The Contortionist

The black marks on her skin are like fragments of a larger picture, too small and disjointed to make sense. But as the contortionist moves, benids into impossible shapes, the tattooos change, shift, until they collide with one another, skin on skin and form exotic pictures, or strings of words in beautiful script. 

Art by Fluff

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Wind Up Toys

Amber light seeped from the hallway, illuminating the grass and trees. Mira hurried up the path, tredding on flowers and narrowly avoiding the empty iridescent husks left by beetles. She came to a stop, flushed and out of breath, at a golden chamber on the crest of a hill. It was filled with strange ornaments; tiny animals perched on pillars. Some were gold, some silver, and some ivory or crystal, all seated on blue silk squares. From one sweeping glance she found her favourite, it was a tiny ivory swan with a gold beak, inlaid with ruby red eyes. On the underside of the swan, she discovered when she picked it up, was a crank fittted into a niche in the pillar. She slipped her fingers into the grooves of the crank and hesitantly spun it until it halted with a satisfying clunk. Mira placed the swan gently back on it's pillar. As the crank began to turn, after the initial grind of gears and cogs, the room filled with an intoxicating sound. A familiar melody that drifted in the air and made the world around her sway, until she realized it wasn't the landscape that was swaying, but her. Slowly, then faster until all was blurred. She kept her gaze on the swan's red eyes, but they were darker... like wine, no, like blood. Nausea rushed through her stomach and she turned to find fresh grass in her face and the world on it's side.

Art by ATL Jewelers


Text by Lucie MacAulay

Tea Party Madness

It was madness. Cold tea dribbled off the white-clothed table edges. Various limbs of cups, saucers, teapots, sugar bowls and milk jugs littered the table. Dolls spewed white fluff from their positions on the table, some had butter knifes sticking out of them.

Kerli stood next to the table. Icing and clods of cake clung to her hair and was smeared down her front and across her face. Her dress was ruined, her shiny shoes wet and full of pastry and glazed fruits. She wiped some cake from her eyes, smudging her sparkly makeup in a streak toward her ear.

“Well,” she said after a moment. “That was livelier than I thought it would be.”

Kerli turned around and left the room, returned, picked up the dolls and put them in a neat pile on the table, then left again.

In the long hallway she greeted her friend, a woman older than her by a few years. Her friend glanced up at Kerli’s hair and dress.

“Nice costume. How was it?” she asked.

Kerli shrugged and pulled off her frilly dress and threw it aside. Then she pulled on her black robe and sat down, combing the cake from her long tendrils and filling her engraved rings with sugar.

“It was fun. For the most part. They began fighting.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “And you didn’t stop them?”

Kerli shrugged again. “I stood off to the side to watch them. They were so bloody. I think they enjoyed the cake though.”

The woman nodded. “Of course they did. The cook did a wonderful job. Maybe next time you should stop them. You don’t want to run out of toys. What would you do then?”

Kerli wondered. “Play on my own I suppose.” She sighed and stood up. “I’m going to go wash up. Maybe tomorrow I’ll build an army. I haven’t done that in a while.”

Her friend set down her book. “Perhaps you should find another hobby.”

Kerli shrugged. She really was quite tired from that last tea party. She wanted a bath and a nice sleep in her bed. Maybe some new dolls.

Kerli went to her room and took a bath. When she was nestled in her large bed, lights turned off and curtains closed, she thought about her friend’s comment. She lifted her wrist and tugged on the string that had just begun to form on her skin. “I won’t sleep for long,” she promised.


Art from 2010 Kerli Music Video "Tea Party"


Text by Lucie MacAulay

Bones in the Shell

Her temple aches and when she reaches up to lean it in her palm, her fingertips brush the shell of her ear. In the arc she finds three spikes, piercing her flesh in a small row. The spikes are smooth, like bone. She cannot remember if they were there when she went to sleep but tiny red brown flakes are on the tips of her fingers when she pulls them back. She tries to twist one and quickly ceases when it turns with a lashing tongue of pain across her skin.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Perfectly Contrasting Stripes

He has perfectly contrasting stripes, snow white and midnight black, but the eyes with which he watches her are icy blue. She does not turn away. She approaches him and once standing at his side, turns to gaze across the ocean. She absently lifts a hand to stroke his head, resting her palm between his ears. He does not move. The sky shifts from pale grey to dusky twilight and the few stars that dust the sky are bright as suns.

“Where do we go now?” she asks. She may be asking him, or she may be asking the empty air. She gets no response from either. It begins to rain. Drops falling onto the beach in windblown patterns. But the rain is light and is hardly there before it is gone. Though the sky has darkened. The clouds are stark against the inky blackness and two seas stretch before her, one of ebony and one of sapphire, each with a silver moon, though one moon wavers slightly as though it is reflected in rippling glass.

She turns and walks up the beach, away from the sea. She does not have to look behind her to know he has risen and is following her. She stops where the sand has almost dried and the water cannot reach it. She lies down, rain picking up grains of sand, dress catching on a loose strip of log wood. Her calves are bare on the gritty dune, the crest of it only a few feet above sea level. She lets her hands fall to either side, her chest and head higher than her fingertips. He lies down besides her, resting a massive snowy head on his paws. She vaguely remembers dreams, as she lifts a hand to stroke his ears. She releases his ears and the memory and turns her head away from the sea, closing her eyes. It is red behind her eyelids; dark and red like smoke and fire. She dreams something warm, spicy and rich and the colours of a fire. Sparks flicker, embers radiate light and metal undulates in the heat rolling off each flame. When she wakes and cracks her eyelids open like the lid of a rusty wooden chest, she cannot remember her dream.

He is there, wide blue eyes watching her. The beach is grey and beige, the sky icy and the sea infinite. The only difference is the fog billowing across its surface. The sand is colder than it seemed last night. It is lighter; the clouds are thinner and weaker against the sun. She shields them with a hand, the skin on her knuckles and palm cracked and dry and white, like spider webs. “Where do we go now?” She asks again. She receives no answer.

When she does stand, her back aching as she stretches, her hair matted behind her neck, she looks at the beach. It stretches on in each direction, disappearing into mist. Behind her is the sea, ahead of her are dunes, sand rising and falling, and beyond the palest outlines of dunes she can see nothing.

“That way?” She suggests, watching a cloud of mist move over a distant grey dune. He does not answer but when she begins walking, he follows.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Marble Castle

The castle that rises out of the mist is large. Large enough that is stretches on in each direction to the horizon, as though it is as big as the beach. It is made of off white marble, or some other smooth stone. There are gray tiles on the roofs though they are also adorned with many white spires coming out of arches and turrets that are elaborately carved, and even adorning the tops of windows. There are pale grey streaks on some of the bigger walls, where water has streamed and stained the walls. There are carvings of seashells, ferns, strange one-horned beasts, and some that are simple complex patterns of swirls and flourishes.

The windows are black, the inky glass only reflecting the mist and dunes outside. She can see herself in a large window, her own pale tangled form rippling in the pane.

Beyond the castle are vast grey shadows with shifting outlines. Despite the grey sky, they seem out of place.

There is no gate around the castle. No moat or garden or pathway. The door is clear of any obstruction and when she places a hand on the curling silver handle, it swings open without protest. 

Art by Daniel Merriam

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Panthers

The giant cats do not respond to her reflective eye makeup and light-catching clothing. Cynthia herself cannot feel her hair burned in straight curtains or her skin sprayed with fine bronze mist. But they raise their noses at her, sniff and become bored. She lifts her arm to her nose, her skin smells as it always has.

The panthers prowl on the white floor, black fur shedding and pelt gleaming in the lights. Cynthia watches their pupils grow to black pools, and then shrink until their eyes are jaundiced orbs. She poses a thousand ways. Draped over the creatures, cowering from them, morphing her expression but keeping her eyes on their listless ones. She tries to prowl with them, mimicking the smooth ripple from their shoulders to their paws and the sway of their head. The photographer follows her but she follows the panthers.

The set ends. There will be no more animals now, someone says as the panthers are rounded up. They return to their cages and she returns to hers.  

Art from Q Magazine 2009

Text by Lucie MacAulay