all thought aside, they all three did the
inevitable. In the blink of an eye, they fell upon that tree
like bees on blossoms, like lawyers on mishap, like vultures on
dead men's flesh.
The Serpent, having eaten more than his fill, belched and said,
"I'll get the tools." With a groan, he slid his great bulk along
the ground and was gone.
Adam and Eve, too consumed with gluttony to care what their
friend had meant, stuffed themselves with succulent fruit.
Breathing became secondary, and for a time, their world
consisted of naught but plucking, biting, chewing, swallowing,
and plucking again. When they grew weary of feeding themselves,
they fed each other. Eve crammed the juicy pulp past Adam's
incisors. Adam shoved fruit down Eve's gullet with all the
fervor of a cunt-hungry stud pressing home his fuckflesh. They
stuffed themselves, our first parents, like there was no
tomorrow.
As they gorged and grew great, the tree of knowledge lost its
every fruit and leaf. Like the arms of a beggar seeking raiment,
it lofted its bare limbs into the perfect air of Eden. But its
leaves now blanketed the ground and its fruit ballooned the
bellies of the insatiate sinners, bloating their bodies beyond
all reasonable bound.
Adam's hand, animate with desire, went organ-hunting among Eve's
rolls of flab, and Eve's among Adam's. But finding lust within
gluttony proved no easy task and they had to make do with
blubbery hugs instead. It was in the midst of one such clumsy
clench that Eve heard hoofbeats mild and meek and saw, over her
husband's left shoulder, God riding toward them upon a squat,
gray, four-legged animal whose name eluded her.
Adam gave a low whistle. "Divine creator," he said, "you seem to
have shrunk a good deal. You're just about human-sized, I'd say.
If anything, you're quite a bit leaner about the middle than we
are."
"What happened to you?" asked Eve, astonished.
God just looked at them, sad-eyed. He slipped off his donkey and
sandals, let fall his robes, dug beads of blood from his brow
with a crown of thorns. Draped about his waist, falling from hip
to hip like a cotton grimace, a simple loincloth concealed his
godhood. He leaned back against the barren tree, crossed his
legs, stretched out his arms, and rose along the rough bark
nearly three feet into the air. Left and right, from shoulder to
hand, his arms traced the contours of the tree's bifurcating
limbs. His eyes were wet with sorrow.
Rage filled fat Adam. Each breath became an effort. "Come down
from there and punish us, you miserable excuse for divinity! We
did it a third time, Eve and I. We ate until there was nothing
left. One last binge, that's all we wanted. No remorse, just a
final feast and then sweet oblivion. Now get down here and mete
out justice!"
But God only fixed his fat son with a simple look of compassion
and spoke not a word.
Adam's jowls trembled. His puffy hands flexed and clenched. He
became vaguely aware of the Serpent's huge bulk swaying first to
one side, then the other, putting heavy objects into his hands.
A hammer. A cold fistful of spikes. Beneath his feet he felt the
moving green of leaves and then he'd leaped to the lower
branches of the tree and was pounding spiteful iron into his
maker's left palm, straight through into treelimb. Before God's
right hand, Eve's hammer swung wide, broke the deity's pinkie,
then drove her spike home in two swift strokes. Good lord, she
was fat, thought Adam, seeing her beauty shine forth even
through folds of pudge.
Together they pierced the feet. A simple task, this piercing,
yet it drew them closer. With each hammer blow, their love
augmented. Crucifixion, they discovered, when performed upon
scapegoat deities, can often be a powerful aphrodisiac. God's
blood beribboned his feet and dripped from his toes. Where it
fell, Calvary clover grew.
Stepping back hand in hand with his spouse to admire their
craft, Adam watched Eve's breasts rise and fall with excitement.
A rampant hunger seemed to seize her as she fixed her eyes on
their impaled creator. She relinquished Adam's grasp and moved
forward. Then she snaked one hand beneath the simple swatch of
cloth and undraped it from God's body, exposing his sex.
Adam gaped in awe at the size of him. Maybe it was the light, he
thought. He took a step closer. Nope. No trick of sun or shadow.
This was one huge tool, dangling now from a dying deity. A
tragic waste, in his opinion, of progenitive flesh.
Eve, however, clearly saw one last use for it. She hefted the
organ in her hands, ran her fingers along its underside, got it
to grow bigger still. Then she wrapped her jaws around it like a
python, gorging her fat face.
Around the clearing, in the center of which grew the now-barren
tree, animals made their silent approach. The graceful heads of
two gazelles peered round the flanks of an elephant, who stood,
grey-eyed and baggy, looking on in puzzlement. Birds of every
shape and color perched in the surrounding trees, their songs
stilled, their heads cocked to one side. Upon the ground,
serpents slithered, insects danced closer, squirrels and ferrets
and martens and rats leaped over one another and darted in to
freeze and stare. The circle of beasts hung there, dumb and
attentive.
In his loins Adam could feel all nature stirring. He watched Eve
feast upon her maker. Her swollen arms barely bent at the
elbows. Her chubby fingers could hardly close around the cock of
the crucified lord. He saw the spread of her legs, the beads of
moisture on her pubic hair, the exquisite anus playing hide and
seek with him as her butt- cheeks writhed.
He'd never had that anus, never particularly wanted it until
now. But now it drew his every attention, closed out all other
sights, urged his feet forward. Nestling his manhood between her
buttocks, he touched his cocktip to the tight centerpoint. Eve,
without ceasing her oral ministrations, swiveled her hips to
signal her consent to Adam's penetration. Adam spat on his
palms, slicked along the length of his erection, and eased into
the depths of his beloved wife's derriere.
Eve leaned against God's womanly thighs. She could feel his
balls tighten toward orgasm. His pre-ejaculate oozed free and
gradual into her mouth, delighting beyond measure her taste
buds. Between her cheeks, back where things grew narrow, she
could feel her husband fill her full to gasping with his erect
flesh.
And now, coiling up her left leg came the Serpent. She supposed
he'd stop and speak to her, perhaps egg her on. Instead he
parted the pink petals of her womanhood and began to fuck her
with his head. Glancing down, she saw the slick, criss-crossed
snakeskin move rhythmically in and out of her, coated now with
her lovejuice.
Eve felt deliriously stuffed. God's crimped thatch tickled
against her forehead like the gentle brush of a breeze. His tool
tasted like the cock of all creativity on her tongue. Down
below, lesser life forms pulsed out their polyrhythms, readying
fecund liquids.
In at her ears now crept the murmurings of nature, until then
silent with reverence. Now there was growing excitement in the
air. Rising to voracious receptivity, drawing her three
seminarians up to a mindless frenzy of seed-spilling, Eve heard
all nature twitter and roar and rustle in sympathy.
Almost there now.
Almost home.
Then the floodgates burst on all fronts at once. Her husband bit
into her shoulder and juiced her from behind. The Serpent,
rippling from tail to head, vomited gobbets of forbidden fruit
into her womb. And from the sides of her mouth, gouts of
godsperm gushed, so voluminous was the deity's discharge, so
impossible the task of swallowing it all.
The fluids roiled inside her, coming together at her very core.
Up she swelled, backing off from the tree and squeezing Adam and
the Serpent out of her. Inside she was all generation. She could
feel the teeming zygotes spring and swirl within, latching onto
bone and organ, tapping into spirit, jittering through ontogeny
like manic nuns fingering rosaries, like prayer wheels gone
wild.
As she blimped up, her lungs drew in air unceasingly. Just when
it seemed that inhalation might be Eve's eternal curse, the
gates of Eden burst open outward, and screams and infants began
to shoot forth from her. Bright balls of every color they were,
these kids. Out they flew, slick with vernix and hugging their
afterbirths to them. Red ones, green ones, black and brown and
orange ones; some as clear as glass, all shades conceivable and
many that were not. Through the lips of her quim and out the
gates of Eden they spun and tumbled, scattered by the winds of
chance hither and yon over the earth to flourish or starve at
destiny's whim.
When the grand exodus was over and the last humanoid hopeful --
deep purple and no thicker than a thumb -- zinged out of Eve and
careered off who knew where, she lay there steeped in sweat and
panting with exultation. Eve was fat no more, but restored to
svelte. So, she noted, was Adam, whose outpouring of spunk had
spent in the exertion his store of blubber. He helped her to her
feet and gave her a round, resounding hug.
"Time to go, honey," he said.
She nodded, looked down, hesitated. Then, to the Serpent,
wrapped round the base of the tree: "You coming with us?"
"No thanks, pretty one," he said. "My place is with him." He
slipped into God's fundament, coiled inside his large intestine
(whose length he matched perfectly), and fell asleep for all
eternity.
Above, head snapped back from collarbone loll, God roared in
anguish.
Adam took Eve by the hand, smiled, and led her toward the open
gates. "The world's our oyster, Eve. What say we have it on the
half- shell?"
She held back. "What about God?"
"We're beyond all that now, you and me," he scoffed. "Let our
progeny create deities if they must. As for us, I think secular
humanism suits us better."
"Ugh, that sounds dreadful," Eve objected. "If we're going to
call ourselves something, let it be something we can feel proud
of, something with a ring to it."
"Such as?"
"I don't know. Let's see." She thought a moment, then
brightened. "How about sacred universalists?"
"Sacred what?"
"Universalists," said Eve, warming to it. "Because absolutely
everything we see and know and touch or even think or fantasize
about is shot through and through with the awful light of
divinity."
Adam smiled bitterly. "Everything but this green mausoleum we've
been cooped up in." He gestured, like a man gone mad, about the
Earthly Paradise. In this fallen world of ours, dear reader, the
life of every human male demands its adamantine core of
resentment, its refusal to forgive, the galling pill stuck
eternally in its proud male throat. Adam found his in Eden, hung
on a tree and suffering clear to the walls. "Come on, Eve. Let's
go find our sons and daughters."
Eve nodded, her eyes lowered. But the aftertaste of God hung
like temptation upon her tongue.
"Don't leave me," came his agonized whisper.
Pausing at the gates, Adam frowned up at the tree. Then he
cocked his head toward the animals, watched them gallop and
slither and lope and lumber past him, and slammed the gates of
Eden shut with a resounding clang. The echo rang in Eve's ears
long after Eden dropped below the horizon, and the vision of her
lord's twisted limbs hung tantalizingly before her inner eye.
Much later, when she'd had her fill of Adam, Eve set off on her
own to regain Eden. And yet, though she looked ever and anon
with a light heart and a hopeful mein, her search, in the end,
proved fruitless.
Robert Devereaux (bobdev@hpfela.fc.hp.com)
--------------------------------------------
Robert Devereaux is the author of the novel _Deadweight_, which
will appear in the Dell Abyss line in February or March of 1994.
You can find his short stories in _Iniquities_, Dennis
Etchison's _MetaHorror_ anthology (Dell, July 92), _Weird
Tales_, as well as in various TAL publications. Robert designs
and maintains software for Hewlett-Packard during the mundane
hours, which gives him gratefully free access to the net. He
loves to lurk. This story first appeared in the Nov. 1990 issue
of _Pulphouse_.
Snapper by Mark Smith
========================
...................................................................
* If the kids want to mess with Mother Nature and her creations,
fine. But leave _me_ out of it. *
...................................................................
As if it weren't weird enough to be trying to put a snapping
turtle the size of a manhole cover into a flimsy plastic
dry-cleaning bag, the plan after that seemed to involve
transferring the beast to a shopping cart they had dragged from
the supermarket several blocks away.
My wife and son and I were going for one of our tedious
afternoon trips to the local swimming pool. Not exactly my idea
of fun, I might quickly add, being dragged into the cold water
every day to get shivering wet with a bunch of screaming kids
peeing in the pool. Then, to witness the bizarre and cruel
spectacle of these kids dicking around with this turtle, and the
thing getting obviously more pissed off every minute. I stood
there watching, dumbstruck, thinking that it would serve these
kids right to have this monster bite off one of their fingers or
whatever. My wife and son stepped up beside me.
"Hey!" said my wife. "What are those kids doing?" Though she
could see what they were doing as well as I could.
"I think they're trying to put a snapping turtle into a dry-
cleaning bag," I said. "Of course, I could be wrong."
"Wow, Dad," said my kid. "That's a big turtle." Which isn't as
dumb a comment as it sounds since he's only four. And it _was_ a
big turtle. Biggest fucking turtle I ever saw. At least a foot
across its gnarled shell and weighing, I would guess, twenty,
twenty-five pounds. A noble beast, actually, something like a
natural treasure. Not that I'd know a natural treasure if it bit
me on the dick. Still, I appreciated that turtle. I felt sorry
for it being dragged out of its element by this bunch of
cretinous kids.
I felt like I ought to do something to stop them from
terrorizing the thing though by all rights it ought to have been
them who was scared. I'm absolutely sure that I would never have
gone screwing around with an animal that big and mean when I was
their age, which I judged to be around seven or eight. On the
other hand, these kids were a bad element. I'd seen them
abandoned to their own devices in the park on more than one
occasion. Residents, no doubt, of the trailer park down on
Congress Avenue by the park at Live Oak where the bums hang out
passing quarts of Colt 45. Hell, for all I knew, those bums
_were_ their parents.
So I finally decided that I had some kind of moral obligation to
stop these kids from killing this turtle.
"Hey, kids," I yelled. "Don't do that."
The oldest boy, a lanky, dirty urchin dressed only in dingy
swimming trunks, glowered up at me from his crouched position.
The other kids turned cold, stupid eyes on me. Obviously they
weren't used to having adults telling them what to do.
"Why not?" said the boy.
"That thing'll bite your finger off." Now I didn't really care
about those kids or their smudgy fingers and anyway, I could
tell that this sluggish old reptile was in little danger of
biting anyone. In the first place, they were handling the thing
by the tail and shell, which I seem to remember hearing is the
way you are supposed to handle snapping turtles if you have to
handle them at all. In the second place, the kids seemed to be
sure enough of themselves that they couldn't get hurt, though
that could have just been street smarts. After all, they were
trying to put the thing in a dry- cleaning bag and a grocery
cart. What kind of outdoorsmanship is that, for Christ's sake?
"Aw, we ain't been bit yet," sneered the boy. I guess this made
some kind of logical sense to him.
"That's why we're holding it by the tail," said another child, a
girl I'd often seen hanging around the pool trying to chum up to
the life guards.
"What're you going to do with it?" asked my wife.
"Take it home," shrugged one of the kids. Stupid question. Of
course, every home ought to have at least one viscious reptile
lurking around under the furniture or sleeping under the car.
"Keep it for a pet," said the girl.
"Daddy," my son piped up. "Can we get a turtle like that for a
pet?"
I laughed and touseled his hair. Right, I thought, my kid, who's
deathly afraid of the neighbors' fox terrier that's about as
ferocious as the Pillsbury doughboy, is going to take a snapping
turtle, of all damned things, home and feed it -- what? Purina
Turtle Chow?
"Where are your parents, anyway?" I asked. A question that had
been on my mind for weeks. Just then, as if on cue, a woman's
voice boomed up behind us: "What the hell are you doing with
that thang?" I turned to see the mother stepping carefully
across the pebbled parking lot on her bare feet. She was hugely
obese and wore a flowered bathing suit. She looked identical to
the girl, who seemed only a scale model of her mother -- like
those dolls from the Ukraine, or some damned place, that fit one
inside the other.
"Takin' it home," snarled the boy, shooting daggers at this
woman who must have been his mother, too, since he also looked
like her. _Probably his mother and his aunt, too,_ I thought.
_That way he gets those genes from both sides._
"You let go of that thang rat this minute, you hear me, boy!"
"I ain't," yelled the boy, still holding the turtle's jagged
tail. The other children -- only two that I could count, though
I could have sworn there had been more -- nervously shifted
their eyes from the woman to the boy. They seemed to be trying
to figure out which one of the two was the least likely to get
crazy enough to hurt someone.
The turtle seemed oblivious to the whole controversy. It sat on
the ground as solid as a fire hydrant, a mass of twigs, dry
leaves and dirt lodged behind its claws from being dragged along
the ground up from the creek. Occasionally, it would snap its
beaked mouth suddenly and erratically from side to side or over
its huge back shell. I understood completely. Why fucking
bother? Easier to get dragged along by the tail by someone else
than to put up a fight. What good did it get you anyway? Bide
your time and look for your chance to make a getaway.
So I stood there at the edge of the parking lot, siding with the
turtle against all odds, until my wife pulled on the towel
draped over my shoulder and said, "Come on, let's go."
I glanced at the turtle once more. I felt like I ought to make
some kind of stand. Go down into the creek bed and stage a
heroic rescue. Intimidate the kids and their mother until they
fled. But who would really do that, except for an animal rights
activist or something? And I'll bet even the most hardcore Earth
Firsters might back off if they got a load of this charming
family.
"Fuck it," I muttered under my breath and fell in step behind my
wife.
As we walked away, mama yelled, "You put that dayum thang back
in the crick or I ain't never buyin' you another goddamn toy
ever. You hear me?" Jesus, I thought, remembering all those
touchy-feely classes in parenting techniques my wife had ever
dragged me to. But I chuckled to myself, certain that her crude
logic (was it a bribe or a threat?) would work its magic on
these kids and they would give up the fight and let this old
creature lumber back into the murky waters of Stacy Creek where
it belonged. The other children started back toward the pool,
bored with this business.
A few minutes later, beside the pool, the fat girl was telling
the lifeguard about the turtle. The lifeguard looked bored.
Later, with my family happily bobbing in the water, swim ring,
beach ball and all, I gave into an urge to brave the fire ants
on the grassy slope beside the pool and peer through the chain
link fence to check on the turtle.
I got to the fence just in time to see the boy, alone now,
single- minded in his resolve, hoist the turtle into the
shopping cart. Then, like Sisyphus pushing his rock, he leaned
into the handle of the cart and off they went, jingling slowly
across the rutted parking lot and out onto the blacktop leading
uphill toward their mutual fate.
Mark Smith (mlsmith@tenet.edu)
---------------------------------
Mark Smith has been writing fiction and non- fiction for over
ten years. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in
_Window_, _Spectrum_, _Malcontent_, _Epiphany_, the
_Lone Star Literary Quarterly_, and _Elements_. Mark is also the
author of a collection of short stories titled _Riddle_ (Argo
Press, Austin, Texas, 1992).
What Are You Looking For, China White? by Kyle Cassidy
=========================================================
...................................................................
* Sure, as a general rule it's good to get out of the house,
leave behind the mundanity of those four walls you're so
accustomed to. But sometimes, it just might be best to stay at
home... *
...................................................................
She looks like she's dead or maybe now she's singing for The
Cure. Her hair is orange and knotted like she's been buffing it
with a carpet remnant, or more likely using it to stick balloons
to the ceiling. Her eyes are long and flat and black, curved
downward at the ends, cloaking her beauty with an absurd mask of
drunkenness.
"Oh... my... _god_," she says, lurching to her feet and
careening towards us, falling into me, her arms wrapping around
me awkwardly like parts of broken candles still held together by
the wick. "I can't believe you came, oh my _god_. Let me look at
you!" She reels back and starts plucking at my hair. "You're
_beautiful_. You're fucking _beautiful_." She tries to kiss me
on the lips, but I turn my head because I can see her boyfriend,
Visconti, sitting despondently behind her, a worried look on his
scruffy face. He's seen this before. He stands up, holding onto
the back of the chair.
"You guys sure took your _time_," he slurs. "I called you at
_one_. What time is it now? It's like _nine_ or _ten_ or
something."
"It's five-thirty," I say. He turns his wrist to look at his
watch and beer spills from the bottle out onto his feet. He
doesn't notice.
"We're all fucked up," he says. Kristin is still holding onto
me, or more precisely, I am holding her up.
"Where were you last night? For the party?" asks Visconti, his
voice viscous. "We've been up for forty-eight hours, straight,
and we're the only ones here. Everyone else _left_ -- they
couldn't take it, and they went _home_ -- but there's still
_beer_. There's still a _party_. There's _us_. Right?"
"Right," I say. Then, pointing: "Everybody, this is Alden.
Alden, this is everybody. This is Kristin and her boyfriend
Visconti. And that's the Lobster asleep on the floor over
there." Kristin takes a step back from me and inspects my
roommate drunkenly, with a squinting, uncertain, sneer on her
face.
"They call me _China White_," she says.
"That's right," I assure him, "they do."
"Because I look like an oriental _princess_." She hiccoughs,
snorts, and laughs.
"That's beautiful," Alden is assuring her. Kristin _does_ look
remotely Asian, although she's far too tall. She takes several
stuttering half steps toward him, her eyes riveted on his left
shoulder. He looks uncertain of what to do, as though he is
being introduced to some slavering monster of a relative --
drooling, senile and a million years old, smelling of piss --
that he is expected to hug. She holds her arms raised limply in
the air like a murderous puppeteer, and finally she embraces him
indelicately, crashing around his neck like a tumbling house of
Lincoln Logs.
"Oh, do I get a hug?" he asks.
I have always wanted to introduce Alden to Kristin. She is the
girl of his dirty dreams; six foot one, smooth pale skin, blond
(most of the time) hair, centerfold body, and most importantly,
she is irresponsibly and irrepressibly insane.
But now that I look at his face peering over her shoulder, his
hair plastered down by her grip and the evening humidity, his
features reveal none of the enchantment and instant, staggering
devotion which I had expected. Instead he looks befuddled and
amused, some crazy simian grin on his face. She releases him and
steps back, then paws at his hair.
"Oh _god_," she moans, "you're beautiful _too_. You're so
_fucking_ beautiful. You're so fucking _beautiful_ and you don't
even know it. You don't even know how beautiful you are."
She looks down at the floor now and I come to the realization
that for perhaps the first time in my life I am completely sober
in a room filled with people so drunk that they probably don't
even know that I'm there.
I look at them and feel that I might now move about among them
as a ghost, surrealistically, or ectoplasmically, and they would
not see my actions. That I could pick their pockets and steal
their secrets and that no one would be the wiser.
"Grab yourselves a beer," says Visconti, suspiciously eyeing
Alden. "Help yourselves." I take a Miller ten-ounce from the
open case on the table and set my coat down on a chair. Maybe
two hundred empty bottles are growing like a forest over the
table, leaving no space for anything else. A slice of pizza
stands there, wedged between bottles. I pick up the slice and
start to shove it into my mouth, making loud smacking noises --
trying urgently to appear as deranged and careless as the
others.
"Who else is here?" I say, loudly again so that they can hear
me. I imagine them deaf as well as blind. I walk into the living
room where I see Nora Laura -- a beaming, flirtatious, and
vexatiously annoying woman of 27 who, during one summer, Alden
and I had both briefly dated. Neither one of us ever expected to
see her again in our lives.
She was a petulant and disarming artist with a round face and
almond eyes. Someone had once enigmatically described her to me
as a "moist and anal person with a sort of long underwear
quality about her humor." At one time she possessed in her
shabby and dark apartment, draped in scarves and smelling of
cabalistic Egyptian love oils, a cat named Calamity Bitch as
well as a crucified mannequin nailed to her living room wall
which she surreptitiously referred to only as "The Guy."
But I haven't been to her apartment lately. In my head I
catalogue the list of words that come to me when I see her:
charming, winsome, provocative, perilous, obnoxious,
ostentatious and blaring. I also tick off her various crimes
against culture, mostly fashion-related, though many of them
have to do with singing. She is sitting on the sofa, naked from
the waist up, watching an X-rated videotape on Visconti's huge
color television.
"Hey," she says, looking up and pointing the remote control at
me and pressing a button, as though to increase my volume or
perhaps contrast. "What's up?"
I shrug. "We just got here. I came with Alden. You seem to be
all set."
"I'm just trying to cool off," she says, briefly fanning
herself. Then coquettishly lifting one of her large, round
breasts in one hand she proceeds to lick it while looking
salaciously at me out of the corner of her large, dark eyes.
"My nipples are hard," she points out needlessly.
"I can see," I reply. Then, turning into the kitchen, I say
loudly: "Hey Alden, you'll never guess who's naked in the living
room."
Alden extracts himself from the kitchen delicately, as though he
is in a maze of razor blades constructed by the glances of
Visconti and his obfuscated girlfriend.
"It's Nora Laura," I say, pointing as he steps carefully in his
worn boat shoes down the two stairs into the darkened room. On
the screen Samantha Strong is giving a decidedly uninspired blow
job to some short hairy guy wearing only tall, white sweat
socks. Alden's eyes flit first to the television and then down
to Nora. He seems startled at first and I watch his eyes change
size.
"Nora," he says in a deep voice, "_hey, hey_."
"Show him that trick you just showed me," I say.
"What? This?" She takes her breast into her hand again and sucks
hungrily on the small, brown nipple.
"What does she need us for?" I say.
"I need a _cock_," she croaks, and her mouth gapes in a
screaming laugh. Her huge white teeth are like prophetic
tombstones. "I'm _hungry_ for it."
She laughs again, opening her mouth wide enough for me to lob a
grapefruit down, if I had one. I realize suddenly that everybody
is speaking in boldface.
"Hey _Kristin_," shouts Nora without turning her head. "Hey
Kristin, come in here darling, come in here."
Drunkenly Kristin responds from the kitchen like a herd of
clumsy rhinos, leaving a piqued Visconti with his back up
against the fridge, sipping from a beer and flapping a sandal
against his otherwise bare heel. Kristin staggers down the steps
and Nora says: "Isn't Kristin _beautiful_? Aren't you, Kristin?"
"Sure," says Kristin, and her eyes are like heavy slits. Her
mascara is running as though she's either been crying or
sweating.
"Show them your tits," commands Nora. She reaches out and puts
her hand on Kristin's leg, "Kristin has beautiful tits." Kristin
grins and her eyes disappear while she pulls at her top with
both hands until her breasts fall out like fruit from a grocery
bag. They bounce and come to a stop.
"Oh, Christ," says Alden, covering his eyes.
Kristin smashes her breasts together and rubs them.
"Kristin is so beautiful," says Nora.
"We're sisters," adds Kristin, pulling her top back down and
smiling a perfect orange-wedge of a smile, "we're going to be
sisters because we're the same."
"We have the same breasts," Nora points out, and it is true that
their breasts are very similar.
"I'll lick you to make you mine," Laura goes on, projecting her
face at Alden and me, "because love is like a squeegee and sweat
will make you shine."
"What are you doing?" I shout quickly, directing my comment at
Visconti, who looks forlorn and abandoned. "Is this a party?
What the hell kind of party is this? I thought you said there
was a party! Naked women and pornos?"
Visconti shrugs.
"You should have been here earlier," says Nora. "Kristin and I
were dancing on the hood of the car and we were naked and all
the little neighborhood boys were standing in the street
watching us and we kept going like this."
Here she illustratively grabs her breasts and aims them at me
like a pair of crazy bazookas.
"And their little peckers were getting hard and they were
saying, 'Ooh, what's this in my pants?' And I said, 'Do you like
it?' They won't be getting any sleep tonight!" She cackles again
and shakes her head so that her long brown hair covers her
nakedness entirely. Kristin is still grinning like an idiot and
leaning up against the stereo now.
"Why don't you put some music on?" says Visconti from the
kitchen and I push Kristin gently aside and kneel down in front
of the CD player and shove something in. And when it starts Nora
jumps up and starts thrashing her head around. I notice for the
first time that she's wearing a pair of jean shorts and that her
hair is so long that it hangs down below the ragged cut of the
denim, swinging.
"What's this?" asks Kristin.
"It's Pearl Jam," I say. "Pearl Jam. Where do you live? Under a
rock?"
"Huh?" she groans quizzically and I rap on her forehead with my
knuckles a few times, like I want to get in and she laughs and
goes to push me away but she's so drunk that when she pushes me,
she loses her balance and falls down onto the sofa.
"I'm laying down now," she giggles.
I follow Nora out into the kitchen and the last thing I see in
the living room is Alden and Kristin sitting down together on
the sofa, watching the porno movie. Kristin is leaning across
Alden's lap, touching his hair.
"We should wake this guy up," says Visconti, poking at the
Lobster with the toe of his sandal. The Lobster, beet red and
two hundred and twenty pounds, is laying in front of the
speaker, arms folded across his chest and a smile on his face.
"He's been asleep since _noon_," invokes Visconti disdainfully,
poking him again. The Lobster, however, remains inert and
oblivious.
I finish my beer and fish another one from the box on the table.
For a moment, as I am opening the bottle I think that there is a
Marine Corps emblem on it and I wonder if it is some Desert
Storm commemorative beer or something, but then I read the label
and it only says "America's Quality Beer," so I guess that it's
only a coincidence.
"Doesn't that look like the Marine Corps logo?" I say, holding
the bottle out to Nora, like she's really going to be able to
tell. She takes the bottle from my hand, and instead of looking
at it, she shoves it slowly into her mouth, bobbing her head up
and down suggestively a few times, taking almost the entire
length of the bottle down her neck before tilting her head back
and drinking from it, maybe an inch of glass rising vertically
out of her mouth. She hands the bottle back to me and squats
over the Lobster, allowing beer to dribble from her lips onto
his face. He grunts, rolls over, and looks up disgustedly.
"What the _fuck_ are you doing?" he demands, wiping beer from
his face.
"Waking you up," says Nora.
"When the hell did you get naked?" he remarks, observing her
dangling breasts.
"When you fell asleep and I knew that I'd have to satisfy
myself, sailor."
"I'm going outside," I say, setting the half-filled beer down on
the window sill and getting a fresh one from the box. "Things
are getting entirely too weird in here for me."
And somehow I'm sitting outside on a lawn chair and Visconti is
sitting on the grass next to me, and there is a six-pack between
us and I've a broken, unlit cigarette shoved between my teeth,
drunk, and trying to look like Franklin Roosevelt.
Visconti is saying: "The only way I can deal with it is to
pretend that it isn't happening. I mean, I know that she's
beautiful and I know that guys look at her all the time."
"But she's drunk," I say, "she doesn't know what she's doing and
she won't remember it in the morning."
"But tell me I'm not feeling it now," he says, "I know that
she's in there, making out with your roommate -- I mean, it's
hardly fair to say that since she's going to get drunk and fuck
other guys I might as well get used to it. I mean, this sort of
shit happens four or five times a week, every time she goes out,
she gets fucked up and she gets fucked. You know? And the next
morning she doesn't remember any of it, but it hurts me man, you
know? It hurts me right here." He thumps his chest.
"But you know," he goes on, "the only thing that matters is
this, is the air, is walking outside and being able to breathe
the fucking _air_. I mean, some people just don't know what
they've got. I travelled the world, I travelled this country. I
used to be in the Navy. I travelled across this country from New
York to California maybe five times and I always said: _New
Jersey sucks, I hate New Jersey. I don't want to live in New
Jersey_. And you know what? It's taken me a long time to realize
this, but it's not New Jersey. I mean, look at this place. It's
beautiful. That tree over there, just look at that fucking tree.
People who say that they hate New Jersey just aren't paying any
fucking attention to what's going on around them. You know? This
place is _beautiful_, and the Pine Barren
s, they're _amazing_,
but you've just got to go outside and _look_ at them, you've
just got to see them for what they are. And that's the only
thing that matters, fucking _living_. It's not about you, or me,
or her, it's only about _this_. This fucking world that's out
here, and if you can live at peace with this fucking _world_,
then nothing else matters and it doesn't matter who the fuck
Kristin is fucking. It's the grass between your toes. I used to
be a glider pilot; for five years I was a glider pilot; and I'd
sail around and the only sound you here is _shhhhhh_, like just
the air and shit, and it's completely silent and all you can
feel is the plane moving up and down in the air, like it's
catching you like your mother and holding you like it loves you,
and that's nothing:-- flying is _nothing_ -- the real feeling is
when you land on the ground and you step out and there's just
grass under your feet and you're back on the planet and you know
that it loves you and that you're part of it. You know?"
Then suddenly, with a crash, the door swings open, banging up
against the side of the house, and Kristin pours out like a wave
of determined uncertainty. She is crying and there are tears
deluging down her face, making it shimmer wetly in the
moonlight.
"There you fucking are," she says, looking violently down at
Visconti. "Here's the fucking _asshole_." She turns her head and
addresses these words loosely to Nora, who is standing behind
her with her top still off and the swell of her breasts only
hinted at in the dark air.
"What's up, hon?" he says.
"You know what's up, you fucking _bastard_," she slurs. She
mumbles something and drops the beer that she is carrying. It
crashes to the patio beside me and there is a white spider
growing across the concrete, foam hissing.
"Careful of your feet! Stay right there!" Visconti warns,
getting up and stepping over me. He puts his arms around her and
goes to lift her up, to carry her back into the house.
"Get off me, you fucking _bastard_," she shrieks, swatting him
on the shoulders. She wriggles from his grasp like a greased
sausage and comes down hard on a shard of glass. Then she is
screaming. Visconti picks her up and carries her to the car and
sets her down on the front seat. With the door open I can see
that there is blood on her foot, not much, but a thin red
trickle slicing down from the ball toward the heel. Kristin is
laying back on the front seat and crying as Visconti pulls the
sliver out. He gets up and is headed to the house when Alden
comes out.
"What's going on?" he asks.
"Kristin stepped on some glass," I say.
"Wow."
"I'm gonna get a towel and wash it off," says Visconti. "She's
done this before."
"I have to go to work tomorrow," says Alden, and I nod. Visconti
nods too.
"Thanks for coming over, guys," he says, and shakes hands with
both of us. His hand is dry and cold. "Don't be strangers."
Alden and I walk over to the car, where Kristin's legs are
dangling askew from the driver side door, looking white and
false, like Marilyn's protruding from the vault. She is passed
out and Nora is sitting in the passenger seat with Kristin's
head cradled into her lap, slowly brushing her bare breast
across Kristin's mouth and face.
"Good night," says Alden, leaning down and looking into the car,
"It was nice meeting you, Kristin. Good to see you again, Nora."
Neither of them make a sound. As nothing more than a formality,
I twist my hand in an insincere wave to these people who don't
really care anyway.
"What do you want?" I say as we are walking down the driveway
towards the car.
"Huh?" asks Alden.
But I am not talking to him.
Kyle Cassidy (cass806@elan.rowan.edu)
----------------------------------------
Kyle Cassidy is still 26 and still at Rowan University. He tries
to divide his time evenly between his girlfriend, his Macintosh,
and his motorcycle. Currently, however, he has no girlfriend,
which gives him more time to ride and type.
Drop-Lifter by Jim Vassilakos
================================
...................................................................
* Morality may not translate across cultures, but these days
competition does. What happens when the two come face to face? *
...................................................................
It was a big machine, all yellow like summer daffodils except
for the black diagonal stripes along its tow arm. To the younger
workers, it must have looked entirely benign, but Ada had
recognized its true nature from the moment he'd first laid eyes
on it. They'd used a similar device in the mines for hauling
around big sacks of gravel. This one had relatively lax duty by
comparison. It just picked up the naked auto bodies after they'd
been painted, transferring them up to assembly line C. Then it
would sit still like a big lump of slag, idling until its
dim-witted logic circuits queued it back to action.
He made his sign with the remains of a big cardboard box,
writing the Japanese characters for "dangerous" in long, bold
strokes with a red marker. His supervisor would no doubt
remember his initiative, perhaps making a notation in his
personnel file. All he had to do was find a good place to hang
the sign, someplace where it would stand out, someplace where
people would notice it and pay heed.
Ada climbed over the safety barrier. The trick was not in
approaching the machine, but it waiting for the right moment. It
stood still so long, sometimes there was no telling when it
would lumber back to life. That was its real danger. You had to
be some sort of psychic just to figure out when it would decide
to move. Like now, for instance.
Ada screamed, but only for a moment. Then the blood came
spurting from his chest and underneath his armpits. He stood
there, before the other workers, legs flailing back and forth as
the machine picked him up, its scissor-like claws pushing on his
old, splintering ribs like it thought they were solid metal. It
wasn't until some hours later that they found the sign, so
soaked through with Ada's blood that his long, bold strokes with
the magic marker were no longer discernible. They had to ask one
of his friends what the sign had said. Then they all nodded and
agreed in hushed murmurs.
The old man was right. It was dangerous.
Stark streams of crimson light fell across the Oppama Valley,
cutting through the late afternoon clouds and dancing along the
smooth white cement outside Nissan's Assembly Center #13.
Something about the design of the building (perhaps the
coal-black roofing) seemed remarkably efficient at attracting
and retaining heat. Thomas Randell wiped the thin veil of
perspiration from his forehead, returning his arm to the task of
carrying his blue suit jacket. It had been a warm day, even by
local standards. Now, as his white polyester dress shirt stuck
to his chest and back, making a conspicuous splotching noise
every time he turned his torso, he found himself thinking more
about his weak bladder than about the words of his interpreter.
"...reducing productivity ten percentage points and reducing
defective parts by twenty percent after last year."
Tom suppressed a yawn. He'd heard the spiel before in various
others plants. Despite their quiet nature, the Japanese liked to
brag as much as any people, particularly when they thought they
had something to gain from it.
"Well, Mr. Kawamata, your workers may be smarter,
better-educated, and even more efficient than ours. But there's
one thing they can't do."
For a moment, the Japanese executive seemed as affected by the
heat as his American counterpart. Tom smiled and motioned to his
watch. "They can't tell time. It's only a quarter until
quitting, and nobody is servicing their stations."
Kawamata just smiled, sputtering forth another intelligible
stream of Japanese.
"They know the time," Yukihiko translated. "They wait until
after work to clean up."
Tom lifted his eyebrows, "After work? In other words they work
overtime without pay?"
"It is a strictly volunteer practice."
"How many?"
"Eh?"
"What percentage of them volunteer?"
"Ah... all of them."
Tom nodded. "All of 'em. Sheesh. If only we could get the UAW to
volunteer for something like that."
Yuki laughed, and Kawamata chimed in as if on queue even before
he'd heard the translation. He must have known the American's
sentiments from the look on his face.
"Mr. Kawamata says that his people love the company. They
believe in quality through harmony."
"Harmony?"
"The unsung harmony of man and machine. He says to look around.
This is a community full of vitality."
"All I see is a bunch of laborers working their butts off."
"Not laborers. He says they don't use that term. They are
employees as he is... like members of a family... the Nissan
family. Mr. Kawamata asks if it is okay for him to... ah... make
an inquiry?"
"Go ahead."
"How much production do you lose in the States due to strike?"
"A lot."
"He wonders if you would believe that in the twenty-seven year
history of this plant, there has been only one strike."
"How long did it last?"
"A week."
"_How_ many weeks?"
"One."
Tom shook his head even though the figure didn't faze him. He'd
learned from the literature he'd read to expect such "obedience"
from the Japanese work force. It was one of the things that made
cross- planting Japanese management methods a problematic
proposition at best. No Americans really seemed to know what
made these people tick.
"What caused it?"
"Eh?"
"The strike. What was it over?"
Kawamata nodded and pointed to a large crane-like device at the
corner of the room. It was colored yellow, except for the
powerful arm which was accented by a row of black diagonal
stripes. Tom watched as it moved cars from one line to another,
yanking them up, turning them in mid-air, and placing them along
a new conveyor belt as though they were no heavier then papier-
mache.
"He says that there was a tragedy here some years back. One of
the employees climbed over the safety barrier and was fooling
around. The machine mistook him for a car, and he was killed."
Tom coughed, "Killed?"
"It was his own fault. He was violating a safety clause clearly
stated in his contract."
"So the union shut you guys down for a week. A week for a man's
life. Uh... don't translate that last part."
Yuki smiled.
"Say, did you notice any rest room signs anywhere?"
"Eh?"
"Y'know Yuki. Lavatory? Some place where I can piss?"
"It's over there," he pointed.
"I'll be right back."
Tom made his way across the floor, amidst the clinking and
clamoring of machines -- only machines. The assembly line was
moving so fast, the workers barely had time to breathe, much
less talk with each other. Inside the rest room, the noises of
automotive production seemed to recede against the beige,
porcelain walls. Yuki walked in while Tom was still relieving
himself. His young Japanese friend carried a clipboard and a
Japanese-English dictionary, looking somewhat apologetic about
his intrusion.
"I need to go, too."
"No, really? I figured you just wanted to stand there and watch
me."
Yuki looked at him wide-eyed.
"It's a joke, Yuki."
"Ah... American humor is still strange for me sometimes."
"You just think we're all too fat, lazy, and stupid to have
humor." It was an ongoing joke between them, and Yuki laughed
out loud when he heard the comment. Tom ambled over to the sink,
checking on Yuki's progress. His interpreter seemed more
interested by some Japanese graffiti than with where he was
urinating. He finally laughed again.
"What's it say?"
"Beware the revenge of those who eat."
"A commentary on the cafeteria food?"
Yuki nodded, "I think so."
"What's that one say?"
Tom pointed to a particularly large scrawl on the far wall. Yuki
peered at it for a moment, then began reading out loud.
"This isn't a beer company. Why are we increasing production at
the height of summer? Hire more workers."
Tom raised an eyebrow, "You're making that up, right?"
"It's exactly what it says."
"Sounds like things aren't quite as harmonious as Mr. Kawamata
would have us believe."
Yuki shrugged, zipping himself back up with studious delicacy.
Kawamata was waiting patiently as they exited the rest room. He
wore a tired smile, as though the heat were penetrating even his
luxurious cotton.
"Yasu... he just asks if we find the facilities adequate."
"More than adequate. Don't tell him about the graffiti."
Yuki nodded. "Don't worry."
It was after a generous dinner of sashimi and octopus that
Kawamata posed the question. The food had been so fresh that Tom
had been forced to forfeit one of his chopsticks to a
quarrelsome purple tentacle, and the scene made Suji (as he
preferred to be called) laugh out loud, a great belly laugh with
all the trimmings. Then he burped and apologized, saying
something about the finest entertainers in all Japan having
nothing on his American guest. He paused for precisely one
heartbeat after Yuki had finished translating, dark eyes
becoming suddenly serious.
"So what do you think about our set-up here? Can we do
business?"
Such directness was so far from the norm that Tom found himself
taken aback by the question. Of course, his host had every right
to ask it. Still, even after being wined and dined to excess,
the idea of jumping into bed with the man and his company grated
on Tom. There were still a few nooks and crannies which
warranted closer examination.
"Tell Suji that we are very grateful for his hospitality and
that what we have seen so far will please our directors back
home... that we can look forward to an era of prosperity between
our two companies."
The Japanese executive smiled and nodded, drinking his glass of
sake in one gulp. Tom did likewise.
"There is one small matter, however. I will need some
statistical details for the report. Personnel department
records."
"He says to send your request through the headquarters."
"No... it's important that the research be conducted first-hand.
If he could tell me the password to the personnel database, that
should suffice. We could conclude our work here tonight and make
the morning flight."
Yuki translated, and Kawamata listened intently, a slight furrow
forming between his eyes.
"Tell him that if we're going to be partners, we might as well
start trusting each other."
Armed with the password, written on a small restaurant napkin,
Tom entered Nissan's personnel database from back at his hotel
room. Yuki just sat on the sofa chair, watching the television
with a tired yawn.
"What do you think you're going to find?"
"The truth. You think you can get us to 1-11-15 Kita?"
The place was dark and run down, the dim light of tall actinic
lamps shimmering in icy circles along the rain-spotted street.
The flat they were looking for was situated on the third floor
of the building, its entrance nestled between the stairwell and
the door to a corner suite. Tom knocked lightly, stepping back
as the door opened. The woman on the other side seemed
surprised, which was natural enough, and Tom let Yuki do the
talking until the man came. He was in his sixties, sparse white
hair covering most of his scalp, and he drooped his head in a
manner which suggested that he was more than a little saddened
that his evening was being disturbed by a pair of suits.
"Tell him that we only want to ask a few questions."
The man kept shaking his head, muttering a fluid stream of
gibberish.
"He says he knows nothing."
"He sure talks a lot for a guy who knows nothing."
"Ah... let me rephrase. He says he knows who we are and that he
has nothing to say."
"Look, Mr. Kayama. Either you answer my questions, or I'll tell
your employer you were rude to me. Your choice."
The old man shut up, detecting from the tone of the American's
voice that he'd better listen close to the translation. Then he
shuffled to the side, directing one arm toward the flat's
interior.
Like many Japanese homes, his place was about the size of a
studio apartment. It had a small kitchen and bath tacked on,
white, wall plaster peeling in the cold, moist air, and only one
window for ventilation.
Tom made himself a seat on the wood floor, directing his
polished leather shoes to the corner of the room where Mr.
Kayama's grease- stained, work boots wearily resided.
"I read your personnel file. You've been working at Oppama for a
long time."
He nodded, then shrugged as if to ask, "What of it?"
"Sit down, Mr. Kayama. This won't take long."
The man complied, bending his brittle knees with considerable
strain.
"You were there during the strike. According to your file, your
salary dropped about three months later. You have missed every
opportunity for promotion since, and you are now making less
than workers with comparable seniority. Considerably less. I
want to know why."
"He says to ask his union."
"I'm asking you."
Kayama shrugged again, his deep gray eyes finding some corner of
the room and hitching to it. Then he began to talk, and despite
the ready translation, all Tom could hear in his head was the
old man's coarse and tired voice.
"There was a shop-floor meeting... a union meeting. I spoke
out... told Shioji, our local boss, that the strike had
accomplished nothing. The rules keeping the machines on
regardless of circumstance had not changed. Wages had not
improved. Work hours, the speed of the assembly line, demands
for overtime... all the same. After the meeting, I was taken
aside by several of Shioji's men. They told me that I was a
fool, that the strike was not because of Ada. It was because of
an internal power struggle. Shioji's boss had to flex his
muscles to command personal respect from management. The strike
had nothing to do with Ada except that his death was a suitable
pretense."
"What about his family? Did they get any compensation?"
The old man smiled, then began to chuckle quietly.
"I guess that's a no."
"They said to go talk to the mutual aid society."
"That's supposed to be a joke?"
"It has no money. Nobody pays into it because nobody trusts it.
People trust only in themselves. We work in a desert, here. We
are all bits of dust and sand."
"Why don't you leave?"
"He says that one does not job hop in Japan. Even if there were
jobs for old men, he says he could be blacklisted. A few years
ago, seven anti-unionists were fired from the Atsugi plant...
fired by the union, not by management. They were later attacked
by two hundred union members."
"Attacked? Two hundred against seven?"
"That is correct. They had to be hospitalized. They were very
lucky to have survived at all. You do not cross the union in
Japan. And the union does nothing for the workers. That is just
the way it is."
Yuki occupied the driver's seat of their rented car on the
return trip back to the hotel. He was tired, but like many of
the Japanese white-collars, he had a strange knack for remaining
awake and attentive whatever the situation. Tom, meanwhile,
consoled himself with watching the specks of rain form on the
windshield. He would schedule their flight before fading off to
sleep. Better to leave in the morning than have to face Kawamata
with only an ideological explanation.
"So did we find the truth?"
"What do you think?"
Yuki shrugged, "I think it's bad. I never really knew how much
is secret."
"Yeah, well, you learn something new every day."
"What are you going to put in your report?"
Tom shook his head and sighed. "If we do this partnership, it's
going to mean copying Nissan's labor policies in the States."
"It will lift the company's profits, yes?"
He said it with a smirk, and Tom grinned, "Yeah. If it actually
works, it'll lift profits quite a bit, but it'll also drop
working standards right down the cess pit."
"Drop and lift," mused his Japanese friend. "Just like that
machine. But what do you care about working standards? You're an
executive, not a laborer." And then he laughed. It was his
teasing laugh, as if inviting the American to say something
stupid. But it contained a hidden edge, just barely discernible,
as though lurking somewhere within the folds of that laughter
there was someone crying, someone pleading to be let out.
"I may be an executive, Yuki, but I'm also an American."
"An American?"
"Yes... a fat, lazy, stupid American. And we stick up for our
own."
Yuki laughed again, this time high-pitched and merry, and Tom
imagined that Yuki understood what he meant. Perhaps he could
understand because he'd seen both sides, the good and bad of
each culture. It afforded him an interesting choice, to decide
where his destiny would lay.
Unfortunately for Ada, not all people had that choice. And look
how he'd ended up.
Jim Vassilakos (jimv@ucrengr.ucr.edu)
----------------------------------------
Jim Vassilakos is an MBA graduate of the University of
California, Riverside campus. He drives a tan Nissan pickup and
writes in his spare time. This story is based on an article by
John Junkerman titled "We Are Driven," published in the August
1982 issue of _Mother Jones_ magazine.
Dreamstock by Dorothy Westphal
=================================
...................................................................
* When you drop down that money for a haircut, you're paying for
a lot more than scissors and shampoo. *
...................................................................
"A stock of dreams?"
I watched his practiced hands deftly strop the razor a few more
times before he turned his attention to my foam-drenched
stubble. "Yeah, that's right; if you really want to know what my
most important piece of equipment here is, that would be it."
I had asked the question idly, just because I wasn't in the mood
to listen to this guy chatter about TV or yesterday's Giants'
fiasco. It was the first time I'd come into the shop; I was
starting to wonder if it had been a mistake.
"All right, I guess I'd better explain that." The chill on my
cheek told me the blade was starting its first run.
"You see, everybody's got something they'd like to talk about,
but they don't know how to get started. Say, some old geezer
comes in here, looking worried and sick. You wonder if he just
went to his doc or something, got real bad news. Well, if he
did, he might wanna talk about it; but I can't say, 'Well, how's
about it? Do you think there's life after death?' "
I started to grin, then caught myself before the blade could
catch the fold of my cheek.
"What I do is, I have a stock of dreams. I mean, I just make up
something; you can say you dream about anything. Nobody thinks
anything about it. And who's to say if you really did dream it?
Just to break the ice. So I might say to this guy: 'Had a real
strange dream last night -- thought I saw my father. And you
know, he's been gone near ten years now.' Then I'd go on with
this line about seeing a light, meeting old friends and so on.
Then I say 'Whaddya think of that? Do you think it could really
happen?'"
He flipped a bladeful of suds into the sink. I was getting
interested.
"Young kid came in yesterday, maybe 13, 14 years old. Looked
nervous. Told me he wanted something really special. Kept
looking in the mirror. Know what I finally told him? I said I
had a dream the night before about somethin' happened over 40
years ago. I was dreaming about my first date!" He chuckled.
"Well, I hit the nail on the head, all right. I told him I was
so scared I was going to do somethin' stupid, then it ended up
the girl was the one knocked over her Coke! Gave me a chance to
be grown-up and mature; I jumped up and gave her my napkin.
Said, 'Don't worry; I do that all the time!' Well, that gave the
kid something to think about. He finally said, 'Well, I'm taking
this girl out tonight, and she's real popular. I was really
worried about it. But I think it's going to be OK!' "
By this time my face was enveloped by a steaming towel. I
thought I'd heard the last of the Stock of Dreams, but he had
one more.
"Woman came in the other day with her little boy; said it was
his first time in a real barbershop. I believe it. It's a real
shame what some people do to their kids with a pair of old
scissors, just to save a buck. Or maybe she thought a real male
barbershop would be an unsavory influence on the kid. Anyway, I
could see the kid was scared stiff. What am I, a dentist? So
this time I did it different. I said, 'You know, I had a funny
dream last night. There was this little boy looked kinda like
you, but he was magical. He could talk to all the dogs and cats
in his neighborhood, and he could fly!' Well, right away the
kid's eyes bugged out, and he looked up at me with his face
shining, ready for more. We were off!"
I left a good tip; he earned it. I hadn't been entertained like
that in years.
I didn't go back to that neighborhood for several years, but one
day I had to call on a customer nearby and thought I ought to
spruce up a bit first. The shop was still there, and walking in,
I saw the same guy, working on some young dude's blow-dry cut.
He nodded at me without any recognition as I sat down with a
_Life_ magazine.
"With you in a minute!"
As he clipped the cloth around my neck and reached for his
beaver- bristled brush, he looked at me close, then started:
"Had a real strange dream last night -- thought I saw my
father."
Dorothy Westphal (westphal@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com)
-------------------------------------------------------
Dorothy Westphal is a technical writer by trade. This is her
first published work of fiction.
FYI
=====
Back Issues of InterText
--------------------------
Back issues of InterText can be found via anonymous FTP at:
> ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/InterText/
and
> ftp://network.ucsd.edu/intertext/
You may request back issues from us directly, but we must handle
such requests manually, a time-consuming process.
On the World-Wide Web, point your WWW browser to:
> http://www.etext.org/Zines/InterText/
If you have CompuServe, you can read InterText in the Electronic
Frontier Foundation Forum, accessible by typing GO EFFSIG. We're
located in the "Zines from the Net" section of the EFFSIG forum.
On GEnie, we're located in the file area of SFRT3, the Science
Fiction and Fantasy Roundtable.
On America Online, issues are available in Keyword: PDA, in
Palmtop Paperbacks/Electronic Articles & Newsletters.
Gopher Users: find our issues at
> ftp.etext.org in /pub/Zines/InterText
....................................................................
Repeat after me: Chia Pets are _not_ alive.
..
This issue is wrapped as a setext. For more information send
email with the single word "setext" (no quotes) in the Subject:
line to <fileserver@tidbits.com>, or contact the InterText staff
directly.
