Last Drink Bird Head

by Jeff VanderMeer

We’ll pause for a moment in the story to talk about Scouting in Antarctica. For many years the US Antarctic Program has sent Scouts to Antarctica. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in alternate years. Unfortunately the Girl Scouts have not fared as well on the continent as the Boy Scouts. At home, stateside, I believe that you’d find the average Boy Scout and the average Girl Scout to be equally capable human beings. The Boys Scout organization always seems to select terrific individuals to send down to the ice. Unfortunately the Girl Scouts seem to go for the opposite sort of selection. It’s been sadly true that some Girl Scouts in recent memory have had to be deported home to America. A couple of years ago I was wondering how the Girl Scout in our camp could have been selected to come here after she had just told me how boring Antarctica was for her. I asked her why she thought she was selected to come here. And she told me it was simple: she was the one who had kissed ass the best.

  I’ve heard many odd stories about past, deported Girl Scouts, such as the teenager who bragged that she was a CIA agent and a jet fighter pilot. That did not really prepare me for looking under Clusterfuck Bridge to find this year’s new Girl Scout with a number of stuffed animals laid out on the snow and ice, on top of her red parka, for some kind of polar picnic. She was bending over a plush penguin, with a nearly empty fifth of Scotch whisky in her hand, pouring spirits into the toy’s beak chanting, “Last Drink Bird Head…Last Drink Bird Head…Last Drink Bird Head…” I don’t think she’ll be here much longer.

  CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN

  Caitlín R. Kiernan was born in Ireland, raised in the southeastern US, and now lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Her short fiction has been collected in several volumes, most recently A is for Alien, and she’s published eight novels, including Daughter of Hounds and The Red Tree.

  …certainly, far stranger things have been suggested regarding both his life and his works. And given the particulars of his short career, his involvement in the occult, and his penchant for cryptic affectations, it does not seem—to this author—so outlandish to ascribe to Albert Perrault a morbid sort of prescience or to believe that his presentation of Last Drink Bird Head upon the eve of his fatal motorcycle accident on the rue Cuvier was a carefully orchestrated move, designed to preserve his mystique ad finem. Indeed, it almost seems outlandish to believe otherwise.

  As to the painting itself (currently on loan to the Musée National d’Art Moderne), Last Drink Bird Head is one of Perrault’s largest and most thematically oblique canvases. After his disappointing experiments with sculpture and multi-media, it harks back to the paintings that heralded his ascent almost a decade ago. Here we have, once again, his “retro-expressionist-impressionist” vision and also a clear return to his earlier obsession with fairy tales and mythology.

  A lone figure stands on a barren hilltop, silhouetted against a writhing night sky. However, this sky does not writhe with stars or moonlight, as in Van Gogh’s Starry Night, but rather here the very fabric of the sky writhes. The blackness of a firmament which might well reflect Perrault’s conception of an antipathetic cosmos, and might also be read as the projection of the painting’s central figure and, by extension, the artist’s own psyche. There is but a single crimson dab of light in all that black, contorted sky, and it seems more like a baleful eye than any ordinary celestial body. The distinctive shape and thickness of the brushstrokes have rendered this sky a violent thing, and I have found that it’s difficult not to view the brushstrokes as the corridors of a sort of madman’s maze, leading round and round and, ultimately, nowhere at all.

  And if the sky of Last Drink Bird Head could be said to form a labyrinth, then the figure dominating the foreground might fairly be construed as its inevitable “minotaur”—that is, a malformed chimera trapped forever within its looping confines. The figure has previously been described by one prominent reviewer as representing the falcon-headed Egyptian sky god Horus or Nekhen. Yet it seems clear to me that Perrault’s “Bird Head” cannot accurately be described as “falcon-headed.” Rather, the profile presented—a small skull and long, slender, decurved bill—is more strongly reminiscent of an ibis. This, then, brings to mind a different Egyptian deity—Thoth.

  In its left hand, the figure clutches a book, and on the book’s spine we may clearly discern three letters, presumably a portion of the title—LEV. I cannot help but note reports which surfaced shortly after Perrault’s death that he’d recently begun correspondence with a surviving member of the late Jacova Angevine’s Open Door of Night “suicide cult.” Angevine’s book, Waking Leviathan, is known to have been present in Albert Perrault’s library… .

  TESSA KUM

  Tessa Kum does not believe the revolution is coming.

  This is the story of one Last Drink Bird Head, the greatest ninja assassin to walk the Earth, and of his eventual downfall.

  The trouble with sending a ninja to perform an assassination is that ninja are far too good at what they do. No one sees ninja enter, no one sees ninja leave, no one sees ninja execute mission with precision and style. A target may keel over in the midst of dinner, all thanks to the skill of ninja, only to have their death blamed on a bad heart and old age. Pity the poor ninja, whose mastery of stealth and secrecy works against him. Last Drink Bird Head is a very special ninja. He has mastered, through years of arduous and intensive training, the art of Being Noticed.

  His study of the masters enlightened him to the many ways in which he could gain the attention of his targets, and those surrounding him. He also came to learn, through observation of those street thugs who can only dream of being as skilled as a ninja, the uses of a recognizable methodology, and thus came to develop his own, most recognizable, technique.

  This is marvel of Last Drink Bird Head.

  He waits until his target indulges in a drinking session, which rarely requires much waiting. He waits until his target has finished this drinking session, which can require much waiting. Then, when his target has finished their very last drink, Last Drink Bird Head makes his appearance.

  He leaps forth from a hiding place only ninja can find and, wearing an elaborate chicken mask, crows like a cock, slays his target with brazen extravagance, and then disappears with all the stealthy skill of ninja, never to be caught.

  This has led to the deaths of many traveling performers, who may have carried chicken masks upon their person.

  It is his own special technique. Using it, he has never failed a mission, and proclaimed he shall never use another, lesser, technique again. What great ninja!

  Unfortunately, Last Drink Bird Head made the mistake of assassinating someone whom the Emperor’s aunt’s sister-in-law’s cousin was fond of, a travesty that the Emperor could not let pass unpunished. The Emperor himself called Last Drink Bird Head to his court, and gave him a mission.

  Last Drink Bird Head was full of pride at this, and took the mission without question. Oh, if only he had inquired as to the nature of his target before accepting! He traveled from the capital all the way to a small village in the remote northern mountains, and there found his target, who cared for the village’s little temple, and had done so for his whole life. He was devout in his duties and beliefs, and never, ever drank.

  Last Drink Bird Head has been at the temple for many years. The villagers have started to blame the mythical kappa for the mysterious appearance of little cups of sake in the temple, which they happily relieve the priest of.

  Pity the poor ninja.

  ELLEN KUSHNER

  Ellen Kushner has returned to New York City after adventures in Boston involving public radio. She lives many lives at once, which can be inferred from and verified at www.ellenkushner.com

  I don’t know why I’ve always been afraid of birds. I do know I can’t stand their eyes, the way they peer at you opaquely, changing angles for no reason. And between those eyes are those bills. Bills come in many grotesque and threatening shapes.

  All the same, it’s not the head, it’s the neck. That long, sinuous neck…not just the neck, tho
ugh. Because I’m not afraid of snakes. Long and sinuous is fine, as long as there’s no head at the end of it with two beady little eyes, one on either side of a long bill or beak. I don’t mind hawks; they don’t have bills. Their beaks are small and curved, and look like the kind of nuts you get as treats at the holidays, the kind you can use a nutcracker on if you’re careful and don’t hurt the furniture. Besides, hawks are in medieval tapestries, carried by attractively dressed people on caparisoned horses.

  I’m told I was pecked at by a goose at the Bronx Zoo when I was two; but who wasn’t? It’s the geese in the Bois de Boulogne when I was seven that I remember with horror: it was supposed to be a fun picnic, with baguettes and cheese and sardines in cans that you’d better not lose the keys to, and limonade that looked like the kind of bottle the Three Stooges spritzed annoying people with… . And then we got to the pond at the end of the path and there were these creatures with ugly multi-colored heads and unpredictable habits, who followed us around before we were even done with lunch, and I had to climb up on the only picnic table to get away from them, and one had a broken wing twisted at a horrible angle over its waddling back…

  Mallards are the only fowl exempt from the general curse. This is because they were so great in Make Way for Ducklings. You have to love mallards, even if you hate and fear all other ducks. Which I certainly do. Ducks and geese are just the beginning. Swans are my worst nightmare. Ostriches, let’s not even speak of.

  My point is this: Don’t show me a bird head and expect me to drink to, near, or from it. Just don’t. Or that drink will be your last.

  JAY LAKE

  Jay Lake lives in Portand, OR, where he writes, edits and generally misbehaves. His latest novels are Green and Madness of Flowers. www.jlake.com

  Last Drink Bird Head? Meanest son of a bitch ever walked through these doors. Had a sweet side, too, at least when it came to redheads and people who liked dogs. But I seen him carve a man for telling a joke wrong. Never could stand a blown punch line, not Last Drink Bird Head.

  He’d shipped in on the old Delta liner, Hard Green Hills. Yeah, that one, what got dumped in Venus low orbit and decayed, taking eleven hundred souls with her. Last Drink Bird Head was the last man off her.

  In the middle of the Authority Riots of ’37, he was too. Don’t believe me, check the footage. You’ll see him at the Pangborn Door, carrying the thermal lance they used to cut Mayor Bardo free. He was gone by the time the headbreakers got there, and no one would ID him from the files, so he never got to trial.

  What else? Oh, yeah, flew the tub that met the first Extern ship. Remember the Titan thing? Ever wonder how a sector governor happened to be in the right place for the first alien contact? Last Drink Bird Head ran into them while he was drunk on oxygen; two, three light minutes further out. He got sober enough fast enough to broker a deal, convinced a few folks he wasn’t insane, and the rest was history. By the time the cameras rolled on that, he was drinking it up in a Jove-Trojan refit shop waiting for new impellers for his ship.

  Yeah, you could pretty much say Last Drink Bird Head was everywhere. I believe I seen him in some pictures from the Old Times, too. No, no, I know what you’re thinking, no one alive from the Old Times. Hell, that’s what makes ’em old, right? But still, go back and look at that picture of Lee Harvey Oswald going down. There’s Last Drink Bird Head behind him in a forty-liter hat, not looking a bit surprised. Likewise when the Berlin Wall fell. He’s in there with a sledge hammer, wearing some kind of South German uniform. East. Whatever they were.

  Not a lot of people made it up the well, really. Not when you count how many lived down there back in the day. Me, I think Last Drink Bird Head’s kind of a tulpa or some shit like that. You know, a spirit of the place. Loco genius, is that the word? He bends down to take a drink, something changes. He ships out to an empty spot, someone comes along. He stands near a guy needs whacking, someone whacks.

  But his name’s never on the boards, you know?

  Thing is, when I see him coming, I lay his set-ups on the bar, then I go do inventory or something. Kind of like this, actually.

  Watch out for yourself, fellah.

  TANITH LEE

  The 2009 Grand Master of Horror, Tanith Lee—www.tanithlee.com, www.daughterofthenight.com (Daughter of the Night: An Annotated Tanith Lee Bibliography)—was born in London (UK) in 1947; her first major publication was in 1975 ( DAW Books; The Birthgrave); now has published 90 books and just over 300 short stories. She lives Sussex Weald (UK) with husband, writer-artist John Kaiine.

  Having been doomed to death, the condemned man must choose his last meal and his last drink. By law also he must declare his preference publicly. And he could ask for anything.

  He was jet-black of hair and handsome, and besides that, though he had killed many it had been in war for the good of the people, who loved him.

  They urged him therefore to choose something wonderful.

  But the meal he selected was simple—bread and cheese. Then they wept. It was what the people ate most often.

  “And your last drink?” demanded the officer of the law.

  “I will have,” said the man, “Bird Head, in a wide glass.”

  Uproar. No one had heard of such a drink. Yet by law whatever he asked for he must have.

  The City Authority offered a reward of gold to anyone who would search for thirty days for Bird Head. The problem was this: if after thirty days the drink was not discovered, the condemned man must die without it, and so must the one who had volunteered to search for it. The Law’s arm was long.

  None did volunteer. Though thousands wanted the gold, none wanted to risk death.

  Then a woman stepped forward.

  She had loved the condemned man for years, without his knowing this. He had perhaps seen her here and there, perhaps even smiled at her, but there had been other matters on his mind. She thought, I can at least give him the drink he wants most. Or, if I fail, I can die at his side.

  For twenty days and twenty nights the woman searched.

  She heard false ideas of what Bird Head was—an ecstatic liquid drug, a wine with bits of twig and beak in it. She learned nothing of any use.

  On the twenty-first night she came upon the house of a sorcerer.

  “Ah, is it you at last?” he foreknowingly cried.

  By the light of a green fire he opened a jar and showed her the head of an enormous owl with great amber eyes.

  “Bird Head,” said the sorcerer.

  “But,” said the woman, “how is this a drink?”

  “Place in a glass and just add water.”

  She reached the city barely in time. In the square where the gallows stood, the condemned man sat eating his dry last meal.

  The woman placed the head of the owl before him in a wide glass. Then over it she poured a jug of water.

  No sooner did the water touch the head of the bird than the owl grew whole, breaking the glass and swelling to the size of a stallion, with wings the width of six houses. The condemned man leapt on its back. To the woman he said, “Will you have the gold—or me?”

  “You,” she replied.

  He drew her up beside him.

  The soldiers of the state fired at them in vain as, laughing, they flew away into the sky.

  STINA LEICHT

  Stina Leicht is a sci-fi/fantasy writer living in Texas. Her website can be found at www.csleicht.com

  It was an awesome responsibility, keeping the particles moving from one space to the next—one sub-microscopic sip at a time. She and her kind operated unnoticed by the humans buzzing around in their spaceship with their air of self-importance, but that was the job. Tick-tock. The steady rhythm. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The precise placement of each particle in the stale fog that was the ship’s air was all. Catch-release. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Machines could not replicate wind or weather onboard a ship. Thus, matter particles were spurred into natural circulation by her will. The knowledge of her place in the order of things
was gratifying, and she would have been content but for the knowledge that she was the last.

  A foolish human had brought a cat onboard at the last port.

  Her mate, Blue, had been killed three days ago. It had saddened her beyond measure but now that she was alone she could not stop to mourn him. No one else could take up her duty. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. She had begged Blue to hide in the air duct with her, but he’d insisted it would only bring the cat upon them both. This way, he reasoned, she could keep the precious rhythm while he acted as decoy. It had worked for three weeks. The high-pitched tinkling crack of his screams would live in her mind to the end of her days – which, by the look of things, wouldn’t be much longer.

  Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

  She’d been a mere chick at the factory in China when she had met Blue. Her freshly-glued feathers had been fluffy, not ragged as they were now. They’d volunteered together for the space mission. Blue had told her that they would have a kitchen surface of their own one day, and for a time they’d shared a small table in the mess. It hadn’t been much, but they’d been happy.

  Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The smell came first—the sharp stench of urine that clung to cats like perfume. Then she spied the twitching ears beyond the vent screen. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t pause even to save herself. She debated doing so anyway, but it would only doom her as well as her human charges.

  Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

  A paw batted the screen, and the feline stretched into the vent space. She muttered a blessing for the ship’s passengers in futile hope that they might reach port before the ship fell apart. It wasn’t likely.