From “Pussywillow”:
It was a workday, just as it
would have been for her not long ago, so the park wasn’t very crowded. She
walked along the sidewalks slowly, taking in the newness of the greenery around
her, the feeling of life beginning over again after a long winter’s sleep.
Still smiling, she spotted an empty bench and walked over to it. It hadn’t even
been defaced by the inner-city youths. She sat down with a contented sigh, set
her purse by her side, folded her hands in her lap, and waited.
It wasn’t long before they began
to come out. From under a nearby bush, a tiny dragon, no more than a few weeks
old, stumbled toward the bench with comic determination. He looked up at her
and puffed a tiny question mark. She smiled at him and nodded reassuringly. . .
From “We Are Not Amused”:
Miss Kepler
sat primly in her chair. “Now then, Mr. Finklemeyer,
I understand that you’re having a little trouble with your new employee?”
“I fired her,” he spat. “She was
unsatisfactory.”
Miss Kepler
sighed heavily, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead. “Mr. Finklemeyer, we’ve had this conversation no less than a
dozen times.”
“Fourteen, to
be precise.”
“Yes. Fourteen.
And like I’ve told you before, this is not an easy position to fill. There
simply isn’t much call for...”
“Look, Miss Kepler.”
Willard emphasized each word carefully as he delivered his speech once more. “I’ve
told you before that I am an artist, a writer to be specific. My needs are
highly specialized, and I have no time to waste trying out and breaking in
unqualified people. The job is simple enough for someone who knows how to
perform it. I’ve gone through every other employment agency in the city, and
they all think I’m crazy. When you said that you could fulfill my need for a
muse, I took you quite seriously.”
From “Blue Antiphon”:
I blow out another puff of smoke,
adding to the stale haze already hanging in the air. It’s another habit I could
obviously do without, but I can only take one change at a time. The smoke turns
green, yellow, red, green with the traffic light from
outside. It’s the only light there is in this midnight
room. I sit in a ragged overstuffed chair, still naked; it’s too hot for
clothes. I can see sweat glistening on my legs and stomach. The rattling fan
from some 1940s B-movie doesn’t help much, except to make the smoke move
slightly, like a snake dance.
The room is small. Originally, it
was all that I could afford; now it’s just habit. I don’t want much. Don’t need
much. I’ve got a few clothes, a guitar, a smoke, food when I want it. You don’t
have to do much for food these days, if you know how. I know.
The windows are open, but I don’t
care if anyone looks in. It’s been raining. You’d think that would cool things
down a little, but Houston is one
big humidity factory in the summer. I can hear the occasional sloshing of cars
down below. I’m sure that he’s not coming back, but once in a while I wonder if
maybe the wet sound of tires comes from his car. Probably
not. It’s probably too late now.
Somewhere in this low-rent prison
is a man with a horn. He’s good, this guy. Blues on the sax,
every night, like he’s trying to practice up for some big gig, or maybe just
trying to say something about how much it hurts to live through one more day.
I remember feelings like that, from a long time ago. Haven’t
seen them around here lately, though. No big deal. But that horn...that’s
a Lonesome like I’ve never heard before.
Another puff of smoke rises
thickly through dead air. I oughta quit. . .
From “Untitled”:
The first thing we heard about it
was when the aliens tried to mate with Volkswagens. . .
. . .“Mr.
Fortenberry! It’s outside the building, right now! It’s
trying to do it again!”
“What?”
“Come quickly!”
We all but fell over one another
in a race to the front doors, I for one thinking this I gotta see. And, insofar as was
possible, I did.
The creature was a Vyglot, a sort of turtle-shelled biped with a green-tinted,
almost human-looking face which carried a look of perpetual incomprehension. Vyglots, as a species, were considered to be relatively
simple-minded, but they could carry tremendous weights when they shifted to
walk on all fours, rather like shifting a car from two to four-wheel drive, and
as such they became a valued part of the “green collar” workforce. The Vyglot in question, who would have stood some seven feet
tall if he were erect...er, that is to say, upright,
was sprawled across the back of a parked Volkswagen Beetle, making a sort of...well,
appropriate motion with the equivalent of his hips. I found it difficult to
imagine what sort of physical accoutrements he might have been using, and still
worse, I couldn’t imagine where he’d put the damn thing.
