Larks Fiction Magazine Monthly Review January 2012
Published by Larks Media
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Daniel J. Pool
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Cover Image by Eleanor Leonne Bennett, “Is Under the Weather”
Eleanor is a 15 year old photographer and artist who has won contests with National Geographic, The Woodland Trust, The World Photography Organization, Winston’s Wish, Papworth Trust, Mencap, and Dot Dot Dash She was also the only person from the UK to have her work displayed in the National Geographic and Airbus run See The Bigger Picture global exhibition tour with the United Nations International Year Of Biodiversity 2010.Only visual artist published in the Taj Mahal Review June 2011. Youngest artist to be displayed in Charnwood Art's Vision 09 Exhibition and New Mill's Artlounge Dark Colours Exhibition.
See her website at www.eleanorleonnebennett.zenfolio.com
From the Desk of the Editor;
Hello and welcome to the January 2012 Edition of Larks Fiction Magazine! This is the first (and with a bit of luck many) print and e-magazine issues to be produced by Larks Media. I hope you enjoy the works here and will support our efforts by joining us on Twitter, Facebook, and of course joining us each and every Sunday on Blogger.
I would like to thank all the people who have made this publication possible but it would take much too long—so instead here are the people that without this magazine would never have been made: Court Ellyn, Brian Fatah Steele, Meredith McLean, Quentin A. Pongratz, and my wife Kate. Thank you all and best wishes in your endeavors
Yours,
Daniel J. Pool
LFM Editor
Table of Contents
James Vachowski -- I was a Teen-Age Wolf Cub
Luke M. Jones -- The Adversarial Numbers
Ron Koppelberger -- Deputy Cold
David Wright – Genie in a Bottle
Tess Pfeifle -- The Good Pastor Tom
Samantha Jubilee -- The Romance Miser
Melinda Giordano -- The Moon Went Fishing
Quentin A. Ponratz – “The Juice Soothed His Memory”
Russell Bradbury-Carlin -- The Disappearing Girl
Daniel J. Pool – Just Got to Laugh about the End
Issue One, Volume Three
I was a Teen-Age Wolf Cub
Yeah, that’s me. I’m him.
I don’t get recognized nearly as often these days, but it still happens every once in a while—usually in the supermarkets. It’s always the same routine, too: they take a good long look at me, glance down at the row of tabloid magazines near the checkout, then another quick peek. I’ve gotten used to it, though. I just flash them a patient smile and nod. Invariably, they turn away quickly and try to act nonchalant before looking back one more time.
It’s just one of those things. I brought the attention on myself, really. No one forced me to make the rounds on the talk-show circuit and give all those interviews. I mean, I signed that book deal with my own two paws. But what else could I do at the time? It’s not like I had any marketable skills to fall back on, you know? Howling at the moon and scratching fleas are great party tricks, but those talents just aren’t in high demand by the private sector right now. Hey, it’s a recession, man.
When I consider all that life has handed me, I just don’t get upset about being raised by wolves anymore. I’m past it. Sure, my parents lost me when I was a toddler, but let’s face it: I was no Little Angel, always wandering off. But life goes on, right? Those emotional issues have to be dealt with before you can get past them. The trick is to try to treat them as learning experiences. That’s a lesson for all you kids out there: when Mom and Dad say to hold on to their hand, just do it!
I finally had to stop giving all those interviews, though. It was always the same old song and dance: What was it like being raised by wolves for fifteen years? And really, that’s a pretty dumb question when you think about it. The problem is, no one ever stops to think about it. What was it like? What do you think it was like? It was furry and wet. We slept all day and howled at the moon all night. We ate meat and sniffed each other’s butts. I always try to tell reporters that the wolves took great care of me. That the pack accepted me right from the beginning. That I had a happy and well-adjusted childhood.But no one ever believes that. Once I see that look of skepticism on the reporter’s face, I know it won’t be much longer until the camera cuts away to a stock photo of a lone wolf howling. I just smile patiently and remove my gloves when they ask for a close-up shot of my hairy hands.
It’s the ‘well-adjusted’ part that no one ever buys into. Is it really so hard to believe that some kid raised by wolves can still turn out okay? I mean, sure, there was an adjustment period after the police brought me back to my parents, but that’s to be expected. The first couple of months were pretty shaky, what with the howling and scratching wallpaper, but we got through it together. I still sleep all day, but at least I’m in night school. I got my GED and went on to study architecture.
Of course I miss my pack. How could I not? They were the only family I had for fifteen long years. We still keep in touch, though. We talk every full moon. I mean, I don’t want them to think of me as some kind of ingrate. The kid who eats all the raw chicken for years but never remembers Mother’s Day once he leaves the nest. Not me.
It’s always a happy reunion when we see each other, so I try to make it home as often as I can. After all, the Zoo is only two stops over on the Metro.
The End
About the Author:
James Vachowski is a migrant quality assurance technician, blogger and author. His hope is to prompt others to consider the use of fiction as an effective medium for discussing classic scientific inquiries, such as the debate of nature versus nurture. His work has appeared in Everyday Weirdness Magazine, Golden Visions and The Evertalis. When not creating digital works of questionable literary merit, he enjoys documenting the inanities of American life through the 1.0 megapixel lens of his cell phone camera.
The Adversarial Numbers
“He caught a glimpse of his eyes staring into his eyes, in the thrutex, and in them was an expression he had seen in the picture of the rats--weary after convulsions and the frantic racing around, when they were willing and did not mind having anything done to them.”
--E. B. White
Nereus was boring astronomy professor at what he considered to be a boring university. He would admit this to anyone; he would even admit that he was a bore on purpose. “Weeds out those who don't want to learn” he would say. He was tight-lipped in class and spoke of little besides science, and this only in a perfunctory manner. He had the sort of eyes that study you lazily for a moment and then flit to something else. His students hated him. And he hated them. This was most likely a facade. A glance at the items that populated his office suggested pockets of actual personality--a map of Valparaiso tacked to the wall beside the brochure for an Atlantean dig site, a lipstick-smeared photo of a woman whose head was crowned with a wreath of pin curls. But whatever crumbs of actual being he possessed were suffocating under a melancholy notion: that no matter how exhilarating life might be for others, it would never offer him anything beyond its current mediocrity.
And so when he received a handwritten invitation to Clark Stapleton's mansion, he couldn't resist. Nereus had met Clark twice before: at a charity dinner in Washington to which Nereus' then-girlfriend Evelyn Augustine had dragged him and again at a symposium in Cincinnati on the Lunareals. Nereus had not been surprised to see Clark at the charity dinner--his playboy antics had secured his position as a national tabloid figure--but he had been surprised to encounter him at the conference.
The discovery of the Lunareals was perhaps the most stunning event in the history of science, even greater than the discovery of Atlantis or the first lunar expeditions. Nereus was seventeen when the first Lunareal was found lying in a pool of water in a cave near the edge of the Moon's Oceanus Procellarum. An ethereal and timeless feminine being whose flesh was protein interlaced with crystal, she appeared to be sleeping. That water existed in a liquid state on the moon--that was impossible. That a creature, both alien and humanoid, lie in it--that was utterly fantastic. Nereus had fallen in love with the delicate feminine face and serene closed eyes that dominated magazines and newspapers for over a year. It was what compelled him to study the stars. Three years later, two more were found, then ten years later, seven more all lying in the same pool of water. Two were brought back to earth. They never awoke; instead they lay a perpetual state of slumber. The only indications that they were not dead were a faint heartbeat and eyelids that occasionally twitched.
It had actually been refreshing to encounter Clark, who, though just as enamored of the Lunareals as Nereus himself was, was not caught up in the mawkish philosophizing of the scientists and scholars present. It had been refreshing, that is, until Clark, by a slip of the tongue perhaps, mentioned that he was dating Evelyn Augustine. Since he hadn't maintained any sort of correspondence with Clark after the conference, Nereus was surprised to receive the invitation, which had come with a pair of boarding tickets for a dirigible.
The dirigible was a first class one that flew between Baltimore, where Nereus taught, and Newport, Rhode Island, where Clark lived. There was something odd about the handwriting on the invitation--something uncomfortably familiar, as though it were a disguised version of a penmanship he knew--but Nereus dismissed the thought. The trip was to take place two weeks before the end of the semester. Nereus tried to force down the smile that kept twitching at the edges of his lips when he announced to his students that he would be gone for a few days and that class and his office hours would be canceled accordingly. His eyes twinkled when he looked at Billy, a bucktoothed boy with a nasally drone from upstate Pennsylvania, who knew nothing and thought he knew everything, and Prunelope, a weasel-faced girl with pungent halitosis who always insisted in sitting in the front row.
The dirigible towered above him like a grotesque Fabergé Egg inflated to monstrous proportions. The cushioned interior, bursting with velvet, tassels and arabesques was completely opposite that of the drab economy zeppelins that Nereus usually rode. He plopped himself down in an oversized armchair. An attractive young stewardess set a card table in front of him and on top of it, a tray of raw oysters and mignonette. Nereus slurped an oyster down. Its salty ocean flavor made him think of lunar maria.
As the dirigible lifted up past the cumulonimbi that were gathering along the edges of the horizon, Nereus opened a copy of The Chesapeake Daily Bugle. Normally he wouldn't be caught dead reading “Out and About in High Society.” However, after glancing around and noticing that the only other traveler in his vicinity was a pruny old woman whose head peered out of a tunnel of minks, he flipped straight to the column and perused the accompanying photographs.
There was a photo of Evelyn standing beside her new husband, Lord Cheslington. She emanated that cheeky, self-absorbed radiance that had always nauseated Nereus, and Lord Cheslington's beaming walrus-like demeanor wasn't much better. Nereus learned from the article that, for their honeymoon, the two of them had flown out of San Francisco to Tokyo, boarded a junk in Formosa and sailed it to Singapore. After dilly-dallying in Ceylon, Calcutta and Madras, they had waltzed into Europe, twirled through the Alps and caught their breaths at one of the Atlantean excavation sites. Fuming, Nereus tore the paper in two. For the remainder of the voyage, he stared out the window at the dazzling tricolor of cerulean, white and green.
The dirigible landed at the aeroport in Rhode Island with a delicate thud. Nereus emerged feeling stiff, in spite of the luxurious softness of the cabin. He stomped across the landing strip, followed by a porter carrying his luggage.
He assumed that Clark would send his driver to pick him up, but no one came looking for him. A tired, elderly man was milling about in the waiting area. Nereus asked him if a Mr. Stapleton had sent him, but the old man just stared at him and said “Why would anyone want to work for that kook?”
Nereus contented himself with science and technology section in what remained of his torn Daily Bugle. The section was a mere half-page. One article discussed the discovery of an ancient rust-eaten piece of Atlantean machinery that very much resembled a rocket engine. Another article discussed the highly evolved nematocysts on the Lunareal's fingertips--stinging cells that the author claimed also served some function relating to the Lunareal's nervous system. Nereus chuckled to himself. The article was written by someone named Clarence Endymion. Despite being named for a Titan, Nereus had only a tenuous grasp of ancient mythology, but Endymion he remembered clearly: the shepherd who had fallen in love with the moon, and who was also regarded fondly as the first astronomer.
“Hello.” A female voice jolted Nereus from his reading. He looked up. It was Evelyn.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I came to pick you up.”
“But I'm waiting for Clark Stapleton's--say, aren't –”
“Just come with me.” Evelyn cut him off. “I'll explain everything in the car.”
Evelyn's automobile was a shimmering red monstrosity with shiny chrome running every which way. Evelyn's driver carried Nereus' luggage to the car and set it carefully in the trunk. He then opened the back doors for Evelyn and Nereus, who would have preferred to sit up front, but was unable to invent a pretext for it.
Evelyn looked ravishing in a delicate blouse and a peacock green skirt. Her ginger hair was tied back into a large bun with a ribbon that matched her skirt. Nereus diligently avoided her eyes and tried his hardest not to look at her at all.
“You are taking me to Stapleton's house, I assume,” he said, his voice peppered with irritation. “What's going on? You married that Lord Cheslington fellow, didn't you? Are you secretly seeing Stapleton?”
“No, of course not. I've moved on.” Evelyn light a cigarette. “I'm a married woman now and hopelessly in love. But I do still worry about Clark from time to time. Especially now that he's--um, well--”
“Do you ever worry about me?” Nereus snapped, meeting her eyes for a split second.
Evelyn smiled at him contemptuously. “Is there any reason I should?”
“You used me, you know. I was just a rung on your ladder.”
“Ha! Used you for what?” a serpent of smoke slithered from Evelyn's lips. “How could you possibly have gotten me anywhere?”
“Okay, then why did you date me?” Nereus twisted a lock of hair around his finger. This trip was off to a fabulous start.
“I dated you before I'd realized what I was capable of.”
“Well, you still haven't explained why you sent me that phony invite. I assume you had more in mind than just ridiculing me.”
Evelyn tossed her cigarette out the window and shifted in her seat. “It's Clark. He--he's been saying a lot of odd things lately.”
“Like what?”
“Things that don't make sense. He rambles constantly about 'the sublimity,' about 'the adversarial numbers,' about how the Lunereals are going to grant us immortality, but also destroy us. 'It's only a matter of time,' he says. He's like a beast locked away in his castle. The thought of it--frightens me.”
Nereus furrowed his brow. “I bet that's what you secretly think of me as well. So now you're bringing two deranged men from your deranged history of lovers hoping one of them will fix the other, or even better, they'll each prove to be the antidote the other needs--if they don't go completely insane and kill each other, that is. Tell me, what do you want out of this? Absolution?”
Evelyn looked out the window. They were winding through residential Newport, past colossal houses slathered with gingerbread, Doric columns and all the other vomit of Western architecture. “We're nearly there,” she said quietly.
The car sailed through the open doors of a curlicued gate on which rested cupids, lions and coats of arms. Clark's house rose before them, voluptuous as an aging opera singer. Dressed in a silk bathrobe with the collar flipped up around his neck, Clark was pacing back and forth between a sundial and a mass of rhododendrons, muttering terse phrases to himself. He glanced at up at the car, smiled a thin smile and then let his chin sink back towards his chest.
“We're here!” Evelyn said cheerily, as her driver opened the car doors for her and Nereus. She climbed out of the car and straightened her hat and skirt.
Clark straightened up. His mouth grinned broadly, though the rest of his face didn't. “Why, yes you are! How lovely to see you! I see that you've brought someone to cure me!”
Evelyn's smile soured. “You remember Nereus Cowinbottle, don't you, Clarky dear?”
“Of course, of course! A fellow Lunarite, Lunarealite, whatever it is that you'd call us.” He walked over to Nereus and put his arm heavily around his shoulder.
“Well, I'm going to leave you two to chat,” said Evelyn ducking back into the car. “Clark, I hope you'll come see me some time. I'd love for you to meet my new husband. He's an absolute gem, and I think the world of him. I'm sure the two of you would get along splendidly.”
“I'm so glad you found money, a title and happiness, all in one fell swoop.”
Evelyn slammed the car door, and her red and chrome behemoth sped around the driveway and back into the street. Clark's arm still rested on Nereus' shoulder, and it was growing heavier by the minute. Nereus glanced up uncomfortably at Clark, who was taller and much more athletically built. He thought of his own pallid features, and resented Clark for being so dashing and, even in his apparent lunacy, so assured.
“Let's go inside and have a drink” Clark suggested. Nereus detected a hint of alcohol already coloring his breath.
Two french doors framed by sculpted boxwoods opened up to a large, paneled drawing room. There was a marble fireplace littered with ashes. Atlantean artifacts dotted the wall, mostly plates and pottery, but in the middle of the museumesque display was rust-eaten fire sword--it was a merely a hilt now. The Tasian flame had burnt out long ago. On a long table in the corner, dozens of liquor bottles were lined up like crystal skyscrapers.
“It's ironic, isn't it?” said Clark. “Those supposedly utopian Atlanteans certainly had a magnificent arsenal of weapons. In fact, we've stolen more than a few ideas from them. Say, would you like a drink?” He hovered over the liquor table.
“I'll take a stinger.”
“I'm sorry, I'm fresh out of brandy and haven't had a chance to restock. How about a scotch flip? I'm famous for my scotch flips. The secret is that I add a dash of Peychaud's bitters instead of nutmeg.”
Clark left the room and came back with two eggs, two glasses and a shaker. He cracked the eggs into the shaker, poured in some scotch, shook the concoction and poured it into the glasses. Nereus noticed that he forgot to add the bitters.
“You spent a year on the moon, didn't you?” Clark inquired.
“Yes, I did. And what an absolute waste of time it was.”
“Why was that?” Clark handed him a glass. Nereus took a sip and almost gagged. Bits of the egg yoke had congealed. They floated in the scotch like specks of snot. Clark seemed not to notice. He downed his with gusto.
“I didn't come across anything worth seeing. I was relegated to a lab that dealt only with lunar soil samples. We tested moon rocks for traces of magnesium and selenium and that was about it. There wasn't a even single decent looking girl working there. In the very least, they could have given me some eye candy.”
“You know, we have something in common that I bet you're not even aware of. Our parent were both lovers of Greek mythology.” Pointless and fragmented conversation. Nereus let out a sigh and sank into a vermillion armchair. “My middle name,” Clark continued, “is Endymion. Just think of the irony. We're both old childless bachelors, while our namesakes each had fifty children. Oh yes, you know--it's rumored that the Atlanteans might have been space travelers.”
Clark turned back to the liquor table. Half of the collar of his bathrobe flopped down, revealing a crystal formation growing out of the back of his neck. Shards of glass-like crystal radiated out from a central point like a colorless chrysanthemum.
“What the hell is that?”
“What?” ask Clark, rubbing the skin around the formation. “This?” He turned around and walked over to the armchair where Nereus was sitting. “Come, I have something to show you,” he said, grabbing Nereus by the wrist and dragging him towards a narrow door in the corner of the room.
“Let go of me!” Nereus demanded, but the words sounded oddly insincere. As frightened as he was of following this madman into his lair, he simply could not suppress the curiosity that was bubbling up inside him.
Clark dragged him through a series of twisting unlit corridors. His hand felt like an iron shackle around Nereus' wrist. The darkness of the hallways was punctuated by a series of opened doorways. Nereus glanced into each, hoping to orient himself should he need to escape. There was a marvelous mauve dinning room with a chandelier that spread out from the ceiling like an inverted tree, a library so full of books that there seemed to be no shelves or walls, a foyer with a marble staircase. Finally they ground to a halt. They stood in front of the doorway to a room that was almost as dark as the hallway, though, as Nereus' eyes adjusted, he sensed a faint blue light emanating from one corner of the room and an army of small but furiously blinking lights in the other. Clark let go of his wrist. His hand tingled as the blood flowed back into it.
“Do you have any idea what I'm about to show you?”
“No, not even the slightest.”
Clark flicked on the lights. The room was bare and white, starker, even, than a laboratory or a hospital room. In the corner was what looked like a bathtub and, to the right of it, a dozen or so computing machines, each one flashing, whirring, whizzing and calculating. “Go,” Clark said. “Look and see what's in that tub.”