The call of the birds becomes louder, and between the snowflakes, she can just make out a black form, spiralling towards the earth, wings stretched out like desperate hands trying to grab at the sky. She knows she should move. The bird might hit her, but she just stares at it, transfixed. The blank fascination of such a morbid moment, knowing that in three more, two more seconds, the creature will impact with the snow-covered ground in an explosion of black feathers, blood red confetti . . .
It strikes her in the shoulder. Pain ricochets through her entire body. Black feathers scatter across the ground. Celia falls to her knees; she can’t breathe, can’t see through the pain.
Slowly, as her breath returns in short, ragged snatches, she forces her eyes open and finds the bird staring at her, bleating like a newborn lamb. It tries to rise, and when it can’t, it falls back into the snow and mewls.
Celia reaches out, lifts the broken bird in her hands, and takes it home.
If she had looked back, she would have seen a perfect snow angel in the exact spot where the bird landed.
Wildlife specialists now believe the single raven, separated from its mate, is heart-broken and attempting to find a surrogate from another of the city’s bird population, regardless of species. . . .
Fallen, fallen, fallen . . .
The words ring the dying tree, shatter the icicles that hang from its branches, sending a shower of nails to the earth. The women scatter, shrieking. The ice impales the earth, the hart, the loom. . . .
“All is lost,” the women wail. “Ice walks the earth. We will perish.”
A single raven sits among the broken branches, bobbing, sobbing.
Fallen, fallen, fallen, memory has fallen . . .
Celia walks the ward. She’s wrapped her shoulder where the bird hit her. Every step she takes jars it, but she can’t afford to take time off work. She’s being watched.
It’s nearing Christmas, the worst time of the year. A few patients are visited by family, but most aren’t. These are the forgotten people, the elderly who stare out the windows with vacant eyes. It’s the most depressing fate she can imagine.
She visits the old man right before her shift is over. He’s pulled a chair up to the window and has his fingers pressed to the glass.
“What are you doing, sir?” Celia asks. “Plotting your escape?”
“Naming snowflakes,” he says without turning his gaze away from the night. “Did you know each one has a name?”
“No, I can’t say I did,” Celia says. “Time to check your blood pressure. Would you mind sitting on your bed?”
The old man shuffles over and huffs as he sits down. “Uncomfortable mattress,” he says as Celia leans close and fastens the cuff around his arm. He sniffs her shoulder. “That bird, the one that hit you. I saw you with it. I had a bird like that once . . . it had a name. I can’t remember what it was . . .” His face screws up as he tries to recall the name.
“Sir, I need you to breathe while I’m taking your blood pressure. Holding your breath will give an elevated reading.”
But the old man doesn’t release his breath. His lips move as he tries to form words. Celia unfastens the cuff and sighs. He opens his mouth, his tongue waggling about like that of a newly hatched chick, as he makes a lisping noise.
“Sir,” Celia says as she pats his arm. “Sir, can you hear me?”
He nods, and slowly, as Celia holds his hand, he calms down. “I should like to see your bird,” he says. “Does it have a name?”
“No,” Celia says slowly. “I’m not sure it’s going to live.”
“Bring it to me,” the old man says. “I’m good with birds. I’ll make it better.”
On her way out of work, Celia is handed an envelope. Inside is a pink slip, and a card that reads Happy Holidays.
The next day, her last day on the ward, she brings the bird with her, tucked into her parka. What will it hurt? It’s survived two nights; maybe, if it brings the old man just a little joy, its life won’t have been lived in vain. Celia wishes she could say the same for her own. She just doesn’t care anymore. Doesn’t care about anything. She doesn’t have the energy.
The old man is sitting in the chair, nose pressed to the window.
“Have you named all the snowflakes?” Celia asks.
“Not yet,” he says, “but I will.”
Celia closes the door to the room and draws the curtain around the old man’s bed. “I brought something for you,” she says.
The old man’s eyes lights up when she pulls the bird from under her coat.
“My bird,” he sighs. “Oh, my poor, poor bird.” He stretches out his hands, bird claws themselves. Celia places the broken raven in his palms.
“You’ll have to keep it here while I’m on shift,” she says. “And keep it quiet.”
“Yes, yes,” the old man says. “Keep quiet. Ssh,” he says, putting a finger to the bird’s beak.
Celia blinks. Did the bird just nod?
The old man turns his gaze to her. “We will be very quiet, for we remember now.”
“What have you remembered, sir?”
“My bird’s name,” he says as he strokes the raven’s feathers. “It was there all along, in my memory.”
Celia shakes her head as she leaves the room. Crazy old man.
The women have ceased weeping. They wait for the cold to seep into their lungs, bite their blood, turn them to stone. All is lost without memory. Thought no longer matters. This is not how they envisioned the end of the world.
They sit beside their pool, waiting, waiting. . . .
The raven in the tree above is waiting too. If they looked, they would see it cock its head from side to side and flutter to the ice that covers the pool. It taps the ice, tap tap, and hops forward. Tap and hop, tap and hop, until it reaches the centre of the pool.
“What is that crazed bird doing?” the first woman asks. “It’s lost its mind.”
“Without memory, thought is nothing,” says the second woman, pressing her palms to her eyes.
“No,” says the third. “Look.”
The raven has fixated on a single point in the ice, tapping its beak with an increasing cadence until . . . the ice cracks, sending a spider’s web of veins racing across the pool. In the distance, the women hear a sharp, distant echo.
“What was that?” the third asks.
“Winter’s spine,” the first says, “breaking in two.”
Celia returns to claim the bird at the end of her shift.
The old man’s chair is empty. His bed is empty.
She dashes to the window. He’s outside, walking across the snow-covered field in front of the hospital. The bird is on his shoulder. The snow dances past them, fleeing the old man and his path, for behind trails a path of thaw, of green grass, of newly sprung daffodils, a bridal train of spring in the cold, winter night.
She wraps her coat around her and runs down the hall, down the stairs, outside. She will follow the thawed path, follow it until she can’t follow anymore.
The old man stops, picks a daffodil, and waits for her to approach. “This is for you,” he says. “You cannot come with me. I’m going up.” His eyes rise to the clouds and the falling snowflakes.
“I don’t want to stay,” she gasps. “There’s nothing for me here now.”
The old man smiles at her as the raven whispers in his ear. “Well,” he says, “my memory tells me you haven’t heard my stories before.” He looks to the sky, and when his gaze falls on Celia again, something about him has changed. His hair isn’t quite so grey. His face, softer, less creased. “It’s been a long time since I’ve told my stories to new ears.” He holds out his hand. “Why don’t you come along then?”
She takes his hand, a sudden warmth against all the cold.
They walk side by side into the snow. “Let me tell you the names of the snowflakes,” he says. “They al
l have names. I remember them now. . . .”
gaudifingers
TONY BURGESS
It was 1946 and the beaches looked like leather. The shells were chairs and the shells were parasols. Everything that started blue became pink. Dads and moms posed to hide the white cubes of exposed winter thighs. This was the thing I was in. A picture like that. Towels and tufts of singing scrub. Pointy-titted ladies with wide crispy eggs for hats. Beefcakes. And the wind that is only invented ten feet from shore but it’s a bawling baby shredding the pages of magazines and raising lipstick bubbles on the backs of children. And I am bent in a corner of sky in the sand reading a comic. I deny that I am here. I am turned away. Turned inside. My sister is somewhere pretending to swim in four inches of water. My brothers are building bowls out of the droppings of seabirds. It is a joyful place, I suppose, but in my ten-year-old mind it is the bright sunshine of depression. The gold water and rose warmth of permanent intractable despair. I can’t say why it is, but I feel it. Like I’m living in a deep knot.
The sand on my knees covers scudded wounds and each grain is as kind as a diamond. Earlier this week I teased a black kid at school. Not for being black, but for having the last name White. On Friday, yesterday, he tackled me on the sidewalk and brought me down under him. There was nothing for me to do but go home and lie. Maybe it’s that. The lying. Maybe that’s why I want to die today.
“Why don’t you go in?” My mom points out to the sea. She wears sunglasses as big as wheelbarrows. My God, this is an awful place. I bring my knees up under me and look at the back page.
“OK. Well, we’re going to walk down to the pier and see the fishermen.”
She pauses, adjusts the mad white ribs in her suit. She wants me to think. And yes, I really, really want to see the fishermen, but I’m suicidal today. She doesn’t sense this at all and pivots on her heels.
The back page. Sea Monkeys. X-Ray Specs. A six-dollar submarine that can submerge to great depths. If I had about 12 dollars to spare I could watch naked ladies in the cabana. If they caught me I could escape out to sea and drown. I would let my monkeys free to swing in the coral.
I despise this kind of thing. It is such obvious fantasy. The truth is I would be caught. I’d be standing by the cabana peering in through the side of a curtain. An old woman would scream and slap her hands to her bum. Everyone would hear her and everyone would see me. I can feel my knees blush, knowing that one day this will happen. I am changing, though, as the day goes on.
It was wanting to be dead. To be burned alive. Now it’s different. After seeing myself at the cabana and being taken that way, I have decided I will be alive. I will kill the old woman in her nakedness. I will pull parasols up like weeds and drive down them into sockets and mouths and bums. The whole beach will be crying and dirty and ashamed. Blood will be pumped into hollow poles and plumes of it will rise and spatter us all. This is where I get to at four in the afternoon. X-Ray Specs. Monkey submarines. Flies leaving the assholes of dogs and wiping their feet on the corner of my mouth.
I close the comic book. On the back is a picture I’ve never seen before. It’s a public warning. BEWARE GAUDIFINGERS! There is a drawing of a young boy and overlapping that an older boy. Then a man. And after that an old man. Then a dead man and then a skeleton. It’s not a very good drawing and the lines are wobbly and broken. Beneath the drawing is an important public announcement.
“This is a public warning that needs to be heeded by all. The Gaudifingers contagion is no longer contained. Be advised that contact with Gaudifingers results in rapid aging and painful terrifying death within minutes. In many cases the horror of this rapid transformation kills the victim seconds before their final physical deterioration. Gaudifingers then takes the form of the victim and moves on. The only way to know who Gaudifingers is is to witness this transformation. The authorities are asking the public for assistance in tracking and eliminating this demon once and for all. If you witness the sudden aging of someone please call the police immediately. There is no one above suspicion. Anyone you know could at any time be Gaudifingers.”
I scan down the page looking for what they are trying to sell. Is this an ad for a new comic?
A movie? There is nothing on the page to suggest it’s anything other than a very serious public warning. I stare at the drawing. The lines are wobbly on purpose. This is what happens: Your skin wobbles and your lines break. It must be so bad. The Gaudifingers touches you and you feel your skin shatter and your heart age 100 years in minutes. I feel that this is something not everyone knows. The news is just getting out now. The threat of Gaudifingers. I picture Rexdale for some reason. Maybe because it’s an ugly place. Yellow factories and stubby strip malls. If Gaudifingers was working its way through there, no one would know. Or maybe some do. A woman closes her dry-cleaning shop early and hides in a rack of film-covered gowns. The man at the Sunoco wipes his hands on his pants and runs across the street and down an alley. Oh my God! A baby, just born, is suddenly tumbling in fat and loose sacks of skin, then long yellow teeth punch up through its nose and eyes and cheeks. There is no way to age a baby that fast. The process is confusing. Grey hair clogs its throat. Its arms hunch like crooked backs and skin tags pop across its feet. A momentary monster. Its eyes have heart attacks. Who can say what it is? I have to help somehow.
But how? If I tell people they’ll think I’m crazy. I’ll just get in trouble. If I show them the page they’ll say, “That’s interesting. Not now.” I know exactly how the world works. How things don’t get passed on. How messages die. People get used to bad news. They have things that they say when they hear it, but they don’t really hear it, do they? It’s as if everyone’s under a spell and they can only can only think about getting home, cleaning up, going to bed. And that’s exactly how Gaudifingers survives. It may be why Gaudifingers exists.
“Hey you! They caught a baby hammerhead! Come on! You gotta see this!”
I jump to my feet and brush my knees.
“Like a shark? How big?”
I am running backward ahead of my mom. She is excited.
“Well, it’s only a baby. But yeah, it’s pretty big.”
I can’t believe I’m going to see a hammerhead shark in just a few seconds.
“Wow, Mom. C’mon! Let’s run!’
I run ahead toward the pier. If you think that nearby there is a baby hammerhead shark it’s all you can think about. They live for millions of years and now, as a baby, they bounce at our feet and they are seconds away.
I stand at the base of the pier. It is very wide and long. All afternoon there have only been three things: sky then sea then sand. Now as I step up onto the planks I feel as if I’m entering a room that’s been hiding in folds. I don’t run because I can’t gauge the room I have. There is more salt in the air here. I run.
You can always tell when it’ll take you. I say that because it may be true and if it is then we are in an amazing world. There is no hammerhead. There are no fishermen. I turn to my mother and one of her arms is 40 feet long and is in the sea. She has thrown a leg, just as long, around and ahead of me. She is screaming; teeth spring though her lips and cut her face. This is one of my final moments. She says it, “Gaudifingers,” to scare me more. Her forehead makes a sudden oblong fob against the sun. The fingers come at me. She wails again, “Gaudifingers!” The fact that she’s trying to scare me is so hard to understand. The fingers telescope in sloppy curls. I can feel my heart ask to stop beating.
a sea monster tells his story
DAVID LIVINGSTONE CLINK
For Alexa
I have been hatd and huntd my hole life
the seas boyancy holdin my skeletun aloft
holdin this oshun enclosd by skin
in this sea that no longer has anythin for me.
You are on the beech
and you say do not give me things unbrokun
and being a creeture of the sea
I have no possessiuns
I can only give you everythin
so at hi tide I come ashore and lie beside you.
The moon has come out.
The wind brings natures fragrance
trees and blossoms
the salt of the sea.
You say lo tide is comin.
I say I know but I dont want to go.
You say you dont want me to go but lo tide is comin.
I say let it come.
In the mornin the water is gone. I can hear
the ancient creek of my bones
my skin gettin crispy.
People from all around are comin to help.
But I tell them with my eyes
that I don’t need there help
but they come anyways.
They are pourin water on me.
They have startd a bucket brigade.
They are tryin to save me.
And I tell them with my eyes I dont want to be savd
but they are not listnin
the sun is bakin my skin
I feel week I cant think strait.
When it is clear there is nothin to be dun
you look into my eyes and ask why I didn’t leave befour lo tide
why I couldnt be happy visiting for a few hours each nite.
I tell you I have been hatd and huntd my whole life
and the sea held me until I found you
and I will not return to the sea.
I can see it from the beech and I can taste it in the air
along with the scent of flowers and you
but the sea has nothing for me.
My eyes tell you
I am where I have always wantd to be.
son of abish
DAVE DUNCAN
“Louse-infested spawn of a ditch-breeding whore!”
“Spavined cross-eyed dung-eating cockroach!”
Imaginarium 2013 Page 10