City Fishing

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  The king in exile weeps and pulls his hair, soiling the coronation robe he now wears to lounge in. How could he lose control this way?

  The queen in exile sweeps into the room with a flourish, singing the national anthem of their country while dusting the furniture.

  How, how could I lose control? he wails hysterically. Why should my people betray me so?

  The queen in exile brushes the donut crumbs from his beard and announces that she is moving in with the royal gardener, currently quartered in the apartment above their own. You depress me, she says. I no longer wish to sleep with you.

  The king in exile switches on the expensive color television sitting out on his balcony. They’re doing a documentary on my expulsion, he observes.

  His people, his ungrateful citizens stare out from the screen, their clenched fists waving, their faces strained from shouting curses at the king in exile. How, how could you lose control?

  The king in exile cries and shuts off the television. But his people still stare out at him from the screen.

  How, how could I lose control? he wails, as the first tiny stones strike his chest and shoulders.

  Jack’s wife did not share her husband’s concerns over their children’s reading and viewing habits. “They seem fine to me,” was her usual response. But because she hated it when Jack brought up anything that might be construed as a problem, he had long ago ceased taking her opinions very seriously. Jack always had to handle the children’s nightmares; Mary was quite practiced at feigning sleep. After a few years their marriage began to show the strain.

  Jack didn’t know how to tell Mary about the strain. The strain became a tale he would not tell, because he didn’t know if it would help or harm their marriage.

  “You always think you know the answers,” Mary said to him once in a moment of uncharacteristic frankness. But Jack didn’t think he had any answers at all.

  LOST CHILD

  By

  Jack Johannsen

  A child is lost and discovered twenty-three years later as a lawyer in a large downtown office building. You pass her each day on the way in to work but she does not look at you.

  A child is lost and discovered fifteen years later as a man selling newspapers on your corner. He short changes you every other purchase and pretends it was a mistake.

  A child is lost and discovered thirty years later as a nurse giving you your last shot. Breathe deeply and it will lessen the pain, he lies.

  A child is lost and discovered fifty years later dying in the next bed in your hospital room. His last, harsh breaths seem like another language that you’ve no idea how to translate.

  The children wonder where they’ve been all these years, but you can’t help them. You have no answers. I’m only ten years old myself, you say.

  You walk down the street of your old neighborhood until you meet an old woman in clown’s makeup. She smiles and says she’ll tell you a little fairy tale about lost children, and how they’ve always wasted their lives.

  Come closer, she says. My fairy tales cannot harm you.

  She smiles and you’re astonished at her smile, how endless it seems. Before you fall into her gaping mouth you know you should never have come here.

  Sometimes it seemed to Jack that his awareness of his children was molded solely by the demands they made of him, and by the responsibilities he felt he had because of them. And, of course, by the fears. It was possible, he knew, to live all your life with a child and yet not really know that child, to have only the vaguest sense of that child’s presence. That had been true of his own father. His own father had visited the home every night after work, plopping down on the huge living room sofa to read the paper and nap. His father usually took his meals on the coffee table, Jack’s mother delivering the food to him on a big shiny metal tray. He watched television or listened to music while he ate, while Jack and his brother shared a quiet meal with their mother in the next room. Every morning his father was gone before the rest of the family awakened, and on weekends it was more of the same, his father merely substituting fishing and hunting trips for his job. Jack couldn’t remember ever seeing his father in pajamas, or sleeping in his bed, or in fact going in and out of the bedroom at all. Those things must have occurred after Jack had gone to bed, or before he woke up in the morning.

  THE KING AND HIS SONS

  By

  Jack Johannsen

  A king eats a first son but does not recognize the taste.

  A king eats a second son but does not recognize the taste.

  A king eats a third son but does not recognize the taste.

  A queen wails and pulls her hair at a king’s stupidity, a king’s shortsightedness, a king’s indifference to the taste of his sons. And yet a king eats a fourth son and does not recognize the taste.

  A king eats a fifth son and still, still the indifferent king does not recognize the taste, nor has he missed any of the five sons.

  A queen is desperate for the life of her sixth and final son.

  A queen bribes a royal cook to substitute a dish she has prepared to set before a king. A queen cuts off a king’s foot during his sleep. A king does not sense the loss of a foot, nor does he recognize a king’s foot when it is set before him at breakfast the next morning.

  A king eats himself and does not recognize the taste.

  A king shouts merrily, enjoying his wonderful meals. He gaily calls his sons to join him as he begins his feast on the sixth son.

  A king tries to remember if he has had this dish before, but the food seems quite unfamiliar. And yet, he concludes, it is exquisite.

  Years later, Jack would wonder how his mother could have stayed with such a man.

  “It’s a wife’s duty, to stay with her husband,” she’d once told him after he was grown. “The Bible tells us that the man has the final decision in things—it’s his responsibility. I thank God every day that he made me a woman and spared me such a terrible responsibility. It’s your father’s job to take the blame for anything that goes wrong around here.”

  Looking back at them now, his parents’ life together seemed like a badly written fairy tale. Even the most naive of children would never believe such a story.

  One day his parents the giants sat down to dinner. Jack, the only normal child among this family of giants, sat in a high chair off to the side, away from their huge clumsy hands and elbows.

  Suddenly the giants began to argue. Their huge mouths yawned open and bellowed like two screaming whales. Their huge mouths approached each other across the table. The huge mouth of the father giant began to chew on the enormous fingers, the lips, the nose of the mother giant. Great gobs of flesh dropped to the table and writhed. Jack tried to get away from the table, but before he could move he was covered by strips of skin broad as sails, chunks of muscle and tissue large as pig carcasses. The meat piled up over him, the stench of blood making him nauseous, and yet still they argued. Jack could no longer see them, but he imagined how they must appear: two great skeletons, teeth clacking within inches of each other’s gleaming white skulls.

  CINDERELLA

  By

  Jack Johannsen

  A rich man pays two sisters to make life difficult for their younger stepsister.

  Two sisters degrade a younger stepsister with dirt, ashes, and the contents of a chamber pot. A younger stepsister works on without complaint, much to the pleasure of a rich man.

  Two sisters beat a younger stepsister about the head and shoulders and she accepts these offerings contentedly. A rich man receiving these reports from the two sisters is greatly encouraged.

  Two sisters burn a younger stepsister with cigarette butts, put ground glass in her food, hold her head under water, and lash her bare feet with tree branches until they are swollen and bleeding—and still a younger stepsister does not object. And a rich man is overjoyed at her behavior.

  A rich man has a small iron shoe lined with spikes constructed for a younger stepsister’s final test. He visi
ts the girl and with a dazzling grin presents the shoe.

  A younger stepsister accepts the shoe with a timid smile, and does not scream, does not moan, does not even wince when she shoves her ruined foot into the iron shoe, piercing her foot in several places, filling the shoe with blood.

  A rich man now asks a younger stepsister to marry him and share his pleasant life forever. And a younger stepsister demurely agrees.

  One summer when Jack was eleven or twelve he found that suddenly he did not believe in the everyday reality being presented to him. Like an illness, it lasted only the two months of summer vacation, but during that time Jack sincerely believed he had been suddenly transported into another world, and that he was viewing the everyday world of other people through altered eyes. When he looked at himself in the mirror he discovered something vaguely unsettling about his face: his eyes seemed too far apart to be natural, and his skin appeared loosely attached to the underlying muscle and bone, as if at any moment it might alter, or come away completely to reveal a new face, one no one in the world had ever seen before.

  He would never experience this sensation again, but its effect on him was a long-lasting one. Often he would look back on that summer and wonder how his life might have been altered, if only his illness had continued.

  HIS EVOLUTION

  By

  Jack Johannsen

  All satin his skin is, but garbled his voice. In the dark night he glows whitely, his eyes flickering.

  What is it? she asks, as he stares at the ceiling when he should be asleep. What is it? she whispers, but he never replies.

  Then one day he vanishes from her bed—only his sweet sweat remains.

  At night she sleeps deeply, aware of his rhythm in her brain. In her dreams he looks healthier; his eyes and hair shine.

  In her dreams he rides horses. His face is transparent. His lips are pale. He has no need for speech.

  Alice still showed no signs of growing out of her doll-like qualities. Although Jack adored that about her—it was like having a precious, living work of art in his house—it worried him as well. He knew that little dolls fared poorly in the outside world. The dark figures lurking in the forest outside craved what little girls like his Alice possessed—unselfconscious beauty and innocence—qualities lost from the dark forest so long ago they had attained a kind of mythic status.

  Jack continued to read to Alice at night, tucking her in, occasionally lying down with her to snuggle. But he no longer gave his little girl baths. Mary said it was still okay, said that she was still young enough—modesty had not yet become an issue for her. But Jack insisted upon modesty and propriety.

  LITTLE RED

  By

  Jack Johannsen

  A mother and a grandmother live on opposite sides of a dark, wide forest. The girl Little Red, their most precious possession, travels from a mother’s to a grandmother’s house daily with a picnic basket.

  A father is never spoken of: gone, deserted long ago, whatever. A mother and a grandmother will not allow Little Red even to ask.

  Little Red stops in the wood and falls asleep. She dreams a dream of a wolf creeping through the dark, calling her name. For years she dreams a dream of a wolf crawling through her head.

  Little Red awakens and hurries to a grandmother’s house, panic-stricken because she is so late. She hears noises in the dark wood and hurries as fast as she can.

  Little Red walks through the open door of a grandmother’s house. She sees a grandmother in bed within the shadows at the back of the room.

  Who’s there? A grandmother calls out in a voice gone cracked and masculine with age. Come closer so I can see you.

  It’s your granddaughter, she replies stepping up to the bed.

  Put the basket down and lie with me, I’m so ill. A grandmother whines.

  Little Red takes off her clothes and lies down on the bed beside a grandmother. She’s surprised at how large a grandmother can be.

  What big arms, what big legs, ears, and eyes, she says to herself, so loud the thoughts numb her. But Little Red cannot say any of these things to a grandmother. A grandmother would not approve.

  But then a father climbs out of the bed and brings a tray from the kitchen. He asks her to eat a grandmother’s severed hand, and drink a glass of her blood.

  Little Red stares at a father, his hairy body, his large ears, and wonders if she too might someday have such enormous teeth.

  Every day he read in the paper about tragedies. Every evening the 6 o’clock news provided storybook illustrations for these countless disasters. Somebody was writing the stories all wrong, somebody was forgetting about hope and reassurances. Children needed hope and reassurance.

  Every day, someone else died in the story. They’d run out of characters if they didn’t watch out. Somebody had to do something. Jack felt crazed by all the things he could not, or would not, do.

  Only in his dreams did he fly. Only in his notebooks did he chop off the head of the monster.

  THE PROPER DEGREE OF ANGER

  By

  Jack Johannsen

  A man is so angry his bones glow in the dark.

  His friend says he should let his anger go, or some unusual things may happen.

  A man is so angry cats suddenly begin using women’s legs as scratching posts.

  His friend says that’s too much, no, he didn’t mean for a man to show his anger that way at all.

  A man is so angry his head sinks down into his shoulders until only his large sad eyes are showing.

  His friend says now he’s gone too far back the other way. Terrible things may happen.

  A man is so angry trees loosen their roots and rise into the sky.

  His friend wonders where the small birds will stay now. No, this won’t do at all.

  A man is so angry his feet turn backwards and his toenails begin to claw the ground.

  His friend says a man could cripple himself that way. Disastrous things may happen.

  A man walks down the street and buildings explode, water mains burst, people fall to the sidewalk bleeding internally.

  His friend tries to tell him that tragic things may happen, that this isn’t the proper degree of anger at all, but the friend’s mouth has filled with blood.

  Jack came to realize that being a father was a truly terrifying thing, the kind of punishment a wicked king or a demonic judge might impose. It had become simply too difficult to understand what was going on inside his children’s heads—any children’s heads, for that matter. He had thought for a very long time that his remarkably clear memories of his own childhood would be more than sufficient to guide him. But that turned out not to be the case, because he soon discovered that he did not understand his own childhood as well as he’d once thought. As an adult, he could not fully comprehend the reality he’d lived as a child. From his older perspective, his child life seemed like something from another dimension, a fairy tale world, or the reality experienced by a mad man.

  These perceptions had begun to affect his work, the children’s books and stories he wrote for commercial publication. Although the editors still continued to buy them, and the reactions of the parents who bought his books were generally quite positive, now and then a critic or a copy editor or just some young reader would question the tone in a particular passage, or the meaning of some odd image which seemed to have been simply thrown in. Some new dark color, or harsh sound, had entered the fabric of his work. “What did you mean by that?” they’d ask. And Jack didn’t know.

  He’d read recently that some day men might be able to physically bear children. The prospect terrified him.

  THE ONES WITH WINGS

  By

  Jack Johannsen

  This scientist, he attaches wings to their backs. Those others, the more practical genetic engineers, they take them away.

  He gives them great horns above their ears, to make music with.

  Those others hone them down, make coverings to protect delicate inner-ea
r mechanisms.

  He gives them great balloons under their arms, that they might converse upright while floating in cool mountain pools.

  Those others push them inward, for concentrated lung power.

  He wonders what he might next give his children that those others will but shortly breed away. At least I have my way a generation or two, he thinks, trying not to be bitter.

  An old, retired scientist, he gathers the last remnants of his children around him, the ones still with wings, horns, and balloons. But his eyes have gone bad; the spectacles those others have given him, those others without wings, are no help.

  Think, think, what you might have been, he tells them from his death bed, like in my dreams, if not for those others, the ones without wings. Your real mother is me, your father, he tells them.

  And the three-legged unicorns, the blind mermaids, the griffins with curvature of the spine, the beautiful fetal monsters bob and gaze, but have little to add.

  Playing in Jack’s study one day, his daughter Alice found the notebook. Afterwards he would forever wonder if there was some meaning in the fact that he had hidden it so poorly, so poorly that a four-year-old might find it. When he’d found her sitting in her bedroom with the notebook spread open on her tiny lap, the spread of it making her look like some infant amputee, he’d been enraged, had felt the anger turning his face into something unrecognizable. He could see his transformation reflected in his little girl’s face. But there had been no fear there: her eyes gleamed, her mouth hung open as if in wonder.

  THE DREAM TRANSPLANT

  By

  Jack Johannsen

  The surgeon paces the cathedral of the operating room, afraid that at any moment the FDA storm troopers will arrive, brandishing their warrants and affidavits.

  The donor is late, and image by image his patient’s skull is emptying its dreams. They rise like souls or smoke to the ceiling: grasshoppers scraping at the paint, tiny dead bodies rolling in mud, miniature army helicopters full of bright flowers.