Celestial Inventories

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  “Hmmmm …” Pierre sighed.

  Little Poucet shook his head. “You’ve killed us, my brother.”

  Little Poucet led his brothers on a snaky trip through the cold night of stone and damp asphalt, but nothing was familiar. Everywhere the walls towered above them, stinking of garbage and the press of generations of sweating, dying bodies, so dark they blended and became indistinguishable from the night sky around and above. Now and then they would stumble over some form or other, sleeping or dead on the greasy pavement. Hands with long, slick fingers clutched at their ankles and trousers, slipped inside their cuffs to creep toward their thighs and groins. Maurice tittered and Little Poucet told him to hush. Some of the bodies in the dark leaked fluids and they gave these a wide berth.

  When the others complained of hunger Little Poucet warned them not to stray from the path he was reimagining for them, so they kissed Pierre’s sticky teeth and lips with their open mouths and tongues, sharing in the last bits of the sweet white goo, filling their bellies with the dazzling light that permitted them to continue through such darkness.

  Muffled cries and howls floated just as slowly down from the dim windows high above, fixed there like distant, complaining stars. When they shuffled past the darker mouths of night, they could hear teeth rubbing, tongues lapping at the gritty stones.

  At some point in the night it rained, but the night air had grown so thick they barely felt the drops.

  “Where are you taking us?” Pierre whined.

  “Home,” Little Poucet replied, less and less sure of himself. “Wait here.” He climbed a scarred and deadened lamp post and twisted his body round and round its head searching for distant signs of life. Once upon a time he would have been able to fit his entire body on the head of such a lamp. He was surprised at how much larger he had grown. And how much his skin now smelled of adult garbage.

  Down a distant corridor walled by two different shades of black, he saw a distant glimmer of light low to the horizon like a ground floor window. Thinking of warm kitchens and broad beds and small boxes flickering he slid down and led his brothers off in that direction. They complained that they could see nothing in that direction, but they had become used to following him so they did.

  Often he lost all sense of direction and led them down into holes and wet places where invisible, spongy flesh rubbed against them. But eventually they came to the glowing window set beside a rough grey door in the back recesses of an alley stacked high with soggy cardboard cases of rotting meat.

  Little Poucet reached as high as he could and pounded his fist against the door. After a few minutes a frail, worried looking woman with stringy yellow hair answered.

  “What do you children want at this time of night?” she demanded. “If it’s stealing you’re thinking about I warn you my husband is not a forgiving man.”

  “Food, ma’am,” Pierre spoke up. “We’re so hungry!”

  She jittered her eyes from one face to the next, finally resting on Little Poucet’s diminutive form. “Looks like someone has already eaten the best part of this one.” She paused, considering. “Very well. Come in then and I’ll toss you an old fruit or two before sending you back to your parents, if you should have any.”

  Inside the dusty building Little Poucet tugged on her skirt. “We’re lost, ma’am. Perhaps you could call the authorities?”

  “Authorities?”

  “The police? Social services?”

  The withered little woman began laughing. “The police? Oh, my husband would dearly love that!” Then she laughed some more and Little Poucet could see that when she laughed she looked even thinner, her skinny arms flapping and beating her narrow torso, the loose material of her dress lifting away from her tight skin and pressing against it again, so that he found himself thinking of his mother, because this woman was the complete reverse of his enormous mother and in that was a kind of a negative twin, a sister to her.

  “Perhaps just a bit of food, then,” Little Poucet said softly, and the woman started laughing even louder than before. Little Poucet was embarrassed, and gazed down at his feet.

  Just then the scrawny woman’s head shot up, her neck stretching like a startled chicken’s. “You hear? It’s him, my man come home! You hear? Oh, you poor children—he’ll be murdering you for sure! Here … here …” She stretched out her arms and legs and gathered the seven brothers to her, and despite her resemblance to a gigantic praying mantis then, Little Poucet allowed himself to be gathered with the others. “Here, here … let Auntie hide you. Auntie won’t let bad old Otto get to you!”

  She rushed them into the back of the building with desperate pattings and shooings of her long-fingered hands, pushing them past greasy piles of old clothing, dusty collections of children’s shoes, children’s toys, through passageways littered with dirt and what appeared to be yellowed animal bones, dried chicken skin, and a scattering of tiny teeth—Little Poucet figured dog, cat, badger. Pierre was sniveling, but there was no time to comfort him as she practically lifted them up to the first landing of the back stairs whispering hoarsely: “First room on the left. Get under the bed there. But don’t wake my daughters if you know what’s good for you! Get under the bed there. I can’t think of a better place to hide you.”

  Little Poucet waited until his brothers were all safely tucked away under the bed before joining them there. As he rolled under the bed he looked at the bed on the opposite side of the room, and one great bloodshot eye peering over.

  His brothers huddled together silently, staring at him. He could hear the sound of a bearlike voice downstairs, much like his father’s. He heard a slap, then crying. His eyes now adjusted to the dim light under the bed, he looked around him and his brothers: several small skulls, a rib cage that might have housed the tiniest of birds, leg bones and arm bones, a tiny skeletal hand with a small child’s ring on one of the fingers. Tiny teeth marks on all the bones, aimlessly crisscrossing the tops of the skulls, like the tracks of some small animal, like a tattoo. Downstairs more bellowing, and a breaking of furniture.

  “But I can smell them, dammit!” And suddenly Little Poucet heard the thunder move to the stairs. Another eye joined the first atop the bed across the way, equally bloodshot, then the long dirty blonde hair, the high cheeks, the sharp nose and thin lips and teeth filed to points like knitting needles. The chin stained dark.

  The thunder was right outside the door now. Little Poucet could hear the lightning strike, the torrents of rain as Auntie wailed for the seven brothers to run, but Little Poucet knew of nowhere to run. Six more identical heads joined the first on the other bed. The heads leaned over the edge and smiled down at him, their long tongues slipping over their chins. They leaned forward some more and he could see that they had no clothes on. They rubbed their tiny breasts (in two or three only one had begun its development) and made a sound like swarming moths.

  Otto burst through the door, and at first Little Poucet thought indeed that it was their father who had followed them here. He had the size (like a wall, a dark and heavy wall) and the voice, and the way of wrinkling his nose as if he were always smelling a bad smell. And the large, broken teeth.

  Otto strode over to the bed and lifted it to uncover the seven frightened brothers. “Such pretty boys …” he cooed. He turned to his wife. “Get them ready for bed! I’ll want them rested in the morning. No challenge otherwise.” Otto looked back down at Little Poucet. “Sweet little thing,” he said, and patted Little Poucet’s head, stroked his shoulders, felt for muscles in his arms and legs. Then Otto gently spread his great hand until it covered the whole of Little Poucet’s chest. He leaned over him, his breath sour with beer. “I can feel your heart beating,” he whispered. “I can almost taste it, too. Wait until the morning.” He massaged the boy’s rear, circled the boy’s groin with a huge, blunt forefinger. “You’ll see.”

  After Otto left (Little Poucet could hear him drinking and singing downstairs), Auntie gave them a quick dinner of cold noodles and h
elped the seven brothers strip off their clothes. She shook her head at each naked little boy. “Oh, you’re all much too soft and tender. He likes them soft and tender.” She handed each of them a ragged, dark-stained nightshirt, then turned to leave. Her daughters began to giggle. “Hush up now!” she told them. “There’ll be time enough tomorrow for what you’re wanting. Go to sleep now!” And she left the room.

  The seven little girls looked over at the seven naked little boys and whispered excitedly to each other. Then they all laughed one last time and pulled the covers over their heads.

  Pierre started pulling on his nightshirt. “Stop that!” Little Poucet cried. “Can’t you see the stains, the torn places? It’s like butcher’s wrap!” He looked back over at the other bed, the seven sisters starting to snore and snarl under their covers. He pulled his brothers close to him. They snickered at his cold touch on their bare skin. “Hush up now … once he’s got enough drink in him to bring out the beast he’ll be back up here quickly, I think. I have an idea. Do you remember how our father trained us not to wet the bed?”

  The other six nodded solemnly, their eyes pale and tight in their tiny faces.

  *

  First he gathered seven leftover noodles from the cracked plastic bowls Auntie had provided them (Pierre’s bowl, of course, had been wiped clean). A bit of thick, flour-based sauce had settled into the bottom of each one. He dipped each noodle until it was heavy in the sauce, then with great stealth crept over to the girls’ bed, pulled back the covers, and gently stuck a noodle to the sex of each one. They snarled and snapped in their sleep, but did not move off their backs. Soon, he knew, the sauce would become a paste, the paste would dry, and their disguise would be perfected. His brothers’ hair was just long enough that in the dark Otto might not suspect.

  After a quiet search of the room Little Poucet found enough string to take care of all seven of them. Each brother tied one end of the string to the tip of his penis, passed the remaining string back between his legs, and gave the other end to Little Poucet (who also held the end of his own string). Little Poucet became the puppeteer: all he had to do to turn him and his seven brothers into instant females was to pull on the string and thereby tuck each of their penises back under their asses. With their soft bodies and bad teeth, and by pressing their arms close to their sides to accentuate their breasts, they became wonderful, matchless little girls. Lying there together on the bed Little Poucet really found them quite irresistible.

  To no one’s surprise Otto did come up later that night, stumbling drunk, and went straight to the boys’ bed. Little Poucet jerked hard on the string causing Jean Paul and Maurice to gasp, but they drew their gasps out quickly into yawns.

  Otto reached under the covers and felt for their groins. “What’s this? My daughters? I could have made a terrible mistake.” He paused for a time, smiling, gazing off into space. Finally stirring himself he said, “But no time for this,” stood up suddenly, and walked to the other bed.

  He reached under the covers there and laughed. “Tiny they are, but unmistakable! Here’s one seems a little stale.” He pulled out a sharp knife and rapidly cut off the heads of his seven daughters and dropped them into a large bucket by the bed. He then proceeded to flay the bodies, making miniature vests and tiny leggings. He pulled out one of the heads and removed the skin of the face, turning it into a small mask. “This’ll be a good mask for the dog to wear when he watches TV with me,” he said, holding it up to the light coming through the window. He stared at it a time, then dropping it as if it were something truly disgusting he cried out, “Imogene!” and spun around to the other bed.

  But the seven brothers were already out the door and on the staircase, their strings trailing along behind them. Otto leapt up and ran after them, bellowing. He stepped on one, then another of the trailing strings. Pierre and Maurice screamed and tumbled down the stairs. Otto lost his balance and followed hard upon them. Auntie suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairs, and, startled by the naked, bleeding children tumbling down her staircase, she went up after them, only to watch helplessly as they wheeled past her, and her husband Otto, Otto the Butcher, Otto the Cannibal, crashed into her.

  The seven brothers gathered what they could find in the litter and rot of the house: mostly jewelry and clothing from Otto’s past victims, and all manner of cutting instruments and devices of torture. They dressed in the cleanest rags they could find, and when daylight finally came, Little Poucet led them home with all their loot.

  Their parents were of course overjoyed to see them, especially with all the items they had taken from Otto and Auntie’s house. They were puzzled by the fact that both Pierre and Maurice had become girls while away on the journey, but this fact was of very little importance to them. “After all,” their father would say, “children are children.”

  But the world of his mother’s bed was never the same for Little Poucet again. He stayed awake nights. He listened for voices in the distant, dark walls. And sometimes when his parents were unusually noisy, when their cursings and crashings and complaints about how many mouths they had to feed became almost too much to bear, he would reach into his pillow and take comfort in the knife and the hook, the club and the razor, and dream of their readiness.

  THE

  BEREAVEMENT

  PHOTOGRAPHER

  “So, have you been doing this a while now?”

  “A few years.”

  “Sorry for asking, and tell me if I’m out of line, but you can’t possibly be making a full time living doing this can you?”

  I actually almost say, “It’s a hobby,” which would be disastrous. But I don’t. I look at the fellow: sandy-haired, a beard whose final length appears to be forever undecided. He looks terrible in the suit—either long outgrown or borrowed for the occasion. And it is an occasion—a grim occasion but an occasion none the less. He watches me as I set up, without a glance for his child. The young wife fusses with her to make ready for this picture, this family portrait.

  I’m used to this. Who could blame him.

  “I’m a volunteer. They reimburse me for film and lab costs. It’s a way … of being of service.”

  He glances down, gazes at his wife rearranging the baby in her arms, glances away again, with no place to look.

  Me, I have only one place to look. I peer through the lens, musing on composition issues, the light, the shadows, the angles of their arms. “Could you move her a little to the left?” The husband and father stares at me, puzzled, then bends to move his wife’s chair. She blushes.

  “No, sorry. You, ma’am.” I straighten up behind the camera. “Could you move the baby a little to the left?” Notice how I said “the” baby, not “your.” I try to avoid upsetting words. These are family portraits, after all. Just like all families have. Most parents don’t want to be crying. I have folders full of photographs of mothers and fathers wailing, faces split in the middle. Believe me, they don’t want to keep those. Sometimes I have taken roll after roll until there is sufficient calm for me to make the picture that will go into some leather bound matte, slipped into some nondescript manila folder, or, if they’re so inclined, up on the living room mantel in a place of honour, there, oh so much there, for the whole world to see.

  I’ve been doing this for years. But still I find that hard to imagine.

  I feel bad that I haven’t found the right words for this father, the words that will soothe, or at least minimize his discomfort and embarrassment. But sometimes there are just no right words. At least I can’t always find them.

  “I’ll be taking the shot in a few minutes,” I say. “Just make yourself comfortable. This isn’t going to be flash flash flash and me telling you to smile each time. The most important thing is to try to make yourselves comfortable. Try to relax and ease into this shared moment.”

  This shared moment. Whatever words I say to my subjects, I always include these. Even though I’ve never been sure they were accurate, or fair. The moment is shared i
n that it happens to both of them. But most of the time, I think, the experience is so personal and large it will soon split the marriage apart if they’re not careful.

  I’ve seen it happen so much. I’ve seen so much.

  “Okay, then,” I say in warning and again I move behind the camera, almost as if I expect it to protect me from what is to come. As I peer into the electronic viewfinder, so like a small computer screen, so distancing in that same way, I see the mother’s smile, and it is miraculous in its authenticity. I’ve seen it before in my portraits, this miraculous mother’s smile, and it never fails to surprise me.

  And I see the father at last look down upon his dead baby girl and reach out two fingers, so large against the plump, pale arm, and he lets them linger, a brief time but longer than I would have expected, and I realize this touch is for the first, and last, time.

  I again shift my focus to the light, to the shadows and the play of shadows, and ready myself to shoot. The father attempts a dignified smile, but of course goes too broadly with it. The mother holds the child a bit too tightly. And I trigger the camera once, then twice, the baby looking as if she were merely sleeping. The baby looking. Then I take a shot for the photographer, a shot I will never show the parents, an image to add to the growing collection I keep hidden in a file drawer at home, the one in which the baby opens its eyes and fixes its gaze upon me.

  *

  I should explain, I suppose, that I’ve never had much talent for photography. I have the interest, sometimes I’ve had the enthusiasm, but I’ve never had the eye. I got this volunteer position because my next door neighbour is a nurse, and she used to see me in my back yard with camera and tripod shooting birds, trash, leaves, whatever happened to land in front of me. Inconsequential subjects, but I was afraid I’d screw up a more significant one, which would have broken my heart, maybe even have prevented me from ever taking another photograph. I didn’t want to risk that.