InkStains January (2 page)

It’s actually a rather simple trick, if
taxing. If you asked, he’d gladly teach you. No one has ever
asked.

He stands, at the far corner of a parking lot
some hours before nightfall, and stares at the billowing clouds,
concentrating, breaking a sweat. A crowd gathers around him,
jostling each other, murmuring, some deep in the throes of
disbelief. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. He
licks his lips. He glances at the woman with the pale eyes and the
blue dress.

“
Anyone can do what you’re
doing,” she says. “Don’t hold it back. Don’t keep it away. Bring
it. Bring it in its fullest fury. Bring the rain and the wind and
the thunder.”

“
Now?” he asks.

“
Now.”

The first drops of rain hit the asphalt.
After a brief scattering, it’s a deluge. Lightning shatters the
sky. The wind whips her dress around her legs. She’s smiling. She
says, “Unleash it.”

Thunder explodes around them. The crowd
scatters. The raindrops fall like hail, heavy and cold and solid.
The flashes of lightning provide a near-constant flickering.
They’re already drenched to the bone.

The woman with the pale eyes and the blue
dress steps closer to Marvin the magician. The storm has brought
color to her cheeks, vibrancy and vividness she’d lacked earlier.
She has to shout to make herself heard over the storm. “Keep it
going. Keep it ferocious. But keep us out of it.”

He grimaces. That’s a lot to ask for. But
it’s a lot of woman to impress, so he nods once and conjures the
commands, incites the incantations in his head, tricks the trick
into working for him.

Lightning comes down in walls around them; a
Faraday cage of air divides them from the world. You can’t stop the
thunder, which is raucous and exuberant and beyond reason, but the
wind winds around them and the rain pummels the ground at their
sides. In their wall of lightning and wind, they are protected from
the elements.

It’s the smallest ever Eye of a Storm. The
effort is great. Marvin’s sweat is cold and running, his muscles
sore and straining. A headache is forming behind his eyes. He sees
stars.

The woman with the pale eyes and the blue
dress is smiling. She steps closer. He allows the lightning wall to
tighten behind her.

“
This,” she says, “what
you’re doing, what you’re capable of – is absolutely
amazing.”

Then she kisses him.

It’s a good, long, deep kiss, and nothing
else matters, so Marvin forgets what he’s doing. And the storm,
though it calms, blankets them again.

The effort of the magic, the soulfulness of
the kiss combine in Marvin’s body. He stumbles, and he falls, and
he passes out completely.

While he’s blacked out, the woman with the
pale eyes and the blue dress rummages through his pockets. She
steals his pocket watch and a few loose dollars. She takes his
fedora, from which he can pull things, and puts it on her head.

She leaves the deck of cards and its eager
Jack of Spades. She learned long ago never to rob anyone of
everything.

When he opens his eyes, she’s gone with his
money, his watch, and his hat. But he’s still got his cards, so
it’s not a total loss. And he can still taste her kiss, so it was
worth it.

4 January

There was no such thing as fear. He didn’t
believe in it. He was fifteen years old, and not one single thing
he’d ever feared had done him the slightest bit of harm.

He’d been afraid of the dark, which turned
out to by mysterious and magical and alluring, but rarely dangerous
and never fatal.

He’d been afraid of the wolves and the bears
and even the raccoons, anything in the woods with a mind of its own
and the slightest hint of hunger. Ultimately, he’d been hungry once
or twice himself. Further, no creature had ever devoured him.

He’d been afraid of a great many things that
never came to pass or, in fact, had merely been things unknown. It
was stupid to fear a thing you didn’t know.

There’s no such thing as fear. He said this
several times in the mirror, perhaps to convince his reflection,
perhaps just to hear his voice break the silence.

The mirror, however, stared back and offered
no words of courage, no wisdom, no advice. It merely gave back
whatever he gave it.

Right. Fear was a myth. He took a deep,
soul-fortifying breath, and strode out of the bathroom with a
display of courage and confidence.

There is nothing to fear. There is no fear.
Fear itself.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

His heart had a way of telling his head to
take a bath.

He did not falter. Until he rounded the
corner and saw her in the hall, near her locker, a book in hand and
another inside, he didn’t even hesitate.

She looked at him as she shut her locker. She
said nothing, but waited for him.

He said her name. Still, she waited.

He said, “I’m sorry.”

There. It was out. Two words, little simple
things, tiny but far from meaningless. Not exactly what he’d
intended, but in a pinch, he thought they were pretty damn
good.

“
I know,” she said. “So am
I.”

He had hoped for something else, something
more forgiving, but it wasn’t forthcoming. Perhaps fear was a real
thing after all.

In front of the judge, a kid not much older,
the prosecutor, one of the girls, said, “He waited too long.”

“
Is this true?” the judge
asked.

He hung his head. “It is.”

“
You confess?”

“
I throw myself at the
court’s mercy.”

“
This court knows no
mercy.”

They stripped him to his underwear and
paraded him through the gymnasium and the auditorium. They
pronounced his failures and his shortcomings. They declared him
foolish, guilty, stupid, naïve, but also brave. In the end, yes, he
was brave.

He re-worked his words. He ignored the court
in his head. He stopped the girl from walking away by throwing a
few more words at her. “I like you.”

“
I know,” she said. She
smiled. She kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

He had hoped for something else, something
more reciprocal, but it wasn’t forthcoming. Perhaps fear was a real
thing after all.

In the middle of the stadium, on the mound,
surrounded by seventy thousand cameras and flashing bulbs and
microphones, he held out his arms and closed his eyes. He screamed
to the masses, “I have faced your demons! I have borne your
burdens! I have faltered, I have stumbled, but I have not
died!”

Perhaps fear was a real thing, but there was
no need for it.

He tried to rearrange his words again, tried
to prevent the girl from going. A question. He threw out a
question. Plucked it from the air. Presented it on the palm of his
hand. Questions required answers.

“
Would you go out with
me?”

“
On a date?” she asked,
throwing the question right back at him, spiking it, going for the
gold.

There was nothing to do but
answer it. As careful as he was, this was where he lost control.
This was where he slipped. “Yes, on a date. Something nice and
simple. I don’t have a car, I can’t take you someplace far away.
And I haven’t got much money, I’m not out of High School yet.
Neither are you. And I know nothing about Love. I’m still a child,
but I’m willing to learn. I’m anxious to learn. I’m a good, good
learner. And I do know something about Romance, because I’ve read a
lot of poetry and my father taught me respect and my mother taught
me gentleness. I’m strong enough and fast enough, and I am brave,
and I believe a girl like you might teach me something of Love. No
– not a girl
like
you, no one like you would do. You, and only you, and no one
else at all, have stolen all the faces in my dreams and replaced
them with yours.”

Before the end, he realized he should stop.
He tried to stop, but couldn’t. There was no helping it. And a
crowd had gathered, albeit a small one, but word of his soliloquy
would spread fast.

She smiled at him and said, “Thank you.” Then
she said, “No.” Then she walked away.

Surrounded by the firing squad, blindfolded,
offered one last cigarette, he refused. “Just shoot,” he said.

But no one fired. The crowd broke apart. His
story, distorted and twisted right from the start, began to snake
its way through the school.

When he turned, there was another girl,
pretty and shy like him, but brave enough not to believe in fear.
She said, “You were wrong.”

He faltered. “How?”

She looked away and said, “Maybe you can
learn something of Love with me.”

5 January

Through the dark streets, avoiding
streetlamps, slipping between shadows – it’s not a living thing,
per se, but a thing with intention nonetheless. It cannot be caught
by a passing headlight. It is not revealed in the flash of a
match.

Three boys at the corner, smoking, drinking,
laughing, hiding when the cop rolls by, they don’t see it though
they hear something, or at least sense it, but they’re too young or
too weak to pay it much heed.

The young mother, alone in her apartment with
a glorious view of the Dumpster in the alley, glances out her
window, catches something in the corner of her eye. But the baby is
demanding, and demanding now, and there’s no one else to help so
it’s all her and the baby and the baby’s needs, nothing else.

The cop, circling the street with his fancy
computer and radio and department-issued firearm, he sees nothing
except what he expects to see.

The taxi driver who doesn’t speak the
language but knows every secret of these streets, he most certainly
sees it, and maybe he recognizes it, but he says nothing to anyone.
No one else here speaks Czech. And even if they did, his job is to
provide an illusion of safety, not shatter that illusion.

It’s a tough corner in a rough neighborhood
on the outskirts of a rough city. Expectations are low. Hope,
though it exists, is a commodity to be traded, sold, lost, or
forgotten.

Through the narrow alley, through the narrow
basement window, up the narrow stairs – it glides as though on a
mission. It is ancient, older than language, sometimes hungry,
sometimes generous, sometimes merely bored – just as it is bored
tonight.

It shifts form, taking substance, creating an
illusion of humanity, though it is easy to see through. The
demanding cries of the baby attract its attention. It reaches the
young mother’s door. It takes on solidity. It knocks three times,
like a ghost might.

The young mother answers, baby in hand, chain
preventing the door from moving more than a few inches. Certainly,
no man could just slip through. Her hair is unkempt: dark crescents
droop from her eyes. “What is it?” she asks. She’s tired. She’s
always tired.

He smiles unnaturally and says, “I can help.”
His voice, if nothing else, betrays him. He’s no man, he’s not
human, and his definition of words aren’t necessarily in line with
words’ actual definitions. When he says he can help, he means he
can ease the young mother’s burden by removing it. Then she could
sleep again, and maybe buy new clothes, maybe go back to school and
get a decent job and escape this rough neighborhood.

His intentions are transparent.

“
I don’t need your help,”
she says, and she tries to shut the door both politely and
firmly.

The crack allowed by the chain is not too
thin. He slips through it before she can close the door. He reaches
for the baby with one hand, her cheek with the other.

The young mother screams.

In a neighborhood like this, screams are not
uncommon, but there are many different types. In all the world, in
all of history, there have been but a dozen screams of such deep
desperation, such a magnitude of vibrant panic, they stopped a
thing that might be called a god. While this scream, this mother’s
cry of naked fear and defiance and fury, was near to that dozen in
its tenor, it failed to stop a thing that might be called a
god.

It was hungry
now
.

The scream echoed through the apartment
building, which was as good as empty. It leaked into the alley and
spilled onto the street corner. The bottle of beer in one of the
boy’s hands shattered.

They responded immediately. They followed the
source of the scream into an apartment where the front door
should’ve denied them access. Up to the third floor, to the door of
the young mother, ajar but still chained. The baby, in the arms of
a thing that looked like a man but might be called a god, wailed
like any baby forcibly separated from its mother.

She lay on the floor, unconscious perhaps, or
maybe dead, with a trickle of blood above her eye.

The boys knew the mother. The boys knew the
baby. The boys did not know the thing holding it. They broke
through the door easily. The fault was not in the chain but in the
rotted wood. They confronted the baby snatcher. They encircled it.
They were confident, because they were youthful and strong and had
numbers on their side.

They were foolish.

The first, the thing that might be a god
tossed out the window. Glass shattered, but the rusted fire escape
held.

The second, the thing that might be a god
threw against the living room wall, which had always been thin,
into the vacant adjacent apartment. There was nothing but floor and
freshly torn drywall to break his fall.

The third, the thing that might be a god
carried out the front door. It held the boy with one hand and used
him as a battering ram, smashing him first against the broken door
and then the wall in the hall. Then it dumped him down the stairs.
Several bones cracked along the way.