The Ammonite Violin & Others

by Kiernan, Caitlín R

  There was a warning, disclaimer sort of thing then, the following footage contains graphic images not suitable for anyone under the age of whatever, eighteen, twenty-one, I don’t know. The management assumes no responsibility. Etc. and etc. and so forth. The masturbating man made all excited, eager sort of noise, and I thought about getting up and moving to another seat near the back of the theater. Most of the seats were empty, after all. But I didn’t move. I kept my seat and sipped my warm beer and watched.

  The narrator kept referring to the thing onscreen as a “typical patient” but there wasn’t much left that could have passed for human. It was locked inside some sort of isolation chamber, glovebox, airlock quarantine sort of contraption with tall plexiglas sides. There was someone in a white biohazard suit standing behind the glovebox reading a computer monitor. The thing inside, cradled in what looked like orange gelatin, quivered and shifted about in the tank while the narrator’s voice-over talked about advances in treatment and serums and shit like that.

  So, I know what is coming.

  I know what she went down there to find, and what she found, and what is coming. More or less.

  “One significant hurdle facing doctors is the apparent willingness of many people to be infected, despite these horrific consequences,” the narrator said. Or they said something very similar. It was months ago, and I can’t remember precisely, and it doesn’t matter, anyway.

  And then the film moved on to a psychologist and an anthropologist and a priest, all of them talking about the social and ethical ramifications, the “problem” of euthanasia and life termination, cognitive and neurocognitive consequences, the Lamb of God and the Seven Seals, the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse, crap like that, blah, blah, fuckity blah, and I finished my beer and set the bottle down between my feet. Rut I didn’t leave. I’d paid to see it all—no, I’d paid for air conditioning, but I had paid my money, and now I was going to see it all.

  And I did. I saw it all. Everything they were willing to show. And whatever they weren’t, well, I’m sure I’ll be seeing very soon now.

  I wasn’t watching when she finally opened the aluminum canister. I was fading in and out, dozing in my uncomfortable chair by the window, the winter sunlight falling warm across my face, but I heard it clearly, and the noise immediately brought me back around. First, a distinct click and then the loud pop when she broke the inner hermetic seal, a sucking sound like someone taking a deep breath through pursed lips as she pulled the plug and the negative pressure inside the canister quickly equalized with the pressure in the bedroom.

  It’s loose in the room with us.

  And I have nothing whatsoever to fear, not for my own safety, my own morphological integrity (as the nervous man in the lab coat might have said). Because I have not been kissed. I did not follow her down and through those dim subterranean paths to receive the gift, to offer myself up to the devouring shadows. I want to get up and leave the room. Leave the apartment. Leave the building. Call one of the government hotlines when I’m miles and miles away from this place, and the guys in the baggy Tyvek coveralls and booties can deal with her, all those hazmat sons of bitches with their protocols and respirators and decontaminates.

  But I don’t leave, because I told her I’d be there if she needed anything.

  I swear that I will not watch, though. I sit at the window and stare out at the early afternoon sun shining down on the slate and tarpaper rooftops and snagging in the high, bare limbs of trees, sparking on the filthy green river where no visible evidence of the fallen dirigible remains—all the world out there that may or may not have been touched by shiny aluminum canisters of their own.

  “It’s what I want,” she says. “You have to understand that. Please—”

  And I tell her to shut the hell up, that I don’t want to hear that shit, and she does as I’ve asked.

  But there are other sounds, which I know better than to try to put into words. There are sounds, and describing them is more than anyone can fairly ask of a confessed coward. There are other sounds, that’s all. The noises they make, those busy, busy little fuckers, those industrious fiends, asleep in the gardens of Proserpine for however many hundreds of millions of years until someone breaks their stasis, someone wakes them up, and suddenly there’s not another second to spare.

  She gasps, and I know that it’s started.

  I cover my ears, because I think she’s about to scream. I cover my ears, and I wait.

  The sun through the windowpane is so warm, and I’m tired, not having slept the night before, and I drift away and dream of old subway tunnels winding this way and that, ending abruptly at the edge of a vast black lake somewhere far below the city. I stand on the shore, amid shattered railroad ties, gravel ballast, and buckled steel rails, and the air stinks of mold and creosote, and that water is as smooth and dark as volcanic glass. If I know that I’m dreaming, I do not know that I know. I’ve come here to find her, because I let her go alone, and I don’t want her to be alone down here, this place as close to all those mythical hells as anyone will ever come, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hating myself for not having followed.

  There’s a staccato plip, like a single pebble dropped into that still black water, and there are ripples moving slowly towards the shore.

  And I have never been even half this afraid.

  And I open my eyes.

  The sun is low, that last and latest bit of day before twilight sets in, so I must have been asleep for hours. My neck is stiff, and my back hurts from sleeping in the chair. The bedroom stinks like... I could not have said then what that smell was. Those smells, plural. But now I would say it was the commingled stench of mildew and rotting vegetation, something gone ripe way at the back of the fridge, but also a meaty, bloody, metallic sort of smell. And something else, too, something like ammonia or bleach that burns my eyes and stings my nostrils and throat.

  I gag and quickly cover my mouth, not wanting to vomit, become at last so fucking dainty here in the gaping jaws of madness—not like me at all—and that’s when I glance over my shoulder.

  I’m still so, so near the terrible dream of that place down there below, down where the subway tracks end, that endless Stygian sea stretching away into nothingness, and for a moment none of it seems like anything but some new convolution in the nightmare. For a moment, I have the distance and the objectivity to merely see what you’ve become.

  A moment for my mind to take one perfect snapshot.

  I know it’s you. Because I saw the film, remember? I know it’s you, because what else would it be, lying there on our bed? But it looks more like a chrysalis spun from gossamer strands of sugar or a hundred thousand crystalline filaments. The tall interlace of twisting needle spines, translucent and glittering in the fading day, that seem to strain for the low ceiling as if seeking some new anchorage. The spines sprout from that more substantial mass curled fetal on the bed and sunk partway into the sheets and mattress. It pulsates faintly, gently, because of course you still need air. Of course you’re still drawing breath. There’s an iridescent, peacock blue cleft where your vagina used to be, and it leaks a steady, viscous stream onto the ruined bedclothes. There are a few charcoal-colored swellings clustered along the hardening outer rim of that deft, and I know what those are, too. Ejected colonies of the parasite—of course, you would never have let me use that ugly word, parasite—microbial colonies that have died and so now are being expelled from the womb to make way for the living. How many countless generations were conceived while I slept in my chair and dreamed of that black lake? How many were born and nurtured deep within the hive of you, and how many billions must have done their determined, busy work and perished when their ti me was done?

  These are not sane thoughts. But I will never have sane thoughts again, so it hardly worries me.

  Your face is gone, obliterated by these relentless alterations, and I think that’s probably the only bit of mercy I’ve got coming to me. All of this, but at
least I do not have to look into your blue eyes and see whatever might have been there at the end, whatever pain or loss or regret, whatever confusion or terror. Worse yet, whatever ecstasy or relief. There are two short stumps where your arms once were, and a great bloodless gash between your shoulder blades. If any part of your brain, of your mind, has been spared, it must have been moved elsewhere, hidden perhaps in that dark pulsating mass below the spines. There’s a wet splitting sound then, and something scarlet, something like a tongue or proboscis or the grotesque parody of a penis, lolls from that bloodless gash and flops about a moment on the bed, pushing the pillows aside.

  And I’m on my knees then, as if I’d worship what they have made of you, as you must have worshipped in those secret underground temples, offering your furtive prayers and supplications to ancient bacterial gods for the grace of this change, praying to shed your unwanted and unyielding humanity. I am on my knees, breathing you in and breathing them in with you, wishing now that I’d been kissed, as well. For they will have nothing of me until after the sting. Until Athena sees what I have spun, my own conceited mockeries of Zeus and his indiscretions, his bedding of Europa and Leda and Danae, and then she will bless me as she has blessed you.

  And then I will receive my own silver canister.

  Then, maybe, I will at last forget the film and the masturbating man, your eyes and your kisses and what I now see lying on the bed we shared, writhing with new life in the last red-orange wash of day

  The Sphinx’s Kiss

  Long after midnight, but still a thousand years left until dawn, and I don’t know if I said that aloud or someone else did or if it’s something I only thought. The air is so close, so thick with the smoke of hookahs and braziers, cigarettes and cigars, marijuana and frankincense and white sage, and my eyes burn and water. Here I am lying flat on my back on the floor, gazing up into that fuming grey atmosphere, looking for air that is still fit to breathe. The antique carpet beneath me, I think it might only be a rusty blanket of autumn leaves scattered here for the dry amusement of old men who have seen too many Octobers come and go, weary dry old men looking backwards from their Decembers. But then the smoky clouds part above me, and the boy in the fox mask and cumbersome Marie Antoinette gown crouches next to me, and the carpet does not crackle beneath his bare feet the way that autumn leaves would crackle. So it must only be a carpet after all, some priceless, threadbare Anatolian or Persian artefact, stained with piss and countless shades of alcohol, puke and cum and no few drops of blood.

  The fox boy reaches between my legs and tugs playfully at my cock, and I realize I must have passed out after that last kitty flip and wonder how long I was down and if I’ve missed anything that matters. My head’s buzzing like there’s nothing left now inside my skull but wasps, only the X and Ketamine and gin and whatever else I’ve swallowed since sundown, but it feels more like red wasps and honey bees, a whole stinging hive crawling about right there behind my eyes. The fox boy bites his lip and smoke swirls about the long snout he wears because that’s what he drew from the hat. A slip of yellow paper with Vulpes written on it in the spider’s scrawl of one of the dry old men, and so he found his mask waiting among all those others yet unclaimed, there on the mahogany dining table. Sturdy painted latex and an elastic string, their stylish, grotesque guise to hide the upper half of his face, and so the night worked its casual lycanthropy upon that slender, red-headed boy, and here he is a fox. And here I am his mate for this long, long night, because my slip of yellow paper also had Vulpes written upon it, like most of the guests would know Latin or Greek or even care. But, conveniently, someone was standing there at the table to translate, to say what’s what, so no one gets confused and takes a tiger when he’s drawn Taxidea and is only entitled to a badger.

  The fox boy leans over and laughs and teases me with the tip end of his nimble tongue. His dress rustles the way the carpet did not, so maybe he’s the one who’s really only made of leaves. And his pretty lips are painted some shade that is neither red nor orange, so there’s another reason to suspect there’s less to him than silk and petticoats and that black vulpine nose. I tug roughly at his skirts, managing to sit upright despite my dizzy, buzzing head, and he stops licking me and says something about the show, that I haven’t missed the show, or that we’ll miss the show if we don’t hurry. I try hard to remember what he’s talking about—the show—and I want another drink. He helps me to my feet with strong arms, and here I stand in the smoke, naked except for my fox’s mask and his lipstick smeared on my dick. And I’m still blinking and squinting and rubbing at my eyes when one of the old men comes up to us in his raven’s mask and tuxedo of charcoal feathers, something even prettier than my fox boy hanging on his arm. Something pale in a sleek black mask, black whiskers that almost seem to twitch, and a silicone plug up his ass to hold that bushy black tail in place.

  It’s a fucking mink, the fox boy whispers loudly in my ear and giggles, and the dry old man’s rheumy eyes glare out past his beak. The mink pretends not to look offended, and makes a great show of playing with his tail.

  “I hope you two are enjoying the festivities,” says Old Man Raven. All the old men are birds—ravens and crows, owls and cranes and crested cockatoos. They know their parts and do not have to draw slips of yellow paper from the hat. Tonight, they will crown their King of Birds, and we are merely the lowly beasts of the court.

  “Exquisite,” the fox boy tells him, the fox boy who is not me. “Way better than last year, in my opinion.”

  “You think so?” asks Old Man Raven. “Way better? Very good, then. I was afraid that some certain something might be missing.”

  Their words spar and dance through the haze like the stinging insects in my head, all whirring wings and prickling legs and dripping, venomous barbs, and I see that the mink boy has stopped stroking his tail and is busy stroking his spectacularly long penis, instead. Two tails are better than one, I think, and maybe I laugh, too, because now the mink boy is making a face like something smells bad, and Old Man Raven is looking straight at me. His eyes are red, but I know that’s only my imagination and the drugs I’ve taken.

  “Your friend here,” he says to the fox boy. “It’s his first time, isn’t it? Keep an eye on him. We wouldn’t want him getting in over his head, would we?”

  And then they leave us standing there, Old Man Raven and his sneering mink vanishing abruptly into the smoke, and my fox boy says don’t you mind them, all the minks are shits, and none of the birds can get it up without fucking Viagra or Cialis or whatever the hell.

  “Don’t you sweat it, kitsune,” he says, but right about now I’m wishing I’d stayed home, ignored the stories you hear about secret societies and parties like this, offers of free drugs and freer sex, and stayed the fuck home.

  The fox boy leads me to a sofa, garish brocade upholstery the colour of cranberries, but I have to admit it’s more comfortable than the floor, and we sit together as the birds and their pets come and go, filing past with the sort of stiff grace and affected majesty that mere masks and dress up cannot remedy. A waiter comes with a silver serving tray of martinis, and I snag two of them. All the waiters are bulldogs. My fox boy says the waiters are always bulldogs, except for one year when they were mice and everyone was confused all night long. I sip at my martini, and my fox boy steals my olive and puts it into his own glass.

  “Not much longer until the show,” he says, lapping at his drink. And now, if I squint, I can make out a sort of low stage or canopied dais that’s been set up against one wall of the loft, dominated by an elaborate golden throne. There are animal pelts draped across the arms and seat of the throne and great bunches of white flowers set out all around the stage.

  “What the fuck?” I ask the fox boy. “Is that where the King of Birds gets his fucking crown?”

  “No, it is not,” he says and scowls at me, and I almost feel sorry for him, getting saddled with such a clueless git. “The King has no throne except the sky, and he has no cr
own at all.”

  “So, what’s that)”

  “The show? he says, his orange-red mouth making a perfect 0 of the word. “You’ll see, kitsune. Be patient.”

  “Suck my cock,” I reply, and he takes me literally and gets down on his knees in that absurd dress and takes me in his mouth, so that’s taking me twice over. I shut my eyes, not wanting to be here, not wanting to see anymore—the dry old men and their frivolous playthings, the playthings who think this is fucking Paradise on Earth. I want to be home in my cruddy little apartment with my fox boy, only he wouldn’t be a fox, and he wouldn’t be attired for the court of Louis le Dernier, either. After the sex, we could watch an old movie and have microwave popcorn and maybe go out somewhere for coffee. Or we could just curl up and sleep. Either way would be fine with me.

  His tongue flicks quickly, expertly, back and forth across the underside of my dick, and he holds me gently with his teeth.

  And behind my closed eyes, we’re lying in the fold-away bed. The window’s open despite the cold and the snow, and the curtains flutter and flap in the icy wind. My fox boy is asleep beside me, and I’m trying to remember his name. I hear sirens and smell the smoke a moment or two later. Not my building, though, somewhere else in flames, somewhere else burning down to the ground and roasting a hundred people alive. And I’m about to go back to sleep, when I see something at the window, hungry eyes flashing iridescent in the dark, and then the mink slips silently over the windowsill, smooth as satin, and it’s there in the room with us. I can hear its claws clicking on the hardwood, and there’s a huge raven watching from the sill. The raven knows what’s coming, just like it knows about the fire, just like it knows my fox boy’s secret name.