Archaeologists find ruts of an ancient and oddly designed road running down to the sea. A place where ships were launched?
But then they find, straight across the sea, identical ruts rising from the water.
This one is new. Locals swear it wasn’t there last week.
<END>
There are now 47 “Memorable Fancies” posted at terencekuch.com. The title is after William Blake, a major inspiration. I’ve been shopping a collection of my short stories around to publishers (almost all the stories have been published in small-circulation periodicals and anthologies, about half of which were paid, the rest ‘for the love’.) My plan is to include an appropriate “Memorable Fancy” between each story, if that makes sense to the publisher.
I have had one good nibble for the collection, but no bites, and am in search of a publisher. If that could be you, let me know. [I have a novel available on Amazon, but that’s “airport reading,” not like the weird/literary stories I write.)
They attend the famous theatre and see the play. It begins. It ends. Months later, they still cannot get the play out of their heads – like a song but longer, more intense. Each audience member feels – knows – that the play was about him, his flaws, the miserable cheat he’s been, the sins he thought no one knew ….
Finally, they return to the theatre. They demand to unsee the play, to take their fear and pity back. They are permitted this indulgence. Then they look at each other, wondering why they were there at the theatre, what the play they didn’t see might have been about. Nothing very important, surely. Or they would have remembered.
[after Thomas Bernhard]
The Book of Sins
Somewhere there is a book detailing all your faults, all your sins. Everyone has read it but you. You have heard rumors, been the object of disparaging looks on the commuter train. You would like to read it; but the bookstores have never heard of it. Indeed, there are no more bookstores.
[after S.T. Joshi]
What are the most terrible words one can hear, the most crushing? One said “dishonor,” and I said “no.” And another said “death” and I said “no.” And a third said “nothingness,” and I said no. And they said “Well, then, tell us!” and I did, and they did not like my answer, for I had said “Never!” and “Always!”
[after Piero Camporesi]
“Henry’s Bank Jobs”
Russ had several bank jobs to his credit. In two of them, he had killed a bank guard and then a patrolman. Finally cornered, there is a shoot-out. Russ is mortally wounded, but does not immediately die. Medics rush him to a hospital, where his brain is extracted just before his body gives out. Authorities want to keep his consciousness alive so that he can be tried and punished. Henry, a desperately unemployed landscaper, volunteers to receive the transplant. Gradually, their thoughts entwine. Henry confesses, deeply regrets the widows, orphans.
A: “We have found Messiah!”
B: “Where is his army come to free us?”
C: “We have found Messiah!”
B: “Where is his armor? Where is his shield?”
D: “He heals our sins and makes the blind to see.”
B: “Where is his scepter and where is his sword?”
E: “He has made the dead to rise and walk.”
All: “How could we ever follow one like him?”
“No, you weren’t that way. Turn to the right … just a little … there!” – He sees his lover as two-dimensional. She doesn’t look right if she turns this way or that. At some angles she almost disappears.
The Court Reporter Solves the Case
A court reporter, taking testimony in a murder case, suddenly understands who the real murderer was. Neither the prosecution nor the defense had figured it out.
<END>
“Beelzebub”
The Semitic word Beelzebub, of course, means “Lord of Shit,” for each thing must have its god, and after Yahweh was victorious, the defeated gods were sentenced to the lowliest of domains. There is also a Lord of Slime, a Lord of Envy, a Lord of Pride, a Lord of the Plague of the Black Tongue, a Lord of Disgrace and Shame, and so on. I, too, was once a god of higher things. Of a very grand thing, actually. I was quite proud of that.
[after Piero Camporesi]
===
“The Rembrandt”
On a hunch, Harold bought an old painting at an auction. He scraped off the top layer of oil, hoping to find a Rembrandt underneath. There was no Rembrandt underneath. The Rembrandt was what he scraped off.
“The Sames”
Everyone else is the same person; only you are different. The others look alike, seem to know the same things, love and hate the same foods. They speak in a tongue you find impossible to understand. They treat you well. They treat you very well.
“The Talk-Show”
It was an honor to be a guest on his show. They waited off-stage during the monologue, gauging the response of the crowd. They passed a few quiet, unnecessary words. They knew they wouldn’t get the best of him in conversation, he, the master of debate, sometimes a master of abuse as well; but someone had to speak out for the old ways, for righteousness and faith.
After a short commercial break they were escorted to the stage: the scribe, then the Pharisee.
<END>
<Excerpted from “Tell No Tales: Adventures of the Dead”, a book in search of a publisher>
There is a land, far away, where machines originated and have evolved. No one knows how they began, but it is surmised that the first machines were simple off-switches. After uncounted millennia of chance atom-collisions, one switch flipped to “on.” The rest of the story, we know. There are now millions of kinds of machines, some highly complex. One of them is wondering, right now, if there could be organic life somewhere in the universe. And what use it could possibly be.
<END>
“People worshipped oak-tree stumps and dung beetles too, so don’t get a big head about it; about being a cat, I mean.”
The actors are very still. At first, the audience is patient. But then there are coughs, and wheezings, and whisperings, and shouts of disparagement, and shuffling in the seats. The actors begin to move. They imitate the shuffling and shifting. They hear the whispering and shout the words. An audience member gets up to leave. An actor exits right.
<END>
The wall was built by the Dutiful Republic for our safety, they tell us; for our welfare. It is called “The Wall of Memories,” because we come to the wall each morning and throw – are required to throw – yesterday’s memories over it. Our memories, the Republic tells us, are false. They must be discarded. They distract and enrage us.
I have already forgotten this.
“Just like chicken,” the waiter said, but you’d never know it for all the sauce, too sweet for my taste, chewy meat. I wasn’t sure it was real Human, either, in spite of hype and fame, reviews in Dining Guide and word of mouth and all, until
I saw the eyes.
– Terence Kuch
<previously published in the periodical Perhaps I Am Wrong About the World.>
“Gift”
[“It is easier to raise a shrine than bring the deity down to haunt it.” --Beckett]
After taxes that pre-humbled our people for practice, after importing marble at great cost and fighting off tribes to bring it here, and after many crushed limbs in the building of it, and the spiremaker’s falling-death – we built the shrine.
Even from the day of cornerstone and speech the gods were there among us shouting, boistering, cajoling the stonemasons on, eager for the altar’s gift to fill their brimming lips.
- Terence Kuch
<END>
“The Miracles Occur”
“Hold your arms just so,” he said. “Hands relaxed, fingers just a little apart. That’s it, almost. Study the diagrams in the text; practice. Tomorrow’s lesson is at 10. Are we bringing these miracles about, or is it all just coincidence? I have another student now; I can’t take time to answer questions. No, you’ll have to ask one of the wise men. I studied praxis, not theory. Opinions vary. There are different schools of thought. Myself, I think it’s better not to ask: we wave our arms at the specified times; the miracles occur.”
- Terence Kuch
She joked about the killing – not very funny, hardly the best of taste. She could have found a better time. After we had drained the blood,
For instance.
- Terence Kuch
(Published in Tales of Blood and Roses)
<END>
“Flood”
The great flood arrives on schedule. Only I am saved, drifting in my small boat, barely a dinghy. I see the others, those who did not prepare. They are beneath the surface of shifting waters, acting as if nothing has happened, swimming to work, dining on fronds.
Only I am drowned.
– Terence Kuch
[published in Ballista (UK)]
At Madeleine’s party: an unexpected face, my likeness, my double. A twin I never knew I had? I spoke to it. It looked at me as if trying to place me from its album of ignored people. I spoke again. It turned away. Madeleine, desperate to promote sociability, touched its arm. “You remember Herbert, here, don’t you, Herbert?”
– Terence Kuch
Strange things happen from time to time at Gate 56. People arrive from a past decade, appear and then vanish, etc. Airport authorities close off gate 56 as a last resort, wall it in. Voices are heard from inside, becoming ever more desperate. It is possible that a few real flights have landed, their pilots misdirected by incompetent controllers or ground crews. They mingle with those from the past, amaze them with stories of how the world has turned out, how much they fear the future.
- Terence Kuch
I was enjoying a drink on the terrace when I heard a faint noise from my left. I turned, and saw that a little sundial had just been overtaken by the shadow of a tree, as the sun continued its uneasy westward course.
“Ah,” it said, “again it has happened. There will be no more time, now, until later. How much later I cannot say, but for now there is no more time. If they would move me away from this infernal tree I could tell the time a longer time each day. VII? VIII? Who knows?
“The night – the night terrifies me.”
I turned back to my drink, bored with its little mind, its one complaint.
– Terence Kuch
