What Others Are Saying About Women and Other Monsters
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Women and Other Monsters
Bernard Schaffer
Published by Apiary Society Publications
Copyright 2011 Bernard Schaffer
Discover these exciting new collections by Bernard Schaffer at Amazon.com such as:
Superbia Collected Edition (feat. the first two best-sellers and much more)
Guns of Seneca 6
Chambered Rounds: The Collected Non-Fiction of Bernard Schaffer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. No reference to any real person, living or dead, should be inferred.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. The Reluctant Death
2. Codename: Omega
3. Room Service
4. Cold Comforts
5. Nazareth
6. Digestif
Acknowledgements
About the Author
The Reluctant Death
I am a boatman, like all the other men in my family. From the time I was a little boy, my father took me out on the Zaire and taught me her mysteries. I have spent my entire life navigating these waters, but never once have I gone into the forbidden lands.
A whiteman walked up and down the docks inspecting boats and the men standing by them. He carried what looked like a large bundle of black rags, but as he approached, I saw these rags move. There was a woman in his arms covered in long black robes, a hood over her face like the Muslims make their women wear, and I only saw her eyes. She looked at me and pointed her gloved hand, “That one.” Her voice was a rasp, like someone scoured the inside of her throat with rough stone.
The whiteman told me where to take her and I said, “No.”
The woman reached inside the folds of her robe and tossed a bag at me. Gold coins spilled onto the floor of my boat. He did not wait for me to say yes. He set the woman down in the rear of my boat, and stepped onto the dock to leave. “Where are you going?” I said.
He looked at me and smiled, then ran down the dock. I had my oar in my hands and said to this woman, “Why do you want to go to a cursed place?”
“I pay, you row,” she said. “And you do not ask questions.”
Hours later, the canopy of trees above grows so thick that it is darker than midnight. The river is black like ink. Something collides against the boat under the water and rocks us side to side. The oar jerks, nearly coming out of my hand and when I pull it back I see teeth marks.
“We must land before dark,” my passenger says. “For your sake.”
“We will land well before dark.” I point down at the white flowers that float past us on the black river like stars in the night sky. “These mean we are close. When the Christians came, I showed them these flowers. ‘This flower does not grow here. It cannot,’ they said. This bothers them worse than anything else, I think. Still, I tell them, do not pluck one from the water. It is certain death.”
There is movement in the water behind me that sends me spinning with my oar held high, ready to crack it over the head of any animal attempting to invade my boat. Instead I see my passenger holding one of the forbidden flowers. Her sleeve drips as she twirls it between her fingertips.
“I told you it was certain death,” I say. “Why did you do that?”
She sniffs the flower and tosses it over her shoulder back into the water.
***
Francis Jennings travelled the never-ending rows of tobacco plants, keeping his face lifted above the leaves as swarms of bugs hovered around their flowers. He swatted the air while Mr. Rutherford bent to one of flowers to smell it and waved for Francis to come closer.
The fragrance was strangely sweet and Francis nodded to the older man. Mr. Rutherford continued walking and said, “These fields were once worked by John Rolfe and helped turn our people from mud farmers into England’s first permanent colony. I won’t hand them over to just anyone, you see. Clarissa’s reluctance to tolerate suitors has never concerned me greatly before.”
“Of course, sir.”
“But I am growing older,” Rutherford said. “And I believe the time has arrived for her to become serious about her future.”
“I could not agree more, sir.”
“What did you say your family does again?”
“We are importers from the Orient,” Francis said. “I spent several years in Canton as a child. I am quite fluent in their languages, sir.”
Rutherford eyed him suspiciously. “I have had dealings with Orientals. Surely there has never been a more godless, filthy people.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is this your first meeting with Clarissa?”
“No,” Francis said, seeing black faces peering out at him from between the plants in the field. Their shirtless, sweaty torsos were thin but finely muscled, and when they turned their backs, he saw most of them bore heavy scars. Curved blades flashed high over their heads in the sunlight as they chopped plants and threw the leaves into baskets. All of the men and most of the women and children chewed the leaves as they worked, spitting mouthfuls of sticky black juice into the dirt until rivers of it ran along the plow lines.
One of the overseers yelled at the slaves to keep moving. Francis met the large, burly Irishman named Paul upon his arrival, and they were as different as two people could be. Paul’s face and arms were weathered and tanned like leather from his long days in the field with the slaves. Francis was fair skinned and his work kept him inside the office all day. He had worn his finest clothing and sprayed himself with cologne imported from France. Paul was covered in grime from the field and his clothes looked like they’d been stitched together from discarded potato sacks. The two men’s eyes met briefly, but neither of them spoke, and both continued in separate directions.
“I met your daughter at a dinner for Major Thomas Jackson,” Francis said. “I was quite taken by her beauty. I confess I made somewhat of a buffoon of myself and fumbled my own name.”
“Well, I reckon Clarissa could teach Stonewall himself a thing or two about stalwartness. She’s a hard one.”
“As you say, sir.”
Later, Francis found Clarissa standing by a stream of water that bordered the family’s property. She looked down the muddy embankment at schools of shimmering fish floated beneath the water. Francis announced himself as he approached, “Good afternoon, Clarissa. Your father said it would be all right if I came to speak with you.”
She looked at him with striking green eyes and dark hair pinned up in a tight bun. She held her boots in one hand and squished her toes in the soft earth, letting worms writhe between them. Her long skirt was muddy along the hem, and her coat was unbuttoned. She glared at Francis as if daring him to admonish her for her appearance. He did not. “Would that be all right with you?” he said.
“If you are my father’s guest, you are free to go wherever you like and speak as you please.”
He thanked her and said, “We met on
ce before. I am still a bit embarrassed about it actually. I don’t normally stammer, but that night I could not seem to untangle my tongue enough to even say my own name.”
“Is that why you wanted to speak to me?” she said. “To tell me your name?”
“Yes,” he paused. “My name is Francis Jennings.”
“Well done,” she said. “Are you also able to utter the word ‘goodbye’?”
He opened his mouth to respond, but nothing suitable presented itself to counter the sting of her words. Clarissa rolled her eyes and walked down the embankment away from him. Francis tried to follow her but the mud threatened to suck his shoes from his feet with every step. “Actually, I was hoping to do a bit more than that,” he called out. “Would you please just wait a moment?”
Clarissa kicked branches and sticks out of her way as she splashed along the water’s edge, feeling the fringes of her dress get soaked but not caring. The ball of her foot scrubbed what looked like a particularly long branch and an enormous cottonmouth reared up from the water, its wide mouth filled with dripping fangs. Its head snapped at her, striking her ankle with such force that it knocked her to the ground.
Francis raced toward her only to be struck motionless at the sight of the snake coiled between Clarissa’s knees. She kicked at it and it dodged her foot, striking through the folds of her skirt to strike the flesh of her inner thigh.
Venom streaked through her body like acid, burning her. Francis hurled a massive rock at the snake’s head, forcing it to back away. It slithered into the water, leaving a deep muddy groove that quickly filled with Clarissa’s blood.
He dragged Clarissa up the embankment where she lay convulsing in the tall weeds, foam spilling from her mouth like thick cream. Francis tried to hold her still while he screamed for help.
***
African slaves kneeled over her, splashing cool water on her face or trying to suck the venom from her wounds until enormous purple blotches appeared on the skin of her leg.
Francis Jennings groaned prayers that begged God not to take her away. He offered himself in exchange and swore oaths on her behalf that would last all eternity.
Clarissa laid on the embankment, dimly aware of all of. Sometimes she looked out through her own eyes and at others she watched the events unfold as if from a great height while floating through the stratosphere.
A man walked down the embankment from the reeds of tall grass. He passed through the crowd to stand over her body. In a sea of terrified faces, his was serene. In the midst of ebony-skinned slaves, he was bone white as if carved from elephant tusks. He ignored the ones who crashed into him racing back and forth from the fields. They seemed not to notice him either. He looked down at her and his detached expression changed.
He surveyed the beach and then looked into the sky, pointing his finger at the floating Clarissa. He spoke strange words and she tumbled down until she was back inside of her body.
Francis Jennings continued to mutter, and no one seemed to notice the stranger bending over her, peering down at her face. As she lay there, she realized his eyes were nothing but dark reflections of her own vacant stare. He had no pupil, no iris. Just darkness. He touched her hair and let it fall through his fingertips then sniffed them. He traced her lips with his thumb and bent to kiss her delicately. His lips were like stone, but he forced her mouth open and blew air into her lungs. His breath burned and swirled inside of her chest like a crucible until she began to cough.
***
Clarissa awoke from a morphine haze days later, as a nurse changed the bandages of the stump below her right knee. She asked what had been done with the leg, and the nurse looked at her sadly for a moment before finally saying, “I believe it was donated to the university.”
Her windows were open to keep the smell of sickness from wading into the rest of the house. Drums sounded and voices chanted in the far off fields. “What is that music?” Clarissa said.
The nurse ignored the question as she quickly collected her medical instruments and placed them into her bag. “I am glad you are awake, Miss Rutherford. I will tell your father.”
Her departure was followed by the sound of running in the hall and Francis Jennings bursting into her room. “Praise be to God!” he said.
Mr. Rutherford followed him, weak and disheveled. Her father trembled as he took her hands in his and tears spilled down his face when he pressed his lips to her hand.
Henry Jim, one of the house slaves, knocked lightly on the door and coughed. “Boss? Dem negroes is at it again, suh. Mr. Paul went to look for a few dat run off, and the others is acting up. Want me to go fetch him?”
Rutherford waved Henry Jim away, focusing only on his daughter. Jennings pushed out his chest and said, “Mr. Rutherford is busy. I shall address it.”
Clarissa watched them leave and scowled. “Now strangers and house negroes handle our affairs for us, father?”
He hushed her. “That young man has not left your side since you were attacked by that vicious creature. He is the one who saved your life. He is the one who prayed for a miracle, and it happened!”
“I did not ask him for such a thing,” she said. “I would have been better off dead than like this.”
“Stop speaking nonsense. You must rest.”
“Now that I’m a cripple?”
“Be silent!”
“What else would you call it?”
“You should have died, Clarissa. Do you understand that? The doctors could not understand why you survived the attack, let alone the amputation. It is an actual, proven miracle done by God’s hand.”
She touched her father’s face gently and said, “Poor father. Only a devil would do this.”
Rutherford pushed his daughter’s hand away and called for the nurse to bring more morphine.
***
When night fell, she woke feeling ill and needing fresh air. She slid out of bed and crept along the wall, using furniture to prop herself up. She hopped toward the window and heard angry voices in the courtyard below.
There was a beaten slave strung up by the wrists from a large wooden post at the edge of the field. Francis Jennings unraveled the length a long leather whip that he made dance in the grass like a snake as he moved within the ring of onlookers.
The bound slave begged for mercy, but Jennings ignored him and wound up his arm, snapping the whip forward so that it leapt into the air. It struck the negro’s back with a sharp crack and split his skin wide. Jennings twirled the whip again, using the grass to clean the blood from its leathery surface. “Only nine more to go,” Jennings said.
Clarissa looked out past the courtyard, seeing the same pale man, incandescent in the dark fields, staring up at her. She pressed against the window and called out to him so loudly that some of the slaves looked up from the courtyard.
The man turned and disappeared into the fields. Tobacco flowers collapsed from their stems in his wake and floated to the earth like falling stars.
***
Francis Jennings proposed marriage directly to Clarissa’s father, who accepted on his daughter’s behalf. When Rutherford went into his daughter’s bedroom to tell her, she hurled things at him until he left the room.
She lay there beating her fists against the bed futilely, screaming like a barn owl. She caught her reflection in a cheval glass and rolled out of the bed with a thud. She dragged her body across the floor elbow-by-elbow, until she was close enough to smash the mirror’s surface with a fist. Razor edged shards of glass rained down on her, slicing open her back and arms.
Pieces of glass were scattered all around her, and she reached for the biggest shard, wrapping her fingers around it tightly until blood trickled from them. Clarissa turned the point toward her chest and extended both arms. “I have had enough,” she whispered, and plunged the tip directly into her heart. She collapsed on the floor and waited for death.
Death did not occur. She wrenched the glass side to side, at first confused and then enraged that death el
uded her. The shard broke in her hands, and she peeled apart the wound, inspecting the severed heart.
She grabbed a larger piece of glass, lifted it to her chest, and was immobilized by the sight of the pale man staring down at her.
He scooped her up with one arm, keeping her close to his chest and pinning her arms to her sides. He pulled her hair back to see the wound and pressed his mouth to it, blowing into her with the same radiating heat that had brought her back to life at the creek’s bank. She screamed and kicked against him but by the time he released her, the hole in her chest was already sealed.
Clarissa sobbed, “Why are you doing this to me?”
He stepped back and vanished into the shadows.
***
Women and Other Monsters Page 1
