Onion Songs

by Tem, Steve Rasnic

  SISTER: Why should we stand here? Why do we always stand here? We never leave this room. We never talk about anything interesting. We never do anything. Where’s the good food? We never have any good food. No one ever comes. There is never anything interesting to do.

  FATHER: We never have sex.

  Sister stared up at Father with her mouth open. With much effort she reached up a giant hand to close it.

  SISTER: What do you mean? You always say things and I never know what you mean. You and Mother never have sex? Old people never have sex. Don’t tell me about your sex life. You and Mother have no sex life. I don’t want to know about your sex life.

  Father opened his mouth as if to speak again, but with a cry of anguish he clamped his lips shut with the fingers of his own left hand, pinching the lips until they bled. But still his lips tried to move, they struggled like giant pink muscular worms under his wrestling fingertips, articulating saliva until it ran out of the corner of his idiot mouth. Finally he was able to nip the edge of one of his fingers, drawing dark red blood which the fingers rubbed at frantically, obviously unable to return to the mouth for succor.

  Mother glanced up at him out of the corner of her eye and immediately grabbed the bleeding fingers and thrust them into her mouth where she sucked them noisily with eyes closed.

  His mouth freed, Father still tried not to speak, his eyes panicked, his teeth attempting to clamp down on his rebellious lips, but he was unable to stop them.

  FATHER: We never have sex. We never talk. We never go outside. We never kiss. We never hold. We never hold. We never hold. We never have sex.

  He looked around wide-eyed as if addressing the entire Family with this speech.

  Sister tried to move away from him, stared out the window, tried to move away from him, but could not, so she cried.

  SISTER: You mean me! You mean us! We never have sex. We never have sex.

  Brother tried to move closer to Father. He tried to raise his enormous hands. But his hands were too full of anger to be lifted above his waist. His enormous hands could only become enormous fists, which hung low below his waist at the ends of his long arms, swinging back and forth like great pendulums. His enormous hands would not lift and then his enormous feet would not move him closer to Father. He could only lean toward Father with anger.

  BROTHER: Or me! Or me? We never have sex. We never have sex.

  And Brother stared at Sister with his mouth open and Sister cried and Father continued to sweat giant gray snails of sweat that oozed slowly down his forehead as he tried to look somewhere, anywhere but at his Family.

  And Mother sucked the blood slowly, greedily from his giant, wounded finger.

  They stood there transfixed like this, my Family, floating on Archetype and full of swollen id now threatening to burst their skin and pull apart the joints and seams of their body as inside them they were made simple, their hungers simplified to basics, their minds simplified to central swollen images of need, pleasure, and pain.

  Mother let the bleeding finger fall from her huge mouth, the finger now pale, limp, and bloodless, sucked on her lips to clean them of dried residue, and in a cracked voice, which gradually became more and more full-bodied, she spoke.

  MOTHER: You thought you could fool me. You thought you could all fool me. Now see what happens. Now see what happens. The trouble you’ve made. Standing there, barely able to move. But maybe it was for the best. The best place for you is in my parlor. See what happens. You made me the house and the heart of the house. You made me the mountains and you made me the sea. You made me everything and you made me immortal. I am filled with the life of my Family and I hold it dear. What you have made me! There will be sex. There will always be sex. In the Family there are many openings into the body. There are many openings into the Family. There are many ways to be fed and you all will be fed. You will all have sex and you will be fed.

  At that point the Mother began feeding me, and in my smallness her breast was enormous, and filled me with sickness and dread.

  The Father tried to look down at me and vertigo almost made him fall. Brother looked at me and smiled, but then he too began to weave on his enormous legs. Sister took one look at me and scowled.

  I could not see Mother’s face because of the size of her breast hanging over me. I could not see her mouth and it frightened me. Her teeth were so sharp!

  For I am the Baby and in their way they all resent me. They think I get all the sex and I get all the food and in some ways I think they are right.

  I do know they fed me too much Archetype for my size and now what is growing inside of me, pushing against the inner walls of my skin, may some day make me explode. I am filled with shadows, wishes, fears, and dreams.

  But for now I feed from Mother’s breast and I grow larger inside as well as outside. I realize Archetype has gotten into her milk supply but my vocal chords are too clumsy for me to tell them this.

  So I must starve or I must grow larger inside. My choice is obvious. Babies are too young to commit reality. Even the other members of the Family here have been unsuccessful at this—Mother has too much power over them and they cannot break away.

  So I feed at her nipple and I try not to think of anything else. Mother coaxes the other members of the Family to her other nipple one by one, feeding them increasingly large doses of the Archetype in her milk. They go to her nipple willingly, even eagerly. I attempt to tell them that this is ill-advised, but my mouth is full. They turn their heads slightly and look at me as they feed, trying to smile at me without letting go of the nipple. Why?

  Because I am the Baby. And like the rest of my Family, I am large.

  THE HUNTER HOME FROM THE HILL

  Joseph did nothing but dream, until the world gave him the gift of eyes.

  The eyes had been the easiest to catch: they’d simply rolled out of the darkness into his waiting sockets and they’d been unable to budge after that. Trapped, they’d opened and blinked, and filled his mind with frantic pictures of the world, at least the pictures the world wanted Joseph to see.

  At first he hadn’t realized it had happened. Since dreams were all he’d ever known he’d assumed that the incident of catching the eyes had been a dream as well. Any future encounters with the many beasts of the world, he knew, would not come as easily.

  With his new eyes Joseph gave the world back the same gift it had given him: pictures of the world. The eyes turned the abstractions of vibration and motion into one still picture. In his head Joseph could feel the world pausing for relief. Joseph sat—he could do nothing else as he had no legs—and the world sat with him, and together they were in peace.

  But gradually new things began to appear on the world’s horizon, or at least things Joseph had never seen before. And his desire to bring these things closer became so great that eventually Joseph grew arms and legs. He spent his days chasing after the other things of the world, reaching out to them, with a disturbing desire to embrace them and pull them back down inside himself, but he knew that somehow those were the world’s desires and not his own. He was just another thing of this world. At night when he hid from the darkness this perception brought him many troubling dreams. He dreamed of the time before he had arms or legs, or the world’s gift of eyes, the time when he did nothing else but dream the world. In that long ago time he had never anticipated darkness to be a problem.

  Chasing the other things of the world created in Joseph an appetite he had never imagined possible. He realized this new hunger was akin to that desire of his—the world’s desire—for embrace and reabsorption. Before, his appetite had been a small thing, a casual taking in of leaves, fluids, and miscellaneous edible debris. But now the world had created such an emptiness within him that the thought of filling it with whole, living things—things which moved and watched and yammered just as he did—was his constant obsession. He began to dream of filling himself with all the things of the world, until he was as large and complete as the world itself.

>   After years of chasing the other things of the world, Joseph came to know their habits very well. They breathed, much like himself. He had always thought this breathing to be significant, one way, perhaps, in which the world passed around the essence of itself. Further study led him to conclude that this breath was a kind of message, and that all things, himself included, were messengers.

  Joseph spent his life hunting down these animal messengers, consuming them, wearing them, using whatever he could of their bodies. And each time he caught or killed one he would meditate, seeking the particular message he knew the animal must be carrying from the world for him. He would think on the message when he skinned or consumed the animal, when he sharpened the animal’s bones, and when he used the tools he made from these bones.

  And so it was, as an old man running into the end of his life as if into a fireless cave, that Joseph first encountered the dragon.

  The dragon himself lived in a cave at the center of the world. Joseph had never seen this cave; his dreams simply told him of its existence. This cave was full of the dragon’s breath, and thus was full of light and fire. And Joseph had come to realize that the end of his life would, indeed, be this cave.

  Joseph’s many years of hunting down all the things of this world had given him an instinct. All he had to do to find an animal was to think about it. But he had never really thought about the dragon before, and so he had never stumbled across it. Even when he dreamed about the dragon he didn’t dream of the dragon itself but of its cave full of fire.

  But now at the end of his life Joseph thought about all the animals he had ever encountered and the messages they had brought from the world. And by thinking about them all, in total, he allowed his feet eventually to lead him to the mouth of the dragon’s cave. Joseph thought about hunting the dragon down, killing it, eating it, and then worshipping it.

  He dreamed a creature the size of an elephant, with a roc’s head and giant eagle’s feathers, front legs of a rhinoceros and furry, lion-like hindquarters below its scaly back. But when Joseph walked into the mouth of the cave he walked into the mouth of the dragon as well. He never got a chance to actually see the dragon; the eyes given to him by the world were useless for this purpose.

  Joseph walked for a very long time inside the dragon, blind, and eventually, with no useful purpose for his arms and legs, they fell off as quickly as he had formed this thought.

  Joseph dreamed within the dragon within his cave in the heart of the world, dreaming of all the animals, all the things he had been and would be. Joseph dreamed that he was the world. And Joseph the world dreamed of the eyes it would one day create, to give to that one piece of itself that required them.

  SHOPLIFTER

  An old man leaves a large downtown department store with an enormous lump under his coat.

  Stop, thief! cries the store manager rushing up behind him and grabbing his elbow.

  Remove your hand, the old man tells him, it’s only a large, malignant tumor I have.

  The store manager opens the man’s coat and removes the refrigerator there, carrying it back into the store on his back.

  An old man leaves a large downtown department store with an even larger lump under his coat.

  Stop, thief! cries the store manager as he rams his head into the old man’s back.

  Why, it’s only a committee of concerned citizens I have here, the old man says, nothing more.

  The store manager opens the coat and pushes the down escalator back into his store.

  An old man leaves a large downtown department store with an enormous black shadow almost hiding him.

  Stop, thief! Will you never learn? cries the store manager as he leaps on the old man’s head.

  It’s merely a cemetery, you funny little man, replies the old man.

  Whereupon the store manager rips open the coat, revealing the hundreds of faces of his best customers, all staring out, sightless, their skin pale, lips cracked.

  And their torn hands and arms pulling the store manager in...

  BRAIN OF SHADOWS

  While he was asleep someone played with a flashlight in his head.

  The intruder was silent but betrayed his or her presence when sudden flashes illuminated the figures in the dream, making them cower and cover their eyes and revealing the landscape they walked in to be no more than paper, plaster, and cheap paint.

  Have some courtesy, he mumbled in his sleep, and his dream folk nodded their agreement.

  The intruder stumbled and accidentally flashed the light on himself to reveal a biblical figure in long white robes and a beard.

  The next night the dream folk were all wearing dark glasses and the body of God lay broken and bleeding behind the sets.

  ATTACHED

  A mother takes needle and thread and attaches herself to her first born, a daughter.

  A father weeps and shouts, What have you done to attach her so? How can you both live that way?

  A daughter sews the first boy she finds to her left leg. Later she attaches an older, more attractive boy to her right thigh.

  Eventually she has young men attached to her feet, head, shoulders, breast, buttocks, and groin.

  I’m afraid it’s becoming quite difficult for us to walk, a mother comments in long-suffering resignation.

  A father just weeps and wrings his hands over the foolishness of females.

  A daughter attaches children with tighter and firmer stitches to all exposed parts of her body, until her own body is quite hidden by the bodies sewn to her.

  Each child displays his or her own small needle and thread.

  See, see what you have done! a father shouts at a mother. We’ve lost our daughter; she must be quite dead under there!

  All the small children plead tearfully for their mother, once a daughter, even as they begin attaching food, feces, playthings, and other children to their own bodies with needles and thread.

  Help, help, I’m quite suffocated! shouts a mother as she falls over backwards, pulling the mass of squirming, sewn-together bodies on top of her.

  A father stoops over the crushed body of his wife, weeping and wringing his hands over the foolishness of females. He shuffles sadly away, absentmindedly scratching at the sewn-on corpse of his son, their second born, crushed so long ago between his great buttocks.

  THE RIFLEMAN, THE CANCEROUS COW, AND THE SWEDISH MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, A Western

  Lucas McCane, formerly known as The Rifleman, had put away his famous weapon with the enlarged firing ring, and moved to North Carolina so that his son Mark might grow up among deciduous trees and shrubbery.

  “This will all be yours someday,” he told him. “This wooded area here, this lake I’ve recently dammed and drained for cropland (at great physical cost to myself, by the way), and there’s a nice little fast food franchise down there by the creek where members of your peer group eat hamburgers, shakes, and fries, and converse on various age-appropriate subject matters. It’s taken me most of my life, made me old before my time, not to mention quite impotent, but I was glad to do it for my eventual posterity, please don’t mention it.”

  One day Mark and his father were walking through the wooded area, Lucas talking on in this manner, Mark listening, when they came upon a level clearing covered with a thin film of oil. “This bog has been here for millions of years, Mark, consisting of various animal and vegetative matter pressurized underground, then later exposed for our current viewing, but nevertheless, this too will all be yours when I go to meet that Great Ranch-hand in the sky,” Lucas went on and on.

  Suddenly a large black cow with a cancer on his head stumbled out of the underbrush. And before Lucas could point out that that too would someday belong to his son, Mark spoke up for the first time in some while, saying, “Pa, what’s that?”

  “That, son, is a large black cow with a cancer on his head. Notice how he eats large stumps and other useless vegetative matter around this here bog. A cow with a cancer on his head must be pretty clever to surv
ive out here in the wilds of North Carolina.”

  It suddenly became apparent to Lucas and his son that the cancerous cow was lapping up great swatches of the oil with an enormous, rubbery, gray and white tongue. And gradually revealed by these great swipes of the tongue was a smooth, hardwood floor. “No doubt created through the troddings of extinct land reptiles on the decomposing animal and vegetative matter, compressing these into this smooth dancefloor-like surface we see here before us,” Lucas speculated, “...though I have to admit this is somewhat unusual for North Carolina.”

  During this speech the cow had completed his vacuuming, and a perfectly square, glistening orange hardwood plain, two hundred feet on a side, was revealed, bordered on all sides by rotting stumps and blackened underbrush. Lucas strode to the middle of this floor. “This, son...”

  “...will someday all be mine,” Mark interjected.

  Lucas painted an elaborate image of the mansion they would someday build using the floor as base. A wide portico all around, several entranceways, an immense expanse of glass, and several vistas of awe-inspiring aspect. Lucas counted some of these off on his fingertips: the curtain of gigantic pine, the plateau gauzed in grays and purples, the broad grassy slope flowered yellow, red, and blue, and... what was this?

  Mark had run past the tall marble columns, the coved ceilings, the exotic tapestries of the home place, and was climbing the fan-like marble staircase of this last unexpected vista, The Swedish Memorial Hospital.

  Lucas stared slack-jawed at the ruin. The Swedish Memorial Hospital was a five-level complex, each level built on the ruins of the former. Castle turrets meshed with steel framing and glass walls, stucco and wood. The several hundred yards of skylight had been shattered. Six brightly painted hot air balloons and two large dirigibles hung torn and abandoned from spires and eaves. Vines and weeds crept up between cracks and holes in the concrete. He could just make out the scarlet thread remnants of the banners. On the plain behind the hospital he could see the ashen wrecks of dozens of flying fortresses, once used to transport the wounded from all parts of the globe.