John

I once knew this man, horribly, sweaty and blubber lipped, who used to date our teacher. He would walk down the sidewalk in the center, as if he owned the town. Sometimes he held her hand, but most of the time he would stare off into the distance after giving us money to get candy or whatever we wanted.

Then, one time hiding on my balcony, we slungshot a small paperball at his head. He picked up the ball of paper and unwrapped it. "We know." He looked up quickly and we only had just enough time to duck. Les said that we should blackmail him but all of us lost our courage each time we saw him.

He was a marauder, taking and giving pleasure to all. The whole town lived in a constant state of sexual suspense, as if his suspicion gave rise to some rainbow of vibrating physical pleasure. Everything that was wrong made us want to outdo each other, in sin and depravation. The whole Grade 6 class was titillated to hear when Marcia Brook was finger-fucked by her cousin Darlene.

He just moved away one day. The day he left it rained for eleven hours. After graduation, I moved away.

Diane

She lay there, a crumpled back across a chair, with her tongue hanging out. Her eyes rolled in undecided circles. Nobody could tell if she was on ecstasy or dying.

Crepuscular Rose

In the dream there were rolling hills like green flannel over bent knees. She gazed out at her feet, fascinated by the glinting shards of grass, while he, standing tall and proud, gazed straight ahead, towards the horizon line. They stood blinking in the bright light, holding hands. Before them was a little man who beckoned them forward.

“Now, if you’ll just repeat after: me one step forward, two steps back, three steps forward, one step back…”

They repeated the lines carefully and as they did, a soft wind picked them out, swirling through their hair, and slowly they glided forward.

There wasn’t much to see. The sky stayed blue as the hills rolled forward. After awhile, they began to look at each other. It was there the change was wrought. No sooner had they started gazing at each other than the man’s hair did seem dry and grey while her hand in his became dry and leathery.

She woke up with a fright. The bed she lay in was hard and there were more pillows than she could remember. She turned her head to the right and saw two men, slumbering beside her. She felt around her and saw her feet, still covered with shoes. The emerald dress she wore was crumpled and damp. She had a feverish memory of people standing around her, in the dark, asking about, not knowing their faces. A vaguely acidic chemical smell still curled around her nose, making the whites seem more sterile.

There was a sound from the adjacent room. She peeled herself quickly off the bed, found her jacket, opened the door quietly and slipped out into the cool morning air.

She was a young married woman, in her early thirties, still filled with the bloom of teenage youth. It was an early Sunday morning and the normally bustling streets were empty and rose coloured. The infrequent cars passed by like dark random sheets of paper. Every other second she saw herself reflected in the glass, unchanged.

Climbing up the final block, her anxiety mounted. Her husband would be at home, having slept alone there the whole night. Soon her key would pass in the lock, the lavender orange smell of the kitchen would be the same, and she would be able to shed her clothes and take a shower.

Except she was so tired, and the world was still turning on its head. And he was there, in the bed, curled up like a child. His hair was still curly and his eyes unworn. She slipped by his side, embracing the edge. Darkness swarmed around her and the last thing she could remember was the dull chill that still hugged her feet.

Elise

I was watching Elise walk away, down the steep path up the mountain, deep in conversation with Johnson, all the while listening to her husband tell a story about a football player. There were eight of us on the mountain. The sky had never let up and the overbearing mist made the rocks slippery. Hugging the path on either side were the tall trees that were already sliding off each jagged edge.

The husband's voice carried thinly in the air, much in contrast to his fine and sturdy figure. "...the famous footballer, and suddenly he clenched his teeth, as if in a rictus, grimacing, right? And said 'what I can't stand is those artists. They get paid a million dollars and for what? Nothing? Me, I know how I earn my money. I know I can count it in sweat.'"

The other four were gazing admiringly up at him, even as they stood around him. I daren't look in his eyes. There are charms hidden in green things, a flattened mushroom seemed to whisper. Elise flicked something of Johnson's shoulder just as the wind blew her husband's voice off the mountain.

We approached the edge of the second landing. The footing here was especially treacherous. I found it hard to place my feet properly between the coral coloured rocks and the sliding mud. The cottage keepers, deep in the warmth of the fireside when we had found them, had stared blankly when we asked for a path up the mountain. The path we were to take, they warned us, was not to be taken during the fog. Only the cows were sure-footed and dumb enough to tempt the gods, and even they were known to tumble off the mountain every now and then.

Reaching a narrow impasse, a small v-shaped vista opened before me. I saw the tall trees, flanking on either side, giving out to a steep barren climb. At the top was a dark metal triangle.

We had passed, on our way up, what ressembled a cemetary of yellow plants. Some of the group had quickly told me that these plants were used in the cultivation of a special type of alcohol especially delicate in rootlike flavour. I looked at all that remained, flailing withered squat leaves topped with three of four stalks, spaced apart as if headstones, their tops missing. The Mandrake plant screams when unearthed, and the scream is reputedly fatal. A witch then chops its head off.

Elise was almost at the metal triangle when she stopped and turned. It was as if she had chosen, instinctively as a cat chooses it's most advantageous position to pose, that exact moment to give us a picture. Johnson lay draped in the mist, a shadow from a tree. Her sharp form cut the triangle equally in two parts. Yellow. Yellow in hair and jacket, up on a cliff you could still mark her.

In that second, her husband paused to give us the punchline. "Well, I told him I was an artist and smiled."

Later on, while we were all at the summit, each braced against the metal triangle, I looked down to check my feet. He, the artist, was on tip toes, dancing by the edge of the precipice, while hers, well, I did not see hers at all from where I was. The picture showed us all in good spirits.

What R. Donald Minor didn't eat for breakfast.

A very enormous slice of potato pie, served cold, was brought out for Mr. Minor for his breakfast that morning. It was brought out with a tumbler of orange juice, and warmed milk. Minor, a man of enormous appetite, which was not hidden in his equally affluent figure, had had a rather strange habit of ignoring his meal till it was quite cold, at which point, having attained room temperature, he would suddenly wake to its appearance and devour it with white-eyed zeal.

On that morning in particular Minor had been busy fiddling with his new philological paper. He insisted on remaining occupied, though neither fortune nor conscience demanded it. It was not unusual for him to forget small things and thus the tumbler remained full.

However, the orange juice was rather special. Mrs. Thompson, his housekeeper, had a nephew who had just come back from a pilgrimmage to the Holy Land. There he had fallen in love not only with afternoon siestas, but also the oranges native to that land. On his return he brought with him a suitcase of no less than forty-seven oranges, four of which were given to his favourite aunt. She didn't like oranges. And thus this juice had travelled many several leagues simply to be untasted by Minor.

Which was just as well since Minor was not a man predisposed to novelty. He had long discouraged his relatives from travelling, and was of the disreputable filial fame of badgering everyone during Christmas not to bother eating together. After all, artichokes were too rich for someone of his native build. He would much prefer if they all stayed home.

Minor would meet a rather sour end, a few years later. He was to step on a yellowjacket while reaching for his paper, only inches from his doorstep. Reports, culled from Gerry, the man next door, tell us that he swelled up considerably and was obviously strangled by his own body's violent histamine reaction, flopping ungainfully on the ground, besmirching his plaid woollen coat.

Some distance away, a group of swimmers were racing in the pool. They ressembled a fleet of thrashing sardines, fighting against the net.