I raised my hand courageously again. It had been shot down twice so far. I was shooting for a hat trick. Why not climb into the penalty box before the games starts if the game is rigged and that’s where you’re going no matter what you do? We all knew that I wasn’t going to shut up. She was going to have to kill me which she was going to do anyway.
“Let’s get this over with,” I suggested. “Just kill me.”
Madison was roaring in her seat.
“Her Chinese Flannery O’Connor,” Madison snorted.
“You girl,” Chinese Flannery O’Connor snapped. “Go have baby.”
“You think that I care that you’re sexist?” Madison snorted. “You’re a ghost.”
“Me no hear stupid girl,” Chinese Flannery O’Connor said.
“Whatever, Chinese ghost,” Madison laughed.
“Don’t take any gruff from that ghost,” I suggested.
Chinese Flannery O’Connor had turned her back on us. She was writing something on the chalkboard. It was incredibly vast. The chalkboards just kept unfolding everywhere. Chinese Flannery O’Connor was piling quarries of chalkboards around us.
So that’s why the autopsy theater was so vast. It was all becoming clear to me. Chinese Flannery O’Connor had a lot to say. Why shouldn’t she? She was Chinese Flannery O’Connor. What exactly did that mean? It was actually kind of chilling when you thought about it.
What was she writing? Was she writing our lesson plan? She was writing something really hideous up there. I could just feel it in my blood. My blood seemed like it was getting wise. It was jumping out of my body for all purposes. Chinese Flannery O’Connor was making my blood jump a bit. She was purposely trying to frighten us with her writing? Well, it was working. Good for you, Chinese Flannery O’Connor. Go lightly, old girl, the Buddha with you. Or whatever is powering you.
“Booster Boo and Madison Kidd,” she sighed. “Chinese Flannery O’Connor, her know. Her write everything down. You two finished.”
“You just wrote everything that we’re ever going to write?” I gasped.
“That’s it?” Madison asked.
Chinese Flannery O’Connor was nodding. Or at least that’s what her rags seemed to be signifying. How to read the semiotics of this ghost? She can’t even speak English properly. That was the most alarming part.
“Our first day of class is with a Chinese ghost that writes everything we’re ever going to write in our entire lives?” I asked.
“That’s not right,” Madison shouted.
“Me knows,” Chinese Flannery O’Connor said. “No good.”
“She’s telling us that we’re no good at writing?” Madison asked.
“You two stupid,” Chinese Flannery O’Connor said. “No write good.”
“Are you going to teach us?” I demanded.
“Me teach you pig Latin,” Chinese Flannery O’Connor said. “You pigs. You start at bottom of trough.”
“We should leave right now,” Madison said.
“I don’t see why not,” I said. “This is the worst class that I’ve ever taken in my entire life.”
“Why prolong it?” Madison agreed.
“You no leave,” Chinese Flannery O’Connor said.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
“You no leave,” Chinese Flannery O’Connor said.
“Why wouldn’t we leave?” Madison asked.
“Me no done,” Chinese Flannery O’Connor said.
“What is there left for you to do?” I asked.
What more could there be for this ghost to do? This echo of a dead southern writer that had been sent to China like a bail of used clothes. Something for the hill people in darkest China to rip up into so many rags for the privy? I wasn’t enjoying this outing to the outhouse. What was there to like about it? The moon was howling through the door of an outhouse in darkest China. A hill person was in there doing his grim business on our heads.
This was our first day of class in our first class at The Coffin Island School for Witches? Chinese Flannery O’Connor had written our entire output. She had written everything that we were ever going to write? She had then declared us unfit to write. We had been expelled as far as I could tell. Why had we been permitted to pass the entrance exam? Why did we have to travel through Flemish hell? It just didn’t seem right this Coffin Island School for Witches. Perhaps I could try out for another major. I was thinking of trying something a little more manageable like rocket science. Perhaps jet propulsion would be nice. I could be burned as fuel. Or just be condemned to death as a test pilot. You go to Mars to be glass spider.
I bravely raised my hand expecting it to be cut off at the elbow. Short sleeve or long sleeve, how would you like your arm?
“Me never going to call on you,” Chinese Flannery O’Connor said.
“What could there possibly be left to do?” I demanded.
“Me crush you to death,” Chinese Flannery O’Connor said. “Then you leave room in coffin.”
At least there was some logic to this place, I thought as Chinese Flannery O’Connor drifted towards us. It was actually my last thought before I died for the first time at The Coffin Island School for Witchcraft.
Fin
Madison and I were sitting on some boulders on an island at the base of Iguaçu Falls in Paraguay. We were on the Paraguayan side. Madison and I were conversing in Paraguayan Guaraní. We had picked it up like so many speckled river stones upon arrival. Witchcraft was not without its uses. I’ll translate though back into Colonial language.
We woke up in the Coffin Room. It was a lot vaster than I could have expected. I had no idea that there could possibly be this many students of witchcraft. It was quite horrific to see the sheer volume of witches that had been killed. I learned later that was how the school day was concluded at The Coffin Island School for Witches. All the pupils are slaughtered and then they wake up in their coffins. Education is lovely.
Death was unremarkable. It was terribly painful but after that it was nothing but black. It was a brutal black space of pure black. Witchcraft had no heart. Expecting an afterlife from witchcraft was foolish. It was merely another test. Real death it was not. However you thanked witchcraft for not having a fake afterlife because it would be hideous. You just knew that.
Madison and I climbed out of our coffin which was a double. That was one thing that Professor Coffin hadn’t lied about. He had told the truth. Madison and I were magically attached. It was creepy to wake up holding her hand. We were both revolted by the concept but we hugged in joy that we were still alive. And best of all still together. Not even death at The Coffin Island School for Witchcraft could separate us.
The bureaucracy of death then greeted us. The line to get out of the Coffin Room was appalling. Then we had to cue to get down to The Tube. It wasn’t a subway line or a metro line. It was truth in advertising, The Tube. We went down a vacuum to take The Tube out of town.
The Tube was constructed by steam punks. We learned this from a friendly pusher. His job was to shove students into the overfilled subway cars. Every student in The English Department reported to a bureau within The Coffin Island School for Witches. The students worked on projects that built the world that we lived in.
If you worked on steam punk then you worked on The Tube. If you worked on The Detective Genre then you were in The Police force. Murders worked in Murder Mystery. Romance worked in The Church as well as The Courts were they presided over divorces. The whole world was perfectly sensible to me. You were whatever you wrote. Or you were erased.
Madison and I inadvertently tried to step on the train to Brooklyn. We didn’t know where the train was going. We were just trying to flee. The steam punk pusher wouldn’t permit us though. He said that more award winning writers than anywhere in the world lived there. Every piece of literary hardware on the planet was out there. The writers walking the streets of Brooklyn had won everything. It was confusing information. We just wanted to escape.
Madison thre
atened to punch the steam punk in the face. The literary cops were called and we were escorted to an interview room. The interrogators were Soviet thriller writers.
We were going to Buenos Aires. Madison flipped out. Who wants to commute to South America from Manhattan for school? They assured us the steam punks had the details worked out. Madison and I were shoved on the proper train. We were the sole occupants. It really didn’t matter what we said. The train left and we were the only two people on it. The train lurched forward with a blast and somehow we weren’t crushed.
Madison and I floated for about twenty seconds in zero gravity. That lunar feel of weightless permitted us to do a few gymnastics before we crashed to the floor of the empty subway car. The steam punks had somehow worked it out. My daily commute was going to include weightlessness. It seemed somehow appropriate because we were assigned to The Experimental Division of The English Department.
We were the only two pupils in it. It was called The Experimental Division because it was experimental. You experiment, the Russian cop had said. Get out of my interview room.
The ride terminated in La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires. One of the most famous cemeteries in the world, a raven with spectacles crowed as we walked out of it. He was apparently the doorman and tour guide. We just hunched our shoulders and tried to get out of there.
We trundled onto a bus that was waiting for us. It was one of those converted school buses that had been heavily decorated to hide the fact that it was so battered. It was decorated like The Day of The Dead. They had decided not to hide that whole death and dying preoccupation.
I fully expected that Saint of Death to be driving. That Lady of Shadows, of course, she drives a bus. However a cheery ghost in filthy combats fatigues greeted us. A cheery Bolivian ghost was installed under the wheel.
The driver told us that he was a Bolivian ghost. He had just been dug up for us. We were to call him Che. He said it means dude in Argentina. That’s what you call the bus driver. Hey dude, let me out. Pull over. I want to get off this bus, dude. Then he laughed. He was smoking a cigar. The smoke was coming out of the bullet holes in his chest.
Madison asked him if he was Che Guevara. He laughed and said I get that all the time. Madison said I thought you just got dug up. You don’t think there is revolution in the afterlife?
Che put on an old record that sang about Detroit. He had outfitted the bus like some sort of prankster vehicle. Lights were whirling. Someone was singing about voodoo.
Madison found a pack of Argentinean black tobacco cigarettes that somebody had left behind. We just lit up. Why not enjoy the ride? Who cares if the ghost of a dead communist revolutionary is driving you around on The Saint Death Express? At least he had the lay of the land. He drove a diesel bus.
We trundled uptown. Our dorm was somewhere out in the swamps of Buenos Aires. We were in The Experimental Division of The English Department. We reported directly to Professor Coffin. He had tasked us with learning The Tango. We were going to have to make a pit stop for a steak dinner and that little dance lesson. Get some red wine, the ghost cautioned. It will limber you up for your lesson. The Tango is a very sexy dance. Don’t let those uniforms fool you. The Tango is a very sexy dance. That was our homework assignment? Professor Coffin was a genius. What better way to prepare a writer than to send them to the Paris of South America? Break the young artist in a bit before sending them to the real thing.
As far as homework assignment are concerned there are certainly far worse. You’re tasked with a night out on the town in Buenos Aires which includes wining, dining and dancing. You can smoke too. We’d already crossed that bridge with spectacular results. What are you a werewolf? How could find fault with any of that you uncreative savage?
However Madison and I had slightly different plans. We were considering the hotel options. Why should we sing for our beds? We were both cranky and tired. We frankly wanted to go to bed, together.
The prospect of sex had reared its ugly head. I knew that creature was going to come up. And Madison, for her part, meant to beat it down with horrific force. She spoke openly about the biblical riot that she meant to commit in bed. She was quite threatening about it too. She was going to crush me worse than Chinese Flannery O’Connor. Her raw concepts were highly attractive to me. I was quite fearful of them. Was I truly ready for this?
I pulled the Emergency Door on the bus right in front of The Opera House. We were stalled in evening traffic. Madison and I both jumped out of the bus. Unfortunately we landed on the island at the base of Iguaçu Falls in Paraguay. Our feet didn’t even touch the Avenue in front of The Opera House in Buenos Aires. Professor Coffin had teleported us for our insolence.
Madison and I were sitting on a rock below the falls on the Paraguayan side of the falls.
“So this is what happens when you misbehave,” Madison snorted. “Iguaçu is no big deal.”
“I agree,” I said. “I aim to swim it.”
“Why do you think that I’m taking off my shirt,” Madison snorted. “You know how I’m the meanest witch in creation?”
“I heard that,” I said as I took off my pants.
I was standing there in my underwear about to take the plunge. Just take everything off.
“I got the best breasts too,” Madison said as she unclasped her bra.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s all I have to say. Wow.”
“Drop them,” Madison said. “I need to see what I’m up against.”
“It’s substantial,” I said.
“I would expect nothing less from the most powerful witch in creation,” Madison said.
We both stripped and then dove into Iguaçu Falls for a quick skinny dip.
A horrendous cloud opened in the sky above the falls. It was Professor Coffin’s disembodied face. He bellowed down at us.
“Pupils stop that!” he shouted.
Madison and I ignored him. We were too far gone. We laughed right at the cloud. We showed off a bit for the cloud. Why not give the cloud a good show. He had certainly toyed with us. The cloud seemed to cringe a bit.
“I’m too late,” Professor Coffin grunted.
The real Professor Coffin morphed into the pirate Professor Coffin. That Professor Coffin was back. He was jollying us now.
“Carry on,” The Pirate Professor Coffin bellowed. “Carry on, pupils.”
“I’m not even going to cringe,” Madison said.
“Me neither,” I said. “Are you kidding me?”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to David J. Gardiner and Bradford Kendall.
Dave designed the covers and Brad contributed the illustrations.
Visit davidjgardiner.com and bradfordkendall.com to see more of their work.
A WORD ABOUT THE COVER FONT
Eduardo Recife designed Porcelain.
Please visit misprintedtype.com to see more.
Coffin Island Page 25