A Revelation of Cormorants

by Mark Valentine

Cormorant, from the Latin for “sea-raven”. The Tudors saw the bird as a symbol for gluttony: Shakespeare refers to hungry Time as a cormorant. It may have gained this reputation because of its proficiency at catching fish. Milton, however, invested the bird with a dark glamour: he likened Lucifer sitting in the Tree of Life to a cormorant, no doubt because of the bird’s habit of standing with its black wings spread out to dry. The satanic image stuck. The occultist and poet Ludovic Horne wrote of his “Cormorant days/dark and sleek”. The atheist essayist Llewellyn Powys refers to the birds as “satanic saints” in Parian niches on the chalk cliffs of Dorset, but he celebrated them too as manifesting the ecstasy of the moment, as they plunge into the sea after the silver-scaled fish of their dreams. Conan Doyle alludes to an untold Sherlock Holmes case of “The Lighthouse Keeper and the Trained Cormorant”. Isherwood cites them in a nonsense poem. Folklore about them is much barer than the literary record.

The Burning Servant

by Steven Saus

‘Mrs. Freeman,’ Dr. Montegro said, ‘I believe there was a tale in the offering. While your observations of old age are … fascinating… they are not the coin of the realm. So to speak.’ The doctor looked down through his glasses at her. ‘We trade stories here, madam, and your grandson was going to tell one.’

The smile creased her face even further. ‘Why, yes, yes, he was.’ Jonathan tried to guide his grandmother to an armchair, but she waved him off, settling onto a barstool. ‘You fine educated men know of General Sherman, don’t you? The Union commander who burned his way from Atlanta to Savannah?’ Several men nodded; a few, who had betrayed Southern accents earlier in the evening, frowned. Montegro’s hand touched the silver chestpiece of his stethoscope.

Sarah looked up at the paneled ceiling for a moment, then back at the listening men. ‘What you don’t know is that Sherman didn’t do it all himself.’

Let There Be Darkness

by Mike Allen

A day will come when the sun’s pale yellow stare starts to fill with the taint of blood.

Among the confused and tremulous hordes of mankind, amidst the endless processions of grand towers forged from metal stolen from the moon, I will walk. One knowing face, one unique being traversing the rivers of humanity that flood this world.

Mentor

by Sean Eads

I recovered myself with difficulty. I was in my mentor’s house. I stood here uninvited but nevertheless I stood here. Understanding the opportunity, my attention burst outward in glances both rapid and greedy. I took in everything, finding the details of corners, seeking every scrap of intimate but banal information about the man. People might think this insane—I had after all worked closely with my mentor for a decade and a half, giving him my poems for his unsparing critiques, listening and agreeing to his thoughts on literature, attending his seminars and readings, making his friends my friends. I still was not good enough. I had never published anything but I kept at it. I was poor and I wrote about poverty. “You are poor,” my mentor would say, “but you have not suffered.” I was lonely and I wrote about loneliness. “Yes, you are lonely,” my mentor confirmed, “but loneliness is not suffering.” Gradually this became the sum of his critique. At the bottom of each returned poem he scribbled: “You still have not suffered.” I felt I would never understand. I looked about this room now as if it would tell me how to feel the anguish that clearly my mentor felt, the despair that made him so superior a poet. How could his kitchen tell me more about him than his verse, which was so confessional, so full of agony and torment, like a man imprisoned in his own flesh? What was knowledge of his plates and silverware in comparison? What could his dirty dishes tell me about his soul?

This Is Now

by Michael Marshall Smith

If you were seeing the fence for the first time, you’d likely wonder at the straightness of it, the way in which the concrete posts had been planted at ten yard intervals deep into the rock. You might ask yourself if national forests normally went to these lengths, and you’d soon remember they didn’t, that for the most part a cheerful little wooden sign by the side of the road was all that was judged to be required. If you kept on walking deeper, intrigued, sooner or later you’d see a notice attached to one of the posts. The notices are small, designed to convey authority rather than draw attention.

NO TRESPASSING, they say. MILITARY LAND.

That could strike you as a little strange, perhaps, because you might have believed that most of the marked-off areas were down over in the moonscapes of Nevada, rather than up here at the quiet Northeast corner of Washington State. But who knows what the military’s up to, right? Apart from protecting us from foreign aggressors, of course, and The Terrorist Threat, and if that means they need a few acres to themselves then that’s actually kind of comforting. The army moves in mysterious ways, our freedoms to defend. Good for them, you’d think, and you’d likely turn and head back for town, having had enough of tramping through snow for the day. In the evening you’d come into Ruby’s and eat hearty, some of my wings or a burger or the brisket – which, though I say so myself, isn’t half bad. Next morning you’d drive back South.

I remember when the fences went up. Thirty years ago. 1985. Our parents knew what they were for. Hell, we were only eight and we knew.

Biba Jibun

by Eugie Foster

read by Kara Grace

When the train arrived, it was jammed with commuters: students, salarymen, and office ladies. I squeezed into the last car, and more bodies pushed in behind me. My stomach churned, assaulted by cloying perfume, stale cigarette smoke, and sour sweat.

I was so intent upon not being sick that at first I didn’t notice that somewhere between Shibuya and Harajuko stations, a man’s hand had settled on my leg. Surrounded by blank-faced commuters, wedged so tightly I couldn’t move, I had no idea who it belonged to. As the train jostled along, the hand slipped higher, burning a sweat-slick trail from knee to thigh. At the next juddering stop, my agitated insides heaved, and I shoved free from the car. I fled into the closest ladies? toilet to throw up. Stomach as empty and deflated as my spirits, I splashed water on my face, trying not to cry.

The door opened, and a girl in a school uniform identical to mine stepped to the sink beside me. She pulled a glittering gold bag embossed with distinctive Louis Vuitton monograms out of her schoolbag. After dumping an array of makeup on the counter, she proceeded to sketch in her eyebrows with a dark pencil.

“I saw what happened, you know.” Her voice was low and rich. “You’re supposed to yell ‘chikan’ when they grope you. Everyone says train perverts make them want to puke, but you’re the first I’ve seen who really has. You must be new to Tokyo.”

A Study In Flesh And Mind

by Liz Argall

‘Try to observe closely,’ says the Great Teacher, not really looking at her fresh pose, tapping the baton in his palm and smirking at the short-skirted student. ‘It’s like this.’

The model observes his new stance, the way his right hand grasps his hip, the left held in the air. She mimics his pose exactly, although she keeps her face carefully blank and does not include his sneering expression.

The Great Teacher snorts in disgust, shakes his head and rolls his eyes. She swiftly finds a new pose, a mangled combination of the previous three, fighting down anger and a hint of panic. She has no idea what he wants and she will not survive at this school without his recommendation.

The Republic of the Southern Cross

by Valery Bryusov.

A detachment of well-armed men passed into the town, bearing food and medical first-aid, entering by the north-western gates. They, however, could not penetrate further than the first blocks of buildings, because of the dreadful atmosphere. They had to do their work step by step, clearing the bodies from the streets, disinfecting the air as they went. The only people whom they met were completely irresponsible. They resembled wild animals in their ferocity and had to be captured and held by force.