in it, but the gesture is unmistakably the same: Bend to my will, boy. Give me my due.
Fuck that.
I look at Sister.
“Forgive me?” I say.
I have no right to ask. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I see the shadow of a smile.
Her words are just for me this time. “It’s okay.”
Faith’ll jab you in the eye nine times outta ten, but sometimes when you grow up with a head full of horror show, you can’t help but believe.
I open the briefcase. Sister takes the Old Man’s hand. Always the strong one, she holds him where sea meets sand.
The stone, wood, skin, whatever the fuck it is, burns. I cling for all I’m worth, which is shit-all in the grand scheme of things if I have my way. I don’t want to be the next coming of the Fly-Lord. Dying unremembered and unmourned sounds just dandy to me.
The Old Man howls with rage.
I raise the black idol high. The moon’s jaundiced eye rolls my way. It shifts from sliver to full then back again, a knife-edged grin. The sky ripples, stars aligning. Something darker than dark, all dripping angles dreams its way up from the deep.
Displaced water hulks black against off-color stars. The sea, the sky - everything holds its breath. Pain flays me star-sharp, hurtles me into the dark. Cold compresses my lungs, cracks my ribs. Just before I shatter, the waiting sea falls, crashing down on Dear Old Dad, snapping his bones.
The waves retreat, oily-slick. There’s nothing on the shore but me and salt-eaten footprints, fading with the tide.
A single, black spire - not skin, not wood, not stone - thrusts from the waves. Everything goes the color of a bruise. The sky melts, drips into the sea. The black needle lingers a moment, a middle finger raised, telling me how fucked I am if I dare disturb its sleep again.
Then it sinks. The cosmic eye shutters back to dreams.
I sit down hard. The tide kisses my feet. I laugh. Then I weep. I wipe tears from my eyes, and look toward the horizon where the faintest line of silver cracks the sky. Hollow, spent, I wait for the motherfucking dawn.
THE THING WITH ONYX EYES
By Stephen Brown
Often I do sit by myself on dark and windy nights, seated in my chair by the fire, its crackling speech giving warmth to the room but not my bones. I do sit oblivious, my mind not in my parlor but up in the attic where the thing is held. I sit now in my chair, pipe held idly between my teeth, the light of the dancing flames painting half my face orange yet giving me no heat. The window is black. Outside everything is draped in dark velvet. The line between what is terrestrial and what is celestial has been blurred; outside is naught but void be-speckled by the faint, feeble rays of distant stars. But I pay no heed to the blanket of shadows nor the stars, but only the thing in the attic. The thing with onyx eyes.
My grandmother—her head, composed of canvas and paint, hangs still over my mantle—brought the thing from somewhere far away where heathens still yet lived in noble savagery. She had gone with her husband, my grandfather, on a voyage to distant shores: whether it be that Dark Continent or an island in the deep Pacific, I know not. There she found the thing–that thing with onyx eyes–in an evil shrine in the heart of some forsaken jungle. There amidst foliage that steams in eternal green twilight, she found the thing of profane proportions and there she took it. Or rather, the thing took her. My grandmother returned from that strange voyage alone—as alone as I am now—with that thing among her luggage. All who saw it, and they were few, beheld it with repulsion and disgust. But my grandmother was the only one who treasured it, placing it on her mantle; holding it always close; carrying it with her when on rare times she left her home.
That crone stayed ever locked in her dwelling, hating any who came to her door. We would visit her rarely, and when we did, us children found her house a creaking,
Fuck that.
I look at Sister.
“Forgive me?” I say.
I have no right to ask. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I see the shadow of a smile.
Her words are just for me this time. “It’s okay.”
Faith’ll jab you in the eye nine times outta ten, but sometimes when you grow up with a head full of horror show, you can’t help but believe.
I open the briefcase. Sister takes the Old Man’s hand. Always the strong one, she holds him where sea meets sand.
The stone, wood, skin, whatever the fuck it is, burns. I cling for all I’m worth, which is shit-all in the grand scheme of things if I have my way. I don’t want to be the next coming of the Fly-Lord. Dying unremembered and unmourned sounds just dandy to me.
The Old Man howls with rage.
I raise the black idol high. The moon’s jaundiced eye rolls my way. It shifts from sliver to full then back again, a knife-edged grin. The sky ripples, stars aligning. Something darker than dark, all dripping angles dreams its way up from the deep.
Displaced water hulks black against off-color stars. The sea, the sky - everything holds its breath. Pain flays me star-sharp, hurtles me into the dark. Cold compresses my lungs, cracks my ribs. Just before I shatter, the waiting sea falls, crashing down on Dear Old Dad, snapping his bones.
The waves retreat, oily-slick. There’s nothing on the shore but me and salt-eaten footprints, fading with the tide.
A single, black spire - not skin, not wood, not stone - thrusts from the waves. Everything goes the color of a bruise. The sky melts, drips into the sea. The black needle lingers a moment, a middle finger raised, telling me how fucked I am if I dare disturb its sleep again.
Then it sinks. The cosmic eye shutters back to dreams.
I sit down hard. The tide kisses my feet. I laugh. Then I weep. I wipe tears from my eyes, and look toward the horizon where the faintest line of silver cracks the sky. Hollow, spent, I wait for the motherfucking dawn.
THE THING WITH ONYX EYES
By Stephen Brown
Often I do sit by myself on dark and windy nights, seated in my chair by the fire, its crackling speech giving warmth to the room but not my bones. I do sit oblivious, my mind not in my parlor but up in the attic where the thing is held. I sit now in my chair, pipe held idly between my teeth, the light of the dancing flames painting half my face orange yet giving me no heat. The window is black. Outside everything is draped in dark velvet. The line between what is terrestrial and what is celestial has been blurred; outside is naught but void be-speckled by the faint, feeble rays of distant stars. But I pay no heed to the blanket of shadows nor the stars, but only the thing in the attic. The thing with onyx eyes.
My grandmother—her head, composed of canvas and paint, hangs still over my mantle—brought the thing from somewhere far away where heathens still yet lived in noble savagery. She had gone with her husband, my grandfather, on a voyage to distant shores: whether it be that Dark Continent or an island in the deep Pacific, I know not. There she found the thing–that thing with onyx eyes–in an evil shrine in the heart of some forsaken jungle. There amidst foliage that steams in eternal green twilight, she found the thing of profane proportions and there she took it. Or rather, the thing took her. My grandmother returned from that strange voyage alone—as alone as I am now—with that thing among her luggage. All who saw it, and they were few, beheld it with repulsion and disgust. But my grandmother was the only one who treasured it, placing it on her mantle; holding it always close; carrying it with her when on rare times she left her home.
That crone stayed ever locked in her dwelling, hating any who came to her door. We would visit her rarely, and when we did, us children found her house a creaking,
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