Cassilda's Song: Tales Inspired by Robert W. Chambers King in Yellow Mythos

by Allyson Bird

  I mocked fainting onto the mildew and dusty couch to read.

  “Because I could not stop for death/He kindly stopped for me—.”

  I couldn’t focus. A series of designs began to dance on the wall. I looked at the Victrola and saw that its lattice work body was a zoetrope and the art deco octagons, rectangles, and triangles foxtrot around me as Bessie Smith crooned:

  “Noooobody knows you/when you’re down and out/In my pocket not a one penny/and my friends, I haven’t any.”

  Digging the vibe, I flipped through Dickinson and crooned along: “I’m noooooooobody, who are you?/Oh, well, honey, I’m noooobody too.”

  Turned my tickle box over on that one, and had to sit up and put my head between my knees to stop and catch my breath.

  The song concluded and the room was full of white noise from the continued fornication of needle and vinyl that masked a mechanical whizzing sound coming from inside the horn. I stood up and took off the needle and heard the noise more. I looked inside the horn and saw something gleaming down its throat, and stepped back and tripped back onto the fainting couch as a mechanical arm began to extend out and in its tiny hand was a syringe containing a golden fluid. I watched as it reached its full extension towards the head of the couch, and the hand depressed the plunger and the gold liquid streamed and splattered. Had I been reclining, as I had been before I lost it, it would have pierced my carotid artery. The arm retracted back inside the horn, and the dancing designs slowed down and faded as the zoetrope extinguished.

  In the next room, the Victrola had an extra dusty Rude Bloom record. Same ritual as before and watched as the zoetrope shined through the cabinet to illuminate the room. I closed my eyes and let the lights dance upon my eyelids. It was soporific, but once I heard the mechanical arm, I snapped to and watched it repeat the motions of its brother machine: extend, inject, withdraw. However, after years of no lubrication, the arm did not completely return inside the horn. Before I could look it over, the Victrola lost its steam and I was cast in darkness. Had to use up my matchbook to see how to get out of there.

  It seemed elegant but monstrous. The noises it made were unsettling and I couldn’t understand how anyone would complacently allow the thing to penetrate their neck like some kind of robotic vampire. Were they sedated already before hand?

  The Third Trespassing

  Sauntering through the lethal gardens—

  Once you hop the tarnished gates—

  The grounds are so vast and brown

  Shades of their former monstrous elegance.

  Solemn stroll. Sobering stroll. With each

  Step you become intoxicated by your

  Next to last oxygen gasp.

  A glance at

  The shimmering fountain—a gaze at the

  Rusted fountain—around its base hovers

  The Muses.

  I have met the Fates—.

  I have met the Muses—.

  Don’t be fooled by what you can take,

  It’s all a ploy in their ruses—.

  Find yourself with their golden nooses.

  You can see in my eyes the stars

  are gone.

  You can see in my complexion the blood has stalled

  within its constricted highways.

  You can see in my mouth the lost words

  caught in my teeth.

  My dasein is perpetually weeping lactic acid

  from the exertion to live.

  And yet,

  by some involuntary propulsion,

  I move forward through the days and into

  the weeks and into the months—

  For how long?

  Alone, alone, alone. Alone with all the wrong answers.

  what is death but the failure to live

  the secret in living is failing to die

  what is death but failing to live

  what is life but failing to die

  the secret to living is failing to die

  “I have a world inside of me I cannot see,”

  Said the oyster to the sea.

  “I have resolved to shuck that little world outside of me.”

  The Fifth Trespassing

  I found a Pallid Mask and it is not as advertised. Neither the face of Louise Brooks nor any other human ideal. Made out of mercury with a silver arabesque around the brow and down the nose. An alchemical sign?

  I reached into the Victrola and gently extracted the arm. I rigged a fresh vial of morphine into the hand, and returned it to its cave, hearing its hinges and springs lock into place.

  Cranked, needle flipped, and Billie Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday” filled the room. I laid down on the couch and placed the mask over my face and closed my eyes as the lux ballet began. The cold mask was making all thought in my temples frigid and frozen.

  An arctic serenity in the igloo-skull.

  The flickering lights’ somnolent effect seemed stronger. With each inhalation I felt my body relax. “Gloomy Sunday” faded out as the beating of my heart grew louder and louder in my ears. A white heat pierced behind my ear—shot through with smack-warmth, numbed body—I became nothing but ellipses….

  …Hugging the trunk of a giant weeping willow tree, the sun sparkling through its matron-leaf curtain dazzles me awake like a junky Snow White.

  A garter snake coils around my outstretched arm and constricts it, above the elbow, to show the veins in alabaster. A hummingbird alights on my fingers and darts to hover above my inner elbow. It stabs its beak into my vein, hovering and sucking. The snake hisses in rhythm to the bird’s fluttering and my gasping.

  Eden ecstasy.

  When the hummingbird is through extracting, it flits to the willow curtain and falls dead as if it hit glass. The snake uncoiled itself and disappeared in a hole at the foot of the tree.

  Liquid gold pours out of my veins, and I crawl over to the dead bird—stiff and straight like a syringe.

  I pick it up and crawl back to the trunk—nestle back in to its exposed roots and stab the bird’s beak back into the vein.

  Perdition Pain.

  Gold spilling around the bird’s body as I squeeze it, crunching the bones until all it had taken was returned.

  Tapped, I throw the feathered pulp down and the snake emerges to swallow it whole—then disappears again.

  I feel fortified and can stand and walk.

  I part the matron-leaf curtain and look out over:

  Nordic latitudes pause the rising sun—

  Dusk is frozen on the horizon—

  Casting the sky in jewel tones of magenta, violet, and aquamarine.

  The clouds reflect these tones,

  mix them with brooding, ponderous, slate precipitation.

  It is nothing but landscape—

  which changes with the journey—

  It is impossible to survey and map—

  because it only exists at the end of our threads.

  The Fifteenth Trespassing

  Who are all these people with faces and names?

  They were my friends, but they are not the same.

  They are not the same.

  They wear their last suits and gowns—tweed, silk, chiffon, satin—

  worth more than all the money spent on their minds

  worth more than all the money spent into their veins and arteries

  worth more than all their lives combined, if life were ever capital

  to trade.

  They were my friends—they were my lovers—they were my family

  These people with faces and names.

  I recognized and unrecognized them

  Their familiar faces wore unfamiliar expressions

  Of last gasps—cardiac cancers, automobile crashes, undiscovered overdoses—

  And faded beauties—Entropy, gluttony, jaundiced, flaccid Liver beauty spots.

  These people with faces and names were erased

  behind the masquerade of their own threads,

  and looked out through porcelain h
allows.

  Each mask individualized by their individual demise

  But made common by the same golden arabesque

  that swept across the eyebrows and down the nose.

  The secret code—the alchemical sign—that

  Invites living specters to foxtrot at their own funeral.

  They spin and twirl and jive

  In their grandparents spats and stays

  Around a grand table

  That serves as throne and entertainment to

  The two Sister-Queens—.

  Whose corseted musculature

  And golden-laced ligaments

  And silk-skein tendons gorey gleam—.

  Their visages veiled in gold masks

  Socketed with third-eye diadems of lazuli and tiger eye.

  Cassilda wears a halo-collar that crowns her

  Head in the warm embrace of Helio’s arms—

  Golden rays inlaid with rubies and precious and imperial topaz.

  Camilla mirrors her with Selene’s serene beams—

  Silver, sapphire and pearl.

  They do not regard their subjects

  They regard the marionettes on the table—

  A makeshift stage for The Moira—The Fates—

  marble life-sized puppets trapped in a pantomime

  by the Sister-Queens’ gaze—.

  It’s an interesting tableau.

  Clotho

  With bloodshot and puffy eyes,

  Looks out a window with her hand

  On the hip of her hourglass shape.

  From her bosom and through her waist,

  Falls infinite sand collecting at the foot of

  Her petticoat. Her head tilts to consider

  The long tapestry that is woven by Laisches

  And stretches toward Atropos to cut.

  Clotho guides them to the hemming and stitching.

  Laiches

  With fair hair that rolls

  Around her head into

  A chignon of yarn; Pinned

  By countless knitting needles

  Of myriad gauges.

  A lock behind her ear curls to her cheek

  And she takes from it strands to knit

  Into the tapestry.

  Around her lithe marble body,

  A spider spins and spins and spins

  Confining her body to her chair

  Only her arms are free from the

  Cobweb garb, and she can reach

  And grab from a basket containing

  All of the scrolls—each a timeline of

  Our lives—moving from one life to another

  Under her sister’s direction,

  Without missing a click.

  Atropos

  At the end of the tapestry, she sits cross-legged on the floor.

  The murderer of men, her face is an open wound

  From lacerations—the shark teeth tied

  To the end of her matted hair—she shakes her head

  like a gnashing rabid dog. Blood patina oozes from

  damaged stone.

  A string of black pearls chains her neck to the wall.

  She wears a shawl made out of a fisherman’s net—

  Seashells, starfish, and rotting shrimp hang in the lapels—

  Decayed brooches.

  Ever ready in her hands are golden straight razors—

  Once Clotho decides a life has ended,

  She chops the thread with the velocity

  Of a guillotine.

  Atropos’s arms flail at me.

  She juts her knife at me—

  then at the projection on the wall.

  The Sister-Queens’ gazes go unwavered;

  They take no notice of me.

  I am just another reveler with a face and name.

  I walk to the projection; grasp at the dust in the light.

  The surface wavers and pools around my hand like

  I had plunged it into a phosphorescent bay.

  I felt minute pixilated threads stick to my phalanges

  Like spider silk—.

  In the projection, I saw myself—

  A Helen who was not the fuck-up failure—

  the windblown petals swirl around her face, catch in her hair;

  their vibrancy against her raven hues appear as though her locks

  Are wicks to blazing stars.

  I look back to the Sister-Queens

  And the incarcerated Moirai—

  Clotho gestures to Laiches,

  who switches a thread between her fingers.

  The vision in the window changes.

  Atropos juts her knife at me,

  then guillotines the tapestry.

  She juts her knife at her sisters,

  and Laisches searches for another scroll.

  The puppets regard me regarding them.

  Atropos juts her knife at the Sister-Queens,

  and then runs her razor across her throat.

  Cassilda gestures to Camilla,

  Who explodes from her chair

  To rush and push me out of the way,

  To make wiping gestures over the image.

  The threads shudder and settle into a scrye.

  I see myself in my last frock

  And last face.

  Flowing from the right temple,

  Ribbons of Pink and Crimson silk

  Layered with Grey and Aubergine lace

  Enshroud a shattered and cracked

  Porcelain mask—

  All part of a cocktail hat

  Composed of Cockscomb.

  My eyes stare out of carved lids

  Kohl-rimmed and mascara-streamed.

  My sculpted lips are swollen

  And smeared—

  Nose and cheeks rouged by blood specks.

  I touch the ribbons and lace

  And poke at the Cockscomb.

  My reflection merely scratches her cheek

  With a shiny little gun—

  I reach out to my reflection

  She reaches out to me and aims.

  I caress my mask.

  The Sister-Queens bicker.

  Camilla grabs my arm:

  “You, madam, should unmask.”

  I refuse.

  “Indeed it’s time.”

  I regard my nodding reflection—

  Her porcelain lips now carved around the revolver’s barrel.

  “You can’t help but look out of the mask you were given,”

  I tell the Sister-Queens.

  Cassilda orders Camilla to unmask me,—

  I slap away her privileged stretching arms

  And rip the mask off myself—

  The revolver goes off—.

  ….

  The small scenes open up broader landscapes until various worlds

  orbit around your eyes—

  Its induced vertigo—

  And you hesitate where your next step leads—

  But you traverse—

  You move on into Melpomene’s weeping willow arms and wait.

  For any minute now,

  some soothsaying yagé-sipping bruja

  will pass through this road-fork and clear the cursèd humors.

  Or maybe she’ll just walk by with a dismissive wave, laughing at the

  deer and snails in the sky.

  DANCING THE MASK

  BY ANN K. SCHWADER

  Cee wakes to a flapping against her tower window, soft and heavy at once. Soft as feathers. Heavy as the coalescence of black stars above that lake she has danced beside so often, her bare footprints erased within moments by cloud-waves. It is an urgent sound: some message (or messenger?) sent for her alone.

  She rises to investigate. Palest silk draperies flow around her body, transforming each step into dance. A response to whatever missive awaits the last of her Dynasty, sole survivor of the unspeakable masquerade and its final, fatal unmasking.

  When she reaches the window, however, there is only a double sunrise staining her c
ity with jaundiced light—

  Double sunrise?

  Still snarled in blankets, Cee struggles up from the back seat. A sheet of yellow paper flutters against her windshield.

  The sound is barely audible in this empty church parking lot, yet it chills her. Someone put that paper under her wiper while she slept. Someone who might have tried something else—done something else—despite the door locks or the big hunting knife she has kept beside her all night.

  And there are fresh dark smears on the windshield’s glass.

  Cracked glass. Cracked life.

  Fully awake now, she feels the details flooding back. The rehearsal accident last winter that ended her ballet career. The surgeries and months of physical therapy her former company refused to cover. The increasingly desperate temp jobs that barely put ramen on the table, let alone a dent in the monolithic debt she’d long ago quit calculating.

  Facing eviction last month, she’d headed for her boyfriend’s place—only to discover he already had a new roommate.

  Five years younger and two cup sizes larger.

  The days and weeks since were a blur of couch-surfing. Yesterday evening, after yet another heart-to-heart with her most recent host on the topic of “moving on,” she’d moved herself and her remaining possessions on to her Subaru. She’d considered a Motel 6, but the Episcopalians were closer. And God wouldn’t care that her Visa didn’t work any more.

  Flap. Flutter. Flap.

  Cee’s fingers clench in her blankets. For an instant, she is back in the tower, awaiting that unknown message.

  Then she is barefoot on cold asphalt, padding around to retrieve the yellow paper from under her wiper. She uses two fingers to avoid touching whatever nastiness glistens on the glass. Up close, it smells like something utterly, unimaginably dead.

  At least the flyer itself is clean. Sliding back into her car, she relocks the doors before smoothing it out on her lap.

  Nearly half the sheet is filled by one grainy black and white image. At first, she can’t make out the subject – a spider? A skeletal bonsai? – but it finally resolves into a contorted figure wearing white body paint. As it crawls toward the camera, its face is a vision twisted by several emotions at once.

  UNMASK THE DANCE OF DARKNESS

  She blinks at the caption a few times before realizing she’s seen it on the mall. She’s been walking past this bit of urban flotsam for at least a week, giving it no more attention than any other concert or class or cause plastered on the lampposts.