Toybox

by Al Sarrantonio

  The thing spread its cloak; its ghastly white face grinned, red lips parting to show long, tapering, night-hissing incisors

  They screamed—until one of the fangs, soft wax, fell from the play ghoul's mouth. The thing turned and ran, laughing, bearing its candy bag toward the nearest house, perched invitingly in yellow October light.

  They laughed, and followed.

  “Until,” Eidolan spoke gently.

  Darkness cloaked and uncloaked them again.

  The street, the costumes, the October night—all were changed. They heard real screams approaching. Again the moon blinked on above them, this time bathed in red. The smell of copper pushed into their nostrils. The very clouds seemed to bleed. They were together, running, and everywhere they ran there was suddenly blood, in the gutters running like rainwater, splashed against the trees, bright patches against the sides of houses, on porches, before front doors. The night was copper red, lawns were red, streets were red. They smelled red, touched red, breathed and tasted, heard the sound of dripping red. Blood fell like acid, pumped into the sky from open hearts, open throats. The canvas of the earth was painted red.

  The moon arched across their sky like a time machine--crescent, quarter, full, quarter, crescent. Each time it paused it was redder. The years rolled in front of them. And still they ran, unable to banish the taste of blood from their tongues, the sight of blood from their eyes, the sound of dying blood from their ears. Copper, crimson, blood-garnet was the earth.

  The moon ran overhead, east to west, again and again, faster, faster, vainly seeking to break free from the awful spectacle of earth below. High up, the moon froze in place.

  They watched its crescent light up in deep red. A booming bright thud felt down to the earth, followed by another, yet another. The moon became sick and distant, gray and dim.

  There were more booming crimson thuds, close by, the boots of God slamming craters into the earth.

  The earth filled with something more than blood. The yellow clouds came. The cries of men were mixed with other cries, plutonium stakes thrust through irradiated hearts.

  The earth began to die.

  Vesdigris, Mondranie, LaFortina, Damella, Caltunon—they ran on.

  But now, a wondrous sight appeared. The sky was filled with spun glass. A billion spiderwebs of crystal pierced the yellow clouds, hardened above, connected, spread, and melted together where the air was thin and clean.

  On crystal ladders, Verdigris, Mondranie, LaFortina, Darnella, Calumon, climbed to a new world. Crystal glass waited to succor them, bathe them, nurture them, feed them.

  Below, they heard the last screams fade. The yellow earth burned, dying, sealed like a bottle forever, trapping the screaming shells of a billion last beasts, drops of irradiated blood drying on their lips.

  Darkness cloaked.

  “And,” Eidolan's voice said in gentle coda, “another thousand years went by.”

  The moon snapped on above them. For a moment they blinked at its pale, distant form, thinking it unreal. Then they blinked wide, saw themselves in Eidolan's crystal castle, seated before her crystal banquet table.

  A new course of choice delicacies was set before them: red cheeses, vermilion desserts. New liquors rose like the sun from below, scarlet, maroon, ruby, set themselves on the table. Outside, red balloons rose high, a diminishing blanket. The last chant of Red Eve went up, as children sang, making their way home to crystal beds:

  ~ * ~

  Red Eve, Red Eve,

  The night of blood,

  No blood we see,

  Balloons release,

  The earth below is dead.

  ~ * ~

  A distant children's cheer went up. The sky filled with a final soft blanket of balloons, lifting, red kisses, to brush the unblinking stars. The moment ended; the children were gone, the holiday over. Eidolan stood patiently at the head of the table.

  No one spoke; then Mondranie, seated to her left, spoke. “That story was....” he began—then he yawned.

  “Now, now,” Calumon said quickly. Impulsively, he reached for a thin goblet of plum liquor, suspending it between two of his plump fingers. “You must admit,” he said, as if trying to convince himself, “the timing was exquisite. The holos--”

  “The holos were redundant!” LaFortina shouted. He rose unsteadily to his feet. “Nothing new! The same old trees and beasts and moons! The same old Vampire Wars!”

  “I must say,” Darnella said, baring her breasts to study them drunkenly, “those holo nipples left something to be desired.”

  “Desired, yes,” said Verdigris, reaching across the table at Darnella, who slapped his hand curtly away.

  “Boring!” LaFortina pronounced.

  He sought opposition. Verdigris merely nodded, Mondranie, more emphatic, cried, “Yes!” Even Calumon, flustered, hid himself in the ruby dessert before him, pretending not to hear.

  “Boring!” LaFortina repeated. His face was flushed with anger. He attempted to stand straight, found himself swaying into Darnella, who steadied him until he clutched the table for support. “You've bored us for years with your 'lessons’ and tonight, after promising your finest, you've given us”—he swept his hand overhead, where the last red balloon, high above the crystal palace, the crystal world, dotted itself against the star-speckled night before winking out— “nothing! I was not entertained, or enlightened—I was fed and made drunk—but your finest is nothing!”

  A hush dropped upon the table. Even LaFortina realized the immensity of his insult. He sat, finding the center of his chair with difficulty, and drew the closest goblet containing the closest liquor, a blackly red, almost custardly thing, to his lips.

  “Your lesson was....” Calumon began sheepishly, glancing sideways at their hostess, who continued to stand quietly at the head of the table “a...bit...tired.”

  “But,” Eidolan replied, in the lowest, most gentle of whispers, “my dear Calumon, I never said it was finished.”

  “What!” LaFortina exclaimed.

  A general gasp from the table was followed by a shout from Mondranie: “Bravo! Hurrah for Eidolan—that beautiful timing, the holos ending with the end of Red Eve—but the lesson not over! A wonderful ruse! Hurrah!”

  There came a round of huzzahs, followed by another round of huzzahs. Somewhere between cheers, and LaFortina's stuttered apologies, Mondranie proposed carrying Eidolan through the streets upon their shoulders, which would have been attempted had they not discovered drunkness tying them to their chairs. Instead, toasts were offered, more liquors swallowed.

  Eidolan waited patiently until Mondranie shouted, “So, continue!”

  “Yes,” cried Verdigris, “go on with the lesson!”

  “Your finest!” Mondranie added. “Hurrah!”

  “Hurrah!” shouted Calumon, as LaFortina stared sullenly into his half-empty goblet.

  “Of course,” said Eidolan, bowing.

  They waited for the darkening of the crystal palace, the bright sickle of moon, the holos, the trees, the caves. But nothing happened. Instead, Eidolan stood quietly.

  “Ha!” cried LaFortina. “Here's your ruse, Mondranie—there is no more lesson!”

  Mondranie looked from LaFortina up to Eidolan. “Well?”

  “We need no holos,” Eidolan said.

  “What—?” Mondranie began, but quietly, patiently, Eidolan continued.

  “I gave you the lesson in holos, but you didn't learn. So now I will tell it to you simply. Where did we start? A thousand years behind a thousand years. The last beast destroyed, until ten times a hundred years later the memory of it has become a children's holiday. And then the beast returns, in strength, and only the combined force and viciousness of man can wipe it out, along with his own planet. What follows? Another thousand years of tranquility, resulting in memory once again dulled to children's games. What lesson does that teach?”

  “You're a fraud!” LaFortina shouted. “There is no more lesson!”

  “Have you
wondered,” Eidolan went on, lifting her hands to embrace the immensity of the space surrounding her—the airy depths of the crystal palace, the glass-enclosed recesses outside, the black, forever depths of night, “why the beasts return? Has it occurred to you that it is because they must, that they are in us, in our genes, waiting to mutate because they are better? Has it occurred to you that there is no last beast?”

  “Charlatan!” LaFortina screamed, his face crimson with anger.

  “Eidolan,” Mondranie said, “I'm afraid we must insist you end the lesson.”

  “I must agree—” Calumon said timidly, fighting his eyes open against drunken stupor.

  “Have you realized,” Eidolan continued, looking down lovingly at Mondranie, “that this time there is no technology to battle fate with, that a thousand years of forgetfulness has left you all like children? That this time there would be no last beast, because there is nowhere left to run?”

  “Liar!” LaFortina screeched, knocking his goblet over, watching a pool of thick ruby spread before him.

  “End it, Eidolan!” Mondranie demanded.

  “Yes,” Eidolan said. She reached down to Mondranie's face, cupping his chin with firm gentleness, turning his head aside to bare his neck. She smiled wide, to show them.

  “This time, children,” she said, somewhere in the midst of screams, as the real, distant moon and stars once more became the color of blood, “the lesson is learned forever.”

  PIGS

  The day they took Jan was like any other day. The sky over the Vistula was fat with billowy gray clouds, “thick puffs from God's pipe,” as Tadeusz had once said of such smoky formations. He stood on the bank of the river with Jan and with Karol, leaning on the thin rope bridge, the three of them sharing one cigarette as they waited for their solemn friend Jozef, who did not smoke, and did not approve of it. It was November, but felt like late September, cool but muggy. Karol dropped pebbles into the river below, his flat, open face spreading into a grin as his “depth charges” disappeared into the water. “Just like that American Clark Gable, in Run Silent, Run Deep,” he laughed. “Captain, we've been hit!” Tadeusz had his cap pushed back on his head, which always forecast the weather because Tadeusz would pull it down tight over his ears in cold or wet times. He did not like the cold and complained bitterly when it rained, calling it a punishment from God for some great sinner in the city. “In Warsaw,” he once told Jan, as they sat hunched over the smallest table by the smallest window in their tavern, so close together their pints of beer were pressed into their coats. The noise in the cafe was nearly unbearable. They looked out at the rain pelting the tiny window, at the thick wash it sent across the four panes intermittently, because it was either look at that or into each other's close faces, or into the coats of the standing patrons surrounding them—damp wool that would suffocate their conversation. “In Warsaw, when a great man, some member of the Party, commits a great sin, there is rejoicing in heaven. They laugh loud and long, because another Communist has proved himself weak and human, not equal in purity and character with God himself. You know,” Tadeusz continued, poking Jan's nose lightly with his thick finger, an annoying habit, “that this is the great fault of Communism. In seeking to abolish God, it merely replaces him with Man. This is why it's doomed to failure. And God knows this. So, when a Party official commits a great sin, one of greed or lust, God and his angels laugh until they can no longer contain themselves, and God allows his angels to relieve themselves on the city of Warsaw. It is a just and mighty retribution—as well as a great relief for the angels. Unfortunately,” he said, shivering at the rain outside, “it's a pain in the ass for those of us who live in Warsaw.”

  “What about God?” Jan asked him, gently warding off Tadeusz's finger heading toward his nose to make another point. “Doesn't God ever piss?”

  “Of course he does,” Tadeusz answered, offended. “But he is God, and his bladder is vast. It's as large as the Milky Way galaxy. And if you're going to ask me if he'll ever use it, the answer is yes. He's saving it, though, for a very special occasion.” Tadeusz leaned close, pushing Jan's head around so that only his ear would hear his next words. Jan smelled the sourness of Tadeusis breath, the odor of sausage and beer and stale tobacco, before he felt the rough stubble of Tadeusz's mustache at his ear. “God is waiting until that biggest man of all, the Big Man himself, the one in Moscow, commits the biggest of all sins.” He turned Jan's Face around, moving his own back. He smiled. “And then—BOOM! The big rain, right on you know where, and then you-know-where won't exist anymore.”

  “And then?” Jan asked, smiling in a friendly way.

  Tadeusz held his hands out in his confined spot, palms upward, indicating what surrounding them. “And then this is ours again.”

  ~ * ~

  They looked out through the small window silently, before Tadeusz added, slyly, “There's only one catch. I have it on very good authority that you-know-who in Moscow has already flicked a chicken, and,” he sighed, “nothing happened.”

  They turned to their own thoughts, watching the sliding wet sheets of rain on their tiny window, in their tiny space surrounded by heat and the smell of damp shorn sheep, until Tadeusz added, “And why do you ask about God, Jan? I thought you knew all about him. It's you who was going to be a priest.”

  At the bridge, leaning lightly on the rope railing, smoking and waiting for Jozef, who now approached them sullenly, the words of his disapproval of their smoking probably already forming on his never smiling mouth, Jan thought of the priesthood and wanted to laugh.

  “And what do you find so funny?” Karol said. “Are you thinking of pigs?” Seeing Jan shudder, he quickly changed the subject, nudging him to look at Jozef. “Now there's something worthy of laughter. Our friend Jozef was born with a frown on his face.” Karol, who almost never frowned, laughed heartily.

  “He doesn't even smile when he gets off a good fart,” Tadeusz said, throwing the remains of the cigarette which had been passed to him into the river and turning to meet Jozef, who had now reached them.

  “Save your breath,” Tadeusz said, slapping Jozef on the shoulder. “We've heard all your lectures on smoking. And we're late for work as it is.”

  The look on Jozef's face made him stop his joking.

  “What's wrong?” Karol asked, as a cloud of seriousness descended.

  “They're looking for Jan,” Jozef said.

  “What do you mean?” Tadeusz nearly shouted, and then he barked a laugh. He laid the back of his hand on Jozef's brow. “Are you ill? Have you been drinking? Who is looking for Jan?”

  “The police.”

  “A mistake,” Karol spat.

  “No,” Jozef replied. His dour face was pinched tight. He turned to Jan. “I saw them come out of your mother's house as I passed. They must have just missed you. I waited until they were gone, and then I went in. Your mother was at the kitchen table, weeping. I asked her if they had hurt her. She said no—but there was a pot of oatmeal broken on the floor, by the stove.”

  “Bastards,” Jan said, angry

  “She might have dropped it herself, when they came in,” Jozef continued. “She was very upset, Jan. She said they wanted to speak with you, but she could tell by the way they came in, knocking once and then nearly throwing open the door, that they were there not to talk but to take you away.”

  “Why?” Karol shouted, indignantly. “What could they possibly want Jan for?”

  Jozef shrugged. They saw now how frightened he was, his big-knuckled hands working one over the other, his thick coat pulled tight around him, the collar up as if protecting him from a chill wind.

  Jan said quietly, as much to himself as to the others, who now faced him as if waiting for an explanation, “I've done nothing.”

  “Of course you've done nothing,” Tadeusz said, scratching the black stubble on his chin. “But we have to hide you. We can't let them take you. When the storm passes over, it will be like nothing ever happened.”

&nb
sp; “There is no place to hide,” Jozef said, his eyes on the ground.

  Karol, in anger, grabbed Jozef by the front of his lapels. “Of course there is.”

  “I've done nothing,” Jan repeated, as if in shock.

  Tadeusz said, “We must get him to my house, off the street, then move him to a place that can't be connected to him.” He took Jan by the arm. “Quickly”

  Jan looked at him. Comprehension of what was happening to him on this fine day, with its cool, late summer breeze and fine gray clouds-- on this day when he had smoked a cigarette with his best friends, and leaned on a rope railing overlooking the roiling water of the Vistula—dawned on him. Something out of his control was closing in on him, with his name imprinted on it, and unwavering instructions to bring him to ground. The police would not go away. They had been told to take him, and they would.

  “I'll give myself up to them,” Jan said.

  Karol's face came before his own, flushed and angry. “Come with us,” he said. “They're not going to take you.”

  Tadeusz's grip on Jan's arm tightened. Karol took his other arm. For a brief moment he felt as though he was going to faint. But then the world, the gray sky, the billowing gray clouds, the smell of the moving river, came back to him.

  They moved briskly away from the bridge, Jozef darting glances behind them, and ascended stone steps to the street above. “Walk casually,” Tadeusz ordered. They began to converse, trying to keep the tension out of their voices.

  The street was filled with late factory workers hurrying to their jobs. Some wore winter coats, since the last few days had been colder than today, but they were opened at the collar, enjoying the last hint of warmth before the damp winter settled in. Most carried black lunchboxes.

  They walked along with the workers. The pace quickened as the clock in the church steeple near the end of the street began to toll the hour, promising reprimands for those not at work by the time it had ceased. Jan and his friends hurried along until Tadeusz said, “This way is quicker,” and brought them through a narrow alleyway, lined with discarded boxes, to the next street. “Stay back,” he ordered when they reached the end. He went ahead, slipping out onto the street before motioning for them to follow. They crossed the road and mounted a flight of wooden steps to the second floor.