the quest for the golden cobra , or over the hills and into the mist

odd numbered chapters by rhoda penmarq
even numbered chapters by nooshin azadi

illustrated by rhoda penmarq

to begin at the beginning, click here

chapter 5: the blue bird




chapter 6 : through the door

accessible...

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the intersecting streets are empty 
a red footprint has stopped on the sixth line of the zebra crossing
the traffic light goes green
there are no cars to pass
the yellow curtain behind a window at the corner ripples
a little boy is craning his neck
to watch the street over the windowsill
but the only thing he can see is
the blue sky

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clarissa the doll, part 7

by arnold schnabel

edited by professor dan leo

illustrated by rhoda penmarq and konrad kraus

executive producer: kathleen maher

part seven of fifteen

to begin at the beginning, click here

Part Seven We were flying in toward the shore. “I suppose also you’d like to go back now,” she said. “Yes, I would, thank you,” I said. “To your friends.” “Yes.” “All right. I’ll find us a quiet place to land.“ It was odd being carried by her like this, sideways through the air. Not that flying through the air holding her hand hadn’t been odd also. I continued to hold onto the doll box. “What do you say, by the way?” she asked. “What do I say?” “Yes, what do you say for my saving your life?” “Oh, thank you,” I said, perhaps out of excessive politeness, since she would have never had to save me at all if she hadn’t pulled me up into the air in the first place and then suggested I let go of her hand. “You’re very welcome, Arnold,” she said. “And, please, do call me Clarissa.” I wasn’t about to argue while she was carrying me a couple of hundred feet up in the air, so I said, “Okay, Clarissa.’ “That’s better. Now tell me about these friends. There’s a woman, isn’t there?” “Well, yes,” I said. “Ha! I knew it. Anyone else, or is this really and in all actuality just a tête-à-tête?” “Um --” “Or a ‘date’ as I suppose you would call it.” “Well --” “Perhaps assignation is the appropriate word.” “No,” I said. “None of the above. There are some other, uh, friends there.” “A party.” “Just a get-together,” I said. “You will introduce me to everyone?” “Clarissa --” “Yes,” she said, into my ear. “How can I introduce you?” I was twisting around, trying to look into her eyes, so human-looking, and yet I knew better, or at least I thought I did. “Oh, right,” she said. "Pardon me?" “Of course you can't introduce me. After all I’m a mere doll. A plaything.” “Well, it’s just that --” “Oh,” she said. “Let’s stop here." We were approaching Our Lady Star of the Sea Church. Clarissa began descending and brought us down on top of its square bell-tower, planting me on my feet, but at slightly too fast a velocity, so that I stumbled forward and almost fell over the low brick wall on the rearward side. I pushed myself up from the wall, straightened up and turned. She leaned back in the corner of the wall above Washington and Ocean Streets, one arm along the top of the wall, and she turned and gazed to her left down at the street. “The passing parade,” she said. “Um, Clarissa,” I said. Standing up here on top of this tower made me feel unpleasantly vertiginous, although oddly enough flying through the air had not especially bothered me. “Yes, Arnold?” she asked. She drew a strand of curly dark hair away from her eyes. “I really do need to be getting back to my friends.” “Go ahead, I’m not stopping you.” “But --” “There’s a trap door there in the floor. Just go on down.” True enough there was a metal trap door in the brick floor, and it had a handle, and maybe it wasn’t locked. “Aren’t you coming?” I asked, perhaps stupidly. “I don’t know why I should. You’re not being very nice to me.” “I’m really sorry if I offended you.” “If?” “I’m sorry I offended you.” She looked at me, then she turned around, put her forearms on the wall and gazed down again at the street and all the passing human beings. Then she turned her head toward me. Her dark curls floated around her small porcelain face in the breeze. “Perhaps I’ve been over-sensitive,” she said. She returned her gaze to the murmuring pedestrian and motor traffic below. Then she turned around and took a step towards me, smiling. “Damn it, let’s do go meet your friends!” “Great,” I said, not adding anything at all about how this was what we had been supposed to be doing all along. “Open the box,” she said. I opened the box, she climbed back into it, and with the box under my arm I leaned over and pulled open the trap door. A metal ladder led down to the belfry just below, which was not completely dark, thanks to the starlight that came through the trap and the three tall gothic windows on each wall. I climbed down the ladder with the box under my arm. On the other side of the rack of bells was a railing winding down into a hole in the floor. Going over I saw a spiral metal staircase below, and I headed on down. There was just enough light for me to make my way down slowly step by step. At the bottom of the stairwell was a door, its knob only just barely visible. I turned it, and, thank God if he was indeed responsible, it opened. I was now in recognizable territory, at the right of the narthex. I closed the tower door quietly behind me. All I had to do was go straight ahead to the front doors and out. Provided the doors weren’t locked. In which case I would have to come up with some new plan. In any case I was not halfway to the entranceway when I saw Father Reilly come out from the nave. He had a large ring of keys in his hand that he was shaking up and down like a tambourine. He saw me and stopped, stopped shaking the keys also. “Arnold,” he said. “Hello, Father.” “What are you doing here?” I had to think fast. “I wanted to know if you would hear my confession, Father.” He seemed taken aback. “I just heard your confession this morning.” “I know, but --” “But you’ve committed another mortal sin.” “Yes, Father.” I felt a sort of kick inside the box. “You know, it doesn’t work this way, Arnold, really,” he said. “You can’t just go to confession, run out and commit a mortal sin, then run right back to church and go to confession again. That’s insane.” “So you -- don’t want to hear my confession?” It didn’t matter to me, I just wanted to get out of there. “It’s not about what I want, Arnold. It’s about -- you can’t just make up your own rules.” “Okay, well, I can see that. I’ll just be going then, Father.” “Wait, what were you doing coming from down the other end of the narthex there?” “What was I, uh, doing?” “Yes. Why didn’t you just come right into the church.” “I -- I was -- wrestling with myself.” “You were?” “Yes, you know, wondering if I should -- uh -- ask you to hear my, uh, confession --” “So even you knew you were doing something wrong.” “Yes, I suppose I did, Father.” I felt and heard a giggling from inside the box. “Was that you?” asked Father Reilly. “It’s the beer I drank earlier, Father. A slight case of gas.” He paused. I prayed she wouldn’t giggle again. “All right, Arnold,” said Father Reilly. “Take a knee.” “What?” “Kneel down.” I felt and heard another giggle from the box, and, clearing my throat loudly, I got down on one bare knee, on that hard marble floor. “Now make your confession,” he said. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I said. “Please be specific.” “I’m afraid I had sexual intercourse again, Father.” “I knew it.” “I’m sorry.” “Oh, I’m sure you’re absolutely racked with guilt. All right. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” he said, making the sign of the cross, “I absolve you. Again. Ego te absolvo. Say three Hail Marys when you get the urge. Now get up.” I stood up. “Come on,” he said, “I’m going to lock up from outside.” He went to the doorway, opened one of the big doors and waved me through. He came out, closed the door and locked it with a big key from his ring. He put the ring in his cassock pocket and then took out a pack of Camels from another pocket. “Cigarette?” he asked. I hesitated, even raising my hand, but at the last moment I said, “No thanks, Father.” He shook one out for himself, put the pack away, took out a book of matches, lit his cigarette, waved the match, tossed it down the church steps. He put the book of matches back into his pocket and exhaled smoke slowly through his thin nostrils as he gazed down toward the street. “Well, good night, Father,” I said. “And thanks.” “Thanks? For what?” “For absolving me.” “Oh.” He waved his cigarette. “Good night, Arnold. Oh, wait, what’s in the box?” “Oh, the box,” I said. “Yes.” “It’s um, uh, it’s a present for my friend’s girlfriend, a doll. My, uh, friend forgot it, and, uh --” “All right, good night, Arnold.” “Good night, Father.” I went down the steps and turned right on the sidewalk, without looking back. “That man is a complete goose,” she said, from inside the box. “And you’re not much better!” End of Part Seven part 8

note to contributors - perils of open blog

flowers of sulfur , an open poetry blog that i have belonged to for a while - and which inspired me to start this blog, has apparently - apparently, there is still some question as to what happened - been hacked by a disgruntled member. many of the contributors to flashing by are also contributors to fos and will be aware of what happened. others can get an idea by looking at the comments section of the most recent post on flowers of sulfur - or can e-mail me. the bottom line is that this has exposed something i have always had in the back of my mind - the extreme fragility of an open blog, especially one where all or most of the members have "administrative privileges." basically, anybody with "privileges" can do anything to anybody else's posts - alter or deface them or delete them, also do anything to the layout of the blog itself. a war could break out with members going back and forth over each other's posts. you just kind of assume that nobody is actually going to do this. the advantages to everybody having privileges are that : a) members can invite new members - but nobody but myself seems to be doing this anyway b) members could use the sidebar to promote their projects - but this can also be done by posting c) it makes collaboration between members on individual posts much easier - without it collaboration would have to be done offsite with one member posting - but in practice this is mostly what is being done already so - at the urging of some contributors - i have removed the privileges of all except myself and a few other "original gangstas". any questions please feel free to e-mail me. rpenmarq at gmail dot com rhoda penmarq

“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode Sixty-One: remembrances concerning a man named Ridpath

Our serialization of of this sprawling masterwork continues as our author Larry Winchester delves deeper still into the murky psyche of one Captain Alexis J. Pym, USN...

(Click here to go to our previous episode; go here to return to the beginning.)

Not that Ridpath was a bad guy.

For instance he’d always bring back souvenirs and presents for everybody when he returned from one of his outlandish assignments. Little trinkets and things for the girls in the warren. Stranger items for the men.

Pym still harbored in his lower right desk drawer a shrunken head that Dick had brought back from the Amazon, a poison-dart blowpipe from Borneo, and a vial of rhinoceros-horn aphrodisiac from Bechuanaland (sampled only once -- he had worn his penis raw in a masturbatory frenzy in his little office, slavering and drooling over a deck of pornographic playing cards Dick had brought over from Burma).

Pym liked the guy. Everyone did. Especially women. And the Admiral of course. Everyone liked Dick.

“Bonjour tout le monde,” he would say upon making one of his infrequent returns to the warren. Bonjour tout le monde. Only Ridpath could pull off that sort of thing. Certainly Pym could not, he knew, having tried it one wet miserable cold November morning, after having practiced all weekend in the den of his faceless splitlevel in suburban Virginia, with Pat Boone turned up loud on his hi-fi so that his nameless robot of a wife and his two strange zombielike children should not hear him. He had come to the warren and tried to toss it off casually and urbanely, pipe in hand -- "Bonjour tout le monde!" -- and everyone in earshot had looked up, briefly, from their desks, and a few others who were walking somewhere had halted and turned, momentarily, and one or two people had peeked out of their office doorways, just for a second. With contempt. Followed quickly by lack of interest. Pym had flushed deeply, feeling the sweat breaking out under his underwear, and he had tried to chuckle urbanely, producing only a high-pitched croak which he tried to turn into a cough which came out as a strangled wheeze.

And then he had scurried off to his own little office which he always referred to (but only in his thoughts) as “my cell”. And he stood there, hyperventilating, holding the first knuckle of his right index finger between his sharp little teeth.

Oh, those days when Ridpath was due to return.

You could feel a special body-electric current in that normally flat deathly fluorescent air of the warren.

Say Ridpath was due back on a Tuesday; all the girls on that Tuesday would have fresh new hairdos, their make-up shimmering and bright, their outfits clean and slinky or crisp as the wrapping paper on ripe fresh fruit; nylons hissed and whispered like locusts in heat and the subterranean atmosphere was alive with a dozen warring hothouse scents.

Needless to say only the most rudimentary work would barely be attempted.

Pym himself would have gotten a haircut the day before, and even perhaps a manicure as well. He would have had his uniform cleaned, starched, and pressed, and he would have personally polished his shoes so brightly he could see his own ghostly doubled visage looking up at him from them as he languished in his cell not working, suffused in his own private cloud of Aqua Velva.

And the thing of it was, Ridpath never returned on the day he was supposed to. Never. Forget about showing up on time, he just didn’t show up at all. Oh, sure, he would phone, probably at about four in the afternoon, asking to be connected to the Admiral, and of course the Admiral would take the call, and Pym would creep slowly past the Admiral’s office and hear the Admiral chuckling, saying, “Oh, Dick, you kill me! You slay me!”

The Admiral had never called Pym by his Christian name (however, Pym had reflected that when your first name was Alexis perhaps not to be addressed by this name was not such a bad thing, not such a bad thing at all, and damn his parents to hell).

And so maybe, maybe on the Wednesday or more likely on the Thursday, Dick would show up, finally. Two or three days when virtually no work was being done, and all because of this, this -- anticipation.

But oh the feeling in the warren when all of a sudden there fell a complete and echoing silence and then you heard it, that pleasant euphonious baritone: “Bonjour tout le monde!”

And then all bloody hell broke loose. The chirping and the squealing of the women rising up like the mating chorus of a flock of ecstatic parakeets. And under it all that chuckling friendly baritone.

Pym would go to his door and press his ear against the cool plywood, listening as Dick’s joyful, noisy advent surged closer. The women laughing and screeching, the men joking and hey-buddying, and borne along within this happy babble, Dick’s quiet but carrying friendly voice.

Standing inside his door, his heart thumping, that sweaty feeling under his Fruit-of-the-Looms, that sweaty feeling now all over his body except under his armpits which he had absolutely caked with Ban Roll-On. And as the noise drew closer he drew his reddened knuckle out from between his teeth, scuttled back to his desk for his pipe, with trembling hands packed it, with six or seven matches finally lit it, puffing desperately, the noise almost at his door now, and he went to the door, but no, he needed his prop, his other prop, and he went back to his desk and grabbed a folder, yes, some papers he had to take somewhere, yes, an errand, he, he at least was working, not just sitting around all day waiting for Dick, and he put the folder under his arm and went to the door and took several deep breaths, the noise outside came louder, the parade was almost upon him, he opened the door, and there he was, Dick, tall and so very there, sun-burnished and radiant (or, true, sometimes perhaps so very pale, the sad paleness of Michelangelo’s David) but there, smiling, chatting, laden with presents and with that scuffed and battered old attaché case of his, surrounded by almost the entire staff of Q Section.

And then everyone stopped and looked at him, Pym, standing there, sweating.

Was there really such a great pause or did he only imagine it? That momentary silence. Did Dick’s sky-blue eyes really glaze over for just a fraction of a second? Did his famous smile really falter just briefly?

But then there it was, that strong hand thrust out from under the parcels and Dick smiling broadly and warmly and saying, as he always said to Pym, “Hey, fella, how’s it hangin’?”

How indeed. How else but limply and in defeat?

And Pym bravely extended his own hand, but it was the hand that held the pipe, Dick chuckled fondly, Pym blushed and transferred the pipe to his other hand, and in so doing he dropped his folder of fake work to the floor, and blushing deeper still he bent over to pick it up, catching a slow-motion glimpse of his miserable ghastly face in his hyper-polished shoes, and retrieving his fake folder he dropped his pipe, the burning tobacco spilling across the tiles as the pipe spun and slid between some woman’s pumps.

And so forth.

Pym would stay in the warren late on these days. “Working.” “Catching up on some work.” “Trying to straighten out some of this back paperwork.” Dick would have gone for cocktails and dinner with the Admiral. Pym would not have been invited. But that was okay, he had “work” to do.

Someone around here had to get some work done.

He would sit in his office, his cell, until everyone had gone. He would have phoned his nameless wife. She didn’t care. She was probably grateful. She could watch My Little Margie in robotic peace and drink her martinis undisturbed by his baleful presence in their pastel-hued splitlevel with its Swedish furniture and its faintly disturbing paintings of Paris street scenes which she had bought on a subscription plan advertised in the back pages of the Ladies’ Home Journal.

(Continued here. Soon to be a major mini-series event from the Hallmark Hall of Fame starring Justin Timberlake; a Sheldon Leonard Production.)

thE leglesS ladY iS stilL followinG mE...

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i gavE heR mY legS toO
buT alaS!
shE didn'T knoW hoW tO walK!
iF shE diD, i should'T havE seeN heR arounD

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reading: small hot milk

small hot milk

there is a little tiny man

who cuts up my nutmeg for me

he comes down to my house from the moon

on a tiny pair of snowshoes - silver-stringed

like electric tennis rackets

he cuts up the spice very quickly, into

tiny diamond-edged triangles; much better

than any grater or grinder can make

is the fresh taste of this

that he cuts - but

unfortunately

one night i caught him and squashed him against the wall

burst like a bug and guts -  i

was tired, i was half-awake, he surprized me - no more

will i see the quick crazy half-smile

that would cross his face as he plied his tiny scissors; no more

will i see his eyes glint and glitter in the yellow kitchen light. He was beautiful.

2011 Peter Greene.