Songs_of_the_Satyrs

by Aaron J. French

  His voice was rich, a unique baritone, and once again I had a feeling he was far away, at the end of a long corridor or inside a tube connecting Earth with the Beyond. And I knew at once that I would dedicate all my talents to the cause, to the secret integration of the star goats, to the next renaissance of my own weak species.

  I fell to my knees and rolled my eyes in an improvised gesture of utter submission; but then my vision happened to alight on the portrait of King Harry the New, and I saw clearly and with an expanding inner mirth what I had never noticed before. His horns.

  Satyrday

  By Howard Phillips

  Being a mythical creature in the modern world is a pain in the ass. And when your ass is a goat’s ass, it’s a monster pain.

  My name is Darren, and I’m a satyr, bleeding from the stomach and chest on the top-floor balcony of a high-rise apartment complex.

  I flatter myself to think you’d like to know how this all came to be. Well, I have to put it in context, so I hope you’re ready to walk a mile in my hooves.

  First let’s talk about satyrs.

  MYTH: We’re jovial little pipe-playing goat men that dance around drunk, banging forest nymphs.

  I ain’t jovial. I play the saxophone. I dance like a three-legged centaur. And I don’t have a nymph fetish.

  FACT: We have an epic penchant for alcohol, sex, and music. Call them our Achilles heel.

  I binge drink for breakfast. My libido’s as active as Artemis’s bow. And I know a jukebox better than Apollo.

  I didn’t cast the fucking mold, all right? There’s some kind of pantheon irony in the fact that “satyr” is a near homonym with “sate,” because our addictions are insatiable. I’d file a complaint, but Dionysus is busy running breweries in Ireland, and Ares is vacationing in the Middle East.

  That said, I wake up this morning at the crack of noon, hungover, with a hooker named Sally, naked but for a pair of plastic antlers.

  Yeah, she’s a human. We work because she has dissociative disorder, making it hard for her to distinguish fantasy from reality.

  But her ass is Zeus’s magnum opus.

  I smack her on her finest feature and tell her to get dressed; I’m flying to Hollywood. I’m not, but it’s the only thing that gets her moving.

  She dresses into her magistrate uniform and tries to leave my apartment through the refrigerator door. I show her the right exit, kiss her on the cheek, and tell her I’ll see her tonight.

  I turn on Tchaikovsky and sip a bottle of Bailey’s on the balcony. The city below is a mosaic of stone, glass, metal, and flesh, dimly lit by smog-filtered beams of Helios’s cosmic orb. Car engines, pigeon wings, and a murmured choir of voices assimilate into a discordant urban symphony called “Friday Afternoon.”

  Inside, I polish off a jar of kalamata olives and wash it down with the rest of the Irish cream; the breakfast of chumps.

  Then I jerk off to Yo-Yo Ma in the shower, pretending my dick’s a cello bow.

  I throw on some baggy jeans, a hoodie, and boots with gel inserts fitted to my hooves. And then I don a fleece cap over my horns and pop my hood up. My human disguise: satyr incognito.

  I lock up, leave out, and wait in the hallway for the elevator. Inside, Señora Esperanza is coddling Gordita, one of those glorified hamsters humans call “Chihuahuas.” When I get in, the dog starts huffing and yelping like Darth Vader squeezing a whoopee cushion.

  It can smell me, and it knows something’s up. I try to make light of it. “She can smell her own kind,” I say. No one suspects a half goat of a professed canine. I force a laugh.

  “Eres un perro?”

  Señora Esperanza asks if I’m a dog.

  “Si,” I answer. “I must be. My mother always told me my father was a dog. And my father always told me my mother was a bitch. So biologically . . .”

  “Ay caramba!” she exclaims. “Vaya con Dios.”

  She crosses the air in front of me and gets off on her floor.

  “Woof,” I say, as the elevator door closes.

  Downstairs in the lobby, Lenny the security guard is watching porn on a computer monitor. He pulls up solitaire when I walk by and crosses his ankle over his knee to hide his tented Dickies crotch. “I looked up that word on dictionary-dot-com,” he tells me.

  “Yeah?” The sound is still going on the minimized sex screen. The panting and moaning don’t mesh well with the stacks of cards displayed on the monitor.

  “Yeah.” Lenny coughs and hits mute. “Satyriasis: uncontrollable or excessive sexual desire in a man. Like nymphomania in a woman.”

  “You got it,” I say with double meaning.

  He looks offended. “That’s what you think I have?”

  I hit the volume button on his keypad.

  The speakers resume, sounding a screaming orgasm.

  Lenny blushes and hits mute. “Well maybe you just think that’s what I’ve got because that’s what you’ve got.” He smiles, proud to be on the offensive.

  He’s right, in a manner of sorts, only his condition is my identity. “Don’t make me your scapegoat, Lenny.”

  “Scapegoat?” I hear him pulling up dictionary.com as I walk out the door.

  I head to the station and squeeze into a tight-packed subway car. Two stops in, my mother calls, long distance, from Greece, only she blocks her number so I can’t tell it’s her.

  “Hello?”

  “Darren, it’s your mother. I’m going to talk for thirty seconds and you’re going to listen. I’m worried sick about you, up in that big city all alone, never calling to tell me you’re all right.”

  It’s been thirty seconds and she’s still going. Meanwhile, my ass is brushing against nine different people in the overcrowded compartment. I’m trying not to draw any attention to myself, but I’ve got this shrill voice squawking through the speaker. People are starting to look at me.

  “Mom, now’s not a good time,” I cut in.

  But she’s already built up momentum. “Your father’s having a kidney taken out in August. I keep telling him to cut back on his drinking, but he’s all like, ‘I’m a satyr,’ and this, that, and the other.”

  More people are paying attention, eavesdropping on my conversation. I tighten my hood and lean in toward the window. “Mom, I have to go.”

  “It’s dangerous in the city, you know? People get stabbed and shot all the time. Can you imagine a satyr going into a public hospital for treatment?”

  “I have to go, Mom.” I hang up the phone and try to look as normal and uninteresting as possible, but my heart is beating like a horny old man in an erotic movie theater.

  I slow my breathing, get off two stops early, and walk. My head aches like I’ve been cleaning my ears with an oil drill. I stop at a local dive for a drink.

  Aphrodite’s fairer twin is gracing a silver barstool.

  I hear the distant twang of Cupid’s bowstring and take a seat beside her. My vision dallies on her ample bosom, double D’s cresting in the mouth of a V-cut halter top.

  Velvety amber tresses flow sumptuously as caramel liqueur over her silken carnality. I want to pour Shiraz down her smooth, sculpted calves and sip the runoff from her toes.

  “Macallan twenty-five,” I tell the bartender, still fixed on the belle at the bar.

  The aged scotch trails a smooth familiar burn down my throat, pooling in my stomach.

  I strut beside the goddess and hit her with my best line. “Hello.” I gaze into her honey-brown eyes as only a satyr can, wild as an animal yet soft as a poet. A waft of sweet, floral perfume sends my hormones on the fritz, an intoxicating blend of lavender and vermouth. “I’m Darren.”

  “Marcy,” she sings. I let my touch linger after our handshake and she returns my smile.

  “Merci, Marcy.” I mean it when I say it.

  She laughs. “Thank you for what?”

  I pause, staring. “Your captivating allure.”

  Demur, she smiles and blushes. “I’m meeting someone here.” She seems
sad to confess it.

  “I forgive you,” I say without thinking.

  She giggles, but stops abruptly and stares uncomfortably high over my head. Behind me there’s a hate-filled, two-eyed descendent of a Cyclops, spewing anger like furnace heat.

  To the chest at eye level, I say the first thing that comes to mind: “Fee-fi-fo-fum.” It doesn’t help matters.

  The titan lifts me off the ground by my hoodie collar like I’m just another dumbbell. Face-to-face, I can smell the cheeseburger on his breath and envision myself as pulverized goat souvlaki.

  Where’s Heracles when you need him?

  In a swift and sudden rush of movement, he pulls me in and throws his bodyweight behind a head-butt, smacking his skull against mine.

  The room turns into a ringing white flash. When I come to, a second later, I’m standing there, dazed but fine, and he’s sleeping on the floor like a drunken corpse.

  The big dummy didn’t know that beneath a couple layers of thin cloth I’ve got horns to shame the Billy Goats Gruff.

  Marcy’s got her hands on her cheeks in some kind of shocked arousal. In my bottom periphery I see the rhythm of her breasts in heavy breathing. I step so close that our lips are an inch apart and she can feel my erection on her thigh. “So, where were we?”

  She kisses me, lightly on the cheek, unzips my pants, and sticks a napkin in my fly with her number written on it in lipstick. My eyes follow her ass out the door.

  I scram when the bartender calls the cops.

  Running like a human is difficult with the inverted knees of a goat. It resembles the hobble of a constipated cripple. I slow to a saunter when I’m out of eyeshot.

  I duck into a Holiday Inn and slide into the conference room, ten minutes late for the Mythical Creature Support Group meeting that had already begun.

  I mouth “sorry” to the mermaid in the wheelchair with the blanket over her “legs,” pointing to her watch.

  “I feel like Atlas, burdened by this world of secrets I have to carry every day.” The speaker is a gorgon with sunglasses on, snake-hairs sedated and tied into a bun. “Why do we resist the urge to step out and say I am?”

  The mermaid moderator nods. “I think it’s because we expect rejection. A minotaur goes for a walk in the woods in Orleans, California, gets filmed, and people are screaming Sasquatch for years. A hydra goes for a dip in Loch Ness, and all the Scotts are yelping Monster.”

  “And so we never try, for fear of failure?” the gorgon asks.

  “Failure costs,” the mermaid answers. “But someday, someone will try, and it will be better for us all . . . or not.”

  As usual, I don’t say anything during the meeting. Words are a sorry substitute for action. And, for now, inaction seems the proper action. I sound like Socrates’ grandfather.

  I walk home after the meeting, drink a bottle of Kentucky bourbon, and rub one off before I head to work.

  The Labyrinth jazz lounge is a dusky seclusion tucked into a maze of back alleys. Subdued black lights bathe the darkness in a dull purple glow, allowing patrons to haunt the shadows and indulge their vices in private misery.

  I mingle around until stage call, and then take up my sax and sit, spotlit on the stage. I drown thought in the bass and snare of the lead-in, tapping a hoof to the underbeat, and then give music the reins.

  My “voice” joins in, crisp and as squeaky clean as Cerberus’s balls, what with three heads and all. My sad tormented wail is worthy of the Underworld.

  My cheeks swell like a puffer fish trying to blow out birthday candles, as I bare my soul. I’m surprised to find it sadder than I thought.

  I think of Marcy and how I can never see her again, lest I be unmasked. I think of the mermaid in the wheelchair struggling, depressed, through her secret coexistence. And I think of myself, enslaved to programmed instincts, routinely suffering insatiable desires.

  A fiery dirge rails against the silence, screaming where I cannot, each note a short-lived fairy dancing the air unseen.

  And then I think about tomorrow, its bland repetition and bleak prospects, and the tempo falls like Icarus. The band stops now, and it’s only the sax, singing like a well-tuned goose’s lullaby.

  I am Orpheus. I am Prometheus. I am a dissatisfied wooden doll pretending I’m a real boy.

  Silence comes, accented now by earlier melancholy.

  Applause follows. It’s an ovation. I realize I’m shaking and tears have wet my face. Across the bar men and women are raising their glasses. I’ve never played so well before.

  In that momentary triumph, spotlighted in the crowd’s eye, I want to rip my fleece cap off and bleat, to reveal myself in the wake of grand approval. Isn’t it better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you’re not?

  My resolution falters and then fails as the clapping ceases. I need a drink.

  The bartender says it’s on the house. And patrons send a slew of drinks my way.

  Drunk, I exit through the blurred gateway, which should be the back door.

  The alley outside is as dark and foul as Hades’ short hair. I stumble out with an overflowing tip jar tucked under one arm and a handful of salted barroom peanuts.

  “I’m a satyr,” I tell a rat, a bottle, and a trash can.

  I start up Mount Olympus’s little nephew. Streetlights are swaying overhead like bulb-sized fireflies. I try to use the line in the concrete between the sidewalk and the curb to walk straight, but it’s not working. I’ve got enough booze in me to intoxicate a Girl Scout troop.

  I stop on top to gain my bearings, maybe navigate by the stars. But I’m no Argonaut.

  I don’t know where I am, but some guy in an alley does. And so does his knife. The blade slides into my belly like I walked into a hip-high unicorn. I go down like Troy.

  Now I’m lying in a puddle of my own blood. The fall shatters my tip jar, sending dollar bills everywhere. The masked man starts stuffing his pockets with red-green currency before reaching into my pocket.

  “Not the napkin,” I whisper, grabbing the bandit’s pant leg. He kicks me in the face. My hat goes flying off, unveiling my twisted curling horns.

  “Holy shit!” my attacker shouts. “What the fuck?” He throws my money down and takes off running, Marcy’s napkin still in hand.

  I struggle to stand, tears running down my face. “Wait!” I scream. “Take the money.” I just wanted to be mugged the same as anybody else. I throw salty peanuts in his direction.

  It’s just as well, I tell myself. Marcy would curse and run if she knew.

  I’m bleeding. I’m drunk, lost, lonely, and bleeding.

  Eventually, I stagger home, gore running warm and sticky through my fingers as I hold my cap over the wound.

  I open the door to the apartment lobby, dripping blood onto the glossy tile floor. Lenny puts his porn on pause and looks up. “Darren?”

  “Scapegoat,” I confess.

  I see his eyes run the gauntlet of emotion: surprise, betrayal, fear, anger . . .

  He draws his side arm and fires all ten rounds. One catches me in the chest, and breathing gets hard. Empty, he throws his gun down and runs.

  The elevator door opens. Inside, Señora Esperanza stands frozen in horror, holding whimpering Gordita up as a body shield.

  “Baa,” I say, spewing blood and spittle. She runs. “Vaya con Dios,” I call after her.

  I get off on my floor, and Sally’s waiting in the hallway. Her normalcy is surreal. “Hey, Darren.”

  “Not tonight, Sally,” I manage between wheezes. “I’m flying to Hollywood.” She nods and leaves without a question.

  I unlock the door and enter my apartment, alone as I’d been all day. Somehow, I’m horny and thirsty . . . again.

  “Know thyself,” the Oracle says. Dying, my purpose becomes as clear as a ghost wrapped in cellophane.

  I strip down to my mythical birthday suit, my hairy goat haunches wet with blood, and walk out on the balcony where my day started at noon.

 
And here we are, together now. It’s midnight.

  Standing on the edge of the rail, I greet the world. “Hello.”

  And then I take one small step for a satyr, one giant leap for myth-kind. Pedestrian gasps, camera flashes, and a choir of reporters will assimilate into a breaking-news symphony called “Satyrday.”

  Opiate of the Lonely One

  By Fel Kian

  Late afternoon melded like liquid metals into early evening. The waft of metropolitan excess, waste, disinfection, and rot—each vying for supremacy—was inescapable. In the courtyard behind the Hotel Syrinx the miasma was even more prominent, as someone had tried to mask the lingering stench of a recent garbage pickup by sprinkling cheap perfume against the bins.

  Martin tried not to gag. He coughed into his fist and took deep breaths of his own clean palm. The scent of the liquid soap from the office restroom was anything but comforting, but it was better than the alternative. A scraggly rhododendron mocked him with a shake of its leafy frame.

  It was a wonder that plant life existed at all in this human-made cesspit of bricks and glass and mortar. Martin’s hatred of the city had not diminished in the few lackluster years he had lived there. Indeed it had intensified beyond all reasonable proportion. Yet this was where he needed to be, a bustling metropolis of opportunity, the heart of modern progress. It was an affliction he had brought upon himself, one he privately bemoaned but nevertheless endured.

  “Is there something you want?”

  Martin had been milling about the courtyard for an hour, lost in speculation and growing apprehension, trying to recall who had tipped him off about this relatively unknown rendezvous point. Perhaps an online chat room or an overheard conversation between two licentious execs. It scarcely mattered now.

  He smiled at the dark-haired youth eyeing him with reservation . . . or envy, perhaps. Envy at the sight of his fancy shoes, creaseless suit, and necktie. No, not envy—but disdain. Martin had come directly from the office. He had not taken the time to go home and change into something less formal. That path led to hesitation, a chance to back out and delay another day, another week. Another lifetime. No. Sometimes the only way to live life to the fullest was to bypass the safe, the rational, and leap into the fray.