InkStains January

by John Urbancik

mouse said to me, “It’s time.”

  “We’ve been over this already, “I told the mouse. “It’s not time till I say it’s time.”

  The mouse said again, “It’s time.”

  I gave the mouse a good view of my back.

  Somewhere, there was a clock. I imagined it was huge and elegant and gothic, because that’s the way it sounded as it struck, struck, struck. I followed the sound until the last of it faded, but never found the source. Yes, I counted the chimes. Twelve. Midnight. Don’t assume it means anything, not in the confines of a fever dream.

  “There’s no party,” I said to no one.

  A long hall led me a long way, but I made no progress; and though I made no turn, I found myself lost, if not forgotten.

  That’s when I remembered. I’d drunk from the river, not the Styx, not death, but the other: Lethe, the river of forgetting. I’d given up my memories of me and you and everything. Don’t ask me why. I can’t remember. Not while in the maelstrom of a fever dream.

  I said, “I need it back,” though there was no one there to hear.

  I responded myself. “You must have done it for a reason.”

  “No reason is worth sacrificing yourself.”

  “You’re still you.”

  I had a point, I suppose, but I had another as well: without knowledge of who I was, without my own experiences to guide me, without my past mistakes from which I might learn, was I really me at all? Was I anyone? Or was I merely trapped in the eddies of a fever dream?

  I left the house. At the door, the butler said to me, “Leaving so soon, Lord?”

  “I must,” I told him. “I’m late.”

  The car, as it turned out, moved just as quickly in the opposite direction.

  The coyote, still grinning as a wolf might, agreed to watch the car when I left it, though I doubted I’d ever see it again.

  I dove into the river. I couldn’t make the raft float against the current, but I had arms and legs and a certainty — without a memory to back it up – that I could swim. I struggled for breath. I reached a familiar shore, the first of my short memories, and as I climbed onto the land the crow returned.

  “It’s time,” the crow said to me.

  “Don’t rush me,” I said.

  The water of the river dripped off me. Speckled bands of sunlight through the trees dried me slowly. Eventually, I began to remember – not in a flash of sudden knowledge, but easily and gradually and peacefully, until I even recalled what had driven me into the river in the first place.

  Bathed in that memory, tortured in a fever dream, I wept. Every tear returned the fragment of another memory, either good or bad, pieces of my own cloth, my soul, the truth of myself as if escaping a fever dream.

  Somewhere, somehow, as my tears slowed, I found an epiphany, something about a whole being made up of fragments of dreams, fever dreams, feverishly me, no longer a blank slate if ever I was.

  Sometime after, I woke, not yet recovered but wondrously healed.

  3 January

  The rain waits on the horizon, promising and threatening and posturing, darkening the clouds, but held in place by the will of one man.

  Marvin is a magician.

  He’s not particularly good, he’s not talented, and he’s incredibly lacking in wit and wisdom. He is an aging man with gray hair and a Salvation Army suit, a widower and a veteran, and maybe something of a poet in some deep, rarely tapped crevasse in his heart, but he has learned three tricks of magic. He can pull objects out of a hat, though his isn’t a magician’s top hat but the kind of Fedora Bogart used to wear. He can always pull the Jack of Spades out of a deck of cards at will. And he can delay the weather.

  It’s actually a rather simple trick, if taxing. If you asked, he’d gladly teach you. No one has ever asked.

  He stands, at the far corner of a parking lot some hours before nightfall, and stares at the billowing clouds, concentrating, breaking a sweat. A crowd gathers around him, jostling each other, murmuring, some deep in the throes of disbelief. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. He licks his lips. He glances at the woman with the pale eyes and the blue dress.

  “Anyone can do what you’re doing,” she says. “Don’t hold it back. Don’t keep it away. Bring it. Bring it in its fullest fury. Bring the rain and the wind and the thunder.”

  “Now?” he asks.

  “Now.”

  The first drops of rain hit the asphalt. After a brief scattering, it’s a deluge. Lightning shatters the sky. The wind whips her dress around her legs. She’s smiling. She says, “Unleash it.”

  Thunder explodes around them. The crowd scatters. The raindrops fall like hail, heavy and cold and solid. The flashes of lightning provide a near-constant flickering. They’re already drenched to the bone.

  The woman with the pale eyes and the blue dress steps closer to Marvin the magician. The storm has brought color to her cheeks, vibrancy and vividness she’d lacked earlier. She has to shout to make herself heard over the storm. “Keep it going. Keep it ferocious. But keep us out of it.”

  He grimaces. That’s a lot to ask for. But it’s a lot of woman to impress, so he nods once and conjures the commands, incites the incantations in his head, tricks the trick into working for him.

  Lightning comes down in walls around them; a Faraday cage of air divides them from the world. You can’t stop the thunder, which is raucous and exuberant and beyond reason, but the wind winds around them and the rain pummels the ground at their sides. In their wall of lightning and wind, they are protected from the elements.

  It’s the smallest ever Eye of a Storm. The effort is great. Marvin’s sweat is cold and running, his muscles sore and straining. A headache is forming behind his eyes. He sees stars.

  The woman with the pale eyes and the blue dress is smiling. She steps closer. He allows the lightning wall to tighten behind her.

  “This,” she says, “what you’re doing, what you’re capable of – is absolutely amazing.”

  Then she kisses him.

  It’s a good, long, deep kiss, and nothing else matters, so Marvin forgets what he’s doing. And the storm, though it calms, blankets them again.

  The effort of the magic, the soulfulness of the kiss combine in Marvin’s body. He stumbles, and he falls, and he passes out completely.

  While he’s blacked out, the woman with the pale eyes and the blue dress rummages through his pockets. She steals his pocket watch and a few loose dollars. She takes his fedora, from which he can pull things, and puts it on her head.

  She leaves the deck of cards and its eager Jack of Spades. She learned long ago never to rob anyone of everything.

  When he opens his eyes, she’s gone with his money, his watch, and his hat. But he’s still got his cards, so it’s not a total loss. And he can still taste her kiss, so it was worth it.

  4 January

  There was no such thing as fear. He didn’t believe in it. He was fifteen years old, and not one single thing he’d ever feared had done him the slightest bit of harm.

  He’d been afraid of the dark, which turned out to by mysterious and magical and alluring, but rarely dangerous and never fatal.

  He’d been afraid of the wolves and the bears and even the raccoons, anything in the woods with a mind of its own and the slightest hint of hunger. Ultimately, he’d been hungry once or twice himself. Further, no creature had ever devoured him.

  He’d been afraid of a great many things that never came to pass or, in fact, had merely been things unknown. It was stupid to fear a thing you didn’t know.

  There’s no such thing as fear. He said this several times in the mirror, perhaps to convince his reflection, perhaps just to hear his voice break the silence.

  The mirror, however, stared back and offered no words of courage, no wisdom, no advice. It merely gave back whatever he gave it.

  Right. Fear was a myth. He took a deep, soul-fortifying breath, and strode out of the bathroom with a display of courage and confidence.
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br />   There is nothing to fear. There is no fear. Fear itself.

  Be afraid. Be very afraid.

  His heart had a way of telling his head to take a bath.

  He did not falter. Until he rounded the corner and saw her in the hall, near her locker, a book in hand and another inside, he didn’t even hesitate.

  She looked at him as she shut her locker. She said nothing, but waited for him.

  He said her name. Still, she waited.

  He said, “I’m sorry.”

  There. It was out. Two words, little simple things, tiny but far from meaningless. Not exactly what he’d intended, but in a pinch, he thought they were pretty damn good.

  “I know,” she said. “So am I.”

  He had hoped for something else, something more forgiving, but it wasn’t forthcoming. Perhaps fear was a real thing after all.

  In front of the judge, a kid not much older, the prosecutor, one of the girls, said, “He waited too long.”

  “Is this true?” the judge asked.

  He hung his head. “It is.”

  “You confess?”

  “I throw myself at the court’s mercy.”

  “This court knows no mercy.”

  They stripped him to his underwear and paraded him through the gymnasium and the auditorium. They pronounced his failures and his shortcomings. They declared him foolish, guilty, stupid, naïve, but also brave. In the end, yes, he was brave.

  He re-worked his words. He ignored the court in his head. He stopped the girl from walking away by throwing a few more words at her. “I like you.”

  “I know,” she said. She smiled. She kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

  He had hoped for something else, something more