Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles

by David P. Jacobs

  She turned her eyes back to Nathaniel. “Is that . . . ?”

  “Edgar Allan Poe?” Nathaniel nodded. “Yeah.”

  She surveyed the room and surroundings. “He must be lost in a dream. From the looks of it, perhaps dreaming of something akin to the party in Masque of the Red Death.”

  “Bingo,” Nathaniel told her. “This section of the party was devoted entirely to our gothic horror writer for a spot of inspiration while he undergoes his own state of meditation or ‘hypnogogia.’ He’s also our public speaker for this event.”

  “Edgar Allan Poe.”

  “Yes.”

  “Our public speaker!” Annette shook her head, smiling. “You’ve pieced everything perfectly. When I lived as Annette Slocum as a housewife to Lyle, I borrowed Poe’s collected works from the local library. He was one of my favorites.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?”

  Nathaniel nodded. “I worked at the library, Mrs. Slocum.” This comment took Annette by surprise. “In fact, I was there the day that you were hit by the blue Cadillac. I thanked you as you entered the library and deposited your library books that day. I don’t expect you to remember. We were different people, living different lives.”

  “You remembered me? Me! A plain looking woman in a ratty house dress?”

  “You had one of those hard-to-forget faces,” Nathaniel told her. “Acting as the repairer of your library books, I kept tabs on you to make sure you were okay.”

  Annette looked at him with concern and asked “and why didn’t you introduce yourself as my Library Book Rescuer?”

  Nathaniel shrugged.

  As the music played, she and Nathaniel danced oblivious to the undulations around them.

  Meanwhile, a figure stood in the corner camouflaged by the contiguous crowd watching over the party. He wore a mask similar to that of a gray corpse. There were streaks of red paint marked from the eyes to the bottom of the mask. His closed floor-length cloak was a shade of deep crimson. He looked upon the party with a sharp derisive gaze. From this guest’s perspective Icarus was at the concession table filling two cups of punch. Icarus turned, half expecting to find Lucas behind him, which his partner was not. The guest in the blood-red mask sneered and brought his eyes back to Nathaniel and Annette.

  His apprentice, wearing the black Pinocchio mask, appeared beside him.

  “Look at him,” Jonas growled. “Our Prince Prospero; our Fortunato.”

  “I’m confused,” his apprentice muttered.

  “You’ve never read Poe? There are two short stories written by our public speaker,” Jonas explained. At that time, Edgar Allan Poe crossed in front of and past them. “In Poe’s words, Prince Prospero was a hero in a short story about a royal who locked his friends and family into a great fortress to avoid the plague that was destroying the globe. Prospero held parties in this fortress, content in his clever efforts to avoid the Red Death. But the Red Death attended his celebrations one night leaving behind a wake of dismal fatality. The character named Fortunato is from another short story written by Poe. In that story, Fortunato plays another form of antagonist: a drunkard who is unsuspectingly lured by his friend, Montressor, into an underground crypt in search of a cask of Amantillado wine. Unfortunately for Fortunato, Montressor leads him, not the wine, but to an untimely death. At the end of the brief story, Montressor walls Fortunato into a niche, burying him alive.”

  “Poor man.”

  “Ah, but Monstressor had his reasons,” Jonas told his friend. “The beginning of the short story describes that Montressor had grievances although they weren’t overtly addressed as to what Fortunato caused. We all have our own Fortunatos to deal with, our own Prince Prosperos to destroy. Look at this place. Nothing more than a crowded apartment with overused illusions! And look at her,” Jonas sighed. “Broccoli has her so convinced that she’s misinformed. She’s received some of my numbered violet envelopes, I know she has! But from the blissful look on her face he’s no doubt convinced her that what she thinks can’t possibly be right.”

  “Broccoli?” his friend asked. “I thought his name was Cauliflower.”

  “It’s a nickname I called him in his seventh life.” Jonas shrugged his shoulders. “But it’s ancient history. Or, at least, it will be.” He lifted an arm and consulted a wristwatch. “In the next seven seconds.”

  The music stopped. The guests, except for Edgar Allan Poe, had already abandoned the party. Only the muses remained. Nathaniel faced Annette. Holding her, he knew he had to tell Annette the truth about everything, no matter the cost. His heart was fluttering, filled with a rush of adrenaline. He courageously opened his mouth and said “Annette . . .”

  “Mr. Cauliflower?” she asked him.

  “Annette, I . . . I have something I need to tell you.”

  Her eyes were locked indulgently on his. “Okay.”

  “Lots of ‘somethings,’ really.” He took her hands, thinking of the right words to say. “It’s about the last few pages of the manuscript. The ones concerning my seventh life? No doubt you’ve noticed they’ve gone missing. And also about the pegs that you had asked me to order from Management and review?”

  Annette nodded.

  A rumble of thunder erupted from the hallway ceiling followed by several more tremors shaking in sync with the chiming limited edition Steinway Grandfather Clock. There came shouts of horror from the crowd around them. A swarm of tuxedos and ball gowns twirled about. Nathaniel looked from side to side. Everyone was looking skyward. Nathaniel lifted his gaze to the ceiling to see waves of churning storm clouds above their heads. Within the rumbles of thunder, and between the flashes of lightning, were moments of history being re-written. There were moments of the car salesman Lyle, Doris the waitress, the violinist Jonathan, the bowling alley attendant Luanne, the glow-in-the-dark stars of a boy named Phillip and the assorted unknown adventures of a woman named Sarah Milbourne ripping like construction paper being shredded by a heated child in an uncontrollable tantrum.

  Colored pegs began to fall.

  Out of the corner of Nathaniel’s eye he saw Lucas lift his Pinocchio mask from his face for a better look. As Lucas did this Nathaniel was suddenly aware of the red-masked vigilante who had been a stone’s throw from him. Jonas, who lifted the mask from his face, waved to Nathaniel. As Jonas waved, Nathaniel could see the dandelion key hanging from his neck. Jonas then disappeared into the crowd as the muses scattered for shelter.

  Nathaniel had never been a father, but he was a parent to the muses that had been housed inside the department. Like most parents Nathaniel believed that, despite all of the negative nuances that may have existed in Jonas, there had been goodness in him. It had been a hard lesson Nathaniel learned that day: that every “child” has evil within, but there are only a rare few that take it to extreme. And that Nathaniel, having felt like a father, had allowed Jonas’ actions to flourish without immediate consequence. And so it was that with an immediate consequence, much to Nathaniel’s misfortune, the retirement party, the walls, the floor, the muses and Edgar Allan Poe fissured into a cavern beneath him, resulting in a heart-stopping moment of the seemingly irreparable “Fall of the House of the Muses.”

  CHAPTER 15: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED WITH THE MAILBOX’S MISDIRECTED LETTER

  Nathaniel’s eyes refocused on the rotunda’s oculus upon waking from a vivid dream. In the dream he had been an eighteen-year-old Russian immigrant during America’s Roaring Twenties and a repairer of broken kerosene lamps. Recent recollections of his life as Yuri Abramovich greeted him in reverse order as he sat up: his second murder, the act of vengeance between him and the painter, the kerosene lamps of which had led him to the painter’s doorstep and the broken promise pledged to Evangeline. Nathaniel, realizing that it wasn’t a dream and that he had moments before been burned alive by his painter, presently assumed his actions disappointed Evangeline after she had waited over a century for him to resurface. This feeling troubled him. Nathaniel felt regrettabl
y guilty for his actions which had precipitately separated them. How he wished he could see her again and to apologize that he had allowed his anger to cloud his judgment. But Nathaniel wasn’t blessed in reuniting with Evangeline.

  He sat in the rotunda alone surrounded by the leftover fragments of his second life. A column of sunlight traced the 2,307 kerosene lamps which were positioned as a collected reminder of his past indiscretion. They silently mocked him for his errors. There was also the sealed glass jar of six dandelions. As he lifted the jar to inspect the weeds, he palpably remembered his two encounters with the Dandelion Sisters; a sensation far stronger than hatred, an impressionable darkness that rushed like the rustling of raven wings.

  A distorted reflection stared at him from the glass jar. He had been too busy trying to escape these offices the last time that Nathaniel did not take into effect that his appearance changed. Back in the afterlife, with a semi-reflective surface in hand, Nathaniel took stock of his apparent bald head and clean shaven face. He lifted his shirt and discovered that he no longer wore the youthful body as a painter in 1808, nor did he wear the slim body of a young man named Yuri in 1924. The look that Nathaniel had been given was alien leading him to believe that he was a different person on the whole. He wondered from which mold Management had pulled him.

  A patch of white appeared on the other side of the jar’s glass. Nathaniel lowered it to find Fiona.

  “Hello, Nathaniel,” Fiona told him.

  “Who am I?” Nathaniel asked.

  “That’s a question that’s been asked for centuries,” Fiona told him “and will go unanswered for centuries to come. The real question should be, I suppose, ‘Who am I in the eyes of Management?’”

  “Fine,” Nathaniel rephrased his question “Who am I in the eyes of Management?” There was a look in his weary eyes that projected his lack of faith in the system.

  “You’re a muse of the Second Generation,” Fiona told him, “and our caretaker.”

  “Caretaker?”

  “Would you follow me please?” Fiona offered an arm.

  Nathaniel sat down the jar of dandelions, taking her arm. They crossed around the kerosene lamps past an alcove of framed painted portraits. Eventually they entered into the stretch of the agency’s hallway.

  “Since you’ve been absent, Nathaniel, Management has taken strides to ensure the everlasting integrity of our department.” As Fiona said these words, they walked by several doorless offices that held their own unique postboxes from various continents. The white-washed offices housed more people who had been employed in the interim of his absence. Nathaniel peered inside to see his comrades’ faces.

  “You’ll find that we no longer require the use of Victrola record players or spinning discs with unique melodies to travel back and forth through time. As an alternative, Management has devised a more durable method.”

  Nathaniel was then introduced to a new arrangement: Lite-Brite boards, assorted colored pegs and envelopes.

  “But I don’t know anything about being a muse or a caretaker,” he told her, inspecting a grid of inserted pegs.

  “When Management puts His select few into these positions, the muses are given an exclusive perspective on their lives. Embrace the opportunity that Management has given. You may surprise yourself in learning what you’re capable of.” Fiona stopped by an office door. “And know, Nathaniel, Management is with you. You may occasionally find support from the others, but you must not forget to find the support in yourself. Believe that you’re destined for magnitude and it will find you. With that being said I’ve procured a housewarming gift.”

  Fiona motioned into the office where there was a desk, inbox and Lite-Brite board. Standing behind the desk was an elderly woman with stringy ashen hair. A necklace with an opal stone was fastened across her pasty neck. The multicolored stone resembled a mass of forever fossilized tiny star clusters. She wore a white cotton lace dress with a floral pattern of colorless daisies. But it was the woman’s face that Nathaniel instantly recognized.

  “You’re here,” Nathaniel said to Evangeline.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Cauliflower.”

  “Yes, Nathaniel,” Fiona told him. “Evangeline has been brought here as a Second Generation muse as well. There’s no reason why you can’t finish out your work, and solve the matter as to who you are in Management’s eyes, in cooperation.”

  Nathaniel took to his muse work inspiring clients to the best of his ability. He gargled sips of water from the water cooler as Fiona had personally instructed. He provided nearly seven hundred catalysts to those in need. In the role of caretaker, Nathaniel was introduced to a sound studio where his narration was recorded for Management’s instructional videos. Nathaniel transposed the music from the Victrola records onto staff paper; the notes were later translated into what would eventually become the Encyclopedia of Destinies. His office was the rotunda in which he had woken. He worked alongside the kerosene lamps and framed portraits of the muses and steadily developed into the centrically important component of Management’s design. The tingling sensation in his fingers returned intermittently and Nathaniel, coming to terms that the tingling would never completely leave him as long as there were muses to paint, documented the faces of the newcomers.

  While his work ethic flourished, Nathaniel’s love affair with Evangeline deteriorated. The blatant actuality of his workload presented itself in an upsetting disenchantment. Though Nathaniel tried to apologize for his lack of attention, Evangeline’s trust in him, based on his actions during his second life, was severely diminished. She was cold to his advances. She avoided eye contact with him as they passed one another in the hall or occupied the same conference room during staff meetings. The more he exhausted himself in keeping her near, the more Evangeline withdrew into her own reclusive despondency.

  “Do you love me, Mademoiselle?” Nathaniel asked her one day after she returned from an inspiration.

  For a brief second she hesitated. “You know I do.”

  “What can I do to make everything right?” Nathaniel begged. “What can I do to bring us to where we were?”

  “We can’t be what we were,” Evangeline whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “Monsieur, look at me! I’m old. I’m tired. And with every colored peg, I pray to Management that I can finally shed this skin . . . this cage!”

  “You’re as beautiful as you were on the day that we were introduced!”

  “In which life?” Evangeline asked, exasperated. “In which timeline?”

  Nathaniel opened his mouth to answer but Evangeline went on with her statement.

  “Monsieur, from your perspective, your life is a series of splashes in scattered puddles after a rainstorm! You’ve jumped from one life to another so effortlessly that you don’t know what it’s like to have lived a single life for as long as I have!”

  “You’re wrong,” Nathaniel countered in a calm voice. “I don’t see my life as a series of puddles. You may have lived one life, but I’ve lived a total of two lives with two sets of memories. I’ve twice encountered the Dandelion Sisters to be with you. It hasn’t been as carefree as you think, Mademoiselle. But I’ve lived it and I don’t regret a moment.” He then ventured to ask, “Do you have any regrets?”

  Evangeline propped herself against the edge of her desk for support with her hands gripping the edge. “Sometimes,” she told him.

  “You could live to be over a thousand and I’d still love you,” Nathaniel earnestly told her with a soft and reassuring voice. “There’s no one I’ve loved more than you. That will never change. I can’t tell you enough how sorry I am for breaking my promise to you that night in your chateau. You deserve more than what I have to offer but, I can assure you, from this moment forward, I’ll strive to show you how beautiful you are. Both in appearance and within. I don’t mean by makeup or a Fountain of Youth. I’ll transform this office into the most lavish atmosphere no one’s ever thought possible. The transformations wi
ll be inspired by your beauty.”

  Nathaniel kept his word to Evangeline. The white-walled offices were replaced by improvised locales filled with splendor. He started with Evangeline’s office in which he laid stones, erected walls and hoisted vaulted buttresses in her honor. What had once been a drab workplace with four walls was now a collection of stone cathedrals so cleverly created that its imposing implementation would have mystified the graphic artist M.C. Escher. In the same mode as a stone carver working a slab of marble with a chisel and hammer, Nathaniel constructed similarly unique breathtaking offices above and around them.

  Nathaniel saved Fiona’s office for last. As he stood creating an art gallery atmosphere with polished floors and bare walls with empty frames, Fiona stood beside him like a contractor’s assistant. The details poured from his mind and manifesting so fluidly Nathaniel wondered if perhaps he was channeling Management’s inventiveness in the initial moment of Creation. That perhaps he was tapping into the source like a rig finding oil beneath endless ocean depths.

  As he hoped, Evangeline’s spirits lifted when encountering these displays.

  But his visions didn’t stop there. Nathaniel reinvented the unexciting existing retirement parties with more pizzazz. Retirements which had once been a simple stroll across a stage, a handshake and the handing of discharge orders, grew into an array of awe-inspiring cherry blossoms and the passing of planets and stars. Public speakers shared their professions including, but not limited to: perfume makers, glassblowers and the earliest astronomers with their telescopes. Those who were brought to the office to entertain the muses were astute historians, exotic fire-eaters and prolific authors. They were visionaries, inventors and philosophers . . . and they moreover proved to be a distraction. Amidst Nathaniel’s handling, he misplaced sight of whom he was building it all for and was too consumed in his own craftiness that he almost forgot about Evangeline entirely.

  In his down time, Nathaniel busied himself trying to transpose a single unintelligible composition from a broken Victrola record. Where other records contained melodious masterpieces, this precise record held an immeasurably wrecked song. It looked as if it had been shattered and re-glued. Its surface had been scratched and worn which worsened the skipped notes of the already fractured melody. It dawned on Nathaniel that this record was the very same disc that he had shattered in his previous visit! To make matters worse, the lyrics thumped on a name, which repeated over and over: