Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles

by David P. Jacobs

  “The message on the box reads ‘know thyself’ in Greek, which is what should have happened when you opened it to find your object.”

  “Yes, that’s what should have happened. There was this guy next to me that found a guitar pick. Mr. Richardson, was it? His eyes were overflowing with recognition. Another woman, some famous Russian ballerina from back in the day, found ballet shoes, and her eyes swam with memories. There was even this young eighteen year-old kid named Icarus who found a feather! Even his eyes lit up as if finally remembering the lyrics to an old, taunting melody. . . but not me.”

  Nathaniel stopped stacking the plates and shifted his eyes to Annette. “‘Not you’ what, Miss Redmond?”

  “I opened the box and found a bundle of violet envelopes, maybe sixty or so in total.”

  “Yes?”

  “But when I held them in my hands, I didn’t feel, or remember, anything.”

  “That’s impossible,” he told her.

  “Well, that’s what happened, impossible or no. No memories awaiting this gal.”

  “There must be some kind of mistake,” Nathaniel sat the last plate back on the counter instead of the tray and was lost in thought. “No. It can’t be. I gave Fiona the invitations. They were supposed to lead her directly to the others, including you! Or maybe not to you but to the real reincarnation of Mrs. Slocum! But then why would everyone else’s memories resurface except for yours?”

  As Nathaniel pondered such things, Annette took it upon herself to hoist the remaining dessert plate from the counter in order to transport it to the cart. She lifted it up to her eyes to further inspect his craftsmanship.

  “And you’re certain you don’t remember being here? You don’t remember living a tragically boring, unfulfilled life as a housewife named Annette Slocum, or being struck by a Cadillac in front of your local library, or becoming a muse, or inspiring your clients? Anything?”

  “Not a thing,” Annette told him. In the short distance from the countertop to the cart, Annette suddenly lost her grasp on the plate. Within less than a second, the dessert landed at her feet sending the plate to shatter.

  The splintering plate was an added sound that caused Nathaniel’s blood pressure to boil.

  “Oops!” Annette blushed, looking for a broom and a wet rag. “I’m so sorry.”

  As she did, Nathaniel stared at the mess and seethed. The whole arrangement of bringing the Nine Greatest Muses aboard and now his pristine kitchen floor were both polluted.

  “Just leave it,” he told Annette, who was making even more racket in search of the tools to clean the mess. He brought his right hand up and massaged the bridge of his nose with the middle finger and thumb. “Please, just leave it. I’ll clean it up after orientation.”

  Annette found a cleaning cabinet with a mop. “Are you sure?” Unearthing the mop brought about even more of a raucous as the broom, and dust pan beside it, bumped and collided over onto the tiled floor, triggering a series of other handles of various brooms, also inside the closet, to fall as well. Annette stood still, mop in hand, looking guilty of her unintended actions.

  Nathaniel held open the drape.

  Annette, setting the mop up against the countertop, exited through the flap with Nathaniel close behind. Before leaving with the dessert tray, Nathaniel switched off the lights to the kitchen, turning his back on his work and the memories. For a brief second, as the light flickered out at the very end of the expansive kitchen, Nathaniel swore he saw Evangeline standing there, looking not a day older than when he met her in 1807. But such moments were not to stay. The kitchen was engulfed in darkness, and the memory of her once again receded into the dark pit of his subconscious from where it had initially fled.

  As he and Annette crossed through the rotunda’s atrium, Annette’s eyes were suddenly drawn to one of the alcoves to the right of the front door. On display were portraits of painted faces. Nathaniel, who was too concerned with the dessert cart and also finding their way through the path to the door, turned to discover that Annette had strayed from his side. He found that she was looking at the portraits that made up Nathaniel’s secret hoard enclosed in elegant frames and hanging perfectly in line upon the wall.

  “I recognize some of these people,” she told him.

  Nathaniel took a shallow breath and said “Do you?”

  “See here?” Annette pointed to the portrait of Fiona. “This was the woman who handed me the invitation moments before my wedding; she’s the one that brought me here. And this one . . . the man in the argyle sweater-vest, he was given the guitar pick . . .” as she stood there, studying the painted faces of the muses, Annette brought a hand to her mouth in wonderment. Nathaniel took a step forward.

  It was then that Annette had discovered another larger canvas which was a bigger dimension than its predecessors and had its own private easel. It was the unfinished representation of a man in his mid-thirties, whose hair had turned white. Wrinkles had been painted around the subject’s eyes. The man in the portrait wore a black suit and tie and possessed piercing grey eyes that seemed to sputter in icy fury in the pale illumination of the surrounding kerosene lamps. Seeing this face seemed to stir something within Annette, Nathaniel could deduce as much, as she gave a slight gasp.

  “Mr. Cauliflower . . .” Annette whispered with her eyes on the canvas “who are these people? And who is this man?”

  Nathaniel took another step and cleared his throat to get her attention.

  Annette turned to him.

  “His name is Jonas Rothchild. He was a Tenth Generation muse. He’s also the reason that you’ve all been invited back here.” He held the office door open. “With that being said, Miss Redmond, it’s time to continue orientation.”

  Annette exited the office through the red oak door and Nathaniel once again found himself alone. He turned to survey the rotunda and, as he did, Nathaniel let out a sigh. He brandished the handle of the dessert cart, leaving the office himself.

  One of the most disheartening sounds that often anguished Nathaniel was the reverberation of his loneliness. Though it was not so easily recognizable, it still resided. It was a heavy quiet, which heightened his awareness to other grating miscellaneous intonations. So profound was the stillness of his lonesomeness that it often crept up on him during the most inopportune times, like a foreboding mid-winter cloud-covered sunset. It grew to be such an occurring theme that he almost seemed overly calloused by it. Imaginary black rats, slick with sewer grime, pointed claws and menacing red eyes, perched on the mental barbed-wires surrounding this silence. Chattering to one another, the rats would repeatedly screech a common name: “Evangeline . . . Evangeline . . . Evangeline . . .”

  CHAPTER 3: AN ORIGIN MYTH OF A TENTH GENERATION MUSE

  The specifics of Tenth Generation muse Jonas Rothchild and his employment were scribed with these facts: the illusions of Ninth Generation muse Annette Slocum’s retirement, which included rustling, sun-kissed cherry blossoms, passing meteor showers and the visages of planets from the known solar system, receded back into their own private, bleak corners of space. Plain egg-shell colored walls and energy efficient light bulbs of the department returned. Though all, yet again, became what it once had been, the muses who remained held Mrs. Slocum in their hearts. The muses, though each mourning their friend’s departure, were given more envelopes containing colored pegs and they rightfully inspired their preordained clients. They thought of Mrs. Slocum from time to time. When they did, each muse gave a little smile in honor of her memory.

  Nathaniel was one muse who externally didn’t show emotion upon Mrs. Slocum’s retirement. He dispassionately went about his work as usual, assigning envelopes and delivering them to his muses. Out of all the coworkers, he took it upon himself to console only one muse through her heartache. Though Fiona put on a good show, Nathaniel knew what true deep-seated emotions ran through the Head Muse’s veins. On a particularly snowy Christmas Eve, Nathaniel took Fiona to Mrs. Slocum’s grave.

  �
��Why is it so difficult?” Fiona inquired that night. “You would think that after almost ninety retirement parties, I would learn not to take their departures so personally. I remind myself it’s all a process, I put on a brave face, but . . .”

  “I know, Fiona,” Nathaniel said to her comfortingly.

  “Out of all the muses, I miss her the most.”

  To which, Nathaniel said nothing. There was an unfamiliar feeling within the cavernous void of his heart; a sentiment he couldn’t quite place. As quickly as the sensation occurred, it speedily fluttered away.

  “Do you think Mrs. Slocum’s happy, wherever Management sent her?” Fiona asked.

  “I’m sure she’s right where she needs to be.”

  As Fiona looked at the gravestone, Nathaniel’s eyes turned up to find Annette Redmond, Mrs. Slocum’s reincarnation, standing several graves away. Nathaniel wasn’t sure how Annette found them amidst the wintery landscape, but she found them nonetheless. Annette raised her hand and waved. Nathaniel waved back. He knew that Mrs. Slocum found the happiness she had so desperately sought in her employment as a muse, even if it was in a new body, wiped clean of her memories. As a replacement for introducing himself that night, Nathaniel guided Fiona from the grave and back through the falling snow, allowing Annette to live her new life blissfully unaware of all the trials she had faced before.

  Returning from their visit to her former muse’s graveside, Fiona opened the waiting room door to discover Mrs. Slocum’s replacement – Jonas Rothchild.

  On the occasions that Nathaniel visited the musing offices to deliver the envelopes or to display various dinners, he felt the atmosphere of the department change. It was almost as if an unseen mold scaled the walls with invisible indifference. Men hurried by Jonas’ office door without making eye-contact. Women purposefully wore extra layers of clothing. Even the light bulbs in the hallway appeared dimmer. From what Nathaniel gathered, Jonas was not a team player and he often stared out the door to his own office with his cold, impassive grey eyes.

  Nathaniel’s fingertips tingled after one visit to the department, as they had upon arrival of every muse who had been hired by Management. Nathaniel lit a kerosene lamp in his office and adjusted the flame, bringing it to a gentle glow. He swept his glasses up the bridge of his nose and sat down in the swivel chair behind his desk. Nathaniel produced a carved wooden box from within a drawer of his desk. From inside the box, he removed five tubes of acrylic paint: the three primary colors, white and black. Nathaniel then removed a set of brushes: round, flat, bright, filbert, angle, mop, fan and rigger bristles, each in various sizes. The tools were set on the surface of his desk, placed perfectly side by side. On a square palette, Nathaniel squirted a spots of red, blue and yellow. He added dabs of white and black. He started to mix. The canvas before him was blank, but would be no longer.

  With his lips pursed, Nathaniel picked up a flat-bristled 30mm brush and commenced his work. His brushstrokes were careful, confident and precise. After a few moments, he picked up a round-bristled 20mm. With the background solidified, the true figure emerged. A chin appeared on the canvas, and sunken cheeks, followed by the curvature of ears. The neck was next, followed by the shoulders and then the chest. Nathaniel’s head moved as if he were listening to a phantom orchestration that only he, himself, could hear. Brush after brush, bristle after bristle, the portrait came into strict detail. Nathaniel had painted portraits for the department before, but this one filled him with unquestionable discomfort.

  The eyes that Nathaniel painted, Jonas’ eyes, watched every brush stroke. When Nathaniel cleansed a brush into a glass jar filled with tap-water, Jonas studied Nathaniel’s forehead. His eyes seemed to challenge Nathaniel, daring him to paint. “Perhaps the eyes should have been painted last,” Nathaniel thought to himself, but he then figured it would be foolish to discard this painting and start another. “It is only a painting, after all,” Nathaniel thought to himself. But he should have considered it to be an omen.

  The work of a modern muse was quite involved, but that was not Nathaniel’s job. That’s not to say that his work didn’t affect theirs. Indeed, Nathaniel and the muses were indelibly linked. Nathaniel was given an office, desk, Lite-Brite board, water-cooler, and an inbox like his fellow muses, but their occupations diverged from there. Colored pegs descended from the oculus of Nathaniel’s office dome, landing in his inbox, awaiting his judgment. When he touched the little piece of colored plastic to his ear, he listened to them the way some might listen to the ocean inside shells. The pegs would whisper names to him. With the information given, Nathaniel turned to the proper volume of his encyclopedia corresponding to the last name. The volumes of encyclopedias were housed in two expansive alcoves that flanked the fifty yard stretch of his kitchen. The encyclopedias were labeled and alphabetized with the first letters of a client’s last name. The letters A through J were housed in the bays to the left of his kitchen, and the letters J through Z were housed in the bays to the right. The volumes were his pride, joy and the obsession that he had collected from his third life lived. If the leather-bound volumes weren’t spectacular enough, the messages scribed on the pages inside by calligraphy pen were as equally miraculous. Displayed had been an individual’s destiny.

  Once the destiny was discovered, he would fit the peg into the face of the Light-Brite, rotating the peg clock-wise and counter-clockwise. His office didn’t fold or unfold into an elaborate pop-up book. Nathaniel remained at his desk as if adjusting from one radio station to another for a clear signal. Nathaniel then rotated the peg to the exact moment of inspiration, where the muse would provide the catalyst for change. Nathaniel then placed the colored peg into the corresponding envelope.

  There were two stacks of recycled envelopes. One stack consisted of white envelopes to the right of his desk; the other, to the left, was violet. Color variations in the envelopes had been implemented by Management to warn a muse of the generalities of the upcoming inspiration. Pegs inside white envelopes delivered a muse to a specific person, place and time. Pegs within the violet envelopes delivered muses to more difficult situations, usually considered the “toughest of cases.”

  Nathaniel delivered the envelopes to the corresponding mailboxes of his modern day muses, returning to his office to await more pegs. At any given moment, depending on how creative Management had needed him to be, Nathaniel was able to work on forty to fifty inspirations at a time under his fanatical, perfectionistic eye. Envelope after envelope, client after client, the department’s figurative gears were well-oiled.

  That was, of course, until Jonas’ twenty-second envelope.

  Returning from his twenty-second envelope, Jonas told Fiona “There I was, in my violet envelope inspiration, when it suddenly occurred to me just how much I shouldn’t be inspiring the client at all.” He was in the hallway wearing a black suit and tie. He stank of singed fabric.

  The faces of the other muses poked out from their respective offices to witness the altercation.

  “Mr. Rothchild,” Fiona told him then, “when we’re given envelopes, we don’t neglect our clients.”

  “Ah yes, I’m afraid I’ve sinned.”

  “Well, there’s no harm done. Hand over the violet envelope; we will get everything squared away with Mr. Cauliflower.”

  “Yes, I suppose that would fix it all, wouldn’t it?” Jonas’ face grew grim. “Unfortunately, I can’t hand it over to you.”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” Fiona’s demeanor did not falter in the slightest.

  “I’m taking the violet envelope with me.”

  “Taking it . . . ?”

  “With me. My exit is a bit dramatic but there’s just no other way. After twenty-two envelopes, I’ve heard and seen enough. The operation that you run here is worse than I ever anticipated. A world of disease, pestilence, plagues, starvation, rot, disappointments, war, famine, terrorist attacks – man is a beast, and a ravenous one at that. And this grand evolution of the species that you so often
promote is nothing more than a hoax.”

  “What are you saying, Mr. Rothchild?”

  “For years before my death I prayed to Management for answers. Why does Management put us through turmoil? We are all Job from the Bible, and the world is getting worse by the minute! Now I know it’s all due to Management! Because presumably they know what’s best!”

  “Mr. Rothchild, I want you to take a breath and think about what you’re doing.”

  “I have taken a breath, Fiona, and because of Management’s world, I had the wind knocked out of me.” His bitter eyes were even more frozen as he ran his fingers along the door to the waiting room. “How it taunts me, Fiona, this door. How is it that only Nathaniel J. Cauliflower enters and exits from this door on a normal basis while the rest of us are trapped in here like rats? Even the walls of Babel had to eventually crumble . . .”

  “Mr. Rothchild, please hand over the colored peg and violet envelope,” Fiona asked of him, stepping forward. From inside his black jacket pocket he produced the violet envelope as if actually considering surrender. From inside the envelope a small blue peg toppled into the palm of his hand. Jonas licked his lips, hungry for destruction. “There are moments that we go through, Mr. Rothchild, where we question the motivations of Management. All will be forgiven.”

  “No,” he pocketed the blue peg and the violet envelope.

  “There’s no reason to be ornery, Mr. Rothchild.”

  “No,” he smiled like a petulant pyromaniac poised with a metaphorical match. The time came for Jonas to make his great escape.

  “What’s gotten in to you, Mr. Rothchild?” Fiona wanted to know.

  “What’s gotten in to me?” He turned to the Head Muse. “The world, Fiona. Everything about it sickens me, and knowing that Annette Slocum is out there somewhere unprotected . . . I’ll no longer placate Management and all the manipulation as if I were a marionette with strings.” He reached for the doorknob, which turned, but the door seemed stuck. “Every . . . little . . . moment,” his words were punctuated by his attempts to open it. “Will need . . . to be . . . rectified!”