No
Fury
Like
That
PRAISE FOR NO FURY LIKE THAT
Imagine if characters from The Devil Wears Prada got trapped in Sartre’s play No Exit, where “hell is other people.” No Fury Like That uses the lens of female souls stuck in Purgatory to examine loss, love, rage, angst, and what there really is to live for. Alternately funny, melancholy, philosophical, and raunchy, it’s a wild ride and another gutsy novel from Lisa de Nikolits.
—JOHN OUGHTON, author of Death by Triangulation
Suspenseful, surprising, thrilling and at times laugh-out-loud funny, No Fury Like That takes you on a page-turning ride into another world—with Lisa de Nikolits’ skillful writing keeping you belted in.
—JACQUELINE KOVACS, Metroland Media
Afraid to die? Worse is yet to come! Julia, a ruthless business woman, suddenly finds herself in Purgatory not remembering if she has died, or how. Left with no choice but to make friends with other lost souls, she never dreams she will not only become their saviour, but also an avenger. In this brilliantly written book, you will hold your breath when Julia realizes she should have made things right at the primary crime scene where it all started—Earth.
—SUZANA TRATNIK, author of Games with Greta
No Fury Like That is de Nikolits at her best. She has taken the question, “What if you had a second chance?” and given her imagination free rein to answer it. The result is a novel full of colourful characters who grapple with their lives, their deaths, and what it is to be human. By the final page the reader has not only witnessed Julia Redner’s metamorphic journey, but has also taken a personal step forward.
—LIZ BUGG, author of the Calli Barnow Mystery Series
Lisa de Nikolits is one of my most fascinating discoveries of Canadian literature. Her writing is fresh and attractive, but deep in ideas and thought-provoking. No Fury Like That is an example of this duality: under the appearance of a paranormal story set in Purgatory we face a brilliant psychological exploration of a human soul questioning our certitudes about the world: Who are we really? How do we find responsibility for our past? What are the implications of our acts? Big questions presented through captivating prose displayed in a perfect plot that catches the reader from the very beginning. De Nikolits knows how to combine the oppressive atmosphere of Beckett or Kafka with the contemporaneous form of a thriller-narrative, always with a touch of humour and sensibility. And of course, with an extraordinary capacity to capture the essence of human emotions.
—MIGUEL ÁNGEL HERNÁNDEZ, author of Escape Attempt
Lisa de Nikolits’ serio-comedic interpretation of Purgatory, with a subplot of suspense and revenge make No Fury Like That an intriguing novel and a fascinating read. To date, I have read three of Ms. de Nikolits’ novels and it has been interesting to see her develop her serio-comedic style that really hits its stride in The Nearly Girl and has continued with No Fury Like That. In this novel, as with the earlier novel, we have a similar disparate cast of characters united in the afterlife, who for the most part are attempting to make sense of their earthly lives in a “coffee klatch” type of atmosphere, gently guided along by the more experienced Helpers. It is this “stand-back-and-take-a-look-at-your-life” message that is the biggest takeaway from No Fury Like That. It is about realizations: how an altruistic life is better than a self-centered mean-spirited one; the struggle for recognition is often futile; your family does need you, even if they don’t know it; one act of indiscretion can have fatal consequences, and the list goes on. Bottom line: don’t dismiss No Fury Like That as a light, entertaining read. There are nuances to Ms. de Nikolits’ writing that could be missed with such a viewpoint. This book is really about second chances that we may never get the first time around on our trek along Eternity’s Road.
—JAMES FISHER, The Miramichi Reader
Julia Redner seemed to have it all: stunning good looks, a fantastic job, and enough money and perks to live in the style she’d grown accustomed to. But after it all went down and she finds herself in the afterlife, Julia realizes that she didn’t have a single friend and now has a whack of unfinished business to settle. No Fury Like That is a cautionary tale about the perils of rising to the top at any cost. It’s also a smart, satisfying read that’s laced with humour, peopled with quirky characters and moves along at a fast clip. Readers will root for its plucky heroine, hoping she’ll get a shot at a second chance. Another spellbinder from Lisa de Nikolits!
—ROSEMARY MCCRACKEN, author of the Pat Tierney Mysteries
An intriguing and edgy idea where Purgatory is re-imagined as a pleasant spot where souls progress toward redemption through lattes, friendship and therapy. The book engages us from the first page when we meet Julia struggling to explore the strange airport where she has landed through her fight to solve the mystery of her own life and death. A beautifully written exploration of the metaphysical and of the many serious social issues faced by today’s women.
—M.H. CALLWAY, author of Windigo Fire, Arthur Ellis Best First Novel finalist
Lisa de Nikolits is the perfect travel companion we all search for; she is funny without being mean, wise without being boring, and so good at getting both into and out of trouble. I have let her lead me onto a coach bus heading West of Wawa, I have stolen away with her to an abandoned school when Between the Cracks She Fell, and now I know I will follow her even to Purgatory where there is No Fury Like That of her betrayed but unsurmounted protagonist, Julia Redner. If you can, I recommend seizing this chance to take a trip with Lisa de Nikolits.
—JADE WALLACE, contributing author to PAC ’N HEAT, a Ms PacMan Noir Anthology
No Fury Like That is a a bold tale of comeuppance....
—SHIRLEY MCDANIEL, artist at art-explorations.com
Copyright © 2017 Lisa de Nikolits
Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Collective Agency (Access Copyright).
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.
Cover design: Lisa de Nikolits
eBook: tikaebooks.com
No Fury Like That is a work of fiction. All the characters and situations portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
De Nikolits, Lisa, 1966-, author
No fury like that / Lisa de Nikolits.
(Inanna poetry and fiction series)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77133-413-6 (paperback).-- ISBN 978-1-77133-414-3 (epub). --
ISBN 978-1-77133-415-0 (kindle).-- ISBN 978-1-77133-416-7 (pdf)
I. Title. II. Series: Inanna poetry and fiction series
PS8607.E63N6 2017 C813’.6 C2017-905367-1
C2017-905368-X
Printed and bound in Canada
Inanna Publications and Education Inc.
210 Founders College, York University
4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3
Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax: (416) 736-5765
Email: [email protected] Website: www.inanna.ca
No
Fury
>
Like
That
a novel by
Lisa de Nikolits
INANNA PUBLICATIONS AND EDUCATION INC.
TORONTO, CANADA
ALSO BY LISA DE NIKOLITS:
The Nearly Girl
Between The Cracks She Fell
The Witchdoctor’s Bones
A Glittering Chaos
West of Wawa
The Hungry Mirror
To Bradford Dunlop.
And all my friends and family, in this world and the next.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I: THERE
1. Waking
2. Agnes
3. Versace
4. Canteen, Rest Rooms, Ablution Blocks
5. Cedar Mountain Eagle
6. Makeover
7. My New Crew
8. Therapy, Take Two
9. Fat Tracey Bakes
10. Beatrice, the Administrator
11. Duchess
12. Viewing Auntie Miriam
13. Agnes’s Story
14. I Run Away for a While
15. Scrabble and Murder
16. Rain
17. Samia
18. Time Alone to Think
19. Junior
20. Grace, The Living Barbie Doll
21. Isabelle, Eno, and Bowling
22. Emma, Jan, and Aunt Gwen
23. Convincing Grace
24. Grace’s Viewing
25. Goodbye Duchess
26. The First Time Junior Tries to Kill Me
27. Blessed Are Those Who
28. The Second Time Junior Tries to Kill Me
29. Earth is An Option
30. Flying Cows and Board of Regulators
31. Isabelle, Eno, and Options
32. Thinking
33. My Viewing
PART II: HERE
34. Back Again
35. Healing
36. Lula Jane Harris
37. Revenge, Part One
38. Visiting Auntie Miriam
39. Silly Bunny
40. On The Run
41. Ecum Secum Lake
42. Taking Care of Business
43. Planning The Next Move
44. Makeover
45. Vegas
46. The Plan in Motion
47. The Escorts Are Prepped
48. Reunited With Junior
49. Just Deserts
50. Skeptical Joe
PART III: HERE AND THERE
51. Purgatory
Acknowledgements
Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.
—William Congreve (1697)
PART I: THERE
1. WAKING
I WAKE. EVERYTHING HURTS. I’m locked in darkness, submerged. I’m breathing, yes, but the burn bites deep into my bones. I want to lift my head but it’s too heavy; it’s a giant tree stump buried in the roots of my arms. My arms are stinging. My elbow feels like shattered wreckage. Am I broken? Why can’t I move?
I focus on my mouth. Teeth are clenched, jaw is locked. Prison. The prison of my face is buried in the stump log of my head that is handcuffed to my arms.
But, yes, I can breathe and I do. It feels good to breathe and, like a balloon, my head fills with air and becomes lighter, light enough that I can nearly imagine moving it. But only nearly.
I am wedged. I breathe into the darkness of my hot, exhaled air and I wonder if I am dreaming or floating slowly towards the light of wakefulness, at the surface of consciousness.
I wait, expecting to burst through like a drowning man freed after an interminable time of clawing upwards but there’s no reprieve, and I’m not going anywhere. Although my head is a balloon, lighter, still, there’s nothing but the burning, the sting, the darkness, and the air I breathe in and out.
Unclench jaw. Teeth snap apart with a click and the sandpaper of broken tooth enamel is gritty in my mouth. My tongue is a giant snake lodged in an earthworm’s burrow and I want to move my giant python tongue but I can’t. All I can do is sandpaper my palette with the tiny enamel tooth shavings that I ground down during the night. The night? Is that why it’s so dark? It’s night, I must be asleep but I panic, where is my surface?
I want out, away from the pain that burns from my elbow, which is crushed underneath me, crushed awkwardly, bent, twisted and broken. Please, I implore my limbs, my tongue, my head, my hand, please, something move.
My head budges a fraction, enough to make me believe that some movement now will equal all movement soon.
And it is so. Slowly, slowly, like a car being dredged up from the depths of a lake, my head is lifted by an invisible crane, lifted out of the dark, wet prehistoric roots of my burning, stinging, broken arms.
My eyelids are glued tight, but my head is upright and I can straighten my arms although it hurts like hell and I want to scream but I’ve yet to open my mouth.
My python tongue finally forces its way between my teeth, and I hiss inwards. The sound gives me strength and I snap my mouth open, a letterbox unhinged.
Pins and needles like boiling water, fingers pierced by cactus thorns of poisonous pain.
I am going to open my eyes. I tell myself this in no uncertain terms. I force my eyelids apart and stare blindly into the fierce flame of the unforgiving sun. I slam the shutters closed and hiss again.
Burning pain, broken teeth, searing light, why can’t I find the surface of this terrible dream? Why can’t I find the escape hatch of air, that geyser that will shoot me back into the land of daytime sanity and boring, reassuring normalcy?
My torso is twisted like a pretzel. Chair. I’m in a chair. Did I fall asleep at work? Am I at my desk, drooling, gritty-eyed and dishevelled for all the world to see?
I straighten my spine. Yes, that’s definitely the arm of a chair.
I command my eyes to open again but I take it slowly this time, and I peek gingerly through slitted blinds, see fuzzy movement. People. There are people. I open the blinds just that much more. Yes, people.
Oh my god, I’m in an airport.
Floor-to-ceiling windows tower to the left, and I see planes lined up outside, white shark capsules ready to swallow sardines, ship them through the sky and spit them out on the other side.
But I notice something strange. None of the planes have any markings. They are void of Air Canada logos, there are no American flags, or British Airways or WestJet decals. There’s nothing, only white sharks lined up on flawless licorice, the tarmac so fresh it looks chewy. Green lawns divide the runways under skies of the purest blue, accessorized by perfect cotton wool clouds, so pretty. I stare through Vaseline-smeared eyes and I blink a few times, hoping my vision will clear and that something will make sense, but there’s nothing familiar about the world outside.
Was I in a plane crash? Is that what had happened? Maybe I’d been on my way somewhere—but where? And the plane crashed or maybe it had to make an emergency landing? The outdoors is reminiscent of the Caribbean and yet it also looks like nothing I have ever seen before.
I turn back to the world inside the airport, and I recoil. It’s as if I have been punched in the gut, my already tender gut. The noise, the noise, the noise. It’s like being slammed by a Mac truck, such is the impact of this harsh wall of noise. How could I have mistaken this chaotic inferno for the cool, quiet world of underwater blackness?
A crowd is gathered in front of me and they’re screaming and jostling while airport staff make loud, unintelligible announcements over the intercom. Everybody’s shouting at the same time.
I blink again, still trying to clear my eyes, and I unwind my body until I’m sitting straight up in my chair, well, nearly straight. My elbow is s
till stinging and I reach for it, fearing I will encounter sheer bone jutting through the flesh but the skin is as smooth and intact as ever. My arm aches as if I crushed it beneath me when I slept and it needs to ease the kinks out in its own time. But it is still hard to breathe. I feel winded, as if I’ve taken a bad fall from a horse and broken a few ribs.
I let my fingers explore the rest of my body. I reach for my face first, again, frightened by what I might find. But my hair is soft and silky and there are no cuts or bruises on my scalp. I brush my bangs aside and check my forehead. Undamaged. I slide my fingers down my nose. My nose is reassuringly my nose, long, with that tiny pinch at the tip. My cheekbones are high and rounded and familiar under my fingertips and my mouth is free of cuts although my lips feel chapped and dry, and this confuses me. I wet my lips with my tongue and again I taste the sandpapery grit of broken enamel. I explore my teeth and the inside of my mouth, but nothing is broken, nothing explains the sandy grit. My front teeth have always stuck out slightly, much to my annoyance, because I think it makes me look friendly and approachable, which I am not. My overbite and full lips give me a slightly open-mouthed, Marilyn-pout and my theory is that men find me irresistible because I look like I’m halfway ready to give them head, and I’ve got no feminist problems with that. Men and their predictable desires for my assets have made my life so much easier. I’ve always pitied the plain Janes. I gnaw on my bottom lip, a gesture that Martin finds so alluring and, reminded of him, I shoot up in my seat.
Martin! My husband! Where is he? Panic fills my chest and I stand up quickly. The room spins to black and I fall back into my chair. I lean forward, with my head over my knees and take shallow, little breaths.
I tell myself that I am fine. I got up too quickly, that’s all. I must find Martin but I need a moment.
While I rest my head on my knees, my right hand searches my left for my wedding band and engagement ring, and, to my horror, I find nothing. Where are my rings? I would never have lost them. They, like Martin, mean the world to me.
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