Artists are nothing but expert time killers, filling up the hours by entertaining themselves. But the ones who think they’re changing the universe are truly delusional. Writers who believe communication makes any difference are the most delusional of all. Every day people find better, faster ways to communicate and guess what? The same percentage of humanity remains ignorant and hateful. We still torture and murder for profit. We still rape and steal, and we step gingerly over people who are starving to death so we won’t get any of their shit on our shoes on our way to the espresso stand.
In case anyone wants to chalk up my shitty attitude to bitterness, let me be clear. I don’t blame anybody. Not anymore. The man I tried to prove wrong thought enough of me to hang around and offer me words of advice I didn’t follow. The woman I wasted time hating was barely aware of my existence. Even now she’s busy spreading a fistful of thorns across the footbridge at the Arboretum, and tripping children with broken bamboo stems. The man who killed me in cold blood was murdered by a ghost wearing stained underwear.
The worst thing Eve did was to reject the best I had to offer. Last I heard that wasn’t a killing offense. No one was out to get me. Nothing stood in my way. Life was mine to fuck up, and I fucked it up good. Here’s the proof.
Years ago, in one of my restless moods, I hid outside an elementary school on Capitol Hill near Volunteer Park. Indoors the scent of chalk and finger-paints, outdoors an extended canopy of cherry blossoms, like a tunnel of bright aromatic light. I crouched on the mossy steps and waited until the last child emerged from the brick building.
She was strangely familiar, with her lanky stride and her shoulder-length dark hair. She exuded light, a sense of wellbeing and curiosity. With her backpack stuffed full of art and science homework, stopping at each new marvel—an overturned sidewalk stone where ants streamed toward the nearest lawn, a garden gnome clutching a bunch of weeds—she was irresistible.
She followed the curve north, bypassing the park. Soon we were crossing 10th Ave. On a side street the repaired asphalt and concrete gave way to a cobbled path. She reached up and unbolted a gate covered in ivy. When she pushed the gate open another world appeared. A wild and splendid garden surrounded us with a heady aroma of flowers and the sparkling greenery of a barely tended yet naturally beautiful lawn.
The gate creaked shut behind us. Up ahead lay a large, rambling Tudor-style house. The windows and the backdoor stood open. Wafting in our direction, the unmistakable scent of bread baking. The second the smell reached her, the girl took a skip forward and let out a weird cry.
I stopped there, puzzled. I watched the girl proceed across the grass to the backdoor. I kept trying to figure out the nature of the sound she made. Was it fear?
While I was wondering, a woman stuck her head out one of the windows and called out, “Sally! Sally, Sally! Over here!”
The voice hit me like an old song on the radio. Reaching past the present to my youth, my life, all of my wasted days. Moo! It was Ginny Moo calling out.
Through the backdoor a tall, slender man with close-cropped salt and pepper hair and a trim beard emerged. He reached out for the little girl, who dropped her backpack on the ground. The man swept her up in his arms and cradled her, both of them giggling and shouting. Moo looked out and laughed at the sight of her husband Charlie and her daughter Sally.
I stood there on the lawn and watched them swirl in circles. Charlie tossed Sally in the air, caught her, and gently set her on her feet. He picked up her backpack and slung it over his shoulder. The two clasped hands. Charlie had a peculiar expression, as if he’d picked up a bad scent on the breeze. He put one hand against the back of his daughter’s head and ushered her softly into the house, closing the door behind them and locking it.
Only after Moo’s face disappeared from the window did I understand the sound the girl had made when approaching the house. It was joy! It was a feeling of delight and anticipation, as pure and wild as anything I’d ever heard.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
This really is a boom city, isn’t it? As long as the tectonic plates grinding away beneath the surface don’t slip and fling Seattle into the Pacific, it’s only going to get bigger, prettier, louder, and more expensive every year, like most cities.
The light rail is a welcome addition, replacing some of the deadwood, the houses once occupied by families, later marked for demolition and protected (for their eventual demise) behind tall fences and barbed wire. House after house was knocked flat, the detritus of generations hauled away to make room for the train station on Capitol Hill.
I like the train. Clean, fast, fun to ride even during peak hours. Too bad it’s such a short ride but that will change quickly too. Soon everyone will take the train and won’t that be fun? Every stop is a new opportunity, for those who are not quite satisfied with their lives, and not quite happy in the midst of all this glitter, greed, and beauty. For the moment the train is sort of the monorail of its era, a bright novelty and a promise for the future, reminding residents they live in a place of aspirations and ideals and continual alterations.
Public transportation is the most fun. Once in a while, though, I enjoy climbing into a car beside a driver trapped in the awful freeway traffic. The moment is intimate. Cold rain outside, heat and rage and despair inside, fogged windows separating the busy world from a single, sad resident. I whisper between the lines of a song on the radio. “Go on and hit the gas. There’s a truck stalled up ahead. Get it over with…”
The bus tunnel drilling made for some chilling encounters. It’s hard work underground. For now, the drilling is at a standstill. Stop and start, stop and start, shutting down and then gearing up. Nobody said progress would be easy.
Who proposed a Ferris wheel in the middle of the city? What a sweet idea. It’s as cool as cotton candy at a shopping center. You can exit your sparkling new high-security condo, buy a gelato, and ride the Ferris wheel without leaving your neighborhood, like a child, a 25-year-old working child. I find the seating compartments particularly enjoyable. Think of it, sitting there in the enclosed space high in the air with a view of the teeny Space Needle and the gray sludgy clouds over Puget Sound. Suddenly there is the distinctly cool hand, a low whisper, a bite on the cheek—and absolutely no way out.
I’m surprised to find I have a real affection for the fish odor of the market. I like the cold water splashing on tiles and meeting a strange heat, the density and headiness of the human swarm, brisk shadows flashing through the labyrinthine corridors. It’s timeless, the atmosphere of travelers and shoppers; craftsmen selling gorgeous gifts and cheap trinkets; the homeless seeking quarters dropped on the filthy tiled floors, grasping for dimes with black-nailed fingers.
People marvel at it, love it, yet they wonder about the occasional dizziness, the too-crowded feeling reported by tourists who have become ill at the market and blame the proximity of so many bodies, so much bacteria. In the underground halls of the market where they shop and dine at night, and on overcast afternoons all year round, the visitors dress in layers and consider moving here for good. Many of them do move here, lured by tech jobs and pretty images online.
Nothing is more delectable than the stink and sweat of the market. I like to glide between shoppers, sometimes pinching or slapping an uncovered scalp, or brushing past and slamming an elbow into a rib. For the most part my market activities are harmless, and these moments of intimacy are benign; I don’t always follow a shopper or a seller home. As I go on, I find the market, just the wandering and harmless mischief, necessary to keep my memory of something real.
I didn’t apply for this job. I didn’t plan to live here forever. I didn’t plan anything. I simply followed my instinct. Here, surrounded by bad memories of my life, I fill the void in my own way. At times I only watch accidents, and at times I make sure the right conditions are met. I’m not seeking anything, only killing time. But there are days and nights when I have a tiny sense of belonging, of serving a p
urpose. In the city of rain and serial killers and suicide, I’m almost at home.
On good days, really good days, I find someone not quite shunned but shut out by choice. I spy a loner or a person seeking the same refuge I find in the anonymity of crowds.
The sea coils and churns beyond the glass, and fathoms beyond our vision creatures are shuffling through darkness, instinct guiding them to satiate a hunger for which they have no words. Isn’t it the same here on the land? Here I am, wandering, watching, and waiting. Once in a while I still hope for an opportunity to tell my story (the only one I’ll ever know) to a fellow wanderer, a lost cause, a future death in the making. Once in a while I spy one, a seeker of real or imagined solace—someone who doesn’t know me, who is yet drawn to the quiet corners and abandoned alleys where I like to roam—someone lost without knowing it, someone hungry for things that will never exist—someone a lot like you.
The End
Black Static reviewer Peter Tennant rates S.P. Miskowski “one of the most interesting and original writers to emerge in recent years.” Her debut novel Knock Knock and novella Delphine Dodd were Shirley Jackson Award finalists. Her short stories appear in the magazines Supernatural Tales, Black Static, Identity Theory, and Strange Aeons as well as in the anthologies The Madness of Dr. Caligari, Little Visible Delight, October Dreams 2, Autumn Cthulhu, Cassilda's Song, The Hyde Hotel, Darker Companions: Celebrating 50 Years of Ramsey Campbell, and Looming Low. Her writing has received a Swarthout Award and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Dim Shores published Miskowski’s "Stag in Flight" as a limited edition chapbook with illustrations by Nick Gucker. Her novelette Muscadines is included in the Dunhams Manor Press hardcover series with illustrations by Dave Felton. Her short story collection Strange is the Night is forthcoming from JournalStone.
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