WTF is this? Weird Original Fiction. Oh. *backs off cautiously*
With great grovelling whining whinging sobbing> apologies to G.G.Marquez, I wrote magical realism. Sort of. I know, I know, I KNOW.
The Secret History of the Lumiere Brothers, by Greta. June 2008.
There’s a small town built in squares. There’s a cathedral in the middle. Inside, an old bearded white man conceives God as an old bearded white man. God is actually the small girl playing with beads on the wide steps, God is the factory foreman with burn marks on his forearms, God is the blind kitten about to run under the tyres of a 1989 Honda Civic. The cathedral is made of paper. One day the old man drops a match when lighting the candles. The fire spreads through the city. God is killed, and God is killed and God is killed. The old man, too, although no one notices, his bones hidden in the ashes like foil-wrapped potatoes.
At night the moon shines down with a smiling face, and two men in an attic experiment with machines that will capture the moon for them, painting endless pictures moving in endless loops. It could really make some money, this thing. They’re brothers. Their mother is ailing of a wasting disease, coughing the colour from her face into a white lace handkerchief. The elder brother dreams of medicines, surgery. The younger dreams of escape, the South, the sun, dark haired strangers, freedom. It is his most guilty secret.
In the flat below: a girl, white as the empty parchment in front of her, smooth as an egg. She has hollow bones. She is as white as the tip of her quill, made from the clipped flight feathers of her own wings. She can’t fly without them, and she can’t yet write, but she is hopeful nonetheless of a happy ending. She will write a story about the sea, and everyone who reads it will think of her, and their thoughts will lift her up. And anyway, her wings might grow back. She has heard stories.
When she imagines the sea, it’s as plain and artificial as the blue part of a map, bordered by countries in pink and green, textured with wavy ripple lines and a whimsical line-drawing of a sailing ship. In reality, no ships have used sails for hundreds of years, and the sea is never blue. The lines between countries are constantly coloured over by generals and politicians, which proves something about something. There’s a metaphor there that she doesn’t care to unwrap, certainly. It’s not that kind of story.
The sea is a thousand miles wide and a thousand miles deep.
The sea smells like fish and vinegar and old paper soaked in hot grease.
This is the story:
Overlooking the sea is a city built in squares. There’s a burnt church, an attic, and the greatest authoress that ever lived, hidden with a nest of dictionaries, a swarm of thesauruses, three pencils, an eraser, and a stapler arranged at right angles. One evening, she leaves her pens and paper and limps down her staircase and into the streets. She walks left and then right and then left again, zigzagging through the grid. She finds a small charred bead, threading it on a leather thong around her neck. The moon frowns down, pensive, and she walks and walks until she stands at the edge of the sea. The sea curls around her feet, and her ankles, and her knees. She cannot fly.
There are not enough words in this world or any other to describe it, the cold and hungry sea, the long shadows across the moonlit streets in a city where God no longer lives, where a film-maker dreams of tan shoulder and elegant wrist, where the sea-breeze stirs salty ash into the air.
This girl walks into the tide until the water covers her shoulders, and the waves slap at her face, and the currents tug at her feet. Her face is wet with salt. She thinks: if this were a poem, I’d take three more steps, and let the water close above me. If this were a poem, the film-maker would chance upon me as he walked along the beach, dreaming of the sunrise and pull me from my doom.
She turns and walks ashore. The ashes in the air float and stick to her wet skin. Before she is home again, she is completely grey, camouflaged against the concrete office windows, invisible in the lightening city. The clusters of workers smoking cigarettes in the wind-shadow of the high-rises ignore her.
There are still no words.
She leaves grey fingerprints on her quill as above, the film-maker’s brother blows a fuse which robs half the city of light. There are three car-wrecks as the traffic-lights fail on the squared off streets, and in the hospital, surgeons fail to deliver a baby when their instruments cease to function. The infant dies: the mother does not. For the brothers, it is a tremendous breakthrough, and six months later they sell their machine for a thousand dollars, for antibiotics and a dream of the South.
Six months later still the authoress opens her window in the despair of three in the morning and the moon watches as she dives. Falling feels like flying: the trick is to keep your eyes screwed tightly shut.
The sun comes up on the paper sea, and somewhere not so far away the maplines blur again.
---end---
The Secret History of the Lumiere Brothers, by Greta. June 2008.
There’s a small town built in squares. There’s a cathedral in the middle. Inside, an old bearded white man conceives God as an old bearded white man. God is actually the small girl playing with beads on the wide steps, God is the factory foreman with burn marks on his forearms, God is the blind kitten about to run under the tyres of a 1989 Honda Civic. The cathedral is made of paper. One day the old man drops a match when lighting the candles. The fire spreads through the city. God is killed, and God is killed and God is killed. The old man, too, although no one notices, his bones hidden in the ashes like foil-wrapped potatoes.
At night the moon shines down with a smiling face, and two men in an attic experiment with machines that will capture the moon for them, painting endless pictures moving in endless loops. It could really make some money, this thing. They’re brothers. Their mother is ailing of a wasting disease, coughing the colour from her face into a white lace handkerchief. The elder brother dreams of medicines, surgery. The younger dreams of escape, the South, the sun, dark haired strangers, freedom. It is his most guilty secret.
In the flat below: a girl, white as the empty parchment in front of her, smooth as an egg. She has hollow bones. She is as white as the tip of her quill, made from the clipped flight feathers of her own wings. She can’t fly without them, and she can’t yet write, but she is hopeful nonetheless of a happy ending. She will write a story about the sea, and everyone who reads it will think of her, and their thoughts will lift her up. And anyway, her wings might grow back. She has heard stories.
When she imagines the sea, it’s as plain and artificial as the blue part of a map, bordered by countries in pink and green, textured with wavy ripple lines and a whimsical line-drawing of a sailing ship. In reality, no ships have used sails for hundreds of years, and the sea is never blue. The lines between countries are constantly coloured over by generals and politicians, which proves something about something. There’s a metaphor there that she doesn’t care to unwrap, certainly. It’s not that kind of story.
The sea is a thousand miles wide and a thousand miles deep.
The sea smells like fish and vinegar and old paper soaked in hot grease.
This is the story:
Overlooking the sea is a city built in squares. There’s a burnt church, an attic, and the greatest authoress that ever lived, hidden with a nest of dictionaries, a swarm of thesauruses, three pencils, an eraser, and a stapler arranged at right angles. One evening, she leaves her pens and paper and limps down her staircase and into the streets. She walks left and then right and then left again, zigzagging through the grid. She finds a small charred bead, threading it on a leather thong around her neck. The moon frowns down, pensive, and she walks and walks until she stands at the edge of the sea. The sea curls around her feet, and her ankles, and her knees. She cannot fly.
There are not enough words in this world or any other to describe it, the cold and hungry sea, the long shadows across the moonlit streets in a city where God no longer lives, where a film-maker dreams of tan shoulder and elegant wrist, where the sea-breeze stirs salty ash into the air.
This girl walks into the tide until the water covers her shoulders, and the waves slap at her face, and the currents tug at her feet. Her face is wet with salt. She thinks: if this were a poem, I’d take three more steps, and let the water close above me. If this were a poem, the film-maker would chance upon me as he walked along the beach, dreaming of the sunrise and pull me from my doom.
She turns and walks ashore. The ashes in the air float and stick to her wet skin. Before she is home again, she is completely grey, camouflaged against the concrete office windows, invisible in the lightening city. The clusters of workers smoking cigarettes in the wind-shadow of the high-rises ignore her.
There are still no words.
She leaves grey fingerprints on her quill as above, the film-maker’s brother blows a fuse which robs half the city of light. There are three car-wrecks as the traffic-lights fail on the squared off streets, and in the hospital, surgeons fail to deliver a baby when their instruments cease to function. The infant dies: the mother does not. For the brothers, it is a tremendous breakthrough, and six months later they sell their machine for a thousand dollars, for antibiotics and a dream of the South.
Six months later still the authoress opens her window in the despair of three in the morning and the moon watches as she dives. Falling feels like flying: the trick is to keep your eyes screwed tightly shut.
The sun comes up on the paper sea, and somewhere not so far away the maplines blur again.
---end---