New Fiction from Chapter 9: Falter by Daniel Smallegange

Dawn is a strange and alien event.

Outside and standing in a bathrobe and nearly nothing else. It's blue satin and Felix's and I miss him, staring off into the wastes and watching the winds at play, stirring up trouble, among other things. Something Felix was best at. Feeling now both elated and crushed, alive and dead, awake and entombed, feeling free though we walk fettered in heavy-thick-dark chains. They go well with the bathrobe and I look handsome in the dawn light. Cutting it against the grain and smoking on a cigarette.

Hard blinking and Corvina is there and an embrace and I am lighting her a cigarette now. She looks good too in the dawning light. She is brunette, petite, and quite charming with her long eye lashes and short bob-type haircut, elegant with those sharp, squared bangs framing her pale, freckled face. Her lips are magnificent, as is the steel in her eyes and the curve of her frame.

We have not slept in three days. The steel in her eyes is beginning to rust.

She comes up and we embrace and kind of cling to one another as the winds pick up and whip around us and dust flies away, everything flies away from us, moving along those winds that are cool in the morning, not yet hot enough to do anything but cool us and whip us, though they do scare us into the shelter of the house.

'Worry not about gods, or they will worry about you, and that, if history is accurate, can only mean bad things.'

'Bobby, you shouldn't say things about God, or Gods, or anything. It makes me worry for you.'

'Not to worry. It's just talk. I told you, I killed all them gods already in my travels, in my dreams, like David with a sling.'

'And I am telling you, you shouldn't blaspheme so, Bobby.'

'No, no, I shouldn't. But I do. It pleases me. A man after all needs enemies. How else would he know he exists?'

'Ha, you need enemies. Try every waiter and bartender in the state.'

Another fleeting embrace, this one awkward.

'Hey, I tip well.'

'Sure, then you puke on their shoes.'

'That only happened once...'

Time moving fast like the spectre of death approaching, and time's got better things to do, places to be. A few days passed with the lovely and beautiful Corvina, though her love and her patience is eroding. It's those damned desert winds.

We are on the outskirts, out of the city, at a friend's place, Pascal's, who lives most of the time in Montreal, being some political guru or some such nonsense. But he is alright, for a Canadian.

Boozing and laughter, but our time is limited. We are not of kind or kindred, but alien. And she is wilting and she is burning, and so soon must she leave or else. We need and seek and wish only, to set her free, let her be, let her live.

This is no world, and no place for living.

By: Daniel Smallegange

The Scorpion

There is a scorpion dwelling
In the inner sanctum
The inner reaches
Of my heart
Curled up and crouched
Protector and defiler
Waiting
Silent and deadly
The scorpion
Both messenger and message
Beauty and vengeance
Violence and peace
Ever cold the scorpion
At home in the fiery centre
Waiting immobile to catch
You, the thief of hearts
You, the transgressor of
Mind and body and soul
The infiltrator come
To taste my heart
To taste the vision
Granted from the scorpion's sting
In the inner sanctum
The inner reaches
Of my heart

By: Daniel Smallegange

Oh, the little things called Gods...

Worry not about gods,
Or they will worry about you,
And that,
If history is accurate,
Can only mean...
Bad things.

By: Daniel Smallegange

A Frenzy Activity (love is born)

A frenzy activity
Interior ablaze
All fast and rough and tidal
All hot and bubbling
Troubling and trials and retribution
All pure and all dirty
Frenzied flickerings and conclusions sought
Sloughed off
Advance, retreat, relaunch
Firing of pistons and explosive mechanism device armed
While outer shell is cold and expressionless
Exterior exhibiting
No hints of the inferno of thought
Chemical release
The mind's eye roving
Tearing, dancing
At the storm's centre a whirl
of controversy, lust, learning, passion, heat
Outside calm
Eyes focused inward
As the sun sheds flower petal warmth
A hand falls loosely
Sand and pebbles
crumbling and leak
from an extended, opening hand
As sand and pebbles
Slowly drop
Gently to the ground
Love is born

By: Daniel Smallegange

Dancing

Dancing with my arms
Tight about myself
Surrounded by strangers
Staring down and the crushing weight
Of stars and heavens and gravity pressing
Dancing lost and waiting
Waiting for you
You who hide with quiet smiles
In the peripherals and just
Out of reach
I've seen you in my dreams
Where movement is free and unchained
From fear and doubt and loss and love
I've seen you in the corners
An angel or a demon
Beauty personified
Stoking my hunger
Pure and corrupt
You keeping to the background always
Shy and at a loss for words
Despite your multiform charms
My words are lost
In the cacophony of the dance
My hope is lost
When you slip away
Your last lingering look
Breaks me in three
Falling under the weight of love
Worse now than gravity
But rising always rising
To continue the slow, sad dance
St. Vitus is a dance partner
Too
Broken and weighed down
A grin on our dark face
Limping we still dance
With arms tight about ourself
Looking furtively in the corners
for love lighting up a cigarette.

By: Daniel Smallegange

Intro to Part 8: A fucked Up Spree (Fiction by Daniel Smallegange)

A fucked up spree. More fucked up than most. We dance and sing and cry and run and laugh with the water streaming down our face 'til we run out of tears, and then keep going dry eyed, just for the fucking hell of it. We tell people along the way how we would cry if only we could, but are fresh out, a little short of wet and long on dry. And then fall blissfully into even dryer martinis.

Running along, stumbling along, mumbling along, grinning, grinding, groping, sighing. Salutary and salubrious, us warriors of night, decked out in skulls and war paint, us fighters for what cause we can and will no longer recall. We used to have a cause, but it's slipped our minds, along with our sense of perception, along with our sense of self, space and time, sense of proportion also. Along with hope. Hope is gone too, abandoned since we entered through them gates, as the sign Dante mentioned did advise. But we fight on as it's the only way we know how. And also we revel. Revel in fear and joy and lust and love and run, run, run, always running, to get away from the pain and the consequence, bitter foes alarmingly speedy in their pursuit.

We fight pitched running battles in the streets of our minds, knee deep in blood and bile and mucous. Love and war and fear and lust, a mixed bag of those we love and those we hate. Chemically enveloped by occupation forces, by invading armies, our souls, slowly changing, adapting to new environs, transforming, growing thick hides, club-like tails, scales and segments, antennae and mandibles dripping with venoms.

Last few days of little sleep and hardly a moment to take a breath between rounds in the ring, highs and lows and moments of cold unfeeling. And oh, the bruises are beginning to show, cracks along our exoskeletons too, damage to our carapace. We begin to seep and leak, leaving trails wherever we go and slow. Armour too heavy anyways, time to slough it off and run once more, with speed, for they near, those that hunt us. Hot breaths now at our backs, we must run and we must hide.

Hanging by the finger tips on the last rung the ladder. Hanging also out in the bottom of wells, becoming acquainted with molluscs and snails and cephalopoda. Multi-tentacled horrors multi-tasking, manacled to the walls. Slime and ooze and the muck of former living things between our fingers and toes. Scraping at the walls with fingernails until they crack and break. Getting over it. Making friends with the denizens who embrace the lower floors, bottom feeders in hell. Getting over it and playing some poker with them tentacled, carp-faced things. We use bits of our bodies for currency in our wagers. I grow fat on fish eggs and calamari.

Evil and retching and coming at you from all sides, the pleasure and the pain intensifying and the dreams and the truth something lost and far away. So very far away.

By: Daniel Smallegange

A bit from chapter 2: Holiday (Fiction by Daniel Smallegange)

On the floor, a tangle of legs and blankets. The fire is dead and it is cold the exterior, but inside and underneath warm with the accompaniment of tender embrace, soft caress.

She stretches, smiles, purrs, pets and preens.

'I am the definition of well fucked.'

'Okay, I think I can die now. I have completed the highest possible of achievement.'

She shoves me playfully, pulls the blanket away and gives me the wry once over.

'You are fucking white as snow Bobbie.'

'Hmmm, but my mind is so dirty. It will have to balance it out.'

We kiss right through her smile. Neither of us is ready to disengage. We lay silent. I stare at the walls, the ceiling, anything and everything as she sleeps a bit, or rests anyways, head on my shoulder, eyes closed and occasionally squeezing me about the waist in a way that is the definition of good. The feeling of peacefulness is an odd and foreign thing. It is difficult to deal with.

We talk then a bit on unimportant, casual and varied themes. I heroically brave the out-of-blanket elements to prepare coffee. On my return with two cups of black she shifts, stretches, hands clasped above and behind her head, revealing perfect small breasts that require a momentary pause in locomotion. We sip strong brew naked.
When asked she states languidly she has no idea the history and significance of her surname. Nor does she care. She stares indifferently when I mention the Stuart kings, and also the wonderful irony of her wearing orange the night before. She nods and kisses me, basically to shut me up.

Strong, dark beautiful, the liquid gold thief.

Her face is pale, freckled ivory, her eyes light grey in the morning light. They are nearly always difficult to read, and tainted or painted with hints of her own irony, mischief or wry conspiracy. Leaning back and against the bundled up blanket as I stir the fire to life, stretching elegant limbs and sipping coffee.

'I love white roses. Did you know that?'

'That fits.'

'Yes darling. I know all about the Stuarts. My father would not shut up about it,' she states as she leans forward to light a long cigarette, fitted in that longer cigarette holder, the kind that only the drag queens use anymore.

Fire is good, warmth encroaches. And the coffee is reasonable. She is almost better than anything possible, anything I could ever want or desire. Almost. There are the dreams and also, the poisons.

'Call me Jaco. Everyone else does now.'

'I like Pamela, thanks.'

'Suit yourself Bobbie. Suit your ghostly bitch assed self.'

Pamela talks about Montelbann next, her ex lover and financial assister, and how she burned his thousand dollar suits after she caught him cheating with a younger woman. This gets us off and laughing.

'He just kept saying, "why the suits? You know I loved my suits."'

We laugh. She looks so good when she laughs.

'And then begging me not to leave him, begging me to stay.'

I start on breakfast. Eggs and toast and orange juice and Canadian bacon. She eats like a champion. The next three days are warm in physical and emotional zones. More of gossip and details of our lifes both toxic and comical.

'Such adventures.'

'Mad life.'

'To us.'

'To us.'

Wine and cheer. Cigarettes and beer. A game of chess. She routs me with no hint of mercy or remorse. We discuss my research and the terrible dependence, and also the freedom and experience it provides. The horrors too. And the pleasures. We talk about the nature of need and my beginnings in fear.

‘All my trips are bad. It’s okay, I kind of don’t mind them that way.’

But we don't dwell on it. She reads the journals. We discuss symbolism of certain things in them. We grow weary quickly of this, however. We laugh and make fun of me to great, grinning howls of exuberance. There is much worship at the temple of her body. Her talents are endless. And I can't keep avoiding the touch of her skin on my hands and lips. To add to my already crippling desire Pamela very seldom is clothed. Walking around the place freely naked she is majestic and we frequently fall together and explore new ways and old ways into one another's pleasure. And it is very good.

By: Daniel Smallegange