Rustem

This was supposed to be a really psychadelic, wordy thing, like a record of an acid trip. I wanted it to be set in a sort of alternate universe Appalachia, and I intended to keep the Mossman-ish descriptions in the first two paragraphs up for the entire thing.

But I stalled. I got to the liquor's effect too quickly, and no matter how many times I go back over it, I cant seem to take my time with it.

Think I should keep on this one, or let it go? I really love surrealist stuff like this, trippy but easy to understand... But I didnt think it would be this hard to create a plot around the images I wanted to convey. I guess thats the real problem, is that I dont have a story in mind, just a begining and some pictures in my head.


The night was warm, and the thick, black smell of dirt and wet bark was in everything. Every step was a new breath of crushed, rotting leaves, broken twigs of flower blood. They shifted and swooped through the dark wood, downhill, dodging spiked locust trunks and grapevines, thick ropes of wood like ink running from the sky. Watered leaves brushed and caressed their faces, their bare arms, wetting their eyes, their hair. Stinging nettles swung into their hands, leaving short lived welts of insane, caterpillar hair itching.

The trees thinned, turned from oak and maple into cottonwood, and the nettles became reeds in mud, like magic. They were close to the river, a black ribbon of skittered moonlight and tar, water vapor boiling off of it into the valley. Air was fog, fog was breath, and each lungful tasted like riverwater. The dock was like a mistake of the shore, a square bit of non-light in the bending, bone colored moon. A man stooped, tying his boat, a new load of strange things, boxes of straw and secrets, bottles of murky liquor, vials of iron dust. He heard them, even though they whispered through the reeds like galloping snakes, quiet as greyhounds with slit vocal cords.

“Hasau lin naj, gor-i!”, he said.

“Hello, Arthur,” the boy said, breathing out the river, clouds of double thick air puffing from his mouth. He stepped onto the first, soaked plank of the dock, reaching for his sister’s hand. Her hand was soft, wet with the wood’s water.

“Howdy,” she gasped. The run had taken her wind.

“What can I do for the Bonecutter kids, on a pretty night?” Arthur said, switching to his accented English. As they approached, they could smell the places he had been, opium smoke and sweet, roasting meat. Pork, maybe.

“We were figurin on seein what you got tonight,” Lemmy said. His sister nodded, lighting a cigarette. Grey smoke, almost solid in the mist, streamed from her nostrils. She ran her brown hands through her curly hair, trying to comb out snapped bits of twig and loose petals.

The dock creaked as the boatman shifted from one foot to the other. He looked upstream, as if there might be anyone around. Nothing. He looked downstream. The whole world was night, black leaves on still trees, fog and the sound of insects.

“A new thing, a new liquor. Yes?” Arthur said, his eyes dancing with conspiracy and sin. His smile was relaxed, friendly.

“Yes. Yes, lets try it, anything once,” Minerva said, grasping her brother’s wrist. The hint of eagerness was almost hidden in the music of her voice. She sounded like a scared whipoorwill, a bird of dusk and dawn.

Lemmy stood, deciding. A new experience was always tops on Minerva’s list, the best thing in the world. She lived for tomorrow. Not for something else, but just something to experience. He played the skeptic, if just for show.

“Whats it do? Whats the feel?”

“Well, I havent tried it. But the men, the makers, say its like being eaten by clouds, drowned in flames,” the boatman said, reaching down into the darkness beneath them. His hand came up with a bottle, a plain wine bottle, the barest glimmer of green on black.

Minerva’s smoke twirled on his shoulders, and became a wreath of liquid antlers in his hair. His dark eyes narrowed, and then he nodded.

Arthur made a sound of success, celebration, and reached back down into his boat. The sound of paper, wet with the air, a few movements of his shoulder, and the bottle was wrapped. It was a present, nightmares and dreams in butcher paper. Lemmy handed him a few coins, copper discs with animals imprinted on one side and the other, and the boatman slipped them into his jacket pocket. He handed the bottle over with great care, as if it were a heavy thing.

The sister grasped it by the neck, and bowed in thanks. She turned, and looked back into the woods, ready to go home and try it out. Her brother chatted with Arthur for a few minutes, chatting about the war, the long war that affected nobody they knew. She lit another cigarette, and stood savoring the moments of anticipation. She could almost smell it through the glass. Her brother was saying goodbye, the traditional goodbye to elders.

“Chulo, lin naj, mejut.”

“Chulu, lin naj, ye,” Arthur replied, and bowed.

Minerva turned and waived goodbye to him, and took her brother’s hand as they walked back into the forest.

The walk back to the house was long, soaked with tree sap and dark bird’s calls. Inchworms landed on them, measured them for new clothes, and fell away.

The cabin was dark, their little box of wood and stone amidst the sea of trees. All the animals were asleep, dreaming unknowable dreams, except the cat, which greeted them with a rub and a maow. Minerva bent and stroked its black, slick head, and smelled meat on its breath. She wondered what the unfortunate mouse’s last thoughts were.

They turned on all the lights, and sat at the kitchen table. Jars of peppers lined the windows like specimens in preservative. Cobweb spiders sat in the corners of the ceiling, waiting for the next fly to come along. Lemmy looked across to his sister, the dim yellow light shining off of her almost black eyes. Her desire to drink whatever it was they had bought seeped into the air, a smell like metal. He smiled, and unwrapped the bottle.

“Who goes first?” she asked, eyeing the bottle.

“We spin for it,” he said, setting it on its side in the middle of the table. The scarred, uneven surface threatened to send the bottle shooting over the side, and Lemmy took care to spin it slowly. It twirled, lazily, and Lemmy kept an eye out for a pitch to one side or another. It switched back and forth between them, brother, sister, Lemual, Minerva. It slowed, slowed, came to rest pointing to Minerva.

“Haha!” she said, picking it up, pulling the cork. A smell like almonds and vanilla came out, with something else, something less pleasent. Maybe corn smut, or some other sort of infective fungus. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later,” she said, with a smirk, then took a long swallow. The liquor burned its way down her throat, to her stomach, and sat there, spinning.

Her brother chuckled, and took the bottle from her. He stopped for a second at the smell, then shrugged and tipped the bottle. The taste was nothing like the smell. It was like blood and pine nuts, copper and fir needles. The liquor burnt at his lips, numbing his tongue. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. Already he could feel it in his bloodstream, a warm wash of foreign fire through his veins. All he could do was smile at his sister.

Minerva watched as her brothers irises grew larger, swallowing the whites, until his eyes were orbs of blackness. His dark brown skin, the color of mahogany, shifted lighter and lighter, now coffee, now maple, now white, white as Arthur’s, then even whiter, a fish’s belly. The transformation didn’t scare her, all was well, everything was fine. The dim yellow light from the bulb over them went blue, and started to flicker, like a negative thunderstorm, long stretches of illumination with short flashes of darkness.

Lemmy’s breath shortened, and he saw the wall behind his sister fall away, exposing the forest beyond. Then the trees fell, in a silent hurricane, and blew away. The sun came out, a new day of new experiences, and then fell away. The night came back, the moon rising quickly to its chosen spot, and the stars glittered like mica. The ugly wooden chair she was sitting in stretched, warped, broke in half and reformed, becoming a four post bed, the kind royalty had. Silk sheets slid out from underneath it, slipped up the posts, and became a whirlpool of fabric around her, grabbing her long hair, twisting and twisting.

“Can you hear me?” he asked, without sound. He could feel his lips moving, but the actual words were passed across some mental channel.

“Yes,” she said, nodding.

“Do you see what I see?”

“I’m not sure. Do you see flashing blue light?” she said, pointing up. He shook his head.

“Know you’re on a bed?” he said, smiling.

She laughed. “Nope, thought I was still right here at the table with you.”