Stretching across the mirror glass, right beside the reflection of my foot, was a long, dark shadow.

​Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my study table. A black pen was sitting near the lamp, with another pen lying right beside it.

​Panic tightened my throat. My heart screamed the same word over and over: Run, Sofie. Run.

​I gasped and sat upright in bed—3:00 a.m.

​My ex-coworker had broken into my apartment months ago. He was fired, and everyone told me it was over. But I still saw him everywhere: in the dark reflection of my window, at the end of the street, and in the dreams I couldn't escape.

​I pulled the blanket tighter around myself, trying to convince myself I was safe.

​Then, from somewhere inside the apartment, I heard a faint sound.

​A pen rolling across the floor.

"I am trying," I whispered, staring fixedly at the floor near the front door.

​"Trying?" my mother mocked me with a cruel smile.

​Thud—

​"I want you ahead of that mistress's daughter!" she screamed, throwing a glass vase against the wall. It shattered into sharp pieces. I didn't even flinch; I was used to her sudden outbursts. She walked over, grabbed my cheek tightly, and forced my face close to hers.

​"You have to be first," she demanded. "But you came in third. Now... time for your punishment."

​Before I could scream, she pushed me down onto the sharp glass pieces on the floor. The shards cut right into my knees and tore open my palms...

​Read the full story on Substack and medium.

Medium:

https://medium.com/@ekavale/the-last-letter-08f9688f78a5

Substack :

https://ekavale.substack.com/p/the-last-letter?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=8wmhct

It's said that Peter the Great once fainted away at the sight of a cockroach ... an anecdote recorded in sober history and in The Secret Annals of Cockroaches.

It's also said (according to this learned tome) that cockroaches are the avatars of once famous men, and conversely; and that the one, in fact, which caused Peter to collapse was Coriolanus.

Peter, a quondam cockroach himself, recognized Coriolanus despite his new guise, and remembered when he had been brutally squashed beneath Coriolanus' massive ass when that warrior unknowingly sat down upon him, causing Peter, in recollection, to pass out from shock.

Coriolanus subsequently became a dray-horse, and suffered the ignominy and horror of the knacker's yard. Later, more happily, he became an immigrant wash-up man at a luxe New York City bar, and married an angelic Italian girl from Moreno. Peter became Stalin, when his attitude changed and he began to regard men as mostly cockroaches.

Not all cockroaches, however, says our learned tome, transmigrate successfully. Many, indeed, remain cockroaches, although having formerly been great men.

-- Collected in the "Reports" section of Forbidden to Grow Old (Coach House Press, 1989)

Subway

A woman who is late for an important meeting takes the subway instead of a taxi. She has not ridden a subway in ten years, not since she was a secretary. The subway is smaller than she remembered, and colder. She realizes that the heat is not working in her car; she realizes she has boarded an express and that this train won't stop until it reaches 86th Street. She'll have to take a taxi after all, and go back downtown through all the traffic she thought she was avoiding. Nothing can be done now but wait for the ride to be over.

A man seated next to her is reading from a small notebook. She stares because it is exactly like one she often carries. The crabbed handwriting inside it is very like her own. How has this person come to have her notebook?

He is looking at the same two pages, turning them back and forth. She manages to read by looking down and sideways.

"A social security mom," one line begins. "An American girl who visited China," says the next. He moves his fingers: "I know I'm old. I paid for sex. I get no refund. I have no salt, no soul, no refill."

The man is wearing brown wool pants, a quilted storm coat, a fake-fur cap with ear flaps. He is, perhaps, fifty. He seems ordinary. The contents of the notebook are so odd the woman impulsively takes out an envelope and surreptitiously scribbles down what she has read.

The man, absorbed, turns another page. "God hears me. The death bullets. The fee." The woman is suddenly sure he found this notebook somewhere, that he is reading these pages over and over, trying to figure them out. "Both of us are voyeurs," she scribbles on her envelope. When she looks again, he is on a new page: "More death files, you may keep them, the tainters, the foam."

it occurs to her then that a Robert Louis Stevenson story would begin right here: the story would reveal that her copying has linked her forever in a chain of eavesdroppers, trespassers, and spies, and she wonders why she and her fellow passengers allowed themselves to be drawn in, to pass these sick words on, preserving them. Then she realizes that the chain moves back in time as well as forward—back, it seems to her, to the original writer, who will thus be able to know her.

The man shuts the notebook abruptly and puts it in an inside pocket. It's his own. He has put it in a pocket only an owner would use. And he is aware of her reading and writing. He is perspiring; so is she. His clothing is odd; that is, it was once ordinary, but now it's very dirty. The train slows for the stop at 86th. Predictably, the woman is terrified. To leave is to give him an opportunity to follow. She waits as long as she can before leaving her seat and steps off the train as the doors close. The man is still sitting inside. Back on the street, she hails a cab which delivers her to the building where the meeting has surely begun without her. She tips the driver without looking at him.

Six Plots

A writer spins plots in the most condensed forms possible. she strips them of description and comment; they simply outline a sequence of exchanges. she gradually loses the ability to make herself write them out as stories, every time she begins to work on a story, she makes instead other new condensed plot pieces. the obsession increases, she finds she must carry a notebook, so she can write wherever she is. eventually every daily activity—things as simple as walking to the corner for a bottle of milk—triggers another miniature plot, which she must stop to write down, she is unable to go on with her daily life.

---

A girl who is considered a model child in every way is locked into a closet by her elder brother one Saturday morning. he lets her out that night, overcome by guilt he cannot express, because the whole family has gone through the day without ever realizing the girl was missing.

---

A man who has been urged to join a club by his psychiatrist joins a pacifist movement, he leads daring demonstrations against nuclear submarines, nuclear power plants, and army recruiting centers. he is arrested several times. his sense of himself as a loner intensifies, he becomes a leader in the movement, manipulating others and spurring them to acts of defiance he no longer participates in. when he is confronted by the angry girlfriend of a young man who has been permanently injured by police at one of these demonstrations, he tells her he has no wish to be cannon fodder or to be part of any kind of group.

---

A doctor has hired a young homosexual as his office secretary. his sympathy was engaged during the job interview when the young man told him about his struggle to accept himself and live openly as a gay man. the doctor discovers several months later that the secretary is impersonating him after hours to impress his sexual contacts. recognizing how the young man had flattered him into acting against his instincts, and how susceptible he is to being flattered, the doctor feels morally responsible for the misconduct. instead of firing the secretary, the doctor has new office keys made to keep him out of the office after hours. he gives the secretary less to do and hires a part-timer to handle some of the work. his behavior becomes more and more peculiar in his effort to avoid the necessary confrontation. what will rescue him?

---

A painter has been given a solo exhibition at one of the city's biggest galleries, the show gets the full treatment, and so does he: good reviews, crowds everyday, invitations here and there, and, best of all, the gallery sells every picture. for the first time in his life, the painter is flush; he decides to treat himself to his first trip to Europe. when his jubilant friends have left him at the airline lobby, and he has walked though the jetway to the plane door, he turns and stops. why am I leaving what I've worked so long to have? he thinks, he walks back up the ramp—and is promptly arrested.

For more than three hours, he is questioned and searched; all the passengers are made to disembark; luggage is disemboweled; the bomb dogs are brought in to sniff.

When he finally rejoins his friends very late that evening, he tells them it was worth it not to go.

---

The daughter of a world-famous scientist makes friends with the son of a small-town photographer in the country town where the scientist and his family are spending summer. both fathers are delighted, the photographer because he hopes the famous man will be helpful to his son; the scientist because he approves of the sturdy American values exemplified by the photographer's simple aspirations and lifestyle. (he does not approve of the private school his wife sends their daughter to.) both fathers speak so approvingly and at length about this friendship that the children fight viciously, subsequently both of them lie to their parents about what happened.

-- Collected, respectively, in Little Tales of Family and War, 1990-1999 (Spuyten Duyvil, 2000), and North and South (Spuyten Duyvil, 2006).

Actions of Manig (iv)

Manig is asked to go to see the neighbor. Immediately he turns, opens the door, exits and re-enters in the same movement. He has been to see the neighbor.

Now he is asked to carry a helmet into town. Immediately he turns, the shining helmet in his left hand. One-handed he leaves the room, but his receding steps are already approaching steps, one can still see him leave and there he comes hurrying back, enters two-handed, helmetless, a rapid friend.

Overconfidently he is asked to go to the seashore. The image of his exit is still on the retina, and already he is back, with a companion in oilcloth as proof. He takes leave of his companion, drawing him close with both arms, kissing him, letting him go, calling after him a promise to return. Turns to the door, pulls it open, rushes out, and back. Again the two say hello and goodbye, tears, reassurances. Again he enters, this time there are twenty of him, many Manigs fill the room with oval faces, wink twenty times, cry "hello" twenty times, twenty pairs of boots, all stamping. At that he is sent up to the roof. "Don't come back now," is called after him. One can hear them thump about up there, slow sure steps, up one side along the gable and down the other, straight across the roof. One rushes out. The company stands in front of the house, staring up to the roof.

Actions of Manig (iii)

Mr. manig walks down the street. It is a narrow street. In passing he examines the shop windows, but the sun slants down at such a steep angle from the other side of the street that Manig does not see the window displays, he sees only the ghostly, sparsely-colored reflections of the street, of passing traffic, people, himself. His image runs bluish across the glass wall, jumps, a shadow, the distance between two shops, now wanders hunched over the arched window of another shop, shrivels to a thread on a brass nameplate.

A man is approaching from the opposite direction. Manig is already able to pinpoint the spot, somewhere on the rapidly decreasing as yet unused stretch between them, which the man will claim with his legs and whole body if he stays on course, and indeed he is heading toward it. Does the other man notice? Manig veers slightly to the left, they scarcely brush against one another. A deviation so slight, can Manig be sure he has not offended the other man, making him think for instance that Manig had wanted to hint that, in his opinion, the other man would never have given way, had not looked like a man who'd ever concede even a small movement, let alone the somewhat tardy improvised sidestep, in which case they would have collided on the furiously decreasing stretch, in which case Manig's glasses would have described a wide arc onto the tracks of the just then approaching streetcar that would have ground them to powder.

Thus Manig.

Interview

A gentleman stands at the door. He is trembling.

We ask him in. He enters; sits down.

"You don't know what I have seen," he says.

"Where did you see it?" we ask.

"Almost everywhere," he says. "Everywhere I went."

"When did you see it?" we ask.

"Almost all the time," he says.

"Even here, outside our house?" we ask.

"Right outside your house," he says.

"Then you don't see it only under certain conditions? At certain hours of the day? It's not limited to seasons?"

"It is in no way limited," he says.

"Do you see it here too, in our house, on that chair?"

"That's what they all ask," he says and trembles. He gets up and leaves.

Conversations

A gentleman enters the room and all rejoice. His mouth is wide and curved, the nose friendly above it, eyes too, finally hair. We speak to him, he immediately says who he is, talks about this and that, gives information, consoles, instructs. At a certain question he suddenly turns around and we notice that, in the back, he has a short flat nose, a round, tiny mouth, reddish swollen eyes. Here his cheeks puff out, he gets no approval, utters unfriendly words, we walk around him and speak with him rather on his first side, where he pleases. Nevertheless a few persons have stayed at his back, they chuckle and call over to us that there too he pleases, they make our decision difficult, he is talked to on both sides, gaiety all around.

Turn Down

A gentleman steps up to Manig. "Do you like this spoon?" he asks. He holds up the spoon. Manig shakes his head. "You really don't?" asks the gentleman. Then he takes Manig by the hand. They come to a tunnel. Both enter the tunnel. It is dark in here, the gentleman stops, draws Manig close, shows him the spoon, asks: "Not in the tunnel either?" "I don't like the spoon in the tunnel either," says Manig after his eyes have become accustomed to the darkness. Now they are both standing on a mountain plateau. Around them the wind. They are standing side by side, four feet aligned. Between them rises the spoon. The gentleman jerks his head to the right, precisely above his shoulder. His eyes travel to the spoon, then back to Manig. "Well?" asks the gentleman. "Not here either," replies Manig. "What if I add a little ball?" asks the gentleman. He shows Manig the ball. They are sitting in a tree. Below them sway the tops of smaller trees, in the distance rocks the ocean. "Not either," says Manig. "Not in any case."

Manig Sits Down

Manig comes into the room. He is expected. All the guests rise from their chairs. Some remain standing in front of their chairs, just where they stood up, ready to sit right down again, others have taken up positions beside their chairs, but keep a hand on the chairback, others have walked around their chairs, are standing behind their chairs, turned away from them even, others have walked far away from their chairs, others have grabbed their chairs with both hands and take them along as they walk toward Manig, others have grabbed two or three chairs and carried them off into a corner. As a result there is noise. People say hello to Manig. He winds his way through people and chairs, behind him the company settles back down on the chairs. Where is Manig going to sit? Here, here, a chair is pushed toward him, but it is immediately occupied by a gentleman who looks the other way. Now two chairs are held out to Manig while the host casts menacing glances. Manig looks at the chairs, already they are taken, on one of them sit two gentlemen who are whispering to each other. Now a chair is brought over from a corner. "For no one but you," cries the host. Manig looks at the chair. All are waiting. Manig waves the chair away. He removes his jacket, holds it out toward the company, hides his head in the lining, finds the hole, begins to blow, the jacket bloats itself, puffs up into a grey balloon onto which Manig climbs, which soon floats up to the ceiling. From there Manig waves.

Exchange

"Here, my shirt," says the gentleman, he takes his shirt off, holds it out to Manig, Manig takes it, takes off his shirt, holds it out to the gentleman who puts the shirt on, after which a gentleman steps up to him, offers him his shirt, which Manig accepts, after he has again taken off his shirt and given it to the gentleman, who does not bother to put it on, who holds it out to a gentleman who exchanges it for one which he had exchanged for one which he had exchanged for one, so that one now sees everywhere here in the vast square, on the edges of fountains, near the promenade, inside the bends of stairways, on the benches, beside the shop, gentlemen putting on and taking off shirts that are being offered them, an all-around exchange.

Games (iii)

"Something will surely come."

"We're already walking toward something."

We show each other what can be seen on both sides.

"Nothing but solid objects."

We walk through the town.

"There are still lots of things."

"Lots of things are standing."

We continue to walk through the town, our friend is holding the scissors in front of him. Will something come for him to snip, so it will fall to the ground on either side? Flags, letters, coats?

"Then we'll step over it."

"Snip it and step over it."

"Nothing down here," says our friend. He is tired. Someone else takes over the scissors. He lets them snip in the void.

They cut their way through the air. Bad down here.

-- published in an English omnibus of his first two books called Obstacles (Pantheon, 1965). Posted "Punnishing the Guest" to this sub several years ago and I suppose I can restore it if there are any requests. For now however... new material, not available on this community in particular, now and for the indefinite future. New literary home for a while I guess, a place for this anthology I am building myself, just like it used to be all those years ago.

link to division by zero

I will be discussing the story so spoilers be ware.

This is one of my favourite short stories, and I think, one that is somewhat underrated. I find it quite elegant, it's formatted like an equation, chapters follow the formula X, Xa and Xb, and one of the two (a,b) characters is a mathematician. There's also a 3rd character, maths itself, which Ted Chiang uses to explain how the premise of the book fits in mathematical history, division by zero is famously not possible, and how this has been proved or supported over time.

What really impresses me is how well the maths meets the narrative. Chapter 6 states "mathematics contains statements that may be true, but are inherently unprovable. Even a formal system as simple as arithmetic permits statements that are precise, meaningful, and seem certainly true, and yet cannot be proven true by formal means." And in the story our character b, also has a theorem, a belief he maintains about himself that he believes to be true but cannot prove.

There's this tension in maths that says is maths describing the universe or creating it? Is abstract maths about dimensions and dark matter and anti materials discovering reality or is it fantasy, just making the numbers do things. I think this idea plays well in this story as one character discovers through division by zero that the mathematical world is an invention, a persistent hallucination, while the other character discovers that the axioms they held about themselves they couldn't prove but it's even worse, they prove them to be false.

And then this all ties into the title, division by zero. Character A destroys everything they ever believed in via the mathematical division by zero. Character B destroys their own self belief by proving that they are not the person they thought they were. And character C, the Math, ends in a quote about uncertainty. The whole story is a perfectly balanced equation.

The part of this story, the crux of the idea, has remained with me, and I see it a lot. We judge ourselves based on our thoughts and feelings. A moral compass visible only to us. We see hypocrisy in other people and we judge them for it but what of our own hypocrisy? We so often don't see it. It passes without judgement. We can always see the hidden context, the additional information, the asterisk that makes our behaviour logically consistent.

For ourselves it's always different. And so just like in the story we believe things about ourselves that are not true. We look at others and swear we would behave differently in their shoes and yet in our own shoes we behave no different. We never have to prove what we think about ourselves and if we did, how often would we find ourselves like character B here, with overwhelming proof we are not who we thought we were?

Hi everyone! I’m looking for short stories published between 2016 and 2023 that are around 3–8 pages long. Any genre is fine (literary, sci-fi, mystery, etc.), but preferably something engaging and not too experimental.

Do you have any recommendations or personal favorites that fit this range? Thanks in advance!

A lovely story, It was a long time ago that I read it for the first time, it fascinated then and now I wanted to share it.

The Egg

By: Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

I love this story about identity, family, acceptance, and brains 🧠

I'm teaching a short story class for high schoolers and looking to expand my short story repertoire. Has to be readable in 45 minutes. TIA!

15 pages long! Philosophical story about greed. I think it's interesting when imagining new societies not built on "He who owns the most does what he wants" but based on ensuring everyone gets what they need. UBI and wealth caps maybe??? Who knows. But it's important all the same. How much do we really need what we buy? How much stuff can we collectively stuff in landfills? How much water will we waste cooling computers we use to rehash art??? How much land does a person need? A timeless question.

Translated by Gregory Rabassa

On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings.

Frightened by that nightmare, Pelayo ran to get Elisenda, his wife, who was putting compresses on the sick child, and he took her to the rear of the courtyard. They both looked at the fallen body with a mute stupor. He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away any sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entangled in the mud. They looked at him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar. Then they dared speak to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor’s voice. That was how they skipped over the inconvenience of the wings and quite intelligently concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm. And yet, they called in a neighbor woman who knew everything about life and death to see him, and all she needed was one look to show them their mistake.

“He’s an angel,” she told them. “He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down.”

On the following day everyone knew that a flesh-and-blood angel was held captive in Pelayo’s house. Against the judgment of the wise neighbor woman, for whom angels in those times were the fugitive survivors of a celestial conspiracy, they did not have the heart to club him to death. Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff’s club, and before going to bed he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop. In the middle of the night, when the rain stopped, Pelayo and Elisenda were still killing crabs. A short time afterward the child woke up without a fever and with a desire to eat. Then they felt magnanimous and decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and provisions for three days and leave him to his fate on the high seas. But when they went out into the courtyard with the first light of dawn, they found the whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the angel, without the slightest reverence, tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal.

Father Gonzaga arrived before seven o’clock, alarmed at the strange news. By that time onlookers less frivolous than those at dawn had already arrived and they were making all kinds of conjectures concerning the captive’s future. The simplest among them thought that he should be named mayor of the world. Others of sterner mind felt that he should be promoted to the rank of five-star general in order to win all wars. Some visionaries hoped that he could be put to stud in order to implant the earth a race of winged wise men who could take charge of the universe. But Father Gonzaga, before becoming a priest, had been a robust woodcutter. Standing by the wire, he reviewed his catechism in an instant and asked them to open the door so that he could take a close look at that pitiful man who looked more like a huge decrepit hen among the fascinated chickens. He was lying in the corner drying his open wings in the sunlight among the fruit peels and breakfast leftovers that the early risers had thrown him. Alien to the impertinences of the world, he only lifted his antiquarian eyes and murmured something in his dialect when Father Gonzaga went into the chicken coop and said good morning to him in Latin. The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers. Then he noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels. Then he came out of the chicken coop and in a brief sermon warned the curious against the risks of being ingenuous. He reminded them that the devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary. He argued that if wings were not the essential element in determining the different between a hawk and an airplane, they were even less so in the recognition of angels. Nevertheless, he promised to write a letter to his bishop so that the latter would write his primate so that the latter would write to the Supreme Pontiff in order to get the final verdict from the highest courts.

His prudence fell on sterile hearts. The news of the captive angel spread with such rapidity that after a few hours the courtyard had the bustle of a marketplace and they had to call in troops with fixed bayonets to disperse the mob that was about to knock the house down. Elisenda, her spine all twisted from sweeping up so much marketplace trash, then got the idea of fencing in the yard and charging five cents admission to see the angel.

The curious came from far away. A traveling carnival arrived with a flying acrobat who buzzed over the crowd several times, but no one paid any attention to him because his wings were not those of an angel but, rather, those of a sidereal bat. The most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor woman who since childhood has been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a Portuguese man who couldn’t sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him; a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done while awake; and many others with less serious ailments. In the midst of that shipwreck disorder that made the earth tremble, Pelayo and Elisenda were happy with fatigue, for in less than a week they had crammed their rooms with money and the line of pilgrims waiting their turn to enter still reached beyond the horizon.

The angel was the only one who took no part in his own act. He spent his time trying to get comfortable in his borrowed nest, befuddled by the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles that had been placed along the wire. At first they tried to make him eat some mothballs, which, according to the wisdom of the wise neighbor woman, were the food prescribed for angels. But he turned them down, just as he turned down the papal lunches that the pentinents brought him, and they never found out whether it was because he was an angel or because he was an old man that in the end ate nothing but eggplant mush. His only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience. Especially during the first days, when the hens pecked at him, searching for the stellar parasites that proliferated in his wings, and the cripples pulled out feathers to touch their defective parts with, and even the most merciful threw stones at him, trying to get him to rise so they could see him standing. The only time they succeeded in arousing him was when they burned his side with an iron for branding steers, for he had been motionless for so many hours that they thought he was dead. He awoke with a start, ranting in his hermetic language and with tears in his eyes, and he flapped his wings a couple of times, which brought on a whirlwind of chicken dung and lunar dust and a gale of panic that did not seem to be of this world. Although many thought that his reaction had not been one of rage but of pain, from then on they were careful not to annoy him, because the majority understood that his passivity was not that of a hero taking his ease but that of a cataclysm in repose.

Father Gonzaga held back the crowd’s frivolity with formulas of maidservant inspiration while awaiting the arrival of a final judgment on the nature of the captive. But the mail from Rome showed no sense of urgency. They spent their time finding out if the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn’t just a Norwegian with wings. Those meager letters might have come and gone until the end of time if a providential event had not put and end to the priest’s tribulations.

It so happened that during those days, among so many other carnival attractions, there arrived in the town the traveling show of the woman who had been changed into a spider for having disobeyed her parents. The admission to see her was not only less than the admission to see the angel, but people were permitted to ask her all manner of questions about her absurd state and to examine her up and down so that no one would ever doubt the truth of her horror. She was a frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head of a sad maiden. What was most heartrending, however, was not her outlandish shape but the sincere affliction with which she recounted the details of her misfortune. While still practically a child she had sneaked out of her parents’ house to go to a dance, and while she was coming back through the woods after having danced all night without permission, a fearful thunderclap rent the sky in two and through the crack came the lightning bolt of brimstone that changed her into a spider. Her only nourishment came from the meatballs that charitable souls chose to toss into her mouth. A spectacle like that, full of so much human truth and with such a fearful lesson, was bound to defeat without even trying that of a haughty angel who scarcely deigned to look at mortals. Besides, the few miracles attributed to the angel showed a certain mental disorder, like the blind man who didn’t recover his sight but grew three new teeth, or the paralytic who didn’t get to walk but almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers. Those consolation miracles, which were more like mocking fun, had already ruined the angel’s reputation when the woman who had been changed into a spider finally crushed him completely. That was how Father Gonzaga was cured forever of his insomnia and Pelayo’s courtyard went back to being as empty as during the time it had rained for three days and crabs walked through the bedrooms.

The owners of the house had no reason to lament. With the money they saved they built a two-story mansion with balconies and gardens and high netting so that crabs wouldn’t get in during the winter, and with iron bars on the windows so that angels wouldn’t get in. Pelayo also set up a rabbit warren close to town and gave up his job as a bailiff for good, and Elisenda bought some satin pumps with high heels and many dresses of iridescent silk, the kind worn on Sunday by the most desirable women in those times. The chicken coop was the only thing that didn’t receive any attention. If they washed it down with creolin and burned tears of myrrh inside it every so often, it was not in homage to the angel but to drive away the dungheap stench that still hung everywhere like a ghost and was turning the new house into an old one. At first, when the child learned to walk, they were careful that he not get too close to the chicken coop. But then they began to lose their fears and got used to the smell, and before they child got his second teeth he’d gone inside the chicken coop to play, where the wires were falling apart. The angel was no less standoffish with him than with the other mortals, but he tolerated the most ingenious infamies with the patience of a dog who had no illusions. They both came down with the chicken pox at the same time. The doctor who took care of the child couldn’t resist the temptation to listen to the angel’s heart, and he found so much whistling in the heart and so many sounds in his kidneys that it seemed impossible for him to be alive. What surprised him most, however, was the logic of his wings. They seemed so natural on that completely human organism that he couldn’t understand why other men didn’t have them too.

When the child began school it had been some time since the sun and rain had caused the collapse of the chicken coop. The angel went dragging himself about here and there like a stray dying man. They would drive him out of the bedroom with a broom and a moment later find him in the kitchen. He seemed to be in so many places at the same time that they grew to think that he’d be duplicated, that he was reproducing himself all through the house, and the exasperated and unhinged Elisenda shouted that it was awful living in that hell full of angels. He could scarcely eat and his antiquarian eyes had also become so foggy that he went about bumping into posts. All he had left were the bare cannulae of his last feathers. Pelayo threw a blanket over him and extended him the charity of letting him sleep in the shed, and only then did they notice that he had a temperature at night, and was delirious with the tongue twisters of an old Norwegian. That was one of the few times they became alarmed, for they thought he was going to die and not even the wise neighbor woman had been able to tell them what to do with dead angels.

And yet he not only survived his worst winter, but seemed improved with the first sunny days. He remained motionless for several days in the farthest corner of the courtyard, where no one would see him, and at the beginning of December some large, stiff feathers began to grow on his wings, the feathers of a scarecrow, which looked more like another misfortune of decreptitude. But he must have known the reason for those changes, for he was quite careful that no one should notice them, that no one should hear the sea chanteys that he sometimes sang under the stars. One morning Elisenda was cutting some bunches of onions for lunch when a wind that seemed to come from the high seas blew into the kitchen. Then she went to the window and caught the angel in his first attempts at flight. They were so clumsy that his fingernails opened a furrow in the vegetable patch and he was on the point of knocking the shed down with the ungainly flapping that slipped on the light and couldn’t get a grip on the air. But he did manage to gain altitude. Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she watched him pass over the last houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture. She kept watching him even when she was through cutting the onions and she kept on watching until it was no longer possible for her to see him, because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.

Free to read online in Uncanny Magazine

They were engaged in a sing-song when a stranger appeared at the door.

There was not a single free chair in the tavern, which consisted of a square room in the basement of an old, dilapidated building. The room looked onto a rear alley through the iron bars of a single window, and its gloomy, tomblike atmosphere required it to be lit both day and night. Its walls had been painted a light blue and they exuded dark stains of dampness in various places. Its door opened onto a long narrow passageway that led to the street, and on one of the room’s sides were ranged barrels of the infernal wine. The tavern’s patrons were one big family tree whose branches were spread among the bare wooden tables. Some of them were bound by ties of friendship or by being colleagues at work, while all were joined in the brotherhood of being together in the same place and in the spiritual intimacy they shared there night after night. They were united too by conversation and the infernal wine.

They were engaged in a sing-song when a stranger appeared at the door.

It was not uncommon for one of them to be asked the question, “Why is it that you prefer the Tavern of the Black Cat?”

Its real name is The Star, but it acquired its popular name because of its huge black cat, adored by the emaciated and angular Greek owner, and friend and mascot of the patrons.

“I prefer the Tavern of the Black Cat because of its friendly, family atmosphere and because for a piaster or two you can fly without wings.”

The black cat would roam about from table to table in search of bread crumbs and scraps of felafel and fish. It would hang about at people’s feet and rub itself against their legs with the coquetry of one deprived of God’s favors, while its Greek owner would lean his elbows on the table, gazing lifelessly into space. As for the old waiter, he would go around with the wine or fill up the small ribbed glasses from the taps on the barrels.

“And it’s the tavern with the most compassion for those with fixed incomes.”

Witticisms and anecdotes would be exchanged, and hearts would grow closer by sharing grievances. Then someone with a fine voice would break into song, and that damp, tomblike place would overflow with happiness.

“There’s no harm in our forgetting for a moment the plurality of children and the paucity of money.”

“And to forget the heat and the flies….”

“And to forget that there’s a world outside the iron bars.”

“And to take pleasure in fondling the black cat.”

In the moments of being together, their spirits would become serene, abounding with love for everything, freed from fear and bigotry and cleansed of the specters of disease, old age, and death. They would conceive themselves in a likeness to which they aspired, outstripping time by whole centuries.

They were engaged in a sing-song when a stranger appeared at the door.

The stranger looked all around but did not find an empty table. He disappeared from sight into the passageway, and they thought he had gone for good, but he returned carrying a rush chair—the chair of the Greek owner himself—placed it against the narrow door and sat down.

He had come in with a sullen expression, and had returned and sat down with one. He looked at no one. His eyes revealed a stern, fierce look; a look that was absent, that was taking refuge in some unknown, faraway world and seeing none of those who were filling the small place. His appearance in general was dark, strong, and frightening, as if he were a wrestler, a pugilist, or a weight lifter. And his clothes went perfectly with his dark complexion; they accented it—the black sweater, the dark gray trousers, and the brown rubber-soled shoes. The only thing that shone in that gloomy form was a square-shaped patch of baldness that crowned a large hard-looking head.

His unexpected presence let loose an electric charge that penetrated through to the depths of those seated around the tables. The singing stopped, the expressions on the men’s faces contracted, the laughter subsided. Eyes alternated between staring at him and stealing glances at him. This, though, did not last long. Waking from the shock of surprise and terror at his appearance, they refused to allow the stranger to spoil their evening. With gestures they called upon one another to shun him, to continue having a good time. Once again they went back to their conversation, to their joking and drinking, but he was not in fact absent from their consciousness; they did not succeed in ignoring him completely, and he continued to weigh upon their spirits like some inflamed tooth. The man clapped his hands with disquieting loudness, and the aged waiter came and brought him a glass of the infernal wine. He quickly downed it and followed it with a second, then ordered four glasses all at once and drained them one after another. Then he ordered more. A sensation of fear and awe came over them; the laughter died on their lips; they withdrew into a dejected silence. What sort of man was this? The amount of wine he had consumed was enough to have killed an elephant, and here he was sitting like a solid rock, wholly unaffected, his features unrelaxed. What sort of man was this?

The black cat approached tentatively. It waited for him to throw it something. He was unaware of its presence, and the cat began rubbing itself against his leg. But the man stamped on the ground and the cat retreated, no doubt amazed at such treatment, the like of which it had never before experienced. The Greek turned his lifeless face toward the sound. He regarded the stranger at length, then went back to looking at nothing. The stranger emerged from his state of inertia. He moved his head to right and left violently, bit on his lips, then began talking in an inaudible voice, either to himself or to some person of his imagination. He menaced and threatened, waving his fist about. His face took on the ugliest expression of anger. The silence and fear were intense.

His voice was heard for the first time, a harsh voice like the bellowing of a beast.

“Curses…doom and destruction…” he repeated loudly.

He clenched his fist and continued. “Let the mountain come down—and what’s behind the mountain.”

He was silent for a while, then went on talking in a voice slightly less loud, “This is the question, quite simply and frankly.”

They became convinced that there was no point staying on any longer. When it had hardly begun, he had ruined the evening’s entertainment. They might as well go off peacefully. Agreement was reached among them with an exchange of looks, then there was a general movement of getting ready and standing up. It was then that, for the first time, he took notice of them. Emerging from his trance, he let his gaze move among them questioningly. With a gesture he halted them as he asked, “Who are you?”

The question deserved to be ignored and treated with contempt. But no one thought to ignore it or treat it with contempt.

“For a long time we’ve been patrons of the place,” answered one of them, taking heart from his mature years.

“When did you come?”

“We came at the beginning of the evening.”

“Then you were here before I arrived?”

“Yes.”

He gestured to them to return to their places.

“No one is to leave the room,” he said sternly.

They could not believe their ears. They were tongue-tied with amazement, but not one of them dared to answer him as he deserved. The middle-aged man, with a calmness not at all consistent with his feelings, said, “But we want to go.”

He threw them a stony, threatening glare. “Let him who has no care for his life advance!”

There was no one among them who had no care for his life. They exchanged dazed, baffled glances.

“But what’s the purpose of your objecting to our leaving?” asked the middle-aged man.

The stranger shook his head with grim scorn. “Don’t try to fool me,” he said. “You have heard everything….”

“I can assure you we have heard nothing,” said the middle-aged man in astonishment.

“Don’t try to fool me,” he shouted angrily. “You’ve learned what it’s all about.”

“We heard nothing and we know nothing.”

“Deceiving liars!”

“You must believe us.”

“Believe riotous drunkards?”

“You are insulting innocent people and sullying their honor.”

“Let him who has no care for his life advance!”

It became plain to them that the situation could only be handled by force, and this was something they could not muster. Under the spell of his fearsome gaze, they were obliged to return to their seats with suppressed anger and an unprecedented sense of degradation.

“And how long shall we remain here?” asked the old man.

“Until the appropriate time comes.”

“And when will the appropriate time come?”

“Shut up and wait.”

The time passed in painful tension. As they sat subdued by distress and worry, the wine flew from their heads. Even the black cat was conscious of a hostile odor in the atmosphere, so it jumped up onto the ledge of the sole window, then lay down, folded its front paws beneath its head, and closed its eyes, allowing its tail to hang out between the bars.

Certain questions about the man demanded to be answered: Was he drunk? Was he mad? What was the story he was accusing them of having heard? During all this time the Greek owner persisted in his lifeless silence, while the waiter, as though he were seeing and hearing nothing, went on serving the stranger.

The stranger began to look at them with scornful malice, then he said menacingly, “If any one of you has the idea of playing me false, I’ll punish the lot of you mercilessly.”

They took heart when he resumed talking, so the middle-aged man said with evident sincerity, “I swear to you, we all swear to you…”

“If I asked you for an oath, by what would you swear?”

A tiny hope invaded them, and the middle-aged man said eagerly, “By what you want—by our children, by the Almighty!”

“Nothing has any value with patrons of such a vulgar tavern!”

“We’re not as you think, we’re decent fathers and faithful believers. That may be just why we so need to refresh our burdened spirits….”

“Depraved scoundrels, you are dreaming of building castles not by hard work but by the contemptible exploitation of the story!”

“We swear by God Almighty that we do not know of the story and have no idea what it’s about.”

“Who of you is without a story, you cowards?”

“You did not speak. Your lips were moving, but no sound came from them,” said the old man.

“Do not try to deceive me, you old dodderer!”

“You must believe us and let us be.”

“Woe to you if you make a move! Woe to you if you act treacherously! If it comes to it, I’ll smash your heads and I’ll use them to block up the passageway.”

The man was truly fearsome, maybe also fearful, which would in itself increase the possibility of things ending badly. Despair crept into their hearts like a wave of deadly cold. He did not stop drinking, though he did not get drunk or become listless or torpid. And here he was, barring the sole way out of the place, powerful, violent, and as steely as the bars at the window.

They went on hopelessly exchanging glances. Whenever they glimpsed a shadow behind the bars, hope sprang to their hearts, though they were unable to make the slightest movement. Even the black cat seemed to have deserted them completely, and continued to enjoy its slumbers. One of them, finding the restraint too hard to bear, asked apprehensively, “Can I go to the toilet?”

“Who told you I was a wet nurse!”

The old man sighed and said, “Are we fated to remain like this till morning?”

“You’ll be lucky to see the morning!”

To argue was futile:

the man was mad or on the run or both. There might be some story behind him or there might be nothing at all. Despite their number they were prisoners. He was strong and powerful, and they possessed neither strength nor determination. Was there, though, no way of resisting? No possibility of resistance of any kind?

Once again they exchanged glances. Concern was to be seen in their eyes, and whisperings, just discreet enough for the stranger not to hear, were passed between them.

“What a disaster!”

“What a humiliation!”

“What ignominy!”

And suddenly a glance was embellished with something that resembled a smile, was in fact an actual smile. Was it really a smile?

“Why not? It’s a funny situation.”

“Funny?”

“Look at it with passing objectivity and you’ll find it’s enough to make you die laughing!”

“Really?”

“I’m frightened I’ll explode with laughter.”

“Remember,” said the middle-aged man in a voice that was only just audible, “that the time we normally leave is still a long way off.”

“But there’s no longer any real evening gathering.”

“Because we’ve discontinued it without reason.”

“Without reason?”

“I mean without a reason to prevent us continuing as of now.”

“And in what sort of humor would we go on with it after what has happened?”

“Let’s forget the door for a while and see what’s what.”

No one welcomed the suggestion and no one rejected it. The glasses of infernal wine were produced. Though this was in front of the stranger’s eyes, he paid the men no attention. They drank too much, heads became dizzy, and they were carried away in their intoxication. Magically their worries were lifted and their laughter rang out. They danced on the chairs, capped each other’s jokes, and sang “Good news is here of friendship’s feast.”

And all the time they ignored the door. They completely forgot its existence. The black cat awoke and began moving from table to table, from leg to leg. They drank to excess, they enjoyed themselves to excess, they became boisterous to excess, as though savoring the last of their nights at the tavern.

A miracle occurred, for the present retreated and melted away in a rising flood of forgetfulness; memory dissolved, and everything that it had stored away in its cells was demolished. No one knew his companion. The wine was truly infernal, and yet, yes and yet…

“But where are we?”

“Tell me who we are and I’ll tell you where we are.”

“There was some singing.”

“Or was it, as I remember, weeping?”

“There was some story. I wonder what story it was?”

“And this black cat, it is without doubt something tangible.”

“Yes, it is the thread that will bring us to the truth.”

“Here we are, getting close to the truth.”

“This cat was a god at the time of our forefathers.”

“And one day it seated itself at the door of a prison cell and made known the secret of the story.”

“And it threatened woe.”

“But what’s the story?”

“Originally there was a god, then it was changed into a cat.”

“But what’s the story?”

“How can a cat talk?”

“Did it not divulge to us the story?”

“Indeed, but we wasted the time in singing and weeping.”

“And so the threads came together and the way was cleared for grasping the truth.”

The voice of the old waiter was raised as he scolded someone, threatening and shouting, “Wake up, you idle wretch, or I’ll smash your head in.”

A huge man, his head bent in dejection, came along. He began taking up the glasses and dishes, cleaning the tables, and collecting the refuse from the floor. Immersed in a deep sadness, with his eyes bathed in tears, he worked without uttering a word or looking at anyone. With mournful compassion they followed him with their eyes. One of them asked him, “What’s the story?”

But he did not turn, and continued with his work, silent and sad, his eyes streaming with tears.

“When and where have I seen this man?” the middle-aged man asked himself.

The man, with his dark clothes composed of a black sweater, dark gray trousers, and brown rubber-soled shoes, made his way toward the passageway. Again the middle-aged man asked himself, “When and where have I seen this man?”

It’s unmistakable, organic, the flavour of something live.

“Oh, that’s dreadful.”

She shifts in her chair while the doctor pads across and to his fridge.

“Dreadful?”

“The taste. I don’t get a sweetie for after?”

“No.” He turns back with a blur of smile. “No sugar lump to go with it and no sweetie for afterwards.” Quietly teasing between the slim and softly shining shelves, “Sugar is bad for you and here we don’t ever dispense what is bad for you.”

“A small piece of fruit, then?”

“This is a surgery, not a restaurant.” He coughs out a small laugh and decides to risk, “And that’s a Scottish medicine—if it tastes bad, it must be working,” before glancing to check if she takes him in good part.

She grimaces back, not entirely unhappily, and swims the flavour round her tongue, hoping it will weaken. Under the tickle of spreading salt, the cold initial weight of the vaccine, there is something familiar about the taste. She knows that if she concentrates, identification will come.

Her doctor advances, hands benevolently folded round a stack of suitably chilled inoculations: the start of any truly happy holiday.

“I’ll need the use of both your arms.” Laying out his packages and snapping the first needle free: “Tetanus and hepatitis this side …” he grins curatively; “diphtheria and typhoid that.”

Something about his casual enumeration of plagues is strangely enjoyable, a comfort to her. She is being made safe; a part of her bloodstream is welcoming something foreign, so that none of her will go wrong when she takes all her body abroad.

She swallows and briefly considers the matter of Gordon. Gordon will not be made safe, because he will not go with her, because he does not like abroad. He does like her, but not abroad. She does like abroad. The thought of abroad is something she likes very much.

“I won’t hurt.” The doctor draws a careful epidemic up inside his syringe.

“I know you won’t. I will.”

She rolls up her sleeves, hoping that she can offer him flesh high enough on her arms. She would rather not take off her blouse. In the past, her doctor’s acts of examination have been both medical and polite; a nurse discreetly attending, should any especially intimate explorations be required. Even so, undressing always seems more awkward than being undressed—having to stumble her clothes off while the doctor slips outside and the nurse presses breaths through the disinfected silence and shifts tinily on white crêpe soles, observing. Nothing to enjoy. But that won’t happen today.

He nods, “Good,” then pushes a pinching kind of pain inside her skin; holds it, dabs around it, withdraws and dabs again. “Terribly bad?”

“No. Not bad at all.”

“Mm. I am actually quite good at giving injections. I still practise, you see. Others I could mention do not. How’s the polio doing?”

“I can still taste it. In fact, I think it’s getting worse. It reminds me of … I don’t know what.” He slips in another needle, while she thinks. That wasn’t fair.

“Some people would rather not know what’s going on.”

“It’s my arm, I like to keep tabs on it.”

“I quite understand. Other side and then we’re done. We just ask you to wait for a few minutes more, in case there’s an adverse reaction.”

As soon as he says this, she feels a rush in her circulation, a burst of strangeness, but nothing she would call adverse. Her flesh is being fortified like wine, science defending her against nature more deeply with every prick.

“You’re getting tense—this will be painful if you don’t relax.”

“Sorry.”

“Not to worry. You’ve been a very patient patient. And. Last one. There. Will you be going away for long?”

“A month.” A month away from Gordon, during which time she will try to phone him and will certainly write him postcards and may nevertheless experience increasingly serious bouts of what she might well call relief. She can feel her symptoms building, even now.

“Terrific. A month.”

One whole month of perhaps incurable relief.

They probably will fire her when she gets back home. Already, she has calculated the likelihood of summary dismissal. She finds that it doesn’t scare her—not in the way that disease might, or a month staying here with Gordon and his list of things they shouldn’t talk about.

“Yes, I’ve saved up my holiday time”; pausing, recalling the polio taste and where she met it once before, knowing it, making a smile, “And I’m taking four days off sick.”

“Really?” He pauses to look quintessentially medical: phial held high, a glimmer at his needle and naturally chill, but very steady hands. “What will be wrong, in your professional opinion?” His voice relaxes into a type of wink—his eyes being unable to do the same, for reasons of professional distance and confidence.

“Wrong? Oh, probably flu. Probably not typhoid, or hepatitis, or—”

“Or tetanus, or diphtheria, or polio. Yes, I think that flu would probably be best. In my professional opinion.”

Or polio. She licked against her teeth and smiled again. On their second anniversary, last spring, when Gordon had asked her to do it and she’d finally agreed, when he’d got his way—this is how he’d tasted. The gagging nudge in her throat, repeating, and then warmed polio vaccine. It’s just like him.

“As you’re away so long…” The doctor ponders, above her notes, “I could write out your next prescription for TriNovum.”

“For?”

“Your contraceptive.”

Her passport for Gordon to travel, pregnancy free.

“Oh yes, thank you.”

“No problems, periods normal?”

“No problems at all.” She can say this because it will be true soon and might as well be now: her hopes proving unexpectedly resistant to all antidotes.

She waits as he checks the pressure of her altering blood, not minding the hard fit of the cuff, and taking—for the sake of politeness—the prescription for an oral contraceptive she may never use, at least not with Gordon.

“Thank you.”

“We aim to please.” He opens the door so that she can start to go away. “Do have a nice holiday.”

“I will.”

She is aware that, when she speaks, her breath is vaguely coloured with the taste of something not unlike seminal fluid. She is aware of something not unlike the cloy and tang of spunk. She is aware that her husband has the flavour of a tentatively sweetened disease. But, finally, it seems she has developed a complete immunity.

It hurts when we love somebody, because loving is a painful thing, that is its nature. Today, even though we are not sure that the pain will pass, it has to be said that our loving is hurting us.

He is spending this evening in his room whee we don’t see him. It is raining outside and he always likes to smell the rain. Often, we have listened while he opens his window and lets in the damp and the insects and the draught. Downstairs, we can hear the rasp of wood when he tugs at the frame. He can be strong sometimes, even though he is small, and the window is loose fitting and old, he can push it up quite easily. So he empties out the heat we pay for and he really doesn’t think. We don’t know where he gets that from, his terrible lack of thought, he simply isn’t one bit like us.

Of course, no little boy likes to think and we expect to do that for him until he is grown and responsible. This is a burden to us, but a light and pleasant one. Loving someone means that you will do things for them, almost without consideration to the effort it takes. We would catch him if he ran and fell, we wold bandage him if he were bleeding and now we can measure his actions and think ahead on his behalf. On many occasions, we can stop him being hurt.

We don’t think of these attentions as any kind of chore, after all, when he was so noisy and smelly and dirty, so very difficult to hold, we didn’t abandon him. We knew he was a baby, not just some troublesome pet, and we kept him with us. For months, he made our lives extremely different, in fact he was quite a tyrant, but we didn’t mind. We taught him to do better. Now we can really believe that he is quiet and clean as a matter of course. He sometimes makes mistakes, but then, mistakes are how we teach him. We learned by being corrected and that’s the best way.

The worry of keeping him safe is another matter, that can be draining now and then. For example, we didn’t know what to do about his window. He might have opened it up and then dropped out, so we had the bars put on, but still we had to fret because a fire could easily trap him in his room. Then there was the problem of his still opening the window inside the bars and doing whatever old little boy things he feels himself moved to do. His carelessness could have let us with rot in the window frame and perhaps he would catch cold. It was much better to screw down the window and put our minds at rest, because he will give us promises and then break them, which hurts us all in the end. Better to use the woodscrews than tempt him to lie at us.

He wasn’t grateful for what we did, but that is very normal in boys; we understand. His spite didn’t stop us saying that if he ever were in difficulties, or a fire did occur, he could bang on his door the way he does now and we could certainly let him out.

We are puzzled he still prefers not to be granted full run of the house. We don’t know how many times we’ve asked him if he would like to be trusted not to break anything else, or to disturb us. Always he refuses the privilege, which we suppose shows that he knows his limitations: he is still dreadfully clumsy for his age. We make a point of sharing meals with him and having him sit at our table — it is so important he should have good eating manners when he goes to school. We suffer for the decision, but we persevere. It doesn’t matter how many glasses he drops and the stains he makes in the tablecloth don’t deter us; we will stop the silly shaking in his hands and eventually see him performing respectably.

If we let the child know our rules and what happens when he breaks them, it’s only a matter of time until everything falls into place. More people should understand that and keep the incoming flood of modern and imported attitudes out of their homes. Today we all suffer at the hands of criminals created by sloppy care. A good child will be a good citizen and a bad child will not, as anyone can appreciate. Upbringing has to be just that — brining up from the animal level to something higher, better, closer to God. Obviously, some races will always be nearer the animal than others, we must accept this at God’s will, but if everyone would simply do their best then how much more pleasant the world would soon become. As it is, we are almost afraid to go out.

He never goes out without us, of course we can’t trust him to stranger. This means we must be with him always which takes time and effort, but we would rather do a good job now than reap the sour rewards for idleness and slacking later. We tell him this and expect him to feel the same. Equally, we wouldn’t leave him to the tender mercies of the television. If we sat him in front of an endless stream of filthy music and filthy talk, filthy actions, what would we get? We would get a filthy boy. He may listen to some radio, look at his picture book or assume himself in an away he likes and enjoy the haven we have made for him. Our home is a clean home, free from tabloid sewage and the cheap and foreign pollution most people seem content to have wash around them all the day. We are not like that, we even sing him hymns to keep the air sweet in our rooms. It’s such a pity we can’t take him out to church.

We have the cares and troubles that come with the gift of a child, it would be very easy to give him material things and think that making him happy would make him good. There was even a time when we did offer him presents, wholesome gifts for a boy, and we were surprised when he broke them, or dirtied them, or pushed them aside. He could quickly forget we had given him anything.

This ingratitude and forgetfulness was hurtful, but because we love him, it hurt us even more to take the things away. Still, we have the bitter satisfaction of finding our judgements proved right. His will is undeveloped and can be swiftly poisoned by exposure to the material side of this world. A time came when he wanted something he could hug on to in the night and we knew what that meant. That was a warning. We had to take his pillow away because he would sleep alongside of it, in spite of what we told him, and that ws dirty, that was more of the filth we constantly fight to save him from. It grieved us when he cried about it, cried in the night, and didn’t understand the procedures to which he would have to conform. In the end he was persuaded to pray with us and became peaceful which was a little victory for us all.

Other victories will come. We would love him to have birthdays and presents like tooter children. That would be such fun, but the way he is now, it would be quite impossible. We hope that he will change in time and become more upright and mannerly, a suitable example to others, and we are overjoyed to see that he is already much quieter than he ever has been. Sometimes we only know he’s there, because of a certain feeling in the house and the ties that loving binds.

His extreme delicacy frightens us, naturally. Some mornings when we look at him, he seems so pale and thin, perhaps as an angel might be. His whole body is almost white which is clean, but not natural. Not matter what we do, what methods we apply, he turns back to white again within days or hours, even minutes. He could have gone to school this term, had he been well, but we will have to wait until he’s stronger and perhaps reconcile ourselves to the likelihood that he may never go to a normal school. That would be a disappointment. That would make us sad.

Sometimes we have to ask ourselves if he is a judgement on us for our part in his conception. Children come from sin, they are the immediate flower of sin there is sin in him. It would be idle to consider why this should be so and we believe only that, through him, we may find an opportunity to conquer sin again and again. This is more a privilege than a punishment and we treasure it. Many times in the night, we examine him for sings of filthiness, wetness of every kind, and often we are given cause for concern, or rather, we are challenged by sin. He has had seed in him and it comes out. Evil cannot help but flaunt itself and in the darkness it is most free to be manifest. How weary he makes us, forcing us to search and watch and search: a rubber sheet is not enough, an alarm is not enough, all our vigilance is not enough. Nobody knows what pains we3 have to take with the boy, purely to keep him up and away from his animal self.

And the animal brings on the animal, the beast. We find him tempting us as the devil tried to tempt Our Lord and we are uncovered as wanting. He offers us what he has and should not have and takes advantage of our tiredness, our weakness and our humanity.

We have to be strong for his sake, we have to pray and take action fearlessly for the sake of all our souls because we want them to grow up into a man we will be proud of. He will not be a fear and a stranger in our house because our strength and fortitude will not allow it.

Even tonight, when we think of our love for him and feel tender, we are undefeated because we know that tenderness is not enough. We must call upon our action and our faith and, with God’s guidance, proceed.

Our child has sinned today. He has summoned an evil under our roof. What sin, what evil, need not be mentioned, we will not dignify it with a name. We need only say that he is ugly with sin and now we must call upon our God-given love to claim him for beauty so that good may triumph in all our hearts. We will release him from himself and hear him that us for it. We must.

Time after time and time out of time, we will purify him for the coming world and watch him cultivate his gratitude, piece by piece. When we are finished, he will be a good boy entirely.

Of all the music hall attractions that present needless dangers to both the audience and the performers, none fills me with such supernatural horror as the old routine called ‘The Urbane Tiger.’ For those who have never seen it – since the new generations know nothing about the great vaudevilles of yesterday afternoon – I’ll describe how this number works. What I cannot explain, nor try to communicate, is the state of terrified panic and abject disgust in which the spectacle plunges me, as if into fishy and horrendously cold waters. I should simply not go into theatres where this routine is on the bill (which is less and less frequent, moreover). Easier said than done. For reasons I’ve never been able to clarify, ‘The Urbane Tiger’ is never announced, and I never expect it – or rather, I do: an obscure, barely conscious sense of danger overlays any pleasure I might take in the other performances. Though sometimes a sigh of relief might free my heart after the final attraction, at others I recognize all too well the fanfare that introduces the sketch – always played, as I said, as if it were impromptu. As soon as the orchestra starts in on that brassy, oh-so-characteristic waltz, I know what is about to happen; a crushing weight settles on my chest, and I feel the live wire of dread between my teeth like a sour, low-voltage current. I want to leave, but I don’t dare. Besides, nobody moves, no one else shares my anxiety, and I know that the beast is already on his way. I’m also aware that the arms of my chair would afford, oh, precious little protection …

First, the theatre is plunged into total darkness. Then a projector goes on at the proscenium, and the beam from this pitiful beacon alights on an empty box, most often near, very near my seat. From there, the beam moves to the far end of the promenade gallery to find a door leading to the wings; and as the horn section dramatically attacks the Invitation to the Dance, they enter.

The tamer is a very fetching redheaded beauty, though a bit tired-looking. Her only defence is a black ostrich fan, with which she at first conceals the lower half of her face; only her large green eyes appear above the dark fringes of the undulating waves. With bare arms made iridescent by the light and bathed in fog from a winter’s dusk, the tamer is tightly sheathed in a romantic and very low-cut evening gown, a strange gown with heavy reflections, of deepest black. This gown is made of an incredibly supple and delicate fur. Crowning all this is the cascading eruption of a flaming head of hair spangled with gold stars. The whole thing is at once oppressive and vaguely comic. But who would think of laughing? Moving aside her fan to reveal pure lips frozen in a smile, the tamer, followed by the beam of the projector, steps toward the empty box – on the tiger’s arm, as it were.

The tiger walks more or less like a human on his two hind legs. He is dressed as a dandy, with refined elegance, and this costume is so well tailored that one can hardly make out the animal’s body beneath the large trousers with feet, the brace of flowers around his neck, the blindingly white dicky with its flawless pleats, and the frock coat fitted by a masterful hand. But his head remains, with its horrendous grimace, its mad eyes rolling in purple sockets, the furious bristling of its whiskers, and the teeth that sometimes gleam under curled lips. The tiger advances very stiffly, holding in the crook of his left arm a light grey hat. The tamer walks with measured steps, and if her back sometimes arches a bit, if her bare arm contracts, causing a muscle to swell unexpectedly beneath the tawny velvet of her skin, it is because she has just made a violent, hidden effort to prop up her beau, who was about to fall face forward.

There they are at the door to their loge, which the urbane tiger swats open before stepping aside to let the lady pass. And when she has gone to sit and casually rest her elbows on the faded plush, the tiger lets himself drop into a chair beside her. Here, normally, the room erupts into blissful applause. And I look at the tiger, and I want so much to be somewhere else that I could cry. The tamer regally greets the public with a slight nod of her blazing curls. The tiger goes to work, manipulating accessories purposely placed near his seat in the box. He pretends to scan the audience with opera glasses, lifts the lid from a box of chocolates and pretends to offer some to his neighbour. He pulls out a silk handkerchief, which he pretends to sniff; he pretends, to the hilarity of everyone present, to consult the programme. Then he acts gallant, leans toward the tamer and pretends to murmur some love declaration in her ear. The tamer pretends to be shocked, and flirtatiously places the fragile screen of her feathered veil between the pale, beautiful satin of her cheek and the beast’s stinking muzzle studded with sabre blades. At that, the tiger pretends to be overcome by despair, and he wipes his eyes with the back of his furry paw. And throughout this lugubrious pantomime, my heart pounds with agonizing thuds inside my breast, for only I see, only I know that this whole tasteless parade holds up only by a miracle of will; that we are all in a frightfully unstable state of balance, which anything could upset. What would happen if, in the box next to the tiger’s, that little man who looks like a humble office employee, that little man with his pale face and tired eyes, stopped wishing for one instant? For he is the real tamer; the woman is just a figurehead. Everything depends on him. It’s he who makes the tiger into a marionette, a mechanism bound more securely than if he were wrapped in steel cables.

But what if that little man suddenly let his attention stray? What if he died? No one suspects the danger that could break loose at any moment. And I know, I imagine, I imagine – no, it’s better not to imagine what the lady in fur would look like if … It’s better to watch the end of the routine, which always delights and reassures the public. The tamer asks if someone in the audience would kindly let her borrow a small child. Who could refuse anyone so charming? There is always some witless idiot to hand up toward the fiendish box a delighted infant, whom the tiger gently cradles in the hollow of his folded paws, leaning over the little hunk of flesh with his alcoholic’s eyes. To thunderous applause, the lights go up in the hall, the baby is restored to its rightful owner, and the two partners wave before exiting by the same path that brought them.

Once they’ve disappeared through the door – and they never come back to take a bow – the orchestra erupts into its noisiest fanfares. Shortly afterward, the little man collapses and mops his brow. And the orchestra plays ever more loudly to cover the growls of the tiger, who returns to his normal state once he is back in his cage. He roars as if from hell, rolls over and over while shredding his beautiful clothes, which they have to have remade for each performance. There are cries, tragic howls of desperate rage, furious leaps against the cage bars. On the other side of those bars, the false tamer undresses quickly so as not to miss the last metro. The little man is waiting for her in a café near the station, the one called the Never-Never.

The tempest unleashed by the tiger entangled in his scraps of cloth, muffled though it might be, threatens to create an unfavourable impression on the audience. That is why the orchestra is playing the overture from Fidelio with all its might; that is why the director, in the wings, is hurrying the unicycle clowns onstage.

I hate the routine of the urbane tiger, and I will never understand the pleasure that the public takes in it.

Collected in André Breton’s 1940 Anthology of Black Humour. A little too long for r/Extraordinary_Tales

​

This same book in a stranger’s hands, half-known.

Those readers, kindred spirits, almost friends.

You are in transition; you are on the threshold.

The library is the place that gets you. Pure gold.

Jackie Kay

O magic place it was – still open thank God.

Alexandra Harris

Here’s a true story. Simon, my editor, and I had been meeting to talk about how to put together this book you’re reading right now. We set off on a short walk across central London to his office to photocopy some stories I’d brought with me.

Just off Covent Garden we saw a building with the word LIBRARY above its doors.

It didn’t look like a library. It looked like a fancy shop.

What do you think it is? Simon said.

Let’s see, I said.

We crossed the road and went in.

Inside everything was painted black. There was a little vestibule and in it a woman was standing behind a high reception desk. She smiled a hello. Further in, straight ahead of us, I could just glimpse some people sitting at a table and we could hear from behind a thin partition wall the sounds of people drinking and talking.

Hello, we said. Is this a library?

The woman lost her smile.

No, she said.

A man came through from behind the partition. Hello, he said. Can I help at all?

We saw the word library, Simon said. Was this a library once? I said. She’s a writer, Simon said by way of explaining. He’s an editor, I said.

We’re a private members’ club, the man said. We also have a select number of hotel rooms.

I picked up a glossy leaflet from a pile on the desk about some kind of food promotion or taster deal. Simon picked up a card.

Have you actually got actual books? I said.

We do do some books as a feature. Please help yourself to a card, the man said a bit pointedly since we already had.

(Later, when I got home, I unfolded the advert I’d taken, which was for a company working with Library, to produce three-course meals which allowed diners to relive your favourite musicals (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | Phantom of the Opera | Les Misérables | Matilda). I typed in the Library website address off the advert. When it came up I noticed for the first time that a central part of the textual design of the use of the word Library was the thin line drawn through the middle of it: Library.

This is what Library listed next to the photographs of its 5 luxurious, individually designed, air-conditioned rooms with many modern amenities and comfortable beds: • Terrace Bar • 24 Hour Concierge • Ground floor lounge with stage and bar • Massage and Beauty treatment room • Kitchen with Chef’s table (April 2015) • Private Dining and boardroom with conferencing • Double mezzanine with bridge • Smoking Terrace • Access to rare Library books).

Simon pocketed the card. I folded the advert about the food promotion into my inside pocket.

Thanks very much, we said.

Then we left.

We crossed the road and stopped on the pavement opposite, where we’d first seen the word above the door. We looked back at it. Simon shrugged.

Library, he said.

Now we know, I said.