Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles

by David P. Jacobs

  As he was sifting through the desk’s violet envelopes, he spotted it resting against the study’s fainting couch. Its typical papered grid stared at him in such an innocent way that it was hard to believe such calamity could arise from a singularly childish toy. But it wasn’t a “childish toy” in Jonas’ world. The apprentice knew good and well that it was a means of transportation. Jonas had taken his cohort on many two-way trips through the pegs that had been inserted.

  He lifted the Lite-Brite and studied it. There was one cream-colored peg with pink polka dots in the grid. The apprentice wondered who the peg belonged to and how Jonas had intended to destroy that particular client’s timeline.

  “What are you doing?” asked a female voice behind him.

  The apprentice spun to find Doris, the woman whom Jonas had handed a Valentine in the graveyard, standing at the door. She was a slender middle-aged woman with coke-bottle thick glasses that magnified her brutally judgmental eyes.

  “You know you’re not supposed to be in here.” Doris folded her arms. “Jonas gave you strict instructions never to enter his study without him being inside it.” She looked at the Lite-Brite board in his hands. “Drop it,” she ordered.

  The apprentice hesitated, considering any possible alternatives.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Doris squinted menacingly. “If you don’t put it back on the couch, I’ll scream bloody murder.”

  The apprentice looked at the Lite-Brite board and considered the reasons why he decided to retaliate against his captor. He thought about the lives that Jonas had forced him to ruin by way of this device. He thought about the rainy days and the lies that had been told during them. He thought about his own ruined timeline and how it had turned him into a person that he didn’t want to be. Complying with this misplaced woman’s misunderstandings wasn’t worth the prolonged aggravation. Something had to be done and, to the apprentice, the time had finally come for him to step to the plate. He may not have known how the exact physics of the muse world worked but he knew there was a kidnapped muse bound in the basement who, once freed from captivity, would know how to utilize the Lite-Brite to get them to safety.

  He bolted for the door with the Lite-Brite in hand.

  Doris, turning her back to him and focusing on the hallway, screamed Jonas’ name in such a shrill banshee-like roar that it could have shattered the windows. The apprentice, without thinking of a more logical solution, seized the banker’s lamp. Its chord was snapped from the wall. Like the candlestick in the church, he drew it over Doris’ head bringing an end to her shouting. As Doris’ body fell and the apprentice heard Jonas’ footsteps approaching, he looked at the blunt object. He dropped it with an audible clang. As the fireplace cinders fizzled into thin trails of smoke casting the study into blackness, he considered the demonic acts he had performed in this whole ordeal. He hoped that this act would help to reclaim him his worthiness.

  *

  Annette’s physical features didn’t change even though the past life memories of Evangeline resurfaced in a surge of extravagant imagery. She was outwardly disorientated, scrambling to collect as many recollections as she could to construct a complete depiction. Nathaniel aided the piecing fragments, keeping a stream of informative prattle.

  “I knew that the only way to know for sure if you were Evangeline’s reincarnation was if I looked into your eyes and witnessed the truth first-hand. You were an antisocial bookish housewife and to even get close enough to you, let alone look into your eyes, was going to be an impossible feat. The only time we were in close proximity was when you regularly dropped your books through the return slot at the circulation desk. One afternoon the sliding glass door opened. There you were. You stuffed the library books into the return slot and whisked past so speedily I didn’t get a chance to look into your eyes for confirmation. All I could say to you that day was ‘thank you.’ Off you went in search of more library books. I followed you that day but you were agitated by a woman in a cream-colored pants suit, our Head Muse Fiona, who was also trailing after you. I watched as you crouched by the magazine rack by the front sliding doors in an attempt to escape her. I watched as you rushed outside, car keys in hand, to avoid interaction with your pursuer. I didn’t want to implicate myself by accosting another married woman for my own justified happiness. I held your returned library books and considered your life with Lyle and wondered if you were happy. Then there came a screeching of tires and the shouting of pedestrians. I fought my way through the growing crowd of people at the street. You had been struck, and killed, by a blue Cadillac. Your eyes were open giving me verification. A single orange Lite-Brite peg rolled out from a violet envelope and landed by your left ear. Fiona, who had dropped the envelope, stared at me. I remembered her from my previous visits to the afterlife department. She nodded at me as if to say ‘Yes, Mr. Cauliflower. She’s Evangeline, and she’s in my care again.’ Then Fiona, the orange peg and the violet envelope were gone. There was an increasing wail of approaching ambulance sirens as your lifeless body faced Heaven.

  “Thomas was the prosecuting attorney in your trial. I was there in the courtroom as the judge declared the imprisonment sentence of vehicular manslaughter on an amateur violinist, named Jonathan. Life post-trial was like a broken music box with a flat-toned melody. I visited your grave and placed asphodel petals on your tombstone every Memorial Day. Jonas took your death harder than I did. He clung to your obituary with an unhealthy obsession keeping it tucked inside the cover of Dorian Gray. Perhaps he believed your death to be the end of an era – an epoch of sunlit summers, puzzlingly repaired library books and compelled power over those seemingly weaker than him. His obsession with your death led Roberta to file for divorce and take custody of his kids. She remained in the house while Jonas rented an apartment closer to the weather station. He became crueler than he had been in our youth which incontrovertibly showed when you resurfaced in his life in 2012. As you were there inspiring the bookseller Adam Mansfield, he watched you hoping to understand how after three years you had resurrected. Jonas pretended that he was out for your best interest but I was convinced that he had resumed his work of asserting control. When he blackmailed you with your obituary, Jonas wasn’t expecting you to retaliate. You stole your obituary from him in a spinning, victorious battle!

  “He told me this one afternoon right before our last thunderstorm together. I had a suspicion that you’d returned as a muse and that he had seen you in a client’s life. But I kept this from him. By telling Jonas this information it would have given him the power he had dreadfully desired. When it was obvious that Jonas wasn’t getting anywhere he switched tactics. As the atmosphere grew increasingly dark with the storm on the horizon, Jonas looked through the front door’s window. He wore a black suit, matching tie and a light gray shirt. His eyes were filled with lethal acrimony. Jonas’ hair had turned gray over the years and crows feet had formed around his eyes. I, on the other hand, was completely bald, and sported the same brown glasses, tie and suspenders, looking as I do at present.

  “‘You know, Broccoli,’ Jonas told me on that day ‘I know about your affair with Roberta.’

  “To which I asked apprehensively, ‘Do you?’

  “Jonas nodded, turning his face slightly to mine. ‘It’s been a common thread for us, eh, Broccoli? In your seven lives, we’ve seen and suffered one another in many forms; you as my apprentice in 1808, then you again in the twenties as a Russian immigrant and the subsequent four lives in between. We’ve met many times and, near the close, we conclude with me murdering you.’

  “I could sense that there was a part of Jonas that wished it didn’t have to be so. No one is ever truly evil, Mrs. Slocum. No matter how bad a person is, there’s still a side that harbors honor, even if short-lived.

  “Jonas went on in saying ‘Why must we endlessly orbit this destructive path throughout time?’

  “To which I responded, ‘Perhaps, you can pray about it. Management may give you the answer.’

&
nbsp; “‘Because you won’t tell me. Will you Broccoli?’ Jonas sneered. ‘You know the answers, and yet you deliberately act ignorant.’ He turned to me and approached slowly. ‘Tell me the answers, Broccoli.’ Lightning flashed outside the window followed by a distant roll of thunder. We were nose to nose. I instinctively retreated a few steps but stopped and stood my ground. ‘Well, Broccoli? What’s it going to be? Are you going to tell me what I want to know or aren’t you?’”

  Nathaniel took a breath.

  Annette was speechless while listening to her storyteller.

  “I took the answers to the grave,” Nathaniel went on. “My seventh life ended with me being murdered by the painter. Only instead of being thrown from the attic loft of his French chateau, or being mercilessly choked and burned by the flames from an overturned kerosene lamp, our pertinacious dueling ended in amateur swordplay. I died on freshly mowed grass stabbed by a serrated garden trowel on the rain-dappled backyard lawn. As the grown Pampas grass in my garden shifted in the wind, and as Jonas stood over me lit by lightning, my eyes remained on the blackened storm-filled sky. All I could think about was you and how, once I allowed my life to slip, we would be reunited.”

  *

  A spark of sunlight pierced the storm clouds in the last waking moments of Nathaniel’s seventh life. Though he remained on his back for several moments absorbing his lofty internal surroundings while staring at the domed ceiling’s oculus, Nathaniel knew he was securely delivered to his branded afterlife office. His old acquaintances from the past seven lives were there to greet him: the ghostly paintings, the shining kerosene lamps, a collection of fountain pens, various polished globes, volumes of destiny-filled encyclopedias, along with a hefty soaring compilation of repaired library books. It was methodically organized into a private gallery of memorials referencing bygone days.

  “I hope it pleases you how I’ve arranged everything,” Fiona told him, entering the open doorway of his office. “Seven lifetimes is a long time to go searching for someone,” Fiona said with a sigh. “But I suppose in my mind the story of you and Evangeline is almost as common as a modern day muse filling a Lite-Brite board.”

  “I won’t be reincarnating again,” he told her while standing. “I found her.”

  “Have you?” Fiona bore a look of confusion.

  “Didn’t you take her with you?” Nathaniel asked with his head tilted questioningly. “Evangeline, Annette Slocum rather, died in front of the local library after being struck by a Cadillac.”

  It was clear that Fiona had no recollection of the accident to which he referred.

  Having sat through the orientation video in which he familiarized himself with his work, he passed by each office of the current muses. Nathaniel realized that time worked differently in the department. Even though he may have seen Annette’s passing, that didn’t mean it had necessarily happened yet in the agency’s timeline. Nathaniel watched as a mistrusting Harriet had, moments before, been brought to the afterlife as an Eighth Generation muse. Nathaniel took a distant interest in a Seventh Generation muse, Lucas Richardson, who had barely dotted his own Lite-Brite board with designated colored pegs.

  Nathaniel, as the caretaker, reassigned colored pegs to his fellow muses. He delivered white and violet envelopes to the various postboxes. He revisited the pleasure of cooking for his peers. But no matter how many colored pegs fell into his inbox, or how many envelopes he delivered, or the countless hours he spent in the kitchen practicing his stylishly alluring gastronomies, Nathaniel relentlessly thought of Annette and pondered as to when their timelines would eventually coincide. Nathaniel scripted his memoirs and locked the secrets into a glass cabinet secured by a ten-digit combination lock. In so doing, Nathaniel healthily compartmentalized his feelings ridding his mind from the fixation.

  When Annette arrived as a Ninth Generation muse, Nathaniel was busy clearing the plates from his recent dish of chicken Marsala. The dishes were virtually empty except for a spot of vegetable oil in one, a lone mushroom in another and a bowl that housed a single piece of discarded lettuce. Though he would have normally bussed these used China plates, glass goblets, and silverware, Nathaniel’s attention was elsewhere as Fiona said behind him “She’s here.” Hearing these words he abandoned the plates and joined Fiona by the waiting room door.

  Fiona looked at Nathaniel and said “Are you ready to see your friend again face to face?”

  Nathaniel whispered “Yes.”

  But when Fiona turned the doorknob and held the door wearing a managerial smile for Annette, Nathaniel suddenly felt ill and closed himself in the bathroom locking the door. Though he felt foolish for behaving out of involuntary reflex, Nathaniel remained in the bathroom until he heard the instructional video replay. And, as the video replayed in the conference room, Nathaniel entered Annette’s office where he poured out swarming emotions. The passion for her that he had kept was projected in the minute details that he swiftly manifested as Annette’s private empty library.

  Nathaniel kept his distance while waiting for the perfect moment for introductions – a moment which, to his chagrin, never came. Annette attached herself to one of her favorite clients: a living bookseller named Adam Mansfield who worked in an underground shop called The Muse’s Corner. Annette had feelings for this client and often visited him by rotating his peg clockwise. The more visits that she paid the bookseller, the more Nathaniel felt a beating to his pride. Nathaniel was consumed with juvenile jealousy and was disappointed that he had not gotten the courage to say or do anything to attract her. As Annette neared her retirement, and as she rotated the colored peg to spend her final evening in the loving arms of Adam Mansfield, Nathaniel administered his revenge. In her absence, he stuffed sixty-eight violet envelopes into her postbox. Nathaniel knew that his anger should have been directed at himself but he felt a sense of vindication nevertheless. The love that he had for her was poisoned by the fact that she hadn’t known who Nathaniel had been to her, therefore did not reciprocate.

  It was during the last of those sixty-eight violet envelopes that Annette traveled back in time to inspire a young version of Nathaniel in the root cellar. Annette’s sudden realization of Nathaniel’s involvement in her life led Management to request that he set up a table of the repaired library books during her upcoming retirement party. Not to disappoint Management’s wishes, even though his respect for their demands was low as of late, Nathaniel obliged. He stood at a table as the sun rose on the morning of Annette’s retirement party. He listened as the cherry blossoms from nearby trees shifted. The hope of meeting Annette and showing her how he repaired her library books seemed empty. Nathaniel believed that, even if he showed his trick, she would have thanked him and parted company with another man on her mind. That thought sickened him.

  *

  “‘Something came up,’” Annette interjected at this point. Her stare was unwavering. As he had been telling her this information, Nathaniel served bowls of the Puttanesca, placing them on the church kitchen’s rectangular countertop. “That’s what Fiona told me during my retirement party when I stopped by your table to find that you weren’t there.”

  “Yes, something did come up,” Nathaniel nodded. “I realized that, no matter what I did, we were never destined to connect. So I left the table and walled myself into my office where I sat out the remainder of the party cleaning kerosene lamps.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I wanted you to be happy,” Nathaniel explained. “Meeting you would have complicated things. Though you retired and reincarnated into a woman named Annette Redmond I knew that you would be happy. I made it a conscious effort to work with Management in putting you in a life where your joy would be guaranteed. Adam Mansfield reincarnated into a man named Adam Eustace McCloud. You two met under the light of a solitary street lamp on Christmas Eve as he carved a muse out of ice. I watched as you two started a normal life. It was the best gift I think I could have given my dear Mademoiselle Evangeline: a gift that you once
asked me for – a life without me and of the misadventures that tended to accompany. The first, and last, time we saw each other before this debacle was on that same snowy Christmas Eve in the graveyard. I waved at you. And you waved at me. I knew that I could find you and look in on you whenever I wanted and, though it hurt, I knew you were safe with Adam McCloud. Safe and satisfied.”

  Nathaniel fell silent. There were mere centimeters between them but they didn’t touch. Annette’s wedding dress was a reminder of her pending vows. Nathaniel, being the hopeless gentleman, politely respected that boundary.

  A faint rumble of distant thunder brought Nathaniel to business. “Ah, I see this inspiration will be coming to an end soon,” he said while turning to a chilled bottle of Zinfandel. “We’ll have plenty of time to enjoy our meal before that happens, thankfully.”

  “Inspiration?” Annette was jolted.

  “Yes, Mrs. Slocum, we’re in an inspiration.” Nathaniel uncorked the wine and poured several stemmed glasses which Management had also provided. He seized one of the glasses and swirled the wine a few times. He sipped and added, “Every colored peg contains a client that needs our special touch, as you know. This peg is no different.”

  “I’m confused.” Annette studied Nathaniel. “Who’s the client in this drawn-out inspiration? Was it the motel lobby manager that we met?”