1483 c/o Buster Jones
Us... Our Father... Black Moths... The Ghost of a Bear
If we can be killed then bring ravens. Small girls are difficult to break, ask pastors. We are small boys and are easily broken. Go ahead and break us. Bring ravens. We can be killed. And so on.
There are crowns on cushions, punchbowls, sceptres, orbs and golden picnic tables somewhere. When ravens are brought then kill us and bury our bodies beneath the stairs, the two of us. Or somewhere else, in boxes. We feel overdressed to die. Perhaps that is vanity.
We are brothers. We do not feel confident about our hair.
We are so hungry. The food is venison, sometimes blackbird, sweetened with honey, rarely sugar. Where are the ravens? We will learn the taste of potatoes sometime later, served on ornate salvers, sweetened with honey, rarely sugar. We want elaborate cabbage, sweetened, before you kill us. Here is something we have seen on a platter: a bustard stuffed with a turkey, stuffed with a goose, stuffed with a pheasant, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken, stuffed with a guinea fowl, stuffed with a woodcock, stuffed with a partridge, stuffed with a plover, stuffed with a lapwing, stuffed with a quail, stuffed with a thrush, stuffed with a lark, sweetened with honey, rarely sugar.
Surprise us at least. Where are our wives? We are 10 and 13.
We are holding hands, looking in different directions. People approach and one of us speaks and the other looks in a different direction, listens for breathing, beading sweat, footsteps.
Our father is not our father.
One of us was King once. The older one, probably. The older one was never crowned though, the younger one also, probably. We’re not sure.
It is dark unless we play in the courtyard, in which case we are followed by soldiers and the ghost of a bear. Also black moths move through the air around us. There is a heat from the scaffold that we barely notice nowadays. The ghost of a bear grows desperate. The sunlight pinks us while we hold hands.
One of our wives is French, one is English. Our wives have a combined age of 17.
Explain the ravens as having something to do with why the stairs are being dug up. Put a small girl on The Rack and quickly pastors will refuse, impressed that the small girl is so difficult to break. The dungeon is called ‘The Little Ease’. The pastors will hold their hands up and smile at the girl’s body. No-one will take us there.
Here is an update. We are no longer allowed in the courtyard. It is dark. The ravens live mainly on dead flesh. Bring them. People will not ask questions about the ravens.
If you kill us, do not later admit to it under torture. You will not be believed. Remain always impressive under torture. Pastors will remember you this way for a short period of time, like small girls.
What will our skeletons look like? Can experts tell us apart? Will they muddle up our bones? We would not mind. Each of us is envious of certain parts of the other.
This castle grows like a fat man’s heart. We aren’t old enough to know this probably.
Explain the ravens as part of the menagerie. Lions, leopards, lynxes, camels. Admission to the menagerie is three half-pence or a dog or cat to be fed to the lions. It is easily explained. If you must kill us then do it in a secret or special way. Use a method that will not show up on our skeletons at least. Explain the ravens as being to do with the smell on the stairs.
Put a man in The Scavenger’s Daughter and tighten his body down in on itself until you are no longer impressed with him. This will happen quickly.
If you kill us, use it to achieve success, personal advantage or some degree of notoriety. Explain the ravens as explaining themselves thirty feet from the scaffold while what remains is carried calmly to the chapel.
Soon after, a ghost of a bear walks towards a soldier, and the soldier not able to sleep later, or dying soon after, and use this to explain the ravens. So bring the ravens here, and our wives, and the black moths dead and falling and laying and lying dead just there on the lawn, by the scaffold, on the stairs.
1482 c/o David Fishkind
Ten Years Before Doing Anything
Ten years before Christopher Columbus sailed across any blue oceans to discover any new lands or native cultures, he went to college. Chris woke up in his dorm room at 1 PM and felt estranged. He went into the bathroom and drank out of the sink, dropping his head down sideways to grab the water with his tongue and mouth. The roof of his mouth felt dry and sticky. He brushed rheum from his eyes and spit in the toilet. He thought I shouldn’t have drunk so much last night. He looked in the mirror. He thought that he was looking different. Fatter. Especially in the face. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and the patchy outline of a beard was surfacing on his cheeks and chin. He felt his jaw and then tried to open his mouth. It clicked hard and stopped before he could open it all the way, emitting an intense pain throughout his face and temples. What the fuck. He walked to his window and looked out at the dry October scene of Genoa before him. What had he said to Filipa last night? She had refused to come home with him. Had she? Chris’s roommate was on his MacBook watching Asian porn with his headphones on. Chris felt weird. The room seemed to bend and spin a little, and Chris lost his balance. He swayed backward, tripping over himself, and knocked over his roommate’s trashcan. His roommate didn’t seem to notice and Chris replaced the contents in the small plastic bin. He crawled nauseously back into bed and reached for his cell phone sitting on his nearby desk. He thought about calling his parents. Then he thought about calling his sister. He got his sister’s voice mail. He left her a message saying he wanted to get together later that week for dinner and that he wanted to see her new dog. He checked to see if he’d gotten any text messages or missed calls from Filipa, but he hadn’t. He rolled over and went back to sleep.
1481 c/o Bambi Almendinger
Anne de Mowbray, 8th Countess of
Norfolk Thinks While Waiting
The white of the morning
will not be woken and steamed
from my sheets are
sun stains
that make the light imperfect.
There was the night, I remember every hour,
with the rising of fungus on the windowsill
and the animals outside repeating:
Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn, Gott der heilige Geist.
My hands are colder now, the rain blows into the room
where I'm hiding with you.
I know, I'm sorry, I'll stop
someday.
Where are my gloves?
I see nothing, just mahogany.
I should die with the midday -
dissolving into its dirtiness and fullness
without a thing in my stomach
but your anger
with all your blond ugliness.
1480 c/o Adam Coates
pharos
i keep the pharos,
i keep it tidy
sometimes i chase away the birds that land here
sometimes i let them visit
sometimes i pretend i am a bird and stand at the top of the tower and feel the wind
i am happy for my job, the tower is fresh and exciting, i can watch people and boats
and people on boats
i keep the pharos,
i polish the mirror
i light the fire
the smoke smiles to me, i clean it sometimes
i like to sit at the bottom and look up
i like to sit at the top and look down
i keep the pharos
i am not happy when my tower breaks
i am not happy when it is fixed
i don’t like people to touch the pharos
i feel i have been here for a while
the stairs are smoother
i keep the pharos
sometimes people visit and talk about how wonderful it is
this makes me feel bad
people shouldn’t talk about my tower
sometimes people come and use the tower for various things
i do not mind so much because they always leave in the end
i keep the pharos
i am the pharos
the pharos am me
we battle the sea
we battle the earth
we stood strong
sometimes we whisper to each other
i keep the pharos
it is shorter now
more of it touches the ground
i don’t like this
i think it is taking a little rest
i keep the pharos
it smiles at me
it is happy
sometimes it tells me stories about its parents
sometimes it dances with me
we waltz around
i keep the pharos
1479 c/o Ravi Mangla
Columbus’s Cake / The Sea and Cake / Columbus Needs to Get Laid / Columbus Getting Married / Columbus at the Wedding / Frosting / Anything
Columbus skims a lick of frosting off the corner of the cake and slips the lick in his mouth and licks his lips. Good frosting! he thinks. Good frosting indeed! The cake is shaped like a ship, with frothy blue waves of frosting surrounding the ship. A nautical themed wedding! What a jest! The cake to frosting ratio feels right. Not too much frosting, not too little. He should be happy, the frosting is delicious, and Filipa, if all goes as planned, will finally put out tonight. It doesn’t matter. What he wants is to walk down to the water and watch the breakers break on the rocks. He wants to walk down to the water with the cake in his arms and watch it float off on a silver platter, the salt eating away at the frosting. He wants to take his telescope down to the water and watch the cake crest and fall and get licked by dolphins. Ah, shit! Get away from the cake! Stupid dolphins! A pack of mackerel will swim by and the dolphins will swim off after them. On an island far off the coast, the cake will be offered as a sacrifice to the god of the moon. The silver platter will be used to smash the skulls of buffalo.
1478 c/o Nicolle Elizabeth
Bed-Stuy, 1478
I fucked the King of France in 1478, we bumped into each other at a party last night he said, oh yes, I remember you. We held hands and climbed a ladder where we could see three things: water silos, the horizon and God. I lifted my hand from the tartack and pulled up and then we had a shower. We stood under it, washing ourselves in spittle under the moon and toweling each other’s hair with our wrung out t-shirts which smelled like other lovers. He has an incredible odor, the King said. I know, I said. I pushed my hand downward like the gravity involved in any depiction of Christ on the Cross and then we had Angolan oranges to eat. We sat on the tar, peeling away our skin while our cuticles began to sting. Your hand's on fire, he said. I put the left one in the spittle puddle while it burned out and hissed. Thank you, I said. I started to talk about the crusades, he said shush, I’m listening. Below us was a little girl pointing up and saying mama how do we get into that church.
1477 c/o Andrew Borgstrom
Transylvania, 1477
While mother generally said, "No children, stay inside, just for today, I need you near me," today she said, "Go, run, play, while I roast turkey for dinner." And then her stomach growled images of children gagging on their roasted mothers, and Turkish emissaries with turbans nailed to their heads. The children sang, "Vlad is dead," but mother still changed the menu: "Go, run, play, while I broil duck for dinner." Four days earlier, in France, wolves half-ate the Duke of Burgundy's body so that the only recognizable remains were the scars on his uneaten flesh blazing under the sun.
1476 c/o Brad Green
The Siege of Nancy
Bernard pushed out the tent hoping to catch a glimpse of the hanging. He spat onto the black ground and crushed the frozen glob under his boot. If this was the ground the Duke wanted so badly, he was crazed. But perhaps watching a bloodless death by hanging might warm Bernard nonetheless, get the sludge of his dull blood flowing in this cold. He was wrapped in blankets thick with must, coat tatters he'd found along the road or pulled off the dead and still he shivered. Twenty more days of service in this siege, escalation or not, then it was back home, away from the nobles and their campaigns. Back to the plump grapes of the vineyard, the rich dung of the goats, the nights ripe with stars and not shivers. He couldn't see where the hanging was supposed to occur. In the end, it didn't matter. Charles the Bold would have the impudent Knight's life, either by the snap of a rope or by a grinning knife to let in the daylight. One didn't question Charles the Bold, especially in matters of the military. He'd have his Christmas siege, no matter the cost. Bernard pushed back inside the tent.
Corentin scowled and wrapped his arms around the thin fire. "Close the flap, fool."
"No one is about. Maybe he changed his mind."
Corentin slid the last thin stick into the fire and the fire raged into the wood so that new snakes of smoke boiled loose. "The Bold doesn't change his mind. The Knight will die."
Bernard sat next to the fire, held his stiff fingers over the trembling flame. The wood cracked open in the flame, heat-wisped and dry with rot to its core. They'd had to fight off three men for the tent earlier, but now it was so cold that everyone was afraid to grip their swords or piss into the trench, much less fight for the tent which wasn't much protection from the cold. All the armor piled outside, gray and frozen. A keening wind through the black and thin trees behind them. "Wood's not going to last long."
"Then you'll die in service to your Lord." Corentin spat into the fire. "The Knight was right."
A thin curl of smoke spent itself against the wind as it wafted out the smokehole at the top of their makeshift tent. "You best watch your tongue or they'll string you up with him."
"Better to hang than to freeze to death." Corentin said. "Duke René will never give in, even if he and his men behind Nancy's walls gnaw on rats. At least they're out of this vile wind, while our balls turn to ice. As useless as the siege I put upon another cold-hearted bitch not that long ago." He looked up at Bernard to gauge his reaction, but he'd already turned away.
A shout squipped out of the night. A crunching of boots. A slow gathering of sound in the dark. Bernard rose and pushed his head out into the wind. A man was running, jumping over the soldiers spooned on the ground like lovers in search of warmth. The man had removed his armor and shirt, skin red with cold. He was shouting.
"What's he yelling?" Corentin asked.
"That he's on fire. Burning up. He's coming this way."
"Back in!" Corentin wrapped his arms around the fire again. "Hide this."
Bernard shuffled back, took off one of his blankets and held it around the fire in hopes that the light would die out of their tent. Breath came white and fast out of his nose. The light from the flame quaked against the cloth.
"He's mad with cold." whispered Corentin. "I've seen it before. We're all going to freeze out here. It's already started and the night isn't yet full." He looked around. "I'll say it. Damn the Bold. Damn him."
The coldmad man was close. Yelling for water to put the flames out on his body. Soldiers began to stir, curse with a white fur out of their mouths. Someone shouted that he'd seen light, a fire. Boots scraping against the hard ground. The snap of a twig under a knee as bodies labored to rise.
"We're found out." Bernard said.
Someone ripped away the tent and the wind whipped at the fire. The small coals flared in the rising dark. Several men pushed closer. Bernard and Corentin were shoved back, yanked away. The wind drove such a cold into Bernard's body that it felt as if the chill inked from the long, blue bars of his bones. He'd lost the blanket he'd pulled off in the scuffle. The wind stabbed through him as if he were immaterial before its unabated force. The shirtless man had sat on the ground. He was quiet now, breathing slowly, chin against his chest.
Bernard sat on the ground and huddled into himself as much as possible. His legs against the ground burned with cold. There was nowhere to turn away from the wind. He thought of grapes thickly clustered on vines, the warm swell of Nancy's breast in his palm, how the table at her house had been scored with knives. All the men that had rushed the tent now sat on the ground near him. No one moved any longer. The world about freezing in a slow grey breath, the only motion being the black thrashing of the tree limbs. Sharp pains in his exposed skin melted into dull throbs. The coals released their grasp on the orange and faded to dull ash. In the distance, Bernard finally located the gallows. A body twisted on the creaking rope. It was the Knight, the one that had spoken against the Duke's plans, the one that had tried to save them all. No one had cut him down and come to his aid. If he had a knife, he...
When she was atop him, the roll of flesh at her belly jiggled...
Dirt black and warm on his palms...
Trees knuckled thickly into the loam, full and proud of their growth...
Corentin had crawled close. He was speaking into the dirt which was too cold to even yield up a dust to his weak breath. "...something about your girl..." Then the wind stole away the rest.
1475 c/o Chris East
Mrs Gardner
Nero Coffee Shop opened for the first time and Mrs Gardner walked in through the doors. What can I have for free? she says to the BARISTA. Y'know, for the kids?
What? No nothing. What? How can I help? The young man behind the counter is confused and taken aback by this small Irish woman and her question. He was trained for 1 week at the Nero headquarters. No one taught him what to say if someone asks for something for nothing. What kids?
My kids, my grandkids. They're outside see. The young man looks out and sees three teenagers in tracksuits and trainers. He wonders if the small Irish woman's approach ever works. He figures that if she asks in every store on this high street, every day, forever, then the law of averages must be in her favour. She is not begging. This is different to that. It's something better. Give me something, a treat for the kids. He thinks for a long moment and looks around the counter top for clues or ideas.
During his training, the young Barista was taught that 'the customer is always right' and he knew it was bullshit. The customer is usually wrong until corrected and then they are right. The customer asks questions or makes requests, and questions or requests just can not be simply 'right'. He thinks, the responses to these questions and requests can be right or wrong, however subjective that 'right' or that 'wrong' may be. This thinking is frowned upon at a corporate level. They don't have to deal with the shit.
The young man behind the counter decides that the old woman is right. Mrs Gardner is right. He reaches into a bag of coffee beans, imported from somewhere neither of them will ever care to visit, and drops a handful of the fresh beans in to the Irish woman's hands. There you go madam, think nothing of it. He is not sure what the Irish woman could possibly plan to do with a handful of coffee beans but she does seem contented.
Thank you son. The kids will be dead happy with this. She turns slowly and then walks off towards the doors. At this point the new Nero Coffee Shop on the high street is only 5 minutes old. See you tomorrow, Mrs Gardner calls back over her shoulder, without turning her head or breaking stride.
1474 c/o Valerie O'Riordan
King of Hearts
“You're the King now, Al,” whispered his mother, pinching his cheek and hoisting him onto the throne. She balanced the crown awkwardly on his head. “My little King. Give us a smile, duck.”
The crown dug into his scalp like a manacle. Alfonso shivered. The old kings rotted away in their tombs like spoiled meat; his father lay upstairs, cold and silent, waiting to join them. Alfonso gripped his mother's arm and showed his teeth, milky and square. His intake of breath was ferocious. His mother smiled triumphantly at the court.
“You're my Queen now, right? Pay attention,” Al told his cousin, pushing her onto her back and straddling her. His narrow body trembled. He looked at her breasts, the curved lines of her waist, her skinny teenage legs. He moaned. Isabel shifted and propped herself up on one arm.
“Show me how it's done, why don't you, Highness,” she spat, and the courtiers, clustered around the edges of the room, winced.
Al swore and knocked her back down. He heard her arm snap behind her, a horrible cracking retort. He smiled. She screamed, and so did the courtiers. Alfonso roared above them all – “Shut up! Shut up! – and he held his hand over her mouth and mounted her. Their strangled breaths and grunts filled the air.
“Bow to your fucking King,” barked the soldier, casting a quick apologetic glance up at Alfonso, who gazed down from his ten-foot platform like a man in a trance. The slaves fell to their knees, some willingly, the rest jerked off their feet by the snapping chains.
Al squinted past them. Their dark faces merged into the wavering desert landscape. He spied out for snakes, lizards, deadly spiders. When he lost concentration, Isabel appeared, accusing him, always choking on poisoned wine, her slack tongue lolling from her mouth as she fell to the ground, the wine glass shattering.
They brought the slaves back home, men and women lashed together and stumbling alongside the mules by the roadside. Al picked out one of the women, tall, with a proud gaze, and ordered her sent to his chambers. He dressed her in his mother's old gowns, tattered and yellow, and had her coo lovingly at him.
“You're my little King, aren't you, pet?” she murmured, hesitantly, stroking his balding head, struggling with the unfamiliar language. Al didn't notice. He gurgled, kicked his legs, and laughed.
“I'm the Queen,” the girl repeated, staring at her uncle. She planted her hands on her hips. “You can be the King, but I'm going to be the Queen.”
Alfonso nodded. His sister's bastard child. Her head reached his chest. She was younger than Isabel had been at the time of their marriage. Her cheeks were flushed and determined. Her small breasts pushed against her dress. Al swallowed. He knelt beside her and a servant handed him a pen. They signed, her careful round print dominating the page. She underlined her name with a flourish. Al's scrawl crept out beside it.
“You're my Queen now,” he said slowly, and reached out towards her, his mouth dry, but she laughed, and turned away.
“What an awful old man,” he heard her say to her maidservant as she left, and Alfonso pulled his knees up to his chest, curled on his throne, and wept.
