A Season In Carcosa

by Sr. (Editor) Joseph S. Pulver

  Lightning . . . and thunder.

  Lightning.

  Thunder.

  . . . in imprisoned hearts . . . along the road . . .

  Thunder.

  And evil faces.

  Evil faces that betrayed dreams. Dr.

  Sipus—Archer spawned, and his poison. That rattlesnake expression. The cold black gaze framed by unsightly horn-rimmed eyeglasses, he’s Death come knocking at the door. He’s sin, purging and

  Pen pauses. Smile urges, just do it.

  pulverizing

  “Pulver, you ass. Strawberry fields are a myth.”

  You were just a pawn in the King’s game. You were never going to be a duke or a baron.

  Sets his pen down and picks up his glass. Looks down at the words.

  Did you leave a statement about the fire, or the last day?

  Looks up, notes the rivering knuckles of the black cloud tutoring the moon.

  “Or did you just stop negotiating and offer tobacco to the tin moon? You ass. You stupid ass, you looked down in the darkness and marked the rising waterline with your mug shot. Didn’t you?”

  No answer in the sky. None in his empty glass. Karl picks up his pen.

  with its measure of wrong, cutting the usage of good from cried.

  His Nation of Cleansing, his metal prophecy, that river with no bed for those judged and carved by Other. “A case of blending the light out of it,” he said, as he again spit on the guilt and famine of the pawn he’s engraved with the plague.

  * * *

  “Make it stop.” And she curls up, the betrayal still a blade pressed to her throat.

  She remembers the yesterday when her heart raced, raced beat for beat with Camilla’s. They’d broken misfortune’s curfew to dwell in amusement and had been reading of Loki’s cunning betrayal when she found herself consumed by a current of fear that caused her to begin sobbing. Afraid, yet somehow remembering that line from the other story—‘One always remembers one’s mistakes…’—she found herself shivering as the cold sea air swelled, climbed the cliff and slid into her bedroom window and its weight danced on her shoulder. Camilla held her, covered her with the yellow-trimmed, cream and copper colored quilt that felt like a warm poem.

  “Camilla.”

  “I’m here, Dearest. I will not let go.” Camilla’s honey-alto transformed her clothes, freed her to swim in the sea.

  “Make it stop.”

  Tears and a coward’s soul in the traitor’s room with lonely times. This hour, right now, and the narrow ones of debris to come

  “Karl . . . Please, you should come inside and rest. A few hours of sleep might help.”

  “I was, um, considering it.”

  Her eyes question his weak reply.

  She changes her tongue. “He will be there.”

  His expression is loud. Louder than his dim “I know.”

  “His compass will spin and finally come to rest, pointing at you. To-morrow arrives today.”

  Karl nods, yes, yes.

  “And He will point to your hands.”

  He holds no cards. Looks at his empty glass.

  The moon quickly hides behind a bank of clouds. From the crooked-peaked, bitter-black towers of the cathedral the deathbirds sing the song of unmasking.

  Karl sees no tears in Cassilda’s eyes. Sees her lips move—

  “The last writer sits alone in his study . . . Writes . . .’

  “Everywhere: greyness and rain.”

  (after Karl Edward Wagner’s “The River of Night’s Dreaming”)

  [W.S. Burroughs “A Thanksgiving Prayer”, Bennie Maupin “Quasar”, Kate Bush “Running Up That Hill”, John Martyn “Solid Air”, Bob Dylan “Things Have Changed”, “High Water (For Charlie Patton)”, “Desolation Row”, B, S, & T “He’s A Runner”, Jacques Brel “Marathon”, Mathias Eick “October”, The Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “A Day In The Life”, Wings “Live And Let Die”, Traffic “(Roamin’ Thru the Gloamin’ With) 40,000 Headmen”]

  Whose Hearts are Pure Gold

  By Kristin Prevallet

  Before she left for her month-long cruise, Camilla’s mother Tess left the ultimate “To Do” list on the kitchen table:

  vacuum every other day

  dust on Sunday

  pick up the apples daily

  weed whack

  clean up the cat mess under the bushes

  water the lawn

  wash the sheets

  prune the trees

  pick up the apples

  tighten the screen

  hose down the driveway

  toss old books from the basement

  be your best self.

  The “To Do” list is Tess’ attempt to control the chaos, the unimaginable clutter that she had accumulated over the past twenty years. When Camilla was born, the baby’s presence and its totalizing demands were constant reminders of the man who had gotten Tess pregnant, and then left her to bear the burden. It was perhaps an attempt to bury her child alive that Tess began obsessively shopping: she walked out of thrift stores with bags of trinkets, and scoured used books stores for romance novels, which like a slow moving virus has taken over every surface in the house. Camilla never had her own room, really. Just a small space in a closet that she was able to keep completely clean – a space where she would spend her afternoons reading, and dreaming about what other girls were doing in their rooms.

  On this July morning, Camilla wakes up to find the house quiet. She sees the to-do list and instinctively tosses it away. Because for the first time in her life Camilla isn’t going to do any of these things: this is the beginning.

  Instead of tackling each chore with the great gusto to please her mother as she usually does, Camilla spends the first two days that she is alone watching TV. Family Feud, The 20,000 Pyramid, The Guiding Light, The Edge of Night. At 4pm, Leo Buscaglia comes on Phil Donahue to talk about love and positive thinking. “Love always creates, it never destroys. It is our only hope.” His words are background noise for a late afternoon dream-slip into sleep.

  On the third day, lethargic from watching too much TV but jazzed by her defiance, Camilla gets the urge to get up and do something, somewhere, all on her own. But her mother’s controlling influence is so strong that she is paralyzed; the energy is there, but it has no where to go. She wades in anguish through the piles of clothes and cheap statues that have taken over the living room, desiring to break them but feeling that her arms are pinned to her side. All she can do is wander, a ghost who knows she is alive but hasn’t yet found her form.

  Finally collapsing in tears on the dirty living room floor (which hasn’t been vacuumed in years), Camilla spots a wooden box hidden under an overstuffed bookshelf. Inside is an odd trinket – a pin with a clasp of black onyx, on which is inlaid a curious symbol or letter in gold. It is pretty, so she puts it on.

  Without knowing why she has an idea: what if she suddenly went through the house and tore the stuffing out of the couches? Pulled the trim from the doorways? Ripped the faucet out of the sink? Could be exciting. But instead of doing anything that would raise her mother’s hysterical ire, she gets off the floor, walks out of the house, and stands in the middle of the street.

  She stands there for a few minutes. The cement is hot, but she plants her feet on the ground and feels the tar burning. She hears an airplane and the slow rustle of leaves. Somewhere a child is crying. She notices a few shriveled up apples on the ground. She notices a flock of crows sitting on the telephone wire, as if waiting for a gust of wind to knock them into flight. She throws a rock at the crows. A few get startled and fly away. Then, she goes back inside and paces around.

  There is something she needs to work out. In spite of her mother’s raging voice in her head telling her to do the chores because the house is falling apart, Camilla imagines straying further and further from home: outside her cul-de-sac, down the quiet street, and into a series of adventures and misadventures that, even at their most gruesome, she w
ill take in stride as the genesis of a world she has passively ignited.

  II

  Each day that her mother is gone Camilla tests how far she can go by appearing where she is not supposed to be: Monday at the bus-stop in her nightgown at 5am, Tuesday at the gas station at midnight, Wednesday on the median that divides traffic at noon, arms outstretched like Jesus.

  Thursday she decides to up the ante of her thought experiment by standing in the middle of Alcott Street. Along comes a boy named Kass driving his father’s Buick a little too fast, suffering from a hang-over, and listening to Zepplin’s “Trampled Under Foot” on the tape player a little too loud. He sees Camilla just a little too late, but manages to slam on the breaks, skidding into a tightly-trimmed bramble of a evergreen shrub. Camilla is still standing in the street, looking blankly at the scene, like a detective.

  “Are you fuckin’ crazy? What the fuck is your problem? Get out of the street you stupid girl!”

  Camilla just watches him as he jumps around, punching the shrub, kicking the tires, gesturing in the air. Her silence is unsettling, and causes him to shift his tone.

  He pauses.

  “What – whoa. Ok. So… got released too early from lockup?”

  “To see what would happen,” she says.

  “To see what would happen?! To see what would fucking happen? I’ll tell you what will happen when my father sees his car all scratched. Stupid bitch! You Stupid Bitch!”

  Kass grabs Camilla out of the street, pulling her by the sleeve, escorting her to the flattened shrub. Camilla shrugs and smiles at him.

  That shrug causes Kass to look at her face very carefully: her round brown eyes, uncombed hair falling messily around a rubber band at the nape of her neck, her shirt just barely touching the hipline of her skirt. He thinks to himself, “she is pretty. And she is obviously crazy. And my father told me that the pretty crazy ones are the best in bed.”

  At that moment, the shrub owner turns the corner and is about to pull his station wagon into the driveway. Seeing the approach of the shrub man, Kass grabs Camilla and pushes her into the passenger seat of the Buick. Just as shrub man is yelling: “look what you’ve done to my shrub!” Kass dives into the driver’s seat, and then smiles and waves as he backs the car out of the lawn and into the street. None of this is at all alarming to Camilla, who is having the time of her life.

  Realizing that Camilla wasn’t one to talk very much, Kass inserts “Technical Ecstasy” into the cassette deck. The only music Camilla knows is what her mother plays: compilation melodies from cheap violin cover albums she finds in thrift stores. But now, listening to Kass’s music, pure terror channels straight through her, and she is moved. The words say: The sleepy city is dreaming the night time away / Out on the street I watch tomorrow becoming today. The music says: fight. Camilla’s mind wraps around every beat; she lets out a moan. Some other organ is now her eye. Internally focused, she grasps the gold pin. The sun is setting behind her as the car moves forward in time; and she, always lethargic, is awake with an indefatigable energy.

  III

  Kass is at a stoplight, bobbing his head and tapping his fingers on the steering wheel trying to contain his excitement about how dangerous this whole thing was feeling. Hearing her moan, he stops moving and looks at Camilla who at that moment is staring straight ahead, her eyes wide open and her lips slightly parted. Kass is smitten. He drives the Buick to the parking lot of Safeway, finds a spot farthest from the entrance, and turns off the engine.

  She feels Kass’s right hand pulling her hair out of the rubber band, and his left hand lifting her shirt. She thinks of her mother’s words: girls who cause boys to touch them will be forever changed into something evil, unlikable, bitter, mean, and ugly. For a moment, Camilla listens to her mother’s voice as it runs through her head, but then she thinks of how great it would feel to throw all her mother’s crap out into the yard. To poke the walls with thumb tacks. To etch zigzags into the wood panels with a key. She is out to make ruins, and has put the first phase of destruction in motion.

  She lets go of the urge to struggle against Kass’s hand as he pries apart her thighs. She rejects the voice of shame as his hands push her down. In her mind, she reasons that she has not caused this boy to touch her. She is not doing anything wrong just because she happens to be in a place that is different from the place she normally would have been. She releases into the danger of not knowing what will happen next. When suddenly his chapped fingers are in her: she is flesh, moving in ten different places with the elasticity of gum, and this feeling lets loose a wetness that stops the burning and is almost pleasant. Kass, sensing this, moves his hand faster, making more. Having lost her sense of space, Camilla puts her hand over the yellow pin (which is now beating in time to her heart) and feels her breath moving up and down her chest, like particles of light.

  Kass pulls her back up and buckles her in. Her expression hasn’t seemed to change; she hasn’t said a word. He reasons that she is not going home unless she makes it back there accidentally. She has no money, doesn’t really talk much, and seems incredibly clueless. These are intriguing qualities to Kass. And so he decides to keep her. Finally, his very own girlfriend.

  IV

  Camilla has been staying with Kass for a few days, but Camilla gets bored easily. Kass has to keep a very careful eye on her, lest she wander into the middle of the street again, causing an accident or worse. He takes her to movies and is impressed that she never flinches – a girl who doesn’t get scared watching Demon Seed: very cool. Camilla notices that all of Kass’s favorite movies are about monstrous people who cause terrible things to happen in the world, but the world always goes back to normal at the end. She witnesses these acts of violence, and learns something about the world within the world that her mother had tried so hard to shelter from her. In this new world, Camilla reasons, violence exists in order that violence be eliminated; evil exists in order that good can assert itself as a power; men fight wars because through fighting, love can be realized. Men shoot themselves in the head because through shooting themselves in the head they are ensuring that they will not shoot someone else. Men shoot, bleed, set fires and cut other men up in order that sanity, as a general principal might be defined. And what, she asks Kass, is so wrong with that?

  “Nothing I guess,” says Kass who really isn’t into all that philosophy bullshit.

  Regardless, Camilla has learned some impressive fighting maneuvers in a very short period of time. Her mind moves mysteriously quickly and she absorbs knowledge with incredible agility. From the movies she has learned how to hide and then attack; how to squash a man’s head with a wrench; how to kick a man in the balls so that he buckles forwards – at which point she could kick him in the face. She has learned that hitting a man upwards on his chin is more effective than trying to hit him across the face. There is this world of violence, and then simultaneously, there is another world of peace: the darkness of the room, the images on the screen; the honking of horns on the street, the crazed eyes of Kass as he fucks her, just like they do it in the movies.

  It was neither an accident, nor a pre-mediated act that caused Camilla, early Friday morning, to use a steak knife to slice Kass’s eyebrow while he was sleeping. She sits back and observes, while he screams and pleads for her mercy, the blood from his eye socket pouring down around his face. So, she thinks, these things happen, and then these things, and as long as I continue to do things that I would never have done before, worlds will be created, and everything will be in balance. Little does she know the world she is creating is not her own.

  V

  She’s smiling, hand to her golden heart, as Kass, in a rage, screams: “What the fuck are you doing you ungrateful bitch!”

  He’s got a t-shirt pressed against his eye, and is stomping around, looking for the phone, and making a wild racket. He’s obsessed with Camilla but not at all paying attention as she zips her jeans and ties her white canvas tennis shoes before walking calmly out t
he front door.

  Camilla runs wildly. She imagines herself running into a dark and mysterious forest, where the ghost of a lady furiously roams, looking for the man who would set her free. The fantasy helps her run faster, and not care about the people she is mowing down on the street. By the time she stops crouching behind trashcans, and shooting her invisible gun at non-existent zombies who are pursuing her, it’s dark. She is underneath the elevated tracks in the city’s center, standing in the middle of the street and spinning in a circle to take in the atmosphere. She’d never been to this part of the city. The cars look like they have been parked for a long time. On the block where she is standing are three repair shops, a used parts store, a bottle-recycling center, and a bar called Kitty’s. In a moment of lucidity, Camilla looks up at the cracks between the rails of the tracks and realizes that it is still daylight. But the street lights are already on. This realization unsettles her. For a moment, she wants to go home. But as soon as she has this thought, another one quickly takes its place: the world’s athirst; now let it drink! says a voice, as if a book is being written in her mind.

  VI

  A dark green Pinto approaches behind her. Since she is standing in the middle of the street, it honks; she politely moves out of the way. A carload of four college boys pulls over to the side of the road. Camilla stares at them as they get out of the car, laughing and making nervous jokes as if they are trying to be cool, but not really feeling up to the part. Three of them walk across the street to Kitty’s, and one stays behind, leaning against the car to light a cigarette and stare at Camilla.

  There are no words during this exchange of glances—just a nervous nod. The boy runs to meet up with his friends, and because the brooch has made her fearless, Camilla follows him. The darkness of the bar is overcast by a dull-toned glow of red and the movement of women’s bodies on a stage lined with pink tinsel. The boys had taken a seat near the back. Camilla finds herself a spot against the wall, near enough so she can keep an eye on them.

  A man approaches her; a voice.

  “You here to audition?”