Neon Literary Magazine #40
Issue #40
www.neonmagazine.co.uk
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This compilation copyright © Neon Literary Magazine (2015).
Do not copy or redistribute without permission.
All content copyright © respective authors (2015).
Authors may be contacted through the publisher.
Cover image copyright © Sarah Katharina Kayß.
ISSN 1758-1419 [Print]
ISSN 1758-1427 [Online]
Edited by Krishan Coupland.
Published winter 2015.
Subscriptions and back issues available from the website.
Contents
Sean Markey
The Spider In You
Laura McKee
Wednesday | Fainted | In One Of 111 Scenes That Lasted 1000th Of A Second | He Asks Me To Call Him
Sam Kolinski
Hypnagogia | Pillow Raft | The Invisible Girl | Dead Man's Medals
Paul Clyne
A Small Extinction | Consumer Market | Rings | My Upstairs Neighbour
Ruth Brandt
Happy Ever After
Flavian Mark Lupinetti
Division Of Labour | Refined | Rehearsal
Mack Gelber
Best Of Drive-Thru
Jenny Blackford
Mirror | An Afterlife Of Stone | Something In The Corner
Kate Wisel
God And Me | Bad Behaviour | The Dream | What Counts
Paul French
The Lotus Eaters | Stage I Testing | Love Drug In The Feed | The Love Drug Enters The Meat Supply | Love Drug In Pill Form
Postscript
Contributors | Supporters
Sean Markey
Image by “wideye”
The Spider In You
"The Spider In You" previously appeared in Strange Horizons.
We kept our god under the sink, in an old aquarium, so it wouldn't spill its web all over the house. We didn't tell you because you were so curious. Our daughter: you are like an otter, or a hummingbird. How would you stand against such a monster as our god?
We took you to the shore, and watched you play in the surf. You don't notice how special you are, but everything else in the whole world does. The salty ocean spray always falls toward you. When the sun is out, its beams always find you, the heavy centre, the pollen-coated middle; you are always so much brighter than everything around you.
We put you to bed and opened the cabinet under the sink, careful not to wake you or upset our god. Did you know spiders can hiss? Well, not all of them, but this one did. You turned in your bed, dreaming of the blue and red crabs that hide in the piles of rock at the beach. You call them "jellies", and only you know why.
We lit candles around the spider's glass. It reared up against the flame, and in the candlelight it truly looked like a monster.
We asked for good health, for good fortune. We opened the top and tossed in mealworms and cold crickets. The bugs rained down on the spider's fat body, and it turned on them in a rage. While it ate, while its mouth made dark, wet sounds, we broke down:
Be kind to our daughter, we pled. Be easy on her. We love her so much. We loved our children before her, but your poison stopped their hearts, and we did not watch while you wrapped them in your sticky web that smelled like honey, filled our house with the scent of flowers for months while you feasted, hiding the rotting stench. Each child was sicker and sadder than the last, hearing you eat while in the womb, knowing what was in store for them.
We finished our plea, gave our offering, and put the spider back under the cabinet, because it was not time to test you yet. We blew out the candles, put our faces to the floor and wept. You were five, and you would meet the spider soon.
Do you want to know what happened to the others? We named our first child Mahlina, and she had eyes like the ocean. She was the happiest child I'd ever seen. So happy, so full of love. She cried when she saw our god for the first time. It was my first time handling the spider. I'd been there when our old neighbours Hollyanna and Zavier treated their child with their own god's sharp little kiss.
Mahlina cried when she saw the imperfect body, its eight legs scrabbling wildly against the glass. It hungered for her. It knew her already, and it wanted her. Mahlina screamed when I took the spider from its tank, while your father held her. Shhh, honey, I reassured her, be still. It only hurts for a second.
Some people have an allergic reaction to their god's venom. When I was a little girl, my brother did. We left the house for four months while my parents' god consumed his body.
I'll spare you the details. Mahlina was highly allergic. My dear little girl, my horrible monster of a god. She did not make it, and our god only took two months to finish her off.
We were more nervous with the second child. His name was Phendon, and he was always a sick boy. I knew he wouldn't make it, but he survived the first bite. It takes three; if you survive three, you are strong for the rest of your life. You will be successful and able to handle your own god someday. You will have been blessed.
Something went wrong with Phendon. He developed a rash around the first bite a week later. Black spots appeared. At the end, he didn't even look like my little boy anymore. His skin hung from his bones. His eyes turned an ugly shade of yellow, and he forgot how to speak. He couldn't even say goodbye.
But you, you are different. And not just the way the world seems to spin around you, to gravitate toward you. You asked me once who we were hiding, and you looked all day. I could never bring myself to ask if you were searching for our god, if its language of spit-and-hiss found its way into your mind. I might have known, though. Everything else found its way to you.
We had a third child. I don't want to tell you this. We had a third child before you, named Ennison. Ennison was the opposite of you. Where you are the centre, pulling everything toward you, Ennison was at the edge, falling toward a heaviness he would never understand. We heard noises one night, but dreamed the reason for them, and we didn't know anything was wrong until the morning. Ennison had fallen toward our god. He had been exploring, maybe he had been hearing the god's voice. He got the aquarium out, turned the spider loose.
We found his body the next morning, covered in turquoise-silver web, our little black god the size of Ennison's fist, crawling around like an actor that owned the stage.
We conceived you that morning, wrapped in grief like blankets against the cold, the storm of the deaths that came before you. It took the whole length of my pregnancy with you for our god to finish consuming Ennison.
When it was time for your first test, I already knew how it would go. I knew, because every day, I would find you sitting in front of the cabinet, where we kept our god. One moment you were playing by the window, the next you were gone. Memories of Ennison flashed into my mind like bullets. I ran into the kitchen, knocking things over on my way, banging my shin against the table. And there you were, reading a book and sitting cross-legged in front of the cabinet. You looked back at me confused, then continued on. It didn't happen just once, but all the time.
You didn't cry when the spider finally bit you. We took the spider out and shut the door so you couldn't run away. But I knew. I took the spider out and walked over to you. You watched it come and you didn't flinch. It opened its legs like an embrace and latched onto your arm. Sank its fangs in. You looked up, as if to see if everything was okay. Everything was so okay.
You didn't even blink. And when we were done, you went off to draw pictures of the god, shapes I could not understand. Your wound dripped poison and blood for a week, but it didn't slow you down.
The second bite went the same way, and I told your father, "This is it. Our little girl. The one we get to k
eep," but he looked at me like I should know better than to have hoped. I should have; we'd lost three children before you, but I wanted it so badly. We wanted it to be true, for you to stay. We were almost afraid to hope for it.
We had to lock the cabinet between the second and third tests. We caught you trying to get in twice. What were you trying to do? You called it your "pear". What does that mean? So many questions. I was so scared for you, scared for us that we would lose you.
The third bite is always the worst. If you survive the third bite, then you are strong, and are blessed, and you go on from that moment and everything works out. More or less. More or less it balances out over a lifetime. That's the way it works.
Usually.
When the time came for the third bite, we were sweating, swearing, crying. The night before, we stayed up till dawn with our god, giving offerings, pleading.
Please spare her. Please don't take her from us. She's so special.
You're so special, honey.
I brought the spider close while your father stood behind you. We both prayed like we were dying.
You smiled; you laughed. We were a collective wreck, and you were laughing. You said "pear." Its legs twitched in the air, trying to get closer, to find some purchase to get to you. I could feel it. Some people claim they hear the voice of their god. The truly religious claim to speak to their god always, day and night. We had never heard our god's voice before that moment. It didn't even speak words, just desires. It wanted you. We had such a greedy god; we were not blessed with a god that held moderation in its black heart.
Hopeless, we whispered our goodbyes to you, but you didn't even notice. After you said "pear", you snatched the spider from me, held it in your bare hands, and took a bite. I nearly died. My daughter, my special little one, killed our god. Why would you do that?
It bit your tongue. You closed your teeth together. Its legs spasmed. Its dark guts ran down your chin, dripped onto your white dress.
You didn't swallow what you bit into. You dropped the body back into the aquarium, where it fell and bled out all over its webs. You spat, and the half-chewed upper body of the spider fell to the floor. You opened your mouth, and I saw its jaws buried in your tongue. You scraped at them with your little fingernails, and pulled them free.
You couldn't talk for days afterward, but we knew what you wanted. You pointed at the door and said something that sounded like "elly". You wanted to go to the beach, to see the crabs and play in the cold water.
You killed our god! You killed all our plans, and you didn't even pause for it.
Now, you laugh as the hermit crabs drag their heavy shells through the shallows; you pick up smooth stones the waves wash ashore. We can tell you like this new place.
Do you remember the rocks that crashed through our windows right before we left? Or how you cut your feet on the shattered glass? Maybe you don't remember how angry everyone was, how they gathered around our house and demanded we give you to them. That's why we had to find a new home. We would do whatever we had to, because we'd promised each other we would not lose you, our special girl.
You will do great things someday. Doors will open for you that are not open for anyone else. Maybe you will rediscover magic, or find the cure for death. Everything struggles to find you, just like our god, just like the salt spray, the silver fish that crowd around you in the water, the smiles that fall upon you from every face you pass under in this new land.
Laura McKee
Image by Jean Froideveaux
Wednesday
so they can't be missed
the days are named and blistered
I thumbnail tear the edge
push up from under
and today tips as mercury into the palm of my hand
I lift it to my tongue
to taste nothing
*
Fainted
Your brain is the only part of you
not to hurt
because it can't tell itself to feel
Here is a scar that runs
a demi-ring still
around my thumb
On the outer side
is numbness
restraint
as I try to bend it
It shines
reflects his voice
telling me
not to make a fuss
as the room goes black
*
In One Of 111 Scenes That Lasted 1000th Of A Second
I think in the one
where the butterfly tongue
sucked
as expected
but for just that little too long
or when
the match flared
too fast
embarrassed your fingers
somebody needed to be sorry
you struck the jaw
of the immortal robot
she cannot leave this life really
but for training purposes
will play dead
*
He Asks Me To Call Him
daddy
and I think what the
actual fuck I am older
than him
and the hills
so I straddle his lap
to have words face on
about how
he might like to find
a little girl
about how
I am
a real woman
and he whispers
say it
so I hear myself say it
wearily
and he whispers
you can do better than that
princess
with a hiss on the ess
which makes me feel
queasy
deep inside my fingertips
so I say it
in soft anger
into his ear
as he grabs at tiny hairs
at the nape
and I say it say it say it say it
Sam Kolinski
Image by Karen Barefoot
Hypnagogia
In adolescence they were oft-found there,
peering over curved ledge into thick gloop.
What swam beneath the oil-slicked depths
goading their interest, the elders said, wincing.
One night with pleading sister following like
a tail they slunk off with the moonlight.
On her lone return she told tales of the first dip
foot into geometric ripples, not unlike rainfall
to an open pot of paint. How past shoulder-blade
the boys slunk into black basin, rode tethering
their ankles to pole fraying and fragile. Before
the panic set, she felt her mind become a mirror
whatever below not taking kindly to amateur swimmers.
It was too late. The last thing she spoke of before
the silence was the song of her brothers being
swallowed, how it sang to her that they would spend
a lifetime down there, the beasts mimicking them
until they could not be told apart from its own kind.
*
Pillow Raft
In memoriam Emily Willow.
We deciphered it from the manic scrawls
in her journals, how that night she slunk
into the sheets the way an old tattoo
fades into the layers of aged skin.
How they two sable clumps of soot came
to take her, encircling bed like starved sharks.
It's greater than you and us Emily, and watches.
How they clothed her mind with malefic song.
She wasn't afraid, the book said, but wasn't sure
if it was her or the universe who rolled over.
*
The Invisible Girl
It is January. Her nose is pointed
at the horizon like a muzzle nub.
Light oft-darts around her oddness.
It is March. The backscattering
of sunlight flickers on her skin.
She goads it further. Disappear.
It is April. She sits in bar a character
in a Hopper painting, laughing with
those weird enough not to notice her.
It is June. She hasn't slept in weeks.
She arrives at sunrise, but it is
another morning with little luck.
It is July. At barb of field, the wind
tells her life is a dream from which
she cannot wake. She rests well.
It is still July. Last night boasted eight
hours sleep. At sunrise she is not there.
Sepia has inhabited an un-shadowed lacuna.
*
Dead Man’s Medals
He was dead and dull as stone, dropped
from sky like stringed-conker, sewn onto child’s eyes.
Left a wife and grave behind, in Berlin, hero pilot
until it too fell with flame. As dead as you now before me,
sunken onto mortuary metal slab, skin pallid, eyes
all shot and gone. Always wondered what went
through your mind, ephedrine and giggles guiding
you home, dead man’s medals pinned to your chest.
Paul Clyne
Image by Keith Syvinski
A Small Extinction