by Jeffrey Ford
Olen went through the apartment and turned on all of the lights. Then he settled on the couch with the paperback he’d recently gotten at the local library used-book sale—Watership Down. Next to him, sitting on the floor, Dottie drew a portrait of a robot with a head like a lightning bolt with eyes and a square mouth.
“What’s that one’s name?” her brother asked her. He loved the crazy things she called her robots. There were dozens of the pictures laying around the apartment. After the drawing and the naming, there seemed nothing in it for her.
“This one is going to be Mrs. Shakes,” she said, concentrating on keeping the pink crayon in the circle of the right eye. “She shakes and then electricity shoots out her ears.”
“I don’t see any ears on her,” he said.
While looking him in the eye, she drew a C and a backwards C on either side of the robot’s head. She laughed and gave him the finger.
An hour later, night had fallen and the children knew they had to get moving so as not to be late for the show. Olen put the spaghetti in the microwave and Dottie poured the milk. “Cheese?” she asked, putting the milk back in the fridge.
“You mean that white stuff in the shaker?” asked Olen. “That’s not really cheese. That’s the shaved-off callouses of an old man’s feet.”
“I used to eat it,” said Dottie.
“What happened?”
“You.”
Dinner was served. The spaghetti was partially cold, but they were so hungry they didn’t even bother to put it back in the microwave. While they ate, they discussed the new school they were in. They’d been in a number of them in the two years since their father had left. “What’s your teacher’s name?” he asked her.
“Mrs. Beaglestretch.”
“No way.”
“That’s her name,” said Dottie. “Every day after lunch she goes in the coat closet at the back of the room and farts. We all hear her in there and everybody tries not to laugh.”
“You’re making that up.”
She shook her head. “Who’s yours?”
“Mr. Mace. The kids call him Mace Cut and Paste cause all he does is hand out sheets he makes on the copier that we have to fill out. He never teaches us anything; he just hands out sheets. He sits at his desk while we fill out the sheets and looks at his iPhone.”
When they were finished with dinner, they scraped the plates into the kitchen garbage and set them in the sink. Sometimes they washed them and cleaned up the kitchen, but as it was, they were running a little late. By seven thirty, they were back at the front window looking down and scanning the sidewalks, watching for any movement beneath the only two streetlights in the neighborhood that still worked. “Like usual, you watch on the right and I’ll watch on the left,” he said.
“I always get the right,” she said, disappointed.
“I always get the left. What difference does it make?”
“None, I guess,” she said. A moment later she pointed quickly and said, “What’s that?” But in an instant, they saw it was a kid on his bike, going in the opposite direction. Then there was a long spell of silent anticipation.
Around quarter to eight, Dottie spotted the black dog only a second before her brother did. Their mother had it from the real-estate lady that the animal’s name was Nox. “He’ll be coming soon,” Olen whispered as if the person they expected in the street could hear her. Through the glass, above the wind and the rustling of the leaves in the giant sycamore that shaded the Idawolf Arms, they could hear the high-pitched whistle that flew up from the shadowy street and caused the dog to freeze in mid-step. Its master emerged out of the dark and into the glow of the streetlight in a black overcoat and black wide-brimmed hat. The ends of a long scarf were lifted behind him in the wind. Olen thought of him as a part of the night that stepped out of itself in the form of a man. Dottie thought of him only as Mr. Susi. They knew he was their upstairs neighbor. That simple name, though, had over the course of the last four Saturday nights come to inspire fear and wonder.
“Get the flashlight. I’ll turn the lights out,” he said. They scurried through the apartment and met at their mother’s bedroom door in the dark, a thin penlight illuminating Dottie’s face. Olen moved around the bed to the big window that looked out at the abandoned wooden building next door. Dottie followed. The sill for that window was a seat, with a ledge that came out three feet and a cushion on top. Olen noticed that Dottie had her blanket wrapped around her. He thought it a great idea and wished he’d gotten his, but the show was soon to start and he didn’t want to miss a moment of it. She sat always on the right and he on the left, each with their back pressed against the wide frame.
“OK,” he said when they were both in place. She turned off the flashlight and there came the sound of M&M’s bags being torn open. All else was silent, and from where they sat, they could hear Mr. Susi use his key on the door in the lobby. They heard him on the steps, up all three flights, and heard the door to his place open and close. A moment later, they breathed deeply and a large circle of light appeared on the side of the old building not but ten yards away. A crisp bright circumference six feet wide and high. Following the light came music filtering down through the heating-duct system, “Mr. Susi’s symphony music” their mother called it when she heard it whispering in the kitchen.
Olen and Dottie understood how it worked. After the first night they’d witnessed it, they were on the street the next day and happened to be in a position to see the upper story of the Idawolf Arms. On the top floor, in one of its rooms, there was a circular window, floor to ceiling. Olen explained to Dottie the effect. It all had to do with the way the room was lit. The bulb, no doubt set near the ceiling, projected whatever stood or moved in front of it as a silhouette which appeared one story down on the worn gray wood of the building across the alley. The silhouettes came through so clearly in the circle, the detail amazingly precise. After the first few glimpses of Mr. Susi’s shadow passing by, the music somehow always took over and coordinated its slow, smooth rhythms to whatever was happening in the bright circle. It was only then that he appeared in full silhouette, standing at the center of the light in a shirt with long, puffy sleeves and a high collar. His hair was a tall wave about to break. They heard, very faintly from behind the music, the whistle that called the dog to him.
A thin, pointed stick appeared in his hand and he held it up like a maestro’s baton and turned slowly in circles. Dottie realized for the first time, from his profile, that Mr. Susi had a beard. Nox followed him around, carefully watching the stick as if his master was about to throw it. Somewhere the music jumped to a faster pace just as the dog jumped to his hind legs. He bounced around and Susi held the baton up high just out of the reach of the creature’s jaws. When he brought the baton down to his side, the music rolled slower, and as it devolved into a lullaby, it was as if the dog had gotten used to walking on its hind legs. He strode slowly back and forth in front of his master, stepping like a dainty clothes model. Both Olen and Dottie stopped chewing M&M’s as the face of Nox seemed to stretch and deform and then snap back into the silhouette of someone with long hair piled atop their head. In fact, the dog had transformed into the figure of a woman in a long dress. She opened her mouth wide and leaning toward Mr. Susi’s left ear vomited a torrent of tiny butterflies that came like a raging creek and after swamping him from view swarmed upward and around the room like a murmuration of sparrows.
The music swept along in an elegant discordant waltz. Olen and Dottie had seen all this before, seen the tendrils grow from the woman’s skin, seen the flowers blossom and their vines reach out for Mr. Susi who, producing a scissor from his pocket cut each feeler as it drew near. With every cut, agony registered in the woman’s body with a jerk, a heaving of the chest, and the head thrown back to utter a whimper of toads that appeared on her lips and then leaped to the floor. Mr. Susi raised the scissor like a knife and stuck it
in the side of the woman’s head. Smoke puffed out and as it did she shrank back into a dog with human legs and arms. The kids had no words to describe what the meaning of it was, though they’d seen the same before on other Saturday nights. An icy ball of confusion spun behind their eyes. All through the weeks the strange imagery of these movies twisted through their days and surfaced in their dreams. What came next, though, was something new.
Nox lunged, his teeth bared and snapping. Susi’s arms went up in the air and the dogman took hold of his master’s throat. There was a lightning jerk of the snout and dripping blackness as if a bottle of ink had spilled everywhere. In profile you could not only tell Mr. Susi had a beard but also that his throat had been ripped out. It was Olen who screamed. At the sound of it, Nox’s head snapped to attention, and he dropped the lifeless body of his master to the floor. He undoubtedly drew toward the circular window, his shadow form gigantic in the bright circumference. “It’s looking down here,” whispered Dottie. “It heard you.” With those words, the light upstairs went out, the music went off, and the alley fell back into darkness.
Neither Olen nor Dottie had anything to say. Their hearts were beating so loud they wondered if Nox could hear. They moved to the bed and huddled there, numb with fear, listening for the sound of the floorboards upstairs. Instead of footsteps, they heard the tap tap tap of dog claws. A stillness settled in and lasted so long their immediate fears melted slightly before there came a soft knocking at the apartment door. They held each other’s hands and squeezed tight. Eventually, Olen moved, dragging Dottie along. He inched cautiously to the edge of the bed. They stepped down onto the floor as softly as possible. Neither wore shoes, only socks. They left their mother’s room and made for the safety of the bathroom. In their journey through the dark, they had to pass the apartment door. They heard the thing breathing heavily. In a quiet but resonating voice it called, “Children, open up.”
Dottie ran ahead to the bathroom and held the door, ready to slam it shut if she had to. Olen stopped in his tracks and turned to the dog/man’s voice. “What are you?” he asked.
There was a low growling sound and the answer came back, “Different . . . and hungry.”
A spark of fear shot through Olen and he sprinted to the bathroom. Dottie closed the door fast and locked it. Luckily the lights were working. They got in the tub and listened. Hours passed before they heard the tap tap tap of the dog claws on the way back up to the fourth floor. Mr. Susi’s door opened and closed, and there descended a perfect stillness. It was only then that they dozed off to sleep.
They woke to the sound of their mother’s voice at the door. Olen got up and unlocked it. Dottie was close behind him. They hugged her as hard as they could. Willa begged them to tell her everything. She led the way into the kitchen, and they took turns as she made coffee. They told about the movies; they told about Nox and Mr. Susi. They didn’t tell about that one night when Susi in silhouette appeared to be having sex with an octopus. Nobody mentioned that, nor the one scene where a cat was devoured by master and dog. Otherwise they told her everything. She sat at the table with her cup and lit a cigarette. Olen and Dottie sat across from her.
“Are you sure this is real?” said Willa. “It sounds like a monster movie.” She took a long drag, coughed, and a tiny yellow butterfly fell out of her mouth into her coffee.
Sisyphus in Elysium
The rolling green meadows of Asphodel, a grass sea of prodigious mounds and mere hillocks dotted with ghostly flowers, stretched out in all directions beneath a lowering sky. A solitary figure stood at the base of the tallest rise, its crest hidden in clouds.
Thunder rumbled in the distance as Sisyphus slapped his hands together to clear the dust and grit, and then, spitting into each palm, placed them upon an enormous green boulder three times his size, smooth as glass. An eon ago, he’d named the rock Acrocorinthus, as it reminded him of the mountain that overlooked the city where he’d squandered his humanity.
He dug into the summer dirt with the balls of his feet and curling toes. He leaned into the stone’s mass. His shoulder found the right spot, the muscles of his calves flexed, his thighs tightened, and his strength ran up from his legs into his back and arms.
There was a grunt that echoed over the meadow. The boulder, ever so slightly, broke its deal with gravity, inching forward, barely any distance at all, and rolling back from the incline. Sisyphus rocked his burden to-and-fro ten times, slowly building momentum. He screamed like a wounded animal, and then, drooling, legs quivering, sweat upon his brow, he slowly ascended.
The condition of the ground was good, but rain was coming, lurking just somewhere over the next few crests. He challenged himself to make it to the top before the grass got slick and the ground turned to mud. Every iota of distance he won was an enormous strain. With muscles and joints burning, in intimate contact with the smooth surface of his personal tribulation, he needed to concentrate.
For the past millennium, at this juncture, he always returned to the same episode in his life. He’d thought through it 72 million different ways and would certainly think through it again. It took over his mind, letting his chest and biceps contend with the agony.
The time he cheated death happened back in the city of Ephyra, where he had ruled neither wisely nor well. He was a shrewd and conniving character, and the gods took a disliking to him. Treachery was afoot in his court; it was no secret to him. Zeus worked his cosmic will against the king of Ephyra to little avail. Sisyphus had outsmarted the gods more than once, and once was unforgiveable.
Before he was assassinated, he told his wife, Merope, that when he died, she was to throw his naked body into the street at the center of town. She complied with his wishes, as he knew she would, and because he’d not been buried, he was cast away onto the shores of the river Styx, forever unable to cross over into the afterlife.
Upon those sorrowful shores, he sought out Persephone, goddess of spring, on her yearly, contractual visit to Hades. When he tracked her down, just as she was stepping upon Charon’s boat to make the trip across the wild water, he laid out his case to her that he should be sent back to the world above in order to reprimand his wife and arrange for a burial for himself. With these tasks accomplished, he swore he would return to be judged.
The fair goddess, innocent as the season she represented, granted his wish. Of course, once he regained life, he didn’t return to the realm of the dead but resumed his role as monarch of Ephyra and was soon up to his old tricks, betraying the secrets of Athena and plotting his brother’s murder by poison. Eventually the gods had to send Hermes to fetch him back to the afterlife.
He stumbled in a rut and in an instant the boulder turned on him. It took him to the limits of his strength to wrestle the green globe into submission. His success cheered him, and he pushed on, breathing harder now. The rock grew heavier with every step. He whispered his queen’s name, Merope, repeating it like a prayer, struggling to remember her affection and a time he was worthy of it. Sometimes he’d look up and see his reflection in the glassy surface of his work and it often spoke to him of things he dared not tell himself.
The rains came and went, the scorching heat of summer, snow and ice, circling for a hundred years. Then one day he was there at the crest of the hill, and he was no longer pushing the boulder but leaning against it to prop himself up. His body made haunted noises as the muscles and tendons relaxed. He took a deep breath and staggered away from his charge.
A minute, think of it as a century, passed, and as always, the enormous rock somehow rolled to the edge of the hill. A moment later it tipped forward and then was off, galloping down the slope like a charging beast and quickly disappearing into the cloud cover. In his imagination, he saw Acrocorinthus already waiting for him at the bottom.
He descended along the path the boulder had made. During journeys to be reunited with the rock, his mind wandered, and he wondered how his life and deat
h might have been different. He often thought of one summer day out behind their cottage, in a clearing in the tall grass—yellow butterflies, white clouds, blue sky—as the young Merope, copper hair and green eyes, discovered his future in the palm of his hand. She promised to follow him in his ascent to the throne of Corinth.
It had taken mere centuries of pushing the stone before he realized that only the intangible things in life had been worthy of pursuit—love, friends, laughter, hope. Instead, during his years above, he’d chosen to value wealth and contracted greed, which swept him up into its tempest. Soon murder made sense, treachery was second nature, and lies were the meat of his meal. The boulder was a strict teacher, though, and through the torrent of hours, he reversed all his burning compulsions for material wealth, grew calm with his work, and saw he’d been a fool in his life.
The work of the boulder was simple, impossible work. When he strained beneath its weight, grappling for purchase against the incline, time disappeared. He was lost to the task at hand. At first, he considered his sentence a crushing labor, but on and on through the eons he’d come to realize it was hardly work at all and more a necessary form of meditation. His wildest dream from deep in those contemplations was that if he continued on with his work into infinity, somewhere along that misty track he would, himself, become a god through the mere process of repetition.
The planets swung in their arcs, and before too many years, he reached a spot on the hill where he could look out across the meadow, and also down to where the boulder sat like a fly spec amidst the green grass and white flowers. Suspended from the rock ceiling of the underworld was an iron gray cloud that stretched above everything. First the rain came, falling cool and soft on the hillside. Then, a tearing sound, like a shriek, and a sizzling bolt of lightning streaked down from above.