Christopher WunderLee - Moore's Mythopoeia

“Get away from my pillows, I just bought those.”

He takes his leave, pushing the cloud back on course, and swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies through the stunning sounds and voices and bodies and bags and objects until he reaches a central location, where all paths meet. There, he sees familiar faces, Orcus and Ades, Rumour and Chance, Tumult and Confusion, Discord and an old friend who drowned in the Aegean Sea some years before but allegedly rises on full moon nights and abducts expectant virgins. The word cannibal has been used but Joseph has always believed it is meant metaphorically, due to the primal nature of his long-lost friend’s actions.

“You crazy kids, who’ve been born from the infernal abyss, who swim in chaos, I am no spy,” Joseph announced, standing on a fake wood bench in front of an ornate fountain (enter to win, you could be the lucky new owner of a garden fountain from Homestead Landscapes) and raising his arms. “I’m an explorer, you know, an anthropologist. Yet, I want nothing from you, I do not visit to exploit your secrets, your customs, your beliefs. I only want to make it through this desert of want but I can’t seem to find the door. Would someone mind telling me where the border of heaven and earth is? I need to revenge my life.”

“I know who you are,” a particularly decomposing old gentleman said, stopping in front of the orator. “You’re that guy on the news, the one who’s lost. I know a thing or two about life, I feel like I’m losing land to an invading army, to be honest. I own this mall, although probably not for long, if those damn corporate buggers get their way. I’m in the middle of a hostile take-over, so I’m wreaking all sorts of havoc around here. You’re welcome to stay; it would be my gain. But, I can show you the way out if you want. None of these doors lead to heaven, though.”

Joseph, seeing the skeletal finger pointing, did not remain to reply, but seeing the shore after a night in stormy seas, runs headlong into the crowd, knocking people over, dodging angry arms, more endangered than Jason and his buddies against the jostling rocks of Bosphorus, feeling quite like a homesick lord captured in Charybdis, but finally making it to the door, the phantoms of sin and death seemingly riding on his coat tails like castaways, but also paved before him the broad and beaten path over the whisky twilight of the dark abyss between night and day, whose simmering chasm was bridged from hell to earth and the central highway of the transportation of perverse spirits copulating with the tempted and the punished, except from dead Nietzschian lantern carriers and good seraphim guarding the grand grace of heaven. Joseph, whose crimson wings were unfurled and flapping in mad gyrations, clung to the lowest ring of Jacob’s stepping stool, like a giant staircase above all the beanstalks of folklore, and witnessed the Hubble constant expanding out from the blank expanse of the storm of ions and eons like it was fetus emerging from the womb of nothingness.

A small tinkle of rain, very moderate, quiet, the kind of rain that clings to felt but does not wet trousers or require pedestrians to carry umbrellas, the perfect walk in the rain kind of rain. Its tiny beads cling to the one window, darkened by a black curtain, a small spider web crack forming on the lowest pane. Inside, the uneasy owner of the harmatiological establishment wipes clean glasses with a dirty rag mechanically, eyeing the man sitting in one of his booths, sipping a pride and true alcoholic beer (six-percent by volume) that arrives by truckload at three in the morning every Tuesday by way of the mountains and is manufactured under moonlight by men he’s never met. His name is Bernard Quigley; he owns and operates The Blue Moon Speakeasy & Tobacco Bar. Bernard…

“BurrNaard.”

Bayernaard.

“BuurrNnaarrd.”

BarrrNNaarrd.

“BuurrNnaarrd.”

BuurrNnaarrd.

“BurrNaard.”

BurrNaard.

“BurNaard.”

BurNaard (spelled ‘Bernard’) allows the resistance to hold special meetings and engagements at his establishment from time to time in exchange for protection and secure clientele. He operates a criminal business for a hush-hush subculture. If the Sections ever found out BurNaard would be retrieved immediately and re-educated thoroughly, it has made him a suspicious and humor-deficient man who listens carefully and finds conspiracies in the timbre of voices. At least once a night the place is closed down and everyone sent home because BurNaard believes an agent is present.

Arthur Dodger finds him amusing, he purposefully changes his tone any time he speaks to him, especially when ordering a drink: “BurNaard, I would like a BEER, a BEER with ALCOHOL in IT, can YOU get me a BEER with ALCOHOL in IT?”

“That’s not funny.” BurNaard growls and pops the candle wax cork off a new forty-ounce bottle. As BurNaard serves Arthur Dodger his second ALCOHOLIC BEER (still not amusing), the doorman announces the arrival of Miss Kitty (a.k.a. Elisa Greene, no names please), who’s shown in and treated like a guest of honor by BurNaard.

Both men watch her entrance (causing a sort of lallation of their thoughts), which is always treated with genuine rhathymia by the subject. Her hair is down around her shoulders and she’s wearing her familiar simper (suggesting self-knowledge), along with an aubergine corset dress, fitted bodice has a drawstring scoop-neck, velvet placket and hook-and-eye closures; waist seaming and ruffle detail; side zip; cotton/rayon hybrid cloth, size XS, twenty-inches from waist; Giovanni Camolle designed; seven hundred and eighty digits; page 67 of the Hoffberg & Yoyando spring line catalogue, and very lovely. The drawstrings are loose and the scoop is forgivingly low. Elisa orders a glass of red wine from BurNaard who meekly grins and never makes it up to her chin. Then she joins Arthur Dodger at his booth, BurNaard pleased to watch her walk away, bend forward to peck Arthur on the cheek (dangling shadows accentuated nicely as she leans down) and finally, takes her seat.

“You know,” Arthur reaches exaggeratively for her hand and cups it in his palm. Elisa lets her appendage dangle there, as he rolls his thumb over her knuckles, admiring them, damn, even her knuckles, dapatical, smooth little ridges sweeping gently… “you know, you never can quite tell who you can trust…”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me…”

“Do you know who you were dancing with last night?”

“You want to know who I danced with last night? I have no idea — several people.”

“No, do you know who that man was, the one that came up to you while you were with your sister?”

Elisa handles her glass indelicately with her little fingers, sipping rather than gulping every twenty-five or so seconds, licks her lips by rolling her tongue out and over each one and looks away at nothing quite often. She adjusts a boot cuff lying against her shin.

“An engineer, I can’t remember his name.”

“An engineer? That was Captain Vincent Belacque, Section 6 investigator. He’s the author of the Children’s Fiction report — you know the one.”

“Are you sure? You might be getting a little too paranoid, Nick.”

Of course the youngest son of the miller was disappointed. What would he do with a pussy? This was all background information Arthur detailed to her prior to the beginning, he was the youngest son and she, well she was…

“No, it was Belacque. I know him; he’s been watching us for some time. I’ve been waiting for him to make some move and it looks like you’re it.”

“Why would he ask me to dance?”

“Why else would he be there?”

“Because my brother getting married brings out the worst people.”