He was actually talking to the Scotsman, who does indeed have one of those long, dour, Scottish faces, and the general air of a man who’s just lost his job. But apparently the guy with the bird head thought the bartender was talking to him, and has taken offense. The bartender can see why. He really does have a very long face—swan-like neck, red crest, a long, thin swooping beak like one of those Egyptian things, what are they called, ibis. The bartender can imagine the guy gets comments like that all the time.
The guy with the bird head squawks—three squawks in quick succession, followed by a drawn-out hiss. It sounds very aggressive.
The Englishman puts a hand on his friend’s feathery shoulder and says, “Leave it, mate. Leave it. It’s not worth it.”
The Irishman quickly orders four pints of lager. The bartender is very grateful, because now he can cover his embarrassment by leaning over the tap and pretending to be unusually conscientious about pouring.
They take their drinks, and two packets of peanuts, and sit at a booth in the back. Every so often the bird-head guy glares in the bartender’s direction.
Oh God, he thinks, maybe I said something racist?
The thing is, he’s new in town. Between his media studies course, which some people say isn’t really a real degree but is actually bloody hard work, and his evening job in this bar, and his long expensive nightly phone calls to his girlfriend back home, he doesn’t get out that much. He doesn’t know what the etiquette is for talking to guys with bird heads. In fact, this is the first bird-head guy he’s ever seen or heard of. Now he wonders if his initial assumption, when this guy first walked into the bar, which was that there were probably a lot of these bird-head guys in town, isn’t all wrong. Maybe there is no proud thriving bird-head community here. Maybe this guy’s a freak.
Oh God. What an awful thing to think.
He pretends to watch the football. He doesn’t much like football, but the customers like to have it on—though right now there are only the four customers, and they’re talking, not watching the TV.
He eavesdrops. They appear to be sharing reminiscences about their travels. The Scotsman sighs and mentions their time on a desert island. The Irishman gets wistful about jungle adventures. The bartender can’t quite figure out how the bird-head guy knows these other guys. Ordinarily he’d try to join the conversation but there’s no way that would work now. He’s pretty sure he’s messed things up in a completely unfixable way. He keeps watching the football.
Ibis. The bartender is by now pretty sure the bird is an ibis. He used to have a fun little Spotter’s Guide to Exotic Birds when he was a boy, and there were probably ibises in it. The fact is, he’s always liked birds, which is the ridiculous thing about all this. The guy’s head is actually quite elegant, especially when he tosses up peanuts and catches them in his beak. But of course it’s only going to make things worse if the bartender tries to tell him that. It would be overcompensating. Anyway, that’s not the kind of thing a man can say to another man, without, well, you know, which would only make things weird. Weirder.
The Englishman and the Scotsman are in pin-striped suits. The Irishman and the guy with the ibis head are more sort of business casual. They’re all of them slowly nursing their drinks. The Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman seem a bit sad, as if they’re getting up their courage to tell the ibis head guy some really awful and upsetting news, but he just keeps on snacking on peanuts and glaring at the bartender, who’s by now almost literally dying to ask what’s up. If only he could think of a joke to lighten the mood.
JON COURTENAY GRIMWOOD
JCG writes novels for a living. He’s won the BSFA Award twice, and been shortlisted for the Clarke, Campbell and British Fantasy Award, among others. His website is at www.j-cg.co.uk and he twitters as joncg_novelist.
I walk into the cellar bar below the Marina Hotel on the day the Russian President falls down fifteen stone steps and breaks his neck. That’s the story to which the police are sticking and who am I to doubt it… .
Anyway, it’s a wet Wednesday night, with the streets still damp from that afternoon’s monsoon and my jacket glued to my back like a half-shed skin, and there she is, sitting on a stool by the counter drinking… .
She was there and I was in the door and the music was playing and my head didn’t have enough space for punctuation, because it gets like that sometimes. Actually, it gets like that a lot these days, ever since I walked away from my past in the last few seconds before it decided to walk away from… .
Anyway, it’s raining because it always rains here. It does that muggy thing tropical cities do, it starts all friendly, gets muggy by late morning and voids come mid afternoon. You can live with an umbrella in your hand, refuse to go out when it’s raining or get wet. You can guess which one I chose. That’s why my suit is doing its second skin routine, that and the fact it was cheap to start with and the only reason it held its shapes was because someone had done it up with a cardboard lining to look… .
Bit like me, really.
So there I was, coming in out of the rain in dishrags and a panama hat that can’t even remember Central America and wouldn’t recognise straw if dumped down in an Ohio field. And she was sitting at the bar, did I mention that? I usually like to mention that early on…And stop me if you’ve heard this, or I’m the person who buttonholed you the last time you came in the bar, because that… .
She was sitting at the bar on one of those chrome stools and she had on this green silk dress like feathers and a mask with a golden beak and flashes of crimson up both sides, just below her eyes, which looked like smoked glass bubbles. And she looks across at me and patted the seat beside… .
What could I do? Only what any man would do. I walked over and sat down, ordering a gin sling for myself and whatever she was drinking, which was a cocktail so strange I’d never even heard the name. We drank for most of that night, sitting side by side in that bar, with the rain washing the windows outside and my suit jacket steaming quietly in the… .
And then she turned and asked my name and I realised it wasn’t a mask and her dress really was feathers. Come now, she said, a voice like water falling. Wait, I said. She shook her head. Please, I said, last drink bird head… .
But she went anyway, without me.
It’s been months, maybe years. I come here every night and drink gin slings and order whatever it is she had, which I forget but the barman always remembers. And I wait and watch the doors and wonder when she’ll… .
RHYS HUGHES
Rhys Hughes is an absurdist writer with 500 short stories and numerous books to his credit. His blog can be found at: rhysaurus.blogspot.com
I am a botanist. My name doesn’t matter. My greatest achievement is the discovery of the Time Tunnel Orchid (class: metatemporal angiospermae; order: chronocotyledons), a plant so rare I remain the only man who has ever seen it. Some experts doubt the veracity of my reports. I find it hard to blame them, harder to defend myself. I must endure their taunts until I bring back a freshly picked example, and to do that I must continue to wear this bird mask.
In appearance, the Time Tunnel Orchid is beautiful and odd, a large funnel shaped flower on a long slender stalk. The opening to the funnel is a helix with mildly hypnotic properties. Regarding colour, the plant demonstrates the Doppler Effect in a graceful manner, showing a blue flower when approached but a red flower when an observer walks away from it. The outside length of the funnel is considerably shorter than the inside length, but as the outside is only measurable in distance and the inside can only be measured in years, this difference may not be immediately obvious.
The Time Tunnel Orchid seems to exist in symbiosis with hummingbirds that are attracted by the promise of nectar. Once they enter the mouth of the funnel they are sucked all the way through and emerge at an unspecified date far in the future. This journey is entirely one way. Hummingbirds that emerge from the funnels have clearly been projected into our own time from the distant past.
This plant does not spread its seeds very far in terms of spatial distance, relying on time to ensure successful germination. The feathers of the hummingbirds are coated with pollen when they enter the funnel and this pollen fertilizes the different plant that will occupy the same spot in future ages. Thus the orchid guarantees its survival across the centuries, often “leapfrogging” times of drought and disease. The seeds grow quickly and the flower is ready to project hummingbirds into the future within a few months. Old age comes rapidly. A sudden increase in red shift occurs and within hours the plant is lost over the edge of the observable botanical universe.
Dressing as a hummingbird is the only known method of viewing these astonishing plants. I first discovered them many years ago during a fancy dress party in the jungles of Brazil. I was very drunk, I admit the fact. I went for a walk to sober up, still dressed in my costume…In a clearing I came across a dozen orchids. I watched what the other hummingbirds were doing. I was young…I crouched down and crawled into the biggest funnel. I emerged in the distant future…
Unfortunately the way that plants view the “future” is entirely different from the way humans view it. We judge the age we are living in by the technology that surrounds us. Clay pots and bronze axes indicate an earlier century than electric light and nuclear submarines. Plants don’t have that advantage. The future to them is not much different to the past. In this case it wasn’t the slightest bit different. I emerged in the plant’s idea of the far future, not my own…I returned to the party without missing the last dance.
I am still searching for new examples of the Time Tunnel Orchid. My plaster bird head is falling apart and perhaps has lost its potency. But I have faith. One day I will stoop to take a last drink of nectar from the plant I will afterwards cut down, carry home in triumph and mount in the vase of eternal fame.
PAUL JESSUP
Paul Jessup has vanished leaving only a pair of shoes behind. You can view the shoes and other odd ephemeral at pauljessup.com
I am Last Drink Bird Head. And I have come for the Book of Flowers. If you give it to me, I will let you go. If you do not, well—I can put crows in your heart. I can fill your ribcage with worms. I can dip you in ink and write you on paper. I can swallow you whole and digest you for centuries. If you hand it over now, I will walk away and read it, forgetting your face, your name, your home.
But if you do not, I will never forget. I will burn your name on my skin; I will scar your face into my own. I will tear off your flesh and keep your skull as an ornament. I can do these things. I have done these things again and again.
That book is nothing to you. Pictures of birds, paragraphs on different plants and flowers. What’s it to you? You are not even a horticulturist. Just give me back what’s mine, before I change. That book keeps me from changing. You don’t believe me? It does.
The birds keep the spiders out of my mind. The spiders that come and make sinister webs between my thoughts. The flowers bring the bees out from under my skin. The bees that burn my bones, that scrape against me, forcing me to hurt people…so many nice people.
So, just hand it over. While I’m still asking nicely. See now? I’m starting to itch. The bees are here again, can’t you see them crawling beneath…underskin? Like a city underneath my flesh. I can hear the spiders now…and everything is so fuzzy. Connections are all wrong. My memories are out of order.
What-what? What was I asking you for again?
It’s all backwards. Let me start over again.
My name is Last King of the Bird Drinkers. And I have come for a picture of a giant eating his children.
ANTONY JOHNSTON
Antony Johnston is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of graphic novels, books and video games, including Wasteland, Dead Space, Frightening Curves and Wolverine: Prodigal Son. His website is antonyjohnston.com
Then come Lion Head with biggum pack back pack. And come Squonk Head him behind. Tail not proud.
Others many come too. All around circle standing wait. Wait.
Bird Head is I. Tiger Head challenge I. Him want first place to take. Take from Bird Head.
Sun hot rise in sky blue. Heat and haze and dry rock days. Days many come walk rock and dirt over. Many here come is now here come. Hard days. Rabbit head now gone life days four past. Sad many now. Exhausted much. Come now walking end here where water spring is.
But Tiger Head challenge. Want Tiger Head top man. Bird Head top man is.
Squonk Head challenge days six past is when come many on water spring. Weak Squonk Head is. Not Bird Head even sweat. Fresh taste water spring is. Cry Squonk Head! But gone all not long and walk on days many again.
Now circle make all around standing wait wait.
Sun up go top almost. Zenith for wait when go away lost shadows. Old like.
Lion Head biggum pack from out take ickle dial. Look all Lion Head watching watch.
Noddin head Lion Head.
Zenith come.
Leap Tiger Head to I. Stretch claws sharp out. Bird Head side to move dodge groove bestest prove. But slow is. Fly feathers. Wing pain is I. But cry out Bird Head no. Strong Bird Head is. Top man.
On ground is Tiger Head turn to slash. But stomp down is I. Tiger Head paw flat. Cry out Tiger Head! Laugh Bird Head!
Other paw then other claw stretch Bird Head leg for. Cut leg back is. Blood sand in and pool like water dark. Now ground on Bird Head is. Beak hit strong rock on rock off.
Stripe flash through sky rise. Zenith sun not but Tiger Head. See red eyes in. Night early come and pain back is.
Fly feathers.
When wake Bird Head hot sun not. Night for real come and not others many stay.
Squonk Head even not.
Feathers ground cover around all. Wet and dead. Pain back is many. On fingers blood sticky come. Hiss Bird Head hurt in dirt. Up stand not. Pain leg stay. Crawl I water spring expects not but hopes.
Water spring dark is. Dirt from drink others many. Only still puddle tiny so walk on others many. Days past remembers I after fall Squonk Head challenger. Changed all now.
Loser Bird Head and now Tiger Head top man is. Lion Head bestest call. First drink Tiger Head.
Down beak to water dirt is I. Better nothing than. Taste sick is, but need I. All others many walk on. Night dark is.
Last drink Bird Head.
JOHN KAIINE
John Kaiine is a writer, artist, photographer and lives with his wife Tanith Lee and two black-and-white cats in a house in an English sea-side town.
A mouthful of wolf. No cure. No, what you call “antidote.” No hand can halt the moon. You see, I am the last. Only I survive. Feathers, fur, claws, beak, talon, heat. The warmth of winged bodies—Inside. Burial. Hands. Old women’s blue rinsed hair, matted, tangled. Beneath. My mother was never interested in me, for I was his son. A man who is shadow can cast no shadow. Walk into light. Not there. A man made of shadow has his kingdom in darkness. Nightmare. Nightman. A matte black knife of my own making: Me. Champion of little words. Comic book myth. Masks and winged feet, muscle and magic hammers–always a man, some hero to save me, carry me off, fly me through the Steve Ditko skyline and then what? How do I repay my thanks? Last drink. Marvel, Atlas, D.C. Aliens, spies, superpowers. Nick Fury, Hawkman. Bird-Head. Last. Drink. I’m so sorry. I never learnt to pray. I slit my wrists but forgot they were the hands of a clock. Love time no longer. Hourglass. Hourglass. Burnt and brown. A child’s castle built with the sands of time. Gulls inhabit, stripping bare. Fish head. Feed. Eat. Candy cotton in the amusement arcade. Feast on the flesh. Kentucky fried sacrificial Chicken. Drink. Ale from the uncorked bottle and scrawl these words, black as hero’s ink, loud as KAPOW!—These child’s words fingered into condensation on a black toilet bowl–“Help me”–Last drink. Bird Head. Cork the bottle and cast to sea. And drowning hands of sea pass it on, wave after wave, never waved me goodbye without laughing. And the bottle is found, beneath a bridge, beneath a pier, the bottle is found and put with
all the others, unopened, hundreds, thousands, green glass, grey glass, ten thousand different “Help me’s.” Twenty thousand languages. Clay in the mouth. Blood on the wedding dress. The crisped Sienna crust of a napalmed hand. Help me. Last drink. Last orders. Lights out. Walk the streets of self. Lost the map. Beneath a bridge, beneath a pier, the words unwritten, sprayed on iron, girders and stone. Nearly there. And there I am. Old shadow boy, mirrored in the sea. Moon. Son. “I’m sorry.” I bit the bullet and liked the taste. Silver bullets. Smaller. Smaller. Darker and darker. Last. Drink. Bird.
Head
HENRY KAISER
Henry Kaiser is a Guitarist, Filmmaker and Antarctic Research Diver.
There is a bridge here in McMurdo Station, Antarctica. A bridge that Mattracks, Hagglunds, Pisten Bullys and other tracked vehicles use to cross over a particularly large set of pipes. Seemingly unbeknownst to The National Science Foundation, who run the human activities in this part of Antarctica, there is a plaque mounted on the bridge that reads, “Clusterfuck Bridge Summer 1987-1988.” There must be an interesting polar narrative about the construction of this crossing, but it’s never been related to me. That the powers-that-be here have never noticed this peculiar monument and removed the plaque always restores this Antarctic diver’s faith in the chaotic. Walking down to the dive locker today, the Austral sun had dropped below the mountains of the Royal Society Range; the sky stained orange, purple, and gold; the peaks looking more regal than usual. Pausing on the bridge to make sure that the plaque was still in-place, I heard someone chanting something very softly beneath the bridge. The voice had the rhythm of a Buddhist mantra, repeated over and over again. But I could not quite make out the sense of the words. So I climbed down under the bridge to investigate.
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