Mg74

mgversion2>datura mgv2_74 | 10_13 Otherworldly Mammals | Mammifères d'outre-monde Š mgversion2>datura & contributors, October 2013

Contents Cover illustration by Claudio Parentela Introduction by Walter Ruhlmann illustrated by Norman J. Olson Inside illustrations by Cece Chapman, Jeff Crouch, Flora Michèle Marin, & Fulgor Silvi Ranger Danger

Cecelia Chapman

short film

Nenette

Tom Samel

fiction

Identity 50

Fulgor Silvi

artwork

Rat

Caleb Parkin

poetry

Indebted

Karla Linn Merrifield

poetry

In Unison

Elizabeth Tyrell

poetry

Ghost

Flora Michèle Marin

artwork

Oysteresque

Carly Berg

fiction

Extraplanetary Mammal

Jeff Crouch

artwork

Le chant du monstre

Cédric Bernard

poetry

Sink Beast

Richard Godwin

fiction

Face

Flora Michèle Marin

collage

Christophe

Alexandra Bouge

poetry

David

Alexandra Bouge

poetry

Christian

Alexandra Bouge

poetry

Before the Dust Colonizes

Ben Nardolilli

poetry

Outerworld Mammal

Cecelia Chapman & Jeff Crouch

mixed work

People of Clouds

Steve F. Klepetar

poetry

When Monsters Rise

Steve F. Klepetar

poetry

Fulgor Silvi

artwork

Men are Grey

Carly Berg

fiction

Horse

Alexandra Bouge

photograph

Dreams of Taxidermy

Megan Boatright

poetry

Rabbit

Alexandra Bouge

photograph

The Snake-Swallower's Dog

Megan Boatright

poetry

Partially Male, Partially ...

JJ Steinfeld

poetry

Fulgor Silvi

artwork

Angel

Alexandra Bouge

photograph

The Hottest Spot

Mike Price

fiction

Gargoyles

Alexandra Bouge

photograph

Biographies

Introduction by Walter Ruhlmann illustrated by Norman J. Olson

space alien tiptoeing across the icy north atlantic 5x7 inches 3-2012 The Otherworldly Being – first published in Norman J. Olson & Friends, mgv2publishing, December 2012 What is this strange being full of sorrow doing?

He left his land and is leaping from one foot to the other between the icebergs.

The ice from the pole tickles his toes, both toes used to the intense heat of the world he parted from.

He stills bears the incandescent print of this and, far away from his own kind, he is looking for a desert where he could spend the rest of his life making plans to conquer planet Earth.

Celui de l'autre monde Que fait cet être étrange et empreint de chagrin ?

Il a quitté sa terre et saute d'un pied sur l'autre entre les icebergs.

La glace du pôle chatouille ses orteils, les deux doigts habitués à la chaleur intense du monde qu'il a quitté.

Il en porte toujours la marque incandescente et cherche loin des siens un désert où passer le reste de ses jours à trouver un moyen de conquérir la Terre.

Publié dans la revue FPDV juin 2012 Les autres

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Ranger Danger

by Cecelia Chapman “This film is about territorialism, aggression, violence, influenced by events surrounding California rangers with an aggressive stun gun, identification demanding attitude. I wondered what would happen in an otherworldly scenario...

David Schilling, ranger.

Kristina Barvels, tree creature.

The film also reflects on how we destroy what we fear or don't understand.”

Cecelia Chapman

http://vimeo.com/62308058

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Nénette

by Tom Samel à Géraldine Morag Je suis allé rendre visite à Nénette en prison. Elle m’attendait derrière les grandes vitres du parloir.

On s’est d’abord regardé, sans rien se dire. Je ne savais pas par quoi commencer. Je l’ai trouvée très belle, quoiqu’un peu fatiguée. Mais je ne lui ai pas dit. Nous aurions pu rester comme ça pendant des plombes, cependant, autour, les autres visiteurs s’agitaient, s’esclaffaient, leurs voix grinçaient comme des portes rouillées. Ça m’a terriblement irrité.

Au bout d’un moment, j’ai rugi : « Hey ! Vous pouvez jacter un peu moins fort ! » Le silence est apparu comme une source dans le désert. Ils m’ont regardé avec leurs yeux cinglants.

Un type a dit : « Mais pour qui il se prend ce con-là. » Et puis la source s’est immédiatement tarie. Le tohu-bohu a repris de plus belle.

J’ai dit à Nénette : « Ils peuvent pas la mettre en veilleuse, sans déconner ? Ils savent faire que ça ? Jacasser pour ne rien dire ! Bande de connards irrécupérables !

— Tu ne devrais pas parler comme ça des gens, m’a-t-elle rétorqué durement. Tu ne les connais pas.

Ils font rien de mal. En-tout-cas pas plus que toi.

— Tu peux pas dire qu’ils font rien de mal, ai-je répliqué. Ce sont des abrutis inconséquents qui croient que protéger c’est emmurer, que progresser c’est piller. Et puis, ils te manquent de respect, ils te regardent avec une sorte de fausse pitié et en même temps ça les rend heureux de te voir derrière ces barreaux, ça les rassure.

— Pff ! vraiment toi, tu changes pas, dit-elle en soupirant. Toujours à jouer le rôle de l’adolescent écorché !

— Arrête ! Regarde-moi ça. Ça me dégoute cet enthousiasme devant toutes ces aberrations. Ils trimballent leurs mômes ici en leur expliquant que cet endroit a été créé pour le bien de l’humanité. Ils font tout ce qu’ils peuvent pour que ces gamins deviennent aussi cons qu’eux !

Merde, regarde comme ils se voilent la face. Ils se croient libres, parce que c’est toi qui es derrière cette vitre ? Comment ils osent ? Mais qu'est-ce qu’ils cherchent vraiment ?

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 — Et toi alors qu'est-ce que tu cherches ? dit-elle. Vas-y, dis-moi ! Qu’est-ce que tu cherches, monsieur le grand détaché ? » J’ai rougi, je n’ai pas répondu. « Je vais te le dire moi. Tu cherches à te divertir, comme eux ! À satisfaire tes foutues passions merdiques, comme eux ! On est tous responsables de cette misère, tu le sais bien. On est tous sur ce putain de navire. » J’ai juste dit, honteux : « Arrête. On n’est pas comme eux. On n’est pas comme eux… » Nous sommes encore restés un moment sans nous parler. J’avais la boule au ventre. Envie de dégueuler. Je tremblais de colère, comme si j’essayais de dévisser un boulon avec une pince à linge.

J’ai voulu penser à autre chose. À un endroit agréable, à une rivière dans la jungle. Et à chaque fois, le brouhaha des visiteurs revenait se planter dans mes tripes. J’en pouvais plus ? J’ai cru bon de dire : « bon, t’en fais pas Nénette. De toute manière, je vais te sortir de ce merdier » Elle a jeté sur moi un regard méprisant qui m’a glacé le sang et elle m’a dit : « Me sortir d’ici ? Pauvre idiot. Mais après tout, c’est un peu toi qui m’as jeté dans cette cage ? Toi, les autres, votre sale égoïsme. Tu te rappelles pas quand tu faisais le malin avec ta bande de pseudo défenseurs de la planète ? Arrête de te croire en dehors du monde. Tu fais partie de la foule. Tu ne cherches qu’à préserver tes propres couilles.

Elle s’est mise alors à rire, d’un rire qui cherchait à blesser.

— Ne sois pas si cruelle Nénette, ai-je balbutié au bord des larmes. Je n’ai jamais voulu ça, j’ai toujours voulu te protéger des autres, de leur agressivité. Je n’ai jamais voulu que ton bien.

— Arrête, tu deviens ridicule, dit-elle sèchement, en me tournant le dos. Tu sais bien que je vais crever ici. Mais je m’y suis préparé. Ce n’est pas si grave. Et de toute façon, même si je sortais, où voudrais-tu que j’aille ? Chez toi ? T’as même pas de chez toi pauvre chien ! Et puis je sais plus rien faire de mes mains, je sais plus rien faire de ma tête.

— Ne dis pas ça, Nénette, ai-je répondu, éclatant en sanglots. Tu es une artiste. La plus instinctive, la plus sensuelle que je connaisse. On voyagera comme avant, on retournera à Bornéo, on vivra avec trois fois rien, comme avant. Tu te souviens ? Nénette ! Tu te souviens ? » Elle s’est alors levée, puis elle est montée sur le tonneau, elle a pris la corde et elle a grimpé tout en haut du grand mât. Elle m’a regardé une dernière fois d’en haut, elle m’a souri, puis elle a disparu.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Je suis sorti, les yeux pleins de larmes. Le cœur plein de culpabilité. « Monde de merde ! Ville de merde ! Pitié de merde ! Amour de merde ! Vie de merde ! Hommes de merde ! Femmes de merde ! Mômes de merde ! Singe de merde ! Moi de merde ! me répétais-je, tandis que je m’éloignais du jardin des plantes, poursuivi, harcelé par la grande misère à laquelle j’appartenais. » J’ai abandonné Nénette à son destin de monstre de foire et je crois que je suis resté dans mon lit pendant trois jours, à attendre la mort, avant de pouvoir à nouveau affronter la foule, là qui marchait dans les rues de mon cerveau, dans les avenues de mes veines.

Je suis allé dans la salle de bain, je me suis débarbouillé la gueule, j’ai passé mes doigts dans mon pelage hirsute, je me suis regardé dans la glace et j’ai dit : « Je ne suis pas comme vous, bande de cons !»

Identity 50 by Fulgor Silvi

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Vermin the Fifth: Rat (Rattus rattus) / Vanity An Exact Science

by Caleb Parkin Today, the box of light-up faces Needs my fur. It needs my Glossy, shiny coat; our Sleek and silky skin.

The hand cradles me from my cell In the row in this plot of cages, Whose axes go on forever, For endless, ageless ages.

Where is point X? What is the Y? Today, the box of light-up faces Wants my teeth. The faces bite At what we have: our incisors Gleam and glow and grow and grow In this ultra-violet white. The ceiling Refracts our mouths in strip-lights, We stare up as we run From our cage-clamped O. When will their perfect pouts protrude Like ours, with these elegant razors, Their points so sharp and bright?

Today, the box of light-up faces Simply has to have my tail; This accessory to balance.

They need its fullness and its plumpness And will cut a special hole In their couture to Make it fit. But as I fit Upon the sodden saw-dust floor I cannot see this tale’s end.

Whose body is it propping Now I am no longer dropping My elaborate train anymore?

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 The box of light-up faces Needs me, all of me.

They love me, they really love me.

The red carpet is not just for me, It is from me. The dotted-line Of bulbs around the mirror Will copy and paste us together.

But where is the clipboard, The sum of names and parts, The shotgun to begin a race To where the Premiere starts?

What does the box of light-up faces need To swell to the apex of its glow?

How will the channel change To the Conclusion, and How will we ever know?

Where is the exact science you seek, which lies In the lab-white liquid in our veins, The sky-grey mazes in our brains, The space-black marble of our eyes?

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Indebted

by Karla Linn Merrifield She was found swinging from a crossbeam in the attic, had rigged a rope, run it through the stiff old garment laced around her waist, hips, bosom.

She’s hung herself – suffocated – compression of the whalebone stays of her grandmother’s heirloom corset compacting her chest.

It was the strength of the bowhead a century later that finished her off, held her accountable.

She left a note behind of sorts one sheet of scribbles, a few ink sketches of anatomy and profile: ~~~ Balaena mysticetus, Beaufort Sea/Berengia tongue one ton heavy lick up riches of the Arctic His kind blow triumphant Vs 13 feet into atmosphere twin blow holes needed to keep such a mighty Leviathan alive Across seven octaves he sings undulating tones low moans sometimes two notes at once simple song he exerts his passions beneath the ice Long-lived he normally is Elder of all warm-bloodeds Remembers the time one of remaining six Great Fathers of their tribe (said to number only 8,000 now) -- of those few most venerable in their all-white flukes 12

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 earned w/ age & pelagic wisdom— he was slain @ 110 Last great poet of all the oceans gone for buggy whips fishing rods umbrellas ribs handles for the tools of man ~~~ On the back of the vellum page she had used were only a dozen cryptic words, jotted haphazardly: ~~~ skirt hoops too 1500 lbs. baleen

Grandmère’s 2-feet thick

giving up Beloved

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 In Unison

by Elizabeth Tyrell

Illustration Ghost by Flora Michèle Marin

In the lake Cowl-sea slithers Eating polluted words Cast out to the lake.

Angry words consumed Roar into the night grey-blue her skin.

Cowl-sea keeps nature’s balance Churning negativity into positivity.

Only rising in the mantle of a full moon She zips undulating, Over twenty foot long Ducking and diving.

Some mistake her for a ghost Her mouth full of jagged teeth To chew out the negativity of the human race.

Her cry mournful Until her mate arrives Happitor.

He a cowl-sea regurgitates happiness.

He is sky-blue he slides around her large, wide frame.

Together positivity is restored.

There are many Without them the world would not survive.

So with a smile they keep us alive.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Oysteresque

by Carly Berg Nelson didn’t like that I was oysteresque, and that hurt. That is, Nelson didn’t like that I was oysteresque, except when he wanted to fuck me. Like now.

He got some vocals going along with his a-bonging banging rhythm. “That’s right, girl.” His thrusts slammed the headboard into the wall. “Feels good.” Slam. Slam. “Oh, oh, oh yeah.”

Slam.

His cock pulsed, stretching me. “Pearls!” I grabbed his ass and pulled him in hard. “Oh, God. Shuck me! Pearls. Pearls!”

Afterwards, as his heavy breathing tapered off, so did his appeal.

“Pearls again, Claire?”

His lips moved, making words. Lick me with that hot, angry mouth. My mollusk meat was still riled.

It quivered.

“Did you take your medication today?” he said. “Or did you lay around, doing your oysterblivion again?” Another night was ruined.

We finished the Chianti. He used his reasonable tone on me. He said that I was lazy, and selfish.

I heard it like “shellfish,” and cracked up.

That made him mad. He used to say that I was an artist.

Men love oysteresque women, at first. The aphrodisia scent, the love of sex and rhythm and cum.

Later, they don’t like all the resting that’s needed to produce the pearls. They just don’t want to let you filter.

I wanted to doze off into oysterblivion right then. “Who cares,” I said. “You go on home now.”

“I live here, Claire. We’re married.”

It was hard to think right, I was so tired. I shut my shell on him. He still polluted my environment, though.

“Don’t you even ignore me, because you know I’m right. And don’t start that shell bullshit, either.

You don’t have a shell.” He tapped my shell. “You’re not an oyster, Claire.”

I could not produce good pearls in this pollution. I would have to leave. #

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 “A room for one, please.” I handed the girl my ID card.

“Yes, ma’am. How many nights?”

“Is this Papeete? Is this Tahiti?”

“No, ma’am. Um, ma’am? This is actually Pupitre, Texas.”

“Oh. Well. That’s probably my fault.” I was so tired, it was hard to keep swaying. There was itsy bitsy movement in my tummy, a baby pearl. It needed rhythm. I did my arms like a hula girl, for extra luck. “I will stay for one year.”

“Ma’am? Please excuse me for just a minute. I’ll be right back.”

The girl looked all scaredy-cat, slightly retarded, perhaps. “Sure, honey, take your time.” I hoped she wouldn’t take her time. Ah, there was a chair. I sat and waited, fiddling with the strand of akoya pearls around my neck. They tapped together pleasingly, snick, snick, snick.

“Mrs. Seibert? I’m Jon Hayes, night manager. Are you doing all right tonight? Is there someone I can call for you, anything you need?”

“No, thank you. I just want to rest. Can I have some water? And six ice buckets, please? There is a pearl farm around here, isn’t there?”

“Uh, yes ma’am. Certainly. Our guest shuttle runs to Pupitre Lake Freshwater Pearl Farm every two hours. Hold on, let me get you a brochure. And, uh, those other things, too.”

Finally, I was in bed. I had plastic hotel cups full of water lined up on the nightstand, and a stack of ice buckets. Sip the water, swish it around, spit in the bucket, again and again. Sip, swish, spit.

Filtering. Slipping into lovely, lovely oysterblivion. Pure nothingness, just the cool rhythm of water. # The next evening, I still hadn’t made it to the pearl farm. Migrating had been hard on me. After a day of rest, I craved a good dinner.

The room service menu had milk, of course. I needed the calcium for strong pearls. Whole fish was for the iridescence in the scales. Fresh summer strawberries, and a glass of red wine, too, were for the rose tint I wanted my pearls to have. Red, fruit-based foods fostered it. The only thing missing was the bonding agent, but that wasn’t found in food.

The large, golden South Sea pearl on my finger shone in the lamplight. It had been a gift from Nelson, from our wild moonstruck time when we still pitied everyday people. I moved my hand this way and that. The pearl wailed a sad Polynesian song. A hui hou kakou…Until we meet again.

“Room service!” The knock at the door startled me.

“Mrs. Seibert? Here’s your dinner. And a bottle of Merlot, on the house. For you and your husband?”

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Jon Hayes, night manager, had brought my dinner up himself. Men were very drawn to my oysteresque aroma.

“No husband. Nope, I’m not Mrs. Seibert anymore. Now I just go by ‘O’.” I made that up. After I said it, I liked it.

“Oh?” he said. Or maybe he said, “O?” He’d do. The fat ones put out a good load of bonding agent.

We held eye contact, checking that we understood each other.

“Thank you. Would you like a glass?”

“My pleasure, O.” # A new man’s touch feels like sparks. The shock shuts my shell. The thrill opens it, my mollusk meat puffs out. Both things go on at once and I’m all a-flutter.

I got to that best place with him. Pure nothingness, topped with wave after wave of hot, naughty pleasure. He kept at it and I lost control of what I said.

My yelling about pearls didn’t slow him down. He moved his pillowy blubber on top of me like a melody.

Then it was over. He rolled over and went to sleep.

He needed to go, because I needed to filter.

He wouldn’t get up.

I opened the window to air out the thick fragrance of my aphrodisia. Then a few guys started milling around in the parking lot below, so I shut it.

Messing around with my personal collection calmed my mind. These were the pearls I’d birthed myself. I lined them up in order. I liked to track my progress. The earliest ones were small and gray, crumbly gravel. As I had honed my craft, my pearls had gotten larger, rounder, more lustrous.

I couldn’t fight off oysterblivion any longer. I grabbed the supplies and shut myself in the bathroom.

The delicious dark enveloped me. That, and the sip, swish, and spit rhythm. # “Good morning. Hey, what are you doing?” Jon Hayes yanked my shell open.

It was like being stripped in public. It was awful. “Nothing. Rinsing.”

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 “Rinsing? What are you rinsing? Did you sleep in here? What are you doing with all the ice buckets?”

He started coffee in the little drip maker, before I could think of how to tell him to leave.

“What are these, rocks?” He held up my best pearl so far, an eight millimeter baroque, beige with spotty pink nacre. “Kidney stones! I’ve had them. What are you—” “No! Those are… nevermind.” He had little pig eyes.

I shut my shell, and sheltered in place until he went away. # At the pearl farm, rows of long plastic pipes floated on the water. Big nets full of pearl mussels were tied to them. The breeze off the lake carried the scent of fresh aphrodisia.

“Your name is Zero?” Tino, the tour guide, lifted his sunglasses to read my name tag better.

I stuck my chest out to give a better view of my name tag and my cleavage. “It’s ‘O’.”

“Oh. O. What it does stand for?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just ‘O’.”

“That’s beautiful.

Our group toured the sorting shack, the little jewelry factory, the pearl museum, and the gift shop.

Towards the end, I was disappointed at being too tired to understand much.

We got off the tram at the water’s edge. One of the big mussel nets floated up around its plastic pipe. It was empty.

Once the group had filed past, I eased down on the dock, and put one foot into the water, then the other. Secure in the net, I slipped into the cool green lake.

Ah, yes. Sip, swish, and spit. It was fine, froggy water. The lake held me tight on all sides. Pure nothingness. I was home.

“Look Mom, they caught a lady in the net! Look, she has her school shoes on! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!” Men sloshed through the water. They ripped open my shell.

The people from my tour group came running back. How embarrassing. Everyone made a fuss over how the kid had “saved me,” especially its pregnant mother. I’d have spanked the brat for getting into adult business.

The mother had a big earnest pan of a face. She was unlikely to be pregnant with anything 18

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 interesting, probably just a baby.

“Oh, my God!” My mollusk meat got confused in all the commotion, what with two men handling me and a few others in the midst. “My God. Pearls!”

Tino the tour guide snickered.

Nobody else seemed to notice that, at least.

He said, “Thanks, gentlemen,” and held his arms out for me. I was too tired to argue. Maybe I should have, because he walked off with me, away from the others.

“Where are we going?”

“I take you to my hut, O. To rest.”

Oysteresque women are slutty-natured. In spite of my doubts, I couldn’t help but run my hands over his chest, feel his biceps, put my finger in his mouth.

He wore a big, irregular pearl on a leather cord around his neck. I rolled it between my finger and thumb, hoping to conjure a soothing whiff of South Seas coconut or maybe a feel of ocean waves. It came to me. This one thumped. I tapped his chest in time with it.

“Ah yes, it has a heartbeat,” he said.

Tino knew the language of the pearls?

Inside, he put me to bed. I slipped into the dark, too tired to even ask for water. # I stayed in Tino’s hut, sorting and stringing pearls when I could, filtering when I couldn’t. Sometimes at night he’d take me out and put me in the lake.

He came into the bedroom one day just as I awoke. “I want to do it a different way to you now, O!” “What, you want me to suck it?” I reached for his zipper.

“No, I will use my new technique, and shoot microspheres in for you to cover in nacre in your thing!”

“Micro-spheres? You aren’t talking about some kind of seed pearl, are you?”

“Yes! Wait, I will get for you some red wine!”

“You mean you want me to produce cultured pearls?” Cultured pearls were a joke. They were strictly for poseurs. My shell started to close.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 “Yes, but you see, it creates many pearls at the once, not just one. The finest, roundest pearls. I will take them to New York, New York!”

“But… how would the micro-spheres get in?”

“I have blown them into my enormous penis with a straw. When I fuck you, they will hop to the town!”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yum! Give to me some sugar. And some pussy.”

He said he didn’t think it mattered that I was already hosting a pearl. In the end, I could not say no to such exuberance. What did it matter, if it made him that happy.

“Just once, Tino.”

So, we did it. Or he did it. I watched the ceiling.

“There now, O. You rest.” He put pillows under my hips, and brought me my water and bucket. He left me there, to give his micro-spheres a chance to implant. My shell was closed. # It really is romantic, carrying his pearls, instead of my pearls. I’m sleepier than ever, but he doesn’t care. He takes care of everything. I’m huge. I can’t even imagine how many I’ll have. A lot more than one little pearl a time like before, that’s for sure. I hope it’s a necklace. # The cramping started after midnight.

“Tino. I think I’m in labor.”

“What? No! Thick nacre takes two years. Go back to sleep.”

“Owwwww! Owwwww!”

“Goddammit!” He got up, and put his pants on. # The nurse looked at my chart. “Claire Seibert? Mmm-hmm, and it says here that you’ve had no prenatal care. What. So. Ever.

Tino and I tried to keep our faces straight. Just wait.

“Ouch! Oh!”

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 The pearls must be giant. Maybe they’d have the rose tint.

“Ow! Ouch! Oh!” Between contractions, Tino aimed his cell phone camera. He said he had to document for New York, New York. “I need some good hair-lipped oyster shots, O. Hold it open more wide than that!”

The nurse puckered up her mouth hole.

“Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Sonuvafucking-kumbaya-bitch motherfucker!”

And then, it was there. There it was.

Tino dropped his phone. He ran out the door.

My shell slammed shut.

The nurse said, “It’s a girl.” # “Nelson?”

“Ah, yes. Well. How are you, Claire?”

“How did you know I was here?”

“The hospital called me. Also, the insurance company called me. And some guy named Tino called me. Did you know you’ve been unconscious for a day and a half?”

Nelson stood there holding his hospital gift shop flowers as if he didn’t know what to do with them or his hands.

“I stopped by the nursery,” he said. “She’s beautiful.”

Were those tears in his eyes?

“I’ve missed you, Claire.”

“Listen. I’ve missed you too, but I can’t be —“ “I understand.”

“You understand?”

“I do. I’ve done a lot of thinking since you’ve been gone. Five months is a long time to think.”

“Your dinner, Mrs. Seibert.” The orderly put a tray down on the bed table.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 “Excuse me,” Nelson said. “My wife can’t eat this. She’s on a special diet.”

The orderly checked his clipboard. “It’s not on here. I’ll tell the nurse, but it will take some time.”

“She can have the milk for now, at least. That red gelatin, too.” He plucked the containers off the tray. “And can you fill up her water pitcher, please?”

“I’ll be back, Claire, but it might take me a while if they don’t have any whole fish in the cafeteria.”

He came back with my fish. “I think,” he said, “that we should name our little girl Pearl.”

I looked him over good for a tightened jaw, a grimace, a sign that he didn’t mean it deep down, but right then he looked like a guy I knew from way back, from before we’d made such a mess of everything.

Extraplanetary Mammal

by Jeff Crouch

22

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Le chant du monstre first published in Le chant du monstre July 2012

by Cédric Bernard

Une vague qui sourde sans ourdir. Un ciel déteint, un ciel d'étain, sur l'opale d'une mer opaque.

Un élan sonore qui peu à peu se ramasse sur lui-même sans prendre toute conscience de son amplitude. Il vient de l’entrechoc de l'intérieur, la contradiction de l'entrelacs.

La contrariété de la voix.

Le chant du Monstre est la manifestation humaine d'une antinomie martelée. Le chant est le son du tiraillement de l'insécable. De toute part, il est celui de la tension d'un devenir et d'une agonie.

La distorsion de l'accord.

Il est la part de soi contre la part de soi, l'archaïsme qui ne saisit pas l'impétrant. La vibration de l'archaïsme qui se débat et suffoque devant la crue moderne de l'incompréhension.

Le borborygme de l'intérieur.

La friche en soi sauvage et obscure, niée puis crainte par l'agitation de la parcelle civilisée. La confrontation entre ce qui est dicté et ce qui est fait, ce qui est fait et ce qui est dit être fait.

La diction de sa contradiction.

Il est l'affrontement de deux cordes tendues en des directions contraires. L'enfouissement qui remonte, se fraie, s'effraie un chemin dans le nerf jusqu'à la nef.

Le chant du Monstre est ce qu'il y a de plus humain en soi.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Barbecue the Sink Beast

by Richard Godwin.

They found it in the kitchen sink. Just a little bit of head jutting up over the thick layer of grease that lay on top of the filthy water they served guests when they weren’t alone.

Harry stood there looking down at it as Jocelyn scratched her ass through her nightie.

‘What the fuck is it?’ she said.

‘Don’t know.’

He grabbed a skewer and jabbed it.

‘Hear that squeal? Sounds like a fucking pig.’

‘How the fuck would a pig get in our sink Harry?’

‘Think it’s food Jos?’ ‘Get rid of it.’

Harry turned to look at Jocelyn as she stood by the open door, the light wind outside rippling her nighty and the sun passing through it. His eyes wandered down to the blur at her crotch and he said, ‘Let’s go upstairs.’

‘You wanna fuck me get rid of that thing.’

‘Why?’ ‘It might come upstairs and rape me.’

Harry considered the proposition, running his oil stained hand ponderously across his chin.

‘I love to hear your bristles crackle in the horny afternoon,’ Jocelyn said.

‘Well I ain’t shaved yet.’

‘You never shave Harry.’

‘So the deal is despatch this beast and I get your peach.’

Jocelyn nodded.

Harry opened a cupboard which had knives attached with leather straps to the inside of the door. He removed a large bag which he placed on the floor and unzipped. He pulled a long knife from it and inspected it. It glistened. All Harry’s knives were clean. He always cleaned them afterwards.

Jocelyn liked to watch. She also liked to hear them scream. She said Harry had the cleanest cutting action she’d ever encountered and she’d encountered a few of them, as the scars on her breasts clearly showed.

‘I think this’ll do the job,’ Harry said.

He walked over to the sink where its head was rising from the filthy water.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 It had black eyes with long lashes like a girl, and its bloated head looked as though someone had kicked it and it was swelling up with bruising.

‘I can’t see a body,’ Harry said, peering down at it.

Jocelyn walked over to the sink.

‘Maybe it don’t have one.’

It was looking at them, its eyes darting from Harry to Jocelyn and back again as Harry jabbed it with the knife.

It screamed and Harry pulled away a section of grey flesh that dangled like rubber from the end of his knife.

He walked to the back door and flicked it off, watching the flesh land in the cadaverous yard.

He walked back in and inspected the sink.

It was trying to climb out. It had one limp foot perched on the edge of the sink and was scraping a long curved nail against the side, coughing spittle from its crimson mouth as it jabbered in a strange tongue.

‘What the fuck is this?’ Harry said. ‘It’s got a foot like a duck billed platypus.’

‘Kill it.’

So Harry started stabbing it, puncturing it repeatedly with his knife until it was red and dripping.

He stood back and waited to see if it was dead.

Jocelyn looked at Harry and felt a surge of arousal. He had his knife by his side and it was dripping blood onto the soiled linoleum floor.

‘You know how many times we come on this floor?’ she said. ‘I want you to fuck me with that knife when you’re done.’

Just then it started shrieking again.

It jumped up and stood on the edge of the sink and pulled its cock from its fur and stood there masturbating at Jocelyn.

Harry stabbed it again, this time lodging the knife deep in its fur.

He waved it around on the end of his knife and it flew off the end and landed by the door.

It stood there jabbering and then ran at Jocelyn and sprayed her with yellow come.

She wiped the strands of glutinous ejaculation from her yellow cheek and kicked it. It flew against the wall where it started barking at them.

‘What the fuck is it?’ Harry said.

25

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 He went over to the cupboard and got out his flame thrower.

‘Pass me the paraffin Jos,’ he said.

It was making obscene noises at them, a strange cacophony of high pitched whistles and groans that sounded sexual in nature. Then it ran at Jocelyn waving its cock at her as Harry doused it in paraffin and set it alight.

They stood there watching it ignite like a Roman Candle and run outside into the yard, spraying piss all over the walls.

‘We’s lovers ain’t we?’ Harry said, laying an arm around Jocelyn’s shoulder.

She reached down and felt his crotch.

‘Sure nuff,’ she said.

They walked upstairs past the heads stuck to the wall, past the hides and pelts that lay on the floor, past the blood stains on the light switch, and into the bedroom where several claws lay on the faded carpet.

Jocelyn pulled off her nightie as Harry walked over and ran his hand across her nipples.

‘They look like buckshot baby,’ he said.

‘Nothing like a little frying to make me wet. Come and feel me Harry, run your knife hand deep inside me.’ **** They lay in the twilight watching the shapes blur so that the claws looked like small knives on the floor. Harry got up and went down to the kitchen where he got himself a beer from the fridge and walked over to the back door. He looked down at the burnt body and stepped into the yard.

He had to tread over the clumps of fur that lay scattered everywhere. Some of them were dessicated, some had bits of flesh attached to them and were in various stages of decomposition. At the edge of the yard was a head, dried and bleaching from the sun.

Some animals were gathering at the yard’s end, scavenging for bits of still edible meat. They watched Harry, staying back until he went inside.

He cleaned his knife, polished it, and put it back in its case.

Then he got the body from the yard and put it on the floor.

Jocelyn came into the kitchen and stood there looking at it.

‘Smells good,’ she said. ‘I want you to barbecue the sink beast.’

‘Get your fine old sauces dripping.’

26

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 ‘They already are baby.’

‘I’ll spoon the flesh into your savage mouth.’

Jocelyn curled her tongue up to her lip as the light caught the gold stud in it.

And Harry started making supper.

Face by Flora Michèle Marin

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Christophe

by Alexandra Bouge des membres avaient poussé de son corps une jambe sort de son bras des yeux les bras des sexes des yeux des pieds du tronc des mains des pieds sortent du bras, des doigts du cou sa jambe les yeux coupés des mains sortent du bras des mains des mains là

28

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 David

by Alexandra Bouge Les pieds lui sortent de la tête des membres poussent des mains de l'aine une bouche rouge le sexe hors fonction des pieds sortent des bras des mains sortent aussi de la cuisse les deux cuisses collées le pied collé à la main sortent dans le dos des mains d'un sein le sexe de côté

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Christian

by Alexandra Bouge Des mains sortent du cou des pieds des aisselles un pied de l'autre des mains de l'aine un sexe dessus les cuisses collées des pieds des mains sortent d'un côté du ventre une extrémité du sexe est cousue à côté un bouquet de membres d'une épaule des mains du cou des pieds d'une épaule des mains de la tête un bouquet de membres un bras trop petit, un tronc aux membres des pieds sortent du bassin, un bouquet de l'épaule, deux bouches le sexe de côté plusieurs oreilles plusieurs seins il laisse tomber des mains

30

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Before the Dust Colonizes

by Benjamin Nardolilli The girl presented time and death beautifully, but her bloodstream remained hidden to our souls against the wilderness.

And he saw nothing but repugnance and pity, the man who imprisoned us in his opera, its exceptionally rich metaphor bitten.

The monster is inspired by the natural world, those who betrayed their numbers stand frozen and vulnerable for it.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Mixed Work

by Cece Chapman & Jeff Crouch

9:13 a.m.

The Dead Mail Bureau Exhibit designer takes this photograph when she finds an

outerworld mammal under the mystery mail she hung the previous day.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13

10:32 p.m.

Night security takes this photograph of the outerworld mammal skin shed on the floor.

Detectives now believe the mammal arrived as a seed in the wrapping, and that the seed fell to the table and grew overnight.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 People of Clouds

by Steve F. Klepetar The people of clouds have nothing in their eyes, only a brilliant wash of sun. Their hands dry slowly in twisting wind, but we cannot hold them close, or pretend to be bound by their ominous sobs.

Together we have climbed rope ladders, those twisted lines of sand, and pitched our handbills out steep sides of jaunty balloons. See how they float, those text bubbles crooning in their gentle, magnetic sway: “Wait until morning,” they cry, “wait until angels blend their breathing smoke with bridges and factory stacks and outraged fathers shake their empty fists at vanishing moon!”

34

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 When Monsters Rise

by Steve F. Klepetar When monsters rise from my sleep and I recognize their pummeled faces, when their eyes glow with agony and scars torn across their flesh burn along my nerve endings, I can never find the bottom of my fear. When they emerge from flame or stumble soaked and choking from the sea, when they hobble or limp or crawl on broken limbs, when pain becomes nothing but a red throbbing ball of blazing light, I try to dive blind and headlong into black waters, return to before land and stars and the awful shriek of voices crying with cracked tongues to ears stopped with bloody clay of earth.

35

Illustration by Fulgor Silvi

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Men are Grey

by Carly Berg Men are industrial grey. They don’t have jewelry boxes. No fashion, make-up, or fruity rum drinks for them. No happy shopping for bright home décor. It’s much more than trinkets, look close. A colorful woman is privileged and loved. Color is an easy life in a plush nest. Men barely know their colors, poor horses.

My husband was reading a toaster repair manual for fun. I said, poor gray workhorse. I shall teach you your colors so you, too, can land soft.

Neigh, he said, stomping his hoof.

But I coaxed him with a carrot, out of the barn and into the house. We did color flashcards.

Brown he said, to the first three cards.

No. Russet, Peru, chestnut.

Three Yellows.

No. Chiffon, canary, goldenrod.

He said, Green. Green. Green.

Celadon. Olive. Chartreuse.

He studied but could not learn, even after I whipped him.

I said, how can you stand such a colorless life?

He said, neigh, silly. My colorful trinket is you.

I’m a trinket? You… think you’re better than me?

He snorted, “Of course. I am a horse.”

I was going to whip him again but gave him some oats instead. Just felt sorry for him, I guess.

Photograph by Alexandra Bouge

37

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Dreams of Taxidermy

by Megan Boatright Spanish whale-rot. If you want to stay here, you’ll have to fill something.

Open the snow goose by its jaws, crack your knuckles, shake your fistful of spines. I’d like to tell you this gets easier with practice. I’d like to.

I have carried your duck full of coupons, pecan shells, a boar’s tooth, for three years.

Emptying it at night. Heaving like a black spider, a bay leaf in the window.

Salt in the suspension bridge; the way metal needs us. Grinding, fending off, the inevitability of fish song.

Crawl as low as you want.

When the bonedryness of its fin scrapes your belly, you’ll rush backwards, wake up.

Photograph by Alexandra Bouge

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 The Snake-Swallower’s Dog

by Megan Boatright Beautiful plants grow in my stomach like primitive hands, fire in the nauseous calliope, stone among barnacles.

Like a dream of brushing against the wet rock children.

Love like a pitcher plant, making myself felt upon the world.

Lie flat, weaving glassy heartworms into charms against women, against the curtain, against a frightened sword that shudders as we perform it in winter.

In this plastic nothing-place, our mouths signify. We scream obscenities at silken people, want to hold them, say nothing; I tend my garden of swirling viscera, rummage with my sticks for water, prepare to open them out, myself upon the crowd.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Partially Male, Partially Female, Partially Undefined Otherworldly

by J. J. Steinfeld After a discordant night of stuttering demons with limited vocabularies, and past wondering what is real and what is unreal or treacherous, you look up at the large-mouthed partially male, partially female, and partially undefined otherworldly yet toothless mammal you sense the mammal is forthright but outspoken as it keeps speaking as if words were weapons topic after topic from the trivial to the eternal more the trivial than the eternal time for silence time to go you think then speak to the male, to the female, to the undefined otherworldly the mammal speaks faster words now futuristic weapons topics unimagined suddenly imagined: facts, theories, rumours, grotesque imaginings, historical details, bizarre projections and extrapolations in a voice first male, then female, lastly undefined otherworldly too much information too many words too much info go, go, go your thoughts and words interspersed

40

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 * push turned to shove turned to magic tricks for vanishing turned to recriminations turned to you thrown to the ground standing up neck-deep in words and wordy threats silence, go silence, go you repeat then the large-mouthed toothless mammal falls silent — silent male, silent female, silent undefined otherworldly — and the silence is more than frightening but you know night and the stuttering demons limited vocabularies or not will later arrive to serenade you.

Photograph by Alexandra Bouge Next page: illustration by Fulgor Silvi

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 The Hottest Spot

by Michael Price Buried amid the weeds and thistles of desolation, far, far away from where anything meaningful in life took place, raged a dark, foul-smelling prison of a bar the locals called Julia’s. It was, on the surface, an unlikely location for such a busy drinking establishment, tucked away in a sea of rocks and clay. Nevertheless, Julia’s was always the same—crowded. Truth be known, lots of people absolutely hated it there. There was no in-between when it came to opinions on Julia’s but certainly more than enough potential sinners regularly flocked there for their fill of decadence, roguery, and overall enjoyment. All sorts of deviltry ran amuck at Julia’s, no one seemed to care.

In fact, it was the kind of place one might frequent, more often than not, in boorish efforts to get away with virtually any such variety of sport. The old girl had thick walls, she did, what happened there stayed there, no one would ever know. Somehow, in a playfully sinister sort of way, there was something to be said for a spot where one could go to neglect a few family manners, down a little fire-water, perhaps bump into a few other Sunday School drop-outs and, with any luck at all, wake up in the morning casting an iniquitous grin in the bathroom mirror. Sure, it was a trap of sorts, everybody recognized its potential. But it had always been the hottest spot around.

Photograph by Alexandra Bouge Jay had been driving through a better than steady rain for what seemed an eternity when his vintage Mercedes decided to call it quits for the day, smack in the middle of “this damned, Godforsaken country,” not too far yet way too far from home. His disposition sagged into negativity, 43

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 the nagging padiddle of raindrops on the hood of his car adding fuel to his increasingly fiery mood.

Frankly, he couldn’t have cared less about the speech he had prepared. Returning home hadn’t held more than two minutes of his interest since he’d left many years prior; that was hardly the point. But the idea of postponing his long and eagerly anticipated vacation abroad in reluctant lieu of delivering ten minutes of inane ceremonial ribbon-cutting remarks at his alma mater had developed into a pretty lousy decision, Jay thought as he pondered his next move, especially considering his apparently soggy immediate future. He wondered how far he had come, how far he was from the old home town campus—he couldn’t remember—how far he was from anywhere. He exited his car with a splash and locked the doors, suddenly realizing how totally lost he was. He decided to continue on foot, sloshing through ankle deep puddles on the side of the road, rejecting the notion that anybody else might foolishly brave the elements on such a rotten day. Mom had always maintained that the folks back home weren’t exactly the adventurous type, he particularly remembered that, dismissing any possibility that some other fool in a car might stop and save him from being terminally cleansed. He hadn’t noticed another vehicle for almost an hour; he mudded on. He recalled the times he’d refused to wear galoshes in similar weather as a child, irritating his mother interminably, managing a paltry smirk aimed in the direction of his greatly soiled and currently very much appreciated galoshes. He shivered, it was getting chilly, too. He breathed a deep sigh of resignation, rationalizing that the new fine arts wing would no doubt adequately serve its purpose whether the renowned prodigal son author returned to deliver his two francs worth or not. By the time he reached Julia’s Jay was tired, only a little less irritated, and definitely well rinsed.

Jay had heard a great deal about the place, from many locals in addition to his mother, dating back to his formative youth, but was quite certain he had never been there. He’d often been tempted, but mom’s sermons concerning the types of horror that went on in a place like Julia’s had always been difficult to block out of his mind--all those “unholy folks,” she’d said. Jay allowed a grim smile of recollection to surface as he splatted his way down the three weedinfested, cracked-cement steps of Julia’s entryway, shaking himself as a drenched dog might in such weather, dotting the fogged-over, inch-and-a-half-thick glass door. He would simply call and cancel his speaking engagement. That was it, he decided, feeling better all the time. It was only a building, after all, this dedication thing. An unfeeling, inanimate object. One structure in the midst of a tiny scholastic community. In a town nobody had ever heard of anyway, in a state no different than any other. Country, world, universe, and whatever else came after that…it really was

44

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things, what he was doing, he concluded. He would just call and politely tell his alma mater to…well, stick it. Couldn’t be helped. Sorry. Again he thought of his delayed trip, that if he hadn’t earned it before this irritating and untimely saturated detour, he most certainly had now. Yes, he definitely wanted to go away, get away, do something different for a change, anything, and now he felt quite deserving. Jay decided he really did feel better as he stepped into the warmth, for he strongly felt he had earned at least one other thing: a drink.

“Holy buckets, man!”

The comedian draped over the first bar stool had a big mouth, enabling most of the throng to hear his thread-of-a-joke as Jay dripped towards the bar, acknowledging the noticeably less than amiable guffaws with a ritual tip of his once proud tam. Flushness overwhelmed his cheeks, due in equal parts to his all too sudden comic notoriety in addition to the rather balmy atmospheric conditions in the room, which were in oppressive contrast to the outside world. It was considerably louder than the drinking establishments he was accustomed to, each arena of alcoholic shenanigans doing its best to top the next in terms of both volume and intensity. A gray, dimly lit, dreary old hole, Jay’s initial impression of Julia’s was one of a bar that had always been there and would always be there.

Regardless of whatever might happen within its walls, Julia’s wasn’t going

anywhere. Lost souls going nowhere had to hang out somewhere, Jay reasoned, and evidently this was both somewhere and nowhere.

“Still rainin’, huh?”

Jay looked at the dishevelment of a man, disdain and pity fighting for a spot on the tip of his brain. He opted to start out not ignoring Dr. Levity and see where it got him. “Uh huh,” he said blandly.

“Well,” the man continued, “’least it ain’t rainin’ in here.” He emitted a shallow cackle into his drink.

Jay attempted a return laugh, but failed. “At least.”

“Ya know,” the man mused through spittle, “I don’t get out and about like I used to, on account of this little problem I have, but ah…” He raised his glass in a toast to himself, spilling as he cackled up a notch. “…ya know, I don’t believe we get all that much pre-ci-pi-tation out here in these here parts.” And the laugh track droned on.

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Jay countered, sensing growing impatience in his own voice. “I’m from around here somewhere.”

The man reeked of bewilderment, among other things. “That so? Funny, I never seen ya

45

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 before, I swear it. Ya know, everybody knows damn near everybody ‘round here. ‘Tain’t all that bigga place.” He snorted an approving welcome, slapping Jay hard on his back. “Ah, what the hell, name’s Brownton.”

Brownton extended a grubby hand, upon which Jay executed an on the spot inspection, then aw what the hell shook. He seriously considered giving Brownton an alias. “Jay,” he admitted, glancing around. “Say, I need to get to a pay phone…”

“Busted,” interrupted Brownton with his finest snort. “Ya know, Jay, tell ya the truth, seems like the damn thing ain’t never worked. Stuff’s always broke ‘round here, ya know.” Another vigorous slap to the back was matched with the recurring laughter, as Brownton continued his enjoyment.

His breath made Jay turn away, opportuning a more complete view of the hazy, overcast scene loitering all around him. He could scarcely hear what was most likely a jukebox that had obviously seen and heard better days feigning a melody in the background and wished it was louder so he could pretend he was listening. There were a couple of okay looking ladies in the room, Jay observed, figuring, in consideration of his current situation, he probably shouldn’t even look. Jay prioritized, womanizing finishing well down on the list. First and foremost—leave. Get out of here, that’s the most important thing, he thought to himself. Everything else would take care of itself as soon as he was anywhere but where he was. No phone. Cars. Rain. Wheels spinning in mud.

Wheels not spinning at all. Jay forced a weak grin, bemoaning, “I wonder what my horoscope was for today.”

Jay’s back was starting to get red, he could feel it, as Brownton roared his approval which, once again, involved opening his mouth. Jay cringed. In the short time he’d spent at Julia’s he had grown to detest Brownton’s incessant, phlegm-curdling mirth, theorizing that there were more than a few reasons why the place had a certain reek to it, as his new acquaintance lit a putrid smelling cigar, his second since Jay had arrived.

“Ya know, I like ya, Jay, sure as hell I do. Lemme buy ya a drink.”

“No, no, no, no…”

“Hell, yeah.

Whad’ya drink, Jay? Ya strike me as a whiskey kinda guy,” Brownton prided,

toasting himself.

“You really don’t have to …”

“Hell, ya don’t get a chance to buy a new guy a drink every day now, do ya? Besides, ya look kinda ridiculous, ya know, all wet and all, no offense, but…HEY YOU…OLD MAN…BAR KEEP…GET YER

46

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 LOUSY ASS DOWN HERE…damned if you can get any service around here…HEY, YA OLD GOAT!” Jay felt the strong urge to disappear, preferably followed by an immediate and very necessary change of wardrobe. He sensed that he was well on his way to skipping right over drying out naturally and going from soaked to sweat-trodden much faster than he would have preferred, as his prior cleansing continued its rapid and disgusting transformation into the world of filth. He shrank in his shoes, feeling eyes from the immediate radius, piercing, almost bullying eyes, the kind of eyes that, were they little boys, would surely be pigeon-holed as playground bullies. With a sigh of resignation Jay slipped off his galoshes and droopy hat and accepted the bar stool next to Brownton. If you can’t beat ‘em, he shrugged to himself…he’d spent his last cash on gas anyway which, at this point, seemed like a pretty stupid investment.

“OLD MAN! HEY YOU!” “Hi there, sweety.” It was a breathy, alto timbered voice that split the ado. Jay’s initial thought was that Mae West had been dead for years. He slowly turned to match voice with flesh but, before he could focus, the lips of his dreams invaded his mouth.

“Oh, for chrissake, Julia!” cackled Brownton, shaking his head, as he and the vicinity hooted with glee throughout the smothering, time suspending lip-lock. “The least ya could do is let a guy get drunk first."

It wasn’t as if Jay didn’t enjoy such spontaneous passion but he was starting to feel a bit like a circus act, a very much gawked at circus act. Flush had now become his permanent facial hue as he made a believable attempt to pry his face from hers. After his mouth had seemingly been branded for all eternity Jay was physically, almost violently, shoved away by the woman, clumsily falling back against the bar, more perplexed than ever.

By the time he could regain some

semblance of composure and make any attempts at emerging from the experience appearing the least bit suave and worldly, she was gone.

“Friendly,” understated Jay in the direction of Brownton, tasting his freshly soiled lips.

“Welcome to Julia’s,” laughed Brownton, as the hooting began to wane.

Jay dabbed at his mouth with a filthy cuff. “That…was Julia?”

“Yup,” blurted Brownton, trying to restrain himself. “Ya oughta feel damned honored there, Jay. She don’t show her mug ‘round here much, ya know. Sort of a…whad’ya call ‘em…silent partner, that’s it. Just in it for the money…ha! Ha! Sure as hell knows how’da leave an impression though, don’t she?” Again Brownton rattled phlegm, hacking up beer snot, tobacco residue, and other local delicacies. Jay turned away in disgust.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 “Where the hell’s the fire, Brownton, ya no good pain in the ass!”

The bartender was a lanky relic, gaunt and willowy, with protruding eyeballs and a two-bit scraggle of a beard low-lighting an otherwise bony, hound of a face. He had a way of standing way back on his heels--almost as if he had a tail behind him for support, thought Jay—then slouching forward to, figuratively and literally, slop drinks on the bar. As he coiled over Brownton, looking ready to attack, it crossed Jay’s mind that, if this were a western, the old goat would definitely be one of the bad guys, probably the brains of the outfit. As inconsequential and intimidated as the towering, brow-knitted bartender made Jay feel, thirst was starting to become a factor, as he wiped his brow with a sleeve.

“I’d like a drink,” he intervened, hoping the old man wouldn’t take offense.

“Cognac.

Better make it a double. Please. Sir.” The old goat glared down at Jay, who hoped that cognac had been introduced in “these here parts.”

“Cognac…” the man repeated, stroking his chin, trying to see it.

“Yeah, whatever the hell that is and I’ll have me another beer,” said Brownton, cutting in.

“And I’m buyin’.” The bartender sauntered away, flashing what would have been a toothy smile if he’d had any teeth to flash, as Brownton turned to Jay. “Ya know, I’d give ya a towel or a napkin or somethin’ if I had me one but, ah…” He assumed a friskable stance with a shrug.

“In the rest room, perhaps?” Jay was starting to offend himself; he was beginning to feel as if he was actually blending in amid the nauseation around him, a little piece of Julia’s. He needed to freshen up in the worst way, and wondered if that would be possible.

Brownton snorted.

“Ha!” he erupted loudly, spilling beer on himself and Jay, taking no

notice. “That Julia, man, she’s a cheap one, she is. Ain’t never even seen no towels ‘round here.”

Jay swabbed himself with himself and heaved a deep sigh, which evolved into a cough. “I guess this is my lucky day.”

The bartender returned with their drinks as Brownton laughed. “Ya know, Jay, yuz a pretty funny guy,” he finally managed.

“Funny?” the old man hmphed. “It’s more like there’s somethin’ queer about him, I’d say.

Queer in the old way, the way it used to be. Comes ta six bucks even.”

“Six bucks!” Brownton dropped his wallet, four-lettering its retrieval.

“Here, let me get this.” Jay figured it would be easier.

“Geez, how much does that stuff cost, that cognac stuff?”

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 The old goat was almost grinning, stroking his scraggle.

“Five bucks for a double,” he

droned.

Brownton appeared somewhat rattled as he meekly turned to Jay. “Geez, man, ya must be from somewheres else.”

Out of habit, Jay reached for his money clip and came up with a clip. “Okay if I write you a check?”

“No checks,” the bartender vetoed. “Julia’s rule.”

Jay was running out of options. “Credit card? You gotta take credit cards.”

The man allowed a thread of a smile to stitch his face. “Sure,” he said. “Not too often, but…yeah, sure.”

Jay flipped a piece of man-made material on the bar. “I’ll just run a tab then, okay?”

“Right. A tab.” The old goat looked at the credit card like it was a piece of meat. “We always run tabs here.”

Brownton exchanged belly-laughs with the bartender, Jay dismissing it as some sort of local joke. He hadn’t eaten anything all day and, despite some pretty gruesome mental images of what the food might be like at a place like Julia’s, he was hungry, and needed some time to figure out his options. What to do next…no phone. “And could I see a menu?”

“I’ll see if I can scrape up some popcorn,” said the man, walking away. “If we got any.”

“If you got any? What, no burgers, no fries, not even a damn piece of celery?”

But the old man was out of ear shot. Popcorn—old maids, no doubt, Jay figured, how he despised old maids. He felt even more famished just knowing he wasn’t to be nourished any time soon. Nourished. The word sounded strange to him, considering where he was. He gulped at his drink, wishing he’d remembered to ask for a lemon twist like he usually did, realizing in the same brain wave that if the place had no menu there surely would be no fruit of any kind in sight. He determined that the thermostat had to be broken and/or everyone else was simply much more accustomed to the swelter than he was as he sat there, his pores complaining feverishly. At least I’m in a bar, he thought, really reaching for a silver lining. Liquor paralyzes the senses—another of mom’s sermons—and he tried his Sunday best to ignore the simmering stench, making his drink an ex-drink in one final swill. He wanted another. And, depending on the weather, of course, another.

If he could leave, he would. But, at the moment, another drink was definitely in order.

“Hey Brownton, want another one?”

Brownton picked up his glass and looked at it; it was still three-quarters full. “If you’re

49

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 buyin’,” he said, substantially reducing the fraction.

The bartender set up another round, with Jay’s credit card clasped between his gums. “Jay Stevenson, huh,” he squinted at the card before returning it to the bar in front of Jay. “What’s the other J stand for?”

“Nothing,” said Jay with a wave of his non-drinking hand, mildly annoyed.

“It doesn’t

matter. It’s just me, that’s all.”

“Whatever,” nonchalanted the old goat, the smile returning. “Whoever the hell ya are, your card’s about to expire.” And he walked away, chortling through his nose.

Jay looked at the card. The old man was right. No matter, thought Jay, it can’t rain outside forever. Besides, eventually someone would leave. He could hitch a ride to his car, or somewhere.

He stuffed the card in his pocket, deciding he wasn’t ready to leave yet anyway. A few belts never hurt anybody, the time would pass faster. Did he really want to hoof it through another cold shower so soon? On the other hand…but it would mean motivating, and he wasn’t ready to do that.

“Mullins!”

Brownton threw his arms around a man Jay hoped wasn’t driving. He was either being hugged or kept from falling, Jay wasn’t sure, but apparently Brownton had a partner in crime.

“Ya know, Jay, it’s been a helluva time, no kidding, but ah…” Brownton slapped Mullins across the face and exhaled smoke at him, laughing. “…it’s about time we gots ta go mingle.” He leaned closer to Jay, as if he were about to whisper some deep, dark secret, but, instead, turned the volume up a notch. “Ya see, I’m known as kind of a ladies’ man around here, ya know, but ah… maybe we’ll take a break a little later and let ya buy us a couple a’ brewskis.” He slapped Mullins once more, laughing both with and at him, straightened him up as best he could, and off they went, stumbling over each other in search of debauchery.

As the two breezed by Jay quick-checked his deodorant, which had long ago ceased living up to its name. What the hell, he thought, I’m here, might as well check out the place, as he made his way down the bar, then further into the room, his eyes beginning to water. As he looked out over the other inmates he couldn’t help but wonder what was wrong with their cars, why they had been so sentenced, and why if anyone didn’t absolutely have to be there…surely there was some other place, a nicer place, any place would be better than this. Jay shook his head in dumbfounded amazement as he pushed his way through the lack of control. Each step he took squished and stuck on the filthy, greasy, cracked-tile floor, and he had difficulty deciding whether it was the volume, smell, booze, or general disorderliness that was starting to affect his mind, his pulse, his level-

50

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 headedness. Perhaps a little of each, and maybe a few other things, he determined. The women were starting to look better to him, and he almost felt tempted.

After all, if Brownton was

considered a ladies’ man…maybe this place wouldn’t be so bad after all. And when he didn’t show up for that dedication thing everyone would just figure he got detained somehow. Which was true.

He did. And was. He glanced at his watch, which had obviously stopped. That’s odd, he thought, it’s supposed to be waterproof.

“Outta the way, will ya, let an old broad through, huh?” Jay felt a sharp pinch in his backside, courtesy of, when he wheeled around to look, a woman who didn’t look all that old to him, as he jumped out of her path. The girl, maybe out of high school, Jay guesstimated, was giggling through a front of resigned resolve, dragging along a silly-grinning man roughly by the arm, who was feigning difficulty in keeping up with her.

“Sorry,” Jay offered, always one to be at least slightly taken aback by such aggressive impertinence.

He watched as she led the man to a shadowed staircase on the other side of what appeared to be a seldomly used, recently undusted pool table, singing anti-melodically, “I’m a naughty girl, I’m a naughty girl.” They disappeared up the stairs, accompanied by a chorus of apathetic jeering as Jay turned and, having seen about as much of Julia’s as he cared to, trudged back to his seat.

“That’s a shame,” said the man who had taken Brownton’s stool at the bar next to Jay’s, a man who emitted an essence of a little less grime than the rest of Julia’s. Jay speculated as to his time of arrival.

“Depends on your point of view,” rebutted Jay, maintaining a cautious level of indifference.

“Shame, possibly.” He glanced around. “Could be grace, who knows?” He swallowed a wry smile but couldn’t help noting his debater’s intelligent looking mouth.

“Possibly. More shame than grace, I would think, though,” reasoned the mouth matter-of-factly.

“His shame, her shame, her shame his shame…”

“Okay, okay,” surrendered Jay. “Just trying to be optimistic, I guess.” He idly imagined the odor of singed diplomas amid the malodorous fog, belching loudly.

“Bless you. You’re new here. I’m Brantley.”

Jay shook his hand. “Jay. Jay Stevenson. Say, I gotta ask…I mean, no offense, Brantley, but…I mean, I just don’t get the appeal of this place.”

Jay surveyed the room as Brantley sipped on a beverage, thoughtfully preparing his answer. A fight was sparking near the jukebox, which was doing its best not to sound warped. Brownton and Mullins were orating dirty jokes to a table of women, who were literally draped all over the two funny men

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 and vice versa, all intoxicated with laughter. Another fellow, a small-boned man dressed in a horribly out of style suit, was on his hands and knees in the opposite corner, alone. Jay returned focus to his drink, not wanting to watch.

“I find it…strangely soothing,” Brantley pondered aloud. “Soothing as in just on the other side of a volcano, waiting to erupt.”

He addressed Jay directly. “It’s easy, really. I can’t recall how I

originally found this place…or how it found me, I don’t know, but…everybody’s gotta be somewhere.

It’s sorta…home, I guess, that’s what it’s like.”

The sound of shattering glass controlled Jay’s head, as the fight kindled into a flame. He found it disconcerting that no one, he included, made any effort to douse the blaze of violence, as the two drunken combatants rolled around in the muck, yelping wild profanities at each other. Splotches of blood provided vague respite to the grayness of the room, as the jukebox droned on: I bruise you.

You bruise me.

We both bruise Too easily.

Too easily…

“Jay?” “Yeah.”

“Don’t even look,” said Brantley, lighting a cigarette. He then offered one to Jay, which was gladly accepted. Jay didn’t usually smoke, only to be social or when he was overly anxious or perhaps a combination of both, but he knew he really wanted one of those cancer sticks right away. Brantley lit it for him and continued. “They’ll probably be buying each other drinks later on. No big deal.”

No big deal. No big deal. The words rang dissonance in Jay’s ears. The dedication speech he was supposed to deliver at the college was no big deal. Certainly going back home in the first place was no big deal. Even the rain, despite the fact that it was a pretty good sized pain-in-the-ass at this point, was not really all that big of a deal, except for the fact that it forced him to stay where he was. But this, this open, undisciplined brutality, seemed like the very definition of a big deal to Jay, as he squeegeed his face with his hand, noticing that every drink on the bar was perspiring every bit as badly as he was. What if one of them died? BARROOM FATALITY GOES UNNOTICED, Jay headlined to himself, but couldn’t help considering that a decomposing body might very well be olfactorially indistinguishable in a place like Julia’s.

Maybe Brantley was right, Jay chuckled

involuntarily. Maybe it was no big deal.

“So…what are you doing here, anyway?” asked Brantley, puffing away. “I know you’ve never been 52

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 here before.”

Jay took a long drag off his cigarette. “Well, it’s like this: I found myself faced with a decision--get soused out there or get soused in here. Cruel fate, I guess.”

“Fate? I hardly think so. No such thing,” said Brantley, in his finest scholarly tone. “She’s not such a bad old girl, though, Julia’s. I mean, for a bar.”

Jay nodded his head in acceptance, not wishing to get involved in a discussion over Brantley’s idea of a bad bar. He was starting to feel a bit woozy and belches were surfacing with more frequency and volume. “Excuse me, really,” he pleaded, wondering if such a request was necessary fare at Julia’s. “I was just on my way home. I’m sorta stuck here…” He gestured over one shoulder, then the other. “…somewhere. I can’t believe I ended up here.”

Brantley was blowing smoke rings, watching them interlock with each other, then dissolve into and become a permanent part of the murk. “Exactly where is it you’re headed?” he asked.

“Apparently, I’m here,” sarcasted Jay, flipping an ash onto the floor following a brief, futile search for an ashtray. “I thought I was going home.”

Brantley flashed what Jay determined to be sympathetic smile. “Well,” he sipped slowly, “say hi to mom for me when you get there.”

A cold shiver rattled Jay’s spine as he studied his new friend closely, allowing a steady stream of grayness to escape via his nose.

“Actually,” he stalled, searching for a vanilla comeback, “we had a bit of a falling out, I’m afraid.”

“Ah. Sorry.”

“She thinks I’m an atheist.”

“Are you?”

“She’s dead now.”

“I got a big mouth.”

Jay inhaled deeply, absently reading between the haze swimming across his vision. “I didn’t even know,” he squinted. “I was off…I don’t know…trying to find the mathematical equation for faith, or something. Which is probably what kept her from suffering too much--her faith, I mean. That is, if you wanna believe my dad.”

“Your dad still around?”

Jay lowered his eyes, panning the room. “Dad…” he shook his head, curling an eye-rolling grin, “… hell, I half-expect to bump into him here, in this stinkin’ joint, bombed on his ass, of course, badmouthing the first thing that comes to whatever is left of his mind.” He snorted in loving disgust.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 “Good ol’ pop.”

Brantley echoed with a snort of his own and joined in the perusal of Julia’s. They watched as four plus-sized women kicked and slapped Brownton and his friend over and over again, the two cronies laughing aloud many drunken, obscenitized objections. A small crowd of fans had chosen sides and were cheering on their favorites. Brantley looked over at Jay, who stared on blankly, as they chainsmoked in silence for several minutes.

“Ya know,” started Jay, still trancing, “I remember one time, when I was little…ten, maybe…I tried to kiss this girl in my class on the way home from school. Stephie Johnston, that was her name, Stephie Johnston. Her dad was always our Sunday School teacher, ‘til I stopped going. She was quite the looker at the time. Real healthy type, if ya know what I mean.”

“Sure, I know,” smirked Brantley, swatting at an insect circling between them.

“Anyway, she wouldn’t let me…kiss her, I mean. She rattled off some Bible verse, I forget which one, doesn’t matter. Anyhow, I was pretty devastated, ya know? I mean, I was only ten. I ran all the way home, crying, screaming. I remember running into the house, straight up the stairs, and I saw…I mean, they were…I thought he was gonna kill her, he was really going at it, on top of her and all, ya know? And mom just laid there…I’d never seen her without any clothes on, not like that…just laid there and took it. It didn’t seem right at the time, ya know? And I was already pretty upset, with Stephie and all. Then she looked over and saw me, saw me standing in the doorway. I don’t think he did, he sounded real liquored over…I’m almost sure he didn’t. But I’ll never forget the look in her eyes. It was kind of a…like a take a number kind of look, I guess, that’s what it seemed like. Like she knew I needed her but had to let pop finish up first. Not a mean look, not at all, just sort of…pleasant. Calm.” Jay paused, lost in thought, then addressed Brantley directly. “Well, I just freaked out. Jumped down the stairs three at a time and ran out into the street. Damn near killed myself running into a parked car.” Jay’s cigarette had burned past the filter and he reflexed the remains out into the heart of Julia’s, shoving a couple of grimy, singed fingers into his mouth.

Brantley tried not to laugh, but did.

“Good story,” he spat, doubling over with attempted restraint. “Sorry about the ending.”

Jay was in too much pain to be miffed at Brantley for granting his soul-bearing a comic curtain call.

He licked and soothed his fingers to a dull throb while Brantley sobered himself back to relative composure by burying himself in his drink. Jay followed Brantley’s lead, attempting as masculine of a gloss-over as he could muster by downing his drink on the spot.

He wished he had ordered

something with ice in it, it would’ve made his hand feel better, but noticed that no drink anywhere

54

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 nearby had ice in it, which, after momentarily thinking about it, hardly surprised him, as he wiped himself momentarily dry.

“I don’t know how I got going on that,” he said, slipping out of embarrassment. “That was a long time ago. Hell, I left home a long time ago. And now I’m back. Why, I have no idea.”

Brantley just smiled. The political forum being held two and three seats down was heating up, demanding attention all its own, providing a welcome diversion for Jay. Accusations turned into threats, finger pointing into shoving, substantially increasing the sensually challenging pollution index in the room, the negative energy fitting its surroundings like hand in glove. Jay and Brantley drank in silence for the duration of two cigarettes, doing their best to ignore the nearby chaos, the ever increasing multitudes of malevolence pounding on Jay’s senses, demanding his attention. He signaled for another drink and thought of his now officially defunct vacation plans. Vacation. He loved the sound of the word, what it represented. Vacation. Escape. All he had to do was get out of this little spot he was in, that was all, just as soon as the rain stopped. Or someone left, he hadn’t seen anyone leave yet. Oh, how he wished somebody would leave.

“Mr. Stevenson?”

Jay turned. He also liked the sound of the word attractive, and what it represented.

“J.J. Stevenson? The writer?”

“That’s right,” admitted Jay, trying to look as out of place as he could. “And who might I have the pleasure…”

“I read something you wrote once.”

“Well, I certainly appreciate…”

“I hated it. I didn’t even understand it. Big words. Foreign words, too, I think. I never heard of those words, not around here. Stupid.”

Under the big top again; Jay didn’t even have to look, he could feel it. The young woman looked angry, for some reason, certainly liquored to some extent, but different than the others. He looked at her, her distinctive beauty set against such a backdrop of mayhem and filth. Suddenly it was she that seemed out of place, even more so than Jay felt. But of one thing Jay was certain: she was undoubtedly less than impressed with him.

“Maybe if I could explain…” he appeased.

“I read the papers,” the young woman blurted, starting to build, noting Jay’s drink and general appearance with a disdainful shake of her head and wave of her hand. “You’re not even going to make it, are you? Are you, Mr. Stevenson? No pearls of wisdom from the exalted lips of hot-shot

55

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 prodigal son author at our beloved Hick U. tonight, eh, Mr. Stevenson? Not that anyone around here would be able to understand you anyway. Oh, you’re a real big man, all right. And let me thank you from the bottom of my heart on behalf of all of us local yokels for at least saying you’d make the ultimate sacrifice and grace us with your presence down here at our level.”

“Miss, I don’t see how I could possibly be blamed…”

But the woman was on a serious roll. “You don’t know me, Mr. J.J. Stevenson, but I knew you when you were growing up, before you became too good for us. I actually admired you, looked up to you, you had principles. But somehow those principles got…I don’t know, I…I hope you’ve had a good time these last few years, Mr. Stevenson, a real good time. Do you have any idea what you did to your mother when you left, the way you left?”

“My mother happens to be…” “…leaving her like that, with that bum of a father of yours…”

“Look, miss, we had a difference of opinion. I’m quite sure her nomination for sainthood is being expedited…”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” she wailed. “I hate you for what you did to her. Just forget about all of us, we don’t need you either. If we’re not good enough for you, then…to hell with you, too, Mr. Hot Shot Writer!” And she slapped Jay hard across the face before turning to leave.

Jay’s blood pressure left normal in the dust. “Hey!” he thundered, easily tripling his audience. “I don’t give a damn what you think! I don’t care what anybody around here thinks! I did what I had to do, you don’t have to like it, nobody does! I don’t have to answer to anyone!”

“So typical…”

“Enough!

Listen lady, I’m sick of you.

Hell, I’m sick of me.

I’m sick of this rotten, stinking

dungeon, and it makes me sick that I ever even thought about coming back. I’m just…sick!”

Their eyes exchanged poisoned darts as she stormed away, sweeping drinks off tables with wildly swinging arm-strokes in her wake, muttering, “Damned, uppity…thinks he’s so damned smart…” and such under her breath. Jay sat, fuming, his fingers having once again been singed by yet another ignored cigarette, though, this time, totally oblivious of the fact. Upon finally noticing the faint smell of burnt flesh he decided he wasn’t drunk enough and ordered another double, and another for Brantley as well.

“Spunky lady,” said Brantley, offering a weak smile.

Jay attempted an aura of coolness. “Huh? Oh…uh…yeah, I’ve already forgotten about her,” he tried to convince himself aloud. “Doesn’t bother me at all. Say Brantley, how ‘bout a little toast, eh?

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Just you and me: to Julia, wherever the hell she went. May she torch the damn place just as soon as I get outta here.” He started to raise his glass to his lips, stopping halfway. “Oh, sorry. You too, Brantley, I forgot. Hey Brantley, whad’ya say we fly this coop? I mean, this when in Rome stuff is gettin’ kinda old, ya know what I mean? Rome…ha! Funny, Rome. This sure as hell ain’t anything like Rome. Greece, maybe. Get it, Brantley? Greece?” Jay soloed a sickly chuckle as he and Brantley clinked glasses, Jay spilling a good deal of cognac in his lap, taking no notice. Even if there had been towels, and even if he had noticed, he was well aware that he was far beyond the toweling-off stage of the evening anyway.

“Hey buddy, shoot me a smoke, will ya?” The long-hair in the ripped jean jacket and irreparably sullied jeans ensemble was talking to Jay, but the glaze of his blood-shot eyes was flitting between Jay and something behind the bar, or so it seemed, prompting Jay to turn around and look, more than once. “Hey, I’m talkin’ ta you, pretty boy! Gimme a cig or I’ll break your pretty face!” He grabbed Jay hard by the throat, coughed twice in his face, spewing liquid disgustion everywhere, and drew back a gnarly fist.

“I…don’t…have…any…” eked Jay, attempting breath.

“Don’t you lie ta me, I seen ya!”

“Let him go, Link,” rescued Brantley, none too soon. Jay’s uncomfortably rosy hue had taken a turn into purple and even Julia’s air was a welcome guest to his lungs by the time Brantley intervened.

Brantley tossed a few cigarettes at the man. “I got ‘em, Link, leave him alone. Why don’t you go do something important, like donating your body to science? Like now. God, you’re such a loser, Link.” And he lit a cigarette for him.

Jay rolled off his bar stool, once breathing had become less of an effort, steadying himself on his feet. He’d been sitting too long, he needed to stretch his legs, maybe even “mingle” a little. And, now that he was upright, his bodily functions were beginning to stress their importance.

He

squinted through the murky mist, toward the back of the bar, searching for a men’s room in vain.

“Hey Brantley, I gotta water the ol’ horse.”

Brantley blanked a look at him, Jay questioningly pointing in every possible direction.

“I need to speak with the Lord,” he sarcasted, a little louder. “You know, find a bit of relief?”

Still no response.

“Anybody know where the damn can is?” he blared at no one and everyone; someone had to know.

“You know, the head, the biff, a place to sit down? Revolting smell, mind-expanding literature, possibly a sink or two? Not a towel for miles?”

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Link was loitering nearby and knew the answer first, spastically gesturing toward a barely visible open door in the far back left corner of the room. In anticipatory consideration for his nose, Jay bummed another cigarette from Brantley and was on his way. He blindly reasoned that, at one time, perhaps, the restrooms might have been brand new, recently installed, but had a difficult time imagining such a notion, thoroughly disgusting himself trying to picture what they might be like now. He side-stepped his way through the din, methodically guesstimating the path of least horrible resistance, cursing the acuteness of his senses.

“Who’s that?”

“Never seen him before.”

“Some new guy.”

“Yeah? Big deal.”

“What’d he do?”

“Who cares.”

“He’ll rue the day he set foot in this place.”

“Yeah.”

“I heard he’s some sorta smart guy.”

“Intellectual crankery is better left out of this movement.”

“Such a poor house tonight.”

“Ya know, it started snowing…”

As he knifed his way through the crowd, Jay experienced such an overwhelming feeling of paranoia, such as he had theretofore never felt, those rough little boys glowering right through him. He generally found it difficult--at times, painful--to look at anything anywhere for more than a couple seconds but, in a lapse of weakness and poor judgment, he mistakenly found himself adjusting his focus on, as much as he could tell considering the circumstances, a slightly better than average looking Julia’s female.

“What’re you starin’ at?” she bittered with volume. Jay redirected his attention and kept moving.

“You gotta problem or what?” her voice followed him, a choir of guffaws commencing nearby. “All you guys, that’s all you want, that…smut…ain’t that it? Try to tell me that ain’t why you’re here, all you jerks.” She was literally yelling, as Jay had maneuvered his way considerably past her, trying to look like every other guy in the area. Two men, hardly unable to overhear the raving woman, picked her up and carried her kicking and screaming body from table to table, soliciting any and all brutish assistance they encountered along the way, as others poured drinks of all kinds down her

58

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 throat, until she got sick all over herself and the vicinity. And that’s where she was dropped, in a heap, in a puddle, on the floor, as the guffaws reached fortissimo.

By that time, another ringleader and his entourage had picked up the harangue directed at Jay. “Hey you, big boy.” The man’s voiced was sopping scorn, Jay recognizing incoming idle mockery.

“Hey big boy, you still kiss your mama?” Jay kept moving, rabid groupies closing in around him, taunting him with ridicule. “You don’t?” Laughter. “You do?” Jeering. Jay wanted to haul off and slug the guy right then and there but was outnumbered in the very worst way and, now more than ever, his bladder was ready to spill. He slogged on, his temples throbbing with anger.

By the time Jay got within ten feet of his destination the stale, fishy stench of long standing urine and feces had initiated its assault on his nose, his eyes, and demanded its recognition.

Its

offensiveness was overwhelming, knocking Jay back on his heels, and he slipped into an unsavory half-cough, half-puke routine, keeping it up for the better portion of a minute.

Upon finally

reaching the open door he dodged a none too small rodent, which was exiting, Jay idly deciding that, once and for all, upchuck was definitely one word. Once inside the vast reeking sewer over which entrance Julia had hung a MEN sign Jay found himself in the midst of his worst nightmare.

The litter and sewage on the floor was the floor and the walls were equally and excessively peeling and dripping amid a veritable thesaurus of crudely scrawled, even more crudely conceived messages. There was a man, his mind gone hours prior, slumped over in the far corner, attempting sex with a sink.

Another man was confessing the worst of his sins at the top of his lungs to

something in the last stall, which had no door and in which the toilet had evidently overflowed several times, severely unattended to. Two behemoths, fiftyish, ex-high school offensive linemantypes, now grossly hairy and over-paunched, were anchoring the urinals, suggesting profane parental advice to anyone within earshot. Yet another poor fellow was hunched over in the middle of the entryway, moaning, bleeding from the mouth, the victim of some sort of fall, Jay presumed and, frankly, hoped. The smell of human excrement was stifling and inescapable and Jay woozed his way through the film of sensual disgust, trying not to breathe, pulling up to the last remaining urinal. While there, Jay felt no relief, as he usually did. Even when he was done he felt as if he needed to do more. But no, he was through, there was no question about that. There was no more to be done, and he zipped up his trousers. The only unoccupied sink was oozing a thick, brownish liquid so he wiped his hands on his shirt, which was literally dripping with perspiration. Bathing in one’s own natural juices; this was, undoubtedly, the Julia’s manner in which to cleanse one's self, thought Jay, staring into a cracked, clouded-over mirror, seeing nothing.

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He felt quite ill and

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 needed air.

“Heb…me…pease…” the entryway bleeder pleaded to no one and everyone, as Jay stepped over him on his way out. The man was holding in his hand what appeared to be a large portion of his tongue or lip--it was difficult to tell, exactly--as Jay eluded a small pool of blood in addition to other larger, more offensive puddles in his path. His sub-conscious urge was to scream or vomit or both, but felt certain that a random scream would hardly be acknowledged or even noticed at all above the heedless tumult of Julia’s, and his stomach was far too empty to ensure vomiting as a satisfying alternative. He belched again. And again and again, without scant consideration of excusing himself anymore, the repulsive scent of much-too-quickly-processed cognac wafting back at him, assaulting his own nostrils. Someone had shut the door. He leaned it open, the disgustion simply changing rooms, Jay deciding there was as little relief going out as coming in.

The humidity of the room engulfed him as he absorbed the chaos that was Julia’s, his visibility severely impaired, due, primarily, to the suffocating screen of filth that was everywhere. His worst nightmare, indeed; that was the only way to describe it as Jay stood outside the men’s room door, in disquieted observation of the surreal scene before him, trying in vain to think of one good thing that had happened that day, beginning with his decision to return home.

A full-bearded man

dressed in combat fatigues and holey tennis shoes physically implored Jay to sign a petition for some sort of religious cause. Or possibly it was political, Jay couldn’t understand the drunken man very clearly, nor did he care what he was saying, he was trying his best not to pay attention, he didn’t even want to know.

“Sir, you are an anti-social being!” the man orated as plainly as he was able, following Jay’s equally physical brush-off, then stumbled to the floor, where he sat, stunned, cursing unintelligibly. Jay watched a most unsubtle pick-pocket work the room, alarmingly successful in many cases, albeit sustaining a few minor bruises and abrasions along the way. Absolutely no one seemed the least bit sober, prompting Jay to wonder if he would even be willing to accept a ride if it were offered to him.

One intoxicated non-candidate was randomly bolting between the tables, grandiosely

bellowing how, earlier that day, he had told off his boss, really let him have it, made him look like a total idiot, also explaining why he wasn’t able to buy anybody any more drinks for the rest of the day, and would somebody please buy him one. Then he insisted that everyone he bumped into fire him. Even Jay got into the act when his turn came up; he was just in that kind of mood. Two women had climbed onto the pool table and were kicking and clawing each other, yanking each other’s hair and shrieking wildly in mutual protest. It was the first time Jay had seen the filthy

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 table actually put to use, and the game was a sellout: Pull out her hair!

We don’t care!

We don’t care!

Pull out her hair!

We don’t care!

Pull out her hair!

Pull out her hair!

We don’t care!

Photograph by Alexandra Bouge

The pervasiveness of Julia’s’ villainy had sucked Jay into its web of evil, and he joined in the chant as he filtered his way back to the bar. The alcohol had punched his clock and was now hard at work as well. He absolutely, positively had to get out of there and started asking people when they were planning to leave, the most humane response being delirious laughter. He looked for the exit; he couldn’t even see it, it was so smoggy, and absently considered the possibility that he wasn’t even looking in the right direction. He squinted his eyes, scanning the room for a window to check on the weather. He hadn’t seen one, although he was all but certain that any window at Julia’s, if there was such a thing, surely would be far too fogged-over to see through anyway. It didn’t help Jay’s state of mind when an elderly woman, apparently suffering from some sort of claustrophobic hysteria, started squealing, “Get me outta here! Get me the hell outta here!” to a sneering hoard of apathy of which Jay found himself in the midst. Jay cupped his ears and shut his eyes tight but it was no use, he could still feel it. Julia’s had a way of infiltrating one’s very soul, and he shuddered 61

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 at the thought. He had to stop and think; when all else fails, just stop and concentrate for a moment, it had always worked before. He wondered what time it was, he hadn’t seen a clock, either. He had no idea, no ideas, no ideas at all. No phone, no checks, no towels…it was useless, he couldn’t think. There wasn’t enough air to think. He opened his eyes in time to witness the unemployed man picking a fight with one of the urinal beasts, then both of them. It wasn’t going well for the man Jay had “fired” just moments prior. Brownton was all but having sex with another elderly woman on top of the bar, the bartender craned over them, hands on hips, snickering under his breath. The guy with the silly grin on his face finally returned downstairs with a different, sillier grin on his face, his naughty girl’s jeans ripped at the pockets, her arms flung about his shoulders, stumbling behind him. More jeers. More filth. More Julia’s.

Jay couldn’t take it anymore. No matter what the weather was like he was going to leave, that was all there was to it.

He didn’t care anymore.

He made the conscious decision that he would

absolutely prefer the sousing out there—the lesser of two evils, he was sure.

“Hey Jay.” “What! Oh, Brantley…wow, Brantley. Listen, man, ya gotta help me out, I gotta get outta here.

It’s real important, I think I’m gonna be sick, ya know? My head…I’m kinda fuzzy, my head’s kinda fuzzy and it’s not just the booze, I think. Here, lemme buy ya one, pal. Same thing?...HEY! OLD MAN!” He positioned some grimy fingers in his mouth, whistled as loud as he could, clapping his hands simultaneously.

“HEY, YA OLD GOAT, GET YER LOUSY ASS DOWN HERE!!!…ya gotta know

how’da talk ta these guys. God, it’s boilin’ in here, don’t you think it’s hot in here, Brantley? God, I’m sweatin’ like hell. I knew I shoulda stayed out there, in my car, I mean. I knew it. Damn.

Doesn’t anybody ever leave this place, for chrissake? What is it about this place, Brantley? The damn place is packed. C’mon, Brantley, you’re a smart guy, why’s this God-forsaken joint so damn packed? ...OH!...yeah, hey, mister bartender, sir…two more, here…make mine a triple this time, it’s my last one, and…ah, what the hell, get one for yourself, ya old goat.”

The bartender snorted a laugh that reminded Jay of a Peter Lorre character in an old movie he’d seen when he was a kid, but crueler. Jay fitfully drummed his fingernails on the bar waiting for their drinks, peripherally noticing a flat-out beautiful woman, about his age, with long, wavy blond hair and very nice figure, standing alone, perched over the jukebox, pounding on it with her fists.

He turned to face her directly. She really was beautiful. He realized he was staring at her but found himself not looking away. She was so…too…too something, she was too something for the place. Jay was at a rare loss for words, as he watched her shake the old machine, whining, “Not

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 fair! It’s just not fair!”

Jay felt sorry for her but knew he didn’t have any change. Still, he wanted to do something for her; he didn’t know what she drank. Pondering, he watched a man whose eyes were teeming with lewdness slither up behind her. Jay looked down, he couldn’t watch any more. He didn’t want to see it. The very thought of what might happen to the poor woman next jarred Jay back into the reality of his situation, where he was, how much he hated the place, not to mention his car, the weather…but he couldn’t help himself.

“Who is she, Brantley?” he indicated over his shoulder, knowing full well that Brantley had been staring at her, too, as the bartender delivered their round.

“I don’t know,” was the answer. “Hard to tell.” Brantley looked again. “Looks like…maybe…naw, I don’t know. I thought it was somebody’s sister, but now I don’t know. Does it really matter?”

Jay guzzled about half of his triple and watched as the man crept closer to the woman, his wretched body coiled to attack.

Jay’s heart sank; a potential positive in a day glutted with

negatives, and he was to be just another spectator. The man slapped a soiled hand on her shapely hip and whispered something in her ear, prompting her to instinctively whirl around, bringing her face-to-iniquitous-face with her aggressor. She doesn’t look interested, Jay was guessing, a flicker of hope spiking his own animal urges. She quickly, impulsively flung herself away from the man, violently kicking at the jukebox. Jay stiffened as the man rudely jerked her back around to face him, savagely slapping her face several times. The beautiful woman emitted a shrill gasp and slapped him back, once, very hard, and immediately turned to leave. Jay shot up out of his bar stool but didn’t go anywhere, as the man snatched the woman by the arm with one hand, reaching under his shirt and pants with the other.

“Brantley, that guy’s got a knife!”

“What?”

“Him! That guy! He’s got a knife!”

“No…” “Yes! Look!”

“Can’t be. Must be mistaken. Gotta be the booze. I don’t even know how you can see anything in here…”

“Oh my God! He stabbed her! He just stabbed her, for chrissake!”

“Aw, come on…”

“Brantley!”

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 “I thought you were gonna take off.”

“There, he did it again! Right there, damn it, draggin’ her behind the pool table! Brantley, for God’s sake!”

“Look, Jay, if you’re gonna try to go…”

“Isn’t anybody gonna do something?” “…a guy just came in…”

“What guy?!” “…I guess it’s snowin’ pretty hard…”

Jay blinked hard. Was he the only one who saw it? Why was everybody looking at him? He hadn’t done anything. The woman had been murdered, he watched it happen. Shock. Disbelief.

He shook his head hard, trying to shake out whatever cobwebs had settled there, officially declaring himself drunk.

Guy…what guy? Snow…snow? My God, that’s right, he’d forgotten, somebody

had told him that; who told him that? The cold. It had evidently gotten much colder outside, the rain…no, snow. Snow. Cold. It was hard to imagine, where he was now. The thought of it made him wince, the way he always did whenever the sun came out after a fresh coating of clean, white snow. Jay tried to imagine what Julia’s might look like from the outside on such a day.

“A ray of darkness in the light,” he muttered under his breath.

“What was that?” asked Brantley.

“Huh? Oh…nothing, just…you’re right, I’d better hurry up.”

Brantley raised his glass. “Best of luck.”

The exact second Jay’s glass toasted with Brantley’s the room went completely black. Terrific, power outage, that’s what we need, thought Jay amid the screams and confusion of utter lightlessness. The sound of shattering glassware and flesh colliding with flesh added impetus to the escalating panic as Jay groped for Brantley; Brantley had matches. Somebody had to have some matches, the damn place was filthy with smoke. Brantley was nowhere. Mass hysteria. Jay could hear punches landing through the wailings, he was getting pushed and shoved around, was that a gunshot?

He slumped under his barstool, kneeling in the mire, perspiration streaming off his

forehead, cursing without thought.

Ineluctable modality. Those were the words. Ineluctable modality. Brantley was right. There was no such thing as fate, only this stinking inferno. The volume was deafening. Fire near his feet, somebody’s cigarette…Fire! Foot’s on fire! Pandemonium was company, he raced everywhere and anywhere, colliding with anyone and everyone. Exploding imprisonment. Above the bedlam, Jay

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 was able to single out the distinctively ominous laughter of the bartender, providing a sinister counter-melody to the room’s extreme dissonance. More sparks had begun to flame but it was still far too dark to see anything clearly, Julia’s wearing a giant cloak of hysteria as the mayhem raged on, one abominable bar’s furor the order of the hour. Jay was petrified. He screamed as loud as he could but nothing came out. His body was numb. His mind craved death.

Photograph by Alexandra Bouge “Just lay back.”

“Where am I?” “Shhh.”

“What happened?”

“You passed out.”

“Where am I?” “Upstairs.”

“I don’t know you…”

“Shhh…just lay back. You hit your head pretty hard.”

Jay tried to focus. I can’t be dead, he thought, I can still hear Julia’s. He stared straight up above him. Two lit tapered candles, set on shelves above each side of his head, provided the only light in the room, as an incongruently calm, pleasant looking woman tended to a wound on his forehead amid the flickering dimness, casting a serene reflection onto Jay’s greatly altered and confused mind. His body reeked…or maybe that was her? It didn’t matter. He was upstairs. On a bed.

Upstairs. Heat rises, he remembered. He wondered how long he’d been out. The commotion downstairs raged on.

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 “Does this hurt?”

“Huh?” “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes.” He had a terrible headache.

“Good. Very good.”

“I need to get to my car.”

The woman tenderhearted a smile and whispered, “I’m afraid that…”

“No no, see, you don’t understand. I have got to get to my car.”

He sat up clumsily, nearly falling over. He was still drunk. She helped him sit up straight, dabbing at his forehead with a foul smelling damp rag, Jay not even wanting to know how its dampness had been so achieved. His head hurt. He laid back down.

“I’m so glad you’re feeling better,” breathed the woman, the old goat’s snigger still easily deciphered through the downstairs din. “My prayers have been answered.”

Prayers. Jay studied the woman. Prayer. Julia’s. It was all wrong.

“What did you say?”

“I prayed for you not to die,” she said, inching closer. “I stayed right here, I never left your side.”

The woman leaned over Jay, gently placing her hands on his chest, gazing caringly into his eyes. “I don’t like to see you suffer,” she comforted, methodically unbuttoning his top shirt button. “You needed someone and I was here. Only too happy to help, you can be certain of that.” Another button. And another.

Jay couldn’t move. His brain wasn’t functioning properly. It seemed like he should stop her but his body, his very being, defied him. “What are you doing?” he asked stupidly.

She had his shirt completely open and was massaging and kissing his chest. Her healthy feminine form cast an eerie shadow between the gently rolling waves of candlelight above him, rendering Jay in total darkness. Her hands felt cool on his body, it felt good, and he didn’t dislike the faint scent of damp ashes emanating from her lips.

“I want you to pray with me,” she said, never looking up.

“What…you…”

With gentle deftness, she unhooked the top of Jay’s trousers and slid her hands behind his back, caressing his buttocks. She passionately began to inch her kisses down his torso, the cool touch of her shivery lips sending chills throughout Jay’s body.

“Let’s pray together,” she purred. “You can do that for me, can’t you, Jay?”

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mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 Lust.

Repulsion.

Repulsion.

Lust.

“First we’ll pray and then we’ll…”

Jay felt his insides erupt. He sat up violently.

“No!” he blasted, knocking her sprawling off the bed and onto the floor. “Get away from me! You just stay away from me! That…that’s enough!” He scrambled to the door, flinging it open violently, allowing Julia’s all too familiar sensual implosion into his soul. He bounded down the stairs, three at a time, deep into the heart of Julia’s, where absolutely nothing had changed. Bodies were screaming, bleeding, vomiting, frantically racing in every direction, in an inevitable collision course with anything in their path. More than a few poor souls were down, mucked onto the floor, some moving, some not. The fog of the room was even thicker, smoggier, the stench more vile than ever.

Jay took in a deep breath of the searing, dead air and aimed himself in the general direction of where he thought the exit might be, bulling a path past the jukebox, which seemed to be functioning again, playing the same song as before, Jay recognized, from a record which obviously had sustained a bad scratch while he’d been upstairs: …bruise you, …bruise you, …bruise you, …bruise…

Jay had to fight his way through the bloody war but was severely determined, wrestling and punching his way. “Gotta have air! Gotta have some air!” he wailed before getting manhandled into the edge of the bar, knocking the breath out of him.

“Don’t forget to sign your tab, Mr. Stevenson,” leered the bartender, emitting the most sustained, malicious laugh Jay had ever heard.

“Sign it yourself, ya old goat!” blurted Jay upon regaining his wind, at long last feeling for and reaching the door with one last effortful lunge. His body laid up against the door; it felt good, the tease of the outside chill against the door, then through to his body. He allowed the tiniest of grins to infiltrate his soul, savoring the moment, a moment of satisfaction, of relief, of finality. With great emphasis he pounded on the door once, very hard, then spun around, surveying the exploding destruction that lay before him, as if this was one nightmare he would never want to forget. He dramatically took one large step back into the room, held his arms straight out, fingers spread wide, 67

mgv2_74 | Otherworldly Mammals – Mammifères d'outre-monde| 10_13 and trumpeted the only words that came to his mind: “GENERAL…PARALYSIS…OF THE INSANE!” Satisfied that he had adequately spoken his piece, had actually had the final word and, in some small way, having avenged his horrible imprisonment, Jay reached for the door handle with a bruised and filthy hand.

The door would not budge.

He tried again, again in vain. Over and over he pushed, shoved, shouldered, and pounded, but the door did not move. Exhausted in every way humanly possible, he leaned forward with his arms and hands flat on the door, banging his head against it several times.

“Snowed in, Mr. Stevenson,” laughed the bartender horrifically, ripping up Jay’s tab, ejecting the confetti into the midst of Julia’s with an underhand toss. like you might be our guest for awhile.”

“Do sit down and enjoy yourself, looks

And more malicious laughter, the complete lack of

humanity, already quite successful in sucking Jay into its wretched cocoon of sin, adding fuel to the heightening assault of mockery.

Jay dragged his drained and drunken body a few steps back into the room, collapsing in a sewer of blood and ashes at the end of the bar, sobbing in uncontrollable spasms amid the jeers and catcalls.

“God, please, no more! No more!” he lamented, straining to hear a shout in the street, anybody or anything that could help. But there was nothing, no one, not a soul that had any chance of helping him now. Not even his imagination, his lifeline, his only hope, was able to venture outside Julia’s’ impenetrable walls now, as he lay wallowing in the putridness, hopelessly repeating, “Please, God, no more! No more!”

But he knew there would be more. Much more.

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Biographies Carly Berg is a mammal from Texas, who begs the neighbors for sandwiches. Her stories appear in several dozen magazines and anthologies. She welcomes visitors at her site: http://carlyberg.weebly.com/ Cédric Bernard est natif du Pas-de-Calais, où il s'est échoué sur les rives en 1983. Après des études de Lettres Modernes, il se tourne vers le professorat des écoles, spécialisé à présent dans la difficulté scolaire auprès des adolescents. Ayant joué jeune avec les mots, après une longue pause, il s'en pensait guéri, mais s'est remis à écrire pour s'en débarrasser, un peu, même s'ils ne sont jamais loin. On peut le retrouver sur le blog http://lesmotsdesmarees.blogspot.fr/, ou dans quelques revues, mgversion2>datura, FPDV, Les Tas de mots, Traction-Brabant, le Capital des mots, Poème sale, Vents Alizés.

Megan Boatright is a graduate student in comparative literature at the University of Chicago, working in critical animal studies. She is from the Florida panhandle, possessed of Tourette's and a very important feline roommate. Her non-poetry work has appeared in delirious hem's chick flix series (currently being reincarnated in book form), paper jewelry here, and a talk on cat food commercials here Alexandra Bouge licenciée en Arts Plastiques et Communication à l'Université de la Sorbonne. Elle publie en 2013 La ville de glace aux éditions Mémoire Vivante, des textes et des pochoirs dans la revue Népenthès, poesiemuziketc. Et dans la revue Paysages écrits, et des textes dans les revues 17 Secondes, L'Autobus. En 2012 elle publie quatre ouvrages: Une nuit à Belleville, recueil de poésies, de photographies et de street art, La ville, recueil de poésies, de photographies de travaux plastique et de street art, Alve recueil de poésies et de dessins, et Le Campement, qui est un recueil de nouvelles. Son recueil de textes courts La peau sorti aux éditions mgv2>publishing en 2008 sera réédité fin 2013.

Cecelia Chapman lives in Northern California where she works in film, mixed-media and writing.

Jeff Crouch is an internet artist in Texas.

Richard Godwin is the author of critically acclaimed novels Apostle Rising, Mr. Glamour and One Lost Summer. One Lost Summer is a Noir story of fractured identity and ruined nostalgia. It is a psychological portrait of a man who blackmails his beautiful next door neighbour into playing a deadly game of identity, and is available at all good retailers and online here here. He is also a published poet and a produced playwright.

His stories have been published in over 29 anthologies, among them his anthology of stories, Piquant: Tales Of The Mustard Man. Steve Klepetar teaches literature and creative writing at Saint Cloud State University. His latest collections are Speaking to the Field Mice from Sweatshoppe Publications and Blue Season, a chapbook collaboration with Joseph Lisowski, from mgv2> publishing.

Flora Michèle Marin était biologiste de métier, elle a fui la Roumanie à l'âge de quarante-cinq ans avec sa fille, qui était mineure. Elle a exposé ses oeuvres, ses photographies ainsi que ses travaux plastiques et elle a illustre des textes dans les revues mgversion2>datura, Les Etats Civils, Népenthès, Paysages écrits et dans les ebooks d'Alexandra Bouge, Une nuit à Belleville et La ville. Elle est morte à l'âge de soixante-quatorze ans d'un cancer du poumon. Les personnes qui l'ont connue, même quelques heures, parlent d'elle comme d'une femme exceptionnelle.

A seven-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, Karla Linn Merrifield has had some 400 poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has nine books to her credit, the newest of which are Lithic Scatter and Other Poems (Mercury Heartlink) and Attaining Canopy: Amazon Poems (FootHills Publishing). Forthcoming from Salmon Poetry is Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North. Her Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills) received the 2009 Eiseman Award for Poetry and she recently received the Dr. Sherwin Howard Award for the best poetry published in Weber - The Contemporary West in 2012. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com), a member

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Biographies of the board of directors of TallGrass Writers Guild and Just Poets (Rochester, NY), and a member of the New Mexico State Poetry Society. Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.

Ben Nardolilli currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in many publications inprint and online. He has a chapbook Common Symptoms of an Enduring Chill Explained, from Folded Word Press, and another chapbook from mgv2>publishing: Ben Nardolilli & Friends. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish his first novel.

Norman J. Olson, the artist, writer and poet lives in Maplewood, Minnesota. His images have been reproduced in dozens of art and literary magazines and publications throughout the world. Longing for quiet and stability, Norman avoids personal contacts with the public. His art is driven by the compulsion and obsession of a man who prefers his own company. In spite of this self-imposed seclusion, Norman J. Olson is becoming an artistic underground legend. http://www.normanjolson.com Born in Catanzaro (1962-Italy) where he lives and works, Claudio Parentela is an illustrator, painter, photographer, mail artist, cartoonist, collagist, free lance journalist... more here

http://www.myspace.com/claudioparentela

Caleb Parkin is a poet, performer, educator and workshop-facilitator, with a media background in TV, radio and print production. His work has been in Blank Pages, Helicon, Outburst and recently he is one of 20 writers under 40 featured in the LS13 anthology of new Leeds writers. He has performed at umpteen poetry nights and his poems have been encountered in galleries, cinemas and DVD shops. The comic, gothic, scientific, filmic, tragic, trippy and transcendent interest him. Caleb often writes about animals and machines; he has long-standing preoccupations with cephalopods, bugs and 1970s sci-fi. Kind people have said his writing is ‘clever and different’ and ‘quite exciting’. Caleb's blog is www.skylabstories.net - where he posts new work and information on activities. You can get in touch via email at skylabstories@gmail.com or via Twitter: @skylabstories and @CalebParkin Michael Price received his BA in Theater from the University of Minnesota in 1980 and has been writing both short and long fiction ever since, primarily as a source of self-entertainment. Regularly published in literary journals, he performed his one-man one-act play No Change of Address at the 2011 MN Fringe Festival to considerable critical acclaim. A former photographic body model, Michael still enjoys fitness training, working on crossword puzzles and Sudokus between sets. He lives in St. Paul with his long-time friend and professional photographer, Pamela Veeder.

Walter Ruhlmann works as an English teacher, edits mgversion2>datura and runs mgv2>publishing. Walter is the author of several poetry chapbooks and e-books in French and English and has published poetry, fiction and non-fiction in various printed and electronic publications world wide. Nominated for Pushcart Prize once.

His latest collections are Maore published by Lapwing Publications, Belfast, 2013 and Carmine Carnival published by Lazarus Media, USA, 2013. His blog http://thenightorchid.blogspot.fr/ Tom Samel est né et a passé son enfance dans le Lot et Garonne. Aujourd'hui âgé de 31 ans, il vit depuis quelques mois dans le sud de l'Ardèche. He was born and grew up in Lot et Garonne. Today 31 years old, he lives in the south of Ardèche.

Fulgor Silvi (Frontone PU ITALY) since 1968 is present in the artistic debate, pursuing a busy exhibitions in Italy and abroad. For some time he turns his interest in multimedia artistic concepts by participating in discussions and reviews of Performance, Mail Art, Artist's Books and Visual Poetry.

J. J. Steinfeld is a Canadian fiction writer, poet, and playwright who lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published fourteen books, including Disturbing Identities (Stories, Ekstasis Editions), Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized?

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Biographies (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Would You Hide Me? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), An Affection for Precipices (Poetry, Serengeti Press), Misshapenness (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), and A Glass Shard and Memory (Stories, Recliner Books). His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals internationally, and over forty of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in North America.

Elizabeth Tyrrell is a performance artist/writer. She has performed over 700 times in venues such as the ICA, London and Bluecoates in Liverpool, she was on the board of Directors for the FWWCP & co-ran 2 performance clubs in London now she runs Freeformer in Lancashire. She has been a facilitator for writing & performance workshops, she has been published 5 books of poetry and appeared Poetry Cornwall & Red Ink amongst others.

mgv2_75 | They | 01_14 subjects: unknown photographer: unknown date: unknown place: unknown send you submissions to mgversion2datura@gmail.com between November 1-31

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