The Past Is Red

by Catherynne M. Valente

Maruchan is the only thing that loves me back, but he’s my twin, so it doesn’t really count. We couldn’t stop loving each other any more than the sea could stop being so greedy and give us back China or drive time radio or polar bears.

I can fish like I’ve got bait for a heart

once I found a ruby ring and a New Mexico license plate inside a bluefin tuna.

Who liked it hot and hated snow? The Fuckwits did! The Fuckwits did! Who ate up every thing that grows? The Fuckwits did! The Fuckwits did! Who drowned the world in oceans blue? The Fuckwits did! The Fuckwits did! Who took the land from me and you? The Fuckwits did, we know it’s true! Are YOU Fuckwits, children dear? We’re GARBAGETOWNERS, free and clear! But who made the garbage, rich and rank? The Fuckwits did, and we give thanks.

“Orchid, what do you want to be when you grow up?” I whispered to it. In real life, it didn’t say anything back. It just fluttered a little in the moonlight and the sea wind. But when I got around to dreaming, I dreamed about the orchid, and it said: a farm.

St. Oscar, keep your mighty lid closed over me. Look grouchily but kindly upon me and protect me as I travel through the infinite trashcan of your world. Show me the beautiful usefulness of your Blessed Rubbish. Let me not be Taken Out before I find my destiny.

Grape Crush, my gannet bird, never worries about silly things like facial wounds. He just brings me fish and pretty rocks. When I found him, he had a plastic six-pack round his neck with one can still stuck in the thing, dragging along behind him like a ball and chain.

Goodnight Moon kissed me before I left. He still had his gas mask on, so mainly our breathing hoses wound around each other like gentle elephants, but I still call it a kiss. He smelled like scorched ozone and metal and paraffin and hope.

you can catch happiness like a plague.

“What do you want to be when you grow up, Maruchan?” I said to my twin in the dark the night before we set off to see what was better than God. Maruchan’s eyes gleamed with the Christmas thrill of it all. “Brighton Pier,” he whispered. “Me, too,” I sighed, and we both dreamed we were beautiful Fuckwits running through a forest of real pines, laughing and stopping to eat apples and running again, and only right before we woke up did we notice that something was chasing us, something huge and electric and bound for London-town.

music so thick and good you could eat it out of the air.

Memory-petrol. Which is all petroleum ever was, when you think about it. A planet’s memories of when it was young, burned up to keep warm and keep going.

THERE’S ONLY A coupla reasons to get married in Garbagetown and love isn’t one of them. If it was just about love, why bother? For the tax benefits? For inheritance? So you’ve all got the same last name? So you can go to heaven because God is just a real hardass about having a giant party and a bit of jewelry before you get down to screwing? Who cares? That’s Fuckwit talk. Nasty little hoarders.

I’d never seen a tiger, but it’s very hard to argue with things they tell you in school, since they are big and you are small.

All seagulls are dead-eyed psychos. If the whole Fuckwit culture was a bird, it would be a seagull. Ravenous, stupid, vicious, not a single shit given, nice feathers.

Anarchy can be so cozy, if you bring enough pillows.

“Sometimes I dream about all the old countries sleeping down under the sea,” Red confided to me. “England and France and Portugal and Poland. All their kings and queens weighed down by emeralds and saltwater in the dark with the squid. All those bones. All those fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. And in my dream, if the fathers and mothers loved their sons and daughters and sang to them in their cradles, they made a good country, and if they didn’t, they made a tyranny, so whether existence is a bloodbath or a bubble bath could hinge on whether a little child got kissed good night with a story and a glass of water or sent to bed without snuggles or a snack or a cohesive philosophy of justice.”

“Yes, but why have a king at all?” “Someone has to make the rules, Tetley.” “Do they, though? They’re all dead, so none of their rules kissed them good night with a story or whatever you were going on about just then. Seems like someone should have thought of a rule that goes Do Not Fuck Your Only Planet to Death Under Any Circumstances. Seems like that should have been Rule Number One.”

always thought they were just full to the brim with the kind of miserable, mean, sour stupid that goes bad inside of you and ferments and turns into a liquor you slowly get drunker and drunker on for the rest of your life until you just keel over dead from it all.

I could still see Venus going on all vain and perfect even with the sun turned up, thinking it could ever be bright enough to compete.

She asked me what I read instead of what I am trying to decide, because sometimes Big Red Mars is not very good at thinking about people who are not Big Red Mars. Sometimes Mister is better at it than her, and by sometimes I mean almost all the time. Maybe it’s something to do with everything attached to the word October. “Oh, just Fuckwit things,” I answer.

is my experience that you learn everything in this world out of order. You only know what you needed to know after it’s already done getting ruined all over you.

the kind of hope I have isn’t just greed going by its maiden name. The kind of hope I have doesn’t begin and end with demanding everything go back to the way it was when it can’t, it can’t ever, that’s not how time works, and it’s not how oceans work, either. Nothing you love comes back.

Hope is greed’s maiden name

“It’ll run out eventually, though, won’t it?” I said gently. “You can’t ever make any more. When it’s gone, it’s gone. None left for anyone.” “Eventually. But not soon.” “That’s what the Fuckwits put on their graves, you know.”