Defenestrationism.net

by Sue Vickerman
(this is part II. Read 
My lover Lily was found dead in the canal 
from the beginning.)

Since you left me…

…I am getting out more by myself, like I used to before we were together. Tonight, the Sinfonietta. The conductor is the actual composer. Hair like a lion; passionate…

…wonder whether he composes into the night with the central heating turned right up, or piles on bohemian jumpers in front of a quaint inefficient electric bar fire, totally immersed in his creative inner life like there’s nothing else in this world? Or whether he has to be in bed early so as not to disturb his wife’s sleep after midnight, and has to take his turn listening for the children and changing the wetted bed, and sometimes has to rub her back and sometimes make love… or whether a mistress comes to his studio after dark and lays on the rag-rug naked, or whether his only love is the tumble of black notes, how they tipple-tail onto the page like tadpoles, no, like sperm, the way a sperm swims strongly into existence…whether music is his child, or his religion, or the bane of his life that ties him in knots and makes him despair and think he should get another job and stop all this – whether this is what passes through his mind each morning before breakfast, or whether he contentedly sits at the piano with his first cup of coffee and feels Life Itself welling up inside; whether all of life is in that room, a well-appointed studio with solar-powered heating and much natural light, everything an architect could think of to perfect a creative environment… or that room, a ramshackle attic with a folding bed permanently unfolded at one end, old-fashioned blankets, a brown stain on the bottom sheet from a long-ago espresso concocted on that Baby Belling. No woman to scoop up the linen and wash it. No: no small-minded fussing over bed-linen, because what he has to do today is Important. Is nothing less than his raison d’etre.

I am attracted to people like you and him; people with a raison d’etre. I know my floundering is what made you hate me.

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by Sue Vickerman

Lily drowned, then…
(publishing December 15th)
Since you left me…
(publishing December 16th)
If you were still alive…
(publishing December 17th

Lily drowned, then…

…six months after, when I decide to take down the last of her pencil drawings, I find underneath it another one, taped up on the wall in her neat way. Omigod. There, superimposed on a sketch she drew of the outside of me is a drawing of my inside.

She had invented (I say invented because she hadn’t a clue what my inside was like) an unscientific spider-web of veins: pink, blue and lime green. Not my colours at all but then she never saw what was really in there; never fathomed me well enough to know I was only black. A recent sketch of me by CJ is more towards the boldness of the London Underground map because CJ thinks that’s how I function, all Broadway Boogie Woogie, but again, all those bright bold colours are wrong, and the edges should be blurred out, but CJ is far too anal-retentive for that. When my previous lover Saj on the other hand drew my inside, it was a complex intersection of roadways along which steam-rollers trundled and bulldozers bulldozed. A messy grey scribble, no flair or subtlety, which is no reflection on me but rather speaks volumes about Saj, who is not an artist but a plumber who could only visualise basic pipe systems. He would’ve built me in Meccano alright but that’s as far as it could ever have gone. I am more of a network of black canals like the one Lily was found in. Stagnant arteries joining up post-industrial cities (Saj at least had a bit of insight into the sluggish passage of liquid along channels, I’ll say that for him, and the practical skills to steer along waterways).

You’d be totally freaking, Lil, over yesterday’s devastating oil-spill that is threatening to obliterate the sea-life of a whole ocean, because taking care of nature was your raison d’etre.  You’d have been way more freaked out, though, if you’d known who I really am – that when I get cut, black ink spews out of me.

Since you left me…

…I am getting out more by myself, like I used to before we were together. Tonight, the Sinfonietta. The conductor is the actual composer. Hair like a lion; passionate…

…wonder whether he composes into the night with the central heating turned right up, or piles on bohemian jumpers in front of a quaint inefficient electric bar fire, totally immersed in his creative inner life like there’s nothing else in this world? Or whether he has to be in bed early so as not to disturb his wife’s sleep after midnight, and has to take his turn listening for the children and changing the wetted bed, and sometimes has to rub her back and sometimes make love… or whether a mistress comes to his studio after dark and lays on the rag-rug naked, or whether his only love is the tumble of black notes, how they tipple-tail onto the page like tadpoles, no, like sperm, the way a sperm swims strongly into existence…whether music is his child, or his religion, or the bane of his life that ties him in knots and makes him despair and think he should get another job and stop all this – whether this is what passes through his mind each morning before breakfast, or whether he contentedly sits at the piano with his first cup of coffee and feels Life Itself welling up inside; whether all of life is in that room, a well-appointed studio with solar-powered heating and much natural light, everything an architect could think of to perfect a creative environment… or that room, a ramshackle attic with a folding bed permanently unfolded at one end, old-fashioned blankets, a brown stain on the bottom sheet from a long-ago espresso concocted on that Baby Belling. No woman to scoop up the linen and wash it. No: no small-minded fussing over bed-linen, because what he has to do today is Important. Is nothing less than his raison d’etre.

I am attracted to people like you and him; people with a raison d’etre. I know my floundering is what made you hate me.

If you were still alive…

…my floundering would continue to freak you out, Lil. Like, today I have an appointment with a man off the internet…

….but what if he has no intention of turning the virtual thing we’ve had into reality? So will not be outside Leeds Travelodge at eleven when I get there in the businessy-looking outfit he wants me to wear with court shoes; will not emerge from the Travelodge just as I’m retouching my lipstick out of nerves, take my elbow and steer me into – no, not straight into the hotel, but round the back, where the bins are, where rubbish has been spread across the alleyway by cats or by an urban fox so that it smells bad in the sun, where he pushes me against the redbrick and speaks in a low menacing voice the kinds of words he writes when we chat online… what if the national economy crashes today between my departure from home and arrival by train at Leeds, at Leeds Travelodge; something so momentous that public transport stops, or maybe it is a terrorist attack, everything stops, or some sort of magnetic force caused by a comet that makes all the clocks and watches stop, or jolts the world out of its timing, so that eleven o’clock doesn’t even happen and I do not arrive at the Travelodge and will not be taken to the anonymous room he has already booked and paid for, steered by the elbow in an ecstasy of anticipation… what if he forgets the whip. Or doesn’t use it. Or doesn’t look at all like the name he has given himself so that I cannot bring myself to call him by it. Christ, what if he just downright doesn’t want to do it to me after all this, all this talk. What if his wife. His little daughter. What if the civil service department he works for. What if you had not topped yourself, bitch, and left me to my floundering. What if instead, I stay on the train past Leeds and end up in a god-awful seaside town in perishing cold looking out at the polluted sea, at a lone cockle-picker like a dot on the ever-increasingly black-slicked quicksands, and I feel afraid for that person.

Life is so fragile.

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by April DeOliveira
(this is part IV. Read Marsh Creek Grievers from the beginning.)

After Automata

The early Michigan fall began to roll over summer, displacing the warm, humid air and deep green trees with its crisp chill and colorful leaves, some trees already bearing sparse branches.

Change shrouded me as I lay in bed—as I had every day for the past three months—listening. Listening to the world outside my window, to the people routinely entering and exiting the building, to the people talking and laughing as they walked in pairs down the street to and from Marsh Creek’s waterfront, to the people driving their cars and going about their lives. Listening to the emptiness of my apartment, an emptiness that would not be filled by the ticking of my and Gregory’s beloved mechanical figurines—the automata we had spent much of our lives building.

When he’d moved out this summer, Gregory had left his automata behind, abandoning not only me but his creations.

I tucked my hand beneath the hem of my T-shirt and traced my hip bone. It protruded like never before.

I swung my rusty legs over the side of the bed and stood. I brushed my overgrown, knotted hair off my neck and straightened my shirt and sweatpants. Rigidly, I walked out of my bedroom and into the hallway. Until now, the only time I’d left my room was to use the bathroom and occasionally get food. Not to wander. Otherwise, I’d spent most of my time in bed, even as I worked seven to three every day with my laptop on my stomach.

I paused, staring across the hallway into what had once been Gregory’s room, where the automata geared on in their operations as if Gregory were coming right back.

I knew he wasn’t.

I forced my legs to motor me down the hallway and into the living room, then the dining room, then the kitchen, then back down the hallway and into Gregory’s room.

The emptiness followed me.

Something else needed to change.

I had an idea.

#

I put the finishing touches on my first-ever life-size automata—Gregory and Christina 2.0—and then booted them up. Apart from this project, I’d given up on all other automata-related pursuits. Something in me had shifted.

Once Gregory and Christina 2.0 were fully conscious, I introduced myself and informed them I was leaving.

“I’m going to need you to man the fort,” I said to Christina 2.0, whose webby, hardwired eyes watched me analytically. “I’m sorry to leave so soon upon meeting, but I have to go. I’ve left you with a friend, though,” I gestured toward Gregory 2.0., who looked at Christina 2.0 like he’d known and loved her for years. I grabbed my suitcase and scanned the place for the last time, admiring the automata Gregory and I had communally built.

“Will you be back?” Gregory 2.0 asked.

“No.” I headed toward the door. As I grabbed the knob and readied myself to abandon everything I’d built and step into a new world—one I didn’t know like clockwork—I turned again to my counterparts. “Look after the automata.”

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by April DeOliveira
(this is part III. Read Marsh Creek Grievers from the beginning.)

Driving with the Sun in my Eyes

The highway pavement blends into a luminous blob of asphalt and sky and floating dark spots through my squinted eyes. I squint harder and adjust my visor, to no avail. The luminous blob remains the luminous blob as the traffic slows and quickens, slows and quickens.

I’m on my way home during that time of day when the Sun is starting to set, when it melts into the horizon with ferocity and pierces the eyes of every driver on the road—before it dips low enough for curses and exasperated sighs to transform into exaltations of nature’s miraculous beauty.

The other day, an 80-year-old man was all over local news because he crashed his car into the back of a woman and child biking—the woman on the bike and the child in one of those attached buggies.

It was that time of day, when the Sun is starting to set, when it melts into the horizon with ferocity and pierces the eyes of every driver on the road—before it dips low enough for curses and exasperated sighs to transform into exaltations of nature’s miraculous beauty.

The man was approaching a hill when it happened. He claimed he couldn’t see the bike and buggy, due to the inclination of the hill and the brightness of the Sun, until he was right on top of them.

Two people. 36 and 7. A mother and her girl on their way to surprise their husband and father at work. A woman with a book buried in her soul and a calmness that could put the most hardhearted at ease. A child with a mouth full of baby teeth, trees to climb, and feet dirty from play.

Traffic slows again, coming to a coast, as I and other dazed drivers enter Marsh Creek. I’m relieved to make it home.

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by April DeOliveira
(this is part II. Read Marsh Creek Grievers from the beginning.)

Squirrel Daycare

The thing about working in a squirrel daycare is the squirrels refuse to lay down for naptime.

Well, technically that’s not true. I don’t work here. I’m a volunteer—or participant, really—at Grief Recovery Squirrel Daycare for the Gifted. Yes, I know that’s a mouthful. Yes, I know the name doesn’t make sense. And to be clear, it’s not the grieving who are gifted. It’s the squirrels. And to be even clearer, it’s not the gifted squirrels who are grieving. It’s the residents of Marsh Creek.

When, a few weeks ago, my mom came to me and nearly begged I apply to Grief Recovery Squirrel Daycare for the Gifted, I laughed. Are you serious, I said as a statement rather than a question. I had driven past that place so many times on my way into town. And so many times I had looked at it with suspicion and thought, surely that doesn’t help people, not really. Like those church Celebrate Recovery or Grief Support programs. Just another one of those quick fix, put a bandage over a gaping wound kind of programs.

Please, just give it a try, she said through tears. I want my son back.

I’m right here, I growled. I hate it when people say stuff like that. As if what my grief has done to me is actually me trying to hurt them.

You know what I mean. You’re not yourself. You haven’t been for a long time.

Though I was angry, I knew she wasn’t wrong. It had been two years since my wife and daughter died. Two years later, I still couldn’t move on in my life, not even after those first six months of grief had caused me to lose my house and move in with my mom. I still couldn’t return to work. I still couldn’t get out of bed until 2 p.m. I still couldn’t brush the coffee off my teeth or wash the days-worth of grease and sweat and dust off my body. I still couldn’t bike or woodwork or read. All I could do was sleep and watch Megamind over and over.

No, Mom, I said, beginning to cry, which I do all the time now. I can’t. Everything is too overwhelming already. Everyday life is too much.

I know, honey. I know. That’s why I think this would be good for you. You need help. And I’ve heard really good things about this program from others in the community. People who have experienced the absolute worst things in their lives and are now doing better as a result. I just really think this could help you too.

I sighed and studied my mom’s tear-filled brown eyes. The dark circles. The crinkles that formed paths around and between her eyes. Signs of a life spent loving and worrying and lamenting.

Will you at least meet with a representative and see what they do? You don’t have to agree to it. Just talk with someone about it.

I reached for my face, rubbing at the stubble along my chin and left cheek. I sighed again. Sure, Mom. I’ll do it.

Now, I curse my empathetic mother under my breath as I place Photographic Memory Squirrel onto his nap cot, tucking the miniature blanket under him knowing full well he’ll sit up the moment I’m done and take off running through the Play Area and the Art Station. I let go and sure enough he runs away like I just clipped the tip of his tail with the craft scissors.

I don’t know why she thought this was a good idea.

Photographic Memory Squirrel comes to a halt in the Art Station and looks in my direction. Staring me down, he blinks once before printing a picture from his mouth. He drops a four by six on the floor and starts running again, this time to the Music Lab. I huff as I walk to the Art Station in the middle of the room and pick up the picture.

I run my thumb along the smooth, white edges of the Polaroid-like picture as the image comes into focus.

Shivers ripple down my spine. I don’t recognize myself. The sullen face, prematurely aged and worn. The dull eyes with droopy lids. The unkempt hair and frail, neglected body. I don’t know who this man is.

You’ll feel better in time, Telepathic Squirrel says inside my head. I hate it when he does that. I rotate toward the Sleep Place to glare at him. He’s sitting up on his nap cot, his blankets a heap on the floor, except for the one he’s wearing as a poofy, oversized scarf. It looks like tires stacked around his neck. Will you get out of my head? I think-shout at him.

Don’t shoot the Messenger, he says. You’ll know yourself again.  

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by April DeOliveira

“Automata”
(publishing December 11th)
“Squirrel Daycare”
(publishing December 12th)
“Driving with the Sun in my Eyes”
(publishing December 13th)
“After Automata”
(publishing December 14th)

Automata

Carefully, yet with ease, I slid the tiny astronaut helmet, about the size of small bouncy ball, onto the head of Asher the Astronaut, my newest automaton.

He now stood before me with his chest puffed out and his hands placed confidently on his hips, fully outfitted in an aluminum spacesuit and ready to shoot to the moon. I looked at my 28-year-old brother, Gregory. Two years my senior, he sat across from me building his own automaton as he screwed the limbs onto an electrician. I grinned at him and threw my hands into the air emphatically. “Voila!”

Gregory laughed, observing my astronaut. “He looks great, Christina,” he said. His eyes scanned the room. “Where should we put him?”

I craned my neck, checking to see if there was any free space on the end table by the window. The end table, like the rest of the hard surfaces in the living room (and every room in our apartment, really), hosted multiple automata—mechanical, humanlike figurines—knee high and miniature. “Hmmm,” I said. “I don’t know. We’re starting to run out of free space. Before long, we’ll have to upgrade to a larger apartment.” Gregory completed his final step and fastened a blue jumpsuit onto the four-inch figure. “Your electrician is fantastic. He looks like he’s ready to check the wiring of this entire building.”

Gregory beamed and stared at his creation. “He does.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the way Gregory took such joy in his work.

“Well,” he said, “Asher the Astronaut and Emmerson the Electrician will just have to hang tight together for a bit. Maybe we can go to the thrift store today and find another end table.”

I nodded, leaning back on my hands, studying my brother’s automaton.

I grabbed Emmerson the Electrician and stood him next to Asher the Astronaut. I admired them for a long moment, appreciating how they too appeared as best friend-siblings.

#

Over the next several months, I noticed Gregory progressively breaking down. Sleeping in past 10 a.m., though he was always an early riser. Taking hours-long naps, though he’d always hated naps. Showering infrequently, though he’d always begun his morning routines with a shower. Wearing only sweatpants and T-shirts, though he’d always dressed in jeans and button-up shirts. Slowly, a sadness of some sort seemed to fuel him like motor oil. I had never seen such behavior from him before, and it scared me.

But it all came to a head one day when I arrived home from the grocery store and found Gregory lying belly-down on the floor, crying next to the small, limp body that was Gadget, his autodog.

I was about to ask him what was wrong, but I was cut off by a yellow spark that flashed from within the joint of one of Gadget’s steel legs. A screw loosened from his joint and bounced onto the hardwood floor, rolling toward my feet. Gadget let out a dysfunctional eerr zz zz er and jerked his leg, his heavy silver paw clanking onto the ground, causing yet another screw to come loose and fall.

Gadget was dying. My brother never let his automata die.

Gregory erupted into a fresh round of sobs. His cheek rested on the cold floor, his face inches away from Gadget’s. He placed his shaking hand on Gadget’s head, rubbing his thumb along the smooth surface, whispering, “I’m sorry, boy.”

            Tools were strewn across the hardwood floor. The automata that surrounded us persisted in their various tasks as if there wasn’t a threatening, dreadful ambience in the room. Gadget twitched violently as he released his final breath, his cold body producing a high-pitched deflating noise. Then he was still.

Squirrel Daycare

The thing about working in a squirrel daycare is the squirrels refuse to lay down for naptime.

Well, technically that’s not true. I don’t work here. I’m a volunteer—or participant, really—at Grief Recovery Squirrel Daycare for the Gifted. Yes, I know that’s a mouthful. Yes, I know the name doesn’t make sense. And to be clear, it’s not the grieving who are gifted. It’s the squirrels. And to be even clearer, it’s not the gifted squirrels who are grieving. It’s the residents of Marsh Creek.

When, a few weeks ago, my mom came to me and nearly begged I apply to Grief Recovery Squirrel Daycare for the Gifted, I laughed. Are you serious, I said as a statement rather than a question. I had driven past that place so many times on my way into town. And so many times I had looked at it with suspicion and thought, surely that doesn’t help people, not really. Like those church Celebrate Recovery or Grief Support programs. Just another one of those quick fix, put a bandage over a gaping wound kind of programs.

Please, just give it a try, she said through tears. I want my son back.

I’m right here, I growled. I hate it when people say stuff like that. As if what my grief has done to me is actually me trying to hurt them.

You know what I mean. You’re not yourself. You haven’t been for a long time.

Though I was angry, I knew she wasn’t wrong. It had been two years since my wife and daughter died. Two years later, I still couldn’t move on in my life, not even after those first six months of grief had caused me to lose my house and move in with my mom. I still couldn’t return to work. I still couldn’t get out of bed until 2 p.m. I still couldn’t brush the coffee off my teeth or wash the days-worth of grease and sweat and dust off my body. I still couldn’t bike or woodwork or read. All I could do was sleep and watch Megamind over and over.

No, Mom, I said, beginning to cry, which I do all the time now. I can’t. Everything is too overwhelming already. Everyday life is too much.

I know, honey. I know. That’s why I think this would be good for you. You need help. And I’ve heard really good things about this program from others in the community. People who have experienced the absolute worst things in their lives and are now doing better as a result. I just really think this could help you too.

I sighed and studied my mom’s tear-filled brown eyes. The dark circles. The crinkles that formed paths around and between her eyes. Signs of a life spent loving and worrying and lamenting.

Will you at least meet with a representative and see what they do? You don’t have to agree to it. Just talk with someone about it.

I reached for my face, rubbing at the stubble along my chin and left cheek. I sighed again. Sure, Mom. I’ll do it.

Now, I curse my empathetic mother under my breath as I place Photographic Memory Squirrel onto his nap cot, tucking the miniature blanket under him knowing full well he’ll sit up the moment I’m done and take off running through the Play Area and the Art Station. I let go and sure enough he runs away like I just clipped the tip of his tail with the craft scissors.

I don’t know why she thought this was a good idea.

Photographic Memory Squirrel comes to a halt in the Art Station and looks in my direction. Staring me down, he blinks once before printing a picture from his mouth. He drops a four by six on the floor and starts running again, this time to the Music Lab. I huff as I walk to the Art Station in the middle of the room and pick up the picture.

I run my thumb along the smooth, white edges of the Polaroid-like picture as the image comes into focus.

Shivers ripple down my spine. I don’t recognize myself. The sullen face, prematurely aged and worn. The dull eyes with droopy lids. The unkempt hair and frail, neglected body. I don’t know who this man is.

You’ll feel better in time, Telepathic Squirrel says inside my head. I hate it when he does that. I rotate toward the Sleep Place to glare at him. He’s sitting up on his nap cot, his blankets a heap on the floor, except for the one he’s wearing as a poofy, oversized scarf. It looks like tires stacked around his neck. Will you get out of my head? I think-shout at him.

Don’t shoot the Messenger, he says. You’ll know yourself again.  

Driving with the Sun in my Eyes

The highway pavement blends into a luminous blob of asphalt and sky and floating dark spots through my squinted eyes. I squint harder and adjust my visor, to no avail. The luminous blob remains the luminous blob as the traffic slows and quickens, slows and quickens.

I’m on my way home during that time of day when the Sun is starting to set, when it melts into the horizon with ferocity and pierces the eyes of every driver on the road—before it dips low enough for curses and exasperated sighs to transform into exaltations of nature’s miraculous beauty.

The other day, an 80-year-old man was all over local news because he crashed his car into the back of a woman and child biking—the woman on the bike and the child in one of those attached buggies.

It was that time of day, when the Sun is starting to set, when it melts into the horizon with ferocity and pierces the eyes of every driver on the road—before it dips low enough for curses and exasperated sighs to transform into exaltations of nature’s miraculous beauty.

The man was approaching a hill when it happened. He claimed he couldn’t see the bike and buggy, due to the inclination of the hill and the brightness of the Sun, until he was right on top of them.

Two people. 36 and 7. A mother and her girl on their way to surprise their husband and father at work. A woman with a book buried in her soul and a calmness that could put the most hardhearted at ease. A child with a mouth full of baby teeth, trees to climb, and feet dirty from play.

Traffic slows again, coming to a coast, as I and other dazed drivers enter Marsh Creek. I’m relieved to make it home.

After Automata

The early Michigan fall began to roll over summer, displacing the warm, humid air and deep green trees with its crisp chill and colorful leaves, some trees already bearing sparse branches.

Change shrouded me as I lay in bed—as I had every day for the past three months—listening. Listening to the world outside my window, to the people routinely entering and exiting the building, to the people talking and laughing as they walked in pairs down the street to and from Marsh Creek’s waterfront, to the people driving their cars and going about their lives. Listening to the emptiness of my apartment, an emptiness that would not be filled by the ticking of my and Gregory’s beloved mechanical figurines—the automata we had spent much of our lives building.

When he’d moved out this summer, Gregory had left his automata behind, abandoning not only me but his creations.

I tucked my hand beneath the hem of my T-shirt and traced my hip bone. It protruded like never before.

I swung my rusty legs over the side of the bed and stood. I brushed my overgrown, knotted hair off my neck and straightened my shirt and sweatpants. Rigidly, I walked out of my bedroom and into the hallway. Until now, the only time I’d left my room was to use the bathroom and occasionally get food. Not to wander. Otherwise, I’d spent most of my time in bed, even as I worked seven to three every day with my laptop on my stomach.

I paused, staring across the hallway into what had once been Gregory’s room, where the automata geared on in their operations as if Gregory were coming right back.

I knew he wasn’t.

I forced my legs to motor me down the hallway and into the living room, then the dining room, then the kitchen, then back down the hallway and into Gregory’s room.

The emptiness followed me.

Something else needed to change.

I had an idea.

#

I put the finishing touches on my first-ever life-size automata—Gregory and Christina 2.0—and then booted them up. Apart from this project, I’d given up on all other automata-related pursuits. Something in me had shifted.

Once Gregory and Christina 2.0 were fully conscious, I introduced myself and informed them I was leaving.

“I’m going to need you to man the fort,” I said to Christina 2.0, whose webby, hardwired eyes watched me analytically. “I’m sorry to leave so soon upon meeting, but I have to go. I’ve left you with a friend, though,” I gestured toward Gregory 2.0., who looked at Christina 2.0 like he’d known and loved her for years. I grabbed my suitcase and scanned the place for the last time, admiring the automata Gregory and I had communally built.

“Will you be back?” Gregory 2.0 asked.

“No.” I headed toward the door. As I grabbed the knob and readied myself to abandon everything I’d built and step into a new world—one I didn’t know like clockwork—I turned again to my counterparts. “Look after the automata.”

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by Frederick Highland

(This is part III. Experience Mystere Suite from the beginning.)


“One Minute Mysteries” have been around since the 1930s, illustrated stories that call upon the reader to solve a crime.

The Fourth Coffin
…

…

Author’s Comment:

Perhaps the most elusive murders involve poisoning. In this piece, the reader is presented with four inhabited coffins, three of which suggest the method of the crimes. A fascination with botanicals has likely led the skulking figure on the left, curiously dressed in parson’s garb, to practice his skill in dark, dark ways. Fortunately, an officer of the law is on the scene and seems likely to apprehend the felon. The tome the culprit is carrying may be an ancient herbal or even a grimoire. As for the fourth coffin it seems to be missing a deadly botanical. Why?

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by Frederick Highland

(This is part II. Experience Mystere Suite from the beginning.)


“One Minute Mysteries” have been around since the 1930s, illustrated stories that call upon the reader to solve a crime.

Under the Rose

…

Author’s Comment:

“But when we with caution a secret disclose,
We cry, “Be it spoken, sir, under the rose.”
Since ’tis known that the rose was an emblem of old,
Whose leaves by their closeness taught secrets to hold.”

The meaning of “sub rosa” is explained by this old rhyme, one that hints at a mysterious murder in which roses play an essential part. We see a victim, whose bloody corpse is draped across the table to the left. A murderer is present too but there are two personages- a woman on the staircase dressed in male evening clothes and carrying a bouquet of lilies and the older gent contemplating a bloodstained rose. Other text hints at a possible motive for homicide. A telegram in French at bottom right, reads, roughly translated: “Why has there been no answer to our offer of six thousand? Rose.” Is this crime about love or money? Or is something else afoot?

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by Frederick Highland

Mystere 1: Maybe Not
(publishing December 8th)
Mystere 2: Under the Rose
(publishing December 9th)
Mystere 3: The Fourth Coffin
(publishing December 10th)

On the Concept of the “Mystere”

“One Minute Mysteries” have been around since the 1930s, illustrated stories that call upon the reader to solve a crime.

I sort of flew with this in creating the “Mysteres.” Each piece offers a single tableau of image and word that presents a crime and often suggests a solution. Sometimes no solution is apparent but the reader can speculate on the why where and how of the crime. They can also be perceived as springboards for the imagination—perhaps inspiring a tale of the reader’s own.

The three “Mysteres” here are not related in the narrative sense but thematically. Each piece is its own narrative.

Maybe Not
…

…

Author’s Comment:

Body snatching is an ancient crime and was widely practiced even in enlightened 19^th century England.  In this case it seems the snatchers have unearthed more than they bargained for. Their recent acquisition of a calcified Egyptian from who knows where seems to have awakened a baleful presence. Curses!

Under the Rose
…

…

Author’s Comment:

“But when we with caution a secret disclose,
We cry, “Be it spoken, sir, under the rose.”
Since ’tis known that the rose was an emblem of old,
Whose leaves by their closeness taught secrets to hold.”

The meaning of “sub rosa” is explained by this old rhyme, one that hints at a mysterious murder in which roses play an essential part. We see a victim, whose bloody corpse is draped across the table to the left. A murderer is present too but there are two personages- a woman on the staircase dressed in male evening clothes and carrying a bouquet of lilies and the older gent contemplating a bloodstained rose. Other text hints at a possible motive for homicide. A telegram in French at bottom right, reads, roughly translated: “Why has there been no answer to our offer of six thousand? Rose.” Is this crime about love or money? Or is something else afoot?

The Fourth Coffin
…

…

Author’s Comment:

Perhaps the most elusive murders involve poisoning. In this piece, the reader is presented with four inhabited coffins, three of which suggest the method of the crimes. A fascination with botanicals has likely led the skulking figure on the left, curiously dressed in parson’s garb, to practice his skill in dark, dark ways. Fortunately, an officer of the law is on the scene and seems likely to apprehend the felon. The tome the culprit is carrying may be an ancient herbal or even a grimoire. As for the fourth coffin it seems to be missing a deadly botanical. Why?

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by James Roderick Burns
(This is part III. Read Northport from the beginning.)

I, Too, Am Cone

I HADN’T RETURNED to the Island in years, but when she called from beside the harbour, it all came back: strip-malls petering out into scrubland, roads without pavements, bottomless coffee and bagels piled high with green-olive cream cheese.  I heard boat-lines clinking, a plaintive gull’s call, and smiled.

‘Hello,’ she said.  ‘This is your wife.’

I looked at the phone.  I’m not in the habit of taking calls from that many consumer-protection lawyers with funny accents, especially ones who regard themselves as the lone American in a sea of sixty-seven million foreigners, so I waited.  ‘I’m by the harbour.  He’s – he’s gone, Michael.  I had to get out, take a walk, you know.  So I’m just wandering around.’

It was sad, but not unexpected.  Her father had been ailing for years, slipping away for weeks and at death’s door the day she flew back.  She wasn’t cold, exactly, but practical: a bundle of intertwined instincts from which a personality peeped, occasionally, like a seal breaking the surface.  Then she could be funny.  On our first date she dragged me half the length of Manhattan, repeatedly claiming it was only another block to the station.  A block is knocking on for a thousand feet.

‘Anna – I’m sorry.  What can I do?’

‘Nothing.  Just call later.  Broadband’s still on.  I’ll talk to you then.’  I went back to my screen with a hollow heart.  A bit of work might sort it out,  but this time the magic of transport planning failed to do the trick.

When I got to America, I could hardly wait to engage with my peers at the University of Bony Creek.  I’d studied the rise of suburbia – Levittown, the ubiquity of car culture – and rather than adding to some stack of dusty monographs, wanted to do something about it.  Missing pavements, for starters.  Instead I was met with five years’ worth of blank stares.

Still, there was Anna.  On our second date I took her to the graduate dorm.  She stood goggling at the squalor.  One of the math-nerds in the suite had punched a hole through the sheet-rock wall, taped up the Taj Mahal in fond hopes of avoiding a thousand-dollar fine.

‘How much does this cost you?’

A week later, we’d pooled our resources and moved to Huntington.

Now I imagined her up the road in Northport, where her dad had lived, picking up cleaning supplies and calling her sister.  None of it made things any better.

I walked over to the traffic department.  We’d been working on metered access to a new roundabout by the distribution centre, and Tommy was at the controls for this evening’s night-coning festivities.

‘Hey,’ I said, ogling his bank of screens.  ‘All good to go?’

Without turning round he curled a finger around the joystick, clicked a button.  Every monitor wheeled round into a single giant image of the unfinished roundabout, now the sole focus of Tommy’s massive compound eye.  Though littered with breeze-blocks and chunks of discarded kerbing, it still looked magnificent – clean as some undiscovered island laid bare by a storm.

‘Course.  Unlike you blueprint-monkeys, we work for a living.’

Tommy liked to affect a gruff exterior, but at heart he was a marshmallow – taking his mother to the theatre, baking his flatmates little cakes.

‘So what can I do you for?’

‘Oh nothing, really.  The old man finally slipped away.’

He grimaced and I filled him in.

‘Wanting cheering up, is she?’  I nodded.  ‘Hmm.  Well, keep an ear out.’

The office would be quiet now, so without understanding what he was on about, I headed back.   A couple of hours later she called.  All the earlier hesitation was gone; her voice leapt out of the phone like a tiger bounding through a fiery hoop.

‘So, I finished the family room, started on the den.  That’s the office you know.  Daddy kept his things there, my mom’s stuff.  Clippings.  Evidence.’

I pricked up my ears.  She was on the case, and either furious or thrilled; I’d no idea which.

‘Go on.’

‘So I was looking for the deeds to the house, but I found something else.  An old folder.  It was furry, you know, like somebody had been constantly touching it.  It was bound up in about a million rubber bands that fell apart when I touched them.  Inside – ’

At that moment the incoming call button flashed and my monitor sprang to life.  When I didn’t pick up, an instant message popped into view: Open the link, you cretin.  I clicked on the portal that allowed users with passwords to access our live video-feed.  I watched Tommy’s crew carve the closed roundabout like skaters riding a wall.  They were building something with two rounded top-bumps, a bottom point of orange cones.  The luminous bands shone like teeth in the dark.  How’s that for cheery! a second message said.

‘ – there were newspapers, from the family.  My mother’s father was in there, and not Charles, like we were told.  Not Samuel Charles Goodman.  Samuel Cohen Goodman.  We’re Jewish, Michael.  Jewish!’

The shape finally revealed itself on my screen: an enormous, wobbly love heart, light dripping from its curves.  She hated lovehearts and everything they stood for.  I typed furiously into the messenger: Not that!  Anything but that!  Get it changed to something round – a bagel, or something!

‘Remember that guy in the joke who meets the other old guys playing chess, and they all introduce themselves, like Cahn, Coyne, Kane, you know, and the guy bows and says “I, too, am Cohen!”’

She seemed delighted and stunned in equal measure.  I didn’t want to interrupt the moment but felt I had to offer something – some tiny bit of reassurance, a portion of love to complete the circle.  Without waiting to see what they managed to make, I fired off an e-mail with a password, an embedded link.

‘That’s great, Anna!  Listen, can you get to the computer?  I’ve sent you a message – ’

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