Monday, 16 September 2013

A Cleaning




“What’s next?”
The boy was wearing fingerless gloves, and his nails were already cyanotic blue. He’d catch cold if he wasn’t careful.
“The ice needs to start melting. But we’ll leave that for now. Let’s move on.” Jack pulled the boy along, by the sleeve of his coat, around the snow banks. Winter in the city was more grey than white, and the slush soaked through the toes of their boots as they walked.
The park had become a blur of white and grey and colour only really appeared ten feet from a person, before it faded into the flurry of snow. Strollers and dog-walkers hardly seemed to notice the boy and the elderly gentleman, each carrying a torch that occasionally spat copper-green flame.
Only the children paid any attention, and they ceased their snow-angel-making or snowball-throwing for seconds to squint through the wall of snow as if they were looking through a smudged glass window.
The boy nudged the elderly man’s elbow. The man’s torch scattered green sparks. “The kids keep making me nervous,” he said.
The man didn’t look at them. “The kids see us, but don’t worry, they’re not doin’ any harm. They just don’t know yet that they aren’t supposed to see us. They’ll grow into their parents. They’ll think they made us up. When they learn.” He made an inelegant sound, like a snort. “Seems that’s all their parents teach them, to be blind.”
The snow here was deeper. The elderly man motioned for them to stop, then adjusted the shoulder strap of his torch. He pointed the torch and fired.
Around them green flames erupted, like a ring of summer trees. The snow began to melt, quickly, collapsing like a deflated cloud after a rainstorm. It was beautiful and very dangerous.
Then there was a noise like the ticking of a broken clock. The boy’s torch sputtered a few small flames, then ceased firing and emitted a thin curl of green smoke.
“Oh, bother,” he said, shaking it. The elderly man set aside his own torch and watched the boy as he shook, cursed, and shook some more.
“Let me,” said the elderly man, and took the gun. His cold-bitten fingers fumbled with the latches. It was some complicated design, something from after his time. The boy had the stunned look of one who just finished training. He stayed silent as the elderly man fixed his torch, then handed it back to him.
“Thanks. Have you been doing the Cleaning for a long time?” he asked.
The elderly man hefted his torch and pointed it at the snow again. There was noise like a gunshot and winter erupted into green light again. “Depends what you mean by a long time,” he shouted over the din.
The boy looked sideways at a couple huddled together, walking on what they assumed was a path. They came within inches of the green flames, close enough that sparks fell on their coats and sparkled like spangles.
“Aren’t they going to notice?” the boy asked asked, squinting through the snow.
The old man sighed. “Nope. Doesn’t happen overnight, the cleaning. And look at them, they don’t notice nothin’, do they?” He pointed. “That one’s got her nose buried in a book.” He pointed again. “That one’s busy with his blackberry or what have you.” He nodded to a passing man with a steaming bakery bag. “That one can’t see past his next lunch. Nobody notices anythin’ unless you give ‘em a reason to. And we don’t. So that’s that.”
“I mean, how do they think spring comes? Do they think it just happens? That winter just shoves over and makes way?”
“They likely do think that. ‘Cause they don’t see anyone prove otherwise.”
“What about all the stuff we do?” The boy asked.
“The little stuff we do? We don’t take care of the big stuff. Those are the guys upstairs. We just handle the little stuff. Cleaning the ground and all.”
The boy stopped again. His eyelashes were caked with snowflakes. Her wiped his face. “What big stuff?”
The old man looked up and gave him a look. The boy held back a sigh. He was getting tired of being the recipient of looks.
“You’re new to this, aren’t you, lad?”
The boy nodded. His cable knitted scarf fell over one should and into the snow bank. The old man handed it to him as he straightened with an audible creaking of joints.
“See that?” he pointed a gloved finger over the boy’s shoulder. The boy turned and caught sight of a woman’s outline in the snow. She shivered and breathed on her gloves hands. Her face was obscured by her white cloudy breath.
“What?”
“The breathing thing. That’s the big man’s job.”
The boy shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
The old man watched the lady trudge on, until she faded like a shadow in the grey distance. His eyes were piercing blue, milky at the edges with the beginnings of blindness. “When they breathe, they’re breathing out just a bit of their soul. It’s white, you see, so they don’t think nothin’ of it. But it’s their soul.”
The boy blinked. “That’s not- why? Why would anyone want them to breath out their soul?”
The old man turned his face up. Snowflakes glittered like embers falling from the sky. “Because you can’t carry around that much soul all the time. You’ve got to get rid of all the bad things. The bad deeds, the broken promises, all those things that make you feel awful. Imagine rememberin’ that, year after year. That’d be the death of a person. They’ve got to be cleaned out too. To make way for the new year.”
The boy breathed out. His breath was clear, no white puff of air, just heat.
He wrinkled his nose.
“What now?”
“It just seems – wrong. Is it really right to just forget?”
The old man took his finger off the trigger, produced a rag from his pocket, and wiped his brow. “No. It wouldn’t be. But they don’t forget it, exactly. It’s like – it’s like a wound that they’ve inflicted on themselves. If we don’t take care of it, if they spend the rest of their lives rememberin’, it’s just goin’ to fester and hurt them. So we make them forget – but only a little. Some part of ‘em will remember, and that’s like a scar. Still there, but not a nuisance. They can get on with their lives, see?”
The boy nodded. He pictured the park in April, when the trees would shiver away the last of the snow, and green shoots would impale the thawing earth, and the view would be a spectrum of greens and yellows and blues. There was no room for sorrow and guilt.
He felt the touch of a gloved hand on his sleeve. He opened his eyes.
“We’re one here. Call it a day?” the old man asked.
“Sure.”
They slung their torches across their backs, barrels pointed away and down.
“Does the cleaning get easier?” the boy asked.
“Doubt it. Seems to be getting harder, actually.”
The elderly man looked sideways at the boy. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll do fine. Just keep breathing the way you are. You don’t want to get cleaned, do you?” He laughed, and just the tiniest hint of white appeared in front of him. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Boon




Beneath the green-golden bower of the forest canopy – lulled by the heat and the hum of cicadas, he falls into a deep sleep.
When he wakes, he wakes in the shadow of a woman.
She traps him in a gaze the colour of dying leaves. She is draped in a thin cloth the colour of the sky at twilight. It is not just the cloth that is ghostly-thin. Her entire being radiates with insubstantiality, as though she may fade with the morning mist. Even her hair is like the gossamer threads of a spider’s web.
She bows her head. “I would recommend that you soon go inside. After the sun sets and the lights are out. That is when they leave.”
Jonathan sits up. “When who leave?”
She does not reply, but produces from the folds of her gown, a flower, and holds it out to him.
It is still in full bloom, as though freshly picked. It is a trumpet flower, but ringed with several velvety petals. And it is golden as the sun, medallioned with pollen like fine gold dust.
He gently takes it, and she is careful not to let her skin touch his. When is it secure in his grasp, she releases it and steps back.
“Get them out,” she says. “They do not belong in my dominion.”
“Who?” he asks, baffled.
“Get them out,” she says, before the sky darkens and soon it is the world around him darkening too.
He wakes with the golden streaks of sunset in his eyes, the horizon painted in shades of red and orange.
He cannot tell if what transpired was a dream or not. It cannot be real.
But a smell, deep and rich, like honeyed wine, draws him to the golden flower in his lapel.

Art by K.Y. Craft

Text by Lucie MacAulay

A Midnight Stroll




Slowly, very slowly, the phoenix flower opens. It bursts in an array of spear-sharp petals the colour of embers, scattering pollen like sparks.
He gasps and is certain that the girls have heard him, but they show no sign of having noticed his presence. He steps slowly out of the shadows, and they do not turn.
The girls are silent as they come to stand before a wall. Arianwyn slides the wall aside, like a paneled door. Beyond is darkness and stairs, punctuated by dim lantern light.
Fabrics as shimmering and diaphanous as woven moonlight rustle as they descend and, after a moment’s hesitation, he follows them.
They emerge from the stairs into a forest, in a kiosk filled with moss, speckled with night-blooming flowers. The girls walk with purpose, as though their destination is in sight, but they do not stop soon. They do not trip on the roots snaking in and out of the soil, as though they have walked the path a hundred times before.
Then, very slowly, the forest begins to change.
The trees are lit with a soft silver light, and every leaf is carved silver so bright they appear like stars.
He holds his hand over his mouth to stifle his gasp, and almost stops walking. He must run to catch up with the girls, whose procession does not halt and whose silence is uninterrupted.
The silver light begins to fade. Like moonlight changing to the light of dawn, the forest glows golden. The leaves on the trees here are like golden coins. Even the blossoms on the ground release small starbursts of golden pollen, and the ferns are covered in fine golden hairs, like those on a peach. The woods are a rich man’s dream, but the boy does not pause to pick a flower, to snap a twig and its leaves from a low-hanging branch.
They continue, and time begins to lose meaning in a blur of gold and silver. It is not until the light before them begins to twinkle like the night sky that he realizes the forest is changing once again.
The leaves, each one on every tree, is a clear shining diamond. They rustle with a sound like twinkling silver bells and catch the moonlight, glittering like tree-fulls of stars.

Art by K.Y. Craft

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Never Tears




The riots are fewer, but, as Dr.Kane suggests, it does not mean the project is being accepted. Protesters get tired, and Cynthia is showing promise.
It may work. It may truly work.
It is the years of investment in the project that propels her to imagine what will follow Cynthia. A race of Human Canvases, beautiful and blank.
And not unhappy. Unhappiness is not the absence of happiness.
Absence is only absence, if there was something there before it, she reasons.
After all, Cynthia has never cried.

Art by Joanne Young

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Insistance




The years pass as smoothly as water, and it is with extreme care that Cynthia does not come to hear the title Human Canvas or understand what it means. Prototype and experiment are words disallowed in her presence.
They are few of many things disallowed around Cynthia.
Mother and father are equally distant concepts, though she hears the words.
There are innumerable rules regarding the project: her eating habits, the sounds and conversations she is allowed to hear, the questions she can ask or be asked.
No one tells Dr.Kane’s son these rules. 

Art by Joanne Young

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Children of the Night




Beatrix circled him, and stood behind him. She could feel the warmth rising off his skin, like heat rising off a road in the summer. She could smell him, like sunlight and blood, golden and rich.
“But- I want to live forever too.” His voice was beautiful, soft as silk or the caress of moonlight. It was heartbreaking to hear/It was like a knife in her heart.
She sighed. This was the first goodbye, Beatrix realized. Only the first. “This is not living.”

Text by Lucie MacAulay