Exposed for archaeologists, geologists, and scientists...
The forest has been exposed by a flood of sea-sickness;
Now shows black, short, finger like branches.
Each stump is a sour reminder of loss
Each stump is a relic the Irish Sea has left
Each stump is a tree’s ashen-black corpse.
A Golden Age that was swallowed whole
By the swelled, and ravenous, tides of climate changes.
They ate woods, a city, and hundreds of forgotten lives.
*Author’s Note: After reading ‘Prehistoric forest arises in Cardigan Bay after storms strip away sand’ by Maev Kennedy published in The Guardian, 21st February 2014.
NICKOLAUS PASSIONATE AND THE CHILDREN OF ERESHKIGAL
John Goodrich
Nickolaus Passionate loved having Isaac’s cock in his mouth.
Not so much the physical sensations of heat, firm flesh, and motion, but the effect it had on Isaac.
Nickolaus’s head hung over the edge of the bed, and Isaac thrust into his mouth with a cock that stretched his jaws. The feel of hot flesh in his mouth... he’d never imagined it would make his soul so complete. He loved the scent of Isaac’s sweat, masculine and musky. He even loved the gentle brush of his feather-light pubes.
Isaac was so unique. Everything about him was delicious, addictive. Two months ago, Nickolaus couldn’t have imagined spending so much time with a man. Now, he couldn’t imagine being without Isaac. He’d had a life before falling in love, but that was a distant, dimly-remembered past, like a black and white film.
Isaac grunted and his hips bucked. He was getting close. Nickolaus opened his mouth a little wider. Isaac was in a frenzy, moving his hips as fast as he could, all thought forgotten, focused entirely on pleasure. Nick swirled his tongue over the rapidly-moving head as best he could. Isaac’s back arched, his wings slammed out to their full eighteen foot span, quivering at the moment of complete release. Hot semen gushed down Nickolaus’s throat, the liquid essence of his lover’s ecstasy, tasting of pomegranate.
Sated for the moment, Isaac stumbled into the broken-down upholstered chair, his erection flagging. “I can’t believe you,” he said, throwing his head back in exhaustion. “I can’t believe us.”
Nick looked around at their dingy squat. No electricity, but there was running water in the basement. They had few belongings because Isaac’s wings smashed things when he was in the throes of orgasm. Which was as often as Nickolaus could manage. But they didn’t need much. They had each
other.
“You are a miracle,” Isaac said.
“I love you,” Nick said.
Their kiss was tender, undemanding, each taking solace and comfort in the presence of the other. “Is there anyone else like you?” Nickolaus asked.
“So we can have a threesome?”
Nick chuckled.
“There are others,” Isaac said. “I’m not a genetic freak.”
“I never thought so. Your wings are too perfect to be a mutation.”
Isaac’s smile was rueful. “Sorry, I get defensive. I, we, have been hunted down, persecuted, for thousands of years.”
“I has no idea,” Nick murmured. One hand went to his lover’s softened cock. Isaac wasn’t ready to go again. Not yet.
“In Babylon we were the Lamassu, the wise guardian spirit. We were revered, sometimes even worshiped. But there is a meanness, a resentment from people who are small.” Isaac sighed. “If we weren’t messengers of the gods, we had to be demons. For two thousand years, we have been hunted, persecuted, murdered. Lamassu became the Lamia, and we were called seducers, demons, even eaters of children. We, who had been seen as the voice of gods, who taught the ground-dwellers agriculture, kindness, and love, have learned to call the last two and a half thousand years the Burning Times.”
“How awful,” Nickolaus said. “People can be terrible when they are jealous. Envy so often turns to hate.” Especially, he thought, if Isaac’s surprising size were inherited. “Then you have had contact with your people. I’d love to meet them.”
Isaac stood and turned his magnificently winged back to Nick. “We call ourselves the children of Ereshkigal and Gugalanna, the Great Bull of Heaven. And we no longer welcome the outsider. I can never introduce you to my people, Nick. They will not accept you–won’t even meet you.”
“That’s ridiculous. How can they?”
“My parents are dead, murdered by fanatics. The persecution has never stopped.”
“I didn’t realize. I’m so sorry.”
Isaac half-turned back to Nick, so he was in profile. “I love you. Nothing is as important to me as you are. But your people have killed mine for thousands of years. You can’t expect them to trust one of you now.”
“You know I’m not a threat. I love you. I could never hurt you. I would be honored to meet your family. More than honored.”
“They are frightened. They’ve been betrayed many times,” Isaac said. “There’s even a chance I will never see them again because of us.”
“There has to be some way. There has to be something we could do.”
Isaac looked at him, spread his hands. “I can’t think of anything. A lot of us have been isolated for so long, some of us have forgotten how to trust.”
They left it at that. But the advantage to living in a squat was that Nick had plenty of time to think. Two days later, he had an idea.
“I could write about it, about you, in sort of a roundabout way. About our love, and a little bit about your people. Think of it as me declaring my love for you, almost publicly, without having to say your name.”
Isaac looked at him with surprise on his face.
“You write?”
“I used to. I was terrible at it. Had to set up my own self-publishing company and trick novice writers into submitting. Now...” He considered Isaac. “Now I have something to write about. Something from the heart.”
“From the crotch, you mean.”
“If one way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, the same can be said about his dick.”
“As a million failed marriages demonstrate.”
“Sure, but even the shortest marriage carries an emotional connection. It might not last the rest of someone’s life, but it’s there.”
“Words only,” Isaac said. “No pictures of me. And definitely no video.”
The idea stopped Nickolaus cold. He imagined how glorious it would be to film Isaac, how unique. For someone else to watch that moment of beautiful orgasm when his wings batted the air in uncontrolled ecstasy. Was it selfish to want to keep that to himself?
“No. No porn.” But Nick filed that idea away.
The only problem was, they had nothing. The furniture had been left by the last tenants. They had no lights, no typewriter, not even any paper. Isaac couldn’t go out without fear, leaving everything up to Nick.
In the end, he scooped up a tablet at an outdoor café. He felt bad, but he had no other way to get his work done. They lucked out with two bars of an unsecured Wi-Fi network not too far away. Nick could write, and he’d be able to submit.
With this one tool. Nickolaus went to work. He set up on a rickety desk, and tapped away at the tablet’s screen. His former writing efforts, horror and ghost stories, seemed trivial now. He had something to say, something the world needed to know. Except for Isaac, he had few distractions.
In two days, he had finished his first erotic piece. He sent it off immediately, to the market with the best pay rate he could find. Paranormal Romance, he discovered, was something of a hot market. He felt good tapping the ‘submit’ button.
Rejection was swift. No polite feedback, just a note saying the magazine had filled their quota of stories, and Nick’s would not be included.
Enraged, he almost smashed the tablet on the concrete floor. Isaac saw what he was doing, and stopped him before it was too late.
“You can’t give up after just one try.”
/> “They’re obviously fucking retards who wouldn’t know a good story if it waltzed into their offices, stripped naked, and fucked their mothers senseless on their own damn desks.”
Isaac sighed. “Let me know the next time you get a rejection.”
“There won’t be a next time. I’m through. The system is obviously a circle jerk.”
“Hey,” Isaac’s voice was soft. Nick tried to resist, but he was pulled into Isaac’s warm, comforting arms. “You tried and you didn’t get in. Are you going to give up? Let one defeat knock you out of the game?”
Nickolaus glared at Isaac, but only for a moment. He couldn’t be angry. He had a purpose. The rage was draining out of him already. If one shitty magazine, admittedly with a lot of money to sling around, didn’t want his story, he’d just have to find someone else to buy it.
“Fine,” he said. “I won’t give up.”
“I tell you what.” Isaac stroked Nick’s cheek. “You sit and start writing again, and I’ll encourage you.”
Somehow, Isaac managed to get himself and his wings under the desk, and nestled his head against Nick’s knees. Isaac seemed content. Nickolaus pecked away at the tablet. But he couldn’t get the rejection out of his head. Damn it, it had been a good story. Isaac had liked it. People just didn’t appreciate confrontational writing. He hammered a fist into the desk. He couldn’t concentrate.
Isaac’s hand wandered across the front of his jeans, then found the zipper. He lifted his hips, and Isaac took off his pants. Nickolaus felt silly sitting without pants. This was the way to watch porn, not write.
“I can’t write while you’re...” He stopped when he felt Isaac’s hot breath on his erect cock.
“Ah,” he said as Isaac nuzzled his way up and then down, stopping to nibble delicately on the bottom of the shaft, working his way slowly up to the sensitive head.
Nick gripped the rickety arms of his chair, nearly breaking them when Isaac engulfed him. The heat from Isaac’s mouth was shocking. Isaac’s tongue swirled.
“You having fun down there?” he managed to ask.
Isaac said something unintelligible, his mouth full. His hot mouth traveled up down Nick’s cock, slowly picking up speed. Nick relaxed, as much as he could. He knew how this dance ended. He gasped when a slick finger entered his anus. The digit pressed deep into him, then found his prostate, and Nick was coming like an oil rig blowing crude. Isaac slurped and swallowed, somehow sending Nick to new heights, pouring out semen like a human fire hydrant.
“I think my ears are still ringing,” he said when he could articulate again. His orgasm had been so intense that his erection was still tall and proud.
“You’ll get one of those every time you get a rejection.” Isaac sounded so smug. Nick realized he had truly achieved the best of all possible worlds.
Encouraged, he began to churn out stories. At first, all he got back were rejections, but each one gave him another ear-ringing greased lightning orgasm, so they weren’t that bad after all. He was a little disappointed when he made his first sale, the third submission of his seventh story. Isaac made it up to him in other ways.
After that, the dam burst. Nick was producing better quality stories, and faster, and they were selling. Not for much. Three cents a word on a four thousand word story was only a hundred and twenty dollars. But Nickolaus made a rule, that he would never sell a story for a lower rate than he’d sold the previous story. He would not go backwards.
He could push out thousands of words in a day, writing and revising short stories in less than a week. Response times were slow. Nick didn’t care. He’d flood the market with stories of love. After a year, they couldn’t afford anything but the squat. Even when Nickolaus started getting three and four hundred dollars a story, the checks were slow to arrive, inconsistent enough to make paying a rent impossible. Still, they no longer had to steal food.
Close to a year and a half, and innumerable blow jobs after he started writing, Nickolaus woke to see a winged figure standing over him.
“You are Nickolaus Passionate, the writer?”
Nickolaus barely heard the words, he was so awed by the woman’s breathtaking beauty. Dusky but perfect skin, piercing brown eyes shaped like almonds. Her flips were full, made for whispering intimate an forbidden secrets.
Where was Isaac? They’d been in bed together, but all Nick could feel was the cold bed beside him. The woman held up a book. Curious Love, Volume 6, with two men with incredibly chiseled abs on the cover. With his feature, “Leather and Feathers.” It had been the first anthology with his name on the cover.
“Yeah. That’s me.” The writer. The writer who lay on a beaten mattress, on a crumbling concrete floor. In an otherwise-unoccupied apartment building, paying no rent.
“We have been looking for you.”
“Thanks. I think.” He couldn’t think straight when he looked at her. “Who is we?”
“The children of Ereshkigal and the mighty bull of heaven, Gugalanna.”
“What?”
“Come with me.” She caught him in an iron grip.
“Where...” but she dragged him along. He looked for Isaac, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Who are you?” She had to be of Isaac’s people. Were they angry with him? Had he revealed too much?
“Anatu,” she said.
“Where are you taking me?” A stupid question. They were already on the stairs, going up. “What have you done with Isaac?” Nickolaus had the sudden dread that she would take him to the top of the building and drop him off. He tried to shrug Anatu off, but she held on.
She opened the roof door to a quiet night, and five winged figures. Four strangers and Isaac.
“Is this him?” one asked. Like Anatu and Isaac, she was beautiful. Strong, dusky skinned, her pinions a lustrous black.
Isaac nodded, and the clutch of winged strangers clustered around Nick.
“You have shown us love, child of the Earth,” Anatu looked at him with a sly expression. “And the world has accepted it. We come from the court of the last Mardukian King in order to bring you to him. We have not brought one of your sort to our court in many centuries.”
Isaac gathered Nick to his chest. Nick could feel the heat of his body, the thump of his heart.
“It will all be fine,” Isaac whispered. He took five, six running steps and threw himself off the roof. His great, beautiful wings caught the air, and then they were soaring into the night.
RED OCHRE
Mary Pletsch
The stories here are very old, painted in a substance modern science has yet to identify, on the great granite rock that rises out of Mazinaabik Lake. Pictographs hide on the surface of the stone, playing peek-a-boo from behind ledges and amongst tufts of hardy grasses and under shadowy overhangs. To my uncle, they’re the voices of our ancestors flung forward in time. To me, they’re cryptic graffiti.
I remember being twelve years old and discovering manga. I’d had to go online to research the idiom—a teardrop on the face suggests embarrassment, a nosebleed means a perverted reaction—so different from the superhero comics I’d grown up with. There was no key on the internet to teach me what the pictograph artists had implied, and if I tried to ask my uncle, I’d get some trippy cocktail of history, mythology and New Age nonsense, so thoroughly mixed together that I’ve never been able to sort out the truth of my own ancestry from Uncle James’ wishful thinking. Is it so wrong that I prefer to spend my time on things I can prove; things I can touch?
Things like the rock. I’m studying geology in university and Mazinaabik Rock is massive, over a kilometre long. The cliff rising above our canoe stretches at least a hundred metres high, and when I crane my head back, there is brilliant June-midafternoon sky behind me but only stone marbled with quartz and topped with gnarled cedars before me. Mazinaabik’s presence presses down on me, and I am cool in its shade. The guidebook says that the rock extends even farther underwater, down into the deepest of lakes. For a moment I can a
lmost understand why my ancestors believed that stones have spirits.
Just ahead, partially obscured behind a dwarf tree, another pictograph teases me with a half-seen glimpse of red ochre. Another story drawn by a nameless person whose bones have been dust for centuries.
I beckon to Perry in the stern; he stabs his paddle into the lake and sends us lurching forward. He’s not as good with the canoe as he thinks he is. I’m guessing the “experience” he told me about on the drive up here dates back to Boy Scouts.
I get a quick glance at the image: a man with long ears like a rabbit, and a great beast at his side. Underneath the two figures, a long horizontal line links a series of vertical columns. I have no idea what concept this image is intended to convey. Age has blurred the russet paint, but the beast’s curved fangs and spiked tail are still visible as it towers over the man.
Then I glide past the pictograph and watch the prow of the canoe hurtle at an angle towards Mazinaabik Rock. I thrust my paddle downward in an attempt to slow our forward momentum, but I’m only partially successful. The prow still impacts the rock with a shudder that I can feel in my teeth.
“Sweet,” Perry says behind me. His attention’s on the pictograph, his little bumper-boat manoeuvre already forgotten.
I lean forward to make sure we haven’t actually damaged the canoe; it belongs to my uncle, and I wish Perry would be more careful. I can’t tell if he’s scraped the paint, but at least the canoe’s still watertight. I look back over my shoulder just in time to see Perry running his hand over the image of the rabbit man: pale skin and red ochre in the summer sun.
“Hey,” I call back to him.
He looks up at me, but he doesn’t lift his fingers.
“You’re not supposed to touch.”
Perry snorts. “Get real. If these pictures were really so fragile, they’d be in a museum behind glass.”
Fossil Lake II: The Refossiling Page 23
