Imaginarium 2013

by Sandra Kasturi

  One more thing to add to the list.

  After a while I went upstairs. As I was passing Soelle’s room, the door slammed shut. I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge.

  The door still doesn’t open, and I haven’t been in her room since.

  No one ever questioned Soelle’s disappearance. I never called the police, and no one ever came around asking about her. I think it was more than just the town being glad she was gone. Maybe she really didn’t belong here.

  I heard from her only once. I got a letter. It was postmarked from a town in Mexico, some place I couldn’t even pronounce. It contained two items. One was a colour photograph of a Mayan pyramid. On the back she had written: I found it, Toby. It was here all along.

  The other item was a playing card.

  The ace of diamonds.

  no poisoned comb

  AMAL EL-MOHTAR

  For Caitlyn Paxson and Jessica P. Wick

  A story in the teeth of time

  will shift its outlined shape, be chewed

  to more palatable stuff.

  Thus death; thus cold demands

  for a hot hot heart,

  for slivers to simmer in warm plum wine

  on winter nights.

  Nonsense.

  They say I told him to bring me her heart,

  but I didn’t.

  It is a fact well known

  that the fashion for wearing hearts on sleeves

  has passed. Young girls today,

  with their soft looks, their sharp lashes,

  wear their hearts as cunning hooks

  in their cheeks—that supple flesh

  so like to apples, so red, so white,

  smelling of fall and summer both,

  of sweet between the teeth.

  My huntsman hungered.

  So did his knife.

  Do you eat the red cheeks,

  I said to him that day,

  and I will eat the core.

  I cored her. Oh

  her looks might’ve hooked

  the hearts of mirrors, of suitors

  in dozened dimes, but my huntsman

  hooked her looks, carved sweet slices,

  blooded the snow of her face, and I

  gave her the gift of a fabled room

  whose walls were mirrors.

  The tale is wrong. Their way

  is kinder, I confess.

  But mine is fair.

  what a picture doesn’t say

  CHRISTOPHER WILLARD

  BOB BEZERHKO

  A man who lies about his name and carries a varnished cane will never babysit my future kids. I see him from a distance. He dances poorly this Bob Bezerhko. He shimmies like he can go from zero to vermouth in a second. Framing him are two perhaps-strippers if the dank boas are a clue to intent. Alligator Skin and the Rubber Woman sit nearby, mentioned only because they are not pictured.

  I wander past the sideshow stage and linger at the crude canvas tarps. Animals, humans, all are frozen. Jolly ripe depictions of a past that separated oddities, freaks—whoa, diversity, and political correctness hiding around here? How to look? How to resist?

  DUCKS WITH 4 WINGS! ALIVE!

  Duck Wins Fast Flier Record? Or. Glued on Flappers from a Dead Relative? Too depressing. True story: In a room while waiting to have my prostate palpitated I read in Chinese Cooking for Exeprets, and this is a quote, “If peopel can manufucture ducks wiht for wings then restaranteres very happ men.”

  HALF BEAR, HALF MONKEY! ALIVE!

  I’m thinking marmoset or red panda. Next.

  MIDGET HORSES, ALIVE!

  Last week after Eight Belles broke its front legs at the Kentucky Derby a thought popped into my head, “What about the midget horses?” Here they are, Alive! On the painted canvas a beefy man, whose head comes out of his chest, grasps the manes of two tiny horses. The Strong Man’s legs are too short. What kind of stunt-legged-depicting Michelangelo did this art?

  FOUR-LEGGED DUCKS. ALIVE!

  What is it with this Alive! thing? What is this four appendage fetish? City dwellers will never pay to see mutant livestock. We can’t even wrap our head around the fact hotdogs come from pig or weasel, or wherever they come from. I suspect such bizarre animals shock norms central to central states. “Okay, listen up kids, this is your principal speaking. We’ve just heard that the Iowa State Fair has a Rhode Island Red with a hair lip, Alive! Busses are waiting out front.”

  MIDGET BULL! ALIVE!

  Probably a good thing, but I can’t figure out why. Minute steaks? I’ll have the half ounce T-bone please.

  MINIATURE STALLION. ALIVE!

  I already saw the poster for the midget bull. Skip.

  KNIFE THROWER!

  Bob Bezerhko proves no patter is so mundane that yelling won’t help. “Step right up, all and one, gents and dames, boys and girls, washed and unwashed. Five gets you a back row seat. Shudder as he flings blades of razor sharp steel at our half-naked Hilda. All this while blindfolded!” I’m sure the painter means the knife thrower and not the audience. “See Fat Boy, the world’s darling weighing in at a delicate 856 pounds. Ask him what he eats in a day! Try to lift him!”

  THE MERMAID

  So they captured the mermaid. She doesn’t appear too upset. Her marlin tail displays rings of blue, violet, and dill pickle green. Blonde seaweed hair covers her breasts. She’s such a prude when out of water. Play a game? Old man and the sea? Oh yes, she ain’t that little either.

  KNIFE THROWER REDUX

  Buff, Italian. Protruding rump and head jutting from his shoulders, again. Here’s a trick you artists, if you really can’t paint necks, just omit them. Or, could be he just hated tall people? The thrower holds his arm in the air, ready, counterbalanced by purple bell-bottoms. Across the painting Hilda strains against her ties in a flesh-coloured bikini that must have fooled hundreds. The knife thrower wears the expression of intense concentration, Hilda the expression of skipped portrait classes. Twenty or so stilettos describe her sleek outline. At least as many more are plugged like duckpins into a table near the thrower. Three Medieval axes suggest drunken fun back in the trailer.

  OLGA AND HELGA HELM

  Two-headed baby or one-bodied babies? Where does one get such grammatical advice? Helm from the Norse hjalm for rudder or the old English helan. Thus the sentence: “The two-headed baby scudded aimlessly across the map much like a ship without a helm.” Note the incredibly witty play on the name! A fabulously painted nurse who looks even more fabulous in her hospital green operating garb hands off Olga/Helga to the eager mother who looks fabulous too in her stunning Spring ensemble of hospital green. She seems to have somehow forgotten that less than few minutes ago she pushed a two-headed monstrosity through a less than apt birth canal. In the corner of the painting are the words, “Frighteningly Factual Facsimile.”

  PAUL AND PAULA

  Half man, half woman. Psychologists posit there are now five genders: man, woman, man born as woman, woman born as man, and transgendered. Paul and Paula make six don’t they? What a romantic stroll they take on the moonlit pier. How their loving narcissism beckons, how they demonstrate the ultimate gesture of self-love. Is s/he onanist, this man and manna?

  POPEYE, THE MAN WITH THE ELASTIC EYEBALLS

  Dropped the ball here. They could have written Al-EYE-ve! Ping pong anyone? He’s not sneaking a peek at the mermaid is he? Can he see that the turned down corners of his mouth suggest he may not be as awed as we are?

  TATTOOED WOMAN

  Teen revolt mixed with Potemkin village. Yawn.

  EEKA ALIVE!

  Eeka, the wild teeth-gnashing woman of every man’s dreams. Eeka the nasty half-clad with an insatiable appetite, wink. Eeka in leopard bikini with matching tail has lazy eyes. Don’t be fooled. No man survives Eeka the black widow of the human world. From the tropical unnamed paradise it is Eeka the
captured, Eeka Alive! Eeka in all her Tongan toplessness. Eeka feasts upon an arm ripped from a fallen maiden who was more than likely warned many times not to go out alone at night looking for that elusive nutmeg oil. Eeka grinds her teeth against the elbow. How can she not know where the meat is? The dripping blood is as red as the areolas on her large breasts. Then it hits me she could have played the tobacconist in Fellini’s Amarcord. Eeka, oh sweet deadly Eeka! And it hits me, I sure would like one of those sausage on a roll with fried onion things.

  HOO LA LA ALIVE!

  The dichotomous sibling of Eeka sways from the happy side of the Pacific basin. She walks tall on black strapped heels and she offers, with flapping hands, a simple lei. But, I ask, does her smiling demeanour make her any less pigfaced? A rolled scroll lies behind her, upon which must be inscribed many secrets such as the Siren song that lured Captain Cook to his death and just why Hot Pockets® has so many fans.

  LEGLESS WOMAN!

  Her name is Julie Klepterschurrer although if asked she will deny her stint in the Stuchenhier prison. She debuted at Coney Island where she used to lie on stage and describe how she lost her legs in a waterskiing accident. She married Mr. Lift It who picked up cement blocks with a hook through his nipples. She’s advertised too, I’d like to point out.

  SIDE SHOW, ALIVE!

  I push five bucks into the hand of Bob Bezerhko who now pushes tickets. Inside the tent the lights dim as I survey a gum-covered bench. Fat Boy trundles out. Years ago he would have been called Harry’s Beef Trust.

  “If you’re wondering what I weigh, I weigh 856 pounds, not a pound less an not a pound more.” His voice resonates like turkeys fighting in a kettle drum. “Ask me a question.” I mentally calculate how many of the spectators will equal his weight.

  “Go ahead,” Fat Boy says.

  Bob Bezerhko suddenly speaks over a microphone, “Get your fill of Fat Boy because he’s already gotten his fill of dinner.”

  “Ask me any questions you want like what I et for breakfast,” says Fat Boy who then answers before anyone asks. “Okay I’ll tell ya what I et for breakfast. I et two dozen eggs, extra large, and a loaf a bread an butter, two pounds of bacon, an I drunk a gallon a whole milk, an a gallon a orange juice, an for dessert I et ten pancakes, and a pile a sausages.”

  He pauses, “Oh yeah, an a espresso.”

  “Okay, ask me another question,” he says. “What did I et for lunch? Okay I’ll tell ya I et a loaf a bread an a pound a bologna an a tub a mustard an five dozen cans a beef ravioli an I drunk a gallon a whole milk an I et a package a Oreo cookies, an a whole punkin pie an a half with whip cream.”

  Fat Boy thinks for a moment and adds, “Oh, an a espresso.”

  A farmer next to me tugs his overalls in an American Gothic moment and says, “Is that just your gut or do you have a double hernia?” A woman answers, “Gonads the size of Rhode Island.”

  “Ask me what I et for Dinner,” Fat Boy continues. “Okay I’ll tell ya what I et for dinner. I had me one of them bar-be-ques and I et two packs a hot dogs an two packs a hot dog rolls and a couple a pounds a hamburger an a bag a hamburger rolls and a bag of vin’gar chips an a jar of sweet pickles an a gallon a whole milk an for dessert I et a tub a vanilla ice cream an a jar a butterscotch sauce.” Then fat boy stares at us for a long time and we stare back.

  “What about the espresso?” someone asks.

  “Not at night. Too much coffee gives me the shits.”

  Then we can pay an extra buck to see Rubber Woman squeezed into a tiny box and another buck to see Alligator Skin who sits behind a screen and then a man comes out with a cardboard box that contains broken glass and a lightbulb, which he proceeds to crack and chew.

  BOB BEZERHKO

  I corner him as I’m leaving the tent. “Cheap show ya got here,” I say.

  “No refunds,” he states flatly.

  “Advertising the legless woman and then leaving us empty-handed. You have her on a banner out front.”

  “Yeah well a picture says a thousand things, don’t it,” says Bob. “One of them things it don’t say is how she ran away with that asshole who ran Tahiti Boat.” And then he throws me a look that lies somewhere between a punch in the Adam’s apple and a bald-faced lie.

  the last islander

  MATTHEW JOHNSON

  Saufatu stood neck-deep in the water, watching the dawn arrive over the great empty ocean to the east. He raised the coconut shard in his right hand to his mouth and nibbled on the flesh, enjoying the mixture of sweet and salty flavors, then quickly glanced over his shoulder at the shore. He knew before looking that there would be no-one there: even Funafuti, the biggest of the Eight Islands, was nearly always empty except on Independence Day. Here on Niulakiti, the first of the islands to sink, he had never seen another soul.

  He turned back to the sea, took another bite of his coconut and frowned. Something was out there. He squinted, trying to make out the dark smudge perhaps a half kilometre out towards the horizon. It looked like someone swimming, or rather thrashing at the surface; suddenly he remembered what he had put out there, realized what was happening, and pushed himself out into the waves.

  It had been a long time since he had been swimming, but a childhood spent in the sea had inscribed his muscles with the necessary motions. He inhaled and exhaled salt spray with each stroke, getting nearer and nearer to the man—for he could now see that it was a man, dark-haired and tanned but unmistakeably white—who was struggling for his life. The snout and fin of the grey reef shark, rising and falling from the water as it fought to draw the man down, completed the picture.

  “Bop it on the snout!” Saufatu called as he got closer, hoping the man spoke English.

  The man, who to this point had not yet noticed him, looked his way and tilted his head.

  “Bop it on the snout!” Saufatu shouted again. He slowed to tread water for a moment, raised his left hand out of the water and smacked it against his nose twice.

  The man turned back to the shark, which was working to fasten its jaws on his leg, and tapped it gingerly. A moment later he smacked it harder, and the shark turned its head away; another hit and it thrashed its head from side to side, snapped its jaws on empty air and dove under the surface.

  Saufatu reached the man a few minutes later, closing his mouth to avoid inhaling the bloody water. The man looked pale, but surprisingly composed given what he had just been through. He put his right arm around Saufatu’s shoulder and kicked his legs weakly.

  “Not that way,” Saufatu said, shaking his head. “Past here it’s all algorithmic. Just let me pull you.”

  The man nodded and then coughed, spitting out seawater. “Thanks,” he said.

  Saufatu said nothing, concentrating on his strokes as he drew the man back to shore. He helped the man out onto the beach, watching him carefully to make sure he did not have any more water in his lungs, and then leaned him against a tree. Saufatu picked up his clothes from where he had left them, and the jug of toddy he had left there as well. He went back to the man, handed him the jug, and set to work tearing up his shirt into bandages for the wounds on the man’s leg. Luckily they were not deep, and had already been cleaned by the seawater; he was unlikely to carry them with him when he left.

  The man took a swig of toddy, and then another. “Thanks again,” the man said. “I’m Craig, by the way. Craig Kettner.”

  “Saufatu Pelesala,” Saufatu said. He glanced out at the sea. “We don’t get many visitors here.”

  “I can see that,” Craig said, “what with the welcoming committee and all. You really should put a sign up or something, warn people before they go swimming.”

  “It’s only instanced in that spot,” Saufatu said. “People know not to go there unless they want to experience it.”

  Craig frowned. “Why would they want to?”

  “It’s a memory. That’s where it happened.” He gestured out towards the
sea. “Or so I’m told. Apisai Lotoala, he was one of the last people to grow up here—he was attacked by a shark right out there, so that’s where I put the memory.”

  “And that’s how he got out of it? By hitting the shark on the nose?”

  Saufatu shrugged. “That’s what he always said. All I know is, I’ve seen the scars.”

  Craig nodded slowly. “So—what is this place, anyway?”

  “You came here. Didn’t you know where you were going?”

  He shook his head. “I just picked it by random, pretty much. I look for . . . low-traffic sites. Mostly places that are basically empty, or abandoned. I didn’t expect anybody else to be here, to be honest with you.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “So—what is this place? Why are you encoding instanced shark attacks?”

  “This is my home,” Saufatu said. “The Eight Islands were very very low, too low when the waters rose. So my family was given the salanga of taking a record of them, as best we could.”

  Craig looked along the beach from left to right, his head nodding slightly. “And it’s all like this, full immersive dreaming?”

  Saufatu shook his head. “We were able to record some of the other islands immersively, but this one is mostly 2-D. I was able to convert some of it, like this beach, but the algorithms are expensive.”

  “What did you use?” Craig asked, crouching down and running his hand over the white, fine-grained sand appraisingly.