InkStains January

by John Urbancik

mother’s arms. He said, “I truly meant to help.”

  “Help some other way,” she said.

  The thing dissolved into something less solid, less real, and less visible. It slipped away, into the shadows in the alley, away from streetlamps and moonlight. It went away, and it was no longer bored.

  It had done some damage. In the days that followed, flowers bloomed in the gutter, the streetlamps at that corner brightened, the cop found his picture on the front page of the newspaper’s local section, the boys received scholarships for colleges they hadn’t dreamt of applying to, the taxi driver met a woman from Prague who spoke his language – and that woman was, in fact, the young mother. Their romance, after all, was inevitable.

  As to the baby, who had benefited from a scream more honest any it could have affected, became satisfied and quiet and curious and quite capable. The baby grew up to be strong and smart and daring. The baby grew up and discovered things, changed things, created things – and ultimately, the baby grew up to destroy things. The baby’s name was Adam, and Adam had a wicked future in front of him.

  6 January

  Speed. Speed is important. If you can’t get there swiftly, you might as well not go. On the ground, you need a car – and it’s best to be limited by obstacles, whether still or rolling, than by your own engine. If you haven’t got the horses, get off the racetrack.

  That red car there, with its five gears and seven liters and twelve cylinders, with its six hundred and something horses, is fast. It hugs the corners. It gets you there. Your shadow will have to catch up in its own time.

  Go on, take a seat. Enjoy the leather in that cockpit, grip the gear shift, grit your teeth. It’s not like you’ll get another chance. Check the gauges, crank up a heavy blues beat, and drop that thing into gear.

  Don’t you love the smell of rubber burning? A heavy kick on that gas now, this is no time to be timid. You’re controlling a piece of art, modern art, man and machine, style and substance. You can go faster than that.

  It’s open road ahead of you for a hundred miles or more. The other cars, they’ll get out of your way. This is real highway driving, babe. There ain’t a thing to slow you down. Foot to the floor now. That’s it. Kick it up a gear. Make that thing scream.

  Sirens? Don’t be stupid. You’re a god now, a god of speed, you don’t answer to flashing lights. They can’t catch you. One ten, one twenty, one thirty. Faster, babe. You only live once.

  Yeah, those are clouds behind you, and they’re bringing rain, but you can outrace the storm, you can leave the world behind. Speed. You’re pure energy. One sixty. One seventy. Don’t get shy now. It’s only a bend in the road. Don’t you like the way the tires grip the asphalt? That’s not a lot of smoke. You can go faster. It’s practically a straight line.

  One eighty. You’re getting brave. I like what I see. I like the music of that engine and the heavy rhythm pounding out of those speakers. Loud music always goes with speed. One ninety. You’re pushing it now. Just a little more. Coax those horses over the edge.

  Helicopter? So what? It’s up in the air. You’re on the ground, on the street, a flash of lightning, two hundred miles per hour and they haven’t got a chance in Hell of catching you. At least until you run out of gas.

  Until then, drive it like you stole it, babe. ‘Cause after, you’re headed for a long slow stay in a cell.

  7 January

  They chased her into a dark dead-end alley. Her name was Simone. When she turned to face her pursuers, an angry mob, she grinned. There was nothing jovial about her expression. It was pure hunger.

  I’d warned them.

  The mob was about a dozen deep, men mostly, who might have convinced themselves they’d seen something. They hadn’t. Not yet.

  Simone crouched like a tigress. She said, “Stop,” but they did not listen. She did not plead; it wasn’t her life at risk. She drew a long, thin blade from the sheath on her hip. She held it defensively. Poison gleamed on its edge.

  They came at her anyway.

  After she finished with them, when all that remained were steaming corpses and a few final agonized moans, she returned the knife to its home and spoke to me in the shadows. “You’ve been following me.”

  “Watching, yes,” I admitted.

  “You want to know if it’s true, what they say about me.”

  I would’ve smiled for her if I were capable. “I know that it is.”

  Another night, I had seen her talking with a rat, stroking its head, giggling, certain they were alone.

  Another night, I had seen her accept free bread from the stingy baker. He’d slept every day and night since, and slept still, though I didn’t think she knew this.

  Another night, I’d seen her drink whiskey from a bottomless bottle.

  “You want something,” she said.

  “We all want something.”

  “You’re not good at enigmatic,” she told me.

  I stepped out of the shadows so she could see my scars. “I want justice.”

  “You seek vengeance,” she said. “It’s not the same thing.”

  “It’s close enough.”

  “You want my blessing?” she asked.

  “I want your dagger and your poison.”

  She touched the blade sheathed at her hip. “It acts swiftly.”

  The mob had gone silent. I said, “I know.”

  She didn’t ask who had scarred me or how or why. She didn’t ask if there had been another victim, perhaps a mother, a daughter, a lover. She judged me by the expression in my eyes and the determination in my voice. I was unwavering and unafraid. She unhooked the sheath from her hip and handed it over.

  I drew the blade, sheath still in hand, and examined the edge. She’d wiped it clean, but there were traces of blood, and of course the poison.

  “Return it to me here,” she said, “twenty-four hours from now.” The threat was implied. I nodded. I left her to her shadows.

  My plan had been simple. Twenty-four hours later, precisely, I sat cross-legged in my bare room in the dark. My boots were next to me, the knife and its sheath in front of me on the ground.

  Simone entered through the window behind me. I only head her because she allowed it. I knew she would find me. I knew she’d know my name and, by now, my story.

  “My blade is dry,” she said. She hadn’t even retrieved it. “You failed to find your justice.”

  “Justice moves at its own speed,” I told her.

  “You couldn’t find him.”

  “I didn’t look.”

  She knelt in front of me, slid the knife from its leather. The blade glinted. Though dry, it was still potent. “Don’t feel bad,” she said. “Many who quest for vengeance find they haven’t the stomach for it.”

  “He’s dead,” I told her.

  She raised an eyebrow. She put the knife in its sheath. “How?”

  I raised my hands before me, palms up, fingers splayed. “I crushed his windpipe until he could breathe no more.”

  “Then why the knife?” she asked.

  “Comfort.”

  She went out the way she entered. Twenty-four hours later, in a spice shop, I met Simone again. She had bewitched the shopkeeper; he would never put two coherent words together again. She carried a basket full of garlic and rosemary and salt. She said, “This is no coincidence.”

  “No.”

  “You court death.”

  “You won’t kill me,” I told her.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  I didn’t answer. I showed her my empty palms. “Teach me.”

  “Blades?”

  “Secrets.”

  “Poisons?”

  “Spells.”

  She put the knife in my belly. She whispered, “I’ll teach you death.”

  I kissed her. She’d come close enough. She’d done it to herself. The touch of my lips on hers was brief, but it was enough. She drew back. She cursed. She dropped the blade on the floor.

  “I’d found my jus
tice long ago,” I told her, though it was not an explanation. “Now, it’s just for money.”

  She dropped to her knees. She foamed at the mouth. My poisons, like hers, were swift. She tried to cast a spell, but I’d taken that from her, as well.

  My wound would heal. What’s one more scar? And it hadn’t taken me long to devise a counter for her poison of choice once I knew it.

  Simone stopped breathing and her heart stopped beating and she died. I went out to collect the bounty.

  8 January

  When a thousand little gods still walked the earth, when humanity was young and the land fresh, before the ages of silicon or iron or bronze, there was a youth in love.

  Even then, when there was little worth fighting for, when language was new and inept and inexact, there were few things more worth fighting for than love.

  The youth wrestled a bull until it had to yield. The youth diverted the course of a river. The youth dug a hole straight through the mountains with his bare hands.

  The girl did not notice.

  Let me tell you about the girl. You may have heard of Helen, for whom a thousand ships were launched. You may be familiar with Cleopatra. You might have seen filmic images of Brigitte Bardot. But you have never seen beauty such as existed in her face. There has never been so great a beauty.

  She was smart. She knew all the stories. If there had been books, she would have read them all. Until she saw the shapes of unicorns and dragons in the clouds, no one saw anything but cloud. She wore a piece of jade around her neck, which she had found and fashioned herself; before then, no one had ever made jewelry. She discovered salt on a breezy afternoon, discovered pepper over a long weekend. Had there been weaving, she would have woven. Had there been canvasses,