Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles

by David P. Jacobs

  Her father gave one final nod to Annette.

  Nathaniel watched out of respect for her father’s wishes as Annette administered the lethal injection and kissed her ailing dad lovingly on his forehead. Though he wanted to be there with her, Nathaniel knew it was right that she do this by herself.

  A rift in space opened from Adam’s stolen Lite-Brite board. There had been a single peg in the Lite-Brite’s grid when Adam had seized it. And her fiancé turned that specific cream-colored polka-dotted peg now, which tragically belonged to Annette’s father. Living home movies displayed before them which told the story of Annette’s growing relationship with her father from her birth through to her wedding day and settling to this exact moment.

  Nathaniel watched as Annette delivered her father to the moment he had been taken from so that he might seek medical treatment. But Nathaniel knew that Annette Slocum’s father would not be revived and he said a prayer for his soul. As Annette cried, Nathaniel nodded to Adam. Adam stepped forward to receive Annette into his arms. Seeing her fiancé, Annette rushed into his embrace desperate to be held. With Annette’s back to Nathaniel as she was cradled by her fiancé, he stepped out of his own respective shadow. Because he loved Annette and didn’t want to see her hurt more than she already was, Nathaniel refrained from exposing Adam’s truth.

  Nathaniel quietly left the bedroom and revisited a familiar blizzard. From his perspective, Jonas overlooked the untouched wreckage of the motor vehicle accident in the ravine. He stood reverently beside Jonas as the instant replay of Thomas’ life reached its bookmarked half-way point.

  “I couldn’t change it, Broccoli.”

  “It isn’t supposed to be changed, Jonas . . .” Nathaniel sighed. “None of these timelines were supposed to change.”

  Jonas stared into the debris. “I had hoped that you would see my logic eventually, Broccoli. But I see you’re more deluded from Management’s Kool-Aid than I thought. I was trying to build an empire here. One where everyone would be free from the Pharaoh’s decree of slavery. Everyone that Management touches is a blinded bondservant for someone else’s will.”

  “You have it wrong, Jonas. The pharaoh in this story isn’t Management. It’s you who’s the tyrant. And I’ve come to take them all home.”

  “Here we are,” Jonas sighed. “At odds with one another.” He circled around Nathaniel, giving his step-brother a sly smile. “You and I both know how this is going to end, Broccoli.” He approached Nathaniel who reflexively retreated several steps. “Once things are changed in my way, there’ll be no need for Annette as a muse. Because the destiny on that long ago broken vinyl record will be redirected to me. And when I’m in charge, I’ll find Annette in one timeline or another when she’s most vulnerable. I’m going to rip her away from you for good, just as you stole my mother!”

  Nathaniel reached the edge of the ravine and stumbled into the steep slope of the ravine.

  Jonas grabbed him by the scruff of his dress shirt. He dragged Nathaniel to his feet and shoved Nathaniel into the side of the Mercedes where, through the glass of the passenger window, Kathleen’s lifeless face could be seen.

  Nathaniel spied Kathleen and looked at Jonas. Nathaniel’s left glasses lens was cracked.

  “Perhaps, Broccoli, I’ll take Annette when she’s reading a book at the local library. Or when she’s standing over a pie pouring in the filling. Yes, I think that’s more fitting: allowing her a head start on happiness, don’t you?”

  There came a piercing sound that sang through the falling flakes.

  Jonas’ eyes squinted. “That sound . . .” Jonas whispered, thrashing his head to hear it better. It was a solid high-pitched note on the broken wind. “That sound!”

  The pop-up book of Thomas Rothchild violently broke apart beneath them. They were in 252 Sisyphus Hill where the note rose in crescendo. Nathaniel surmised that Jonathan had gained possession of his violin again and had taken a bow to the strings.

  With Jonas’ grip still on his step-brother’s shirt, Nathaniel reached into his pants pocket and took out a repaired, unwound string of Christmas lights from the downstairs family room. He wrapped them around Jonas’ wrists securing the string into a tight, inescapable knot. Jonas looked at the knot. His eyes were furious. Jonas screamed as he tried, and failed, to flee from his bondage. He charged toward Nathaniel, accidentally crashing into the side table with the kerosene lamp. It wobbled as Jonas stumbled but the lamp remained upright. Nathaniel dodged Jonas’ advance and seized the excess string of lights. Jonas lost control of his balance giving Nathaniel the opportunity to guide Jonas toward the center of the room where Jonas collided with the tree. It toppled on top of him. Nathaniel took the seconds to secure Jonas’ feet with a string of lights making him entirely inert. It was Nathaniel’s turn to stand victoriously over Jonas. Instead of looking smug, Nathaniel was more interested in the colored pegs that had been kicked up into the air, suspended like dust mites.

  The fallen colored pegs were rising again, signaling the repairs to Jonathan’s timeline.

  Rumbles of thunder in correlation to the repaired timeline shook beneath his feet. Nathaniel looked down at Jonas who wrestled the knotted Christmas lights. He then found Annette, who stood across the room. Nathaniel wasn’t sure what was going through her head but he hoped that she noticed Jonas’ current vaulted condition. He hoped she carefully considered what this could mean for their severed friendship.

  The violin music played on. Though the first few notes that came from Jonathan’s repaired instrument were questionable, the memories of his violin experience reignited. What had started as a simple series of notes transformed into a brilliant violin partita by Johann Sebastian Bach.

  The direct results from the music were instantaneous. As the solo was played, Luanne was in the presence of her Christmas ornament. Phillip stood from his chair to spy a single star in a patch of night time sky beyond the parting clouds. Doris looked from her vanity. Lyle stirred from his Chesterfield chair. Sarah Milbourne’s eyes opened slightly. With this awareness, more colored pegs rose into mid-air.

  But this small victory was nothing compared to the deadly warfare that lay ahead.

  As Nathaniel and Annette bridged the spatial gap between them, Jonas excitedly spied a pair of polished sharpened shears in one of the overturned holiday totes. Out of the fungal enhancements of his physical memories that had sprung since he’d been here, Jonas found one he could utilize to his advantage and he promptly put it to use.

  CHAPTER 24: THE MIRACLES THAT BROKE FORTH

  Nathaniel was unaware that Jonas had covertly obtained the scissors and therefore he did not invest in a mad dash as he ascended to the upstairs. While Jonathan’s violin music rang throughout the house, Nathaniel found the Weather Wizard on the mantle. He frowned and shook his head slightly at the eye-catching reminiscences it invoked. He recalled, in colorful detail, the farm house from where it had been taken and the lazy summer days young Nathaniel had spent in the company of his great aunt. He recalled the cracked dining room floor as it had buckled from the weight of the heavy table and chairs. He remembered the sweet frozen milk his great aunt had stashed away in the freezer. Nathaniel recollected the afternoon that she had showed him, first-hand, that “by cutting off the butt of a wasp with a kitchen knife does not mean the wasp would instantly die.” These memories of the farm house, and the additional fragments of those slothful childhood days, blinded Nathaniel as he stared at the Weather Wizard’s miniature witch.

  To make matters more problematic, the stack of photo albums on the fainting couch were disturbed in the ruckus and they collided to the floor. One opened on its own to reveal pictures from Nathaniel’s childhood which showed him as an infant being held aloft by the arms of his smiling mother. Flipping the pages, Nathaniel found images of his great aunt. Memories snowballed on Nathaniel: hallucinations of countless bedtime stories that his great aunt had read to him. It had been her active involvement in Nathaniel’s early tot years that igni
ted his intellectual pursuit of reading any book that he could get his outstretched hands on (children’s, classic or otherwise).

  After his great aunt had died many years later, Nathaniel had collected scores of favorite books in his adult life because some of them, when held, brought a sense of safety. When Nathaniel had been alive, he hunted through extensive book drives at the library. He had picked through other people’s collections at short-lived garage sales and frequented off-the-cuff used bookstores, like The Muse’s Corner, to track missing manuscripts for his personal museum. He had never ordered online, nor had he gone to larger chain bookstores to obtain his copies. Half of the fun of acquiring the titles he coveted was procuring the used copies himself.

  By happenstance, he had much success procuring most of the compulsory titles except for one: an illustrated children’s book entitled The Talking Eggs written by Robert D. San Souci. The illustrations were drawn by Jerry Pinkney. Out of all of the books, that one had the most impact. It had been the first book that Nathaniel had remembered his great aunt having read to him.

  *

  A comforting autumn breeze brushed through the farmhouse curtains as she read aloud to Nathaniel from the children’s book. He would forever remember the varying vocal inflections his great aunt adopted in telling the Creole folktale of a sweet girl named Blanche, who lived with her mean older sister Rose and an overbearing mother. While Blanche obediently did the chores around their dilapidated farmhouse, Rose and her mother sat lazily and talked about a fantasized life of riches. They were cruel and downright cross to Blanche ordering her to do duties without lifting a finger themselves. One day, as Blanche fetched water from a nearby well, she kindly aided a mystical old hag in obtaining a cool sip from the liquid deep underground. The water dampened the woman’s cracked lips.

  In the story, upon the main character visiting the old woman’s farm as a reward, Blanche found oddities including misshapen cattle with corkscrews instead of horns and whistling multicolored chickens. Blanche watched in awe as the beldam removed her own head and sat it on her lap to braid her hair properly. Blanche, being an obedient and respectful child, did not laugh or gawk and stare at the crone who put her head back on appropriately. The harridan had been nothing but kind to her so Blanche continued to be a well-behaved young lady. She courteously fetched kindling for the woman’s crazily concocted feast and was genuinely overjoyed by the after-dinner festivities as rabbits in dapper frock coats and colorful trail-train dresses danced on their hind legs to the playing of a banjo. Blanche’s exciting adventures in the magical house commenced the following day as she dutifully helped the benefactress with the morning chores of her own volition.

  Blanche was told she had to return to her own home but, before she did, the woman gave her an unexpected incentive for her good behavior. Blanche was told to go to the henhouse on her way out of the farm and to abide specific instructions: Blanche was allowed to take the eggs that said “Take me” and leave the ones that stated otherwise. Per the request, once Blanche retrieved the “Take me” eggs, she was counseled to toss them over her shoulder while on the road home. She found two types of eggs in the henhouse – plain eggs that sang “Take me” and bejeweled sparkling eggs that screamed “Don’t take me” just as the woman had explained. She implicitly observed the directives given to her, even though Blanche so desperately wanted to take at least one gold one! With the basket of eggs in hand, Blanche waved goodbye to her elderly hostess who, in turn, waved back. And so, at this point in the story, Blanche had the first of many plain eggs she collected and tossed it. She was pleasantly reassured and overly ecstatic with what had poured out from the broken shell.

  *

  “Monsieur Cauliflower, where are you?” Nathaniel waved his interrupted childhood memory to find Annette standing beside him and the open photo album looking concerned. Jonathan’s violin music could be heard from the upstairs living room.

  Nathaniel was suddenly very cognizant of his memories.

  “It’s this house,” he explained while consulting the photo album. “These things are too much of a trigger. I don’t know what’s worse, really. Being present in Purgatory where the memories that define you are ripped apart or standing in a place like this: where there are too many memories to conceivably manage.” He moved his cracked drooping glasses frames to the bridge of his nose. “I’ve spent the majority of my lives remembering when I should have been living.” He said earnestly, “I don’t want to remember so much anymore that I forget to live in these current moments.”

  Annette nodded slowly.

  It was one thing to be told about a personal vice by someone else; it was another to be aware of it for oneself. Nathaniel wanted to believe that he could shed the memories and make a life for himself in the future but he wasn’t sure how to fathom an expedition of that magnitude. The truth was, in anyone’s case, not all memories were meant to be disregarded. The memory of his great aunt’s reading of San Souci’s fable was the model for how Nathaniel would live the rest of his life, assembling himself into the paradigm of a male protagonist.

  *

  “See what’s happening here, Nathaniel?” his great aunt whispered to him at the turn of the page. “As a reward for Blanche’s pleasant behavior, all sorts of things spilled out of those plain broken eggs. An assortment of treasures: diamonds, rubies, coins, beautiful dresses and satin shoes. Even a proud pony and a big old carriage!” She went on to say, “If you live your life as a sweet soul like Blanche, you’ll be as content. Remember, Blanche wasn’t expecting payback for her kindness. Promise me that you’ll live your life as selflessly, and meekly, as Blanche.”

  Young Nathaniel looked to his great aunt and said, with as much belief as his young lungs could muster, “I will, Auntie . . . I will.”

  *

  The current Nathaniel closed the photo album and placed it, and the others from the floor, on the cushion of the fainting couch, thereby actively conceding his domineering recollections.

  Annette opened her clinched fist to show the storyless colored pegs.

  He held each colored peg up to his ear to discern the owners. Within several seconds, he matched the singing destinies of the storyless colored pegs to the uninspired clients.

  The victims of Jonas’ actions, while listening to the serenade, watched as Jonathan’s bow glided along the strings. Nathaniel watched as Annette approached her violinist who immediately acknowledged her. The violinist composed a melody that mimicked the feelings that seeing his muse ignited. The bereaved bachelor Lyle, seeing the face of his ex-wife at the head of the group, approached her with tearful recognition. Even Doris accepted Annette by whispering two words of recognition: “Jiminy Cricket . . .”

  Nathaniel took a deep breath and rotated Jonathan’s peg clockwise signaling the mass departure.

  In the same manner as Blanche’s plain eggs had broken apart to expose her newfound assets, Jonathan’s life filled the space as an appropriate indoor cocktail party of living illustrations from the violinist’s “pop-up book.”

  There were moonlit nights on a pier as the reverberating music from Jonathan’s bow and violin inspired passersby. The pier fit snug into the confines of Jonas and Nathaniel’s childhood home like an impressively constructed hall of mirrors which gave a sense of excessive liveliness to the concomitant, music-filled nightfall. Nearby was the tinkling sound of dropping coins and shuffling creased dollar bills as they were tossed into an open blue-velvet instrument case at Jonathan’s feet. When Jonathan touched the bow to the violin the notes of his improvised compositions were all his own and delivered a message of hope. Even the stars and moon above Jonathan’s head looked down on his hopeful wishes which rested in the underlay of his unrehearsed opuses.

  Another aspect of Jonathan’s life was piled on top of the pier and his nighttime string-induced melodies so that both existed on the same level: visions of a sprawling indoor restaurant where Jonathan bussed and waited tables, rebuilding his self-esteem and makin
g enough money to pay rent for a small one bedroom flat. His flat was another defined visual that promptly added itself to the already chaotic mounting mixture. Still, there was more added: a live well-delivered solo violin recital in a brilliant Siamese Byzantine decorated concert hall. It was followed by thunderous applause of approval during a celebratory banquet of his playing achievements. It ultimately resulted in Jonathan meeting his Juilliard-educated second wife and starting a family with their own respective mismatched beloved instruments.

  In Nathaniel’s experiences as peg and envelope auditor it wasn’t uncommon for him to see a client’s storyline rush with supremacy. What troubled Nathaniel was that Jonathan’s life had expanded in such a violent way and that the plot did not adhere to common chronological order; it built on itself with each of Jonathan’s experiences and, furthermore, did not come to any fixed conclusion. Its intense particulars sustained magnification while paralleling the escalating dexterity of the violinist with each note played.

  With Jonathan’s inspiration already re-established, Annette looked to Nathaniel in a silent appeal to rotate another.

  Nathaniel hoped that, by rotating another peg clockwise, it would indicate the direct closure to Jonathan’s business. In actuality, Jonathan’s life remained as Doris’ story collided on top of it in a horrid combination akin to stripes against plaids. The waitress found herself in a familiar kitchen where Annette supervised the successful creation of funnel cakes. The funnel cakes erupted in multiple precarious sugar-specked columns that rose into the air as Doris’ flourishing attempts at baking the flaky batter were praised. From Nathaniel’s perspective, Annette’s work with the heart-broken waitress was not complete.