Michael Peterson - Gepetto's Children

[Excerpted from a novel in progress:]

Somewhere in Georgia, a committee decides to tidy up its charts. Gone are the towns of Roosterville and Hemp; bid farewell to Cloudland, Five Points, and Hickory Flat. A son is heading home after thirty years, a daughter looks for the family she never knew; but these homes are fiction, now. Storybook villages called Box Springs and Aonia, empty fields once named Damascus, named Lost Mountain. Somewhere in time, Hadley is telling Hemingway that he’s made a mistake. Asks him if one cock and bull story is as good as another. Blink and you miss Zetella, you miss Poetry Tulip. Scholars start warring over the Cardenio rumor. One giant becomes a windmill again. There was no room on the map for Po Biddy Crossroads. I’m somewhere in Columbus, looking for you, when we’re in two different Macy’s in the same mall. All these displays look the same and my phone’s bleeding minutes all down my fingers as your voice gets farther and farther away.

Here I am sitting in a dying Ford pickup with you, listening to tapes from before I was born. Listening to Bobby Thomson’s bat connect, tinny through the busted-ass speakers. Sounding more like a dropped pencil. Bandage around my temples, watching you take pictures as I drive. The inside of an office under construction, tiers like a temple; the girder skeletons of an elevated rail station, the inevitable pier system when the waters flush these streets away into nothing.

Mornings in Chicago are thick with fog, like a wet towel down the throat, and we’re looking for sunlight in window reflections and gleaming on the ever-exposed scaffolding. Behind us is Boston, off-road city where students climb through tunnels and large fathers knock down buildings like they can’t bear others having toys. Ahead of us is Los Angeles, disintegrating before we can reach it. All our colors are smearing together, graywash speedlines as the truck struggles into second gear and your camera dances from your wrist like a too-full medicine bag.

From your other wrist still clinks! the broken handcuff loop. Me still wishing I was on the other end of the splintered chain. The frost is giving way outside, and the snap of the air plucks at the cords of each guitar lying in our truck bed as we roll on from the red light chapels and holy-blessed wankrooms of Gainesville to the twitchy-moving pens and typewriter racket of Portland.

We left the city then, so soon after I had arrived. We broke free of the city's tangle and emerged amongst the sprawl, miles and miles of big box stores and car dealerships into infinity. Where everything was drive-through and thousands of new cars stood like soldiers at attention. And then there was row after row of self-storage units, stock’n’go carrying cases by Kenner and Hasbro and Mattel. Somewhere Eastward of Eden, my past was locked away inside an identical pod; where the metal starship walls breathed air conditioning fog. My antique British bicycle, your found art installations, the longboxes of comics and milk crates of VHS tapes. Our impermanent record.

Noise walls locked the highway into a straight Hot Wheels track, and we rolled on. The gray panels blurred, the road was a tight rope, a superstring in a dark cosmos, and then it was giving way again, broken fencework falling back before pool and patio neighborhoods, sitcom suburb snout houses with a chicken in every pot. And on past Starter Castles and McMansions, on to where the trees weren’t all fenced by eight by nine curbwork. Out past pork chop lots with electric pylons and cell towers reaching from the ground like fingers.

We’re always in by curfew, looking out at factories looming over cornfields and tract housing; making love quietly, anxiously, then rolling over to watch the sunsets we’ve recorded onto our iPods. Afraid to meet each other’s eyes, confident that nothing exists past these roads, these identical motels and their bolted furniture. Waiting to wake up, always waiting.

Sing a song to Baudrillard, whose maps were the world. Raise a glass to Kafka, or at least to Magritte. There are people writing love letters to Roy Orbison, where they wrap him in clingfilm. A grifter steals Sex.com and flees to Mexico. Japan builds the robot armor it saw run amok in its youth. Disney has a town, Muppets have AIDS and kids are reading “Mary Worth.”

It’s late at night and my arms are outstretched; the tide is coming in and it sounds like your screaming voice.

We remember these days now and forever as the best of them. The pain is romantic, the poverty is ennobling, and the loneliness is spirituality. Everyone is clever and good-looking, every moment is meaningful; we are myths and legends in our own time. We’re entitled to the world and indebted to no one. Our veins pump music and we ever breathe fire. We’re the coming body politic, with all the wisdom our buttons can share.

We are sorcerers and you can never contain us.

We are dying already.

Thomas Ligotti is My Favourite Flavour of Ice-Cream, by Quentin S. Crisp

She thought she knew why dolls and teddy-bears were always so lonely. For a start, everything was the wrong size. When you made a tea-party for them, the plates were usually too small, and the food was too big. They belonged to all different sizes of space. And when you looked at the daylight on the plates and knives and teapot, you could see that nothing really belonged together at all, and you had to squeeze the dolls and bears very hard indeed to stop them from crying, and that only worked for a little while, because they'd soon get cold and lonely again. But it wasn't just sizes, it was shapes, too, that made them lonely, and especially lines. She was just like the dolls and teddy-bears, really, because when she looked at the lines of everything and how big things swallowed up little things before being swallowed up by other little things that were bigger than them, she knew she didn't belong anywhere, either, and she felt cold and lonely, too.

But at least she had one thing to help her that the poor dolls and teddy-bears didn't have and that's because she was magical, and being magical was a bit like having pets. Maybe they start off wild and want to bite you or run away or they won't eat and they die. But if you train them then they begin to do what you say. And that was just like the lines and shapes and sizes. They scared her first of all, and they still did sometimes, because there were so many of them, but she was teaching them to do tricks now.

There were lots of reasons why she knew she was magical, like the board against the wall in her room. Her dad had put the board there, and sometimes her mum would tell her to stand against the board, and she would take a squeaky black marker with a kind of square snout like a wolfy kind of pig, and she would trace a line all around her. There were four of these black outlines on the board now, all different sizes, and all of them were her, even though she was walking about like this now.

And another reason she knew she was magical was because she was sweet and melty. She found this out mainly after her last birthday when her mum drew the biggest outline around her. She had a cherry ice-pole and it made her lips and fingers red like cherries, or more like blackcurrants. Her mum had given her a special present that was a box. It was all yellow and blue with seahorses jumping over the stars in the sky. It wasn't a very big box, and she wondered what was in it at first. She couldn't find how to open it, and she thought maybe what had happened was that someone had taken the sky and turned it inside out to where it turned into the sea and then made it into a box so that it could keep everything in it forever. And when she asked her mum it turned out she was right. Her mum said that there was the whole universe inside this box, or anyway, it was her universe, and she could do whatever she wanted with it. Then her mum showed her how to open it, by finding the secret place where the sky had been folded over back on itself. And inside she found pencils and paper and felt-tip pens and rulers and rubbers and lots of other things like that, which were all to do with lines and shapes and colours. It was like a zoo that you make and unmake. That's when she really started getting the lines to do tricks and everything. One time when she was doing it after eating her ice-pole, she wanted to rub out part of a line, and the red drips of her ice-pole ran down her fingers and got rubbed into the paper. And then she tried to rub the stains aways by licking her fingers and wiping them on the page. But she only spread the pink-red cloud of smudge, until the whole page was covered with the candy-floss stain of her fingers and the little grey crumbs of rubbed-out line from the pencil on the paper. Then she drew a line on another page and rubbed it out with just the fingers she had licked, and the same thing happened. It was her that was coming off on the page. Even when the ice-pole had gone, red stickiness ran down her arms and her fingers. Then she noticed the ants on the page. She didn't know where they had come from, but they were running up her arm, following the dripping red. Some of them were crawling back down, too, and then down the table-leg and across the floor. Or had they come from somewhere across the floor? She did not notice when she wet herself. She thought it was just a trickle of ants. Or perhaps she was melting again. She sat for a long time, becoming hot and uncomfortable at her drawing table, so that she felt as if she were stuffed with stiff old straw inside like one of her teddies, and she scratched at the stitching that held her together. When she touched her body like this, it was like she was touching a thing like any other thing that had nothing to do with her. But if so, who was it that was touching this thing? This must be the strangest thing in the world, she thought, warm and alive without any head, and touching itself through an invisible me that wasn't it anyway.

And since when she touched her body with her melting hand, and found herself stitched together with ants, she proved, too, that she was the invisible twin of the strangest thing in the world, with a mouth but no face or head, she knew she must be magical.

She quickly became bored of being magical, and for many afternoons in a row watched a number of dirty grey clouds try to rub themselves out in the sky, changing into all different shapes. Everything she drew, and everything in the universe, was like these clouds. They appeared and changed and disappeared, but it made no difference to the sky.

"What's the point of a box with no treasure in it?" she asked her mum at last, but her mother just said that it did have treasure in it, and so she sulked, because her mother always cheated by saying this sort of thing.

Justin Isis - 0% of Indonesians Care That I'm Alive

Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents, but her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between her relationships with three very different men: her proud and stubborn brother, a close friend who is also the son of her family's worst enemy, and a charismatic but dangerous suitor. With its poignant portrayal of sibling relationships, The Mill on the Floss is considered George Eliot's most autobiographical novel; it is also one of her most powerful and moving.

Justin Isis - Ranzuki is the Greatest Magazine in the World

Robot A was at Robot B's birthday party when Robot B's sister took his hand. Robot B had just turned eight but his sister was in high school or college - Robot A didn't know, he had only turned eight himself two months before.

The party was drawing to a close, but Robot A was going to stay the night. Robot A and Robot B were watching television. Then Robot A went to the kitchen to get some juice, where he saw Robot B's sister standing by the sink.

The tray of plastic cups was right next to her. Robot A walked over and reached up, but the tray was too far. His arms weren't long enough to reach it.

Robot B's sister noticed him and pulled the tray over. Robot A took one of the cups and sipped the juice.

"I'm sorry, I didn't see you," Robot B's sister said.

He looked up at her. She was wearing a grey skirt and some kind of white top - he didn't know anything about girls' clothes.

"What was your name?"

"Robot A."

She ran a hand through his hair. He felt the points of her nails brush against his scalp.

"Did you have a good time?" she asked.

Robot A shrugged. The party had been all right.

She reached down and grabbed his hand. Her palm was cold, wet - she'd been doing the dishes.

"Can you help me, Robot A?" she said, smiling. Her voice wavered a little, as if she were singing.

"How?" Robot A asked.

Robot B's sister smiled and led him out of the kitchen. She kept rubbing his head. Her nails felt cold and hard against his skin.

"This way."

Robot A saw Robot B in front of the television. He was gaming. Robot A hoped whatever Robot B's sister wanted would not take long.

She led him into her room. The walls were covered with posters of people he didn't recognize. She closed the door, locked it, then went to her computer and put on some music.

"Do you like this song?" she asked.

Robot A shrugged.

"Do you listen to music a lot?" she asked, and sat on her bed. She motioned Robot A over, and he sat beside her.

"Not really."

Robot B's sister was wearing lipgloss, so that whenever she spoke, her mouth glistened. Her cheeks were slack, her eyes large and empty, like a frog's. Only her nose seemed perfectly formed. It was so small that Robot A imagined it was drawing into itself, trying to escape the rest of her face. He reached out and gently pressed it.

"Honk, honk," she said.

Robot A felt like he was wasting time. He was supposed to be gaming with Robot B. If he was not there, Robot B would become conceited. He didn't know why Robot B's sister was bothering him.

She took his hand and moved it down to her skirt. He could feel the warmth of her legs beneath.

"You said you'd help me, Robot A," she said. Her voice made the same strange waver he had heard before. She was still rubbing the back of his neck. He shivered as her nails brushed against his skin.

She used his hand to pull back her skirt. Underneath, her legs were full and pale. She dragged his hand along their length.

Robot A saw a mosquito land on her leg. She brought her hand away from his neck and swatted it. A bead of dark blood stood out on the white of her thigh.

"Ow!" she said, drawing the syllable out in a low whine. She moved his hand between her legs.

"I hate insects." she said. "Can you keep doing this, Robot A?"

Now she was making his hand rub the space between her legs.

Robot A was not used to this much contact with anyone. All he could relate it to was his parents' infrequent embraces, which still had the barrier of clothes. He had seen his father in the shower once, and remembered the fine coat of hair that covered his body, thickening across his forearms. It was entirely different from the warm smoothness of Robot B's sister's skin.

Robot A heard a strange whistle. He looked up. Robot B's sister was breathing through her teeth, her eyes half-closed. He felt a damp spot on her underwear.

"Just keep doing that," she said. Soon she hooked her thumbs into her underwear and pulled it off. Her skirt momentarily obscured her legs, but then she drew it back.

Robot A looked between her legs and saw a mat of dark black hair. Robot A's father had had that too, but that was where the similarity ended. Below the mat there was nothing, just a triangle of flesh. But then Robot B's sister arched her back and he saw that there was something under the mat - the top of a raw pink slash, the color of the skin under a scab. He could feel horror draining the warmth from him. What had happened to Robot B's sister's penis?

"Are you...okay?" he asked her.

"Huh," she said. "Don't stop."

She took his hand and pressed it to the wound. It was still wet, but not with blood. A whitish grease slickened the flesh and matted hair.

"What happened?" he said, staring down at it.

She seemed finally to have noticed him.

"That's my pussy." she said.

"How did it happen?"

"How did it happen?" she repeated, a high waver in her voice. "Every girl robot has one."

It occurred to him that this was what she needed help with. But Robot B was not a doctor - how was he supposed to help her?

She showed him how to move his fingers. He felt through skin, bone and muscle. Why wasn't she crying out in pain? Even now, as his fingers moved into her, why wasn't she screaming? Her eyes closed, her breaths sharpened; but she only pushed against him harder. Robot A moved his hand away from her.

"I said not to stop."

Robot A ran to the door.

"Robot A!" Robot B's sister called after him. Then she started to laugh a little.

"Please, please come back," she said.

She lay back on the bed, legs spread. He could see her pussy more clearly now. He unlocked the door and ran out into the hall.

He went to the bathroom and washed his hands for fifteen minutes. The room's sterile tiles reassured him, but he found it difficult to leave. What if Robot B's sister was waiting for him outside? And Robot B had to be wondering where he was.

He looked at his hands. They were rubbed raw, but he could not forget how her pussy had felt against his skin. It had been like dipping his hand in a jar of slugs.

Justin Isis - Cantopop Hasn`t Been the Same Since Aaron Kwok Sold Out

"Herbert! Good God! Is it possible?"

"Yes, my name's Herbert. I think I know your face, too, but I don't remember your name. My memory is very queer."

"Don't you recollect Villiers of Wadham?"

"So it is, so it is. I beg your pardon, Villiers, I didn't think I was begging of an old college friend. Good-night."

"My dear fellow, this haste is unnecessary. My rooms are close by, but we won't go there just yet. Suppose we walk up Shaftesbury Avenue a little way? But how in heaven's name have you come to this pass, Herbert?"

"It's a long story, Villiers, and a strange one too, but you can hear it if you like."

"Come on, then. Take my arm, you don't seem very strong."

The ill-assorted pair moved slowly up Rupert Street; the one in dirty, evil-looking rags, and the other attired in the regulation uniform of a man about town, trim, glossy, and eminently well-to-do. Villiers had emerged from his restaurant after an excellent dinner of many courses, assisted by an ingratiating little flask of Chianti, and, in that frame of mind which was with him almost chronic, had delayed a moment by the door, peering round in the dimly-lighted street in search of those mysterious incidents and persons with which the streets of London teem in every quarter and every hour. Villiers prided himself as a practised explorer of such obscure mazes and byways of London life, and in this unprofitable pursuit he displayed an assiduity which was worthy of more serious employment. Thus he stood by the lamp-post surveying the passers-by with undisguised curiosity, and with that gravity known only to the systematic diner, had just enunciated in his mind the formula:

"London has been called the city of encounters; it is more than that, it is the city of Resurrections," when these reflections were suddenly interrupted by a piteous whine at his elbow, and a deplorable appeal for alms. He looked around in some irritation, and with a sudden shock found himself confronted with the embodied proof of his somewhat stilted fancies. There, close beside him, his face altered and disfigured by poverty and disgrace, his body barely covered by greasy ill-fitting rags, stood his old friend Charles Herbert, who had matriculated on the same day as himself, with whom he had been merry and wise for twelve revolving terms. Different occupations and varying interests had interrupted the friendship, and it was six years since Villiers had seen Herbert; and now he looked upon this wreck of a man with grief and dismay, mingled with a certain inquisitiveness as to what dreary chain of circumstances had dragged him down to such a doleful pass. Villiers felt together with compassion all the relish of the amateur in mysteries, and congratulated himself on his leisurely speculations outside the restaurant.

They walked on in silence for some time, and more than one passer-by stared in astonishment at the unaccustomed spectacle of a well-dressed man with an unmistakable beggar hanging on to his arm, and, observing this, Villiers led the way to an obscure street in Soho. Here he repeated his question.

"How the fuck has it happened, Herbert? I always understood you would succeed to an excellent position in Dorsetshire. Did your old man disinherit you? Surely not?"

"No, Villiers; I came into all the property at my poor father's death; he died a year after I left Oxford. He was a very good father to me, and I mourned his death sincerely enough. But you know what young men are; a few months later I came up to town and went a good deal into society. And by society I mean clubs where I could practice my considerable para-para dance skills. Of course I had excellent introductions, and I managed to enjoy myself very much in a harmless sort of way. I played a little, certainly, but never for heavy stakes, and the contests I entered brought me in money--only a few pounds, you know, but enough to pay for cigars and such petty pleasures. It was in my second season that the tide turned. Of course you have heard of my marriage?"

"No, I never heard anything about it."

"Yes, I married, Villiers. I met a girl, a girl of the most wonderful and most strange beauty, coming out of Atom in Shibuya one night. I cannot tell you her age; I never knew it,but, so far as I can guess, I should think she must have been about nineteen when I made her acquaintance. My friends had come to know her at Florence; she told them she was an orphan, the child of an English father and an Italian mother, and she charmed them as she charmed me. The first time I saw her was on the psychedelic trance floor. I was standing by the door talking to a friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I heard a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart. She was singing an Italian song. I was introduced to her that evening, and in three months I married Helen. Villiers, that woman, if I can call her woman, corrupted my soul. You, Villiers, you may think you know life, and London, and what goes on day and night in this dreadful city; for all I can say you may have heard the talk of the vilest, but I tell you you can have no conception of what I know, not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams can you have imaged forth the faintest shadow of what I have heard--and seen. Yes, seen. I have seen the incredible, such horrors that even I myself sometimes stop in the middle of the street and ask whether it is possible for a man to behold such things and live. In a year, Villiers, I was a broken man, in body and soul--in body and soul."

"But your property, Herbert? You had land in Dorset."

"I sold all that shit - everything."

"And the money?"

"She took it all from me. Bitch ruined me, Villiers! Before this I had a 401k plan and a two-car garage. I had a flatscreen plasma television and a comprehensive collection of 60`s J-pop; I mean I was shithoarding 60`s J-vinyl. All of it`s gone, Villiers."

"And then she left you?"

"Yes; she disappeared one night. I don't know where she went, but I am sure if I saw her again it would kill me. The rest of my story is of no interest; sordid misery, that is all. You may think, Villiers, that I have exaggerated and talked for effect; but I have not told you half. I could tell you certain things which would convince you, but you would never know a happy day again. You would pass the rest of your life, as I pass mine, a haunted man, a man who has seen hell."

"Come on Herbert, you gotta tell me more of this shit. I honestly don`t know what the fuck you`re talking about."

"Serious?"

"Yeah, shit, you`re being hell vague."

"I dunno. This shit is inconceivable, unspeakable. I can`t tell you any more."

"Herbert, don`t be a little bitch. Tell the fucking story."

"Okay. The night of the wedding, I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel, listening to her talk. She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things which even now I would not dare whisper in the blackest night, though I stood in the midst of a wilderness. Then she started trying to test my dance skills. She was like, `Herbert, your skills are getting weak, can you touch this shit?` Then she started in with this really weak ass routine that even Ken Maeda wouldn`t touch. I was like `Helen, just stop. You`re half-Italian and Italians can`t dance."

"They seriously fucking can`t. God dammit Herbert...we`ve been landed - forever, or so it seems! - with those dull-eyed, olive-skinned chocolate munchers and garlic crushers who are not the least bit English but rather Italian. In short, we`ve been overrun by the Latin race - cocky, treacherous, over-emotional imbeciles one and all that can go to the Devil for all I care!"

Herbert raised his eyebrows.

"My, my," he said, laughing. "Your remarks prove to me that you are interested in 'our own, our native land.' I should never have suspected it of you."

"Of course you wouldn't," said Villiers, lighting a cigarette. "As has so often been said, 'My own, my native land is wherever I happen to feel at home.' Now I don't feel at home except with the people of the North. But I interrupted you. Let's get back to the subject. What were you saying?"

"Okay, yeah. Helen was pissing me off, so I was like `Bitch, stop.` Then I started busting some tight ass moves. So Helen was like, `Okay Herbert, but what about this shit? Then she takes this door out of her pocket..."

"Uhhh, what the fuck?"

"Yeah like this miniature fucking door. And it gets real big all of a sudden and opens, and this Italian monk comes out. He`s like, `Follow me, Herbert...`"

"You told him to fuck off right?"

"Yeah. But he comes out and grabs me and pulls me through the door. And on the other side it`s nothing but Italians. I mean it`s some kind of Italian church with like ten thousand Italians gathered together and all chanting to the Pope, who`s standing at the head of the altar."

"Shit..."

"The Pope looked at me and said, `Italo-disco can`t be stopped. Soon you`ll be dancing to even more Giorgio Moroder-ripoff shit.`

"Impossible!" Villiers exclaimed.

"I said that too," Herbert continued. "And then the Pope said, `When Italo-disco hits lost their popularity in Europe, the Japanese market forced Italian and German producers to evolve the sound to what end up under the term "Eurobeat" and later Super Eurobeat and Eurobeat Flash. Those music styles, under the term Eurobeat, are sold only in Japan due to the Para Para culture there. Italian producers are still producing songs for the Japanese (super) Eurobeat market in the 2000`s. This evolving sound of Italo-disco involves a much higher BPM, as well as more rapid synth-lines and faster vocals. The genre itself upped the BPM in the late 80s, all the way into the 2000s."

"Good God!" Villiers shouted.

"Then...the organ broke out overhead with a blare. A dazzling light filled the church, blotting the altar from my eyes. The Italians faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathomless glare, and I saw the black stars hanging in the heavens: and the wet winds from Lake Como chilled my face. And now, far away, over leagues of tossing cloud-waves, I saw the moon dripping with spray; and beyond, the towers of Rome rose behind the moon. And now I heard his voice, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light, and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me in waves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the Pope whispering to my soul: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!"

Villiers looked at him for a long time.

"Those fucking Italians," he said at last.

The Seventh Night, by Natsume Soseki

Chomu's mysterious editor-in-chief, Mr. Jorkins, apologises for the slight delay in new stories. In the meantime, he asks you to enjoy the translation below of Natsume Soseki's 'The Seventh Night', from Yume Juuya, or Ten Nights of Dream. Night the Second and the Tenth may be found here and here respectively. New stories will follow when the current existential turbulence has passed. Should you experience any cosmic nausea in the meantime, remember your sick-bags are in your imagination.

The Seventh Night

(With thanks to Hayashi-san of Kyoto Univerity Bungakubu)

For some reason, I found myself aboard a gargantuan ship.

Day and night, without a moment’s pause, the ship spewed black smoke and pressed forward, cutting through the waves. The noise was terrific. However, I had no idea where the ship was bound. From the depths of the ocean the sun would rise up like a red hot poker. It would climb until it stood just above the main mast, and just as it seemed to be suspended there it would overtake the great ship, and, before I knew it, disappear into the distance. Finally, sizzling like a red hot poker, it would sink again beneath the waves. Every time it did so the blue waves would boil up in a deep maroon colour. Then the ship would make its terrible din and follow in the sun’s wake. It never caught up.

Once I accosted one of the crew and questioned him.

“Is this ship going west?”

He gave me a suspicious look and, after sizing me up for a while, finally he questioned me in return.

“Why do you ask?”

“It’s just that we seem to be following the setting sun.”

The man cackled. Then he disappeared off in the other direction.

From somewhere there came the sound of jeering voices.

“Is the east the journey’s end for the west-travelling sun? Is that true? Is the west the home of the east-rising sun? Is that also true? Our life is on the waves! An oar for a pillow! Onward! Onward!”

I went to the bow and found a great number of sailors gathered there, hauling in the thick halyard.

I felt exceedingly lonely. I had no idea when I would next set foot on land, and I had no idea where we were going. The only thing that was certain was that the ship went on spewing its black smoke and cutting through the waves. Those waves were a vast expanse, an endless blue with an occasional touch of purple. Only the immediate proximity of the moving ship was any different, being always a perfect white with the spray of churning water. I was terribly lonely. Rather than remain on this terrible ship, it would be better, perhaps, to cast myself overboard.

There were a multitude of passengers, most of whom seemed to be foreign. Their features were not as we typically imagine, but were various. When the sky darkened with clouds and the boat rocked on the waves, a woman would draw up to the handrail and weep continuously. The kerchief with which she dried her eyes flashed white in the gloom. She was wearing a western-style cotton print dress. When I saw this woman I realised I was not the only one who suffered.

One evening I went out on deck to gaze at the stars when one of the foreigners approached me and asked if I knew anything of astronomy. I was so weary that I wished even for death. What use was astronomy to me? I said nothing. Then the foreigner spoke of the Seven Stars that hung above Taurus. He said that the stars and the ocean were all the work of God. Finally, he asked if I had faith in the Lord above. I looked at the sky and said nothing.

On another occasion I entered the bar to find a young woman in a florid dress playing a piano with her back to me. Next to her stood a tall and splendid gentleman singing to her accompaniment. His open mouth appeared cavernously wide. But the two of them seemed utterly indifferent to the world around them. It was as if they had even forgotten they were on this ship.

I grew ever more weary. At last I determined on self-destruction. And so, one evening, at an hour when no one else was around, I leapt wildly over the edge of the ship. However, the instant my feet left the deck and my connection with the ship was broken, my life suddenly became precious to me. At the bottom of my heart I wished that I had changed my mind about jumping. But it was too late. Whether I willed it or no, I was to plunge into the bosom of the ocean. However, it seemed that the hull of the ship was built to a fantastic height, and even though my body had broken contact with the ship, my feet did not soon connect with the water. But there was nothing for me to grasp hold of, and slowly, slowly, I fell towards the waves. However much I drew in my legs, the water still loomed nearer. The colour of the water was black.

Before long, the ship spewed out its usual black smoke and passed on. I realised for the first time that even if I did not know where the ship was bound, it was still better to be on it – realised for the first time only now such knowledge was useless to me. Filled with infinite regret and infinite terror, I continued to fall silently towards the black waves.

Upcoming Chomu Stories

The following stories will be forthcoming on Chomu:

Justin Isis - `Cantopop Hasn`t Been the Same Since Aaron Kwok Sold Out`

Justin Isis - `I Attain to the Level of Fucking Your Basic Hairdresser`

Justin Isis - `Isis Has No Friends`

Quentin S. Crisp - `Living? Our Servants Will Do That For Us, Etc.`

Quentin S. Crisp - `Thomas Ligotti Is My Favorite Flavor of Candy Bar`

More announcements to be made soon.