Fell Beasts and Fair

by C. J. Brightley

  “Oh, yes, the man is lucky who can call the world his home, and yes, the man is lucky if his house is all his own. And if the man is lucky, then the fairies shine their light, and love the man who’s lucky every day and every night.”

  About the Author

  Rollin Jewett is an award winning playwright, screenwriter, poet, actor, singer/songwriter…etc. Mr. Jewett’s feature film credits include “Laws of Deception” and “American Vampire.” His poems have been seen (lately) in The Gathering Storm Magazine, Red Weather Literary Magazine, The Write Launch, Weasel Press and others. A short story “The Girl in the Forest” was recently published as part of Ghost Stories: An Anthology by Zimbell House Publishing. His plays have won several awards and have been produced all over the world. Mr. Jewett lives in Holly Springs, NC, with his wife and son. His website is http://rollinjewett.com/.

  Everything Mimsy

  Samuel Marzioli

  When Nico was a boy, his mother told him about a world beyond our own, tucked into the seams of reality like a spiderweb in the corner of a room. She draped herself across his mattress at bedtime, pressed her bulk into his side, her eyes fixed on the business of her knitting.

  “It’s unique,” she said, deft fingers making both yarn and needles dance. “A place that welcomes people like you and me because we’re unique too.”

  “What makes us unique?” Nico asked.

  “Something in our genes? Our Filipino blood, perhaps?” She smiled, as if doubtful but amused by her own suggestion. “Or maybe a promise to an ancestor by Bathala Himself, who sustains the worlds and binds them all together.”

  “Bathala?”

  “That’s a longer story than we have time for now, and in the end, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we are.”

  Nico grimaced, leaning up on his elbows to better see his mother. He was a skeptical child, especially where extraordinary claims were concerned. Ever since the veil of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny had been snatched away, there was little room inside him left for silly things like magic.

  “Then why haven’t I gone there yet?” he said, more a challenge than a question.

  “It only lets us visit when we’re ready.”

  “I'm ready now!”

  She wrapped the beginnings of a scarf around his neck, a watermelon pattern with fringe the color of its rind. “Maybe you are, my sweet. And maybe you and I will both go there together.” She smiled again, the skin of her cheeks sliding into dimples. “Only time will tell.”

  Nico’s mother died soon after. The doctor said she had a weak heart, but Nico didn’t think that could be true. The way she’d always made him feel so loved, her heart was the strongest thing about her.

  His remaining family shuffled him from house to house for years, because they couldn’t stand the burden or expense of having him around. At 12, he moved in with his father’s third cousin, twice removed, a stern old man who radiated ambivalence from every liver spot and wrinkle. By 17, he graduated high school and moved into his own apartment. At 21, he married his best friend Cathy.

  He didn’t love Cathy enough to promise her forever, but he’d gotten her pregnant and had no intention of abandoning her the way his father had abandoned him and his mother. Once the child was born, he had no time or money left for college, so he took a job working as a mail handler in a US Postal Service facility. It was a ramshackle building where industrial machines hummed and whirred, and the wheels of passing forklifts kicked up dust from the corroded concrete flooring. His workstation consisted of aluminum containers filled with newspapers and magazines, and it was his job to clear them out before his shift ended.

  You Live, You Work, You Die, someone had scrawled across the wall in the men’s locker room one night. Nico’s co-workers chuckled when they saw it, but Nico only frowned. He much preferred his own prescription, “Abandon hope anyone who dreams of happiness.” Because while ten-hour shifts made for a dire experience, work was just one wall in the prison of his life.

  When Nico arrived home, he found Cathy reclining on the couch in her pajamas. Their son Dominique was mashed against her breast, a curtain of her hair resting on his head like a greasy, black toupee. Nico might have been amused by the sight of it had they not been in that same appalling state that morning.

  “Busy day?” he asked, taking in the clutter, the reek of rotting food wafting from the sink and trash can in the kitchen.

  Cathy shrugged. She edged forward, struggling through the weight and roundness of her belly, and mumbled something about making dinner.

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “You’ve rested this long. Why quit now?”

  She held up a limp middle finger before easing back onto the couch. “Jerk,” she whispered, and he knew he deserved it.

  Dominique began to cry. Cathy shushed and rocked him while Nico made spaghetti. Sauce from a can, meatballs from a bag, precooked noodles from a Tupperware container left for who-knows-how-long in the refrigerator. It took fifteen minutes to prepare the meal, and that was the best he could pull from that ragged frame of his, running on the dregs of a microwaved breakfast and a fast-food lunch.

  Cathy ate her dinner on the couch while Nico sat at the dining room table. He took a few bites, dumped the rest into the sink and slipped upstairs, unnoticed. As he changed into pajamas, he thought about how insubstantial he had become. Like a poltergeist, flustering the residents of his house, but accomplishing little else.

  Something had to change. He knew it, Cathy knew it, and—the way Dominique always cried whenever Nico was home—maybe the baby knew it too. The only problem was, he didn’t have the faintest clue about how or where to start.

  Nico woke in the dark of early morning. Something had roused him from his sleep, but as he drifted into consciousness the memory dimmed and he could remember nothing but the specter of a presence. Had someone called his name? He couldn’t decide so he sat up, casting anxious looks around to probe the edges of his room.

  A silhouette loosened from the shadows of the corner and scampered to his bedside. “Nico Aganad?” it said.

  From its size alone, he would have thought it was a boy with ears the size of dinner plates. But from the high-pitched squeak of its voice, he couldn’t begin to guess the source.

  “Who’s there?” said Nico, swinging, grasping at the shadowed figure.

  The figure stepped back, out of reach. “Mr. Aganad, you’re a hard man to track down!”

  With a snap of its fingers, cracks formed along the walls. They lengthened and widened until there was nothing left but snow, covering a landscape in a dazzling sheen of white. Once Nico’s eyes adjusted to the brightness, he noticed a little man, naked but for a puffy, woolen hat. The lines of the little man’s skin were deep etched, slick and brown as tooled leather. In his hands he held a flowing, silver beard, crimped near the end so that the tip pointed like an accusatory finger.

  “What are you?” asked Nico.

  “I’m the duwende of your grandparents’ house. My ancestors and yours have lived together for centuries, but we lost sight of you shortly after your mother died.”

  “This has to be a—”

  The duwende threw his hand aside, finger splayed. “No.”

  “You expect me to believe this is—”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s not—”

  “Maybe? Look, if we’re going to have a conversation, you really need to finish your sentences.”

  The duwende sauntered off, his body sinking waist-deep into the snow. Nico followed, rubbing warmth into his arms, with nothing but a t-shirt and boxers to keep the biting cold away. A mile off, they came across an array of snowmen fashioned in tableaus, replete with bushes, flowers, and even trees all formed from snow.

  “I made them while I waited for you,” the duwende said.

  “Was I expected?”

  “Someone from your family always comes along, whenever you need us most.”

  “What could I possibly need you for
?”

  But the duwende only winked, as if he thought Nico already knew the answer.

  Some of the snowmen wore ancient Filipino garb, topless with a hint of a loincloth or skirt carved into their lower halves. Others wore modern clothes, like jeans and t-shirts. They stood alone, or side by side, or circled around in groups as if engaged in lively conversations. One even sat beside an easel, a paintbrush poised over a plain white canvas—but whether it had finished its masterpiece or only just begun, Nico didn’t know.

  After they passed into the heart of the display, the duwende cupped his mouth and whispered, “Do you know how to tell the difference between snowmen and snowwomen?”

  “Let me guess,” said Nico. “Snow balls?”

  Every snowman turned in their direction. The inside corners of their eyebrows furrowed and the pebbles of their mouths circled into O’s. One snowman had collapsed onto its back, the coals of its eyes replaced by Xs shaped with twigs.

  “No, by their clothes,” the duwende said. “Careful about the words you say. Even words can sting.”

  The duwende shuffled away, too quick for Nico to follow. With each step the duwende took, the world faded. The dark-encrusted walls of a bedroom formed and, before Nico could even wonder about how to get back home, he found himself lying in bed beside his sleeping wife.

  Nico shook Cathy awake and tried to tell her about the strange things that happened to him that morning. She just rolled out of bed and lurched from the room with a hand pressed against her stomach. To the incidental music of her peeing, his enthusiasm faltered and his mind wandered back to memories of when he and Cathy were young.

  They were best friends before that one-off, drunken night when they shared each other’s bed. As children, her compassion had drawn him to her. She was a shining light that led him through the worst of his loneliness and gloom. But somewhere along the way, life had melted him like wax, poured him into a mold and slipped him out as a warped and bitter version of himself. Now there was little left between them except the glue that leaked from their darling baby’s skin.

  Nico spent the majority of his day working on the docks with at least a dozen others, hustling through a sort line pulled from transportation trucks. A heavy wind swept in, tossing raindrops thick as bullets in their faces. No one dared speak. Not before every package, sack and envelope was unloaded. By the end of the shift, the muscles in Nico’s arms burned, his hands had gone numb, and a kink in his hamstring made him hobble.

  He insisted on making dinner that night, even though it was Cathy’s turn again. The entire time he tried to ignore the state of the living room: clothes left unfolded, magazines spread across the floor, and the wrappers from her all-day snacks strewn around the couch like the litterfall of a junk food forest. He wanted to yell, to start another fight, but he bit his tongue for once.

  “Words can sting,” the duwende had said and he’d stung her long enough already.

  Sometime in the unstirred morning, he felt his body shift, a sensation that called to mind liquid flowing through a metal strainer. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes he was hiking up a russet-colored hill. Snow covered the plains below, but moist, tepid air spilled from cracks and crevices, as if the hill were exhaling the first breath of spring.

  When Nico reached the top, the ground plateaued, its surface smooth and flat as polished marble. Three enclosures made of wooden posts and chicken wire stood in the center of that summit. In the left-hand enclosure, a giant sat cross-legged on a small tree whose trunk and branches sagged almost to the ground beneath the creature’s ample weight. A plaque fixed to the enclosure read: A Light Kapre.

  “You don’t look very light to me,” said Nico.

  “A common misunderstanding,” said the kapre, the deep bass of its laughter pounding against Nico’s ears. “I’m not light, but I could sure use one!”

  It motioned to the unlit cigar dangling from its lips.

  Nico made a show of patting his pockets before announcing, “Sorry.”

  He passed on to the next enclosure where what appeared to be a mermaid lay naked in a children’s wading pool—except her lower half was sleek and tapered to a point, more like snakes than fish. She took no care to cover her breasts, not that they held any appeal for Nico. Absent nipples, they reminded him of the heads of two bald sailors bobbing beneath the water’s surface. The plaque fixed to her enclosure read: Mermaid of Moderate Rates.

  “Clean your house, mister?” she asked, before Nico could ponder the meaning of her plaque.

  “Actually, I could use a cook. If you cook as well as clean, you’re hired.”

  She scoffed, muttered under her breath. “For that you’d need a mercook, not a mermaid,” she said and flipped around to face the other way.

  In the last enclosure, a dragon lay stretched out on its side. It had two sets of wings, one rooted to its shoulders and the fragment of another sprouting from its lower back. Its scales were the rainbow sheen of an oil slick, and it snored in a way that called to mind a hundred knuckles cracking all at once. The plaque on its enclosure read: Lazy Dragon.

  “What makes you so lazy, dragon?” Nico said, loud enough to wake it.

  “His name isn’t Dragon, it’s Bakunawa,” the Mermaid said. “You would know that if you had bothered asking.”

  “Sorry,” Nico said. “What makes you so lazy, Bakunawa?”

  Bakunawa stared at Nico through narrowed slits, the bags beneath its eyes big and round as plums. “I may be small, but I’m very heavy. Moving is a burden so I move as little as possible. Still, sometimes I must, and when I must I’m draggin’.”

  “You’re… dragon?”

  “Right.” It gave a long and troubled sigh, as if the act of speaking strained it to its limits. “In the morning, I’m draggin’ myself to the river to bathe. In the afternoon, I’m draggin’ myself to the village to eat a few adults or a dozen children. In the evening, I’m draggin’ myself into the heavens to swallow a moon or two and then, Bathala willing, it’s back to bed for what little sleep I can muster. It’s all so exhausting.”

  “You’re awfully nosy,” said the mermaid. “Don’t you have better things to do than harass a sleeping animal? Why don’t you focus on your own state of affairs? Lord knows your family needs it.”

  “I didn’t mean to pry. I’m just curious.”

  “Ignore her,” said Bakunawa, clamping its eyes shut. “She likes to nag; it’s her way. In case you didn’t know” —it yawned— “your people call her kind ‘naga.’ It’s a little on the nose, but it sure fits.”

  “A real man would have better things to do than waste our time. You should try to be one,” said the mermaid.

  “Look,” said Nico, rounding on her. “Whatever I did to upset you, I’m sure it wasn’t intentional.”

  “Don’t take it so personally. I say and do only what’s expected of me. No more, no less.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s the way of the world. A muscle-bound oaf is expected to be stupid.”

  She threw a thumb in the direction of the kapre and it met Nico’s eyes and shrugged.

  “A monster is expected to be bestial.”

  She motioned to the dragon and, with its eyes still shut, it grinned and nodded.

  “And a beautiful thing like me is expected to be—”

  “A nag,” said Bakunawa.

  “Perfect!”

  “But why not be yourselves? Who cares what other people think?” said Nico.

  A chuckle from Bakunawa, a rumble of laughter from the kapre, and the mermaid tittered, covering her mouth.

  “Think it’s so easy? You have no idea.”

  In the morning, Dominique’s screaming brought Nico to the nursery. Dominique wouldn’t stop crying even after he was wiped and gleaming pink, so Nico brought him to window and bounced him in a beam of sunlight. He thought about his own mother, pictured her alone in their old apartment, cradling the screaming baby version of himself. She’d always found the
time to care for him no matter how sad she was. She was stronger than Nico could have imagined, and he cursed the realization that he’d grown to be so little like her and so much like the memory of his father.

  The smell of breakfast brought him downstairs. He found Cathy in the kitchen, sweat pooling on her forehead, her gaze somewhere far beyond the eggs and bacon sizzling on the stovetop. After they ate in their separate places, Nico sidled over to Cathy on the couch.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  His tongue felt dry, a bloated thing too big for his mouth. He swallowed hard, gathering up the courage to continue, even as Cathy threw him an exasperated stare.

  “I know I haven’t been much help around the house, but maybe tonight we could tidy up together?”

  She surprised him when her face softened. “Sure,” she said—the first real word she’d spoken to him that week.

  For the rest of the day, he emptied sacks from a dozen OTRs at work. Hours of manual labor ground his muscles into mush. When lunchtime came, he shuffled to his car and collapsed into the driver’s seat, squirming from the aching of his limbs.

  “Please,” he said. “I’m ready again.”

  He concentrated on that other world, trying to pull himself back by the sheer force of his will. To his surprise, he heard a gentle rasp and felt something softer than the car’s metal floor beneath his work boots. A second more and he was tramping through a meadow toward a cottage, monolithic in a landscape boasting only knee-high grass.

  The cottage was made of stones painted rainbow colors. It had a soft white trim and a thatched roof that it wore like a bulbous summer bonnet. Beside the front door, an old woman stooped beside a raised flowerbed.