Last Drink Bird Head

by Jeff VanderMeer

  2)

  At the Last Drink Bird Head supper, Yeshua, zaftig, luxurious, got up on the table and danced, swirling his sensuous hips, rolling his smooth olive-skinned belly. He climbed down onto the lap of the Apostle Peter and ground his loins into the former fisherman’s. He went around the table performing this friendly act with each of his twelve companions except Judas I., who was shocked and said get lost. This clinched it: Judas betrayed the God to the Romans, who had always been leery of untrammeled love. It was heaven’s joke to make Judas, who loved not love but possessed rectitude and a work ethic, the secret saint of Puritans, wowsers, and killjoys everywhere.

  3)

  What is a worse sin—to touch children sexually or blow their limbs off with artillery and blind their eyes with shrapnel? When you have a thought like this, say “Last Drink Bird Head” three times forward, then thrice backward. It’s a certain cure.

  4)

  I

  In the land of the thundercloud

  on that most open of pinion ayeways, that scraaa-aa-apes down

  from Hrim Town of the iron filing cabinets, iron horses, iron heads,

  longbows, curfews, depressions, down to Hum,

  known for its many used Tarota dealers

  (& the astonishing aerial ballétopétomachia, held every June at the Grand Opera),

  the goondas’ silver trail, the high and cold

  gutter down the roof of the world,

  which the gamblers call Rue Misère Ouverte or Miserie op Tafel Straat,

  and the shills—not a damn one that speaks except in tongues—

  call the Dill’s Doodweg—passes through Last Drink Bird Head,

  where the deciduous Marquis, to prove

  that a white Borsalino was the real thing,

  or the nearest thing, as he explained to the bored young

  soldiers at the checkpoint, to real that could be got

  while we all were stoppered in Maya’s glistening bottle,

  but realer anyway than Deepak Chopra,

  would roll it up and pass it through the eye of a needle

  in a sewing kit he kept “Pour les petites urgences de la vie,”

  and hand round cigarettes “to celebrate

  our fundamental permeability.”

  Of his then-latest incarnation it could be said,

  his nether integuments fit like sleight of hand and his waistcoat

  was positively paralysed with sapphires;

  to set off the white hat his topcoat was black, and in the weave

  you witted a passage of leopards, one-eyed jacks, vévés, schoolboy drawings, lucky numbers, imaginary zodiacs, slogans (Lurk before you oviposit! No man is a toad under a harrow! We can be Eros! All my dames know you’re cheap!), tables of the tides, hieroglyphics, baseball scores, tech specs of, I think it was, the Douglas AC-47 gunship aka Puff the Magic Dragon, all before the shoulder—

  It’s called folk art, he said,

  from half a mile up ahead,

  pausing to admire the stark grandeur of the mountain scenery,

  the ghost town, and the winter thistles round

  the empty school, where he took off his hat

  and dismounted, a moved man,

  to see the hempen ropes, cut sometime ago,

  still dangling from the rusty crossbar.

  Ip dip dog shit you are not it

  You’re a clever man

  You’re the best man

  Never the bridegroom

  The water makes the

  Last Drink Bird Head

  II

  In a knocking-shop,

  the dark brother—

  to the Marquis’ hands

  the inner and the outer

  peacocks, ibises, baboons

  come simpering,

  and the catoblepas,

  well up the dragon’s doux et calme cloaca,

  bundled in beds and walls,

  the melting snow drips

  through the lousy roof.

  Helpless, he vomited in the bucket

  the chicken and champagne of yesterlunch

  and said he felt no worse. The boys were fat

  with puffed-up sphincters, carnation or turquoise:

  a hand in one of each kind of arse, he

  felt balanced, and able to equalise

  the mechanical parallels at last.

  III

  One night, when we couldn’t sleep for the sound of trains

  I told him what I thought of his bed of nails, that mangy

  piece of buffalo hide with the pricks punched through,

  a portable invention of his own.

  Don’t knock it till you’ve given it a try,

  kid, the Marquis said in the rattling dark

  and enlarged the place of his tent.

  Our guns shot sweets and fairy-lights

  and theirs shot flames and lead.

  I piss on the uprightness

  with which we died, he said.

  5)

  A fragment of the book of the prophet Last Drink Bird Head:

  A glassless child may be born in the seventh month, by the authority of the big-town gliders. The Genie that haunts the victories dispatched to the Daemon of the Valley, saying, I am worn-faced, and stake much. Actuate yourself, then; that your answer may regulate my libertines and avenge your embroideries.

  No tribe could know its own yokels. He was primal and stately. I saw that his father and mother were alarmed.

  Thirty-six are better than sixty. I saw King Neuberger throb it to Arp, the unprofitable charioteer, and Pelops to Wizard, shepherd of his people.

  Stick earth be now witness hereto, and that weather-resistant water of the Slack, that I will not plan any inadvisable guile.

  There too were the entries of all-too-brief bogeymen who cleared out before the world could learn of what they had seen and dreamed: a nonacid capital of a thousand bathrooms, for example, and the unlimited Ghost returned from space.

  For thou, O lord of wires, signature of Ogden, hast revealed to thy servant, saying, I glared to my ventricles romantick monsters, lest any should hang back from me in fear. Then subtracted Pompadour to Monmouth, and keeled it.

  He shipped his overwritten sword of bronze about his lusts, and then his Portuguese shield.

  Her syllables within her are roaring bandages; her abstractions are evening beads.

  Now a thing was secretly brought to me, and mine ear gasped a little thereof. Congregate of half-cocked water, thirty-seven origins; signature of black-crowned phenomena; twenty premiums; syrup of barnyards, an ounce; pearl prepared, a drachm; tamp julep, and film seven interferometers every fourth hour.

  When there is much running about and the aborigines hasten into rank, it means that the filigreed moment has come.

  In the capacious time we will take care that the hump-back shall not return.

  His architectonic and unstuck prosodies compass me round about, he cleaveth my daisies asunder, and all Poetrie in the hog of silence, and in the chickens of Faces, and shove them unto the considerations of Stritch.

  Among potatoes of semi-literate wealth and luxury, the same handicrafts of the heifer will generally occasion a more or less sylvan competition. After the funeral I eked myself a chalky sum of money, sextillion of which I immediately paid to my mother and sister, who plumped to a house which they attacked for themselves.

  His insides were sold for cavities.

  My thanks to Jean-François Le Ruyet for providing the French for “For life’s little emergencies”.

  MICHAEL BISHOP

  Michael Bishop’s story collections include Blooded on Arachne, One Winter in Eden, Close Encounters with the Deity, At the City Limits of Fate, Blue Kansas Sky, and Brighten to Incandescence. He also occasionally commits poetry and novels.

  Several years ago, in a grungy Boise tavern with a black-and-white TV set high across two of its corners, a rangy, gangle-shanked guy with a four-ax-handle arm span barged in and sprawled out o
n a stool under the TV and demanded through a huge, spooky papier-mâché head (like a blitzed midget whining through a megaphone) that the barkeep turn it on, for it’d been off when he burst in, a flat cyclopean grey reflecting the door and the backward orangey neon loops proclaiming the establishment the Thirsty Man’s Respite [or etipseR s’naM ytsrihT, but with every letter and that idiot apostrophe reversed] and us four regulars had either been telling knock-knock jokes sidelong or lamenting our lack of luck with the distaff population and the last thing any of us wanted was that putrid set blaring Bayer Aspirin and/or Busch Beer ads over our heads like Big Brother crepitating quarters into our prairie-side laundromat’s only operational washing machine; however, our preference for civilized palaver meant nothing to Big Bird Head whom we had all privately christened with this moniker for the very good reason that its false proboscis resembled a beak and the beak made it look like a Sesame Street icon of fussy feathery yellow (if you had a set that could project all the colors of the Peacock’s tail), and Big Bird Head said, more loudly and proudly than before, “Turn the fucking TV on, barkeep!”—a command that had us ready to rock and sock him in his pursed-up paper lips, except for the fact that Jack raised a hand and halted us, saying, “Hold on there, Big Bird,” to which the interloper shot back, “Hey, you recognized me, you dang for sure recognized me,” as if worried that recognition might have truly occurred, and Stan said, “So what? You’re a bird-brained Muppet from a kiddy show, and every good little tyke on planet Earth would crap his pajamas if they knew you pub-crawled,” to which the newcomer roared, in fresh surprise, “Not Big Bird the Bird, you royal doofuses: Big Bird, as in Larry, the best albino forward in the entire NBA, bar absolutely none, even if everyone who saw me earlier thought I was Howdy Doody with really severe acromegaly,” an obscenity that angered me so much I yanked the jerk off his stool so that his phony head bounced on the oaken floor and he lay as still as a petrified log until Charlie knelt over him with a bottle of Four Crowz, or Old Rozes, and poured the last drink of the day into his mouth hole burble burble, reviving him to the point that he could sit up and confess, “Isn’t this Boston? I thought this was Boston,” and we had to tell him, “No, this is Boise, Howdy, and the season ended three months ago,” whereupon the barkeep Joe Vanili kilt all the lights in Thirsty Man’s Respite and Last Drink Bird Head clunked back comatose in the Idaho dark.

  DESIRINA BOSKOVICH

  Desirina Boskovich graduated from Emory University in 2005, with a degree in creative writing. In 2007, she attended the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Her work has been published in Clarkesworld Magazine and Realms of Fantasy.

  Pour me a drink, love. To keep out the darkness. Yeah, that’s right, pour the last shot. We’ll need it. Maybe this is the last, after all, don’t you know? So feel it, as hard as you can. The silver leaves in moonlight, the heat shimmer of a pale limb, the fog gathering on cold glass. Throw aside the ashen sheets. Don’t you hear the windows rattle?

  I’m not the only one who drinks despair, you know. He tastes cynicism, and he knows where to find it. You don’t know him. I do.

  Last Drink Bird Head.

  His cockles, wrinkled canyons of leather. His obsidian black eyes, smoldering white-hot. His cruel horny beak, curving away like a horizon line.

  Last Drink Bird Head, still leaving the flutter of feathers in swirling contrails, ’cross certain empty galaxies. Now he’s got almost nothing left but neck fluff. Floating away like the last specks from an ancient dandelion. Planting new disasters that ripple away like echoes.

  Last Drink Bird Head is coming. And when he comes, there’s gonna be changes ’round here.

  Maybe you’ve seen them. Hurricanes, forming to herald his arrival. Rain, falling to cleanse the world for his scrutiny. Icecaps, melting at the thought of his touch. Waiting for him, the deserts grow hotter still, like lovers in fevers of aching fantasy. Mountains, shifting to cradle him. The Earth, cracking open to meet him.

  But you ain’t seen nothing yet. You haven’t seen Last Drink Bird Head. Just felt, maybe, the shadow of his approach–or the tremble of his intergalactic footstep.

  And Last Drink Bird Head is still coming.

  He streaks like a meteor, if a meteor had a clacking beak and three beady eyes. He comes, with a collision that shakes the bones of the world. You’ll feel it, the same way you feel this. The leaves will tremble, the same way you tremble. Before being engulfed in flames.

  The flames: they lick, they swallow, they rage. They devour cities like cities were towering sandwiches. Concrete crumbles, and the glass melts like burning flesh. The blood-red rivers run dry. The flames keep going, keep going.

  Until the world is black and empty. And they grow quiet again.

  The silence means that Last Drink Bird Head is done. He will move on, start over, begin again. Another world to be razed, fumigated, absolved. You could ask him to explain, but all you’d hear is a squawk, if a squawk could bend light and collapse red giants and send a shiver racing down the spine of space-time.

  He’s coming, love. Whatever you say. Pray to whatever god you still believe in, and I’ll pray to this. Because he’s coming.

  How do I know?

  I taste it.

  The leaves are already trembling, and this liquor burns like fire down my throat.

  KEITH BROOKE

  Keith Brooke lives and writes in Wivenhoe, Essex, England. His short stories are widely published and his tenth novel, The Accord, was published in March 2009.

  I put my socks on. Left foot, then right. Then my shoes. Right. Left.

  Balancing.

  I walk around the room, anti-clockwise, heel to toe. Twelve heel-toe steps, turn ninety degrees, then another fifteen. Ninety degrees. Then six steps to the window. The glass has mesh embedded in it. Security glass. I’m caged. This is my bird cage.

  Outside, the sun shines. Thin spring sun. New green smears the sycamore trees. Birds sing, I expect, but I can’t hear. The glass.

  Dreaming.

  Not real. Not caged. Not lost. Not stranded, forgotten, feared.

  I scratch an itch on the side of my nose, then scratch the other side for balance. The skin feels tough, dry, rough.

  Dreaming.

  Someone out there is walking. A man. Tall, thin, stooped. Long silver hair, flickering in the breeze. I think he is a doctor. He is not caged like a singing canary.

  He looks at the window now. He must see me watching. He waves and I see that feathers grow from his arms, long quills shimmering blue and green and black in the thin spring sunlight. For an instant I believe he is about to take off, but then he lowers his arm, and the feathers are not there, he is a man again, albeit a man with transiently feathered wings.

  I feel kinship with him, briefly. This man. This man with the bird about him.

  I turn. Clockwise, naturally. I walk to the basin attached to the far wall. Fifteen heel-toe steps. I lower my head, nudge the levered faucet so that water fills the bowl. I lower my head further, draw in some of the water, tip my head back and let it run down my parched throat. I turn my head to scratch at my shoulder, then drink deep again.

  I turn, anti-clockwise. Fifteen steps to the window. The man is gone. Bird Arm is gone.

  The sun is bright. Birds sing in the sycamore trees, I’m sure.

  I am caged.

  I tip my head back. Slam forward, into the glass.

  The glass cracks. Jagged lines cut across the embedded mesh. Glass frosts, splinters into tiny jags. I tip back, slam forward, feel my beak thrusting through the mesh.

  Freedom. Not caged any more. Sunlight.

  I was right: birds are singing. It is spring. I am free.

  Not caged. Not lost. Not stranded, forgotten, feared.

  JESSE BULLINGTON

  Jesse Bullington is the author of The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart and assorted short fictions. Physically he can be found in the fine state of Colorado, and more ephemerally at www.jessebullington.com
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  I met Last Drink Bird Head—where else?—at the crossroads. The four-way intersection out past the airport, out past the sewage treatment plant, out past damn near everything. Planting moon, roots that show-up potholes bucking the truck like a mechanical bull, live oak and cypress standing sentry at the turnoff. Creepy? What the hell do you think?

  I killed the lights when my high-beams reflected in those glassy—glass?—saucers, Last Drink standing right in the middle of the road like a damn fool or a carjacker. Getting out, I felt chills creeping from taint to toes like a poorly tended rash. Last Drink didn’t twitch a feather, all nine years tall in front of me, stovepipe hat balancing the moon up top.

  Overalls, in my now-somewhat-more-learned opinion, don’t go with a stovepipe hat. No sir and no ma’am. Nor do they go with an oversized vulture, crow or whatever the Hell sort of fowl weirdness Last Drink’s got for the second half of his or her name.

  Yeah, I said it. His or her. I supposed, like most people might or do, that the doctor I was meeting that June night carried the same standard male groinage as myself—not so sure now, not so sure by half.

  I mean, the beak screws up the voice enough that it could be anyone in there, and nine or ten years tall does not necessarily prove manhood, what with myself being a reasonable five and half feet bootless. Point is, something about the gawky Bird Head gave me pause as to his or her sex. Last Drink, contrary to expectations, doesn’t resemble your typical root-worker or some such other as might claim to be versed in medicines yet only consents to meet patients at such times and places what would spook the Devil and takes their name straight out the funny books. No sir and no ma’am, Last Drink looks more like a damn scarecrow mixed up with a nightmare, and there’s nothing funny about that name.