Spread the word!
Nick Carroway is no longer so great and Ishamel is sunk. Forget the guys who claim to tell a truthful tale yet never mention that they do not exist anywhere but in books. For I, Renfield Stoker-Belle, am a made up person who knows she is a Fictional Character (FC)–and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
He found her sitting in a tree. Her legs dangled over the edge, her dusty feet kicking back and forth. It had taken him a while to find her. It wasn’t as simple as it usually was. Each hourglass of life came with coordinates, of course. The tiny numbers ascribed on the bottom gave approximate locations. It wasn’t a perfect system. Humans weren’t as predictable as, say, ants. Things had gotten tricky when they domesticated the horse, for example. It had gotten worse with the engine. Obviously airplanes had kicked things into gear. But the hourglass makers, those bright-eyed creatures, were quick to adjust. They usually got it in the ballpark.
Wednesday at Chaucer’s I was digging through the fiction for a Christmas Eve book. Pulled Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights from the shelf when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Startled, I turned to face an older man in a gray sweater, the kind with a ribbed neck, and a salt and pepper beard.
1.
The river here heaves up on the bank like an old man getting into bed.
Birds cry downstream. A gull perfects a theft, executes drastic turn in air that could break bones. I do my duty walks like perimeter guard, shoulder walking cudgel the way I carried my carbine back there at 23, know the pound of it to an ounce; knowledge of the scabbard hangs on.
I’d rather the river and the tired water’s run as 86 years weigh a heavy canteen. Nothing is like a river’s to and fro against this sea, tide-wash, catch of kelp, air sting full of briny sea’s salad smells, perpetual anger, always earth-dig, sand-flush and rock-wear, drag on the moon, where a ship’s ghost and canvas call.
Damaged.
It’s written in the lines of her face. The mottled flesh scrawled across her cheeks, the tangle of scar tissue weighing on her eyelid. Battle scars? A robbery gone wrong? In any case, she’s seen some shit. And the story’s not finished.
Leila has chosen a piece by one of the ‘old timers’ to the site. We are pleased to see Adam being featured here and I for one do hope that he answers her second question. This is what she said:
The kids in town nearly ignored marijuana altogether; they moved straight to heroin. They smoke it off of aluminum foil and to them it’s like taking communion. Not many shoot it, perhaps because they’re afraid of explaining away the marks during gym class.
