InkStains January

by John Urbancik

dangerous walk, but I need the air. I’ve got a three-room walk-up the far side of the neighborhood. Got my chair in one, and the needles, my whole kit, a half dozen pictures of my skin work on the wall.

  That’s not the only thing I need the ink for. In my bedroom, I’ve got a small desk, something of a luxury these days, and a quill. I’ve got plenty of blank paper – that’s easier to come by than the ink – and a stack of poetry I’ve never shown Cassie. Maybe now I will.

  27 January

  Soldiers move through the trees – closing in on their target, weapons raised – in a blanket of unnatural silence. Their faces are greased, their guns cleaned, their boots encrusted with mud. They move in waves. There must be two hundred of them.

  Beyond them, forming a perimeters, several Blackhawks hover – ready to fly, ready to provide support, missiles loaded and anxious for their brief freedom.

  Further out, a half dozen fighter jets and a half dozen bombers and a half dozen troop carriers keep an inconspicuous distance. They fly low, so as not to be seen, and are mostly of the stealth variety, so as to avoid other forms of detection.

  Off shore, there’s an aircraft carrier, two battleships, and a variety of support vessels on the surface, and untold numbers of submarines beneath it.

  In short, they’re not taking chances.

  Their target is a simple cabin. It’s not unoccupied. There’s a girl sitting at a table, both hands on that surface, eyes closed so she can better see. There’s a boy pacing back and forth, back and forth. He’s angry, frustrated, tired, hungry, cold, and frightened – same as the girl.

  He says, “This is stupid.”

  She says, “Quiet.”

  The soldiers come closer. The boy goes to the window but refrains from pulling the curtain aside for a better look. They’ve been in these situations before. It makes him nervous. It only takes one.

  He says, “Is it time yet?” He has a watch, but it only speaks of time in the ways mankind has defined it.

  The girl wears no watch but she knows. She opens her eyes. She lowers her voice. She says, “Yes.”

  The boy smiles. It’s not a joyful smile, but he no longer has to wait. He can stop pacing. He can concentrate on the job at hand. He says, “Good.”

  And the door opens.

  The door is in the floor at the center of the cabin. You might think it leads to a cellar; in a way, and at another time, you might be right. The girl has been saying things in Latin, Babylonian, and Egyptian. She’s been saying things in languages that aren’t dead so much as extinct. This is in response.

  The door opens and the first of the demons emerges. It’s earthen toned, but its eyes burn red and it wields a sword which has, in its time, captured a thousand and one souls.

  The boy’s sword isn’t a physical thing, but a manifestation of his strengths and talents. He swings. It shatters the demon’s sword, releasing its souls, and takes the demon’s head.

  The second demon, bigger, scalier, with sickly yellow eyes and poisonous breath, falls just as quickly.

  The third and fourth demons are twins. One wears a necklace of human fetuses. The other has a chipped tooth.

  The girl says, “Watch out.”

  The fifth demon is bigger than the cellar door. He breaks it apart as he rises, and he roars something awful. He also screeches something awful as it joins the other four dead demons on the ground.

  For a moment, it’s quiet. The boy says, “That can’t be all.”

  The girl says, “It’s not.”

  And it isn’t. The sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth rise together. While they descend upon the boy, a useless gesture, the tenth demon goes for the girl. This is the biggest, slimiest, most vicious thing to rise from this cellar, and it swallows the girl whole before the boy can put down the other four.

  The last three are smaller, but quick, lizard-like, long-tongued, fire-breathing things. Only one goes for the boy. The other two smash their way out of the cabin.

  The soldiers open fire. The helicopters are called in. The twelfth demon takes a hundred rounds of ammunition before it stumbles. The boy is there to finish the job.

  The thirteenth demon takes to the sky and meets the fighter jets. It takes down four before a sidewinder missile finds its way down the demon’s throat. It drops to the earth with a thud. To be certain, the boy severs its head.

  After the demons, a mass of the damned emerge, escaping the bowels of hell. They ignore the boy. The boy ignores them. He’s tired, and they’re the reason the soldiers are here. There must be a thousand crawling out of that hole. They run headlong into the soldiers, taking a rain of bullets but also taking quite a few lives in exchange. They fight for their lives and souls, though both have already been forfeited.

  The boy enters the devastated cabin. There’ll be men to bless and seal and send the soldiers’ spirits to their eternal reward.

  The girl stands by the cellar door wiping gobs of slime and mucus and gunk out of her face. There’s also blood. Not hers. Nothing else comes through the door. The boy walks to the edge, looks down, sees the tenth demon retreating.

  “You turned it inside out.”

  The girl shrugs. It doesn’t much matter what she did to the thing. It won’t return, and the portal has been exhausted. It’s already collapsing upon itself. Quantities of demon blood will do that. When the men come to seal it, it will be permanent.

  The boy says, “I’m hungry.”

  The girl is also. She looks at the boy and says, “You’re filthy.”

  So they’ll get showers before they eat, and maybe they’ll each sleep through the night – at least until the girl locates another unsteady portal.

  One day, she’ll find the last of them.

  28 January

  Do you really want to know the secrets?

  Take the magician – the illusionist, if you will. He performs, he creates tricks of mind and eye, he uses his hands and his skills to make you see a thing that isn’t real and make you believe it. If he’s successful, you walk away with a head full of wonder and amazement. Yet you don’t go simply to have the trick pulled over your eyes – you seek the flaw, the tell, the secret. How is it done? And whether it’s simple skill or elaborate trickery, when you uncover the method, the illusion is spoiled. You don’t marvel at the dexterity or ingenuity. No, you walk away thinking he’s a poor excuse for a magician. He let you in on the secret. The next time you see that same trick, you can say smugly to your companion, “I know how that’s done. I know the truth. Here, let me spoil it for you.”

  I’ll admit I’ve often been behind the scenes. I’ve seen the work that goes into producing a thirty minutes talk show for television. I’ve watched musicians argue with themselves over the inflection of a single note in a song. I’ve seen pencil sketches of what would later become feature length Disney animation. On the other side of that curtain, where all the ropes are being pulled, the smoke generated, the mirrors positioned, there can be a great sense of accomplishment when everything comes together and the target audience walks away without thinking of the method. When the illusion carries the day, you are successful.

  Yet DVD special features, magazines, websites, friends who know or think they know, even television specials with masked magicians, will proudly reveal all the secrets that went into the creation of that illusion.

  If you want to know the secrets, they are out there.

  But they’re not really, are they? Knowing how a thing is done is not the same as knowing how to do a thing. The revelation of a secret doesn’t confer ability, not even real knowledge. If you want the secrets spoiled for you; that’s your choice and you have the means. But if you want to learn the secrets, really learn them, so that you can animate your own films or create your own illusions, that requires study, practice, dedication and devotion.

  It also requires sacrifice. You’ll never see the illusion in the same way. But if you’re sincere and earnest, if you’re building a craft not just exposing its faults, you’ll sta
rt to appreciate the spectacle of the creation. You’ll find joy in the method and satisfaction in its execution.

  Allow me to re-work my initial inquiry: Do you want to know the secrets, or do you want to be a part of creating those secrets?

  29 January

  The street is a snake. It slithers through the city, winding this way and that, full of venom, full of the things it’s consumed. Things are people, good or bad, the snake doesn’t care.

  It’s another Friday night. None of the lights on the snake street seem to work. There are different types of danger. Most people don’t know one from another.

  The snake winds around and through other streets, crossing traffic lights with cars sliding and slipping, never racing, never finding that kind of speed. Storefronts are locked tight after twilight, but there’s always the clubs, the bars, the errant library, the hourly motels, the pizza places, the convenience stores.

  Inside one, there’s a man, big if not strong, just doing his job, answering one guy’s questions as another sneaks up alongside. For a twelve pack of beer, maybe forty bucks out of the till, the secret sneaking guy takes a swing.

  No one goes down. It’s an awkward moment. The would-be thieves flee. The clerk, dazed, isn’t sure what happened.

  When his shift comes to an end, he leaves his company-issued smock and wanders the snake. He’s something of a poet. He sees the beauty in the flaws and the flaws in the beauty. He thinks he knows things, but he’s confused. He