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The second of my recent run of fiction. I really like this story (which probably bodes ill for its quality). But that's the mood right now.

Mal heure

London, 1873.

The gas lamps were lit early that night. I recall noticing, and thinking it strange at the time, as if the streets were hailing too soon a dark that had not yet come. The day lingered in the between-time of evening, when the light goes red and the shadows grow so long as to make it almost dusk. I was passing down St. James street, on my way to the small park near the wharves. The season had turned hot about a month prior, and the trees along the avenue were blooming lazily, dropping pollen and the occasional insect into the paths of the sweating street sweeps. My waistcoat had quickly become too heavy on my walk, so I had taken it off, and draped the fabric instead over my arm.

The cause of my journey was in the pocket of that waistcoat: a thin parchment letter received the week before from my cousin, Emile. The only child of my Romani mother's sister, Emile had at an early age joined a circus, and now worked as an acrobat. The letter had been the first I'd heard of him in three years, and had contained an invitation to watch tonight's rehearsal of their show. I had almost decided to forego the offer, but some prompting (I'll never be sure precisely what impulse it was, ennui or perhaps some darker thrust) had pressed me after dinner into my good trousers and out towards the park.

The tent had been erected in the center of the green, dark burlap panels rising like gothic spires above the ornamental shrubs that surrounded the park fence, gargoyled with garish signs announcing the show's amusements. Behind the tent, a flotsam of smaller tents, cages, wagons; the essential life of a circus sprawled like a train in the wake of an opera dame. I watched for a moment as a woman, wearing the incongruous combination of a brilliantly sequined red skirt and a shapeless brown sweater, fed strips of fish to an enormous dark cat. Her eyes were olive green and her sharpened nails a dirty brown color, as though by too many month's spent in proximity to the animal, she had absorbed its feral features.

For some moments, the feeding of the cat held my attention, and I studied the shape of the paws as they grasped at the meat, pictured them sinking into living flesh. So involved was I in the gruesome spectacle that a sudden clamor of drums and trumpets from within the tent had me whirling about in fear. The woman laughed at me, a deep throbbing rumble from within her chest, and I turned with reddened cheeks to make my way into the tent, hanging the waistcoat on a long and empty rack provided for that purpose.

The entrance was a series of flaps in the burlap, difficult to discern in the growing twilight, and I pushed my way inside the heavy material to discover myself in total darkness. Disembodied cymbals shivered the air, and the oppressive fabric of the flaps blew back to wrap about my shoulders and snare me in its tenuous grasp. I struggled blindly, groping with my hands towards the interior of the tent, but could see nothing. Hisses, and the high scream of an animal unlike any I'd heard before, echoed around the space. I panicked, ripping myself away from the tangle of burlap and falling to my hands and knees. The dirt on the floor gritted beneath my fingernails.

Suddenly, a single beam of light broke the oppressive darkness and I looked up, transfixed. A man stood in its center, staring out into the blackness. A wind that only he could feel billowed the animal-skin cape that hung from his shoulders, and for a moment I thought that he did not know I was there. Still unable to see anything around me, I groped for a seat, but he turned towards me, and I got my first real look at him and froze. Beneath the cape, he wore no shirt, but across his chest swirled sigils of black and red paint, which wove together and branched out to cover his upper arms and neck as well. It must have been a trick of the light and his movement, but as I watched the designs seemed to change, to slither across his body with the sinuous motions of his muscles.

His face was painted pure white, and his eyes surrounded above and below with dusky circles, which made them look huge and imposing as he crooked his head slowly to study me. His eyes were arresting: the strangest uneven golden colour, with pupils that by some trick of make-up seemed thin and vertical within the molten iris. It was as though the fires of damnation burned in that shifting amber, and even though he stood in the center of the enormous tent, when he stepped towards me, I instinctively stepped away.

"Welcome." He spread his lips, painted a lurid and arterial red, in a smile that reminded me in a primal way of a great ape's roar. "Welcome, stranger, to Cirque du Malheure, where monsters dance before your eyes, and men perform deeds never seen before by men." He threw back his head, but I could not hear his laughter, for the fabric of the tent began a great wave of movement, as though blown by a wind outside. The roar drowned out any sound from those grimacing lips. At a great clap from unseen drums, the wind stopped as though it had never been, and the ringmaster ceased his laughter and fixed me once again in his uncanny stare. "You, our guest, must fly, or fall, with us tonight. But first, join us in our dance!"

At his words, a single murky note blew from an invisible flute, and I jumped when hands locked onto mine from the shadows around me. Drums echoed my wildly pounding heart as masked figures emerged from the darkness, drawing me with them towards the beam of light in the center of the tent. One wore the face of a cow, great and golden and smiling a grotesque fool's smile. Another seemed to have ears covered in scales, like a fish, and eyes of a strange milky white. To the primitive beat of the drums and the single, unending note of the flute, the figures leapt and cavorted around me, pulling me with them. A creature with an ogre's face and hands tumbled past, and a mask like a tree with small, dark eyes whirled me in circles.

The ringmaster directed the dance with inarticulate cries, sometimes hissing as though speaking to snakes, sometimes barking like a great dog, at which the dark-muzzled wolf dancer threw back his head and echoed the wild howl. I found the beating of the drums leading my legs, and the constant drone of the flute pressing my mind into obedience. We tossed ourselves about the ring in an orgy of contortions, sometimes dancing with each other, sometimes alone. Surely it was my imagination that saw the wolf bite down into the fish's shoulder, and emerge with bloodied teeth and lolling tongue.

As suddenly as it had begun, with a sudden concussion the drums ceased and the dancers froze, leaving me to stumble and catch myself at the suddenness of it all. The single flute note lingered on, unbroken still, until the ringmaster threw his head back once more and screamed, hard and strange as though he were in pain. When his scream stopped, the flute was gone.

He turned back to me once more, advancing slowly and still grinning with that too-wide painted mouth. None of the other dancers moved, but those mesmerizing eyes bored into me and I again stepped backwards, colliding with the tree in my haste. Long, leafy fingers seized my shoulders and guided me out of the circle of dancers, where I was made to sit on the raised edge of the ring. The ringmaster watched me still.

"Don't... blink," he whispered, in a tone almost mocking, and though I did not take my eyes off him, he swirled the animal skin cape around himself, and when it fell to the ground, he was gone. So too were the dancers, when I looked about me, and then the spotlight was extinguished and I was left in eerie darkness.

"Aradia, mistress of the beasts," a disembodied voice proclaimed.

I squinted against sudden light. Where the ringmaster had stood was a dark woman in a red dress, with long black hair that fell in unbound waves down her back. The orchestra whispered of equatorial heat, and she began to move in shimmers and scintillations, her hair echoing and magnifying each movement as though it were a creature all its own, with a heart that pulsed to the throbbing cadence. Suddenly, I realized that from within that hair, a pair of onyx snakes were emerging, and the woman Aradia flickered her long, slender tongue as though she herself were more serpentine than human. As if of one mind, the two snakes slipped down to her wrists, then twined about her waist as she continued her dance. I struggled to see if her hair contained more of the creatures, but its movement was so like the sinister undulations of the snakes themselves that it was impossible to discern. The two that belted her waist slipped downwards, outlining her legs against the red of the clinging dress. The pair reached her ankles and wound like sinuous manacles, working back upwards beneath the dress to appear as ripples in the fabric's shimmer along shapely calves. When the snakes wrapped around her thighs and higher, moving in and out, suggestive, I turned away, no longer able to bear watching.

The cry of another animal surprised me, and I turned back to see that she had torn off the dress to reveal a red leotard. The cry had come from one of the two cages that had appeared in the ring. One contained the enormous cat that I had seen earlier, and the other a black goat, taller than the cat, and with a silky coat that reflected the spotlight as it baa-ed at the woman. She moved first towards the goat's cage, removing a thick hoop and a whip from the top and opening the barred door.

The goat ran out into the ring, and circled until it reached where I was sitting. For a moment, we stared at each other. Its eyes were golden and wild, the pupils straight slits as though coins had been spun on their edges and frozen within them. I could smell soil on the breath of the creature, see the crags and cliffs reflected in its irises. There was a taste of ozone about it, as though the wildness of high mountains had somehow clung to the silky coat and surrounded it still. The great head lowered, and for a moment such hatred from those eyes impressed itself on my brain that I could not move, though I expected the sharp hooves to charge at any second.

"I detest you," the eyes said, "for the taste of soap on your skin, for the way you stumbled in the dance, for the way your throat no longer recalls the rawness of sky."

A whip cracked, and the spell was broken. The goat ran on around the ring, then circled to the center and leapt to balance on top of the hoop, holding there, never blinking. The door creaked from the cat's cage, and I assumed that Aradia was opening it, but I could not take my eyes off the statue-still goat, whose gaze regarded me still. Beneath the whip, the cat prowled through the hoop and leapt on top of the cages, but the goat never moved. Even when those golden eyes widened with fear of the ancient enemy, it remained helplessly still, sharp hooves and horns prisoner to the sound of the whip. Still, the woman danced, a terrible parody of sensuality in her red leotard and black serpents, prowling the ring with the cat, stalking closer then withdrawing, taunting the frozen goat.

I was about to call out for her to stop such torture when the disembodied voice rang through the ring again.

"The Roco Carne Trapeze Flyers."

I looked upwards, and there, dressed wholly in white, were four figures high above my head. They were already in motion, arcing through the air in graceful swoops. There was a purity to their movement that the woman lacked, as though the freedom of wind had robbed them of sex but left them with something more essential. I could see the motionless black goat beneath them, an ugly duckling to the egrets that soared and flipped above our heads.

The orchestra grew silent, so that the only sound in the ring was the dull thud of hands grabbing or leaving a flying bar. One of the beautiful figures began to shift between the others, tossed and caught by his fellows. For full minutes the delicate ballet continued, panther stalking goat on the ground, flyers hurtling each other into contortions in the air. A strange tension filled me with each perfect catch, each sure pivot. I wanted to yell into the utter silence, thrust my bare hands into its heart and tear at essences.

Then, as though I watched in a time unlike our own, where all motion is graceful and suspended, the pure white hands of a leaping flyer reached for a bar and kept reaching, never found their goal. Inevitable and silent as the turn of the sun behind the great monuments of old, the pale figure arced downwards, and a black blur arced upwards with a flash of claws, as though if time were slow enough they might meet in the strange space between. Like a feather, light and unreal, the white silhouette settled to the dirt, and I dreaded the sound: the dull crunch that would doubtless break the spell and release me to stomach-turning reality.

It never came. Instead, there was an unearthly scream, as though the voices of the boys in cathedrals of my youth had been oddly melded with those of demons in the torments of hell. Blood-curdling and high, it was the sound of the goat when finally those silvery claws sunk home. The air around me seemed to shrill and shatter with the noise, and when finally the goat was silent, I deliberately closed my eyes, so as not to see the moment when those golden slit-pupils rolled upwards and the cat tore apart its prey. The oppressive silence grew and grew, and finally, morbidly, I could not stand not knowing if it was finished or not.

I opened my eyes, and the ring was dark, with only a single beam of light shining down onto the restless sigils across the ringmaster's slender chest. He stood where I had last seen goat and cat, but there was no sign of them now, nor of the terrible woman and her snakes, or the fallen acrobat. Only the ringmaster, and the light shifted with him as he stalked towards me. I dared not move.

A sound broke the silence, dry and silvery. Later, I never could say with certainty whether it was a cymbal, or the ringmaster himself that made it. I watched him, stilled, as the light caught the shifting fires of his eyes and cast sulfurous shadows onto the pallor of his cheekbones. The same trick of the light that had earlier flexed his pupils long and vertical now gave him the flaming amber eyes of the helpless goat, screaming to me from atop the gracefully unsexed body of the fallen swan and moving with the predatory motion of the panther just before its spring. His steps echoed a dull clop across the floor as he advanced.

I was terrified. His blood-bright mouth opened and a low hiss emerged from between the crooked teeth, rattling over the steady hoofed beat of his steps. Like the rattle of a snake ends in a sudden strike, the sound broke something sharp in me. I could feel it just below my ribcage, and was suddenly in motion, scrambling over the edge of the ring and running blindly towards the sides of the tent. My hands met the gently waving burlap and felt along, searching for the exit as laughter racketed around me, bizarrely disembodied by the echoes of the space.

The flaps gave way and I was outside, breathing the fish-scent of the wharves and listening to the passing jangle of carriages in the dark. The terror that had gripped me within the tent seemed suddenly distant, as though another world existed in there that the warmth of the summer night faded to pale shadows and nightmares. A low growl emerged from one of the cages behind me, and my stomach remembered the black blur of the panther's spring. I began to turn, but at the last moment stopped and walked deliberately away. I did not want to see if there was blood on the cat's claws. Better to suspend belief still, to preserve the ability to rationalize that it had all been in show, to let the goat's scream and the strange angle of the fallen acrobat's limbs fade from memory.

Better not to know.



EDIT: Two weeks later I still really like this story. It actually was written for a contest, and I was hoping it would win me a nitemare scarf. But it was beaten by a story called (not kidding here) "Search for the yeti". It featured a cliched plot, and grammatical errors. Sigh. I wish contest judging weren't so subjective, but them's the ropes. Perhaps I'll enter it somewhere else, where it will truly be appreciated, or maybe I'll just save it and be happy with it. At any rate, I still think it's quality work, even if it got passed over for bad banter.

... I did. Just this once. So here's a record of it, in case I want it later. And yes, the white dots look strange on the orange, but it's easier to leave them white if I want to repost than it is to change them all then have to change them back when I want to use the piece later.

Dispatches to Andromeda Prime

WorldWideMedia report: January 1, 2552
.....Today, the ship Columbus I departed the planet on a historic mission: the colonization of the planet Rebus V1918, in the galaxy Andromeda Prime. The inhabitants of the ship are three thousand carefully chosen and cryogenically frozen volunteers. Their tissues will be maintained by life support systems for the estimated three thousand years Earth-time that their journey will take. Because the ship is traveling at near-light speed, the passengers of the ship will only experience about four years' time passage.

March 16, 2552
Dear Sophia,
.....I hope this reaches you. NASA tells me that they are sending these letters, and that the tight-beam frequency will reach Andromeda only a little after you.
.....I watched a dragonfly today and thought of you. I cannot help but think of you, however, with every sight, every animal, every car that I see. Will you ever see such things again? Will Andromeda Prime have insects? Will the on-board scientists create them for you? A dragonfly lives for only sixteen days. Even if you could see this one from space, its little life would be too short for you to notice it. I feel that I should be sad about this, sad that to you from space, my life must seem no longer than this dragonfly's. But I somehow cannot. The concept of such time, of such distances, is too much for me, too unreal. I still open the door of the flat and expect that I will hear your voice. How can it be that you will sleep through the lives of my grandchildren a hundred generations hence?
Faithfully yours,
Daniel

October 7, 2552
Dear Sophia,
.....I forgot to write you yesterday, I'm sorry! I don't have much time even now, my business meeting ran long, and we're meeting the clients again in half an hour for dinner. With luck, this account will make me a partner, though. Say hi to the stars for me.
Faithfully yours,
~Daniel

RadioCentral broadcast, Oct. 25, 2552:
RC: Is there any chance that the ship will not make Andromeda Prime? That we will have sent the finest scientists, engineers, and scholars of our generation out to die?
Dr. Largesse: We of course designed the ship to withstand far more than the stresses we intend it to encounter. For all intents and purposes, moving very quickly is the same as floating perfectly still in deep space, so that's not too stressful on it. The only problem comes in the navigation, when the booster rockets have to fire. Bt we've made sure to include enough backup systems that it shouldn't be an issue. So while, yes, there are risks involved in every space endeavor, we've done our best to minimize them, and the volunteers were aware of the risks when they signed on.

May 17, 2553
Dear Sophia,
.....Is it possible to be angry with someone who I haven't seen in over a year now? Because I am angry with you, and I don't care if it's irrational. I wish you hadn't gone. I hate you for choosing the stars over me. I wish that I wasn't still waking up from dreams of you. It's two AM here now, Soph, and damn it, after a year you shouldn't still be keeping me up. It's not natural. ******** NASA and their stupid 'auto update' crap. Those robots on the ship don't know s**t about whether you're alive. You know what? I don't care. You didn't care that I was going to still be alive here, and I don't care whether you're still alive there. ******** you.
~Daniel

May 18, 2553
.....I'm sorry. Just... give me time.
~Daniel

June 18, 2553
Dear Sophia,
.....I'm becoming a sort of ghost in the office, now. The secretary actually forced me home tonight. It helps, though, when I'm too tired to dream.
~Daniel

WorldWideMedia report: July 1, 2553
An automated broadcast from the Columbus I was received yesterday by NASA scientists. The brief report confirmed that the life support systems are in working order, and reported the ship's position as slightly beyond the star Sirius.

November 29, 2554
Dear Sophia,
.....I went bowling today with the boys. Rolled a 179. Go me. I'm thinking of getting a kitten. I've always liked cats, and now that you're not around to be allergic, I think I'd like a kitten.
~Daniel

December 13, 2554
Dear Sophia,
.....Picked out a Christmas tree tonight. It's a Leland Cyprus, so it'll get needles in the carpet. But it smells good. You always liked the tree-smell. Miss you (Still. Always. Inevitably.)
~Daniel

August 3, 2557
Dear Sophia,
.....I'm sorry it's been four months. I just... it seems pointless, telling you all these things about day-to-day life, and knowing that when you wake up, it'll all be there, ready for you to read like a novel. Will you even bother? It can't be fun to read the ramblings of someone so far removed from your own life, in the future. And the letters weren't interesting, anyway. I felt like I was just listing what I had done that day. You didn't even know the places, anymore, since the company moved me to Baltimore on that new promotion. I guess when you set foot on that ship, I knew this day would come, Sophia, but it just doesn't feel like you're mine anymore. I guess you aren't anybody's now. You always said you'd be your own woman, but even though you left years ago, I... I need to give you up, Sophie. So you won't hear from me as often from now on. I loved you, but you belong to the stars now, and I can't compete. This isn't any sort of goodbye (god, this is strange), just a... just a letting you know. Know why, that is. Anyway, I'll keep writing. Just not as often.
~Daniel

WorldWideMedia report: Jan. 1, 2560
An automated broadcast from the Columbus I was received yesterday by NASA scientists. The brief report confirmed that the life support systems are in working order, and reported the ship's position as past Deneb, one of the stars of the summer triangle.

May 9, 2565
Dear Sophia,
.....Well, I've been transferred again. I'm in London this time, because they wanted all the full partners together in one city. It's nice, really, I've got a flat that overlooks the Thames, and your picture is above a black granite mantelpiece. Quite a step up from the old digs, huh? I like you there, sort of standing watch over the room. My own guardian angel. I wonder how you'll think of me, when you get there. Will you miss me still, sharply, or will all that time and distance give you this same sort of dulled bump right above the stomach: it doesn't ache anymore, but it's just there. That's you for me. Except you're not in my stomach now, you're above my mantelpiece. Heehee, I'm drunk now, can you tell? Got the machine on dictation so I don't have to write. Probably shouldn't be writing you (or is it talking you?) drunk, you'd get that Disapproving Line (I always called it that in my head: the Disapproving Line) right between your eyes, and you'd sniff your hair out of your face. But you're not here now, and this is dictation, and I can make you listen to drunken ramblings all I want. This is my revenge: you go away, and now you have to listen to me. Be thankful, dear Sophie, for the wonders of modern spellchecking or you'd have to decipher me as well. Wonder if they'll let you get drunk in Andromeda? Alcohol... Andromodol... Androhol... Androcohol... Rockohol. Yeah, Rockohol. You'll have Rockohol, and you'll all get blinding smashed and then someone will forget to turn the air filters and you'll all get sleepy and wake up with stale air and smashing headaches. Or maybe that's why you're going all the way out there: Rockohol won't cause headaches. Hell, Sophie, if you'd told me that was the case I'd have gone with you. I'm rambling, aren't I? Anyway, good housewarming and all that to you too.
~Daniel

Dec. 24, 2572
Dear Sophia,
.....Merry Christmas. It's been nearly a year since last I wrote you, and I must confess... I am engaged now, to Susannah, who I mentioned then. I feel... guilty, a little depressed, though I don't understand why. I'm getting married to another woman, and I haven't missed you this much in ages. I look forward to the wedding, but is it possible to be unfaithful to a woman who will outlive you by three thousand years? I just wanted you to know, I've never left you behind, all this time. I do still remember. And for what it's worth, across all that distance and time, I still love you.
.....It's snowing here on Christmas eve. A group of carolers came by a few minutes ago, and I gave them hot chocolate and listened to Angels We Have Heard On High. That's actually why I'm writing you now. I heard once that maybe God is a being traveling faster than the speed of light, because at that speed time becomes meaningless and you would live in an eternal now. I can't wrap my mind around that one quite yet, even after all these years thinking about how time passes, but it occurred to me that you, going so fast now, could be sort of like an angel. Christmas always makes me sappy.
~Daniel

April 2, 2581
Dear Sophia,
.....I have a daughter. Her name is Aradia Sophia. I like that idea that some relic of you will live on here on earth, even if she's not yours by blood. Susannah understands.
~Daniel

November 17, 2611
Dear Sophia,
.....Forgive any mistakes this dictation may have, my voice has become bad over the past few days. The doctors say I haven't but a few weeks. Susannah and the kids (I'm a grandfather now, did I ... [dictation unrecognizable]... mistake. Strange, to be so old and looking at the stars. I always wondered if you would look back out and one day try to see earth, to imagine me. I ... [dictation unrecognizable] ... if maybe those pricks of light would be comforting to you, as they have been to me, all these years. Thinking of death, now, after all these years of imagining the spaces between the stars and how vast that distance is, doesn't seem so scary. If there is a god, and past the mysteries that even you adventurous types won't ever figure out, I hope that one day I see you again. You'd laugh, but I'm glad that there are things that even your beloved science will never touch. Ironic, that after all these years of you being the one on a journey, I'll be the first of us to make that discovery. Or not so ironic. We both always knew it would be so. [coughs] I miss you still, though Susannah has given me my life again. I love ... [ dictation unrecognizable] ...

Media Beam 0713, 5523
Today, sci-techs at Universal SpaceTime Labs celebrated the reception of the final Columbus series message by destroying the antiquated equipment that received the signals. The tight-beam technology was developed millennia ago, and has long been replaced by modern edgenet technologies. The message stated that Columbus I, first of the Columbus colonizers to launch, and because of rapid technology advances, the last to reach its destination, had landed successfully, and that the crew was awake and functioning normally. The message also contained preliminary readings about the planet's characteristics, and a message of hope from the crew. A Lightridge IIX vessel is scheduled to launch for Andromeda Prime planet Rebus V1918 in two weeks, and arrive next year to help with colonization efforts and to hook the planet into the edgenet.

Sacrament

What fathomless gangrene of the spirit traps
the most unholy of our ghosts in wood?
Our anguish oozes into pores, adheres
like varnish copper-red to knotted boards.
Blunt metal in its twisted agonies
may scream to us of progress and its costs,
but true humanity is locked in wood -
in wood we seal our ecstasies and loss.

In splinters now the martyrs old return -
rough slivers cased in glass here sanctify
the cedar scent of flesh on pagan pyre,
or offer up the copper twitch of life
bled out against crude-planed centurion cross.
Soft wood to stay our tortures, hold the lash
until some later century when priests
may pray the screams in vaulted halls at last.

And not our deaths alone, but joinings too
are memorized in weather-beaten grain.
Rude alters, thresholds, shuddered posts of beds
hold specters of the former lives they've seen:
a scrap of lace that flutters on a plank
ripped eons past from blushing August bride
evokes her hesitant carnality
recalls her slender fingers, azure eyes.

The rasping moans of battered planking hurl
the spectral vestments deep into the wind -
our exorcism never grasped in full,
our absolution termites in the end.


Written for a picture, but I really like it right now. I was going for blank verse with gentle slant rhymes.