David reached back and hit my arm, hard. “Let go!” he yelled, just as I was lacing my fingers more tightly into the weave of the raft. I stared at him, then understood, and let go, flinging myself face-down, one hand clutching the edge, the other wrapped around one sapling.
We were surfing, riding the giant wave. Then we weren’t. The raft flew off the crest, and dropped. A half-second later the water crashed down on us, and up was sideways and I was half holding the raft, half in the air, and then I came down on it again, and someone’s foot hit my nose, and one arm contacted someone’s leg—and I thanked God, if he could still hear me from here, that my hands weren’t both still wedged in the raft and all my fingers broken—and then there was only water.
An edge of the raft smacked into my side. I opened my mouth to scream. I gulped in water. Thrashing, I tried to drag myself to the surface. The water was black. My eyes were open, but I couldn’t see a thing. I wanted to cough, but my lungs were full of water. I wasn’t strong enough to force it out.
The next thing I knew, I was opening my eyes. I was lying face-down on a beach. It was morning.
I sat up. There were two men a short distance away, one standing and the other squatting on his heels, both examining a pile of branches at the water’s edge. I thought I should know them.
Both glanced up as I stumbled to join them. The older of the two wore a look of fatherly concern. For a second I wondered if he were my father, but only for a second. My father was sandy-haired and much heavier, with a moustache, and . . . I felt a rising sense of panic, when I realized I had no idea what my father’s name was.
“Alison,” the man said. “Are you all right?”
I didn’t remember his name, either. “I-I think so.” I paused. “Are you? Both of you?”
The younger man let out a sharp bark of a laugh. “She doesn’t remember us.” Then, addressing me, “Don’t worry. There are worse things to forget.”
And suddenly it all flooded back—the weeks in the tiny house, the raft, being pitched overboard . . . I still couldn’t remember my father’s name. Or my mother’s.
“It’s coming back to me,” I said.
The older man, David, nodded sagely. “I thought it would.” He returned his attention to the pile of sticks, all that remained of our raft. Reaching, he untied the end of a rope from the fork of one sapling, tugging at the wood with his free hand. “I think that’s the last of it.” The rest of the rope was coiled over his left arm.
“What’s that for?” Adam asked. “Clothesline for the house?”
I couldn’t muster up much excitement about a clothesline. The raft was supposed to work. It was supposed to carry us downstream, right out of the Borderlands, right back to the stone staircase that led up into the real world. I had only four weeks left before my contract came up. What was I going to do?
“Of course not,” David replied. “It’s for our next raft. The one we’re going to build properly. With an axe.”
I stared at him. Adam swore.
“We don’t have an axe,” I pointed out.
David started walking away. “There are two in the shed next to the mountain chalet, one in the vineyard, and at least one in the groundkeeper’s shed behind the hotel.”
Adam glared at me in lieu of David, who was moving farther and farther away. Finally, he yelled out, “The raft didn’t work the first time, and it won’t work now!”
David stopped, and turned around. To my surprise, he walked straight back toward us. “Unlike you,” he said, “Alison and I do not have infinite time to waste here. Alison is going to die in less than a month if we don’t find a way out. I have a fifteen-year-old son whom I’ve left alone with no explanation, and who may be at risk from my former client.” Adam’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to argue, but David didn’t let him. “She’s dead, Adam. She’s been dead for two years. If you think she’s on the other side of the river, you know how to get there. If you’re ready to go home and pick up what’s left of your life, then stay with us. But don’t try to discourage our efforts because you’re not ready to stop living in limbo.”
Adam stared at him for a moment. Then, without a word, he turned his back on us and started walking toward the water’s edge. I started to take a step after him, but David caught my shoulder, holding me back.
Adam stopped at the line between shore and water, small waves splashing over his feet. His shoulders heaved up and down as he breathed. Then he threw back his head and screamed, a long wordless howl that went on so long my own throat felt raw. When he lost his breath he took another and screamed again. And again.
David took my elbow. “We should leave him.”
When Adam returned to the cottage, he was carrying an axe. “I’m glad you’re still with us,” David said.
Adam told him what he could do with the axe, and went back out into the night. This time I did hurry after him.
“Adam!” I called. “Wait!”
I ran to catch up. We walked along the dirt road in silence.
“I killed her,” Adam confessed to the night. “I killed my wife.” I stopped breathing.
“I was trying to save money. I talked her into taking a less convenient flight so we could save $200. I killed Christine for $200.”
After a moment, carefully choosing my words, I started to say, “Adam, that’s—”
“Save it. I’ve heard it enough times from David.”
I thought about David, and wondered what it was like to always be in control of your emotions.
“Sometimes I know that she’s waiting across the river for me,” Adam said. “And then I don’t care if it’s Hell or Tartarus or whatever, because we’ll be together, and I can tell her how sorry I am for being such a cheap bastard, and that’s all I want. Other times I think it’s all a trap, so they can tempt me into giving in and eating the food.
“The thing is, I know she’d forgive me for picking the wrong flight. But I don’t think she’d forgive me for what I did to get here, or what I’d have to do to get across the river. And I knew that even before I came.”
It was dark when I woke. I sat straight up. I knew the answer. “We don’t have to build another raft,” I said into the silent room. I woke Adam and David up and explained what I had realized. Adam was dubious. “It can’t be that easy.”
“I don’t know.” A chink of hope seemed to be trying to force its way through David’s usual calm demeanor. “The answer usually is that easy. Once you see it.”
Every time Adam and David tried to find the stairs, they had tried to gauge their progress by looking back over their shoulders to see how far they had gone. I knew we had all looked back while on the river. Even on the footpath between our cottage and the resort, looking back returned us to the road outside the cottage. Looking back was the key. It acted like a cosmic Restart button, erasing any progress we might have made toward the elusive stone staircase. At least, that was my theory.
Adam went first, David brought up the rear. I don’t know how long we walked, through unchanging scenery. But all of a sudden, it stood in front of us, a squared spiral staircase of grey stone winding upward into the sky. It looked vaguely ridiculous, plunked down onto the centre of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, branches brushing one side.
David and Adam left their picnic baskets behind, but I kept mine. I saw no reason why it should endanger us. It, and the food that appeared fresh each morning, were from our own world. Maybe it wouldn’t work once we got back there, but I wanted to find out.
I guess I also wanted a souvenir. Not that I would miss the cottage, or the fear of being sent across the river. But I would miss Adam and David. We all lived in New York, but maybe Adam wouldn’t want reminders of how he had sold his soul to pursue his dead wife into the afterlife. What would we do, anyway, meet for brunch in the Lower East Side and reminisce about our days in the Underworld? I didn’t see it. So I clutched the basket in both hands as I set my right foot on the first step, the one memory I thoug
ht I might be able to keep.
I kept my eyes fixed on Adam’s shoulders, following three or four steps behind. The sweat on my palms made the handle of my basket slippery and awkward to grip. I was unnerved that it had been so easy. No Borderlands staff had come to harass us. Even on the staircase, we encountered no distractions. Nothing but the sound of our own feet on stone, and our breaths, in and out, and beyond that: silence.
The staircase wound up and up, never changing. My legs burned, and I longed to rest for a moment, but I was too excited to stop. We were escaping. Maybe I wouldn’t have a place to live; maybe my roommate had already rented out my room. But it didn’t matter. I was going back to my city, my home, and no creepy undead guide was going to send me across the river because of a contract I didn’t realize I was signing.
Suddenly: behind us. We all heard it. Someone was running up the steps, trying to catch up, breathing hard from exertion.
Adam, just above me, was a statue. “I know—” he started to say.
The person below cried out, a wordless exclamation of exhausted fear, perhaps even of pain. Then she spoke.
“Adam! Help me! Please, I—” Again, footsteps.
“Christine!” Adam cried.
“No!” David shouted. “It’s a trap!”
Maybe David shouted his warning too late. Or maybe Adam wouldn’t have listened, even if he had heard in time. I saw. I saw him turn around, one hand against the stone wall, bracing himself. And I saw the look of horror that crossed his face as he disappeared.
I screamed, reaching for him, but my hand closed on air.
Then David was behind me, his strong arms holding me in place, not letting me look back even if I had wanted to.
Did I want to? I wasn’t sure. I felt like someone had torn my liver out and slashed it into a hundred pieces.
“We can’t save him,” David said. “He belonged to them whether he ate their food or not. We don’t. We belong at the top of these stairs.”
After a moment, I took another step. Then another. I couldn’t see the stairs. My eyes were blurred, and I tasted salt, streaming down my cheeks. But I kept walking, always forward, never looking back.
We ascended in silence. Soon we came to a door. I pushed it open, and felt the light of the sun on my upturned face for the first time in so long, and the cold, crisp breeze of New York in late fall. When I stepped out into the light, leaves crunched under my feet.
David and I see each other from time to time, for coffee or lunch. We don’t talk about what happened, but I guess it’s good to keep in touch with someone who shared that experience.
Once he took me out to dinner, which was kind of weird, partly because I couldn’t tell if it had been intended as a romantic overture, and partly because I was embarrassed by how much the food cost.
I’ve stopped investigating the disappearances. All the files and documents David had gathered to incriminate James Hammond over other irregularities have vanished, even those on password-protected areas of his hard drive at home. David believes that if we keep quiet and don’t bother Hammond, he won’t bother us. That he’s made his point. I’m not so sure, but where would we hide? We still don’t understand why James Hammond is acting as a travel agent for the Underworld. Is money deposited into a Swiss bank account each time he sends down a new guest? Or is his payment something more subtle, and more sinister?
I still have trouble remembering my parents’ names. Fortunately, none of my other memories of them have faded.
For the first few weeks, I couldn’t look at the picnic basket. But one day, when I dug it out from the corner of the closet, all I felt was a dull ache in the pit of my stomach, so I lifted the lid to see what was inside.
A small wholegrain roll, a tub of sweet butter, a fillet of smoked fish wrapped in parchment, and a paper carton of dried apricots. Tears sprang to my eyes, when I remembered Adam and David talking about how smoked fish had been their favourite basket meal.
For a week I took basket food to work as my lunch. Every morning, a different meal appeared. It tasted as good as it had in the Borderlands. But I felt strange eating it. I caught myself dwelling more and more on Adam, wondering if I could have done something differently, maybe not quarrelled with him so much. Would that have brought him back safely?
Eventually I gave the basket to a homeless man in Central Park.
“This is a magic picnic basket,” I told him. “Keep it closed when you’re not eating from it, and every morning new food will appear.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. But he took the basket, and when I left he was eating a hunk of cheese sandwiched between torn-off bits of bread.
Maybe he kept it, maybe he tossed it in a trash barrel or under a tree once he had eaten all the food. If he left it behind, I hope someone who needed it more found it, and is even now enjoying nutritious meals, sitting in the sunshine on some park bench.
I don’t know what he did with the basket. I walked away, feeling better than I had in a long time. I didn’t look back.
CHARM
ANNA MIODUCHOWSKA
Elysia chlorotica: species of sea slug . . .
known for its ability to photosynthesize food.
It is the only known member of the animal kingdom
capable of producing chlorophyll.
—Encyclopaedia Britannica
Heels over head I stand before you,
smitten by your moist,
verdant physique,
a green surreal
of glacial lakes
sighted in drumlin fields.
At first sight,
you stole my heart, as I am
determined to steal yours,
and in a fine china cup
carry it
down the aisle.
We will exchange
vows and organelles
to the sound of cheering,
our families charmed,
truly a match
made in salt marsh heaven.
After the honeymoon,
we’ll build a cottage,
plant acres of sea weed,
I’ll grow fat
on chloroplasts
and sunlight.
You my dear,
will grow an ear,
and listen to my lyrics.
final girl theory
A.C. WISE
Everyone knows the opening sequence of Kaleidoscope. Even if they’ve never seen any other part of the movie (and they have, even if they won’t admit it), they know the opening scene. No matter what anyone tells you, it is the most famous two and a half minutes ever put on film.
The camera is focused on a man’s hand. He’s holding a small shard of green glass, no bigger than his fingernail. He tilts it, catching the light, which darts like a crazed firefly. Then, so very carefully and with loving slowness, he presses the glass into something soft and white.
The camera is so tight the viewer can’t see what he’s pushing the glass into (but they suspect). Can you imagine that moment of realization for someone who doesn’t know? Watch the opening sequence with a Kaleidoscope virgin sometime, you’ll understand. The man pushes the glass into the soft white, and moves his hand away. A bead of bright red blood appears.
As the blood threads away from the glass, the sound kicks in. Only then do most people notice its absence before and discover how unsettling silence can be. The first sound is a breath. Or is it? Kaleidophiles (yes, they really call themselves that) have worn out old copies of the film playing that split-second transition from silence to sound over and over again. They’ve stripped their throats raw arguing. Does someone catch their breath, and if so, who?
There are varying theories, the two most popular being the man with the glass and the director. The third, of course, is that the man with the glass and the director are the same person.
Breath or no breath, the viewer slowly becomes aware they are listening to the sound of muffled sobs. At that moment of realization, as if prompted b
y it thus making the viewer complicit right from the start, the camera swings up wildly. We see a woman’s wide, rolling eyes, circled with too much make-up. The camera jerk-pans down to her mouth; it’s stuffed with a dirty rag.
The soundtrack comes up full force—blaring terrible horns and dissonant chords. The notes jangle one against the next. It isn’t music, it’s instruments screaming. It’s sound felt in your back teeth and at the base of your spine.
The camera zooms out, showing the woman spread-eagled and naked, tied to a massive wheel. Her skin is filled with hundreds of pieces of coloured glass—red, blue, yellow, green. Her tormentor steps back; the viewer never sees his face. He rips the gag out, and spins the wheel. Thousands of firefly glints dazzle the camera.
The woman screams. The screen dissolves in a mass of spinning colour, and the opening credits roll.
You know what the worst part is? The opening sequence has nothing to do with the rest of the film. It is what it is; it exists purely for its own sake.
But let’s go back to the scream. It’s important. It starts out high-pitched, classic scream queen, and devolves into something ragged, wet, and bubbling. If there was any nagging doubt left about what kind of movie Kaleidoscope really is, it’s gone. But it’s too late. Remember, the viewer is complicit; they agreed to everything that follows in that split second between silence and sound, between sob and catch of breath. They can’t turn back—not that anyone really tries.
Here’s another thing about Kaleidoscope—no one ever watches it just once; don’t let them tell you otherwise.
The opening is followed by eighty-five minutes of colour-soaked, blood-drenched, action. (Except—if you’re paying attention—you know that’s a lie.)
The movie is a cult classic. It’s shown on football fields, on giant, impromptu screens made of sheets strung between goalposts. It flickers in midnight double feature theatres, lurid colours washing over men and women hunched and sweating in the dark, feet stuck to crackling floors, breathing air reeking of stale popcorn. It plays in the background, miniaturized on ghostly television screens, while burn-outs fuck at 3 a.m., lit by candles meant to disguise the scent of beer and pot.
Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing Page 38