Electric Velocipede Issue 25

by Megan Kurishage

  Adaptation

  Heather Albano

  Amid the rows of masks

  remnants lie scattered—

  torn pages, broken bindings, smudged ink

  half-remembered tales and half-forgotten names.

  Lilith, Lot’s wife, Iphigenia, Cinderella, Rose Red

  the ones they’ve forgotten and the ones they never knew

  we who can now speak only

  through these masks of bone and stone

  masks that fuse to the skin beneath

  and then are we who we were?

  Recent arrivals touch the masks with distaste

  don them with reluctance

  and tear them off once each conversation concludes

  —tearing bits of skin as well, marking the mask with blood.

  Viciously they insist I will not change

  I will not I will not I am who I am

  I will not let them break my legs to fit me into their box.

  They scream, and the walls shake with it

  listen to me, they say

  listen to me

  listen to me, we older ones whisper

  listen to me.

  Footbinding cripples at first, but then it frees you

  Boxes are infinite once you are inside

  It is when the mask and skin fuse that you learn the sideways shift

  Then you can assume all forms

  and all the ways they tell the story can be true at once.

  The frock-coated man with the brass-bound trunk argues,

  brandishing the text that contains his truth.

  I am here. Within these pages, in these words. Maybe no one knows who you once were,

  foolish woman, but I can prove this is the truth of me.

  It’s not so simple

  I tell him, though he does not want to hear—

  harder for him, of course

  harder for men with their man-power

  bound by words, captured in tomes—

  hard for him to grasp what power can be taken sideways after the feet are broken and the skin is fused.

  I am changeable, flitting on the wind

  head turned slightly, free to whisper

  the truth that is still mine to tell.

  No, he says, not shouting, not screaming

  in frustration that shreds the walls

  speaking with certainty only—no, he says, no, not so

  you only tell them what they wish to hear.

  We face each other over his trunk

  the one that chains him, brass bindings becoming fetters

  which he accepts with dignity

  —willingly imprisoned, waiting to be rescued

  When someone thinks to come for him,

  he will be here

  intact, unwavering, unyielding. Whole.

  It is too late to rescue me.

  My wholeness long ago became fragments

  and then the fragments, dust

  but I dissolve into wind and whisper around him

  waft through the links of his chains

  part and parcel of the air

  and the fragments that remain of me tell a story still.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Heather Albano’s short fiction and poetry has appeared in Aoife’s Kiss, The Gloaming, Spectra Magazine, the anthology More Scary Kisses, and others. Her first novel, Timepiece (a steampunk time travel adventure about a girl, a pocket watch, Frankenstein’s monster, the Battle of Waterloo, and giant clockwork robots taking over London) is available for download from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords. When not writing traditional forms of fiction, Heather works for Choice of Games. She attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop in 2009 and joined the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop in 2012. Check out her website at www.heatheralbano.com.