Can & Can'tankerous

by Harlan Ellison

  The other jailer, the younger, #7, made a retching sound and sent an extrusion of holy greenish flesh across the stone floor of the cell, to tap #12 on his third leg. “Now who’s complaining? This coffee was wretched when Hector was a pup.”

  But he drained off the last of it, set the Styrofoam cup on the metal bunk, and watched as it cornucopially refilled itself. With cold, bitter coffee.

  “So, listen, 12, how did you get into this line of work?” He was young, perhaps only an eon and a half, and still naïve. As if one “got” into this line of work. All but the freshest arrivals knew that in the realm of divine light beyond the universe through the divine emanation (usually referred to on the Celestial Ephemeris as RDLBUTDE, which was a strictly noxious acronym, unpronounceable even to the most linguistically accomplished seraph) pulling guard duty over the divine spark was shit detail reserved for Archons who had somehow royally cheesed off The Old Man.

  #12 grimaced. Spending a century or two with this pimply-pricked kid would undoubtedly make him unfit for decent service anywhere in the universe when his tour was up. He thought once again, as he always did when he was a short-timer, of opting for rebirth. But when the time came, and he checked out the condition of the Real World, it was always dirtier and dumber than he’d left it, so he inevitably re-upped. Six hundred and eleven times, to date.

  In the corner, glowing fitfully, the divine spark of the human soul reeled off the totality of public utterances once spoken by Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson, and began to make in-roads on the private ruminations of Oral Roberts.

  #7 threw the Styrofoam cup at the divine spark. “Will you, in the name of all that’s holy, shut the hell up for just five bloody minutes!?!” The divine spark paid no attention, cranky as usual, and more than a trifle meanspirited, and footnoted its Swaggart sayings with minutiae from Anita Bryant, one of the latter day saints.

  “Well, kid,” #12 said, preening his pinfeathers, “I got into this line of work by creating okra.”

  “Say what?”

  “Okra. You know, okra. It’s green.”

  “I thought she was black. Well, dark-brown, actually.”

  “Not Oprah, kid! Okra. The vegetable.”

  “You pulled divine spark jailer duty for creating a vegetable?”

  “It wasn’t a reward. It was a punishment.”

  “For a vegetable?”

  “Clearly, kid, you have never tasted okra. It was purely not one of my best ideas.”

  The kid, #7, sighed. “Oh, now I get it,” he said. “This is The Old Man’s way of kicking me in the ass. I thought I was pulling down cushy duty, something that’d look good on my resumé. Boy, talk about not knowing what’s happening.”

  #12 was intrigued. What could this young Archon have done that could equal the nastiness of okra? He asked the kid.

  “Beats me,” #7 said. “I’ve only done a couple of things all told. How long, uh, does one figure to be on this detail?”

  “Well,” #12 said, “I’ve been watching this stupid spark for eight hundred thousand years, Real World time.”

  “For a vegetable?”

  “I’m up for reassignment in about sixty-five years. I’m short. I can do it standing on my head.”

  “Holy…The Old Man must’ve been really honked at me. I saw my dossier. I’m on this duty till Hell freezes over, which I understand doesn’t happen for another million and a half years.”

  “So what’d you do?”

  “I created the mail order catalogue. Junk mail.”

  “You’re in it, kid. For a long time. Well and truly.”

  In the corner, the divine spark droned on, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and on and on and on. After six months, #7 asked the elder Archon, “What are we supposed to do to pass the time?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I did for most of the time I’ve been here with this imbecile. And I’ll be gone soon—which is, I suppose, why The Old Man brought you in—so you can practice with me, if you like.”

  “Yeah, sure. Of course. But…what is it?”

  “Gin rummy. Three across, Hollywood style, tenth of a scintilla a point, five hundred per game for schneider.”

  In the corner, for the first time since the younger Archon had entered the detention cell, the divine spark shut up, perked up, and began making warm, expectant sounds.

  “The divine spark plays gin rummy?”

  “For eons.”

  “Well, that’s a little better, I guess.”

  “Not really,” said #12.

  “Why’s that,” #7 asked.

  “The divine spark of the human soul cheats.”

  In the corner, the glowing ball chuckled nastily. As Archons went, there was one born every second.

  B IS FOR BANSHEE

  Just outside Belfast, the heavy metal ripper punk snake-oil rock band that called itself The Fluorescent Stigmatas had been booked into Castle Padveen as the opening night attraction. The ninth Earl of Padveen—Skipper to his friends—had been offered the options of selling the great stone structure for back taxes or developing some commercial use for the ancestral home, though it was known throughout the land as the most annoyingly haunted edifice in Ireland. Skipper had decided to turn Castle Padveen into a night club. And on opening night, as The Fluorescent Stigmatas launched into their second set, opening with “Don’t Woof in Mah Haggis, Bitch,” the Fender bass player, Nigel, had a massive coronary, pitched over dead, sent the packed audience into paroxysms of anger at having the music stopped, and brought forth the redoubtable banshee of Castle Padveen, acknowledged the noisiest and most off-key wailer of all those ghastly haunts.

  The banshee materialized just over the bandstand, her one great nostril blowing air like a bagpipe, her long red hair smoldering and sparking, her empty eyesockets on fire. And she began her dirge, her horrific caterwauling, her teeth-jarring threnody of fingernails down a blackboard…and The Fluorescent Stigmatas nodded, listened, vamped for a minute, then fell in behind her.

  Their first album went platinum last week. With a bullet.

  C IS FOR CHARON

  Among the poster advertisements on the Staten Island Ferry is one that shows a terribly thin, extremely unhappy looking man in black cape and cowl, poling a garbage scow bearing the legend Phlegethon, around Manhattan Island. The poster reads: I Got My Job Through the Times

  The lonely figure has a copy of The National Enquirer sticking out of his back pocket.

  D IS FOR DYBBUK

  The dibbuq, in Jewish folklore, is a disembodied human spirit that, because of former sins, wanders restlessly until it finds safe haven in the body of a living person.

  It is well-known that the French love the work of Jerry Lewis.

  If you look long enough, and hard enough, there is an explanation for even the most arcane aberration.

  E IS FOR ECHIDNA

  Downunder, in Oz, there is a small, awfully cute monotreme known as the echidna. If you startle this Disneylike animal, it will roll into a spiny ball, belly-up, seemingly comatose.

  If one looks up echidna in the BRITANNICA, one learns that the name comes from the Greek for snake: a creature half-woman, half-serpent. Her parents are variously alleged to have been the sea deities Phorcys and Ceto, or Chrysaor—the hideous son of Medusa—and Callirrhoë—the daughter of Oceanus. Further, one learns that among Echidna’s children by the hundred-headed Typhoeus were the dragons of the Hesperides, the Hydra, the Chimaera, and the infernal hounds Orthus and Cerberus. Which makes Orthus’s progeny, the Nemean Lion and the Sphinx, the Echidna’s grandchildren.

  The echidna lives faraway at the bottom of the world, mostly rolled up in a ball. Is it bothered? Certainly not.

  But not one of those ungrateful kids calls, sends a card, even during the High Holy Days. But, hey, listen, like a Brillo pad, that’s what’s got to be a mother’s heart. I’ll just lie here belly-up in the dark.

  F IS FOR FENRIS

  The deep core rig went down five miles i
nto the Ross Shelf. When the fiber optic snorkel cameras ringing the drill burned out, they withdrew. At the base of the core sample, in the block of ice eight feet across and fifteen feet deep, they found what had blinded the instruments.

  Frozen in ice was a gigantic wolf.

  When they swung the section overhead on the gigantic pneumatic crane, they understood what had scorched the optics: the beast, trailing a broken chain, was giving off heat and light. Its body glowed from within, and the ice melted, showering on the drilling crew and geologists. The block slipped its moorings, crashed to the ground, and shattered. The wolf shook itself massively, its evil green eyes surveying the terrified crew. Then it threw back its head, howled at the bright sky, and loped away to the north.

  But if this is Ragnarok, and Fenris has swallowed the sun…

  Whose eye continues to burn down upon us?

  G IS FOR GOD

  GOD is an acronym for Good Old Demon.

  This good old demon’s name is Bernie.

  Bernie is your basic good old boy demon.

  Bernie owns Texas.

  They say there is no god in Texas.

  Boy, are they wrong.

  H IS FOR HIPPOGRIFF

  The metaphor. From Virgil. “To cross griffins with horses.” Meaning: to attempt the impossible.

  The metaphor. A small, unruly beast with paper breath and bones of conjecture. The metaphor, like the hippogriff, of mixed parentage. The date-rape of logic by surmise. When the metaphor takes wing, it is with a rush of sound such as one hears only when phantom locomotives play sackbut, lyre, and symbol.

  The hippogriff slides through the tawny waters, warfling and wobbling. Hear the song of the hippogriff: etymology in the key of skeleton.

  I IS FOR ILITHYIA

  It was in all the papers. In Minnesota, the midwife Ilithyia was brought up on charges for performing unlicensed abortions. The trial was a sensation. The jury was composed entirely of men. When they brought in the verdict guilty, and the members of the Right to Life League stood up to cheer, Ilithyia said, “Ah, screw it,” and smote them hip and thigh with bolts of chartreuse lightning.

  This year, Minnesota goes Pro-Choice.

  J IS FOR JACKALOPE

  Texas, again. Land of myth and wonder. Home of a million private lives. The choking Doberman. The kitten in the microwave. The jackalope.

  Yankees think the jackalope was the invention of a guy who wanted to sell big brag postcards—here’s one of our oranges, it says, and it’s a painting of a watermelon-sized Navel—the crossing of a jack rabbit with an antelope. Huge hind legs that permit the beast to go like a sonofabitch on fire! Huge ears flattened by the wind as it races eighty miles an hour across the Panhandle.

  That’s a lot the damned Yankees know.

  Down here in Nacogdoches we know better. Just ask Joe Lansdale. Joe was stalked and damned near killed by a rabid jackalope maybe two, three years ago. Only saved himself at the last moment by using the one weapon that can kill a jackalope.

  He stabbed it through the heart with a Stuckey pecan praline.

  K IS FOR KELPIE

  It was late, well past the hour in which they closed the pool. But Hester had gotten special dispensation from the building’s management. Not only because she was an administrative assistant at Chicago Sky Tower, and thus entitled to a few minor privileges, but because she had spent the past three days, almost without break, reorganizing the database: the condo owners on floors fifty through ninety-five, their dependants and hired help, anyone cleared for access to the dwelling storeys; the offices from twelve to fifty, all staff members down to the last wage-slave in the typing pool; the galleria shops and their sales force from ground level to twelve…the data fields went on and on.

  It was little enough for them to key her in for a late night swim in the warm, silent Olympic-sized swimming pool.

  Hester floated on her back, auburn hair trailing on the surface like a Portuguese man-of-war. She had turned on only the valance lights; their soft blue-white glow cast a calming, almost ethereal luminescence across the gently rippling water.

  There was the sound of a door closing on metal jamb.

  Hester swam quickly to the edge of the pool, and pressed herself against it. She was naked.

  The man was tall, and dark. She could not tell whether he was Caucasian or Negro. His skin was almost the shade of teak, a golden hue that gave no indication of heritage. But it wasn’t suntan, genuine or salon-produced.

  He strode toward her, and looked down.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said. His voice was buttered toast. If she had ever trusted anyone in her life, she trusted him. His smile, his manner, the way his hands lay along the seams of his pants. Kind eyes and honest speaking.

  “Well, the pool is actually closed,” she said, not wanting to offend him, afraid of losing him even before he had had a chance to discover her. “I’m staff here at the Tower. They let me use it after hours sometimes.”

  “May I swim with you for a while?”

  She dimpled prettily. There had been a husband, briefly, eleven years earlier. A passion or two since. Nothing more. “To be honest,” she said, “I’m naked. I wasn’t expecting anyone else. The doors were supposed to be locked and—”

  How had he gained entrance? She wanted to ask him, but he was removing his clothes. “That should be all right,” he said. “No problem. And nothing to feel awkward about.”

  He stood naked at the edge of the pool, almost aglow with his easy beauty. Then he seemed to lift from the tile edge, as if airborne; arched over her, and sliced into the pool as smoothly and cleanly as a paper cut.

  She watched him stroke away from her, barely making a splash. He reached the deep end, tucked and rolled, and beat his way down to the shallow end. Then he came back. She watched, realizing she had been holding her breath.

  And when he came to her, she laid her hand on his bicep and felt the blood beating beneath the skin. He reached for her, and took her hand and put it on his hip, and her hand slid between his legs, and she knew that there would be more than swimming.

  He pressed against her, and her back went flat to the tiled side of the pool. She let her arms trail at her sides, and when he spread her legs and lifted them around his hips, her arms laid out in the overflow gutter, giving her the proper height. She felt him trying to penetrate, and she closed her eyes, her head thrown back; and then he was inside her.

  And in that instant the kelpie changed shape. His sleek head of hair—which she now realized had been wet even before he had entered the water—seemed matted with weeds. She felt a terrible pain as he expanded within her, and the sound he made was that of an animal, a cross between a horse and a bull.

  The kelpie went to its native form, holding her helpless. To be mounted, to be drowned, and her flesh to be eaten. The kelpie, servant of the Devil. Hester screamed…

  And fought back. First she trapped his organ within her, held in a grip as tight as a walnut shell. Then she changed. Her body expanded, altered, flowed, and reformed.

  Flesh was eaten. But not hers.

  Love is a changeling. The kelpie: waterhorse. Hester: the sharkling. There are forms that are ancient, and there are natural predators. More recent.

  The water was warm. And peculiarly tainted.

  L IS FOR LEVIATHAN

  In what would have been the year 6250 BCE the crippled century-vessel from somewhere in the deeps of space fell through our galaxy, and entered the atmosphere at such a steep angle that only one pod of the great ship survived, crashing into the sea and vanishing.

  On April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck a berg off the Grand Banks and went to the bottom, carrying 1517 souls to their death.

  The race that had come to an unwanted new home in the deeps watched the poor ship die, and felt pity. In their compassion they went to the creature and mated with it; and they lived in harmony for almost seventy-five years, and the progeny of that union swam through the oceans of the Earth undi
scovered and unimpeded.

  Then the ghouls violated the tomb. They came to the shell of the mother and they stole. They ravaged the corpse.

  And the children rose, and went in search of the entrepreneurs who had gone through the pockets of the shroud for pennies. And in New York harbor, in the stretch of water known as the Narrows, the first born of that metallic union rose with its gleaming sinewy length, and began exacting vengeance of the parasites that had so dishonored the memory of its mother.

  Now the seacoast of the world is forbidden territory.

  You can see their eyes glowing offshore every night.

  M IS FOR MUT

  Osiris met her at the fresh fruit counter of the A&P in the Blue Nile Mall. She was squeezing pomegranates. He dallied, pretending to blight the figs, and finally was able to catch her eye. “Horus,” she said, when he returned the eye. “Lovely,” he replied, meaning the Eye of Horus and meaning her, as well, but basically too shy to say it without covering his verbal tracks. “And all-seeing, as well,” she added, dimpling prettily. He smiled; she smiled; and he asked her name. “Isis Luanne Jane Marie,” she said, “but my friends all call me Isis.” He went pink and stammered, and finally managed to say, “May I call you Isis?” and she said yes, that would be lovely, and did he come here often? And he said, oh only to practice a little resurrection in the meat department, and she gifted him with a giggle and a pirouette, and he asked her where she was from, and she said, “Lower Egypt, over that way,” and she motioned toward the parking lot. But Osiris’s heart turned to ash, as he noticed for the first time the cobra totem of Buto on Isis’s perky baseball cap, worn slantwise in the homeboy style so popular at the moment. He was glad he hadn’t worn his falcon’s crest Borsalino, the dead giveaway that he was from Upper Egypt. It would have shamed her immediately—coming from the wrong side of the tracks as she did—actually the lower side of the tracks—and he didn’t know what he was going to do. Because as surely as Aunt Taueret had made whoopee with a hippopotamus, he knew he had fallen in love with this Isis from Lower Egypt, and he knew that his mother was never going to approve of the relationship. He could hear her now: You can’t be serious, Osiris dear; why, she simply isn’t Our Sort.