Luis Mateo Díez: El pozo

Mi hermano Alberto cayó al pozo cuando tenía cinco años. Fue una de esas tragedias familiares que sólo alivian el tiempo y la circunstancia de la familia numerosa. Veinte años después, mi hermano Eloy sacaba agua un día de aquel pozo al que nadie jamás había vuelto a asomarse. En el caldero descubrió una pequeña botella con un papel en su interior. Éste es un mundo como otro cualquiera, decía el mensaje.

Roberto Bolaño: El retorno

Tengo una buena y mala noticia. La buena es que existe la vida (o algo parecido) después de la vida. La mala es que Jean-Claude Villeneuve es necrófilo.

Me sobrevino la muerte en una discoteca de París a las cuatro de la mañana. Mi médico me lo había advertido pero hay cosas que son superiores a la razón. Erróneamente creí (algo de lo que aún ahora me arrepiento) que el baile y la bebida no constituían la más peligrosa de mis pasiones. Además, mi rutina de cuadro medio en FRACSA contribuía a que cada noche buscara en los locales de moda de París aquello que no se encontraba en mi trabajo ni en lo que la gente llama vida interior: el calor de una cierta desmesura.Pero prefiero no hablar o hablar lo menos posible de eso. Me había divorciado hacía poco y tenía treintaicuatro años cuando acaeció mi deceso. Yo apenas me di cuenta de nada. De repente un pinchazo en el corazón y el rostro de Cecile Lamballe, la mujer de mis sueños, que permanecía impertérrito, y la pista de baile que daba vueltas de forma por demás violenta absorbiendo a los bailarines y a las sombras, y luego un breve instante de oscuridad.

Después de todo siguió tal como lo explican en algunas películas y sobre este punto me gustaría decir algunas palabras.

En vida no fui una persona inteligente ni brillante. Sigo sin serlo (aunque he mejorado mucho). Cuando digo inteligente en realidad quiero decir reflexivo. Pero tengo un cierto empuje y un cierto gusto. Es decir, no soy un patán. Objetivamente hablando, siempre he estado lejos de ser un patán. Estudié empresariales, es cierto, pero eso no me impidió leer de vez en cuando una buena novela, ir de vez en cuando al teatro, y frecuentar con más asiduidad que el común de la gente las salas cinematográficas. Algunas películas las vi por obligación, empujado por mi ex esposa. El resto las vi por vocación de cinéfilo.

Como tantas otras personas yo también fui a ver Ghost, no sé si la recuerdan, un éxito en taquilla, aquella con Demi Moore y Whoopy Goldberg, esa a donde a Patrick Swayze lo matan y el cuerpo queda tirado en una calle de Manhattan, tal vez un callejón, en fin, una calle sucia, mientras el espíritu de Patrick Swayze se separa de su cuerpo, en un alarde de efectos especiales (sobre todo para la época), y contempla estupefacto su cadáver. Bueno, pues a mi (efectos especiales aparte) me pareció una estupidez. Una solución fácil, digna del cine americano, superficial y nada creíble

Valerio Evangelisti: Eymerich contro Palahniuk

L'intervista a Chuck Palahniuk apparsa nel numero di novembre di Tutto Musica era corredata da questo breve racconto. In esso, la creazione più nota di Valerio Evangelisti, l'inquisitore Nicolas Eymerich, sottopone a interrogatorio uno dei personaggi del romanzo di Palahniuk Ninna Nanna, la strega Mona. Purtroppo, molti riferimenti risulteranno oscuri a chi non abbia letto il romanzo.

L’inquisitore generale Nicolas Eymerich guardò con disprezzo la donna legata sul sedile triangolare destinato agli imputati. Scarmigliata, aveva sulla testa riccioli neri parzialmente tinti di rosso. Dal collo le pendevano sul petto, quasi scoperto, collanine, ciondoli e altro ciarpame. Sotto una scapola le si scorgeva il tatuaggio di tre stelline nere. Il dettaglio più disgustoso erano però i piedi, coperti di un lerciume antico e infilati in un paio di zoccoli.

Eymerich si rivolse al notaio, seduto accanto a padre Corona sotto il pesante crocifisso che costituiva l’unico arredo della sala. «Signor Berjavel, leggetemi l’atto d’accusa.»

L’ometto raccolse un foglio e incominciò: «L’anno 1367, avanti a noi, frate Nicolas Eymerich, inquisitore dell’errore eretico nel regno di Aragona, è comparsa la sedicente Mona Sabbat, nota anche come “Gelso”, nata in terra ignota da genitori ignoti, la quale…»

«Saltate le premesse. Venite al dunque» ordinò Eymerich, innervosito.

«Come volete, magister.» Berjavel prese un secondo foglio e continuò: «…le attività e l’esistenza stessa di detta Mona Sabbat sono dovute alla scoperta di un grimorio di forma e rilegatura inconsuete. Sulla prima pagina è indicato il nome dell’autore, tale Chuck Pahlaniuk. Subito sotto, il presumibile titolo del libro di magia, Ninna nanna, sovrasta il disegno di un uccello morto.»

«Saltate ancora.»

Il notaio passò a un terzo foglio. «E’ scritto nel libro che detta Mona Sabbat, con la complicità di tale Ostrica, si sarebbe dedicata a operazioni di magia. Che nella propria abitazione avrebbe officiato ignuda, con adepti ignudi, riti appartenenti a un culto presumibilmente derivato dai Celti e chiamato Wicca. Che avrebbe ignobilmente tentato, fino al funesto successo finale, di impadronirsi del testo di una cantilena capace di uccidere a distanza, sia per perfezionare le proprie arti diaboliche, sia per impadronirsi del mondo…»

Anthony Boucher: They Bite

There was no path, only the almost vertical ascent. Crumbled rock for a few yards, with the roots of sage finding their scanty life in the dry soil. Then jagged outcroppings of crude crags, sometimes with accidental footholds, sometimes with overhanging and untrustworthy branches of greasewood, sometimes with no aid to climbing but the leverage of your muscles and the ingenuity of your balance.

The sage was as drably green as the rock was drably brown. The only color was the occasional rosy spikes of a barrel cactus.

Hugh Tallant swung himself up onto the last pinnacle. It had a deliberate, shaped look about it—a petrified fortress of Lilliputians, a Gibraltar of pygmies. Tallant perched on its battlements and unslung his field glasses.

The desert valley spread below him. The tiny cluster of buildings that was Oasis, the exiguous cluster of palms that gave name to the town and shelter to his own tent and to the shack he was building, the dead-ended highway leading straightforwardly to nothing, the oiled roads diagramming the vacant blocks of an optimistic subdivision.

Tallant saw none of these. His glasses were fixed beyond the oasis and the town of Oasis on the dry lake. The gliders were clear and vivid to him, and the uniformed men busy with them were as sharply and minutely visible as a nest of ants under glass. The training school was more than usually active. One glider in particular, strange to Tallant, seemed the focus of attention. Men would come and examine it and glance back at the older models in comparison.

Only the corner of Tallant's left eye was not preoccupied with the new glider. In that corner something moved, something little and thin and brown as the earth. Too large for a rabbit, much too small for a man. It darted across that corner of vision, and Tallant found gliders oddly hard to concentrate on.

He set down the bifocals and deliberately looked about him. His pinnacle surveyed the narrow, flat area of the crest. Nothing stirred. Nothing stood out against the sage and rock but one barrel of rosy spikes. He took up the glasses again and resumed his observations. When he was done, he methodically entered the results in the little black notebook.

Cristina Fernández Cubas: El ángulo del horror

Ahora, cuando golpeaba la puerta por tercera vez, miraba por el ojo de la cerradura sin alcanzar a ver, o paseaba enfurruñada por la azotea, Julia se daba cuenta de que debía haber actuado días atrás, desde el mismo momento en que descubrió que su hermano le ocultaba un secreto, antes de que la familia tomara cartas en el asunto y estableciera un cerco de interrogatorios y amonestaciones. Porque Carlos seguía ahí. Encerrado con llave en una habitación oscura, fingiendo hallarse ligeramente indispuesto, abandonando la soledad de la buhardilla tan sólo para comer, siempre a disgusto, oculto tras unas opacas gafas de sol, refugiándose en un silencio exasperante e insólito. «Está enamorado», había dicho su madre. Pero Julia sabía que su extraña actitud nada tenía que ver con los avatares del amor o del desengaño. Por eso había decidido montar guardia en el último piso, junto a la puerta del dormitorio, escrutando a través de la cerradura el menor indicio de movimiento, aguardando a que el calor de la estación le obligara a abrir la ventana que asomaba a la azotea. Una ventana larga y estrecha por la que ella entraría de un salto, como un gato perseguido, la sombra de cualquiera de las sábanas secándose al sol, una aparición tan rápida e inesperada que Carlos, vencido por la sorpresa, no tendría más remedio que hablar, que preguntar por lo menos: «¿Quién te ha dado permiso para irrumpir de esta forma?» O bien: «¡Lárgate! ¿No ves que estoy ocupado?» Y ella vería. Vería al fin en qué consistían las misteriosas ocupaciones de su hermano, comprendería su extrema palidez y se apresuraría a ofrecerle su ayuda. Pero llevaba más de dos horas de estricta vigilancia y empezaba a sentirse ridicula y humillada. Abandonó su posición de espía junto a la puerta, salió a la azotea y volvió a contar, como tantas veces a lo largo de la tarde, el número de baldosas defectuosas y resquebrajadas, las pinzas de plástico y las de madera, los pasos exactos que la separaban de la ventana larga y estrecha. Golpeó con los nudillos el cristal y se oyó decir a sí misma con voz fatigada: «Soy Julia.» En realidad tendría que haber dicho: «Sigo siendo yo, Julia.» Pero, ¡qué podía importar ya! Esta vez, sin embargo, aguzó el oído. Le pareció percibir un lejano gemido, el chasquido de los muelles oxidados de la cama, unos pasos arrastrados, un sonido metálico, de nuevo un chasquido y un nítido e inesperado: «Entra. Está abierto.» Y Julia, en aquel instante, sintió un estremecimiento muy parecido al extraño temblor que recorrió su cuerpo días atrás, cuando comprendió, de pronto, que a su hermano le ocurría algo.

Hacía ya un par de semanas que Carlos había regresado de su primer viaje de estudios. El día dos de septiembre, la fecha que ella había coloreado de rojo en su calendario de su cuarto y que ahora le parecía cada vez más lejana e imposible. Lo recordaba al pie de la escalerilla del jumbo de la British Airways, agitando uno de sus brazos, y se veía a sí misma, admirada de que a los dieciocho años se pudiera crecer aún, saltando con entusiasmo en la terraza del aeropuerto, devolviéndole besos y saludos, abriéndose camino a empujones para darle la bienvenida en el vestíbulo. Carlos había regresado. Un poco más delgado, bastante más alto y ostensiblemente pálido. Pero Julia le encontró más guapo aún que a su partida y no prestó atención a los comentarios de su madre acerca de la deficiente alimentación de los ingleses o las excelencias incomparables del clima mediterráneo. Tampoco, al subir al coche, cuando su hermano se mostró encantado ante la perspectiva de disfrutar unas cuantas semanas en la casa de la playa y su padre le asaeteó a inocentes preguntas sobre las rubias jovencitas de Brighton, Julia rió las ocurrencias de la familia. Se hallaba demasiado emocionada y su cabeza bullía de planes y proyectos. Al día siguiente, cuando sus padres dejaran de preguntar y avasallar, ella y Carlos se contarían en secreto las incidencias del verano, en el tejado, como siempre, con los pies oscilantes en el extremo del alero, como cuando eran pequeños y Carlos le enseñaba a dibujar y ella le mostraba su colección de cromos. Al llegar al jardín, Marta les salió al encuentro dando saltos y Julia se admiró por segunda vez de lo mucho que había crecido su hermano. «A los dieciocho años», pensó. «¡Qué absurdo!» Pero no pronunció palabra.

Miguel Puente: Caries

La consulta resulta anodina, como cualquier otra consulta. En la sala de espera, sillas de plástico blanco, una mesita con revistas desactualizadas de coches, prensa rosa y deportes de alto standing. Las paredes de un tono pastel a medio camino entre el caqui y el amarillo. El suelo enmoquetado, algo inusual, con un tejido sintético que imita terciopelo, de un tono magenta sucio, sembrado de manchas oscuras aquí y allá, y que, para colmo, no pega con nada. Sobre la pared norte, justo encima de las sillas, la Noche estrellada de Van Gogh pretende dar un toque de color a la sala. Lo consigue a medias. Cualquiera con unas mínimas nociones de decoración se daría cuenta del desbarajuste de colores que supone mezclar magenta y caqui con diferentes tonos de azules. Lo extraño es que no resulta excesivamente inadecuado o doloroso a la vista.

Un único paciente espera cómodamente sentado en una de las sillas, con las piernas cruzadas y una revista de golf sobre las rodillas. Tendrá unos veinticuatro años. De pelo negro petróleo y corte clásico. Pasa las páginas con desgana, deteniéndose úni­camente para ojear las fotografías. De su cuello pende una cruz de plata sin ningún adorno. Un elaborado tatuaje cubre casi

por entero su brazo izquierdo. De la muñeca al antebrazo se suceden motivos de zarzas y espinas. En el codo mismo, una tela de araña al más puro estilo carcelario. Ya casi en el hombro, un brazalete que parece maorí se conjuga con el resto, fusionán­dose de un modo sutil y equilibrado. Viste unos pantalones de pana verde oscura algo caídos, de estilo hip-hop, una camiseta negra en la que puede leerse en letras blancas sobre placa roja Stop when flashing, y unos converse marrones de forro naranja chillón. No lleva calcetines.

La puerta de la consulta se abre sin hacer ruido. El médico se asoma disimuladamente para comprobar que todavía le queda un paciente por atender. Roza la cincuentena y viste unos panta­lones grises y una camisa a cuadros, de línea fina, blanca y azul turquesa. La inevitable bata blanca le cubre casi por completo.

—¿Fernando de Barriga Puig? —pregunta, por si las moscas.

—El mismo, hijo —le responde el joven, lacónico.

El médico, que se llamaba Pedro, odia ese trato invertido, como si el crío fuese él, con sus cuarenta y nueve tacos recién cumplidos, cuando el otro parece un mocoso que todavía no ha alcanzado el cuarto de siglo. Suspira, resignado.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Colour Out of Space

West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs.

The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. It must be this which keeps the foreigners away, for old Ammi Pierce has never told them of anything he recalls from the strange days. Ammi, whose head has been a little queer for years, is the only one who still remains, or who ever talks of the strange days; and he dares to do this because his house is so near the open fields and the travelled roads around Arkham.

There was once a road over the hills and through the valleys, that ran straight where the blasted heath is now; but people ceased to use it and a new road was laid curving far toward the south. Traces of the old one can still be found amidst the weeds of a returning wilderness, and some of them will doubtless linger even when half the hollows are flooded for the new reservoir. Then the dark woods will be cut down and the blasted heath will slumber far below blue waters whose surface will mirror the sky and ripple in the sun. And the secrets of the strange days will be one with the deep's secrets; one with the hidden lore of old ocean, and all the mystery of primal earth.

When I went into the hills and vales to survey for the new reservoir they told me the place was evil. They told me this in Arkham, and because that is a very old town full of witch legends I thought the evil must he something which grandams had whispered to children through centuries. The name "blasted heath" seemed to me very odd and theatrical, and I wondered how it had come into the folklore of a Puritan people. Then I saw that dark westward tangle of glens and slopes for myself, end ceased to wonder at anything beside its own elder mystery. It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked always there. The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too big for any healthy New England wood. There was too much silence in the dim alleys between them, and the floor was too soft with the dank moss and mattings of infinite years of decay.

Juana Manuela Gorriti: Yerbas y alfileres

-Doctor ¿cree usted en maleficios? -dije un día a mi antiguo amigo el esclarecido profesor Passaman. Gustábame preguntarle, porque de sus respuestas surgía siempre una enseñanza, o un relato interesante.

-¿Que si creo en maleficios? -respondió-. En los de origen diabólico, no: en los de un orden natural, sí.

-Y sin que el diablo tenga en ellos parte, ¿no podrían ser la obra de un poder sobrenatural?

-La naturaleza es un destello del poder divino; y como tal, encierra en su seno misterios que confunden la ignorancia del hombre, cuyo orgullo lo lleva a buscar soluciones en quiméricos desvaríos.

-¿Y qué habría usted dicho si viera, como yo, a una mujer, después de tres meses de postración en el lecho de un hospital, escupir arañas y huesos de sapo?

-Digo que los tenía ocultos en la boca.

-¡Ah! ¡ah! ¡ah! ¿Y aquellos a quienes martirizan en su imagen?

-¡Pamplinas! Ese martirio es una de tantas enfermedades que afligen a la humanidad, casualmente contemporánea de alguna enemistad, de algún odio; y he ahí que la superstición la achaca a su siniestra influencia.

He sido testigo y actor en una historia que es necesario referirte para desvanecer en ti esas absurdas creencias... Pero, ¡bah! tú las amas, son la golosina de tu espíritu, y te obstinas en conservarlas. Es inútil.

¡Oh! ¡no, querido doctor, refiera usted, por Dios, esa historia! ¿Quién sabe? ¡Tal vez me convierta!

-No lo creo -dijo él, y continuó.

Hallábame hace años, en la Paz, esa rica y populosa ciudad que conoces.

Habíame precedido allí, más que la fama de médico, la de magnetizador.

Multitud de pueblo vagaba noche y día en torno a mi morada. Todos anhelaban contemplar, sino probar los efectos de ese poder misterioso, del que solo habían oído hablar, y que preocupábalos ánimos con un sentimiento, mezcla de curiosidad y terror.

Silvina Ocampo: El retrato mal hecho

A los chicos les debía de gustar sentarse sobre las amplias faldas de Eponina porque tenía vestidos como sillones de brazos redondos. Pero Eponina, encerrada en las aguas negras de su vestido de moiré, era lejana y misteriosa; una mitad del rostro se le había borrado pero conservaba movimientos sobrios de estatua en miniatura. Raras veces los chicos se le habían sentado sobre las faldas, por culpa de la desaparición de las rodillas y de los brazos que con frecuencia involuntaria dejaba caer.

Detestaba los chicos, había detestado a sus hijos uno por uno a medida que iban naciendo, como ladrones de su adolescencia que nadie lleva presos, a no ser los brazos que los hacen dormir. Los brazos de Ana, la sirvienta, eran como cunas para sus hijos traviesos.

La vida era un larguísimo cansancio de descansar demasiado; la vida era muchas señoras que conversan sin oírse en las salas de las casas donde de tarde en tarde se espera una fiesta como un alivio. Y así, a fuerza de vivir en postura de retrato mal hecho, la impaciencia de Eponina se volvió paciente y comprimida, e idéntica a las rosas de papel que crecen debajo de los fanales.

La mucama la distraía con sus cantos por la mañana, cuando arreglaba los dormitorios. Ana tenía los ojos estirados y dormidos sobre un cuerpo muy despierto, y mantenía una inmovilidad extática de rueditas dentro de su actividad. Era incansablemente la primera que se levantaba y la última que se acostaba. Era ella quien repartía por toda la casa los desayunos y la ropa limpia, la que distribuía las compotas, la que hacía y deshacía las camas, la que servía la mesa.

Fue el 5 de abril de 1890, a la hora del almuerzo; los chicos jugaban en el fondo del jardín; Eponina leía en La Moda Elegante: "Se borda esta tira sobre pana de color bronce obscuro" o bien: "Traje de visita para señora joven, vestido verde mirto", o bien: "punto de cadeneta, punto de espiga, punto anudado, punto lanzado y pasado". Los chicos gritaban en el fondo del jardín. Eponina seguía leyendo: "Las hojas se hacen con seda color de aceituna" o bien: "los enrejados son de color de rosa y azules", o bien: "la flor grande es de color encarnado", o bien: "las venas y los tallos color albaricoque".

Ana no llegaba para servir la mesa; toda la familia, compuesta de tías, maridos, primas en abundancia, la buscaba por todos los rincones de la casa. No quedaba más que el altillo por explorar. Eponina dejó el periódico sobre la mesa, no sabía lo que quería decir albaricoque: "Las venas y los tallos color albaricoque". Subió al altillo y empujó la puerta hasta que cayó el mueble que la atrancaba. Un vuelo de murciélagos ciegos envolvía el techo roto. Entre un amontonamiento de sillas desvencijadas y palanganas viejas, Ana estaba con la cintura suelta de náufraga, sentada sobre el baúl; su delantal, siempre limpio, ahora estaba manchado de sangre. Eponina le tomó la mano, la levantó. Ana, indicando el baúl, contestó al silencio: "Lo he matado".

David Riley: Out of Corruption

So this, I thought on that fine September day less than one year ago, as I drove my car round a bend in the lane and drew up before a pair of wrought-iron gates, is where he lives. Despite the brilliance of the sunshine I could not help feeling somewhat disappointed. For the drab grey building visible beyond seemed to personify for me all that had struck me as wrong about the town I had left only two miles away, before passing through the tree-lined meadows and farms along the lane. The uncurtained windows of the house, however, the leaf-strewn pathway rank with mould and long, bare streaks of clay, all these gave off such an air of desolation that I felt instantly depressed. It was certainly not a place which I would have chosen to visit at any time of the day of my own free will, and certainly not at dusk, when the shadows lengthening all about the estate seemed to intensify its ugliness. Why Poole had decided to buy such a place I could not imagine, and I roundly cursed myself for having so readily agreed to come down here to visit him over the week-end. I only hoped, as I stepped out of my car, that the inside of the house would prove to be of a more hospitable appearance than its. facade.

Its blank, almost senile-looking windows stared down at me as I neared the door and rapped upon it. Soon, though, I found myself ushered deep inside the old house in Poole's redecorated study - a book lined room full of polished wood, paintings and leather armchairs, with a coal fire roaring in an elaborately carved hearth full of ebony cupids and flowers. Poole - tall, thin, with the concealed strength of a mountaineer - was in the best of spirits. My own, in contrast, though relieved to a degree by the signs of redecoration, were overcome by a newer and less easily explainable feeling of abhorrence. There was a certain, indefinable quality about the house which I strongly disliked, and I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that, however much Poole might enthuse about it, this initial feeling of mine would not be changed. The more I saw of the house, in fact, as Poole showed me around it, the stronger this abhorrence grew.

Upstairs it was almost derelict, with large, grey, vacuous rooms that echoed their emptiness through fibrous veils of cobwebs and dust. Looking at them I could well imagine this place as:

A house without a living room For dead it was, and called a tomb!

"I don't intend using them much," Poole explained, interrupting my thoughts, "except, perhaps, as store rooms, though I might have two or three done up for guests."

Presently we returned downstairs to the hallway where, at Poole's insistence, we turned off into an arched alcove, within which stood a sturdy wooden door that led to the cellar steps. Lighting a paraffin lamp from a shelf beside it, he unlocked the door and led me down the damp-slicked steps beyond into a tactile darkness that took us into its frigid depths like the waters of a Stygian well.

Clive Barker: The Midnight Meat Train

LEON KAUFMAN WAS no longer new to the city. The Palace of Delights, he’d always called it, in the days of his innocence. But that was when he’d lived in Atlanta, and New York was still a kind of promised land, where anything and everything was possible.Now Kaufman had lived three and a half months in his dream-city, and the Palace of Delights seemed less than delightful.Was it really only a season since he stepped out of Port Authority Bus Station and looked up 42nd Street towards the Broadway intersection? So short a time to lose so many treasured illusions.He was embarrassed now even to think of his naivety. It made him wince to remember how he had stood and announced aloud:‘New York, I love you.’Love? Never.It had been at best an infatuation.And now, after only three months living with his object of adoration, spending his days and nights in her presence, she had lost her aura of perfection.New York was just a city.He had seen her wake in the morning like a slut, and pick murdered men from between her teeth, and suicides from the tangles of her hair. He had seen her late at night, her dirty back streets shamelessly courting depravity. He had watched her in the hot afternoon, sluggish and ugly, indifferent to the atrocities that were being committed every hour in her throttled passages.It was no Palace of Delights.It bred death, not pleasure.Everyone he met had brushed with violence; it was a fact of life. It was almost chic to have known someone who had died a violent death. It was proof of living in that city.But Kaufman had loved New York from afar for almost twenty years. He’d planned his love affair for most of his adult life. It was not easy, therefore, to shake the passion off, as though he had never felt it. There were still times, very early, before the cop-sirens began, or at twilight, when Manhattan was still a miracle.For those moments, and for the sake of his dreams, he still gave her the benefit of the doubt, even when her behaviour was less than ladylike.She didn’t make such forgiveness easy. In the few months that Kaufman had lived in New York her streets had been awash with spilt blood.In fact, it was not so much the streets themselves, but the tunnels beneath those streets.

‘Subway Slaughter’ was the catch-phrase of the month. Only the previous week another three killings had been reported. The bodies had been discovered in one of the subway cars on the AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS, hacked open and partially disembowelled, as though an efficient abattoir operative had been interrupted in his work. The killings were so thoroughly professional that the police were interviewing every man on their records who had some past connection with the butchery trade. The meat-packaging plants on the water-front were being watched, the slaughter-houses scoured for clues. A swift arrest was promised, though none was made.This recent trio of corpses was not the first to be discovered in such a state; the very day that Kaufman had arrived a story had broken in The Times that was still the talk of every morbid secretary in the office.The story went that a German visitor, lost in the subway system late at night, had come across a body in a train. The victim was a well-built, attractive thirty-year-old woman from Brooklyn. She had been completely stripped. Every shred of clothing, every article of jewellery. Even the studs in her ears.More bizarre than the stripping was the neat and systematic way in which the clothes had been folded and placed in individual plastic bags on the seat beside the corpse.This was no irrational slasher at work. This was a highly-organized mind: a lunatic with a strong sense of tidiness.Further, and yet more bizarre than the careful stripping of the corpse, was the outrage that had then been perpe-trated upon it. The reports claimed, though the Police Department failed to confirm this, that the body had been meticulously shaved. Every hair had been removed: from the head, from the groin, from beneath the arms; all cut and scorched back to the flesh. Even the eyebrows and eyelashes had been plucked out.

Edgar Allan Poe: MS. Found in a Bottle

Qui n'a plus qu'un moment a vivre
N'a plus rien a dissimuler.
—Quinault—Atys

OF my country and of my family I have little to say. Ill usage and length of years have driven me from the one, and estranged me from the other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no common order, and a contemplative turn of mind enabled me to methodize the stores which early study very diligently garnered up.—Beyond all things, the study of the German moralists gave me great delight; not from any ill-advised admiration of their eloquent madness, but from the ease with which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their falsities. I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a strong relish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind with a very common error of this age—I mean the habit of referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science. Upon the whole, no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than the positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity.

After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18—, from the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island of Java, on a voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went as passenger—having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend.

Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank.

Dan Simmons: The River Styx Runs Upstream

What thou lovest well remains
the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft 
from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy
true heritage... 
—Ezra Pound, Canto LXXXI

I loved my mother very much. After her funeral, after the coffin was lowered, thefamily went home and waited for her return.

I was only eight at the time. Of the required ceremony I remember little. I recall thatthe collar of the previous year's shirt was far too tight and that the unaccustomed tiewas like a noose around my neck. I remember that the June day was too beautiful forsuch a solemn gathering. I remember Uncle Will's heavy drinking that morning andthe bottle of Jack Daniels he pulled out as we drove home from the funeral. Iremember my father's face.

The afternoon was too long. I had no role to play in the family's gathering that day, and the adults ignored me. I found myself wandering from room to room with a warm glass of Kool-Aid, until finally I escaped to the backyard. Even that familiar landscape of play and seclusion was ruined by the glimpse of pale, fat faces staring out from the neighbor's windows. They were waiting. Hoping for a glimpse. I felt like shouting, throwing rocks at them. Instead I sat down on the old tractor tire we used as a sandbox.

Very deliberately I poured the red Kool-Aid into the sand and watched the spreading stain digging a small pit.

They're digging her up now.

I ran to the swing set and angrily began to pump my legs against the bare soil. The swing creaked with rust, and one leg of the frame rose out of the ground.

No, they've already done that, stupid. Now they're hooking her up to big machines. Will they pump the blood back into her?

Michael Marshall Smith: To Receive Is Better

I’d like to be going by car, but of course I don’t know how to drive, and it would probably scare the shit out of me. A car would be much better, for lots of reasons. For a start, there’s too many people out here. There’s so many people.

Wherever you turn there’s more of them, looking tired, and rumpled, but whole. That’s the strange thing. Everybody is whole.

A car would also be quicker. Sooner or later they’re going to track me down, and I’ve got somewhere to go before they do. The public transport system sucks, incidentally. Long periods of being crowded into carriages that smell, interspersed with long waits for another line, and I don’t have a lot of time. It’s intimidating too. People stare. They just look and look, and they don’t know the danger they’re in. Because in a minute one of them is going to look just one second too long, and I’m going to pull his fucking face off, which will do neither of us any good.

So instead I turn and look out the window. There’s nothing to see, because we’re in a tunnel, and I have to shut my eye to stop myself from screaming. The carriage is like another tunnel, a tunnel with windows, and I feel like I’ve been buried far too deep. I grew up in tunnels, ones that had no windows. The people who made them didn’t even bother to pretend that there was something to look out on, something to look for. Because there wasn’t. Nothing’s coming up, nothing that isn’t going to involve some fucker coming at you with a knife. So they don’t pretend. I’ll say

that for them, at least: they don’t taunt you with false hopes.

Manny did, in a way, which is why I feel complicated about him. On the one hand, he was the best thing that ever happened to us. But look at it another way, and maybe we’d have been better off without him. I’m being unreasonable. Without Manny, the whole thing would have been worse, thirty years of utter fucking pointlessness. I wouldn’t have known, of course, but I do now: and I’m glad it wasn’t that way. Without Manny I wouldn’t be where I am now. Standing in a subway carriage, running out of time.

People are giving me a wide berth, which I guess isn’t so surprising. Partly it’ll be my face, and my leg. People don’t like that kind of thing. But probably it’s mainly me. I know the way I am, can feel the fury I radiate. It’s not a nice way to be, I know that, but then my life has not been nice. Maybe you should try it, and see how calm you stay.