by Amber Sparks
We turn the universe into our mirror. #narcissus, naturally.
WE THREE AT the budding temple: you would map the fires, chart them out on a complicated grid. You said it showed how the world would end. And when. You painted strange symbols on the spreading gold of your floor. And the stranger would help you, connecting the dots with indigo while you made phone calls like a politician, raising money for your shrine. The stranger would stare at me with those shiny eyes, those sugar-glazed membranes, and I thought then that I would burn, too.
IN OUR LIFE TOGETHER, we loved jazz and swing, especially Ellington. We would dance to “Come to Baby, Do!” and you would sing along, crooning softly into my ear. Moonlight and streetlights and the low hum of love, and you were as bright and handsome as a satellite. Was it any wonder I orbited you, was your companion star?
Your name before you changed it: a fusty yet furious string of syllables, Old Europe braided with the raw spirit of the New World.
Your name after you changed it: the dead name of a lost god, buried ten thousand years ago under a swollen, ancient sun. You said it meant the son of Ra.
But what’s in a name? Or so you said, what seems like ages ago now. What’s in a name, indeed, and so I started calling you Junior instead. Online I took shit from your followers for #junior-ing you. But in petty times like these, we must do what we can to keep our hurts at bay. We must take our tiny revenges.
THE STRANGER, you said, was a healer. In just a year, you said, he’d healed: One woman with six toes on each foot, one child with tuberculosis, one blind man, three people with the avian flu, one snake and two turtles burned at a reptile house, one child with a clubfoot, one child with a cleft palate, one grown man with shingles, sixteen people with various cancers, and seven barren women.
WE WOULD SIT BY the fire, always the three of us now, always his glassy eyes on me. Women find him very attractive, you told me, and it was true: his face had a certain ascetic beauty, all sharp cheekbones and razor eyes.
The stranger said very little. I asked him why, once, and he told me words had ever been a bane to him, had ever led him into trouble and damnation. Your man saved me, he said, and I have eyes to thank him. And ears to hear his prayers. That is enough.
And hands and a mouth and other things besides, I said to myself, thinking of those barren women. Pretty and young and plump, all of them, like sows led to breeding. I wondered how their husbands felt; if they were glad of the “miracle” or ashamed to warrant another man’s assistance, no matter how holy. And what, at the end of the world, were we breeding more mouths for?
I hated the stranger; to me he was a wild animal, a rooting boar, and I was sorry you had decided to use him so. I wondered if he would turn on you, or me, or get free before that could happen.
But you turned on me instead. You offered me to him. You said it was necessary, that you were now as a god and he your earthly representative—that this sacrifice was needed to make the fields fertile again. You said these things and I stared, white and crimson, and if someone had given me a weapon I would have sacrificed something, oh yes. I would have cut off your balls with a butter knife just then. I would have held you down for as long as it took, stuffed you between your own teeth like a #humanhogroast. You saw my fury and said we would speak no more of it, and then you made me tea, and when I awoke I was laid out like a cross in the back bedroom. I was draped over the blankets and my clothes were gone and so were his and he was smiling all plastic and coming toward me and the world was on fire but you were calmly chanting and suddenly I heard the words, under all this madness you were sing-chanting Ellington, you were singing, “So, pucker up, my sweet, and meet your Waterloo, come to baby, do!”
And then I screamed and screamed and screamed and I think I would have screamed forever had the stranger not slapped my face. You scowled at him, called me the mother of all life, said be respectful for fuck’s sake, and I gaped and gasped and dragged the blankets over my breasts, and with a sudden strength I didn’t know I had, I changed my trajectory. I shot out of orbit, renegade star, I packed my things and made for the Motel 6 on the other side of town and all the while I heard “Come to baby, do!” like a spell through my brain and I spat at it, I wept over it, and I drowned it with music and booze and dice and sleep. And I drowned it deep in sweet red fire.
MOON. Face notwithstanding, the moon is a source of madness just the same. Or so say the police, hospital staff, and good old Pliny the Elder, who theorized that perhaps humans were so affected by the moon because they—like the tides—were made mostly of water, especially the brain. The full moon, in particular, is believed to hand us lunatics, werewolves, and criminals. The moon reaches down with silver fingers and toys with us; and we reach up and destroy the moon.
THE NIGHT YOUR temple burned down—arson, it was whispered—it was my birthday, and I felt the full moon breathing down my neck as I remembered I was circling the world without you now. The stranger had burned with you—your son, they said, this news was trending—and they called you a madman. They seethed, but understood—how false words were part of the new darkness. They understood how easy it was to become a prophet, #endtimesscamartist, how easy it was to sow hope among the hopeless.
At your funeral—held like those of the kings of old, your pyre signaling only the absence of a body—I wore my bluest dress and wondered if there really was a world beyond. There was a feeling of bacchanalia in the room, your worshippers mentally popping champagne corks and dancing in frenzies. It seemed possible to see a kind of heaven in their stares, a cruel human dream of heaven. And I did not forgive you.
In Which Athena Designs a Video Game with the Express Purpose of Trolling Her Father
IN THIS ONE, SHE TELLS ZEUS, YOU HAVE TO SAVE THE HUMAN world from a vengeful god.
Mmm, he says. He is eating a cheeseburger in bed, watching college basketball and only half-listening. Mustard hangs in his beard here and there, gold on white. She dabs at the spots, her lovely face shifting slightly with something more godlike than disgust.
You can play as one of three nymphs, she says.
Nice, he says. Zeus is really into nymphs.
It’s open-world, Athena tells him. There are all kinds of side quests and mini-games, beauty contests and drowned-sailor-saving and whatnot. But the main point of the game is to avoid this one specific god until you’re powerful enough, because if you run into him before then, you’ll get turned into a cow or a tree.
That sucks, says Zeus. Can you drink a potion or something to turn you back? Find a magical object?
No potion, says Athena, but you can still play through as a cow or a tree.
That’s good, says Zeus. WHAT! Did you see that foul? HOW DID THEY NOT CALL THAT FOUL? The bed shakes, and snaking fissures appear on the TV screen.
Jesus, Dad, says Athena. Did you take your pills? Your blood pressure.
I did, honey, it’s fine, says Zeus. I’m fine. Tell me more about your game. I’m listening. He leans back, eyes on the screen.
Well, she says, if you really want to punish yourself, you can start as a cow and play the whole thing like that. It’s the advanced mode. Europa Mode, I call it.
Zeus narrows his eyes. Athena waits. Trolling Zeus is dangerous, after all. Last time Hera did it, he turned her into an earthworm for a year.
Finally, he nods. Go ahead, he says. Put it into production.
She breathes, adjusts her diadem. She starts off to hire developers. Just wait until he sees the way he looks in game, foolish and flaccid.
WAIT, says the Father of Gods. His shout splits the television. Crack. Sizzle. The stink of singed wires.
Athena stops, halfway through dematerializing. She wonders what it feels like to eat nothing but earth for a year. She really enjoys mortal foods, and wine, and mortal men and women, too. She grips her staff. Yes?
Make sure all the nymphs have big tits, says Zeus. A little fanservice, you know?
Athena nods, rolls her eyes, dissolves. Her godli
ke disappointment lags behind, a cold blue cloud, and Zeus wonders why he feels so weird and so goddamned small.
He grabs his phone and texts Hephaestus: hey kiddo, need a new tv. big. make it happen plz. He waits, then texts again: r u watching this game? miss u, as plaintive and lonely and punctuationally awkward as any dad on earth.
Is the Future a Nice Place for Girls
THE QUEEN WOKE UP ONE MORNING TO THE FURIOUS SOUND of the Future invading. It had that rumbling, insistent sound all uprisings carry with them.
The king was still sleeping, his heavy body a wide lump under the damask. The guards, used to his snoring, were all half-asleep too. The queen poked him, gently then not-so-gently, shouting until he snorted himself awake.
What the hell, he said. I need my royal rest.
It’s the Future, the queen told him, ears tilted toward the commotion outside. Don’t you hear it? It’s coming, and fast, and we need to flee. She could hear screams, shouts, the sickening sound of bodies crashing into new ideas. She could hear speeches being made. She could hear the present coming apart.
We’re not going anywhere, said the king. The Future doesn’t frighten me. My guards will take care of it.
I don’t think they will, said the queen. She heard another thud, then the distinct sound of bone crunching. I don’t think they are.
Well, I’m not going anywhere, said the king. And I don’t hear anything, anyway. I think you’re mad.
Fine, said the queen. She’d always strongly disliked the king, forced into the marriage after her elder sister disgraced the family by having secret and robust babies with a shepherd. You should do the same, she told her younger sister, just before she was hauled off to the nunnery. The breeding stock is so much better.
The queen got dressed, quickly, all by herself, and some things were assuredly on backwards or sideways but she didn’t care. She ran to the nursery where her infant daughter was sleeping and began to swaddle her.
Your Majesty, said the wet nurse, shocked. What are you doing?
The Future is coming for us, so we’re leaving, said the queen. Come on, Matilda. You come too.
It’s Alice, said the wet nurse. And I’m not leaving! What a dreadful thought.
Fine, said the queen. She packed a few of the baby’s things in a small velvet bag and she ran. She could hear the clang of the spears, the scrape of the pickaxes, the news anchors broadcasting, the rumbling of engines. The Future forcing its way in.
Once outside, she could hear the castle gates opening—it was surrendering to the Future. Fine, she thought. I’ll slip right through. She ran just in time to avoid a stream of cars weaving about, the drivers and passengers hitting frantic sheep and pigs in their distraction. They were all gazing up, dazzled by the turrets and by the great north tower, with its spire of beaten gold. More people were holding up guidebooks, or looking down at phones, charging into knights who then lay on the pavement with their lances shattered, moaning and invisible.
This is where they cut off the king’s head, the queen heard, and she held the baby’s wobbly head with one hand and picked up her skirts with the other. How had they missed the signs? The Future never arrived suddenly. It was always anticipated, announced. There were omens. How could their seer have failed to see?
The queen jogged on, unused to the exertion but determined to survive. The baby, lulled by the motion, was quieted. She slept. The queen passed trams, trampled fields, serfs standing mournfully next to slaughtered oxen, and curious tourists in yellow wellies. Men with large guns were pointing them everywhere, taking down pheasants and peasants with equal aplomb. Nobody recognized her, thank goodness; her cloak and the chaos guaranteed her some brief anonymity.
She stopped, finally, at a tavern in the next town over, exhausted and in need of a bed and some food. She asked the barman for some milk for the baby. Skim or whole? he asked, and she stared. Never mind, he said, I think whole is what babies drink. The queen put a little on her finger, and let the baby suck it off. The child had a dozy little face, big bleary brown eyes, and the queen was quite in love with it. The child was already betrothed to the Duke of Something or Other; a young man known for his unexceptional face and exceptional cruelty, but perhaps (she hoped) he hadn’t escaped the Future. She sighed and turned to the woman next to her, shockingly muscular and got up in breeches.
Is the Future a nice place for girls, the queen asked, and the fit woman snorted. Not exactly, she said. But—and she eyed the queen’s cloak and shoes and hair—better than where you come from.
Thank goodness, said the queen, and she kissed her daughter’s slack fat cheeks, her fuzzy head. She held the baby carefully as she hauled herself up onto the barstool, the cool indifference of the barman an astonishing relief. No one was looking at her. The air was thick with conversation. This is the Future, she told her daughter. The baby opened her eyes and looked around.
Our Mutual (Theater) Friend
THE PROBLEM, IN PLAIN TERMS: SHE ONCE WAS AN ACTRESS. Even in younger years she played the boozy diva—hovering in the wings, faintly sardonic—until the crucial point in the musical when she took over the stage and sang the big, sizzling, fourth-wall-shattering solo number that exposed the hypocrisy and artifice of the whole show. Audiences loved her; directors loved her; reviewers loved her. No matter how little stage time she got, she was always the main draw and the de facto star.
The problem, in plainer terms: she still thinks of herself as an actress. She hasn’t acted for many years, retiring early after a disastrous marriage and a quiet breakdown. But she still hangs out in the metaphorical wings, drinking too much and expounding on life with a level of wit inappropriate to shopping for shoes at Nordstrom Rack. She explodes every now and then in the most embarrassing fashion, usually at children’s birthday parties. She doesn’t sing—thank god!—but her dramatic speech patterns at these moments rival Norma Desmond’s and confuse her friends’ small children, who have never seen golden-age cinema or Sondheim. During the latest outburst, she waxes on at Brooklyn Davis’s fourth birthday party (“for a good goddamn ten minutes,” claims Brooklyn Davis’s father) about the vulgarity of modern pizza parlors, upstaging Elmo and Abby and Cookie Monster—not to mention the pirate-themed face painters. Their mutual friends convene the next day at the dog park, positive it’s time to take action.
Marcus’s birthday is next Saturday, says Pam Perkins. And we rented a bounce house. It cost a fortune, she says.
And she’s supposed to be seeing Hamilton with Jack and me the weekend after, says Jenny Jackson. Jenny and Jack are child-free, and feel unfairly saddled with their eccentric friend whenever they head to the movies or the theater. God knows, says Jenny darkly, what she’ll think of the show or when she’ll decide to stand up and say it.
She seems so unhappy, says Anna Lowenstein. I want to help but—
But when you ask about her life, says Aisha Rollins, all you get is a weird, albeit witty, retort.
Exactly, says Jonathan Yan. She called me “my dull darling” in front of the waiter at Shake Shack the other day.
The others nod; it can’t go on. Indeed, it’s getting worse. Her outbursts were once rare, and only at dinner parties and diners late at night. But she seems to have an opinion almost every day now, and she chooses her moments carefully, gathering drama and timing to her like a very loud dress.
She needs an audience again, says someone, but none of them have said it. They turn around and there on the park bench is a very old man: brown teeth, white hair, skin like an old saddle. He laughs. Aisha Rollins glares.
Your friend needs an audience, he says again, and Jonathan shakes his head. She’ll never sing again, says Jonathan. She’s lost the voice. It’s part of the problem.
The old man laughs. Doesn’t need a voice to have an audience, he says. Just needs this. His voice is congested, tubercular, and Jenny moves away just slightly. He hands Jonathan a small glass ball, a snow globe with no snow. Inside, a tiny wooden theater stage sits, apron
empty, curtain down, tiny people sitting at the edge of tiny seats. Something about it speaks of waiting, of a deep, long hush. All the friends stare into it, hushed and caught up in the waiting, too.
Give it to her, says the old man. As a gift. And then he’s gone, the air strangely still where he stood a moment ago. They blink, the sun in their eyes after the cool dark of the miniature theater.
I bet he doesn’t even have a dog, says Anna. What a weirdo, they all agree with relief.
But then they gift it to her anyway, for reasons none of them quite understand.
Jonathan is her favorite—they were briefly lovers, long before he married his husband—and he makes the trek to deliver it. Her studio apartment is tragic because it is nothing like appropriate to her outsized personality and fading star persona. The blinds are dusty and off-white, the carpets are beige, the furniture is flawed Pottery Barn, purchased ages ago at a warehouse sale.
Come in, darling, she says, as always. She is pretending to work when he knocks, and she goes right back to it after she lets him in. Pounding away at a computer keyboard, for chrissakes she has no idea how to type. She’s claimed for ages to be freelancing, though she never says what for and anyway everyone knows she got a fat settlement when she divorced her broker husband.
Jonathan hands her the globe. She looks at it, her eyes watering, her ashtray full. Her hands are still beautiful, translucent as they catch the soft light inside the thing. Enjoy it, he says, and then he does the strangest thing—he runs. He’ll tell his husband later he has no idea why, a middle-aged man running down four flights of stairs and into traffic like a lunatic. But really, he runs because he sees her face as she holds it; that glow and that head tilt and that proud eye pure Gloria Swanson, and he does not want to see what happens next.