ONE HUNDRED DOUBLOONS... excorpse short fiction

Another of our Exquisite Language experiments; this one was published in 2 Gyrlz Quarterly #3 (our printed zine-journal).

by Paul Ash, Susannah Breslin, Farai Chideya, Trevor Dodge, Dave Eggers, Polyanna Fishwrap, Jemiah Jefferson, Richard Kadrey, Lance Olsen, Richard Peabody, Cate Peebles, Camela Raymond, Claire Tristram, and Vandoren Wheeler.

Early February. He has already forgotten the name of the last town. The moon is alarmingly full and bright.  He presses the accelerator to the floor.  Snow is plowed high along both sides of the road and he shoots through the barrel.  He has been drinking, although not to excess. That is what he tells himself.  The clock on his dashboard reads 3:00 a.m.  A dead deer passes through his headlights and then falls into dark once more.

One Hundred Doubloons

An exquisite language experiment by

Paul Ash, Susannah Breslin, Farai Chideya, Trevor Dodge, Dave Eggers, Polyanna Fishwrap, Jemiah Jefferson, Richard Kadrey, Lance Olsen, Richard Peabody, Cate Peebles, Camela Raymond, Claire Tristram, and Vandoren Wheeler.

Compiled by Allison Dubinsky and the editorial lackeys at 2 Gyrlz Quarterly. Title created from a bibliomancy session using Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (Ian Maclean translation, Penguin, London, 1995). 

Early February. He has already forgotten the name of the last town. The moon is alarmingly full and bright.  He presses the accelerator to the floor.  Snow is plowed high along both sides of the road and he shoots through the barrel.  He has been drinking, although not to excess.  That is what he tells himself.  The clock on his dashboard reads 3:00 a.m.  A dead deer passes through his headlights and then falls into dark once more.

He hears a thunk. A thunk-a-thunk. Thunk. One more piece of meat, one more dead animal, one more mess of carrion representing whatever he once was, that he has encountered on this road, on this night, on this road of his life, that was before him, that was under him, that now, thank god, is gone.

He wheeled the radio left and right, finding only hatred and chaos. He was so distracted he almost missed the turnoff for the bridge, where he’d been told to get rid of the tools, the blood-stained clothes, the rope, all six of the fingers.

But then what were the odds? This was Angelina Jolie after all. When he stopped, she climbed inside. "Drive," she said. And then she grinned, "Oh look, fingers." Nail polish appeared. Angelina meticulously painted one nail before tucking the gaudy finger into his shirt pocket so that it stuck up like a fuchsia telescope. He was halfway across the bridge wondering what next when the acid kicked in. Oh god, me god, me oh my god: this gentle shifting of vision makes each meter of pavement jump up and ache in the headlights, like we are driving through great squares of black glass, Angelina and I. This bridge wafts and swings and the planet is one glass tree splintering up from a gigantic ship on a sea of stars.

These thoughts and visions came to him in waves, ebbing and flowing as the station wagon rattled past the fruit stand, groaning with the season's last artichokes. "We won't see  another crop like this for another dry season," Wilson said to anyone passing by on foot or on bike, vegan shoes squeaking on recently washed metal grates, or aces of hearts fluttering in Schwinn spokes.

I wasn't there. I'd left my windbreaker and deerstalker crazily askew on Emmiline's coatrack, teetering the way my mind had left it, after a night of too many pipes left crusted with conversations and too many conversations blackened with the soot of caustic words.  She was the kind to sprinkle salt on her cantaloupe and cottage cheese, so we ate most of our meals in wicker-clad restaurants overrun by silk plants. I was the kind to over-tip, even for bad service.

With months of practice in another neighborhood, Emmiline has become razor-precise in her movements.  She holds her breath now when breaking the Host and intoning the ritual phrase, “All of you, take and eat of this for this is my body which was broken for you.” With practiced grace she holds the sacramental cell phone to each ear. The voice of the angel Metatron, the voice of God, speaks to each worshipper saying, “There is no God but God, and Emmiline is her prophet.” The hold music which follows is different for each person. When Emmiline listens, she always hears a sound the color of roses that reminds her for some reason of the little shreds of paper Ludwig Wittgenstein used to fill with notes to himself.  "No one ever taught me that my hands don't disappear when I am not paying attention to them," one said.  "Does my telephone call to New York strengthen my conviction that the earth exists?" said another.

This is why Emmiline listened to the music as little as possible. Sometimes after doing so she couldn't sleep for three nights in a row, she felt so creepy. But when Ziggy listens, he hears something else entirely.

Pressing his ear to the floor, Ziggy can hear his downstairs neighbor rewind the cassette he'd given her over and over. It wasn't really the music she was listening to, but the sounds behind it. They sounded, to his ears, like the moans small children make when they're having a bad dream. He'd managed to listen to the music twice, maybe three times, with a vague discomfort before he noticed. And then, for reasons he couldn't quite understand, he passed the tape on.

"I didn't sign up for this." He stands tilted backward pinning his chin to his neck as if it gives him a tone of proper authority. The blurry wavering mass behind the desk must be his boss, he's in what must be his work clothes, which means he must be at work. There's a smell of benzene. He's not sure if this information is relevant so decides to ignore it.

What he does at his job is still unclear to him, so he finds it best to try to do as little as possible in the order of avoiding mistakes. "I don't see why it's suddenly my responsibility to even listen to that, um, you know, what it is ever the hell you gave me  to listen to I don't even know what it's supposed to be." he points a stubby finger in the general direction of a dark fuzzy rectangle sitting where he thinks the tape must have landed when he tossed it on the desk. "Well, whatever it is, it's your business not mine. Just because you pay me doesn't automatically mean your business automatically becomes my business you know because it doesn't. Hardly nothing ever happens just because you think so."

A piece of watermelon fell from her fork to the floor: apparently, an interruption tactic. It worked. "Let's go," I said. "I'm going to buy you a taxi ride. A taxi ride for both of us. We're going to Shevlin's house. He'll settle this once and for all."

Yes, the cab door opened, but in that moment I thought it was me had broken some seal. The singing was deafening. The only thing missing were children, thank God. I stepped out among the sweating mass of voices and bodies and the crowd sucked me in to its vibrating dampness. I kept my hands firmly squeezed in my coat pockets, the envelope a soggy rag by now. No matter. My shoulders wedged a passage through so many giant breasts and bellies. I pushed into them, under them, through another chorus of "Hurdy Gurdy Man" and finally found the deep, throbbing center of all humanity, the stashed cache of all souls' gold, the hoarded hundred trampled beneath the "X"  sketched dimly on every manuscript ever scrawled.

The jade box glowed and pulsed, her rusted chain and latch held by a cracked thread that must once have been a lock. Ignored by all revellers, revealing herself only to me, she smiled a rich green smile and beckoned. I  burst her lock with a slight caress. Slowly, majestically, she opened her creaky hinges to my touch and welcomed my hands to sift through her doubloons, an endless fountain flowing with the gentle music of soft metals. All else ceased to penetrate my senses, until today, when you joined me here and asked your questions. Yes, I have been here ever since. Yes, I am her guardian. Yes, the story is fascinating, if fading in memory. And no, you may not dip your hand into her waters. No one may.

Compiled by Allison Dubinsky and the editorial lackeys at 2 Gyrlz Quarterly. Title created from a bibliomancy session using Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (Ian Maclean translation, Penguin, London, 1995).