I awoke, completely, a few moments ago, the morning sun full on my face. There was nothing beside me in the bed but a purple flower on the pillow. I am holding it now. It reminds me of an orchid, although I know little enough of flowers, and its scent is strange, salty and female.
Becky must have placed it here for me to find when she left, while I slept.
Pretty soon now I shall have to get up. I shall get out of this bed and resume my life.
I wonder if I shall ever see her again, and I realize that I scarcely care. I can feel the sheets beneath me, and the cold air on my chest. I feel fine. I feel absolutely fine.
I feel nothing at all.
MY LIFE
“My life? Hell, you don’t want to hear about my life. Jesus, my throat is dry…
A drink? Well, since you’re buying, and it’s a hot day, sure. Why not. Just a little one.
Maybe a beer. And a whiskey chaser. It’s good to drink, on a hot day. Only
Problem with drinking is it makes me remember. And sometimes I don’t want
To remember. I mean, my mom: there was a woman. I never knew her as a woman
But I seen photographs of her, before the operation. She said I needed a father,
And seeing my own father had dumped her after he regained his eyesight （following
A blow on the head from a Burmese cat, which jumped from a penthouse apartment window and fell
Thirty stories, miraculously striking my father in exactly the right place to restore his sight,
And then landing uninjured on the sidewalk, proving it’s true what they say about
Cats always landing on their feet） claiming he had thought he was marrying her twin sister
Who looked completely different, but had, through a miracle of biology, exactly the same voice
Which was why the judge granted the divorce, closed his eyes and even he couldn’t tell them apart.
So my father walked out a free man, and on the way from the court he was struck on the head
By detritus falling from the sky; there was folks said it was lavatorial waste from a plane
Though chemical examination revealed traces of elements unknown to science, and it said
In the papers that the fecal matter contained alien proteins, but then it was hushed up.
They took my father’s body away for safekeeping. The government gave us a receipt
Though in a week it faded, I guess that it was something in the ink, but that’s another story.
So then my mom announced I needed a man around the house and it was going to be her,
And she worked a deal with that doctor so when the two of them won the Underwater Tango contest
He agreed to change her sex for nothing. Growing up I called her Dad, and knew none of this.
Nothing else interesting has ever happened to me. Another drink?
Well, just to keep you company maybe, another beer, and don’t forget the whiskey,
Hey, make it a double. It isn’t that I drink, but it’s a hot day, and even when you’re
Not a drinking man… You know,
It was just such a day as this my wife dissolved. I’d read about the people who blew up,
Spontaneous combustion, that’s the words. But Mary-Lou—that was my wife’s name,
We met the day she came out of her coma, seventy years asleep and hadn’t aged a day,
It’s scary what ball-lightning can do. And all the people on that submarine,
Like Mary-Lou, they all were froze in time, and after we were wed she’d visit them,
Sit by their bedsides, watch them while they slept. I drove a truck, back then.
And life was good. She coped well with the missing seven decades, and me, I like to think that if
The dishwasher had not been haunted—well, possessed, I guess, would be more accurate—
She’d still be here today. It preyed upon her mind, and the only exorcist that we could get
Turned out to be a midget from Utrecht and actually not a priest at all,
For all he had a candle, bell, and book. And by coincidence, the very day my wife,
All haunted by the washer, deliquesced—went liquid in our bed—my truck was stole.
That was when I left the States to travel round the world.
And life’s been dull as ditchwater since then. Except…but no, my mind is going blank.
My memory’s been swallowed by the heat. Another drink? Well, sure…”
FIFTEEN PAINTED CARDS FROM A VAMPIRE TAROT
0.
The Fool
“What do you want?”
The young man had come to the graveyard every night for a month now. He had watched the moon paint the cold granite and the fresh marble and the old moss-covered stones and statues in its cold light. He had started at shadows and at owls. He had watched courting couples and drunks and teenagers taking nervous shortcuts: all the people who come through the graveyard at night.