Bloody Fabulous (24 page)

His eyes were shut in rapture when the moon came up. A sibilance made him open them.

Some fish had come up onto the bank like a pack of eels, and had arranged themselves with their tails to the river and their eyes toward him. He continued to eat the one galligaskin that he had torn into pieces. It was not an easy thing to chew. Though rot softened it, particularly underfoot, its yarn caught between his teeth. This slowed his greed.

The moon showed through to the luminous back of the watchers’ eyes, making them into mirrors in which he saw himself eating as he never had—with such joy, and sadness that there was only so much to this meal. The fish took no liberties, nor made any sounds that he could hear, but they must have communicated some way, for soon the bank was so covered with fish, each head pointing in his direction, that he choked.

The first stocking, the one that held extra savour at its crusty top from a time that he fell and tore his knee, he’d gulped the last stitch of, but he could not eat more with these silent lookers-on. Tears stung his eyes.

He ripped the top of the undevoured hose with his teeth so that the knit unravelled on his tongue. Swallowing his excess saliva and his appetite, he pulled the knitting asunder and made a yarn ball, as the fishes watched. Then he stood up, naked as he was born. Walking amongst them, he broke the yarn into pieces and dropped a piece into each of the uplifted mouths.

As he broke and distributed yarn, there was no fighting amongst the fishes, even though, to give each fish a portion, he had to break the yarn into shorter and shorter pieces. When he had fed the last fish, the one whose tail lay in the river, he was unsure what to do. The fishes watched him, but if they’d turned their heads away he wouldn’t have been able to see himself in so many mirrors. There he stood on a riverbank—unclothed and without a coin of any realm.

Why did I take that medlar’s counsel? he asked himself, striking his tripe-white knees with both his fists till all were red as a maiden’s lips. Who should know better the value of what is free? He didn’t ask the fishes, of course, any more than he would have asked a mirror. They remained as they were—expressionless but still as a playwright’s wished-for audience as Werold hit himself, then wept a bit, then pondered, sitting naked on the grass. The only sound was the slow woosh of gill-moved waters.

Werold became very still and increasingly vacant-eyed, till suddenly he slapped his head. “I know!” He scrambled up, wiped grass and mud from his skinny backside, and did a little dance. “The medlar,” he sang, stamping three times. “Valued as most blessed”
stamp stamp stamp
“what
medlars
wish.”

Werold’s deliberations had led him to this conclusion: Any medlar would anoint itself with the scent of gingerbread if only it could, for that is almost how a bletted medlar smells, but never quite.

Every medlar is rootbound. “But I have legs!”

Werold laughed, an action this master argumentitioner had never been seen to take. Even now, he thought, that goodnatured medlar might be living richly in its imagination, as it travels in the shoes of the traveller it told the way to happiness. Whether the medlar assumed that the scent of gingerbread is all for everyone, is something Werold didn’t try to fathom.

He had made up his mind, with no argument that it brought forward. The fish had eaten his galligaskin kickshaws with the same delight as he—not to be polite, not to be agreeable. “We do agree!” he said, expecting not a wriggle of understanding, not a blink of their lidless eyes.

For now it was time, Werold decided. He would meet his end here, as he could go nowhere naked, but could not bring himself to don the litter on this land. “Perhaps you’ll find me tasty,” he said to them, “you poor creatures who have never tasted worms.”

He jumped from the bank.

Werold the argufier will be no more,
he thought as calmly as he could, as his nose met the water. He could not swim, so hoped his end would come before he lost his mind.

His toes touched the soft thick bottom of the river, but only once. Every fish must have raced into the water. They bumped up against his chin, hit his chest and legs and back. They flayed the water from the river, from him, using their solid bodies, their lashing tails and fins. One big fish slipped under his feet and flung him free of the river. He sailed into the air and tumbled back upon the back of another giant. Without thinking, he grabbed that fish’s fin. It turned its head back toward him, and he saw himself in its eyes. Werold, wearing a smile to rival the happy face on Pleasanz’ gate.

The fishes would not let his head slip into the river, but they pushed him so that his body hung in the depths. Then began a procession in which each fish rubbed against him backwards, and they rubbed him everywhere below his head, from his neck to the undersides of his feet. Soon he was as covered with a thick coat of scales as they, though the arrangement was somewhat Galligaskinish—saggy and slovenly next to the tight, neat patterns on the fish.

His coat and leggings needed constant adjustment, but the fish took care of that. His new profession—and the fishes greatly looked up to him—was to lead them up the great unexplored river where he pulled the worms off boys’ hooks in every new fishing hole. If there was a fishermen’s net poised to throw upon the river, Werold stood up, on a long sinuous fish’s back (this was the only treat the fishes still squabbled for) and dazzled and intimidated all the two-legged landlivers with his shining raiment. Whenever fishermen saw the wondrous man of the river with their own eyes—the man who was coated in a fish’s rainbowed mail—they rushed to their huts and then back to the river, where every fisherman emptied a bucket of offerings. The waters swirled the most at worms, but also liked were pig’s knuckles, roasted hens, buttons and buckles and belts, soft slippers, and the lees of ale. The action of leaping fishes and man was so looped and wet and active that no one could say for certain whether the man ate worms or only hens and bacon.

Two-legged landlivers watched, drool-mouthed. And that night in the house of every civil citizen who saw that the man was not a myth, everything wearable though it be new as the morning egg, was ripped and cursed and piled in a heap—from gold-embroidered shirts to hose as fine as spider webs. On fine streets, it was impossible
not
to hear the rich men wail, and grizzle, answer their ladies’ cries with sharp replies; and kick their dogs, and moan and keen and weep.

In rude huts, fishermen tore their hair, worried over whether their offerings were rich enough; whether the visitors had gone their way sated or having left a curse upon the nets.

The glittering vision on the river, the unattainably clothed man—though looking just the same from year to year, from sighting to sighting—left fashion in a leap.

So this is almost the end of this true story, except for what I pass to you.

At night, those days, only scoundrels and the wretched were not in bed at home. At campfires along the river, fierce arguments flamed over what the man on the river droned, for on moonlit nights the one they called Silverlips was seen to sit on the back of a fish, spouting a stream of endless words. About one thing though, every loud-mouthed vagabond agreed. That each word might have made some sense in some other order, but the arrangement from the mouth of Silverlips made “nonsense.”

My great greeaaaaat grandfather, a wretched poet, watched the fire and held his tongue, but while others were sleeping, he’d slip to the riverbank and cup his hands around his ears. The river was slow and deep, never a babbler, so when one violet dawn he heard a drone, he knew it was Silverlips. He caught the stream coming from the river, answered back in like, and penned the story with the quill he carried, and his own hot blood. A fine procreator, he passed down his talents and this tale.

Avant-n00b
Nick Mamatas

Olivia got that witchy feeling frequently, but never so powerfully as the time she spotted a particular garment while thrifting at Dog and Pony on Guadalupe. It was a weird interstitial moment—the owner, Star, was in the back and Olivia was the only customer in the usually crowded store. She didn’t even know what she was looking at, and had nobody to ask, but was sure the item would make for a great blog post. Olivia was fashionn00b, her blog was fashionn00b.net, and its slogan was “Clothes Blogging Live From Austin—We’re the America of Texas!” It was her father’s joke, and Olivia had appropriated it the way she had liberated any number of her mother’s old dresses and shoes from the early 1990s, after mom had abandoned them. The clothes, and Olivia, that is. This garment was generous in its own way, stretching across two hangers. Its lines and folds were crazy. Was it some sort of sarong, but with sleeves, and in a half-faded black with a silvery lace gimp, instead of the more typical patterns and plaids of Asia? Anyway it was only ten bucks, and according to NextBus.com the bus was coming now!, so she decided that it was hers. Olivia left two crumpled five-dollar bills on the counter, shouted back to Star, “Hey, I bought the impossible garment on the two hangers!” and ran out of the store, with the garment in her arms. It was Saturday. Olivia didn’t hear Star calling her back, didn’t see Star leaning out the door to shout, “No, wait, not that thing!” She slammed into some big kid with greasy hair on the corner, mumbled an apology as she ran, and just made it.

Everyone knows that the best time to make a blog is Monday morning, as the whole world gets up first thing in the morning to catch up on, and with, the Internet after a weekend of doing whatever. But bloggers do a lot of whatever on the weekends, including prep work for the Monday blogs. Saturday night was a wash, because Olivia went to the movies with her father—some artsy Japanese thing about the year in the life of a family she wasn’t interested in except for the sailor fuku the girl character wore. Olivia preferred the winter outfit with the long sleeves and white scarf to the summertime version, which carried way too much sexualized baggage thanks to dirty old men and anime boys.

That was a problem, even in Austin, Texas, which was totally liberal and friendly, with decent weather most of the time. The male of the species and its dull, if hungry, gaze. The blonde cheerleader look was still the default, and most of the other girls just dressed like ugly boys as a form of sullen rebellion. Then there were the ironic cowgirls, with cleavage! and hats! So for Monday, Olivia picked out a ridiculously oversized sweatshirt she had thrifted a while ago, and tiny shorts nobody would see because the shirt came down past her knees, a New Wave belt, and black stockings, and what she called her
My So-Called Life
boots. She imagined hurling herself out the window of fifth period Social Studies and flinging her arms out, the sleeves stretched like the patagium of a flying squirrel, and gliding safely to the endzone of the school’s football field. And the shirt even read DRAKE UNIVERSITY—put a bird on it! was always good advice. Look assembled, photos taken and properly cropped. Then the witchy-smelling garment.

“What the HECK is that THANG?” Olivia said, affecting a goofy hick accent for her own amusement, five minutes later. Unfolded and unfurled, the piece was over twenty feet long. It zig-zagged across the floor of Olivia’s already cluttered room. The center of it was insanely narrow, but the fabric was stretchy, like nylon. Something a boa constrictor might wear, with a huge poofy bottom and a top that was a petaled flower of shoulder pads and seemingly random spikes. And the sleeves-slash-pant-legs-slash-huh, what?? She snatched up her phone to take some pictures. There
would
be a Sunday night posting to fashionn00b.net. The hardcore Olivia thought of as the ladysphere was always online.

The comments flooded in, but nobody knew what the hell it was.

Bibian Bestwould guessed: Like a bicycle-built-for-two, but a garment.

Joan of Park(Place) wondered: Some sort of circus outfit? You should get some stilts and see if it fits then! But which holes are for which appendages, eh?

MsCantBeWrong tried: Snuggie Couture.

Three other bloggers announced that they were totally going to change their screen names to Snuggie Couture, and everyone had a good laugh. It was nice to have friends in every time zone, people who really understood a girl, even if nobody understood what was on the floor at Olivia’s feet. The pictures were tumblrd and tweeted around a bit. With luck, by Monday morning someone would be able to identify the piece as something other than a horrific factory error or a prank on Olivia’s part. Then, at the stroke of midnight, when Sunday turned to Monday, there was a new comment. Olivia always slept with her phone. It blazed to life, and she read:

YOUIDIOTDOTCOM: INSIDEOUT!!!
On t’a bercé trop près du mur?

Olivia had a strict policy about deleting griefers and trolls, but she knew not a word of French and hoped that it would be some sort of clue, so she decided to let the comment stand till morning. Olivia took Spanish, because it was easy and the maid could help when it wasn’t, but she could ask a French teacher, or maybe a student.
But what if it was something
nasty
, or
dirty
?

“Nice shirt!” a pimply fifth-year senior shouted as Olivia walked down the hall to homeroom “Planning on gaining three hundred pounds?” It was the greasy kid from the other day, Olivia realized.

She turned to him, stepped right up and said, “I’m going to give you one minute to come up with something more entertaining, all right?” She had a Swatch—1990 Robin Gj103, day-glo green and pink with little Kirbyesque superheroes decorating the band—on her left wrist and made a show of rolling up the sleeve of her sweatshirt to count down the seconds.

“Uhm . . . more like Drake Cakes University?” he tried. “Heh heh, get it?” He looked around for support, but only got a sneer from a Chinese girl on her way to the honors homeroom, and a shrug from her obedient boyfriend. The senior smiled at Olivia, and even pushed his bangs from his face. “Hey, you’re all right. I’m sorry.”