Fabled Streams
By Daniel Hales.
“Doesn’t the carnival turn a little more sinister each passing block?” she says huskily, smacking her lips on the p and b. It did seem many revelers had begun chanting praises to the glorious Nada, to a sacred shush between all songs.
Please understand, if I am kept, for a time, from my quest by the succubus, it is not because of the perfect, smoky sheen of her skin, no, nor her tightly laced up cleavage. I am disgusted by her riches, her retinue of loyal gnomes, her palace inscribed with arcane symbols. But her spells are strong. Her clairaudience anticipates and disarms each attempt to resist.
From the lowest ramparts we watch the procession. Spiked plumes, sequined masks, whips going taut in slow motion–or do I grow a bit feverish? A French horn tumbles from a float. Is stolen.
A sudden, frenzied percussing with torchpoles on all the manhole covers, from which emerge hundreds of rapiered men. They bow, then perform a grisly, intricate choreography. Each mimes slaying and being slain, till each duelist has impaled every other.
She twines me, whispers “but how can a dead mule marry a school master?” I drift, something about “venture capital” and “fabled streams.” I laugh for some reason–begin to cough, hack, lose my hold on gravity. Does it dissolve the rust, form a fine coat of chrome? I am hit by a mad barrage of flutes in a backwards wind.
I attempt to regain myself, wriggle free to uncork another bottle of Domaine D’Valdeaux. Gaze out over the parapet, address the panorama of mountain ranges in the officious tone reserved for toasting royal patrons: “remain where you are: your milky contours melt exquisitely into the horizon–and what is not more beautiful in the pale, unfinished distance?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Hales is a writer and musician living in the wilds of western Massachusetts. His poems and flash fictions have appeared recently in Bateau, Conduit, Verse Daily, Upstreet, Slipstream, nth position, Qarrtsiluni, 42 Opus, and elsewhere. His website is here. Songs from his recent album, “Frost Heaves” can be heard here.
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Friday, February 5th, 2010.
