by Peter Straub
I try to snap his head to one side and break his neck, but the mitts give slightly and the neck groans but refuses to snap. There is a flurry of bodies and Skarmus is dragged away and other hands are holding me down, pulling the mask off, holding my own head down. I see the brief glint of the long needle, feel it pricked into my skull, just above the rim of my eye.
“An inch more,” says Brother Johanssen. “A simple rotation of the wrist, brother, and you shall have little relation to any body at all. Is that what you choose?”
I move my eyes no, feel the pressure of the needle.
“Are you telling me that all our time has been wasted?” He looks at me long, without expression, the needle an everpresent pressure, a red blot now drawing itself into my vision. “It is too late for a full cure,” says Brother Johanssen. “Your body is too stubborn in its ways. We can redirect it but slightly.”
Brother Johanssen gestures and I feel the needle slick back out, see it fluxed and dripping blood, moving away. There lies Skarmus, his jaw blistered black and blue. He is silent for once.
“The Resurrection then,” says Brother Johanssen as blood curls over my eye. “This is all we can do. May God forgive us.”
II. SHOE
In the polished ceiling of the Living, in the few moments I have free of the mask, I see the flesh above my eye gone dark and turgid, swelling like a second eye. Below it the original eye wavers and falls dim. In a few awakenings its vision is altogether gone, the enormous fist of death beginning to open in its place.
They sedate me and scrape the eye from the socket and drain the ichor from it and scald the socket clean. Skarmus speaks muffled, morphined, his jaw wrapped, his voice mumbled.
I was right, he means to say. I was right all along.
His gestures of impediment have subsided, seem half-hearted at best. I am allowed to touch each door frame largely unimpeded, move in my wires and chains into the Resurrection at last.
It is a simple station, a single room, a low light in the center of it. Brother Johanssen is already there, waiting, at attention, his simple garments exchanged for brighter brocaded robes.
I am made to sit. I am then strapped in place and into a head-brace locked so I am forced to regard him.
“These are the initial terms of the Resurrection,” he says:
Top Lift
Eyelet
Aglet
Grommet
Vamp
He holds it up, cupped in his hand. He displays it in the light.
“Do you see the curve here?” asks Brother Johanssen a few sessions later, tracing along the side. “Employ your imagination. What does it conjure up?”
They are trying to change you, whispers Skarmus.
“On a woman’s body, brother. What does it recall?”
He brings it close, traces the curves, holds it close to my face, describes the minor shadings and traces. When I close my eyes, Brother Johanssen commands Skarmus to hold them open, both of them, the missing and the whole. He is touching the shoe, caressing it, speaking still in a way that makes the shoe steam and glimmer, glister in the odd light as if threatening to become something else.
Quarter, he says.
Cuff.
Counter.
Heel.
When I wake he is there, leaning over me, my jaw already screwed open. “Do you accept the fruits of your new faith?” he asks.
“What?” I say.
“What?” he says. He stands and begins to weave away. “What?” he repeats, “What?”
Throat, someone says behind me.
Tongue, someone says.
He dims the central light, disappears himself somewhere behind me. A square of light as big as myself appears, flashes onto the wall before me.
You are in it, says Skarmus. Too late to step back now.
The square of light goes dark, is exchanged for the image of the forepart of a woman’s shoe, the dip between the first and second toe captured in the low cleft of the vamp. It flashes away and is replaced by pallid white flesh, the dip of a dress, the slow curve and fall of the woman’s body.
There may be a resemblance, says Skarmus. Yet it is entirely superficial.
The images are flashed back and forth, one replacing the other soon with such speed it becomes difficult to know where one image stops, the other begins.
Breast, someone says.
Cleave.
Box.
I hear the clatter behind me, the square of light pulsing and then a shoe fading up and angling in and transforming into a woman. Then the shoe again and a difference place, followed by a section of the woman. The clatter, swirling motes of dust bright in the beam of light.
It is her breast, its breast, her feet, its foot, her neck and shoulder, its neck and shoulder, cleave, cleave, thigh, thigh, box, box, counter, counter, welt, welt, looping to begin all over again.
Skarmus is speaking filth into my ear.
The film is sped double time, looped over and over. In my good eye I am seeing the parsed shoe, in my missing eye the parsed woman. At some point there stops being a difference.
Sole.
I feel his hands through my hair. I test my bonds, find them tight.
Every shoe was once a woman, he says. A shoe is a woman in a new body. There is, for your purpose, no distinction.
Welt, he whispers. Box.
When I open my eye there is a flash of gold, pendulant, turning back and forth above me. I try to lift my head but cannot lift it. I do not feel the pressure of the jawscrew, yet my jaw will not move.
There is the steady sweep of Brother Johanssen’s voice, speaking slowly and calmly and with authority, his body invisible except, above the flush of gold, a pale and disembodied hand. Skarmus is nowhere to be seen or heard.
His cadence changes, his words coming slower, matching the rhythm of the swinging gold. “One,” he intones. “Two. Thr—”
I have lately been experiencing some uncertainty as to who I am and where and when. I am becoming strange to myself, caught somehow outside my own skin.
I hear a noise like the snap of a bone.
I am in the Resurrection, not knowing how I have come to be here. The padding and restrictions have been removed from my arms and instead I hold in my hands the subject of all my time in the Resurrection.
I stand still, holding it, observing it. I begin to stroke softly, my heart beating harder, until I feel my arms overwhelmed by other hands and the object is falling out of my hands, and I am crying out into the closed surface of a mask.
The mouth flap is tightened, and I feel the breath slowly leaving me. The baffles are fitted over my hands. Brother Johanssen moves until I can see him through the eyelets of the mask. He is smiling. He has picked the subject up, holds it suspended from a single finger, swaying, near my face.
“Dear brother,” he says, leaning forward as my air gives out. “Welcome to the fold.”
They hold me down and in place and strip all the apparati from me piece by piece until I am bare and shivering and in a heap on the ground, lost without the sweat and smell of baffles and rubber and leather and wire. They carry me by the arms and legs, toss me. There is the moment of collision with the floor, a sensation more naked and complete than anything I have felt in some time.
As I am getting up, stumbling in my body, I hear the sound of the door snapping to.
I can barely walk, the ground wavering under my feet.
I am, I know, in the Resurrection. In the cast light, centered, a woman of red leather, sleek and low cut, satined inside, without eyelets, aglets, grommets, perhaps twelve inches from heel to toe box. She is lovely, her shank perfectly curved, needle heeled, her vamp v-shaped and elongated.
I am moving forward. I reach and pick her up in my hand, touch her against my long encased skin.
After that I cannot explain what happens. There is a rush of dizziness and when I awake she is destroyed, strips of leather and thin wood and metal are scattered about, her heel broken off and fre
e. There is, as always, tremendous regret and shame.
I turn to see Brother Johanssen and Skarmus together, complicitous in the doorway. I lift my shoulders, try to think of something to say. Then the door opens and all the brothers are upon me in a rush, ladening me down, binding me again.
Each day I am stripped to my skin, left alone with her. I may, Brother Johanssen tells me, remain with her as long as I do not destroy her.
I do what I can to resist. I make conversation. I resist, for a time, touching her. When I do touch her it is merely slightly, turning her, attempting to perceive, briefly, a new aspect. I let things build slowly, but in the end am always lying spent, strips and fragments of her scattered about me.
Yet each day she is there again, the same, velvet on the outside, silken innards. I can destroy her, but she keeps returning. It is, after all, the Resurrection.
That’s right, says Skarmus. Keep destroying it.
It? I wonder.
The film gets stuck. I watch the image darken, bloom black and dissolve into light. I am not the only one who destroys.
There is some confusion in me about who I am, what I desire.
I keep destroying her. I am not changed, my body just as wayward as ever. Yet they are happier with me. I understand none of it.
Then I am stripped and thrown in again, as if to the lions. Yet this time there is no woman, only an odd and curious creature, the same size as myself, much like myself, only not a man. It grimaces, brushes back its hair. It is all familiar somehow.
“This is your body’s test,” says Brother Johanssen. “Do not fail us.”
I do not know what is expected of me. I approach slowly. It makes no move, seems at ease, relaxed. It begins to mumble words that I can’t quite string together.
Breast, throat, quarter. Suddenly I can see the woman hidden in it, luminous, the leather and satin cached just beneath hair and teeth and skin.
Through her skin I brush her vamp, finger the damp welt. They cannot conceal her from me in such a carapace. In a minute, I know, I will have shucked the carapace and she will be strips of leather, her box torn apart and open, her throat undone, all of her gone.
Louise’s Ghost
Kelly Link
Two women and a small child meet in a restaurant. The restaurant is nice—there are windows everywhere. The women have been here before. It’s all that light that makes the food good. The small child—a girl dressed all in green, hairy green sweater, green T-shirt, green corduroys, and dirty sneakers with green-black laces—sniffs. She’s a small child but she has a big nose. She might be smelling the food that people are eating. She might be smelling the warm light that lies on top of everything.
None of her greens match except of course they are all green.
“Louise,” one woman says to the other.
“Louise,” the other woman says.
They kiss.
The maitre d’ comes up to them. He says to the first woman, “Louise, how nice to see you. And look at Anna! You’re so big. Last time I saw you, you were so small. This small.” He holds his index finger and his thumb together as if pinching salt. He looks at the other woman.
Louise says, “This is my friend, Louise. My best friend. Since Girl Scout camp. Louise.”
The maitre d’ smiles. “Yes, Louise. Of course. How could I forget?”
Louise sits across from Louise. Anna sits between them. She has a note book full of green paper, and a green crayon. She’s drawing something, only it’s difficult to see what, exactly. Maybe it’s a house.
Louise says, “Sorry about you know who. Teacher’s day. The sitter canceled at the last minute. And I had such a lot to tell you, too! About you know, number eight. Oh boy, I think I’m in love. Well, not in love.”
She is sitting opposite a window, and all that rich soft light falls on her. She looks creamy with happiness, as if she’s carved out of butter. The light loves Louise, the other Louise thinks. Of course it loves Louise. Who doesn’t?
This is one thing about Louise. She doesn’t like to sleep alone. She says that her bed is too big. There’s too much space. She needs someone to roll up against, or she just rolls around all night. Some mornings she wakes up on the floor. Mostly she wakes up with other people.
When Anna was younger, she slept in the same bed as Louise. But now she has her own room, her own bed. Her walls are painted green. Her sheets are green. Green sheets of paper with green drawings are hung up on the wall. There’s a green teddy bear on the green bed and a green duck. She has a green light in a green shade. Louise has been in that room. She helped Louise paint it. She wore sunglasses while she painted. This passion for greenness, Louise thinks, this longing for everything to be a variation on a theme, it might be hereditary.
This is the second thing about Louise. Louise likes cellists. For about four years, she has been sleeping with a cellist. Not the same cellist. Different cellists. Not all at once, of course. Consecutive cellists. Number eight is Louise’s newest cellist. Numbers one through seven were cellists as well, although Anna’s father was not. That was before the cellists. BC. In any case, according to Louise, cellists generally have low sperm counts.
Louise meets Louise for lunch every week. They go to nice restaurants. Louise knows all the maitre d’s. Louise tells Louise about the cellists. Cellists are mysterious. Louise hasn’t figured them out yet. It’s something about the way they sit, with their legs open and their arms curled around, all hunched over their cellos. She says they look solid but inviting. Like a door. It opens and you walk in.
Doors are sexy. Wood is sexy, and bows strung with real hair. Also cellos don’t have spit valves. Louise says that spit valves aren’t sexy.
Louise is in public relations. She’s a fundraiser for the symphony—she’s good at what she does. It’s hard to say no to Louise. She takes rich people out to dinner. She knows what kinds of wine they like to drink. She plans charity auctions and masquerades. She brings sponsors to the symphony to sit on stage and watch rehearsals. She takes the cellists home afterward.
Louise looks a little bit like a cello herself. She’s brown and curvy and tall. She has a long neck and her shiny hair stays pinned up during the day. Louise thinks that the cellists must take it down at night—Louise’s hair—slowly, happily, gently.
At camp Louise used to brush Louise’s hair.
Louise isn’t perfect. Louise would never claim that her friend was perfect. Louise is a bit bowlegged and she has tiny little feet. She wears long, tight silky skirts. Never pants, never anything floral. She has a way of turning her head to look at you, very slowly. It doesn’t matter that she’s bowlegged.
The cellists want to sleep with Louise because she wants them to. The cellists don’t fall in love with her, because Louise doesn’t want them to fall in love with her. Louise always gets what she wants.
Louise doesn’t know what she wants. Louise doesn’t want to want things.
Louise and Louise have been friends since Girl Scout camp. How old were they? Too young to be away from home for so long. They were so small that some of their teeth weren’t there yet. They were so young they wet the bed out of homesickness. Loneliness. Louise slept in the bunk bed above Louise. Girl Scout camp smelled like pee. Summer camp is how Louise knows Louise is bowlegged. At summer camp they wore each other’s clothes.
Here is something else about Louise, a secret. Louise is the only one who knows. Not even the cellists know. Not even Anna.
Louise is tone deaf. Louise likes to watch Louise at concerts. She has this way of looking at the musicians. Her eyes get wide and she doesn’t blink. There’s this smile on her face as if she’s being introduced to someone whose name she didn’t quite catch. Louise thinks that’s really why Louise ends up sleeping with them, with the cellists. It’s because she doesn’t know what else they’re good for. Louise hates for things to go to waste.
A woman comes to their table to take their order. Louise orders the grilled chicken and a house salad and
Louise orders salmon with lemon butter. The woman asks Anna what she would like. Anna looks at her mother.
Louise says, “She’ll eat anything as long as it’s green. Broccoli is good. Peas, lima beans, iceberg lettuce. Lime sherbet. Bread rolls. Mashed potatoes.”
The woman looks down at Anna. “I’ll see what we can do,” she says.
Anna says, “Potatoes aren’t green.”
Louise says, “Wait and see.”
Louise says, “If I had a kid—”
Louise says, “But you don’t have a kid.” She doesn’t say this meanly. Louise is never mean, although sometimes she is not kind.
Louise and Anna glare at each other. They’ve never liked each other. They are polite in front of Louise. It is humiliating, Louise thinks, to hate someone so much younger. The child of a friend. I should feel sorry for her instead. She doesn’t have a father. And soon enough, she’ll grow up. Breasts. Zits. Boys. She’ll see old pictures of herself and be embarrassed. She’s short and she dresses like a Keebler Elf. She can’t even read yet!
Louise says, “In any case, it’s easier than the last thing. When she only ate dog food.”
Anna says, “When I was a dog—”
Louise says, hating herself, “You were never a dog.”
Anna says, “How do you know?”
Louise says, “I was there when you were born. When your mother was pregnant. I’ve known you since you were this big.” She pinches her fingers together, the way the maitre d’ pinched his, only harder.
Anna says, “It was before that. When I was a dog.”
Louise says, “Stop fighting, you two. Louise, when Anna was a dog, that was when you were away. In Paris. Remember?”
“Right,” Louise says. “When Anna was a dog, I was in Paris.”
Louise is a travel agent. She organizes package tours for senior citizens. Trips for old women. To Las Vegas, Rome, Belize, cruises to the Caribbean. She travels frequently herself and stays in three-star hotels. She tries to imagine herself as an old woman. What she would want.
