Heroine| 4.3 Five Point Palm Exploading Heart Technique

HEROïNE STUDENT MAGAZINE OF LITERARY AND CULTURAL ANALYSIS

Year 4 nr. 3

Five Point Palm Exploding Hear t Technique

colophon Year 4, Volume 3 2017 Editorial Board: Iris Mathilde van der Werff, Besiana Vathi, Laura Pannekoek, Eveline Mineur, Kat Lybanieva, Awethu Kakaza, Nina Huis, Joep Harmsen, Carlota Font Castelló.

Image editor and design: Kat Lybanieva Illustrations: list on p. 51 With special thanks to Fabula Rasa.

Contact and submissions: redactie.heroine@gmail.com facebook: Tijdschrift Heroine twitter: @tijdschrifthero Do you want to subscribe to our magazine?

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Would you like to be part of the creating process of this magazine? Please contact the editorial board. We are also looking for new stories and images for our next issue: Try Religion!

Contents Editorial the editors Disclaimer Iris Mathilde van der Werff Greetings from Miss Hanifa Miss Hanifa Bwogo Bullets Nina Huis A Walk in the Park Joep Harmsen Homergasten the guest: Aylin Kuryel Alternating Fragments on the Dissolusion of an Imagined Intimacy Jack Caulfield A Girl is a Half-formed Thing x Written on the Body Eveline Mineur Black Death Kat Lybanieva Rebirth Besiana Vathi Omschrijf een spiegel Nina Huis Overcoming the Femme Fatale Niall Brown Ferrie the Rabbit Carlota Font Castellรณ The Fire Awethu Kakaza

4 5 6 8 10 12 15 24 25 26 29 32 38 43

Editorial Religions preach love over violence – as do pacifists and parents. But can the one truly exist without the other?

As the driving forces of human kind, often in conflict with each other, love and violence are intrinsically connected.

Nowhere this is as expertly displaced as in volume 2 of Quentin Tarentino’s film Kill Bill. Our brave heroine finally dispatches her foe with the fabled Five point palm exploding heart technique, reaching her goal but also destroying the man she loves in the process. It is a victory tinged with sadness and regret, reflecting the duality of human relationships and the juxtaposition of conceptualized love and its actuality. In its attempt to capture this eternal conflict, the issue Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, has become an issue crammed with passion, throbbing like a vein under pressure – or like a heart about to explode. ~ the editors

•5

Disclaimer: Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique

by Iris Mathilde van der Werff

The theme of this issue: Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, is not only a tongue twister but also a Chinese martial arts technique. Five striking punches on one’s chest executed with fingers in a sharpened position ought to be enough to cause death. Is it really possible to kill someone with this quick pressing-technique; since this twistery term is excersized for killing Bill in Hollywood’s Kill Bill?

First it is needed to dive into where this Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique comes from. In Chinese

acupuncture we see the same mechanism of pressing certain locations of the body in order to release energy. The traditional Chinese medicine relies on the concept of life energy, named chi.This energy flows through the body in paths called meridians. When a disbalance in chi occurs, this can be balanced by putting needles into the body. In acupuncture a needle is pointed, in a place along the meridian.

Acupuncture is a healing practice, but the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart technique is derived from Dim Mak, a defensive practice. Dim Mak literally means press artery or Touch of Death. In this practice the chi of the executor is compiled into physic vibrations that hit specific points on the meridians of the victim. In reality the touch of death consists of only one quick punch. So is it possible to kill someone with a Five (or one) Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique? Well, Bruce Lee suddenly collapsed on the set of Enter

the Dragon; few weeks before someone practiced on him the Touch of Death.

6•

Greetings from Miss Hanifa

Hanifa Bwogo <hanifaghazi@hotmail.com> to: <redactie.heroine@gmail.com> Thu, Mar 16, 2017 at 10:57 PM

book... Would you be so kind to send the email again?

Kind regards, ~ the editors Hanifa Bwogo <hanifaghazi@hotmail.com> to: <redactie.heroine@gmail.com> Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 12:02 AM Dearest loved one,

Did you receive my e-mail? From Facebook.

Redactie Heroïne <redactie.heroine@gmail.com> to: <hanifaghazi@hotmail.com> Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 3:26 PM Dear Hanifa, We have unfortunately not received an email from you! Or a message on Face-

Thanks for your replied mail, with heavy heart and tears I am coming for an aid and investment plan from you. I have a special reason why I decided to contact you. I decided to contact you because of the urgency of my situation here and after reading your profile.

I am Miss Hanifa Bwogo Olieu, a 23 years old girl from South Sudan, East-Central Africa. The only child and only daughter of late Major General

James Bwogo Olieu, a high-ranked South Sudanese military commander allied to president Salva Kiir’s government. President Salva ordered his military to ambush and kill my father along with my mother in the Upper Nile State area of the country.

My late father was a well-known South Sudan Major General. They ambushed and killed him along with my mother on Thursday April 2, 2015.

I am constrained to contact you because of the maltreatment I am receiving from my stepmother. She planned to take away all my late father’s treasury and properties from me since the unexpected death of my beloved father and mother.

Meanwhile I wanted to escape to Europe but she hid away my international passport and other valuable traveling documents.

Luckily she did not discover where I kept my father’s FID file which contains important documents.

So I decided to run out of the country

•7

to the refugee camp where I am presently seeking asylum under the United Nations High Commission for the refugee camp here in Dakar, the capital city of the Republic of Senegal in West Africa. I wish to contact you personally for a longterm business relationship and investment assistance in your country. My father of blessed memory deposited the sum of US$6,800,000 (six million eight hundred thousand dollars) in bank with my name as the next of kin. However, I shall forward you with the necessary documents on confirmation of your acceptance to assist me for the transfer and investment of the fund.

As you will help me in an investment, I would like to complete my studies, as I was in my second year of university, when the unforgettable happened. It’s my intention to compensate you with 30% of the total money for your services and the balance shall be my investment capital.

This is the reason why I decided to contact you. Please, all communications should be through this email address only for confidential purposes. As soon as I receive your positive response showing your interest I will put things into action immediately, in the light of the above.

I shall appreciate an urgent message indicating your ability and willingness to handle this transaction sincerely. You can call me on the phone if you want to speak with me on the phone. I have no phone here, but you can call me with this number: 00221 766 913 299. It is the Reverend Father Phillips Albert’s number here in the camp. Call and tell him you want to speak with me, Hanifa Bwogo Olieu. He will call me because I am staying at the female hostel, awaiting your urgent and positive response. Please do keep this only to yourself please. I beg you not to disclose it until I come over, once the fund has been transferred.

Yours sincerely, Hanifa Bwogo Olieu

8•

Bullets

by Nina Huis

I tried to say something today, but when I remembered that no one hears it straight from my head I stopped my mouth from talking. I ate an apple then.

It was a red apple and I thought of poison but I’m writing this, am I not? So I’m not poisoned. Just sat there listening to others talking, or rather blabbering. The shit people say in a day amazes me lately.

Blabber blabber blabber they go and they just go on with it too. Maybe it is meaningful to them, it probably is. And who am I to judge? I try to tell myself. I know I’m not to judge, I just try not to pay too much attention so I don’t get all judgy.

Yesterday I walked up and down

the canals. I stared at the water and the lights and the moment fit perfectly. Not many moments fit perfectly like that. As if everything was supposed to come together and then it came together just like that, like a god appearing out of the water and walking straight into my arms. If I were a god I would never talk and everyone would still understand me because I would be meaning itself.

Maybe I should become a martyr for all the lovers out there. Crucify me like Jesus and I’ll repent for all love’s sins. My heart got broken the other day. The words that were used crucified me and they were like the nails pierced through Jesus’ hands.

Pierce slash punch they went. I don’t want to have anything to do with words anymore. I just have this one big feeling now and it feels like it will be enough feeling for the rest of my life. So I thought I should become a martyr since I will feel only this from now on. And why not feel it

for all the broken hearted lovers, so they can feel better than I do? And that did make me feel a little better. Like a good Samaritan.

The gun that you pointed to my head is still there. I feel it pointing it is so threatening all the time. Why didn’t you just shoot? Pull the fucking trigger? I’d rather have that then feel this feeling all the time. I don’t think I’ll eat more than that red apple I had. I’m just not hungry.

Food doesn’t really appeal to me now and that’s okay because I can handle that. Not eating.

Maybe the trigger did get pulled.

With each word another bullet and now I have holes in me with the bullets still in.

Maybe I’ll turn into a gun myself, who knows? Not me.

“You are better off, kid,” my dad said.

“There’s plenty of other nice, attractive, young men out there,” my mom said. “To be honest, we thought he was way too

Nina Huis • 9

inconsiderate for you,” my friends said.

All words I don’t want to hear. “But we listened to David Bowie together,” I say.

“We were heroes,” I say.

If I would be a god I would have a temple and I would make you come there every day to worship me like you used to do. Like you did when we just became lovers and our love was ecstasy. When each moment thrilled me and when every word you spoke to me was like cotton candy because your words melted in my mouth. I want to appear out of the water and crawl into your arms and your scent. Why do you torture me like this? I keep wondering.

What did I do wrong?

I don’t want not to be loved by you.

When we fell in love our love was stronger than me and it was stronger than you too, for a while at least. But for me it didn’t change: our strong love became my home and I belong in it. And now you’ve fucked it all up by killing me with your bullet-

words and I hate hate hate you for it, ruining love like this.

I think I’ll be fine in the long run.

I might fall in love again at some point.

For now I’m going to try to eat something and see what happens. My mom says I’m losing too much weight. I just know that love will never be the same. Not like that.

He was my first love, you know.

10 •

A Walk in the Park

by Joep Harmsen

De dokter had gezegd: ‘Vitamine D’, en nu loop ik richting het park met de baby’s. Ik heb zelfs een rok aan. De straten zijn stoffig en ik voel de warme adem van de metroroosters om mijn enkels. Zo gaat het elke lente in Buenos Aires, je denkt: ik heb al zo lang geen zonnige dag meer gezien dat ik vergeten ben hoe die grote gele bal er ook al weer uitzag, en BAM het is 32 graden, de airco staat te loeien en je weet van de hitte niet meer wat je met jezelf aan moet. De baby’s zijn blij dat ze eindelijk de straat uit mogen en benutten deze kans om elke lantaarnpaal en portiek te besnuffelen. Bobo, de oudste, hupt met zijn rechterpoot omhoog langs

de gevels; vandaag wordt het territorium uitgebreid. Als we de straat oversteken en bij het park aankomen begint Pati te keffen van vreugde.

Ja, ja, we zijn eindelijk weer in het park.

Bij de ingang staat een grote, eeuwenoude rubberboom. De takken spreiden zich tot laag bij de grond om de grote opening in zijn holle stam te tonen aan iedereen die voorbijloopt. Ik staar naar de opening, de bovengrondse wortels omkrullen de holte als een gordijn.

In het gras ga ik op mijn hurken zitten en voel de warme, roze tongetjes van de baby’s in mijn gezicht. Ze houden van me.

Ik doe eerst de riem van Pati los. Bobo, de ongeduldige, rent er al vandoor, maar wordt dan, zonder dat hij het verwacht, hard teruggetrokken door de lijn.

Kom hier, sukkeltje. In een draf komt hij teruggerend, parmantig om zijn schaamte te verbergen.

Ze schieten allebei de bottelrozenstruiken in en ik rook een sigaret op een bankje in de schaduw. Generaal José Martín, in het brons, houdt ons in de gaten vanaf zijn sokkel en wijst in de verte, naar de toekomst. Mijn leerlingen waren altijd fan van hem: José Martín, de bevrijder der Latijns-Amerikaanse volkeren. Maar mij interesseert meer het beeld van de jongeman aan zijn voeten: Mars, de god van de oorlog, de lusten en de driften. Hij is naakt, op zijn helm en de nonchalant gedrapeerde lap in zijn schoot na. Zijn gespierde torso blinkt in het zonlicht alsof het nat is van het zweet. Ik wrijf over mijn been en het lijkt alsof ik onder mijn hand het patroon van zijn keiharde buikspieren voel.

Dan zie ik tegenover een jongen en een meisje zitten. Ze is jong: te jong, 14. Te jong om zo weinig kleren aan te hebben; ze draagt een zwart topje en een grijze hotpants van sweatstof. Te jong om al een

Joep Harmsen • 11

piercing in haar neusvleugel te hebben, te jong om te tongen, te jong voor die jongen die een snor heeft en een tatoeage van een adelaar op zijn gespierde onderarm (dezelfde vogel die de beeldhouwer aan de zijde van Mars heeft geplaatst), te jong om zijn vieze poten over alle onbedekte plekken van haar lichaam te voelen, te jong om haar benen over zijn schoot te slaan. Ze halen eindelijk adem. Het zweet druipt over hun voorhoofden en ik zie een druppel in het decolleté van het meisje glijden – voor zulke grote borsten is ze ook te jong. De jongen heeft grote bruine ogen, zijn blik is uitdagend.

‘Wat zit je te kijken, oma?’

Ik schrik, wend mijn hoofd af. Waar zijn mijn baby’s?

‘Zit je ons te begluren? Word je daar geil van, trut?’

Ik trek mijn handen uit mijn schoot.

Ben ik warm?

Ik sta snel op en loop weg, richting de

baby’s die nog steeds aan het spelen zijn in de bosjes. Ik hoor de jongen groteske seksgeluiden maken en dan barsten ze in lachen uit. Hij diep en stotend, zij hoog en hees. Achter een grote struik met oranje vruchten hurk ik. Waar zijn ze? Als ik fluit, komt Bobo aangerend. ‘Bobo!’ Ik heb het warm, ik heb het gevoel dat ik moet pissen. De honden doen het toch ook in de bosjes. Mars kan me vanaf hier toch niet zien en de generaal, die kijkt toch naar de toekomst. Ik trek mijn slipje onder mijn rok vandaan en stap eruit. Terwijl ik pis, kijkt Bobo naar me. Hij zit heel braaf en draait steeds met zijn hoofdje. Ik heb niets om mee af te vegen en ik schud wat met mijn heupen.

Door de struik zie ik dat de jongen en het meisje weer aan het zoenen zijn. Zijn linkerhand grijpt haar bil, via de korte rechterbroekspijp van haar hotpants. Ik schud nog een beetje.

‘Ik heb gelukkig jou hè, Bobo. Kom ‘s

bij vrouwtje.’

Ik blijf zitten op mijn hurken en druk Bobo tegen mijn gezicht, als ik hem loslaat drukt hij zijn kop onder mijn rok. ‘Wat doe jij, stoute Bobo?’

Ik voel zijn warme tong op mijn schaamlippen. ‘Bobo!’

Ik hoor het meisje gillen. Ze is opgesprongen van de bank. De jongen lacht.

12 •

Homergasten

the guest: Aylin Kuryel

In Homergasten we ask a guest contributor about a personal favorite in the realm of literature, theatre, film, TV, or otherwise. In this issue Aylin Kuryel from the Faculty of Humanities discusses a short movie titled “Them” that explores themes of violence and nationalism.

A middle-aged woman, insecure but excited, draws a church on a piece of paper larger than herself. She adds the cross on top of it and looks at the image contently with a few others. This is the opening scene of the Polish artist and curator Arthur Żmijewski’s short film Them (2007). The film consists of several experimental meetings set up by the artist himself, who is known for his provocative works at the intersection of installation art and social experimentation. Żmijewski invited members of four different groups in Poland: elderly Catholic women, members of the All-Polish youth group, a Jewish youth, and left-wing activists all gather in a large space, first to create a visual representation of their ideology and then to intervene in each others’ images.

Viewers are kept in continuous suspense.

How far will the participants go? The short film/video indeed almost becomes a thriller, and in my opinion, remains one of

the most inspiring contemporary explorations of the relationship between images, bodies and ideology, between creation and intrusion, as well as of the interventionist and experimental capacity of artistic practice.

At first, we watch different groups creating their own images, which they think best represent their political stances.

After we see the Catholic women contently admiring their simple and neatly drawn church, comes the All-Polish Youth. It is an organization with a Christian and nationalist agenda whose connections with neo-Nazi groups have been a subject of controversy and whose chairman stated in 2006: “We do not want to become like Holland with its free drugs and gay marriage. Since joining the European Union we have seen attempts to destroy our Catholic values.” They draw a large sword on their canvas, also known as Szczerbiec, a symbol used by right-wing and nation-

Aylin Kuryel • 13

alist groups in Poland. The third group, the Jewish youth, draws the map of Poland and writes Poland in Hebrew inside. The final group consists of left-wing activists, writes “freedom” in different colors on the map of Poland that is drawn in red, motivating their effort as the creation of an image that shows everyone is equal.

These images are all rather expected, made in enthusiastically amateur fashion, each neatly corresponding to the respective ideologies.

The striking part starts after this.

The title Meeting One appears on the screen and the four groups are provided t-shirts with the images we just saw them creating printed on them. Now, members of different groups can be differentiated from each other more easily. The body comes forward as the carrier of images, as what discerns one ideology from another.

The image thus becomes even more alive, being carried around in a corporeal way,

moving and occupying space, having the capability of getting threateningly closer to another body. The artist gives them instructions: “Our game begins here, if you don’t like something about the situation, you can change it, re-edit it, re-write it, destroy it or add something”. The rule is that there are no rules. From the beginning, the video invites us to think of images as both tools of solidarity and instruments of power, having agency in shaping (political) identities, fixing or transforming them, talking on behalf of their creators and “having a life of their own”, as the visual critic W.J.T. Mitchell would say, and are treated as such.

The socialists are the first group to act, at least this is what the editing of the video suggests. They open the doors of the church by cutting the paper and folding it. The Catholic women seem to enjoy this intervention. Then, the socialists and the Jewish youth collaborate in making

a rainbow sign on the All-Polish Youth’s sword, alluding to their homophobic stance. As a response, nationalists replaces the word Poland in Hebrew with the Polish one, explaining their act as giving back the deserved privileges to Poles in Poland, “Poles first”, not “them”. The situation slowly starts escalating. The socialists cut the upper part of the sword, saying that “these totalitarian organizations should actually be banned”. When the socialists realize that all the surfaces are in fact canvases, they draw a circle on the floor with a spray paint, naming it “the rubbish of history”, putting the pieces of the cut sword in it. The nationalist group tries to glue the pieces back together, showing the curious tendency to stick to and restore the images that are once produced, rather than creating new ones. Soon after, they reply by painting over the socialists’ freedom sign in white and write “God, Honor and Fatherland” instead, claiming

14 • Homergasten

that these are the central values of Poland.

The end of the first meeting comes when the socialists write “Pogroms” on a placard and put it right under God, Honor and Fatherland, as another central “value” of Poland, an act that doesn’t destroy the image but makes it “sound”.

During Meeting Two and Three, the situation keeps intensifying. One of the Catholic women leaves the room after asking if a member of the left-wing group is homosexual and getting the following reply: “Mind your own business, are you heterosexual?”. She murmurs she is “just normal” while leaving. The other Catholic women lose their tempers after the activists trample upon a piece of paper with God written on it. Then comes the swastikas drawn on the sword, aborted babies made of paper created, pieces of the church are torn apart to shouts of: “I don’t want to live in great Catholic Poland!”. One cannot help but wonder how things would

turn out if the Polish nationalists, Catholics, Jews and socialists were replaced by others in different contexts.

What makes this battle of images so powerful is the suggestion of intervention as a way of communication. The groups who use diverse techniques to intervene in each other’s images and to restore their own, such as drawing, cutting, removing pieces, piercing, and painting, eventually figure out alternative ways towards the end of the film. One of them paints over the sword image on another’s t-shirt, directly addressing and attacking the body as the carrier of the image and perhaps as turned into the image itself. Another person attempts to cut the other’s t-shirt.

The Jewish youth throw the nationalists’ canvas out of the window, joking “It’s not much of a high-flyer, it had poor slogans!”.

The final moment arrives when the socialists start burning the nationalist canvases.

Now, we have a room full of burning

images and smoke. In a few moments, people have to be evacuated and the experiment ends with the image of the artist trying to extinguish the fire. The scene leaves the viewer with the ironic fact that images do not at all cease to exist when they are destroyed. Żmijewski is the last figure shown in the film, who contemplates a difficult question: was he the one who mapped out and controlled this situation, with the participants playing mostly pre-determined roles, or did the participants themselves shape the experiment?

1

W.J.T Mitchell explores a strategy in the visual realm

based on striking images “with just enough force to make them resonate, but not as much as to smash them”. Therefore, making images sound, means “to make them speak, to divulge their secrets” (“What do pictures want?”, interview with W. J. T. Mitchell

By Asbjørn Grønstad and Øyvind Vågnes, online magazine Image & Narrative, November 2006)

â&#x20AC;˘ 15

Alternating Fragments on the Dissolusion of an Imagined Intimacy

by Jack Caulfield

I Intimacy is drowning.

Love is rarely if ever requited.

Violence is the space between two irreconcilable perspectives.

II The first thing to know about her is that she used to answer phones for the Samaritans, until someone called up and

presented a case so convincing for suicide that she could not reasonably contradict it. After this event, she felt that she could not continue the work without feeling fundamentally dishonest. Now she works in a supermarket, and feels lonely.

III The first thing to know about him is this anecdote, from early in their acquaintance: He sees what he is sure are her bag and coat, the latter draped over a chair, reserving a space. He sits down nearby and begins to read, but his heart is hardly in it. He glances periodically to his right, to the bag and the coat, her remnants

and the promise of her return. This proceeds for a time, maybe half an hour, in which, overwhelmed with a jealous longing for those items, he reads maybe one hundred words.

Eventually he glances over and sees someone approaching the table she has reserved, but it is not her. It is a man: young, attractive enough to make the jealousy rear up in him, become greater. Has this man come to fetch her things for her, to free her to leave? If so, why does she not come herself ?

Does she realise he is here waiting for her, and therefore send one of her men in her place? Her menâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the phrase conjures images, for him, of courtly love, courtly service,

16 • Alternating Fragments on the Dissolusion of an Imagined Intimacy

knights in service of a lady. Absurd.

All this passes through his head before the man, the stranger, sits down and rummages through the bag for a book, which he places on the table and begins to read. It is his bag, his coat. The stranger glances over in time to catch the transition from smouldering jealousy to bemused self-reproach in the face still staring his way. It must make very little sense to him.

IV Her sexual history is informative if not eventful. Several men and a couple of women.

The men were largely meaningless, not because of any innate qualities but because of the economics of the thing, the means of acquisition. Long depressing hours on dating sites, a plain woman without a major deformity is never a hopeless case on these sites. She did not

lack for male attention, there are so many men on these things who first court their ideal woman but later after enough silent rejection become indiscriminate. But the quality of the attention was not of the kind she wanted—slow, awkward, born of desperation not unlike her own and not productive of any great passion. She felt always as if she was only being settled for, not desired, and knew that this was true of her own feelings for them. The sex, if it got that far, was listless, dutiful. To say they had done it. These things ended, before or after the sex, when she or he realised the thing was nothing more than a hopeless flailing in search of intimacy that was not to be found here—a pessimist, she thought: not to be found anywhere for people such as us. Among the men were what she judged, guiltily, to be truly hopeless cases, the kind which kept her own complaints in check, it could be worse.

The unremarkable passages of these

relationships aside, the women were not much better, or were differently bad.

These were only two, but worth describing in greater depth than the men. One for whom she was an awkward experiment, and who was, in fairness, equally an experiment for her, both of them having little experience with, but enduring interest in, women. They met online, tried it out, felt at first strange to be seen together in public on the dates—though a stranger would not know it was a date from looking, there was little enough physicality, and besides would likely not object in this day and age—lacking experience, knew little about what they were doing in the bedroom, suffering periods of confusion and unhappy boredom. This lasted some time before coming, unmourned, to the same ignoble end as the other failures.

The other was experienced with women, passionate, interested, the best sex of her life, yet ultimately disappointed

Jack Caulfield â&#x20AC;˘ 17

in her, in a perceived (correctly perceived) lack of real commitment to the relationship. She was restless, though it was the best time of her life, restless because uncertain, uncertain because inexperienced, or yet unsatisfied with experience.

She was used to settling and being settled for, and could not shake this feeling even when it was irrelevant, destructive. This, the present moment, was perhaps good, but was it only good by comparison with what came before? Slim pickings.

Rotten fruit. And finally, restlessness, a messy breakup. Perhaps the only person who had felt any real passion for her, now the only person to really, bitterly, and justly hate her. From a distance. She sent her things back through a third party.

She is disappointed by the adventure of sexuality, unwilling to embark upon it again.

V His history is meagre, a testament to the quiet despair of being undesirable and little else. He has never fallen in love with someone without them having resented him for it. People close to him emphatically insist that he is to be loved,

but nobody is willing to do the work of loving him. With every new infatuation, he manages to convince himself that it has all been leading to this, that she is the one.

He builds up a cruel, false, perfect image, and then falls victim to its slow crumbling.

VI This is to say that from her perspective, his attachment is surprising and increasingly worrying. They met through mutual friends, became acquainted, and without her noticing or wanting to notice, he became infatuated. Which is to say, she did not. When it came time to confront these messy feelings, she told him no, but now she is coming to believe the rejection did not really sink in, that whatever words she used at the timeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;she has since forgotten, though she thought the sense was quite clearâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; are now being twisted around in his

18 • Alternating Fragments on the Dissolusion of an Imagined Intimacy

skull, examined for loopholes.

He becomes more, not less, possessive. He ‘understands her decision’ but treats it as provisional, subject to change, which, after all, she never explicitly stated it shouldn’t be. Alarmed, she becomes more distant, less responsive in person and in writing, seems, ultimately, to care a little less. Not that she does any of this consciously; it is a defence mechanism as much as anything.

VII He’s just got done crying on the phone thirty seconds earlier when she texts back.

The usual routine, wave after wave crashing in upon him until he can’t hold them off any longer, the barrier crum-

bles and there’s no one to call but the same person he always calls. His confidant we can call M., but M. could just as easily not be there. M. listens patiently and provides helpless platitudes. M. is his Samaritan. It is only important to have some safety valve so he doesn’t pour these feelings into her inbox. To M., he says as much as he can bear to say. Even here he doesn’t name her; he names the loneliness, the jealousy, but not its absent object. M. must get the picture. Head throbbing and throat dry as he runs out of tears, he has only just put the phone down,

feeling empty but cleansed, when it buzzes again and it is her.

Now, to understand how ridiculous this makes him feel, you have to realise that she is entirely what he was crying over.

He is hopelessly in love again, scouring the situation for any possible hint that it is different this time, and finding everything implies the opposite. He senses that she finds him unsettling, repulsive, in his new obsessiveness if not inherently. The whole fiasco of calling up M., though he never mentioned her name, was occasioned by her absence. He has been alone a week, the days bleeding into the nights, malaise creeping into the bones. There are other people he could have seen, has made abortive efforts to see, has felt disappointed when these efforts fell through—but he is aware that anything but her would be a placebo. The phone, unfamiliar with the concept of bathos, buzzes and lights up with her message.

Jack Caulfield • 19

The message says, hey what’s up? yes we should catch up, how about tomorrow? Its casualness, you understand, is a slap in the face. No I’m sorry for taking so long, nor an it’s been terrible this last week. The brutal comic timing, and the feeling that on the other end of the line the entire weight of the thing has been lost, give rise to a bitter sensation in his throat. Thank God, he thinks. And fuck you.

He is also forgetting her face, though there are people he sees less often whose features he remembers better—faces engraved into his memory the owners of which he hasn’t encountered in months or years. It is that immutable law by which the most important thing is always the most distressingly intangible. The most just-barely-out-of-reach, if that quality permits of a superlative. It’s the same law that means he can’t ever get a straight answer, can’t send a message without immediately regretting the phrasing or the

wait for a reply he has let himself in for.

She is very far off. Everything happens in the absences.

VIII She has been in a hole recently, feeling not the violent self-loathing to which he is vulnerable, but a sort of diminishing sloth.

Yet sometimes she wakes manic, springs from bed, the weeds in the overgrown garden seeming suddenly to invite action rather than preclude it, and she decides to do everything she had been putting off at once.

Thus, turning a corner on the way home, with a shopping bag in one hand and her phone in the other, she replies to his text. She is ready to ease back into social life, she does not think about it too much, expects the reply to be as slow coming as her own. Instead, a long reply comes in five minutes, teeming with emotional

subtext she can’t quite read; it is a missive that tries achingly to say as much as it can get away with, without scaring her off. She feels somewhere between bemused and guilty. At any rate, the mania is still there, she is still pretty determined to get her shit together, and she ends her next reply with let’s meet asap and catch up IX He is already bracing himself to feel angry when her unexpected attention undercuts him. The cruel picture of her he has built up in his head shifts back into its heavenly double and leaves him feeling stupid.

X There it is, the sinking feeling of starting a conversation with someone with whom you will never be talking at anything

20 • Alternating Fragments on the Dissolusion of an Imagined Intimacy

but cross-purposes. Anyone would have said they were just friends talking, but there is an air of discomfort about the scene. It’s no better in person than by text; he cannot say anything outright, only chip away at it, such that she is caught between ignoring or addressing it with every reply.

She can feel all that constructive energy fading, does not know exactly how to tell a person that they are a drain on one’s energy, how to break up with someone with whom you are ostensibly just friends.

It turns out to be unnecessary.

XI Once he has put his foot down he immediately feels ridiculous. ‘No, it is not okay!’ So what? Is this an ultimatum? On what grounds? You can’t force someone to want to be around you, or cry when circumstances conspire against you. Yet every time this has happened he has

said, ‘Of course, that’s okay, I understand completely.’ He has always confined himself to rehearsing resentments in the shower. Spitting them in her face feels like taking to the streets with a placard in protest of some great injustice. He needed some outlet for what he has always repressed; this tantrum is it.

So be it: go the whole way.

XII Witnesses present in the small café at the time of the confrontation report that it went something like this: ‘Bitch!’

‘What?’

‘I’m sick of this, I’m sick of you treating me like a dog.’

‘Like a dog? What did--’ ‘I’m not finished. I pour my heart out to you and you just--’ ‘No, I’m not finished. What the fuck

do you think this is? I’m not your girlfriend.’

He deflates.

‘I know, it’s just…’

‘Or your mother.’

‘I know, but can you just…’

‘Can I just what?’

‘Just help me.’

‘You’re aware that you called me a bitch less than a minute ago?’

‘Please.’

A brief silence.

‘How am I supposed to help you, anyway?’

‘I need you.’

‘You need a therapist.’

Here he bangs on the table and shouts, ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘I’m not doing anything. Whatever you think I owe you--’ ‘I don’t think--’ ‘Is in your fucking head. Now I’m leaving. I’ve got enough problems of my

Jack Caulfield • 21

own, I can’t handle yours too.’

‘Wait.’

Reports confirm that she did not wait.

XIII They meet again later that month, after he has sent enough messages begging for the right to apologise, and also, she tells herself, because if she does not give back the book she borrowed from him some time ago it will anchor her to him, give him a way back in.

So she listens to his apologies neutrally; there is not much riding on them. She even verbally accepts them, implies that after time apart they will resume friendship. She says it all automatically, knowing that the acquaintance is over, though he is evidently still in denial. She slides the book over to his side of the table and stares into the dregs of her coffee.

XIV Though he does not speak, he’s confident she can tell he is looking at her and that she finds this upsetting in itself.

XV During a subsequent depression she takes to writing a journal. She writes: Other people have been lonely, but it feels all the same like they had no right to it. Like they were infringing. Like they had their reasons for their brief stay in Solitude—a new city, or a break with the past, or work: trivialities—but you, you have no special reason to stay here. What you have is a permanent residency. You have paid Solitude in advance, you have got in on the ground floor of Solitude, you have She realises this is melodramatic in exactly the way he always was, and crosses it out.

XVI After what he thought of as the break-up, despite knowing logically that the relationship had only ever existed as projection on his part, after he stopped waiting for her to call back, stopped believing those vague promises of reconciliation and started resenting them instead—after all this, he told himself that he had finally banished her ghostly presence from his life.

But now she begins to appear everywhere. Suddenly whole territories of affect are closed off to him, those she inhabited, those that now unmistakably bear her intoxicating mark. Something amusing, innocuous, a certain way she used to have of dancing, a certain facial expression— those elements of her with which he was previously most infatuated. If he notices himself, in unguarded moments, imitating these movements subconsciously, he

22 • Alternating Fragments on the Dissolusion of an Imagined Intimacy

pauses, winces, sits, and a sort of seething regret seeps into the scene, colouring everything, and when it comes he cannot answer the question what’s wrong? for the life of him.

XVII The German word for the sheer prohibitive terror which permanently prevents you reopening those old, embarrassing personal correspondences, in anticipation of the peculiar admixture of nostalgia and shame they would ignite.

XVIII She appears uninvited in dreams, a joyful time spent with an anonymous friend becomes suddenly a reunion with her as he wakes, the vague face of this potential connection shifts subtly, becomes hers again. In waking hours he imagines her reaching out to make amends,

he imagines her excuses for cutting him off—that he was a toxic presence needing to be cut out; that it was an exceptionally difficult time; that he simply slipped her mind—he imagines rejecting these ingratiations in the harshest possible terms, forgetting everything about himself that makes them reasonable and inevitable, wincing only slightly at his own capacity for spite. But mainly he fears the force of her return, its capacity to overwhelm these fantasies as it always did before, its making of him a pushover, a simpering grateful victim, an innate tendency towards relapse.

He fears that she will never return.

He fears that she will return and it will all happen again.

XIX It is easy to get too tangled up in people.

XX Swipe right if u r normal physically, mentally, and emotionally

XXI It’s been a year since they met for the last time, and she has pretty much forgotten him. Life is the same, but she is trying to make it different. She binned the journal yesterday; she is looking for less monotonous work; she is off the antidepressants again, for now; and now she is

Jack Caulfield • 23

‘putting herself out there’.

This is theoretically the easy part, a plain woman without major deformity is never a hopeless case in a bar like this. But something is holding her back, a nagging doubt, a warning against emotional danger. It is easy to get too tangled up in people. She is getting some attention tonight, but whenever things look to be moving in a certain direction with any one man or woman, she yields to instinct and politely excuses herself. Now she is sat on a bar-stool, nursing a drink, trying to figure out what this is, longing for her journal and for sleep.

Someone is approaching; without looking, without knowing the figure’s gender or appearance, she can sense intent in the approach. For a moment she becomes woozily angry at a sort of formless abstraction of all her past relationships, which ends up resembling him, and she imagines throwing her drink in his

face, yelling something, even she does not know what. It is easy to get too tangled up in people. She is drunk.

She quietly repels the advancing figure with a gesture.

XXII Somewhere in a different time zone, it is midday. He is travelling alone, something to make him feel less numb. He is on a boat trip with a bunch of tourists, the sun is beating down, and he has over-exerted himself.

When he gets seasick Julie (who pronounces her name ‘Yulie’) tells him the trick is to focus on the shore, a single reference point amid the churning waves.

She was sick earlier and knows. He tries to follow her advice but it’s no use. The horizon’s smooth rocks hold little appeal as visual anchor in the rolling sea. Unconsciously, as he attempts to focus, he finds

his gaze coming to rest instead, implacably, on Julie—her eyes turning to match his, and her lips curling a subtle smile which could mean something or nothing.

24 •

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing Written on the Body

x

by Eveline Mineur Red hair slipping through the fingers and a shiny, rotten apple craving to be eaten. Winterson’s Written on the Body and McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing tell two very different stories. However, in both books love, lust, and a withering body push and pull on the protagonists. Two summaries will follow, told by the protagonists themselves in their own voice. The summary of Written on the Body shifts to that of A Girl is a Halfformed Thing halfway. Consider the two texts as two sides of a bowtie, sharing the same knot.

I was utterly lost. Lost in the trails of her hair gushing red. I couldn’t find myself in the sheets that lay around us, and even though the linen unnoticeably shaded off into the soft of her skin, Louise was all I knew. How can someone who never belonged to you in the conventional way, have such grip on you? As opposed to other things I later found out about Louise, I knew about her marriage from the start. But love doesn’t read any road signs, or flags waving you into the right harbour. It flows, like blood in the veins and arteries, following the conventional paths until pang! it gushes out. And gush it did. The image of Louise flooded me, and I drowned grateful. I closed my eyes and saw the curve following the small of her back, the skin losing some of its softness where her hamstrings tighten, and how she dug her heels in the sand when it came to her illness. That something inside of her that was making too much Louise.

I could never have enough of you, but then, let me take it all, all that is too much for your body to keep in line, walking the paths of your arteries. Let me take all that

is too much to keep you well and balanced.

Who would have thought that the one thing capable of taking you away from me would be your own body?

Jesus. He’s my – Christ. Brother, how different your ill body rocks itself to sleep, the painful floods from down deep coughing, coughing blood. Body slouched hanging on a cross, bleeding, crying, all the things I don’t cannot. Cancer of the brain, they said. It was, never far away, always on the tip of mommy’s tongue and in the back of my good girl’s head. Until I could no longer stand the home, its smell and be careful for your brother’s head you know. So I fled, didn’t I ? In other woman’s sons and uncles, let them flee in me, for just a fine few minutes, pumping until pang! the ick drooping down but chin rising up you fuck, I’m better. Let them take me if they want, as long as I bathe in cold muddy water, take me.

â&#x20AC;˘ 25

Black Death

by Kat Lybanieva

No one knows what he actually looks like. Nobody has ever seen him outside of his working hours. To tell you the truth, nobody even cares. His presence is usually accompanied by fear, despair and death so it comes as no surprise that people are not too keen on making acquaintances with him. Every sundown his grim silhouette appears at the gates of the village, emptying the street ahead of him. Villagers try to hide away their children inside of their house, before it`s too late. Moving slowly under the weight of his clothes the lonely figure moves towards the main square. The echo from his staff lingers in the air long after he is gone, resonating from deserted cobble stone streets. When he eventually makes a stop, sticky silence covers the village like the darkness of the night. From under

his numerous layers he takes out a thick, old book and fills it with names. The villagers know, that one day every one of them will be in that book, rich and poor, old and young alike. Occasionally, the croaking of a raven on his shoulder is heard. The

raven is seemingly the only live creature around that isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t terrified of him, simply because he doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care. The raven is above human fears, such thing as death does not exist to him.

Upon reaching the square, the figure starts a fire and slowly walks away, while villagers quietly stare out of their windows. Only when the sound of his staff can no longer be heard, the doors of the houses open again. The villagers mourn the ones they lost and pray that they do not share their fate the next nightfall.

They call him Doctor, but he never actually cures anyone. Entering his tiny hut near the river on the outskirts of the village, he takes off his wide-brimmed hat and delicately places it on the mantel, to wear it the next day. Climbing out of his clothes, he unbuttons the heavy mask with a curved, birdlike beak and silently stares at it for a while. When he brushes off herbs and ointments from his face, all that is left from the terrifying figure is a bony, hungry man, stretching his hand with the remainings of his breads towards the raven.

26 •

Rebirth

by Besiana Vathi

Let me be triggered by instinct, and forget the reason I am human, which is to think. When I first saw you, I wanted to devour you. Cling to you all night, but I had to thrust myself to leave and resist the urge to continue to lean against your shoulder, while you talked about reincarnation and the soul. I love your soul.

You made me feel as if there should be no reason to get tangled up in my words. I continued to stutter and I did not want to seem weird in front of you, so I told you about myself, hesitantly, and you immediately jumped to ease my vulnerability.

I am a creepy kind of woman, unfathomable in my dramas and my

desires to escape reality or to delve even deeper into it. I can be any woman you want: a pretty lady to take out for dinner at a French restaurant, a sister or a mother to complain to, a buddy to talk with about politics, your own personal slave under the covers.

I want to fill my heart with something dreamy, with tints of malachite blue. ** The sun’s light extends beyond the wavelength visible to the human eye; it is so strong that the color of the sky morphs itself into a paler blue version of itself every minute as the clock peaks daytime.

We’re having a feverish conversation about how to take this beach from a Death Valley-like sand dune to a land of blue paradise.

Your muscles say that you are not all about ideas and actions and dreams, but

also about something more banal and vulgar and necessary. It’s hard for shimmering skin to lie in sunlight, and we start talking about ourselves.

I ask you if you’re here often. You say that you are. Maybe I was mistaken in taking you for someone who loves to run by a crowded beach instead, whose tan skin aches for the attention of girls and women, and maybe a few boys and men. You say that you love the solitary life this beach gives you, a chance to connect and reconnect with yourself without the distraction of a pretty girl or crying children. But you say that today, you quite like the exception.

The conversation stops for a minute as we gaze out into the open sea and listen to the sound and quiet of the waves beating against the shore.

“What are you doing later?” you say.

“I have no plans,” I say after my thoughts transition from the reality of the

Besiana Vathi • 27

shore to the reality between us.

You take my hand and peak at my back as you lead me to the ends of the beach.

just take you to a forest where some wacko could easily emerge from the weeds and kill us both. **

** We drive through nowhere, with a bagel and cheap wine in the back seat and head towards the darkness. We don’t have to worry about any paperwork or cell phones or gas stations. Our hands are interlocked. As we leave the car I say that we’ll get back to our abandoned car in the morning.

You say you have dreams of helping others. But you keep so much angst inside yourself, looking up at the stars thinking how your father never helped you out and how your mother is your idol.

Parting my lips against yours, you say that you’ve never done something like this before, that you never thought a girl would

There is a Bob Dylan concert tonight that you bought tickets for, but here I am, sleeping on your chest as you watch

the Avengers. In my intervals of sleep and non-sleep I see you ejecting that DVD and inserting another; I can’t really read what it says right now nor do I have the energy to tell you to stop being a moron.

You stroke my hair as you sink back on the cozy sofa.

“You know, you paid a shit ton of money for Bob Dylan; what are you doing here still?”

You’re startled.

“Chill, there’s plenty of time; it’s only seven o’clock!” And yet you don’t stop stroking my hair like you are worshipping Mary. ** Smoke a cigarette with me while I suck on it thinking I’m Kate Moss or Audrey. I’ll lean against a railing and examine the smoke become thin air like a body becomes dust. You’ll think I’m a

28 • Rebirth

pathetic little shit, and at the same time, crave to shred all the overpriced clothes off my body. I’ll blindfold you while you point your finger to any place in the world, and the next day, we’ll spend our never-ending cash in our bank accounts on plane tickets.

I want to wear my highest heels and walk by your side with your hand graced over my waist in a rich neighborhood of the city, of any lavish city. And we’ll actually see Kate Moss and whoever else is in these days stroll by. And then, we’ll get intoxicated by the music and the substances of those really pompous clubs (not like we’re any less pompous).

At the same time, though, we get back to your navy blue 2012 Porsche Cayenne and talk about going from rags to riches.

Even though you love this kind of lifestyle and would never go back, never listen to those idiots complaining about American consumerism, you say you can sympathize with the man playing the flute in the

subway or the woman selling her body in those discreet strip clubs. You sometimes like to give away one hundred dollar bills. ** You asked me to pour that small fraction of what goes on in my thoughts into your mind. Isn’t it strange, how we almost have a sort of communication that is telepathic, that when you know that miniscule portion of what I’m thinking, you can get a feel for the rest, taste it and breathe it like I do?

The thought of not being with you makes me want to lock both you and I up in a small box-like room and make sure neither of us leaves.

But if you don’t want to be with me forever, I’m still perfectly okay, kind of, maybe.

Maybe I would just resort to sleeping on subways because what else could I do,

write a sappy song to try to convince you otherwise? I’d like it, if things were to come to that point, that you’d despise me; that you’d almost want to kill me or choke me.

But then I think that I wouldn’t need to confront death if you were to leave. (I know the thought of our beautiful liaison-creationship together fading or breaking makes the both of us cringe.) Neither of us would need to do anything else to ourselves, other than let the tears stream down our face. Personally, I would be a human waterfall.

I would still be in the other people you’d meet and you’d be able to see my soul in other eyes and hear my voice out of other mouths. My person is not the only manifestation of myself. We are not the only manifestations of each other.

â&#x20AC;˘ 29

Omschrijf een spiegel

by Nina Huis

Ze heeft de spiegel jaren geleden van haar moeder gekregen, van wie hij eerst was. Hij is simpel: goud met een handvat. Er is niks in het gouden frame gegrafeerd, geen woorden en geen kleine details.

Volgens haar is hij tijdloos, alhoewel hij door tijd getekend is geraakt.

Haar moeder heeft haar nooit verteld hoe ze zelf aan de spiegel is gekomen, ze vertelde alleen dat hij van haar was toen ze jong was.

Af en toe als ze op haar kamer zit bestudeert ze de spiegel. Dan glijdt ze teder met haar vingers over het

gladde, koude goud en bekijkt ze van dichtbij de honderden fijne krasjes op het frame. Er zitten ook drie kleine barstjes in de spiegel zelf en ze weet dat kijken in een gebarsten spiegel ongeluk brengt, maar ze heeft besloten dat ze niet meer zal geloven in bijgeloof. Telkens als ze in

die spiegel kijkt ziet ze een verhaal dat niet af is, informatie die mist, ook al is het spiegelbeeld perfect gedetailleerd. De sproetjes op haar neus, het kleine litteken bij haar onderlip. Het gouden frame lijkt bijna een aureool wanneer ze in die spiegel kijkt, alsof het object haar heilig maakt en alle karaktertrekken in haar gezicht niets anders zijn dan hemels. Ik kan over water lopen als ik in die spiegel kijk en ik ga je voeten wassen en je zonden wegnemen. Mama kom dan, laat me je voeten wassen. Hier is zeep en het ruikt naar lelies en lelies staan zo mooi bij je gezicht. Soms zit ze met de spiegel in haar handen op de grond in haar kamer en luistert ze naar Blondie en bestudeert ze de krasjes. Ze heeft de krasjes al zo vaak bestudeerd dat ze er patronen in begint te zien en als ze de spiegel weg legt en even later weer oppakt en opnieuw naar de krasjes kijkt,

30 â&#x20AC;˘ Omschrijf een spiegel

ziet ze de patronen niet meer. Kris kras kris kris kris kras skir skas kras sakr kris mama mama mama kwam laatst de kamer in toen ik met de spiegel zat en toen keek ze naar me en er kwam een mist in haar ogen en toen knipperde ze en toen draaide ze zich om en deed ze de deur dicht. Toen wilde ik een bad vol laten lopen en lelies erin laten drijven en er naar kijken totdat ik duizelig zou worden, omdat op dat moment er niks anders zou bestaan dan lelies in badwater. Het viel haar laatst pas op dat ze een moedervlek op haar kaaklijn heeft. Hij zit aan de linkerkant en ze dacht eerst dat het een vuiltje was. Ze probeerde hem weg te vegen en toen het niet wegging veegde ze harder en kwam er een rode plek op haar kaak. Toen liep ze naar haar kamer en keek ze in de gouden spiegel, de moedervlek zat er nog steeds. Ze ziet ook haar moeders kromme neus. Hij is niet groot en puntig maar meer klein en krom. Er zitten sproetjes op die iets lichter zijn dan de moedervlek op haar kaak. Ze wist niet dat je er moederv-

lekken bij kon krijgen en toen na het harde vegen het vuiltje niet wegging, besloot ze dat ze opnieuw haar moedervlekken moest tellen. Ze heeft er 39. 39 krasjes op haar lichaam en op haar kuit kan ze lijntjes tussen de moedervlekken tekenen en dan lijkt het figuur bijna op een vlieger.

moeder. De foto ligt nu op haar kamer bij de spiegel en af en toe als ze in de spiegel kijkt vindt ze dat ze op haar fotomoeder lijkt. Ze wilde laatst ook een witte jurk en bruine leren schoentjes met hakjes, maar daarna dacht ze aan mistige ogen en toen wilde ze ze niet meer.

Ze heeft laatst een antiek parfum flesje gekocht, met een pompje. Ze heeft er parfum in gedaan en als ze het opdoet dan spuit ze eerst met het pompje een parfumwolk in haar kamer, dan loopt ze er doorheen. Ze oefent haar loopje in haar kamer en ze oefent haar glimlach in de spiegel. Als ik mijn linkermondhoek iets meer optrek dan benadruk ik mijn kaaklijn meer en links is mijn fotohoek. Haar moeder staat niet veel op fotoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. Ze heeft laatst wel op zolder een zwart-wit foto gevonden waarbij haar moeder een witte omslag jurk aan heeft en bruine leren schoentjes met hakjes.

Wat ben je mooi zei ze tegen haar foto-

Vandaag rook het naar zomerregen en gisteren rook het naar gras. In haar kamer ruikt het naar parfum en net gewassen haar. Beneden ruikt het naar eten en koffie. Ze ligt op haar bed met haar ogen dicht en ruikt aan haar handen en aan haar haren. De geuren zijn schoon en lief en ze voelt zich schoon. Ze gaat met haar wijsvinger over haar neus heen en voelt de kromme boog. Dan glijdt de vinger recht over haar lippen en kin, over haar nek en borst. Eerst raakt ze haar rechtertepel aan en dan de linker en ze worden hard. Ze voelen hard en ribbelig.

Dan glijdt de vinger over de zachte huid

Nina Huis â&#x20AC;˘ 31

eromheen en ze voelt hoe warm haar borst is en hoe zacht en lief. Ze kneedt haar borst en dan raakt ze weer met haar wijsvinger haar tepel aan en ze likt met haar tong over haar lippen en dan bijt ze zachtjes. Ze glijdt met haar handen over haar heupen en ze voelt hoe rond ze zijn en glad en haar buik is ook zacht. Meer naar beneden zijn er stoppeltjes en waar haar vinger nu zit is het warmer en natter en het tintelt daar en als ze haar ogen dicht doet en alleen maar daar is begint het meer te tintelen. Ze voelt de pijn van op haar lippen bijten maar het is geile pijn en ze is geil en wil meer getintel. Haar vinger beweegt en haar heupen bewegen zachtjes op en neer en ze kromt haar tenen en duwt haar achterhoofd in het kussen. Ze stopt even met haar vinger bewegen en ze draait met haar vingers over haar tepels en dan gaat ze weer naar beneden met haar hand, terwijl ze met haar andere hand over haar ronde heup glijdt. Ze is zo zacht en schoon

en lief en rond en geil en alles tintelt meer dan maximaal.

Ben ik jou? Ik ben rond, zacht, ik ben een meisje en een jonge vrouw en ik weet wat ik geil vind, ik kan tintelen door mijn eigen handen en zo hard op mijn lippen bijten dat ze bijna bloeden.

Ze is naakt en warm en ze pakt de foto van haar moeder. Ben ik jou? Jij bent koud en mistig en ik ben warm en zomerregen. Als jij een lelie bent, ben ik lavendel en als jouw ogen zo mistig naar me kijken, kijk ik weg.

32 •

Overcoming the Femme Fatale

by Niall Brown

In North West England, dairy farmers used to have an old saying about women. It goes like this: ‘ Wo m e n …

You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them’.

This age old pearl of wisdom gets to the heart of every straight man’s dilemma.

On the one hand,

men love women. They have an insatiable need to please them, as the survival of their genetics depends on it.

On the other hand, it’s exactly this need that men have in order to please women that gives women such power over them. Men themselves rarely have someone who is desperate to do anything to please them. Women however, if they’re lucky, can use their beauty and charm to manipulate men. This is an ability that many may recognise in someone they know.

Traditional second wave feminist scholars like Gloria Steinem maintain that women have been arbitrarily kept out of power throughout history. But ancient societies knew better than they did that women have all kinds of ways of exerting their political will.

I’m talking here about the archetype of the ‘Femme Fatale’.

The femme fatale is a mysterious and

beautiful woman who is able to manipulate men into doing things for her, often leading to their downfall.

This archetype appears independently in the different mythologies and literature of vastly different civilisations.

The Ancient Greeks had many such figures, like the Sirens of The Odyssey, who sing a song so beautiful that sailors out at sea are drawn to it if they hear it, so they inevitably crash on the surrounding rocks and drown.

In Ancient India, the Hindu God Vishnu is able to appear in the form of a beautiful seductive woman called Mohini.

He uses her to trick demons into giving her the elixir of immortality that they had stolen from the Hindu Gods.

The Hebrew Bible itself has several examples of Jewish Princesses who precipitate the downfall of an otherwise noble king.

One strange example is the legend of

Niall Brown • 33

Lilith the Demon Queen. She repeatedly appears in ancient Jewish texts as a demon enchantress and today has become an icon of Occultist and Wiccan groups. During

the Middle Ages, it was thought that she was coupled with the Demon King, Asmodeus, and that together they would populate the world with hordes of demons.

All these mythological succubae serve as a warning against the power of feminine beauty. It’s not just mythological beings either. Throughout history there are examples of femme fatales, from Cleopatra to Marie Antoinette.

The Chinese have a great tradition of evil concubines manipulating the Emperor into doing evil things.

The most famous is Daji of the Shang Dynasty. Her favourite invention was an oiled bronze cylinder suspended over heated coals. People who displeased Daji were ordered to try to walk along the cylinder, where they would invariably fall and be burned alive on the coals, something that greatly amused her.

The existence of the femme fatale in film and literature presented a paradox

to feminists writing in the 1970s. She appeared to be both empowering and degrading to women at the same time. She had autonomy and independence from men because she was able to use them for her own ends. However, she was also the villain in many of these stories and was portrayed as evil.

Writers like Mary Anne Doane and Virginia Allen concluded that what the femme fatale signified was a male fear of a loss of control over women, and therefore it could only be seen as degrading to the cause for female empowerment1.

However, it seems that the existence of such an archetype, recurring again and again throughout history, is evidence of

1

“Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psycho-

analysis - Mary Ann ....” https://books.google.com/ books/about/Femmes_Fatales.html?id=ALcRTt4YktwC. Accessed 28 Apr. 2017.

34 • Overcoming the Femme Fatale

an innate difference between the sexes.

As these writers point out, it’s relevant that the femme fatale is threatening, not because she is female, but because she has chosen to reject the role of motherhood.

Therefore, any man’s attempt to gain her affection can only result in self harm.

Ancient societies told such stories not because they hated women, but because they believed that feminine beauty held a particular kind of power over men.

Evidence for this has been born out in actual scientific research.2 Taiwanese psychologist Wen-Bin Chiou decided to create a study to test if the sight of an attractive face actually inhibited a man’s ability to think clearly.

2

“Sexy women can tempt men down the road of

immorality: Exposure to ....” Accessed April 28, 2017. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S1090513816302884.

For this study, Chiou took 74 heterosexual men.

They were then divided into two groups; the first group were shown pictures of women that had previously been rated as very attractive. The second group were shown pictures that had been rated as unattractive, and they were told to place them in order based on their good looks.

To complete the study, participants had been told they’d receive $4 in payment.

But at the end when they collected the money, they were given an extra 50 cents.

The aim of the study was to see how many men would be honest enough to return the money. It turns out that out of the group who had been shown attractive pictures, only 54% of them returned the money, as opposed to 74% of the group who’d been shown unattractive pictures.

What does this mean? That seeing a beautiful girl will make men do bad things? Wen-Bin Chiou’s theory is that the

sight of attractive features can cause men to lose their self-control. So, when they’re presented with things they want, like free money, it’s harder for them to say no.

If this is the case, how can men hope to resist such charms?

In all kinds of societies throughout history, different codes of conduct were reached to try to reconcile a conflict between the two genders.

A social contract is made where women are given protected and privileged status. They are valued and provided for by the males, and in return they agree to bear the children for the next generation.

The femme fatale is likely seen as immoral because it is precisely a breach of this social contract- a breaking of this code of conduct.

One such code of conduct developed in early Medieval Europe in the 12th Century.

It started in the French noble courts

Niall Brown • 35

and later developed into the subject of many Romance novels.

Today this code is known as ‘chivalry’.

While its depiction in romantic literature may have been mostly fictional, it’s idea has developed over the years into a general social etiquette that is specifically Western. It turned into the idea of gallantry, and behaving like a gentleman.

This attitude in a society is necessary because we know that men are capable of great evil towards women. When communities are gripped by terror and mass hysteria, they tend to project their fears onto the weaker members of the community, who are often female.

The most famous case of this happening are the Witch Trials of early Modern Europe. They continued for decades and up to 60 000 people were executed. It’s estimated that around 85% of those killed were women.

But why is this? From an evolutionary

perspective, it makes very little sense.

Men depend on women for their survival so why would a mass hysteria of this kind result in their persecution?

A deeper analysis of the witch trials may offer an explanation. Historian Lyndal Roper gives many examples, explaining that rather than a conflict between genders, the witch trials were really a conflict among women themselves. She points out that many of the accusers during the trials were also female. And that they tended to accuse midwives who had had contact with their own children. Her explanation is that elderly women’s fears about their health were projected onto others.3

3

“Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque

Germany - Lyndal Roper ....” https://books.google. com/books/about/Witch_Craze.html?id=YoFnNHVnwrgC. Accessed 28 Apr. 2017.

36 • Overcoming the Femme Fatale

Other explanations are that elderly women were targeted because they were the least useful members of the society, being unable to bear children. Another scholar, Barstow, points out that there were also many young women targeted and that this may be because this provided the elderly men of the Clergy with the opportunity to kidnap and rape the accused.4 I want to suggest that both the femme fatale and this kind of persecution, are reflective of the destructive power that resides in men. The fatale is an individual, and she is capable of causing men to destroy themselves, but when a society’s moral codes break

4

Barstow, Anne Llewellyn (1994) Witchcraze: A

New History of the European Witch Hunts San Francisco: Pandora.

down, this same aptitude for destruction can be turned against the gentler sex.

The idea of chivalry was a way of dealing with this destructive tendency

where masculinity is refined and channelled towards protection of the weak and the innocent.

The whole notion of chivalry came under attack by the suffragettes of the 1910s in Britain who viewed the idea as demeaning to women and resulting in their exclusion from positions of power.

What has resulted since then and the sexual revolution of the 1960s is that western societies have traded the idea of gallantry for an ideology that states that men and women are exactly the same and should be treated as such.

The sad thing is that like most of the ambitions of the 1960s baby boomers, they ended up doing the opposite of what they wanted to achieve. Gloria Steinem and others, made their careers by criticising the way that magazines like Playboy overly sexualised girls.

Contraceptives meant that now women could be ‘sexually empowered’

Niall Brown • 37

meaning that they could sleep with whomever they pleased without getting pregnant or facing social stigma. A woman needs a man ‘like a fish needs a bicycle’ in her words.5 In the culture that exists today, young people are encouraged to seek short term sexual pleasure, instead of resisting and searching for long term stability. While girls are more sexualised than at any point in recent history, modern Western societies have become what their ancient predecessors warned against in so many ancient tales – a place where the malevolent qualities of both sexes are able to bring out the worst in each other.

Most men today like the idea of

5

“Gloria Steinem Quotes - BrainyQuote.” https://

www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/gloria_ steinem.html. Accessed 28 Apr. 2017.

behaving like a gentleman. It’s something they often aspire to be, something they admire. This is because they recognise that behaving in a civilised manner is a better way to live, but they often do not do so, usually because they are unable to resist the temptation that this culture offers.

The values of gallantry and gentlemanliness that have for so long been dismissed by a certain generation of feminists, are actually a great alternative to the current mental state that exists in our culture. And they do not have to be in conflict with the ability for women to be empowered and make their own choices as men do. But only if it is recognised that masculine and female qualities exist and will remain present for the foreseeable future.

Like Hegel’s dialectic, a compromise can be reached between the two opposing viewpoints and a better standard can be met.

It may offer a better way for men to resist their own impulses, and thereby resist the impulses of the Femme Fatale.

38 •

Ferrie the Rabbit

by Carlota Font Castelló

‘Once there was a rabbit called Ferrie,’ Jamie said.

‘Ferrie?’

‘Yes, and he had a dream.’

Suddenly, an empty box of chicken wings flew out of a window from the fifth floor and landed next to us.

‘Gross,’ I heard someone say, probably someone from the picnic table.

‘I kinda want chicken wings now,’ I said.

‘Should we go get some?’

‘Yes. But you were telling me about the rabbit’s dream.’

He looked at me and smiled. He was so close I could see his cheeks getting red

from the sun. It was a sunny day, and we were lying on the grass sharing a towel.

Not having the student residence in city center sometimes had its privileges.

‘Ferrie’s dream was to achieve equal rights for all black rabbits,’ he continued.

Jamie could talk like that. He was a history student raised by two moms and people thought that sometimes gave him the right.

‘Only the black ones? What about the brown rabbits?’

‘Those are already one step higher in the ladder, you know?’ he said, moving his hand in the air, pointing at me as if that would help me understand the obvious.

He’s lips were pressed against each other, containing a smile. His raised eyebrow daring me to continue his game.

‘What color was Ferrie?’

‘Yellow.’

‘Yellow?’

‘Yes, but his dream was for the black.’

‘Okay.’

‘His most famous quote is “We shall not discriminate rabbits because we do not discriminate carrots.” Very well known.’

His loose blond curls where moving up and down while he nodded at his own story. I nodded back, pretending it all made sense now.

‘Did he achieve his dreams?’

‘They ate him.’

‘Who― what?’

‘His family ate him for Christmas, because he was yellow,’ Jamie said. ‘They didn’t really like how he tasted though.’

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘How?’ ‘Ah, yes. Well, he died. But the family got a new rabbit, a black rabbit, and this one did not get eaten,’ he sentenced, clapping his hands against his thighs.

‘So, in a way, his dream came true.’

‘Yes.’ I opened my eyes as much as I could and nodded exaggeratedly slowly with my

Carlota Font Castelló • 39

mouth slightly open ―then I laughed.

Jamie narrowed his eyes and threw a wine cork he somehow found near our towel at me.

‘Honestly,’ I said. ‘This grass is disgusting.’

‘Come on, let’s get chicken wings.’ ** Levi came with us to get chicken wings and I told him about Ferrie.

‘Lovely story, Jamie.’

‘Thanks man. She loves stories, so I gotta give her some.’

He smiled and we continued walking.

‘How’s everything?’ I asked Levi.

‘Good. Good.’

With him I never knew. He had dark shadows under his eyes and looked a bit too pale. It was mostly because of his dark hair, but also because he didn’t smile much. He was not handsome in a conven-

tional way, but had interesting cold blue eyes.

‘Tell her about the girl,’ said Jamie.

‘What girl?’

He shrugged.

‘He met a girl the other day and they made out in the smoking room.’

I looked back at Levi, but he was looking ahead of the road. If I was surprised, I was not going to let him notice it.

‘Who is she?’

‘New girl, moved in for the second semester. Pretty hot.’ continued Jamie.

I looked at him now, hoping he would shut up and let his friend explain.

‘So,’ I asked, ‘do you like her?’

‘She’s okay. She’s texting me now,’ he said.

‘Levi, I’m telling you. You can get this one,’ Jamie said, a bit overexcited.

‘Can I see her picture?’

He nodded and passed me his phone.

She was blonde, straight hair, light blue eyes a bit too separate, round face. Jamie was right, she was pretty.

‘She’s cute!’

I gave the phone back when we got to the mall. Levi and I sat down at a table near the window while Jamie ordered. I stared at the people walking in the street, not knowing what to tell him now that we were alone.

‘How come you like stories?’ he said suddenly.

I was not sure what to answer.

‘Since I was little my parents told me stories, bought me amazing books.’

‘Because she’s a nerd,’ I heard Jamie say in my back.

Smiling, he sat down next to me and gave me a quick kiss. I smiled back. To everybody, Jamie was someone different than to me. I knew him now; I knew he was the biggest nerd.

‘Back to topic,’ he said looking at

40 • Ferrie the Rabbit

Levi. ‘What are you texting your girl?’

‘Nothing anymore.’

‘She will think you’re boring if you don’t,’ Jamie threatened.

‘Why don’t you tell her about Ferrie?’

I suggested. ‘She will laugh.’ ** That Monday, when I came back from university, I found an envelope without sender between my mail. Inside, there was a story printed on low quality paper. I was reading the end when someone knocked on my door.

‘Hi,’ said Levi when I opened.

‘Hi.’ ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I– er’ He had never come to me before. He was Jamie’s friend, not mine. I knew then that the story was his.

‘I came before, but you were not here.

I wanted to give you something, so I left it

with your mail,’ he said.

‘I was just finishing the story.’

‘Oh, okay. Finish it then.’

I let him in, and he sat on my chair.

He looked at me in silence while I read.

‘Do you like it?’

I nodded.

‘The other day you said you liked stories.’

‘I do.’

Not sure if I was supposed to say something else, I looked back at the papers in my hands. It was a story about a shy boy who stares at a girl everyday in the subway, but doesn’t dare speak to her. She has a boyfriend, a very cool but stupid basketball player, and never looks back at him. They finally meet in a concert one evening, from a band no one seems to like but them, and it turns out she does recognize him from the metro.

‘Did you write it?’ I asked.

He nodded.

‘I’ve been writing since I was thirteen,’ he added.

‘Cool.’

‘I just never share it.’

I could hear his breathing. This thought came strange to my mind. It was not in a sexual way that I was thinking about his breathing ―I believe he had a cold― but it made me realize how close he was. He had moved from the chair to my bed, and was sitting next to me.

‘I need to tell you something,’ he said.

He waited for an answer, but I said nothing.

‘I’m in love with you.’

The words resonated in my head.

‘I know you’re with Jamie, and I know I’m not… you know. But somehow I feel like we’re the same. I think you can see it yourself that we have much more in common,’ he continued.

Suddenly I felt like I was in a teenage, high school set, TV show with a really bad

Carlota Font Castelló • 41

soundtrack. As if it were in slow motion, I saw him leaning towards me.

‘Don’t.’

I stood up.

‘I don’t love you.’

Silence filled the room, but not my head. I realized that I had never told Jamie, or anybody before him, that I loved them. Not in the way Levi meant it.

‘I think you should go.’ ** Not even a week later, when the doors of the elevator opened, Levi was there.

‘Hey.’ ‘Hi.’ ‘This is Hayley,’ he said.

I realized then that there was a blonde girl next to him. I recognized her from the profile picture: the smoking room girl. She was as tall as him, very beautiful indeed.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hi.’ ‘Are you going to the bar?’ Levi asked.

‘Aha.’ We spent the elevator ride in silence.

Downstairs, Jamie was waiting for me like we had agreed.

‘Come here you,’ he said, and hugged me.

Then he noticed Levi.

‘Hey man, long time.’

He introduced Hayley again and then we all went to the bar. It was not crowded for a Friday evening and one of the pool tables was free for us to play in obvious couple teams.

‘Is there a bathroom here?’ Hayley asked after our second beer.

‘Yes, I’ll go with you,’ I said.

‘Thanks.’

Like most bar bathrooms, it smelled terrible. The mirror was full of water splashes, and the hand-dryer didn’t work.

‘Welcome to student life.’

‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Can you see my bra through my shirt?’

I laughed.

‘I don’t want to give away too much,’ she said, going a bit red.

‘You like him?’

‘I think so. He’s fun.’

‘You can’t see anything,’ I stated after she made a turn.

It was hard for me to imagine Levi as anything else than that shy boy from his story now. I kept picturing him leaving my room, and it made me angry.

‘He told me this really funny story about a rabbit the other day– ’ ‘Ferrie the Rabbit?’

‘Yes! Has he also told it to you too?’

‘Yeah,’ I had to lie.

When we went back to the bar, Jamie and Levi were talking. I looked closely at Jamie and I was sure he didn’t know about

42 • Ferrie the Rabbit

anything that his friend had done the other day. I was not sure if I should tell him.

‘Can we go upstairs?’ I asked him when the others weren’t listening.

‘Something wrong?’

I shook my head “no”, and it was true.

‘Okay, let’s go.’

Under the blankets in his room, I didn’t care if I had to tell him or not. I moved closer so I could put my arms around his neck and lay cheek on cheek.

He was warm, and soft. I knew what I was going to say before anything else.

• 43

The Fire

by Awethu Kakaza

A column of flame shot out into the night sky. Long streaks flickered upwards as if they were trying to reach for something above. The entire house was engulfed in flames, a huge mass of violent red that somehow didn’t spread, bound somehow to what used to be the edges of the house. Consume, consume, consume.

Destroy, destroy, destroy. If a flame had a mind, that’s what she imagined it would think. A singular clear purpose. The heat from the flames surrounded her, in front of her, behind her, over her under her. Even though she was a good distance away from the house she could still feel it, uncomfortable dry heat that threatened to singe

her. The fiery column had still contained itself but everything around it could feel it’s presence. She stood by her car door staring, barely blinking. The intense heat stung at her eyes but she couldn’t look away. How could she? This blazing carnage was the culmination of all her life’s work. All she’d strived for, the effort and sacrifice was ending right in front of her in a bright hue of orange and yellow.

“Miss,” the word sharply cut into her mind as a man laid down a cup of tea on the table. It was one of those cheap styrofoam cups with a tea bag floating near the top.

“They didn’t have any sugar so I put in some honey. I hope that’s alright.” he said.

“Misses,” she replied.

“What?” He asked.

“You said miss. It’s Misses Chapel.”

“Oh, my apologies, I’m Detective Presley.” He said.

“Like Elvis?” she cut back.

“Yep, and before you say anything I’ve heard all the jokes before,” he said with a sigh as he sat down on the plastic chair opposite her.

“No, I wouldn’t think to....”

He interjected, “relax, that was a joke” he said with a light smile “So Mrs. Chapel, there are a some gaps here that I’m going to need you to fill in,” he said.

“Of-of course, detective,” she replied with a shiver.

“Are you cold? We could get you a blanket or something. I’m sure there’s ones laying around here somewhere,” he said as he turned backwards in search of what he had just promised.

“No, don’t worry. I’m fine with just the tea,” she said as she pulled the cup closer.

She wasn’t a small woman but slender. There was a meekness to her

44 • The Fire

but something else as well. A heat, not a warmth but a heat. Almost like she’d burn to the touch.

“So you’re married then?” he asked.

“What was that?” she replied snapping out of sort of dreamy state.

“You said Misses Chapel. I’m assuming there’s a Mr. Chapel,” he said.

“We could call your husband to pick you up after all of this.”

“No, that won’t be necessary. He’s out of the country on business. He left about three days ago,” she replied.

“Then we can contact someone else.

Family perhaps? Friends?”

“I don’t really have either. Well, none here. Joseph wanted to move here. It was better for his career.”

“There must be someone we can contact. A sibling perha...” The detective was cut off by a knocking at the door.

His eyes dragged towards it and then he whipped his head back towards her.

“I’ll be right back,” he said as he pulled himself up from the chair.

“The tea”.

“What?” she replied.

“You should drink the tea before it gets cold.”

Her eyes looked down at the small cup she was holding with both hands, the tea bag floating on top of what was now a dark Opaque mass of liquid.

“Oh, of course,” she said bringing the cup to her mouth.

The detective stepped out into the hallway. Phones rang in the distance, the sound of copy machines and people running around filled the building. It was a loud place but he’d learned how to quiet it down to focus on his tasks.

“What a mess,” a voice exclaimed.

“Yeah,” he replied “You get anything out of her?”

“Not really, I don’t know. There’s something different about her.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like she’s not really here,” he let out a sigh.

“You know she did it right?”

“Yeah,” he lightly grumbled.

“Just tell me about the bodies.”

“Well you’re going to love this. So basically it’s a complete cluster fuck. The fire torched the whole place, took the firefighters 5 hours to stop it. It’s a goddamn miracle that thing didn’t spread. We’ve got next to nothing to link her to it, except he fact we found her just standing there,” the man said as he flipped through the pages he was holding.

“The bodies were almost unrecognizable but we did get lucky though. You know those new chip things?”

“Chip things?”

“You know the new bank cards.”

“Yeah, but there’s no way a bank card could survive that,” he replied.

“No, but the chip could,” the man

Awethu Kakaza • 45

said as he handed him a page.

“Apparently the card melted against his thigh, they’re still not sure how exactly but the chip got pushed into this guy’s leg.”

“Jesus.”

“They got it out. Still worked.”

“Let me guess, the husband?”

“One Joseph Alexander Chapel, 42 year old doctor. Married obviously.

Moved here about 20 years ago.”

His eyes moved towards the door of the room he just left. “And the other body?”

“The lab’s working on it, we barely got dental on it but they’re backed up.”

“They’re always backed up,” he quipped.

“Poor bastards are overworked, it’s going to take a while till we can ID it, but it shouldn’t be too long.”

“Right,” he replied sarcastically with a slight roll of his eyes.

“Get me an ID on that second body,”

he said as he turned to grab the handle of the door.

“This is a pretty straightforward one Pres, we won’t need to ID that body.

Guy cheats on wife, she finds him with the mistress and kills em bot,.” the man replied.

“Just get it done,” he shot back as he pushed the door open.

He walked back into the room closing the door behind him. He noticed the temperature in the room. A vent on the wall blew cool air that made everything cold. The chair, the table, the walls, all except her. He could feel the heat coming off of her. It wafted off her in waves towards him.

“So Mrs. Chapel, could you tell me what you were doing at there. Near the house,” he said as he sat back down. She stared back down at the cup.

“I was driving.”

“Driving?”

“I went for a drive,” she replied.

“Any particular reason you ended up there?”

“It’s my... our home.”

“You lived there?”

“No, it was our summer home. Joseph and I had it built once we got here.”

“Summer home, so you’re there a lot.”

“No.” “Really? A summer home that you don’t use?”

“Joseph’s work became too busy. We never had time anymore.”

“What about your work? You didn’t get any busier?”

“I don’t work... I had a job, well an internship.”

“Doing what?”

“Stock analyst. I was recruited right out of university before I met Joseph. A lot of people think it’s uninteresting but I loved it. There was, I don’t know, an

46 • The Fire

excitement that came with it, ” she paused for a second, “but I stopped after we got married and moved here.”

“And you never picked it up again when you got here?” he asked.

“It’s harder finding those kind of jobs here, also Joseph wanted me at home. We were going to start a family so somebody had to be there full time.”

“That’s a lot to give up,” he said.

“We were building something, Detective. Sometimes you have to destroy something to create something new.” Her head drifted towards one of the corners in the room.

“Mrs. Chapel, before tonight when was the last time you were there?”

“I think three years ago, maybe four.

I’m not sure.”

“And tonight you just felt like driving up?”

“Are you married detective?” she asked, the question caught him off guard.

He’s eyebrow peaked for a second and then rested back down.

“Yes I am.”

“How long?” she asked as she pulled the tea bag around the circumference of the cup.

He let out a long sigh, “going on 30 years now.”

“And you love her?”

“I’d have to.” ”Have to?” she asked as she perked her head up.

“At this point at least. I mean after so long if I didn’t at first, I must now. Otherwise I reckon I would have left a long time ago.”

“Is it that simple?”

“Is what simple?”

“Love. If you love someone you stay and if not you go?”

“Shouldn’t it be that simple?”

“You know detective, when I was watching that fire burn down my home I

realised something.”

He sat up in his chair, slightly leaning in towards her.

“As everything burned down, I realised that Love is exactly like a fire. It consumes.”

“What exactly are you trying to say Mrs. Chapel?”

“Exactly what I said Detective. Love consumes a person, it burns away at you.”

He narrowed his gaze upon her face while slowly leaning in towards her.

“It just isn’t fair... how... how does it become like this,” her voice trembled.

“Mrs. Chapel, we can sort all of this out. I just need you to explain to me what...” She erupted, grasping the cup of tea and threw it against the wall with a scream. He immediately backed off slouching into his chair.

“I had to do what he did to me. He burned away everything I was, everything I could have been. He made me in

Awethu Kakaza • 47

his image. For twenty years, that’s what he did. That’s what’s necessary. For love Detective.” She grit her teeth and stayed silent for a minute. “...Billy,” she said lightly. Tears began to stream down her face.

“Mrs. Chapel?”

“Billy!” she cried out.

The room somehow felt hotter as she began to sob. She sat there crying and just kept repeating it.

“Billy!, Billy!, Billy!”

His phone buzzed in his pocket breaking his focus on the broken woman sitting before him. He held in a breathe and then stood up.

“It’s been a long night for you Mrs. Chapel. I need to check on something in the meantime but I’ll be back.” He stepped out of the room slowly reaching for his phone. As he made his way to an old desk his phone screen flashed with some data promotion for the weekend.

He pocketed the phone and sat down by his desk which at this point was covered in files on the Chapel house fire. Before a second could pass the man from before walked up to his desk.

“I put in a rush order for that ID.” “It doesn’t really matter anymore,” he said in a tired breath, cupping his chin in his palm.

“She did it. Knowing the name of his secretary or some waitress won’t help.”

“You sure Pres? The boys down in the lab did rush this one out for you.”

“Do you smell that?” he asked.

“Smell what?”

“Nevermind, it’s not important. Just leave it on my desk, I’ll file it down in my report later.”

“Ok, if you insist but I have to admit I was kinda looking forward to telling you the tale of Billy Arnold.”

“Wait, what? Why did you say that name?”

“The dental records on the second body came up for a Billy Arnold.”

“Who the hell is Billy Arnold?”

“Billy Arnold, son of Sarah and Michael Arnold, and also brother to Mary Chapel.”

“He’s her brother?”

“I did some light investigating into it. Flights, buses, hotels, gifts. There’s a whole paper trail connecting the husband with this guy,” he flipped more pages “Billy moves out west and seems like Joseph follows him here with the wife. It’s been going on for years.”

“We’ve also got toll booth photos near the house. Seems like that was their favourite meeting spot. Wouldn’t be surprised if he built it just so they could have somewhere to meet.”

A familiar smell had been lightly biting at his nostrils as he sat there listening intently. Before it was so faint that he could easily ignore it, push it to the

48 • The Fire

back of his mind and focus on the information he was being presented with, but now it was stronger. It could no longer be pushed aside and with every inhalation the question jabbed into his train of thought, what is that smell? He half pondered this while still listening to his colleague go on, his eyes occasionally drifting to his desk, surveying the landscape of folders and dirty coffee mugs in search of the source of the smell. Suddenly the sound of an alarm bell came screaming into the room, his eyes perked up and he jolted from his chair as the sprinklers on the ceiling began to wash the room in water. As he came back to the interrogation room he saw the source of the fire. Bright orange flames engulfed the room, tearing it apart while also forming a barrier. “What? How?” his mind was erratic, thoughts ending before they could begin while the flames continued to grow. A voice cut through the chaos of the flames, it was her. It was

difficult to hear but he could make out it, Billy. She still sat there calling out for him. The fire only seemed to consume the room faster with each passing second as he searched the corridor for something, anything that could be useful. Finally he took off his coat, draping it over himself as he prepared to ram what was left of the door into the interrogation room. With some hesitation he watched the bright orange flames amassed in front of him before a sharp scream cut into his head.

As he pulled back to run he felt two arms grabbing at his shoulders. Before he could even process what was going on he felt his body pulled backwards. Struggling was the first instinct but he quickly came to understand what was going on. When he felt a stream of cool air crash into his skin followed by the banging of loud voices and sirens he knew he was outside.

Two fireman had pushed him out of the police station and guided him towards an

ambulance. As his coughing subsided he could begin to see the scale of the task at hand. Two fire trucks were placed on the left side of the building, squarely fixed on an opening where the flames had come pouring out.

After what felt like hours the fire had finally subsided. The crowd had all but disappeared leaving a handful of cops and two crews of firefighters to deal with the aftermath. Presley slowly made his way to the charred opening on the left side of the police station. As he stood there starting into the blackened chasm that was once the interrogation room a firefighter came jogging up to him.

“You really gotta get out of here.

Were still doing clean up over here,” the man said.

“It didn’t go anywhere,” he replied.

“What?” the fireman asked.

“The fire, it didn’t go anywhere. The rest of the station seems fine.”

Awethu Kakaza • 49

“Somehow it was contained to this area. You guys must have got lucky. Fire this big, burning that fast? Should’ve taken the whole place down.”

“And where are you guys taking the injured?”

“Injured? Just about everyone managed to evacuate once the alarm went off. You’re the only person we pulled out.”

His eyes shot wide open.

“What? There was a woman,” he pointed at the burnt room, “ in there, she was trapped in there.”

“We had a dig crew go over the whole room when we were looking for the source.

There was nothi… ” “She was in there,” he cut in.

The fireman’s face dropped a bit as he looked at him.

“Maybe she got out, I can ask the rest of the guys if they’ve seen her. Where she could have been sent.”

He recognised the tinge rings of pity

woven into the firefighters voice. Whatever sense of comfort he was supposed to receive from those words didn’t come.

He slowly walked towards the gaping hole where the door used to be. The room was ripped apart and you could enter from just about any angle but old habits are hard to break. As his eyes surveyed the room, his mind went over everything that occurred here. As the fireman watched from a few meters back, he walked throughout the wreckage of burnt wood and ash only stopping when his foot clipped an unnatural object. He bent down and dusted off a crumpled clump of plastic. He’s eyes shot wide open when he noticed the dirty blackened string of tea bag hang it out of what he realised had been the cup of tea.

“How bad was this fire?” he shouted back at the fireman.

“Worst one I’ve ever seen,” the fireman shouted back.

“Could anything have survived this?”

“Nope, you could feel the best from three blocks away. Nothing could withstand that kind of heat.”

He stayed crouched, holding the cup in his hand staring at the tea bag string hanging out of it.

50 â&#x20AC;˘

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illustrations

• 51

Albert Planas: cover Kat Lybanieva: p. 2, p. 4, p. 7, p. 25, p. 27, p. 42 Nina Huis: p. 9 Zep de Bruyn: p. 12 Iris Mathilde van der Werff: p. 15, p. 17, p.

18, p. 22 Eveline Mineur: p. 24 Nina de Jong: p.29 Niall Brown: p. 32, p. 33, p. 35, p. 36 Ties Wijker: p. 51 Layout by Kat Lybanieva and Zep de Bruyn Tired of nothingness? Longing for a world in which men walk on water, shameless idolatry is allowed and the Book is truly respected? Drastic times call for drastic measures: for the next issue of Heroïne let’s Try Religion. Go spread across the world, collect stories and find yourselves again beneath that mirage of scholars, theories and analyses. Come back revived, spiritually whole, and contribute to Heroïne’s next issue Try Religion by sending your submission (text or image) to: redactie.heroine@gmail. com

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