by aaron robertson
It is strange sometimes to think of the way
one body outlives another. Each of us,
awakening to our own silence, our
ineptitude of form, cast into the same
body of light, swimming towards
the same darkness. And of how we are
so gently to sway, ivory magnolias
in descent upon the wind,
spinning above the earth until
we touch it and, infinitely falling,
obscuring the sun with the fleece
of our undoing.
by aaron robertson
See the young fireholder,
the way he smiles when
the pyre bristles beneath his chin,
collapsing into the bareness
of his palms until, when he releases it,
the flames mellow to the roiling
black of the sky. And how, there,
the fire blooms into color, melts into
the holocaustic recess of a lonesome
eve before again the air is hushed.
The way he kneels on the small boat set
like a beacon upon the river, on whose
surface the Battersea Bridge tilts
and recoils and the flamelight
sheers from one into many,
sinking away from the moon
to the rustic landside quells,
to the broken boatyards.
The fireholder blows from his
hands the charcoal powder and
the air ignites, the dark arrow
of its body to spiral toward the yet
peaceful void. This time, the flares disperse
and drift in violent hues and
the firemaker, he looks to us,
as if to say, It is the brief unknowing,
the warm breath before you are,
It is that slender passage
leading towards evermore.
by robert katz
The first they saw of us was the sunny beetle.
Its heart stopped, the carapace burst open and my mother and I stepped out of the insect’s entrails, backs straight and heads high.
I shut the door and wrenched open the trunk, slipping out my charcoal suitcase and locking up the compartment once more.
Behind the beetle’s face, my father, his eyes sunken in bemused weariness, counted paper bills to hand to the man with one hand kneading the steering wheel. In a moment, he stood alongside us.
“Now, this feels great,” he breathed with relief.
I nodded and gulped down a scoop of chilled morning air. Fresher than anything I’d ever remembered.
“Aunt Maya should be just down the path. See the big one?”
I whisked around, hair fluttering in my face. If someone was filming, they’d have loved that. You can do a lot in the editing room, but it must be wonderful when the actors give you the effects.
Down a wide cobblestone path, behind proud foliage and greenery, towered the Cadenza — a cream construction, literally swollen with generations of history. The wind blew toward it.
“The one taller than anything else for the next mile? The big-ass mansion that we could fit fifty of our house in and still have enough space for a swimming pool?”
“Oh, you found it.”
My parents were just as confident as they were when we agreed to this excursion, and I saw nature’s beauty approve of their plan. Lemon sunlight ricocheted off Dad’s hazel eyes and and went to flooding Mom’s green irises.
“It’s gorgeous, I’ll tell you that,” my father observed.
He was too right. In summer’s glow, this town was an object of nature’s soft gaze. Grass bounded in every direction for as far as eyes could show, glistening emeralds beneath our feet. Lordly pines swayed dreamily, letting the sunlight cascade through networks of spindly fingers casting clumsy shadow puppets.
And there was so much space. No steel cages or concrete boxes littering the landscape, fighting to block each other’s presence out. No such grays and “meh’s,” yet no more garish hues and “yuck’s.” No stretches of rainbow insects, scuttling to and ‘fro in incalculable hurries and at dizzying speeds. The real bugs, with fragile shells and pumping blood, lazed on branches and hovered without destination. This was the world as it might actually have been.
Stepping down the path, our exploding clops against the stones sent waves of percussion through the chipper ambience of the natural world. With our being there, we lived out parts in the grand composition of reality. Free from the hectic intricacies of the “real” world, one realizes one’s significance in everything.
As we walked, it seemed to me as though the pines had started growing old, leaves fading in color faster and faster. With each trunk we passed, their wood grew paler and less vibrant, as though they drank milk, not water, through their roots.
The grass drifted into pastel, then water color, then it seemed, just the barest hue of emerald, like a stain. The bugs were nearly outlines, buzzing in a baby blue sky.
And if you looked up at Cadenza, you’d see exactly where the world’s palette had gone.
As though diluted with magical water, the rich reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, indigos and violets drained into the pure canvas-like walls of Cadenza, showing in faint, alternating shades of the rainbow. In one moment, the walls shone the gold leaves of October and in another, they were the calm sea under moonlight.
The closer we drew, I saw, the stronger these colors appeared and the fainter the real world became.
Boom! Swish! Whoosh!
In organic crescendos, the walls grew more and more vibrant, until every detail of the mansion bloomed into impeccable tact. The gaping chimney echoing each peep and audible moment into the atmosphere, forever, to be trapped by ozone in the back of the world’s mind, like a whisper one hears and becomes excited to know the meaning of, but nobody else seems to have heard. The shimmering, stained windows, their frames curved exquisitely, shone back light in full beams. The balcony on the third floor, with its ornate, golden railings that ran parallel in five bars, was a unifying bow, tying the whole dreamy rainbow orchestra into one cohesive sound.
The colors popped and banged and kerpowed into a force more intimidating than fireworks, a light show powered by special effects fiercer than those of any billion-dollar Hollywood extravaganza or sold-out concert playing to millions. It blew those out of the water, and it played to just three summer-dressed, unsuspecting souls from California.
At last, fuses in our heads crackling, we stood beyond the ivory gate, whittled finely into three clefs. My father tugged at the C-clef, an ideal handle, and the gate drifted open as we soared further toward the multicolored sun.
My mind fizzled and cracked, my brain sloshed about, coated in Pop Rocks. I bit down to hold together my skull, but I felt it chip apart no matter what I tried. How had the most perfect beauty in all the world deformed so radically, how did nature’s glossy green veneer decay so unpredictably, the paint eroding like the carbon of a once-prideful sabretooth cat? It turned against me, a storm caught in a beautiful plugged vase.
We had to walk faster. Pick up the pace!
We trudged through the tunnel of light along the cobblestone bridge up to a sturdy door, a slab of rich, dark chocolate, marked down the right side with a vertical white crease.
Close by the ripple, a wooden knob of the same materials as the rest of the door, and a closely-rounded, perfect lump of wood, a neat, white, little button embedded at the surface. Its simplicity, its sheer lack of audacious splendor and explosive flamboyance, drew me toward it as a moth to a lamp or an otaku to a pillowcase.
And as my pupils contracted into optimal breadth, the tunnel vision was all in my mind — a telescope into the next two years of my life.
And through the lens, I saw a finger reach to push a neat, white, little button.
–
“Aubrey!”
“Yes?” Dad replied.
“Where’s that canvas shopping bag?” my mother queried.
“In my suitcase.”
“Did you two finish the snacks?”
“Yeah, emptied it out.”
Mom acquiesced.
Take two:
And through the lens, I saw a finger reach to push a neat, white, little button.
“Wait, one minute, Reed!”
The lights had long ago stopped flashing. The strobe was dead. The rave was dispersed. We should have been done. I wanted to run home. All the way back to California.
“Yes,” my mother had to respond, to my irritation.
“What do you think this is?” Aubrey gestured across the door. “Chocolate? Like, a dark chocolate?”
Reed peered down the sights of her spectacles into the warm shades of the oak slab. The cut of the door was masterful, smooth to touch. Surely it was a portal to another, greater world. I longed to slip through the white cracks, out from which peered the future back into my eyes.
And then I saw my eyes.
My mother leaned over to press the doorbell and how was it that easy? Why couldn’t I have done it that quickly?
A screech bleared through the door, tearing through the fabric of sound and scraping across our auditory canals. Given the objective, undeniable unpleasantness of the tone, it was easily identifiable as that given off by an alto saxophone.
My ears rang and throbbed like tuning forks. Were my cochleas broken? Did I have a shattered stapes? How could anyone play so goddamn loudly?
The door swung open (how did it not smack me in the head?).
Standing in the doorway was a tall man, cured and leathered with age — possibly in his late sixties. He was decked in comfortable maroon slacks and a tan shirt, collar popped. The shirt was tucked, but his wardrobe seemed calm and unpretentious, not engineered to impress the big city family that would be taking lodging with him for the next month. He stood in brown leather shoes and simple black stockings. Bungeeing off a strap around his neck, quite naturally, was a gleaming white alto saxophone. That damn saxophone.
The aged man cried in tempered surprise. “If it isn’t the Kibitzer family!”
“If it isn’t the offender, Mister Morris Byrne,” my father mused, while my mother embraced the saxophonist.
“Morris, how are you?” my mother asked, evidently regressing to youthful, girlish elation. “You’ve never played better!”
“I’ve never played worse, too,” Mr. Byrne chuckled. He exchanged a confident handshake with my father. “Aubrey, great seeing you again.”
“Always the deepest pleasure,” Dad replied.
As my head fell back to Earth, I noticed a remarkable handsomeness in Mr. Byrne’s face. Wrinkles had naturally crept along, conquering and marking territory about his striking, brown eyes and his wide grin, but what lay underneath the age was clearly quite handsome, and lent him a bit of the regality supported by Cadenza and betrayed by his raiments. In tandem, those wrinkles further emphasized the impressiveness of the man’s visage, as one knew by them that it had not been achieved by man and scalpel, but by nature and flesh.
He looked to me.
“And the little one!” he cried facetiously. At the time I was sixteen and about five foot five, five foot six. I stood taller than Mom, but she held seniority over me, so “little one” I was.
I reached my hand out and he gripped it in his and we shook.
“I believe Maya is quite thrilled for this moment,” Morris chimed. “Please,” he beckoned, “nuestro casa es su casa.”
And we followed him right in and the door swung back.
–
Cadenza’s foyer could have contained an entire condominium and a pool table. Carved out of the 18th century, it carried generations of additions and modifications and had likely been hollowed out to accommodate an expensive future. One could only wonder how punitive the unfurnished room had made its visitors feel.
The walls were painted a suitable royal blue, quite luxurious and likely recent. Ornately carved figurines, actual-sized, of instruments lined the sides of the foyer, each one a unique representation. Violas, basses, cellos, mandolins, and other necked creations stood in increasing height parallel to the row of trombones, sousaphones, oboes, bassoons and so on. All were solid and unplayable, but they’re still the realest fakes I’ve ever seen.
The apex of craftsmanship tied together the room’s intimidating symmetry; adorning the wall across from the door, flanked by two great staircases, was an immense portrait. Within its silver frames, the great Atlantic winds shook an emerald martini under a blueberry sky. The winds seemed to dance about the real centerpiece of the room and perhaps the entire manor. It was a baton. Thin and likely fragile, the rod towering out of the maelstrom was a pure ivory white, striking to the eye. At the tip, outreached to parting clouds, the baton was encrusted with a scarlet stone the shape of a fat crescent moon sitting on its rounded side.
“Cadenza is one hundred percent hand-crafted,” Morris said. “Each square inch of wood was given as a gift by the trees, wrapped by man. We live in neat harmony with all of nature.” He stopped by the portrait.
“‘The Atlantic Tremolo,’ by Radcliffe Feist. An eternal reminder of our lovely town’s origins. Art sparked Orion and Radcliffe’s souls like kerosene. Perhaps your own heart is so flammable. Cantabile may just be your matchbook.”
–
We ascended the eastern staircase into the most imposing corridor I think I will have ever stood in. Lined with alternating candles and portraits, landscapes, abstracts, the pathway extended toward the edge of the stratosphere and threatened to scrape away the ozone layer. Horror pulled at the meetings of my lips and dragged them downward. I bit its fingers and it drew away.
“It takes a special kind of person to be able to look down the barrel of a gun and feel no anxiety,” Mr. Byrne mused. “It takes an even more special person to see everything but the barrel of the gun and not wish he or she only knew that barrel.
By each picture frame a door stood, each identical to the ones beside it. It should have been fair game for a typical hallway, but there was something terrible to this passage; it had the visual appearance of continuing on forever. Behind each door was a room, but was there enough room in physical space for these chambers to exist in? How could we let this mockery of physics continue to expand and exist before our eyes? Even now, I see the burrowing of invisible miners through the universe.
“Infinity is only theoretical, as our universe only masquerades as unending. A rubber glove, a balloon, a condom; they all are marketed as elastic, but have you ever seen a condom break? Everything has a breaking point, a maximum capacity.
“So, don’t be afraid of what’s not there. If you squint really well, you’ll see that there’s an exit down there. But we’re not going to it now and I suggest you take your time getting there. Just the first door on the right.”
We took the first door on the right.
–
We landed in a cozy living room with a hearth and a set of inviting settees and coffee table. A vibrant woman stood embraced by winding frames above the unlit fireplace, her posture rigid and upright as though a living lamppost. Draped in a jade mantua skirt, she was the crisp sea washing up the silvery foam of her white hair, which fell to her shoulders. Her skin, only visible above her collar, was island sand within a calm ocean of cloth and encompassed the two emerald puddles that were her eyes, seemingly from the same source as the seawater. Though the sand about her sparkling eyes and wry lips crinkled and the dunes of her cheeks were shallow, a shining humor shone through. I judged her the most intelligent woman I had ever seen.
The painted lady confidently wielded a paintbrush, its tip fringed with green and pointed at her own likeness in an act of self-awareness likely too radical to be dreamt of in her time. A china cup of tea on the coffee table behind her. The fireplace burned brightly in the foreground, scratching away at the shadows about it. Fire caught in the moment is inevitably brighter than it ought to be, yet it could not burn more intensely than this woman’s ocean flared.
“Radcliffe Feist,” Morris boomed, “otherwise known as your great-great-great-great-great” — he counted on his fingers — “grandmother! She is very old. Yet, age does not steal away her trophies.”
“I’ve heard of her,” I murmured, “but I’ve never seen her.”
“If she isn’t going into the textbooks any time soon, there is no reason to photocopy her. You’ll find, here in Cantabile, that people tend to hold what they value close to themselves. It’s a sheltered community, sure, but it’s always been one. Orion and Radcliffe sought refuge from their plagued world and dug a fantastic burrow.”
Hiss!
A door slipped open followed by a silver tray with six china cups, a cerulean ceramic pitcher and a full, miniature glass jar. The tray hovered in the slender hands of the awesomely graceful Maya Feist, my mother’s sister. Hers was an ostentatious wit, slathered in expense and relaxed refinement. Beauty pirouetted eternally within her and flowed like warm honey through her arteries. Wavy bubblegum hair stretched to her shoulders, at once startling and comforting, while steel eyes punctuated her suntanned face. She stood in a royal purple sundress, casually haughty, and adorned in necklaces, bracelets and rings that glistened as though struck by a invisible sunshine.
“Tea time!” she chimed. “Just in time.” She set the tray down on the coffee table by the unlit hearth and we hugged. I gave my hello.
“I’m giving her a mini-tour of Cadenza,” Morris said.
“I’m impressed,” I confided. “He’s so well-trained — and his clothes are so neat.”
“Well,” Maya grinned, “maybe one day you’ll learn my secret.”
Morris cracked a half-smile.
“Let me head back and brew a pot,” Maya said as she headed back behind the kitchen door.
“She’s a showy kind of gal,” Morris noted. “If a hissing kettle gives her a timely entrance, she’ll risk the impracticality of the return trips.” He swept his arm about the seat across from him as he reclined into the gold-threaded cushion. I reciprocated.
“Oh,” I realized dreamily, “where’s mom and dad?”
He looked expectantly at me.
Hesitation, then submission. “Uh, where are mom and dad?”
“Ah. Dropping off the bags in their room.”
“Er,” I hesitated again, straining for sensitivity, “aren’t you the house servant?”
“What, like a house elf? Like some kind of hobgoblin waddling through the manor, doing everyone’s dirty laundry and dishes and being paid crumpets for my backbreaking labor? Well, by bare definition, yes. But your lovely aunt and mother were taught at a young age to remain independent of their servants. Since the slavery days, the Feists haven’t hired more than a couple servants at a time and at this point, I’m the only one they need. Of course, it’s just Maya right now with all of Cadenza to herself, but I’m sure she wouldn’t need more than myself whenever she plans to raise the next generation. At the moment, we divide the work pretty evenly. We’re about the same as your average married couple with an age gap of about forty years.”
I liked that. It sounded dignified and I was never a fan of servitude.
Silence fell in between us and we picked up Maya’s lovely humming, a tune surely defined and grandiose in her head but amorphous and cute in the summer air. A light scribbling lay underneath the melody. What? A quill scratched against the timpanis of my skull.
I looked up. Morris caught my eyes in the ascent.
“Ah, yes,” he smiled, “that’s a friend of Maya’s. Soon to be a friend of yours, I’m sure. Bring him in here, tell him tea’s on.”
–
I pulled back my knees and slid my forearms from the cushioning. As I strode to the source of the geyser, goosebumps rose like burgeoning springs. My heart beat on its cage and started to sweat. I hadn’t expected this. Why was I intimidated? Maya would not intimidate me nor did the tall man with the screeching sax. I had not even laid eyes on this figure and it was already everything.
I stood in the doorway to a study. The scribbling stopped. The clapping of leather and cardboard heralded incoming footsteps. I meandered hesitantly past shelves of time-bound grimoires and tombs, taking in the musty spores of generations to spread hyphae through epithelium.
The muffled thumps of our feet flew against each other and kissed briefly. The beats were thicker, wider, heavier than mine.
Indexes along the shelves turned to rainbows, volume after volume of an encyclopedia written exclusively by a Roy Geronimo Biv.
The indexes, series by series, edition by edition, faded into plain worn gray. Between the petrified skins stood an amicable male figure clad in khaki trousers and mild pastel blue button-down, his thin-rimmed eyeglasses burrowed into kempt brown hair. Drifting eyes and a lazy smile beamed lackadaisically down at me, like a man convinced he’s in a waking dream.
“Hi,” I stammered. His head bounced on its neck.
“Maya didn’t tell me she was hiring child servants.”
“Huh? Maya–”
“Like,” he amended with slight haste, “like you’re calling me in for tea.” His left eyebrow intentionally drooped.
“Oh, yeah,” I said with a look of shabby, amused disapproval. I mean, I hope it looked like that.
“But you’re the kid staying over for the summer?”
“Yeah, for the next month.”
“Chill,” the young man decided. He looked younger than 30. Was he still in college? “Hey,” he remembered, putting out a dry hand and further stretching the corners of his mouth, “I’m Callum.”
“Sweet,” I smiled back. “I’m Mabel.”
by danny licht
you see the bulbs and miss the sun
you wake, you rise, you walk to school
your bag is full, you stroke your pen
then close your eyes and feel alive—
/
you know what twain has said of school,
in spite of it he learned,
you think and long for something more
you look but you are trapped—
/
how bleak it is to be in school!
to walk to school, to walk back home
to fill out forms: you’re better, you’re worse
to hear the teacher, to raise your hand
/
to find your seat and stay right there
to act alive, to be much less
how bleak it is to know this dread
as you walk to school, and mock your head
by jay shapiro
NARRATOR: And as the frozen sea swallowed his creature of sin it was at last clear to the doctor what his friend had meant, by warning him of playing God with the human form. It is in cases such as this that we see the outer-limits of the human ambition, and the horrors produced when ambition is not kept in check. But, my friends, this is only scratching the surface. Where true horrors emerge is not in great ambition, but in the exact opposite. Indeed the most terrifying creature to ever walk the Earth was born out of the non-actions of two lazy, lazy college students. For their lack of drive and utter determination to cruise their time at the Mary Shelley Academy of Mad Science gave birth to something even they could not comprehend. ‘Cause they were stupid too! Sit back and enjoy the phantasmagorical creation of the Marionette Man.
(In a dark laboratory/dorm-room, we see a young mad-scientist-in-training, Victor. He is sprawled out on his couch reading a copy of “Mad Science for Dummies”, and eating Cheetos. In the background there is a giant slab with a sheet over it, hiding whatever lies beneath. All of a sudden, Boris, his roommate, enters. Victor jumps up as he enters.)
BORIS: Victor! Victor! I’ve just encountered a dire problem.
VICTOR: Ah, Boris, what is it?
BORIS: I was attempting a careful operation on the snack machine, but now my bag of Ruffles is stuck leaning against the glass.
(Boris puts his arm around Victor and hunches the two of them down. They gaze out toward the audience.)
BORIS: The forces of this university are conspiring to hold us back, yet again!
VICTOR: Of course! What are you going to do about it, Boris?
(Pause)
BORIS: Oh, nothing now. Anger’s kind of draining, I’m not really in the mood.
VICTOR: Perhaps we could invent some sort of pulling mechanism to reach under the glass and obtain the fried potatoes.
BORIS: Yeah, but then you gotta look for both a pulley and extension mechanism, and the pulley should be easy enough but then you gotta make sure goes taut at the right time and that works fast enough to make sure no one will catch us…
VICTOR: Okay, okay.
(The two sit down on the couch)
VICTOR: Oh hey, we got a letter.
BORIS: Ah, from whom?
VICTOR: I think it’s from the Dean’s office.
BORIS: Oh well, that certainly sounds important. What does it say?
VICTOR: I don’t know I didn’t read it.
BORIS: Well, why not?
VICTOR: Well, you know how slow I read I just thought it would be easier for you to read it aloud.
BORIS (resigned): Alright.
(Victor hands Boris the letter and Boris opens it and begins reading)
BORIS: “To the address of Mr. Victor Whale and Mr. Boris Browning: In light of your many recent tardinesses, absences, and lab experiments gone awry…”
VICTOR: You and I both know they gave us the worst plague rat to work with.
BORIS: Very well. “…if you do not average your highest possible grade on this next experiment, your scholarships will be withdrawn!”
VICTOR: What?
BORIS: What is this?
VICTOR: You read it, you know exactly what it is! We’re getting evicted from the Mary Shelley Institute of Mad Scientists!
BORIS: Calm yourself, Victor! We still have a chance.
(Boris grabs Victor by the collar and pulls him over towards the slab. They stand on opposite sides.)
BORIS: We still have our Reanimated Man Experiment.
VICTOR: But it’s due tomorrow!
BORIS: That’s fine. We divided up the work perfectly.
VICTOR: Oh yeah, you’re right.
BORIS: I gathered the body parts…
VICTOR: …while I built a regeneration chamber…
BORIS: …with me handling the sewing and reconfiguration…
VICTOR: …and I got us a nice fresh brain…
BORIS: …And I re-attached all of the nerves in the central nervous system…
VICTOR: Wait! I re-attached the central nervous system!
BORIS: No, you were supposed to do the peripheral nervous system!
VICTOR: The peripheral one is so hard, you gotta worry about impulses in reflexes and everything!
BORIS: I know it’s the more difficult of the two. That’s why I dumped it on you!
VICTOR: Well, I did the central one.
BORIS: Calm down! Okay, if we both did the central nervous system, we’re looking at a creature with zero reflexes and too many voluntary actions to control all at once. Right?
VICTOR: I told you I read slowly! Look, do we have time to reassemble all of the nerves in one night?
BORIS: Uh… maybe. But c’mon I stayed up until 4 last night watching Breaking Bad, I’m really tired.
VICTOR: Well… yeah, I agree.
BORIS: Fire it up?
VICTOR: Let’s fire it up.
(Victor and Boris pull the necessary switches and the Marionette Man rises from underneath the sheet.)
VICTOR & BORIS: It’s alive! It’s alive! It’s…
(The Marionette Man rises up until the sheet falls and upon sitting up all the way it falls over.)
VICTOR & BORIS: …uh-oh.
(The Marionette Man tries to pick itself up and falls off the slab. The tries to pull himself along the floor because the lower half of his body hangs limply.)
MARIONETTE: Eye camp ear my egg! Eye camp ear my egg!
VICTOR: What did you do, Boris?
BORIS: What did I do? You did my job after I already did it! Did you even read the itinerary?
(The Marionette Man drags himself closer to the two of them)
MARIONETTE: REEAAAGGHHH!!!
VICTOR: What itinerary?
BORIS: The one I wrote up and posted on the refrigerator door- Oh, dammit I think I forgot to post it up.
VICTOR: What?
BORIS: I was going to but then Waking Dead came on!
(Marionette Man grabs Boris by his legs)
MARIONETTE: Gib me my egg! Gibe me my egg!
BORIS: AAAAHH!
(Boris kicks him off and he topples over. He lies still for a few seconds as Victor and Boris look on.)
VICTOR: Did you kill him?
BORIS: No, he’s super strong, right?
VICTOR: I don’t know; superhumans are extra credit so I didn’t bother.
BORIS: Professor Jekyll is gonna kill us.
(The Marionette Man suddenly swings his legs up and startles Boris and Victor.)
VICTOR & BORIS: AAAHHHH!!
(Marionette Man hoists himself up on his legs while the rest of his body hands limply. His hands seem to work fine however.)
MARIONETTE: Ah… dad’s bedder.
VICTOR: What?
MARIONETTE: Eyed feel tho muge bedder dow. Dankoo.
BORIS: He can talk!
(Whenever speaking the Marionette Man, shifts his hands around casually at the ends of his limp arms.)
MARIONETTE: Ove gorth eye gan dock! Eyed gottsa moud.
VICTOR: Oh, Boris I think only a few parts of his body can work at any one time.
BORIS: Victor, do you remember how you hooked up his nerves?
VICTOR: Sure do. What about you?
BORIS: Like a photograph. If we can just get him up on the table and run some quick surgery, we can have him ready by morning.
(The Marionette Man stretches his arms up triumphantly.)
MARIONETTE: Hooray! I’m going to be a complete person!
(At this the Marionette Man falls down completely.)
MARIONETTE: Uh, this sucks.
VICTOR: Relax.
BORIS: We’ll just get you tidied up for the presentation tomorrow for Professor Jekyll, and then you’re off to live your life.
(All of a sudden there is a knock on the door and a voice shouting from the other side.)
VOICE: Hello? Open up in there?
BORIS: Who’s that?
VICTOR: Oh no, it can only be one person!
BORIS: Quick, cover him!
(Victor covers Marionette Man with a blanket as Boris answers the door.)
BORIS: Who is it?
VICTOR: Who do you think, child?!
BORIS: Oh no….
(Victor finishes covering the Marionette Man up to his neck and then runs alongside Boris as the door opens. Enter the hunchbacked Igor.)
VICTOR & BORIS: It’s Igor the Inspector!
IGOR: Yes, it’s me. I’ve come to inspect the results of your latest assignment: The reanimation of decayed tissue.
VICTOR: Wait! But, that isn’t due until tomorrow!
IGOR: In light of your recent warnings the professor demanded harsher treatment of you two. Therefore, your project will be reviewed tonight.
BORIS: But, but, but…
IGOR: You have done the assignment, correct?
VICTOR: Yes, of course! Just let us show you.
BORIS: It’s right over here.
(Boris and Victor show Igor the Marionette Man. The Marionette Man pretends to be asleep)
MARIONETTE (sleepily): Hello.
IGOR: Hmm… it’s sleeping?
BORIS: Yes, we just ran several rather exhausting tests on it to make sure it was all ready for Professor Jekyll tomorrow.
VICTOR: He’s lookin’ great, Inspector!
IGOR: Hmm… yes that would appear to be the case but I need to make sure it has basic cognitive faculties. Wake him up!
BORIS: Please, he’s really tired.
IGOR: NOW!
VICTOR: Okay, okay. Marionette Man, wake up!
(Marionette Man shifts over slightly)
BORIS: Marionette Man?
VICTOR: Yeah, y’know the way he hangs like that like a marionette-
(Boris jabs his elbow into Victor’s gut)
IGOR: Hangs?
VICTOR: From the monkey bars- when he’s exercising- ‘cause boy does he exercise!
IGOR: Listen, Marionette Man! Are you able to carry a conversation?
MARIONETTE: Sure, why not?
IGOR: How does the weather seem tonight?
MARIONETTE: Dark and stormy! How should I know I’ve never left this room asshole!
IGOR: Well, I see you haven’t given him the benefit of a charming personality, but everything else seems to be in order. Goodnight boys.
VICTOR: Goodnight.
BORIS: Goodnight.
MARIONETTE: Thudbite.
(Everyone freezes. Igor turns around.)
IGOR: What did he just say?
MARIONETTE: Guy thed thudbite.
(Pause)
IGOR: Wait a minute.
(Marionette Man freaks out and starts quickly crab-walking away from the situation.)
IGOR: Stop right there!
(A chase begins with Marionette Man and Igor)
BORIS: Oh God, Victor, what do we do?
VICTOR: I don’t know.
BORIS: He’s gonna fail us!
VICTOR: I know!
BORIS: And then we’ll have to move back in with your parents!
(At this Victor takes his bag of Cheetos and tackles Igor, putting the bag over his head for a few seconds and suffocating him. Igor collapses. Boris then pulls out a knife and stabs it in Igor’s back. The three stand perfectly still for a few seconds in shock.)
BORIS: Nice.
VICTOR: Nice.
BORIS: How are we gonna cover this up, again?
VICTOR: No idea.
VOICE: You won’t need to boys.
(The three jump and out from the closet emerges Professor Jekyll)
BORIS & VICTOR: Professor Jekyll!
JEKYLL: Good evening.
VICTOR: Professor, we’re so sorry about killing a faculty member.
JEKYLL: Relax, boys, this was all part of your test.
BORIS & VICTOR: What?
JEKYLL: You two are some of the brightest I have in my class, but you’re so unmotivated. I wanted to make sure that you could be driven individuals and do what proper mad scientists have to do to improve their work.
(At this Jekyll transforms into Mr. Hyde.)
HYDE: RIGHT, SLACKERS?!!!
BORIS: Yeah, yeah, yeah…
(Hyde turns back into Jekyll)
JEKYLL: Good. Murdering those who dare to stand in your way is a staple of mad scientists. It’s what separates the Frankensteins from the Dr. Marao’s out there. And now I see that you two can indeed be driven individuals. You’re no longer in danger of expulsion.
BORIS & VICTOR: Yeah!!!
VICTOR: But, wait, you’re not mad we killed your assistant.
JEKYLL: Oh there’s plenty more where he came from.
(Jekyll turns back into Hyde and inspects the Marionette Man, who stands up on one leg and holds his head up with his arm.)
HYDE: A FEW MORE ADJUSTMENTS AND HE’LL BE READY FOR ALL MANNER OF CHAOS! I WANT HIM READY BY THE MORNING!
(Hyde exits. Victor and Boris sigh with relief.)
BORIS: Saved. Now, let’s get to building our creation a better system!
VICTOR: I don’t know it’s late and all that stuff that just happened kinda wore me out.
BORIS: You know I was hoping you would say that, let’s go watch Walking Dead.
(They exit. The Marionette Man tries to follow them by hopping on one leg but falls.)
by max stahl
Act One
Enter cactus, squirrel, geyser.
The geyser blows water out of its ass while the squirrel runs around the cactus. The cactus tries to escape the squirrel, but then it realizes it cannot move. The squirrel lunges at the cactus and gets pricked in the chest and face. It jumps back and cries in pain.
Enter Man.
Man: And thus the parable of the cactus is one third done.
Yet could it not be said that we have had some fun?
Indeed, it seems as though all is lost; there is some hope.
But if I left you like this, well, how would you cope?
So we draw the curtain, assemble the second act.
It’s great, you’ll see, as a matter of fact.
So on we go, as we go on
And we’ll resume the show anon.
Exeunt all.
Act Two
Enter cactus, stethoscope, pondering Buddhist monk, ruptured trachea.
Cactus blows in the wind. Stethoscope sits on a rock. Buddhist monk is meditating. He peeks one eye open and sees ruptured trachea sitting on top of cactus. He screams and runs away.
Enter Man.
Man: And thus Act Two comes to an end,
So now your ears to me please lend.
My rhymes grow lazier as we go,
And by the time we’re done with the show
I’ll be rhyming the same word twice
And this production will lose all spice.
It’s boring; you’ll see, so dreadfully dull
That you’d wish you were free like an old seagull
Exeunt all.
Act 3
Enter cactus, detached root, stampede of rhinos, determined grin.
Cactus stands still. Stampede of rhinos stampedes by. Detached root moves about as stampede stampedes by. Determined grin grins determinedly. Cactus grows, glows blue, becomes monstrous cactus monster. Cactus monster eats root and determined grin, then kills everyone in audience.
Enter Man.
Man: And thus ends the cactus story
Hasn’t it turned delightfully gory?
The cactus, a monster, has killed you all.
Well, now that you’re dead, you can’t be appalled.
You’re dead; it’s bliss; you’ve escaped this play,
So terribly bad, it’ll ne’er see the light of day.
It’s over! It’s over! Just one more line!
The opera is over once I finish this line.
Exeunt all. Curtain.
by raymond chira
Carnegie Hall first opened its doors in April of 1891, and with its opening came a flush of musicians all hoping to land themselves in the court of the industrial king who lent his name to the venue. After its opening performance on May 5th of the same year, all manner of composers and conductors, pianists and pit-musicians were eager to make themselves known to the elite of early 20th century Manhattan, who were, and would continue to be for the rest of the city’s history, the elites of the elites; the Romans of the expanding American Empire. Each season, two-hundred performances were encased inside the walls of Carnegie Hall, and the beats and chords from the orchestras would echo off the venue’s polished white and gold interior chamber, reverberating with enough soul and fire and fury and rhythm that led to a rumor that the bones of Bach had been used in the architecture to give support (to both the building and the performers). Of course, this was what the hall would go on to become, and during its formative years, as most would expect, it was fairly limited in scope of sound. While the classical melodies boomed and echoed with power and grace, Carnegie Hall served as a grand symbol of triumph of the form.
It was a place for the wealthy and the classically trained, perfectly representing Andrew Carnegie himself; Carnegie was a man of great ambition and, through intelligence and determination, transformed himself into a living argument for the glory of capitalism. Carnegie was an immigrant of Scottish descent, and had risen himself through impossible odds to become one of the richest men in the world, and the purest example of a businessman that America could offer. Carnegie Hall, similarly, was a means of expressing this feat through sounds that could not be put into words, for Carnegie’s accomplishment was too glorious. But, however much this could irritate the foundation of Carnegie Hall, it could not diminish the power of the music. The music was too much for argument. The music was the best in the world, and continued that way for seventeen years, and the echoes still rang in the corridors of the hall, resonating a power that strike at the soul of any man, and give him the ambition, tenacity, and perhaps even a small amount of the raw misanthropy that lay deep down in the hearts of men like Andrew Carnegie. What the hall was waiting for was someone who could wash away that legacy. What the hall, and by extension all of New York City was waiting for was an artist who would redefine everything they expected from the venue.
And then, on February 29th of 1908, there came Sammy Carter (whose real name was Shmuel Kurtz. but chose to hide his Jewish background) and his orchestra, the Renaissance, to Carnegie Hall. The anticipation had circulated for several months, as statements about Carter’s orchestra had noted that he was undergoing the most unusual experiment in the music of New York City. Carter had long embraced the traditions of classical music, but, somewhere along the way, he had found that it had grown somehow stagnant and had lost a great deal of its original passion. This was when Carter’s brilliant revelation came to him, when he found the idea in his mind that would make him famous across the nation for one night. He was to combine classical music with the music the blacks of Harlem played. How Carter came to be classically trained remains a mystery to this day, as many have attempted to learn how his family came to wealth while being Jewish immigrants. His father was believed to have been a banker, but in actuality was a poster-maker, designing propaganda to be shipped to the south in the wake of reconstruction. Carter himself had never been concerned about money, as his education was prestigious and his musicians followed him to the ends of the Earth, knowing that only through him could they find the famous court.
When Carter and his orchestra first appeared in Carnegie Hall, reactions ranged from amusement to disdain. Not only had Carter’s idea given him a reputation as both a genius and a madman, but his orchestra was nearly halfway made up of blacks, only a few of whom had even come from Harlem, with most having saved up their pennies to move to the North, where Carter had discovered them one at a time. The night of the performance has since become the stuff of legend. All the patrons sat in their seats, some eager for a new, exciting form of concert music that would take the city into a new age, while others awaited a pure humiliation on Carter’s part. The members of the Renaissance then took their seats, bringing on all of their various brasses and winds, as the audience attempted to contain their laughter over the orchestra’s unorthodox arrangement of instruments. There were so many brasses that the auditorium shown with the same hue and fluidity of urine, and the lack of any strings coupled with a single drum-set ensured the audience that their greatest fears were indeed on the horizon; this was to be a percussive evening of unrelenting amounts of harsh noise, that would last for nearly three hours, and would result in severe migraines for New York’s wealthiest in the morning. Then, Sammy Carter took to the stage, bowed to the audience, and signaled the Renaissance to commence.
For the first the first half hour, there was nothing but the piano, and this surprised crowd expecting unrelenting noise. The man on the piano was Andre Piotr, a Russian immigrant who did not know a single word of English, a situation that led to Sammy Carter’s frustration many times. At 91-years-old, Piotr was, albeit unofficially, the oldest performer at Carnegie Hall at the time. Despite his age, Piotr had maintained a massive head of mangy black hair, with a beard so long it went to knees, resulting in Carter having to tie it up with rubber bands before each performance to keep the hair off the keys, as well as to ensure that the audience did not mistake Piotr for a Neanderthal. Carter’s efforts to groom Piotr’s wild features into some amount of sophistication were in vain, and, for years afterward, the rumor still persisted that Rasputin had been a concert pianist before he destroyed the Romanovs. His true legacy, however, was his piano work, which opened the legendary show and gave the audience the first sample of what they were in for. Although they didn’t realize it at the time, the Russian was actually the most percussive of all players in the Renaissance, pounding his instrument with all the might that an old man’s fingers could (which was far greater than one might expect), and creating a firm, loud, yet still graceful and intricate opener for the rest of the performance.
The rest of the orchestra came in as soon as Piotr looked as though his fingers would melt off from turning too red. The collective of musicians had trained for the better part of a year to make sure they did not overpower the listener after the fury of Andre Piotr, implementing a then-revolutionary call-and-response style between the first row and the back row, while those in the middle steadily carried on the rhythm with the drummer keeping steady for the continuation of the night. For an hour the Renaissance amazed the audience with new methods, constantly switching up styles and exceeding expectations. The drummer himself, Charlie Brooklyn, named after the bridge he was born under, assisted a great deal of this. Brooklyn was as orderly and controlled as the finest desk-worker, but with enough energy to fuel a bomb of his own. And, indeed, when his first snare echoed in the auditorium, New York’s wealthiest were in for a hell of a night. Brooklyn brought to the Renaissance the control they needed to make their music incredible. At every moment they could have played one note, another, even more effective one, stood in its place, and tore down the expected patterns and standards that the patrons of Carnegie Hall had taken to heart. Assisted by Brooklyn’s changing beats, the orchestra carried on storming, and rolled on with impossible ease. This was their night to redefine not only Carnegie Hall, but all of New York, and they weren’t slowing down.
At two and a half hours into the performance, the audience had been overwhelmed by the prowess and power of Sammy Carter and the Renaissance. And then came the build. Charlie Brooklyn began a roll on his snare drum that built so fast and so quiet that it infused itself onto the pulses of all in the hall, while the middle rhythm section row syncopated with him, backing up the long bursts of sound coming from the front and back, as they switched off on the fly to the point where even they had lost track of who was playing at even moment. The build continued and rolled on, as the music grew louder and more powerful, and Sammy Carter kept them going and going and going until their faces had turned red and their hands grown numb. And it built and built and built to a crescendo of booming brass and thunderous uproar of melody, stretched out to a deafening roar that lasted a small eternity. And as the boom grew to its highest and loudest point, thundering so that even those outside the hall could hear it died, and only one thing remained in its place.
A saxophone bellowed out where all the others had died, and stretched out its notes to descend. The saxophonist stood up, and played a solo that took the experience from revolutionary, to something else entirely that words could not describe. The saxophonist, a tall black man of nineteen years, played his miracle instrument for all of New York to hear. To sum up the performance in notes and dynamics was to give it too little credit. It was slower and gentler than anything that had come before it, but impossibly loud and noisy if you listened hard enough. As the player continued to blow into his instrument, it was heard throughout the city. Down by the docks where the seamen arrived it vibrated through the water, and brought all ships that could hear it back to land. In the lower boroughs, the animals fell quiet, and hugged the ground to feel the pulse of the saxophone. On the construction sites in midtown, the sound echoed along the bars and scaffolds where all the night workers could hear it, and all of them promptly stopped their work and sat down on looking over the city and up at the half moon.
And back in the hall, after an hour of playing, Clarence Christopher drew his solo to a close, and the Renaissance took their part in wrapping up with the final movement. The audience sat for twenty minutes, and then applauded for another hour.
Sammy Carter’s body was found in his apartment three weeks later, after the smell had carried over to the neighbors. By some phantasmagorical means, his body had decayed down to the earliest sightings of his white bones.
For the next three years Clarence Christopher was the most talked-about man in Manhattan. After Sammy Carter had died, the Renaissance had dissolved, scattering its members across the five boroughs, with mixed results among their fortunes (Charlie Brooklyn continued to play as a session musician until retiring in 1968, while Andre Piotr had left the orchestra after the Carnegie Hall performance and died of natural causes the very next day in his apartment). It was Christopher who continued onto carve out a pronounced impression in New York City history, performing across Manhattan and Queens for months following the performance. His reputation was always preceded by his legendary Carnegie Hall solo, something he would spend the rest of his life trying to recapture.
While the art of the man later called “Sax Spider” was what would build him up into an icon, his personal life painted a picture of a smaller, humbler musician. Clarence had grown up in New York City, though his exact home area remains a mystery. His father had been killed at the hands of corrupt police officers shortly before he was born, and Clarence’s mother Bernadette had often sent him out to Midtown in order to play on his harmonica for spare change. After the death of his mother at age 11, he had managed to save up a small amount money for himself (an act would which often resulting in fierce beatings from Bernadette Christopher) that kept him from going hungry on the streets of early 20th century Manhattan. It was when Clarence was 15 that Sammy Carter located him after hearing stories about a gifted street performer, and was invited into his early quartet. At the time the quartet consisted of Clarence, Charlie Brooklyn, Carter himself on piano, and an unidentified bass player who left around the time more and more members started to transform the quartet into a full-on orchestra.
Carter’s relationship with the young Clarence Christopher was a uniquely close one in the Renaissance. According to Charlie Brooklyn, “I never did get to know Clarence very well. In fact, he always did come across like he was very self-absorbed. But the one guy he would talk to, and I mean pour everything to, was Sammy. Sammy and Clarence would just always be talking, discussing the music, they were like brothers that always were like that. Like they knew each other all their lives.” Several other members of the orchestra have supported Brooklyn’s claim about Christopher being anti-social. On one occasion, it has been told that Christopher was harassed by another bandmate, the trumpeter Bobby Frank. When Frank had alluded to the then teenage boy’s virginity, a vicious argument broke out between the two, which culminated in Frank commenting on the size of Christopher’s penis. Later that day, on the way home from rehearsal, Frank was assaulted by Christopher in an alley, who had followed him for 20 blocks and beat his face until his nose broken using the saxophone case he had been given by Carter.
For whatever kind of man Clarence Christopher was offstage, when he was onstage he would seemingly evolve. The performer onstage was something much more than “young black man growing up in New York at the turn of the century.” There was something about Clarence Christopher’s music that seemed to naturally appeal to just about every inhabitant of New York; the way it could be so mathematical, always keep his notes and rolls ordered down to the smallest detail and never going in the wrong direction or holding out a note for too long; yet it never came across as perfunctory either. A phrase attributed to many talented performers was the gift of having soul, but Clarence Christopher’s music itself seemed to have some sort of pulsating entity to it. Perhaps it was the universality of his saxophone that could seem to communicate a clear message to everyone who heard it, and spoke with lucidity and grace. For Clarence Christopher, the saxophone was his voice, and he spoke the language of the Tower of Babel. And when he spoke he said the most extraordinary and inspiring things, and no one could ignore the New York City gospel.
Word of Christopher’s skill stretched out beyond the city, and in 1911, the man with a voice of a city began touring nationally, generating anticipation among musical hubs and appreciators of early jazz. The tour was set up with Christopher and his band, called the Solomon quartet, and they set out in May of that year, heading to Boston for Christopher’s time performing outside of New York. It was a performance that he was never to appear at. After settling into the hotel, Christopher left to cash in his check (the owners of the venue had agreed to pay him in advance). At an undisclosed bank in the south of Boston, Clarence Christopher was waiting in line, still carrying his saxophone case, when an amateur bank robber by the name of Corley Conroy stormed into the bank. Conroy had been working at a tiles factory up until the previous day, when two of his fingers had been severed in an accident. The foreman had refused Conroy’s attempts to speak with the managers, and Conroy was fired without benefits for insulting a superior. Conroy had taken to bank robbery rather hastily.
After shaking down the teller and several customers, Conroy was making his exit when something hard collided with the back of his head. Conroy fell over and spun around to see Clarence Christopher standing over him with his saxophone case held above his head, staring angrily down at him. Reacting quickly, Conroy took his pistol and aimed it at Christopher’s face. He fired. After Conroy had picked himself up and run out of the bank with several police officers in pursuit, the other customers of the bank got up to see Clarence Christopher clutching the area where his left eye had once been, which was now overflowing with blood. Then, Christopher, breathing heavily and still holding on to his saxophone case, announced to the bank, “Fuck this town. I’m gettin’ myself back home.”
And with that, Clarence Christopher stormed out of the bank, still holding his bloody eye socket. He never made his appearance at the Boston venue, or returned to the hotel to collect his luggage. The Solomon-quartet returned to New York to find him, but after six years was declared dead by the New York City Police Department. Clarence Christopher had sunken into the city that he had once held in the palm of his hand, and vanished from history itself.
