The sound outside was madness. Screams, yells, and the most haunting laughter, all rose up into her ears. It was a chorus of emotion so vivid and strong. As sick and battered as Isabella was, her body knew that she was in the midst of a flood. The water had come on strong and it was circulating through the air above the mob. She pulled herself up to the carriage window to take a glance. The water circulated through the air. A torrent of madness, desire, violence and fanatical fever that made the air electric and even gave energy to the bile in her mouth.
Isabella noticed that her arm was bent backward, making a perpendicular angle away from her body. She stared at it. It looked to be a limb of someone else attached to her. She wrestled with it trying to straighten it out, but the limb remained bent. She was broken. Cracked. All she could do was lay in the back of this carriage and wait for Marty to finish her off.
But as fate would have it, Isabella noticed Marty slowly but surely rising up, levitating slowly, to hover above the crowd itself. His body rose up out of the mob and he was sailing in the air. His eyes were wild, his greasy hair blowing this way and that and his tongue hung out of his mouth like a dog. He sailed in the effluvia of the water that moved through the air, luxuriating in the bath that Fennel had unleashed. He was hedonistically basking in the water. Isabella watched mesmerized as he let the water enter into his mouth. It poured into him and he hovered above the crowd in a haze of intoxicated glory.
Isabella stared in wonder and awe. She knew all too well what he was doing. It was what she wanted to do. She just wanted to eat this moment up. Let it all come into her body and warm her aching heart. And as if on cue, the smell of gasoline filled her nose. She smelled him before she saw him. The Duke of Izmir came hurling down from above. He was hovering in the air as well. His cape flying behind him, he held onto his top hat and took the water into himself as well. He levitated across Ellindale Plaza from Marty, getting his fair share of the cascading water—the river of madness and sadness filling the void that seemed to lurk in the bodies of these two super beings. It was as though these two men were caribou stopping to drink from a stream before they headed back into the desert.
She had only a second to spare, and she knew that this was her only hope. She had to get the attention of that superhuman who had joined Marty at the riot.
“Duke of Izmir, please save me! I’m like you!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.
It wasn’t the most elegant thing to say, but she had to be direct. She was panicking and time was running out. Her screams, fortunately, caught the attention of the Duke who looked down at her at the same time as Marty McGuinn. The Duke looked to see Marty staring at the same thing. He came sailing down fast as lightening. The carriage exploded into a thousand pieces. Isabella closed her eyes thinking this was the end.
When the dust cleared Isabella realized she was in the Duke’s gasoline arms. His eyes looked drunk with fever. He growled audibly as he looked down on her and pressed his nose close to her flesh. He inhaled her like a beast, the hairs on his face brushing up against Isabella’s fish belly skin. For the first time, someone other than Marty or Fennel was sensing her. He growled in his throat and his arms reached down and covered her in a warm embrace. She lay there and gave in. She couldn’t go on. This was her last resort.
She could hear his heart beating heavily, a motor for a beast so large. She had to speak. She had to let him know. Marty would be upon them and she only had this chance to find a world so potentially beautifully beyond.
“Please help me. I am broken. A twig cracked. He is. He is trying to kill me.”
The Duke looked down at her. His eyes were immense and spoke of a world she barely understood.
“Marty McGuinn won’t be bothering you, little thing. You are safe now.”
He petted her head and for the first time in her life she felt safe. His hands were like baked leather and hot to the touch.
“Be still now. We will take you in. You’ve too long been out in the cold as you are. You are like me, small child.”
“Is it true then?” asked Isabella, staring crazy eyed into the heart of his inferno—his face a map of lines so deep.
“Yes, little girl. Be still.”
“Are we gods, then? Can it be?”
“Yes, pretty thing. We are gods. Though being one is not the glory one might imagine.”
The Duke launched into the sky.
Isabella closed her eyes as she flew with him. She felt the night wind take hold of her and the smell of gasoline blend with the gunpowder smoke of firecrackers. Her hair caught the wind and she didn’t notice at all her extremely broken arm.
He was taking her away! And away was a place that she had been searching for all her life. Fennel had escaped on a horse and she was in the arms of this Duke. He rode through the sky magical and she knew, yes, she knew—she and Fennel were like him.
A god. A god divine. Even if she still hated who she was, and how much she relished the pain of others, and how much the world of Barrenwood still toiled and suffered under the grin of the god’s impulsive laughter, she was not alone. She could finally be with her kin who not only looked over the world but also took capricious pleasure in its unending despair.
Nato Thompson is a writer and curator residing in Philadelphia.. He has written two books: Seeing Power Art and Activism in the 21st Century (2015) and Culture as Weapon: The Art of Influence in Everyday Life (2017), both published by Melville House. This is first work of fiction. During his day job, he works as a curator of contemporary art.
A wonderfully tragic sequal to Marshsong forthcoming…
Table of Contents
MARSHSONG
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
A wonderfully tragic sequal to Marshsong forthcoming…
Marshsong Page 44