Wren Handman's Blog, page 15

The Experiment

I whimper, pull the sleeping bag tighter over my head. His arms around me are strong, secure, but nothing feels safe when the world beyond our green canvas tent is exploding in light, sound, and heat. The familiar warmth of down and the soft rasp of microfiber against my cheek are an odd comfort when I know, if I open my eyes, there will be nothing familiar left. Gradually the sounds subside; the heat fades; but I remain motionless, barely letting my chest rise and fall.

“You have to open your eyes,” he whispers, though his grip does not slacken.

“Or maybe the world is immaterial. Maybe it doesn’t exist without being perceived,” I argue, “and if we stay here, with our eyes closed – we won’t have done this.”

“Mine are already open,” he admits, and I wince. How could we have been so naive – how could we have ignored the signs? We were so close to something, so near to touching greatness…. Good God. What have we done?

“What does it look like?” I beg. He lets me go; I can hear motion, imagine he’s waving a hand in front of his face. I am ashamed that I’m still hiding. I’m a scientist, damn it! I should be staring at the world with eyes wide open, drinking in the consequences of my actions, observing the new world order. Instead I tug the sleeping bag more firmly over my head. Let them be alive… let the world still be alive…

I hear him stand, cautiously open the zipper of the tent. A wave of icy air hits the top of my head, the only unprotected bit of me. I imagine the toxins in the air, the tiny chemical particles… but it’s not like the tent was air-tight. We’ve already been exposed; it’s much too late for us, here at ground zero. In my head I track weather patterns, cloud disbursement. I wonder how long it will take before the world is covered… Days? Weeks? I wonder if they’ll come for us. What the punishment will be.

Finally my legs start to cramp and I know I can’t lie here any longer. I let go the sleeping bag, stagger to my feet. Some twisted impulse makes me grope for the tent-flap in the dark, staring at nothing but the insides of my eyelids until I stand, take a step onto the grass outside… and open my eyes.

It’s just after noon. The sky is black; not like midnight, but a true dark, with hints of brown instead of blue in the inky air. The white birch forest glows in the shadows; dark blues and muddy purples, almost phosphorescent. They seem to give off a subtle light, and I see they aren’t the only things.

David is glowing – so bright that at first he seems like nothing but a splash of colour, a spill of paint on the perfect velvet background. He is a shifting blend of purple, fading to light pink or dark mauve, pulsing with his heartbeat.

In the trees I see similar pools of light, which resolve into birds, and flies turned into fireflies by the strange chemical reaction.

“Oh brave new world,” David quotes quietly, marvelling at my luminescent skin. Everything is oddly two-dimensional, the air thick and black but the glow of other objects cutting through, so they stand out. I wave an arm through the air, experimentally, marvelling at my soft blue skin.

“We are so screwed.”

 

Image courtesy of April Milne. April is a fantastic illustrator and fine artist. See her work at her website, or check her out on Our Contributors Page.

The Fable of the Bear

My mother used to tell me the fable of the mother bear and its cub. The story is a simple one – a mother bear tells its child that it is time to sleep for the winter, but the little cub doesn’t understand the wisdom of its mother; it doesn’t feel sleep weigh heavy on its bones. It waits until its mother grows drowsy, then creeps from the safety of the den, out into the white winter world. It has never seen such glittering splendour; amazed, it romps and plays, laughs and burrows in fleecy frozen drifts.

But soon, the cub grows hungry, and it finds the branches are bare. Soon, the cub grows thirsty, and it finds the streams are frozen. Soon, the cub grows tired, and it finds the path back home is lost, obscured by freshly fallen snow. Afraid and alone, the cub tilts its head to the sky and wails a lonesome song.

This is the point where the story changes, to suit my mother’s mood. Have I stayed out too late, riding in the backseat of a friend of a friend, lipstick smeared and shirt askew when I arrive at my doorstep? Then the cub falls in with a wolfpack, thinking it has found protection from the threat; but instead the wolves are the threat, and when the cub leads them back to its den in the spring, the wolves eat both mother and child.

Have I come to her, tears in my eyes, because someone wrote slurs on my locker, and the rumours in the changeroom are the kind of things you laugh off, but never really lose the scars of? Then the wailing cub sees a shadow fall across it; panicked it tries to run, but it trips and catches its leg in a crevasse; looks up, terrified, to find… that the shadow is its mother, come to rescue her errant child.

Have I broken my leg playing chicken on the tracks by my best friend’s house, even though I’ve been warned that some day I’m going to break my neck? Then the cub spends the winter lost and alone, growing ever sicker, ever weaker; but when the snows finally melt, and the path back to the cave becomes clear, the cub is fed mashed berries by its mother, who shakes her head and says “Now you know why we hibernate.”

Some day, when I am a mother, I will tell the table of the mother bear and its cub. And when the cub is afraid and alone, head tilted in a lonesome wail, the mother will appear from the shadows. “I was here all along,” it will say, “just in case you faltered.” The cub will ask, “But why didn’t you stop me?” and the mother bear will reply, “Adventures and mistakes are part of life, my love. I’m not here to stop you from having them – only to make sure that they aren’t your last.”

Picture by: Emily Lampson. Emily is a Canadian illustrator and fine artist. Check our her work at EmilyLampson.com.

The Return

You may have noticed there was no Lucid Dreaming post this week – that is because the novel undertaking is completed (successfully), so I have taken this weekend off to build up a little bit of a backlog, and Lucid Dreaming will be back in full force this weekend.

Orange Blossoms

This poem was originally published in an anthology called Revolution of the Undertones, by Scrap Paper Press. It’s no longer available to buy, so here it is for you on this week’s edition of my old publications!

Orange Blossoms

Orange blossoms fill the tree

where I used to play.

I’d swing

and reach to touch the sky,

cry out the names of clouds

And never fear to live!

The ringing laughter I used to make

Echoes

out from the long abandoned past.

never heard in this place,

anymore. Not anymore.

For the orange blossoms fill it now;

This tree is theirs.

the only sign

of it’s once and ne’er more

Queen,

the frayed rope of that old

board swing,

Too high in the branches

to ever be removed.

Be Still

Original published in Crow Toes Quarterly, a now defunct magazine.

Once upon a time, in a small house on a quiet street, with a big oak tree and robin’s-egg-blue shutters, there lived a little girl. She was no more than ten and no less than five, and she loved her mother and her aunt and her grandmother, and they all lived together in the small house with the robin’s-egg-blue shutters.

The little girl loved to dance and she loved to sing and she loved to play, but most of all she loved to run and she loved to climb. She knew every branch of her old oak tree, and made friends with every leaf and twig.

She would sit with her mother as her mother made the morning meal, but soon her legs would itch and twitch to run, run, run. “Be still,” her mother would say, and she would try, but soon the oak would call and off she would go, running through the house and out the door and up, up, up that big tall trunk.

She would lie with her aunt and listen to stories, but soon her fingers would clamber and clench to be off and climb, climb, climb. “Be still,” her aunt would chide her, and she would try, but soon the sky would whisper and off she would go, jumping from the couch and bounding down the steps and up, up, up that big tall trunk.

She would stand as her grandmother brushed her soft curls, but soon her soul would ache and call to go up, up, up. “Be still,” her grandmother would warn her, and she would try, but soon the world would beckon and off she would go, twisting from between her grandmother’s fingers and stealing out of the house and up, up, up that big tall trunk.

One night, when the moon was full and the stars were blinking in a black blanket of night, the little girl heard a sound from her old oak tree. In bed she lay, sleep dripping from her mind like cobwebs, and again she heard the sound. “Be still,” she heard her mother’s voice say, but instead she went, out of her room and down the stairs to the locked front door. She opened it and peered outside. “Be still,” she heard her aunt’s voice chide, but instead she went, out the door and into the dark where shapes were stirring. At the end of her driveway with the oak above her head, she looked down her quiet street and saw a sight that stole her breath. A hunt. Men whose beauty struck her heart like ice, and women with eyes of diamond and hair of waterfalls. Horses made from shadow and moonlight, fairy servants blinking like fireflies in the dark. They saw her. “Be still,” she heard her grandmother’s voice warn, but instead she ran. Ran to her old oak tree and up, up, up that big tall trunk.

She did not run fast enough, climb high enough. With a twist and a snap of their fingers they plucked her from the oak’s safe grip, and as she watched they wove leaves and twigs, made branches shape and change until a girl stood before her. A little girl, no more than ten and no less than five. “Be still,” the Hunt whispered to the little thing of twigs and branches, and then they took the little girl, into the blanket of stars and past the Hedge that separates the worlds.

In a small house, on a quiet street, with a big oak tree and robin’s-egg-blue shutters, there lives a little girl. She is no more than ten and no less than five, and she loves her mother and her aunt and her grandmother, and they all live together in the small house with the robin’s-egg-blue shutters. While her mother makes the morning meal, she is still. While her aunt tells her stories, she still. While her grandmother brushes her soft curls, she is still. But sometimes, instead of hairs caught in the spines of the hairbrush, her grandmother finds twigs and leaves.

A Brief Hiatus

Hello my loyal follows. How quiet you are! You would have made excellent children in the 1800s. But I digress.

As part of a novel contest which I intended to enter, got distracted, and decided to enter anyway, I am writing a large amount in a very short amount of time. As such, I do not have the time to write Lucid Dreaming for the month of September.

But I can’t bear the thought of leaving you all – and, more likely, I think you will get distracted and walk away.

So, for September, I am going to post stories of mine which have been published at one time or another, and whose copyright has (hopefully!) reverted back to me. I will link these with some pictures I’ve taken over the years. I will not call these pictures… good.. but they will be thematically appropriate, and I don’t want to waste the lovely art of my beautiful contributors on republications.

I hope you enjoy these stories; some of which you may have read, some of which will hopefully be new to you.

-Your Author

Annalee Cott

Annalee Cott sometimes forgets to breathe.

From a distance the city looks so beautiful. She can sit in the park with the sun freckling her shoulders and white perfect clouds rolling occasionally across its surface, their shade the closest to a lover’s gentle caress she has ever known, and she can appreciate the beauty of the city. Its towers of glass reflect the sun and seem a part of it, stretching into the sky, beautiful pathways to their perfect, shining world. A place with no disease, with the numbing equality of non-divergence that has its own kind of crushing beauty, the safety of the cog in the machine, that Neolithic elegance of inevitability. Annalee Cott can appreciate that as she worms her toes into the deep emerald grass and breathes air laced with salt spray.

But the buildings cast shadows.

Great pools of darkness that overwhelm the people, invisible from this distance, that she knows must be walking their preset paths through the concrete blasted wasteland beneath the all-seeing eyes above. When she is there, among them, the world is not Utopic. The shadows breed dirt, washed off the shining buildings above by pressure washers and window washers, must keep the monoliths perfect, can’t have a monument to idealistic capitalism with hints of the rotten fruit beneath. She stands sometimes weighed down under the bulk of invisibility and it isn’t so much that she cannot breathe as that she forgets. It seems every step she can and must take has been preordained, that the world is so much larger and so impossible and she has such a tiny place in it that nothing she does matters; that she will move inevitably through this molasses and there is no reason to lift a hand against it.

And then her lungs burn, and she remembers. No one keeps her breathing but herself. And if she is in charge of this most basic aspect of her own life, how many other responsibilities does she clutch in her unknowing hands? How much change could this one cog create if it fell out of line?

And then she smiles.

And Annalee Cott takes a deep breath in.

 

Image courtesy of Hayley Mechelle Bouchard. Her work can be found at Little Cat Photography, with more information about Hayley on Our Contributors page.

The Six-Penny Jazz

In the six-penny den where the gamblers

drink

and rub gold coins between shaking fingers they  pretend is just a way to hide their tell by using one that everyone can see and know,

skeletons

play a deep dark jazz they call Fontaine Noir, because everyone knows French adds an aura of mystery, foreign but still totally understood, the fake thrill of a rollercoaster with the guardrails in place. Skeleton hands play skeleton tunes that the ear can’t hear but the

heart

feels, shivers in the bottom of its cups and puts another

coin

on the table. Gambling is just a way of

dying

slowly, with the ups and downs they can’t handle from life, but in this gritty salon with the other empty men they have run so far there’s nowhere left to go, and they all know it and there’s a certain

comfort

in the knowledge that all those rushes of hope won’t ever really get you anywhere, but you feel them anyhow and it gives you a reason to keep on playing, so they spread the cards and roll the dice and the music eats away at the little voice inside that whispers

‘Run’

So they don’t. In the six-penny den where the gamblers

drink

and skeletons play Fontaine Noir there’s an empty chair, room for one

more.

Image courtesy of Kieran Macanulty. Check out Kieran’s website, Purple Sock Studios, or read more about him on Our Contributors Page.

Once Upon My Fairy Godmother

You’d think having a fairy godmother would be great. Everyone loves the scene where the fairy godmother takes a mouse and turns it into a man for an evening; or that bit where she turns a puppet into a real boy. No one talks about the other scenes. The one where she turns a man into a mouse for the evening, so your tea party can have a dormouse. Or when she turns your next door neighbour into a puppet because you mentioned you wanted one for your birthday.

Fairies are complicated creatures. In their hearts they want what’s best for their charges; but the rest of the world is nothing but scenery, vaguely understood and rarely considered. They’re a lot like a child in that way, which is why they so easily understand the whims and wishes of their chosen children. But as you grow up, and they don’t, you start to understand how terrifyingly absent morality is from their understanding of the world. And the fairytale turns sour.

When I was ten my fairy godmother gave me the voice of an angel for my birthday. Everyone had to obey my commands – even when I didn’t mean them. My sister and I got into a fight, and I told her to go and jump off a cliff. She broke a leg, an arm, and three ribs. I told her it was a metaphor and I hadn’t meant her to actually do it, but she was only seven and didn’t understand metaphors, and really neither did I. I asked my fairy godmother to take it back, and she did; but she was so offended she wouldn’t speak to me for seven months, so she wasn’t there when my mother died and my father remarried the Ugly Stepmother. Of course, I suppose every fairytale has to have a Stepmother, so she might not have stopped it even if she could have. And it turns out I like Anise – even if her daughter does constantly smell of baby powder. She’s a kind woman, and she makes me soup when I feel sick.

On my eleventh birthday my fairy godmother gave me a castle. It was still full of all the people, and despite how much my father insisted that we had nothing to do with it appearing in our yard and my face replacing the princess’ on all the tapestries, they still put him in jail for treason. We had to break him out and flee the country.

I was hoping our change of locale would distract my fairy godmother; maybe she wouldn’t find us here? But there was no such luck. A few weeks later she showed up to supper with a handful of strawberries that looked delicious but tasted like tears; we all hid them in our napkins and pretended we had scarfed them down. I’m still not sure what they were.

This year, a few weeks before my birthday, my fairy godmother noticed I was putting my old dollhouse into a box. It was beautiful – my mother made it for me when I was little, but I hadn’t played with it in years, and there was a little girl down the road whose mother had passed away last week. I had decided to give it to her, in the hopes that it might bring her the same comfort it brought me. My godmother saw what I was doing and asked why; when I explained, she scoffed “You haven’t outgrown the toy! You just need a better one!” I assured her quickly I didn’t, but I could see it was no good.

And sure enough, my birthday morning, I awoke to the sound of tiny screams and a child crying. I threw myself out of bed and there, on the floor, was a little village of houses. There were seven in all, each one a brilliant water-colour pastel: green and red, blue and brown, with tiny windows and perfect doors. They looked like real houses shrunk down to miniature – which, of course, they were. And when I opened the front door, I saw to my horror a perfect little interior, full of tiny beds, and tiny fruit, and tiny people who stared up at me in horror. The child’s crying hiccupped and stopped, and we stared at each other across the vast void.

“Oh God,” I said. “Not again.”

 

 

Image courtesy of April Milne. April is a fantastic illustrator and fine artist. See her work at her website, or check her out on Our Contributors Page.

The Day Felix Killed Annette

The day that Felix killed Annette was the day I lost faith that everything happens for a reason.

Mine has been an existence hard for those looking in to understand. Many people would consider it solitary, but I know better; I have had my friends, have loved and been loved with an unconditional peace that you would be unable to comprehend. I have lived not for myself, but as a caretaker to my charges. Those friends were the most important part of my life, until the day Felix killed Annette, and everything changed.

People are transitory. They mean well, intend on never leaving, but we are not in control of our own destinies, and it is only a matter of time before fate takes them. My mother went when I was seven. She told me she would always be with me, but of course that was only what we say to comfort crying children. She was not there. My father and brother left during the second Great War; one to the killing fields, the other to a world of his own, where fathers do not bury their golden children.

I might have been lonely, but I had my friends, the family I accrued and collected. They brought me comfort in the simple simpering heat of my adolescence, gave my life purpose through the childless, nurturing years of my adulthood. When George Feallow kissed me under a willow tree they cheered my luck, and when he left me for a pretty girl in yellow lace they never once asked me what else I had expected. It’s true they couldn’t pick me up at the hospital when I had my eye surgery, or hold my hand when the doctor told me it was shingles. But nor did they judge my tears, and their presence was the only salve my wounds every needed.

I met Annette in a curio shop just off the main road on a rainy day in March. I had no intention of finding anyone new for the apartment; I had just rescued Lulu, a darling china ballerina, from a scrap bin, and she was still finding her place. It doesn’t do to introduce too many new friends at once; the rest have their feelings hurt. I only ducked in to save my paperback from the deluge. But as soon as I saw her I knew she was a kindred spirit. One delicate pink ear peeked out of her straw bonnet, and in her hands she held a bouquet of roses. Her smile was inviting, and when I picked her up I heard her voice, clear as a summer day, and knew we would be fast friends.

Felix was a harder case. I caught him the alley, fighting with Ms. Champagne. He had a notch out of one black ear, like a cartoon kitty, and his bright green eyes were wary. Instead of shooing him away I brought him food in a little blue dish. It took three weeks before he would come into the apartment, and another year before he would stay for any length of time. He’s gotten a nasty scratch in another fight, a lighting bolt where hair wouldn’t grow from his back paw up his stomach. Once he was brushed and well-fed he looked like a different creature, but he never lost the wariness in his eyes.

I was trying to take a picture of him. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe it was too soon. He was lying in the sun with one paw curled around Molly, my hand-made leather horse, and it was such a picture. I snuck in close and snapped a few shots, but there was a spot of shadow on his nose that I wanted to clear up. So I turned on the flash.

He bolted. Ran for the window but it was closed, so he careened past on the windowsill, knocking everyone off their perch. I had set them all up to get some sun. A few fell on their sides, but Annette and Clarence tumbled to the ground. Clarence broke an arm, but Annette… Annette… shattered.

Felix doesn’t even seem to care. He’s sunning on the kitchen table like he was just a naught boy, like he ate my plants and threw up on the carpet in the den. He doesn’t seem to know he killed her, and I… It is my fault, isn’t it. I have made people of my friends. And people are transitory. They mean well. But it is only a matter of time…

Image courtesy of Hayley Mechelle Bouchard. Her work can be found at Little Cat Photography, with more information about Hayley on Our Contributors page.