Welcome to The Sounds Between, the writing blog of Dominic E. Lacasse. I write short stories, scenes, and stream-of-thought narratives of several genres. Please take a look; if you like it, I am happy.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Untitled Cartography Story - Part I

Writer's Note: This is an unfinished work, which means you may see more of it in coming months but certainly nothing for a while. The scope of this story will be quite large and this is definitely only the very beginning. If you're interested, I can say that this story will focus in large part on the so-called Lead Masks Case.

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UNTITLED CARTOGRAPHY STORY
Dominic E. Lacasse


Part I

It is impossible to render a sphere on a two-dimensional surface. This is the inescapable reality which lies at the heart of all modern cartography; geometrically and mathematically, there can be no perfect map.

   Area, shape, direction, bearing, distance, scale. There are a great many properties which must be accounted for in every map projection. However, because there can be no perfect map, sacrifices must be made between these properties. A map may maintain two or three perfectly, but must distort the rest. A map that adequately represents the equatorial regions may scale into infinity at the poles. A map showing perfect angles for nautical work may strangely distort the shape of a land mass. This arithmetic of sacrifice is the language of cartography; specific applications demand the accuracy of specific properties, and this necessarily makes impossible the accuracy of others. In cartography the language of mathematics, that system of representation which we have long held to be the very speech of objectivity, is unable to account for the pure complexity of nature.

   In the 1800s, James Gall stirred up a famous controversy with his equal-area map projection which, by maintaining accurate area instead of angle and shape, impiously shrank North America and the Continent into mere shades of mighty South America and Africa. Arno Peters revised the map in 1967 and the fallout was just as immense, the familiar Mercator projection revealed again as an unsuspected agent of Western aristocracy. It can be difficult when our perceptions are cast from the comfort of assumed objectivity.

   In 1972, I was working at Grayson and Co., a geological survey firm in Boston. I had been working there for some time, having several years earlier completed my degree and begun my career in earnest. The complex mathematical language of map-making was becoming a second dialect to me, and I felt comfortable, even affectionate toward the stubbornness, the evasiveness of the craft.

   The work we were doing at the time was mainly the charting of forests and other undeveloped areas; even in these places, the surface of our world continually changes, and the government of Massachusetts had decided that a new set of topographical maps was in order. After struggling all winter to earn the contract, we now had before us the task of charting all of Massacusetts' forests, translating the wild chaos of nature into the calm, rational standard of human representation.

   I was the only one in the office when he first came to us. It was a Saturday, and while the more senior members of my firm were resting comfortably at home, I had decided to come in and work. The street outside the door was almost empty and the office itself was silent except for my pencil scratches and a small transistor radio whining away in a far corner. I was perched on a stool, a messy rough draft spread out on a large easel in front of me. To an outside observer, I suppose it would have hardly looked like a map at all; it showed an area with no real points of interest, merely contour lines drawn and redrawn among scrawled mathematical calculations and points of elevation. A cold half-cup of coffee sat nearby, and the floor was littered with pencils, scraps of paper, and measuring tools.

   Into this chaos walked a man with the unmistakable air of the casually wealthy. He was wearing a tailored suit and his hands were impeccably clean. His broad face bore a large, bushy moustache, and the very slightest note of disdain, which he wore almost apologetically, as if to say it was directed not at myself in particular, but rather the world at large. I stepped down from my stool and strode over to greet him.

   He shook my hand quickly and introduced himself as Mr. Elliot Tiberius Lowell. If his mannerisms had not given him away, his name and his accent would have; American aristocracy the way only Massachusetts is old enough to remember, the Lowell family of the famed 'Boston Brahmin.' These were the legendary families that had settled Boston and New England-- Adams, Cabot, Emerson, Phillips, and the rest-- and now in many cases the families had become little more than independent corporations managing their own money. Mr. Lowell's family was stronger in the North, where they had been sent as the emissaries and defenders of British civilization in the days of French colonialism. Even so, I was sure that his name turned heads in Boston, as did that unmistakable Brahmin accent, which rang of Kennedy and the liberal East.

   I offered him some coffee and he accepted. I refilled my own cup and poured one for him, wondering as I did if he had ever drank coffee from a paper cup in his entire life. He raised an eyebrow at the cup suspiciously, as if expecting it to tip of its own accord. He took a sip and seemed nonplussed. Finally he spoke.

   "I may have need of your firm, Mr...?"

   "Bailey," I introduced myself. "Martin Bailey."

   "Mr. Bailey. Well, I am considering purchasing a certain plot of land, and I need a map before I make my decision. I'll be building a large summer home there and my architects will need an up-to-date chart of the area."

   "I'm afraid we don't sell our maps here, Mr. Lowell," I said, "but if you check with the Department of Agricultural Resources, I’m sure they'll have copies of all-"

   "I'm not interested in that, Mr. Bailey. The land I am looking to purchase is not in Massachusetts. It is in Brazil."

   I gave him a long look. "Mr. Lowell, our firm operates almost exclusively within Massachusetts. We have worked occasionally in New Hampshire and in Maine, but you can't seriously expect us to have mapped any area in Brazil. You'll need to get in touch with cartographers from the area."

   The man sighed. He gave me a look that called me a fool without his ever opening his mouth. "No, Mr. Bailey," he said, "I am looking to commission your firm." His eyes settled on a large world map which hung from one wall of the office. "Come," he said brusquely, and moved toward the map. I followed behind.

   "We're quite busy, Mr. Lowell..." I protested as he bent to scrutinize the map. "We have a very important contract that we're working on and-"

   "Shh!" Lowell traced the East coast of South America with a manicured finger. "Here, you see?" He pointed to a tiny island just south-southwest of Rio de Janeiro. "Isla Grande. Finest climate in the world. Warm but not arid, two hundred sunny days in a year. Paradise on Earth."

   I looked at the island with some skepticism. I wasn't a fan of the heat-- even Boston was a little too warm for me in the summer-- and that aside, South America seemed to me a damn long haul for paradise. I'd travelled enough to find that paradise exists almost anywhere; building a summer home in Rio de Janeiro seemed to me more an act of vanity than anything else. "It sounds wonderful, Mr. Lowell," I said with a note of exasperation. "But again, we don't work in Brazil. I'm sure there are some fine cartographers down there that can help you out."

   Mr. Lowell snorted. "Yes, I'm sure they're just fine," he said, "but I am not employing any foreigners in the construction of this house; I would not feel comfortable doing so. My architects will be American, my engineers and laborers will be American, and they must have a proper American map. A proper Boston map. I will not take no for an answer."

   We stood in silence for a moment, him admiring the tiny blob of ink that represented his paradise, me watching him, wondering what kind of wealth a man must have to be driven to such frivolous and pointless spending. He turned abruptly.

   "You think I'm a fool, don't you?" he asked, his voice curious, not angry. I stared at him, trying to devise a suitable response. He spoke again before I succeeded. "You think I'm some rich fool who has run out of ways to spend his money, am I correct?" I suddenly noticed that beneath his bushy eyebrows, his small blue eyes were piercing and focused.

   "Mr. Lowell, I don't think you're a fool, it's only-"

   "It's only that you don't see the point in sending an American map-maker to Brazil to map a Brazilian island, yes?"

   I nodded.

   "Well, you and I have different goals, Mr. Bailey. Your goal is to get this fool out of your office and resume your normal work. Charting the forests, is it? A noble endeavor. My goal, however, is the speedy construction of this house. Isla Grande has never been mapped by an American firm. My crew will be American, working in American measurements and in the English language. My plans do not include hiring an interpreter simply to explain the map of the area. My plans certainly do not include any grievous errors that could arise from miscalculations of measurement. I see from your face that you consider these scenarios unlikely; I will remind you, however, that this project is being undertaken on the other side of the world, and I am not a man who takes a great many chances."

   He paused and scrutinized me for a moment before turning back to the map and aimlessly scanning the Canadian Rockies. "In any case," he continued, "this is all beside the point. The point, Mr. Bailey, is that you and I have different goals. Since I must have the island mapped, and my research indicates that yours is the best firm for the business, I must find some way of making my goals, your goals." He turned and gave me a wry smile. "Luckily, that is the express purpose of money."

   "I'm not sure you understand exactly how expensive and time-consuming this would be, Mr. Lowell. Measurements, drafting, travel expenses..."

   Lowell waved his hand at the mention of money as though trying to bat away a fly. "Money is no issue," he said, "You shall be flown to Rio de Janeiro. There is a Brazilian survey firm across the bay in Niteroi; you will be given funds with which to hire one of their cartographers for the purposes of translating the current map and assisting with your measurements. Upon your return, I will compensate your firm to the tune of two thousand dollars."

   I held up a hand. "Wait one moment, Mr. Lowell," I said, "I'm still not sure if the firm will sign on to this project, and even assuming they do, I don't expect they'll send me to do the measurements."

   "Your superiors are busy with their new contract," Mr. Lowell said, "and we older gentlemen don't relocate easily. I will insist that it is you who makes the trip; like I said, I leave little to chance, and I have done my homework on you as well."

   Before I could ask what he could have meant by that, he was on his way out the door. He turned in the doorway, reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a silver case. He opened the case and extracted a business card, placing it carefully on a nearby table. "I will be in touch," he called as he walked out.

   I watched him go, and then picked up his card. It read ELLIOT TIBERIUS LOWELL, and nothing else.

   Lowell’s comments regarding the lethargy of old age proved prophetic; I saw nothing of my employers that day. I sat in silence for the rest of the day, hunched over the easel on my stool, carefully plotting guidelines, marking in the tiny concentric circles indicating the hills and ditches of a plot of land that human eyes would probably almost never see. I put Lowell’s card on my boss’s desk and tried to put it out of my own mind. As I worked, though, I would often lift my head and gaze wide-eyed around the office; I knew I would not find anything, was not even really looking for anything. My mind was telling me that something terribly serious was happening to me—good Lord, Brazil!—and though I attempted to force the thought away, my instinct was to remain aware of my surroundings, lest some other bourgeois tornado come reeling into the room and whisk me off to Dubai or Finland.

   I tried to put Lowell's offer out of my mind, not because I felt he was anything less than completely serious about the project, but because I felt for sure that my superiors would never sign on. The contract we had for the forests would not be completed for almost a year, longer if I were to take off on this ridiculous trip. Despite the man's assuredness regarding the power of money to change a person's goals, we were a small firm and this contract needed to be finished. Responsibilities at home outweighed ventures overseas.

   In point of fact, as the day went on, I became less excited about the possibility of the trip and more irritated by Lowell's presumptuous nature, his dogged determination that his money could gain him anything he desired. Aside from being a paid contract, what we were doing in Massachusetts was important work; our maps would be the standard for the entire state, for as long as they lasted. Having been responsible for what would essentially be a part of the nation's official conciousness-- it's not the world's greatest achievment, but it would be something, something real-- and here this man thinks that he can stroll into my office and throw me some coins, and all of that goes out the window? So I could make his 'proper American map' and he could build his ostentatious pleasure-house with his family's money? The notion began to disgust me.

   At one point my frustration overtook my professionalism and I made a sloppy line on the map, poorly measured, poorly drawn, off-projection so obviously that a child could see. I threw my pencil across the room in anger. It bounced off a far wall and rolled under a filing cabinet. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. The words Brazil, Isla Grande, Niteroi, Lowell had been clamoring through my brain all day and I felt that the sound of them was beginning to drive me mad. I snapped the lights off, locked the front door and stepped out into the night.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Persistence - Part I: Halifax

Writer's Note: This story, "Persistence", is my longest and most involved. I will be posting each section individually, likely over a somewhat long period of time. This draft is not the final edit of this story, but any changes between here and then will likely be minor.

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PERSISTENCE
Dominic E. Lacasse


Part II: Triumph (Link)
Part III: Stories (Link)
Part IV: Ellen (Link)

Part I: Halifax

   In the summer of 1958, I was preparing for my final year of study at my small university in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I was studying folklore and mythology, fairy-tales and urban legends. The stories that settle around any human area, the stories that come into and out of our minds, as surely as air to our lungs. I was romanced by the idea that these stories were everywhere, the kind of things that hide just below the surface of human life, stories that are considered uncouth and pointless by the society in whose creation they play such an intimate role.

   Convinced as I was of the presence of these stories in every human society large or small, it was a habit of mine to take short weekend trips to the small towns of Nova Scotia’s south shore to plunder fresh material. I devoured these stories, carefully marking them down in small black notebooks held together with masking tape at the spine, kept closed with frayed and drying elastic bands. As an H.P. Lovecraft devotee, my favorite stories involved the macabre– I had visions of carefully recording these wonderful creations of the general and undeniable insanity of the common human soul, publishing them in some great black tome that would rumble a deep bass thunder when dropped on a coffee table. A book whose indomitable mute presence would shock an entire room into uneasy silence. I knew I would never want for material; the unwritten tales in the communal consciousness of a small town are nearly always gruesome, if not outright disturbing. My duty was merely to find them.

   I had recently received a letter from a friend and planned to read it quite carefully, given that it was of importance to the next trip I had planned. This friend of mine shared my love of man’s unrecorded nightmares and had heard of a small town named Triumph, somewhere a few miles down the coast from Lunenberg. He had heard rumors of some strange mythology or superstition in which the town was involved and, happening to be driving through the area, stopped in to ask some questions. I gathered that his search was unsuccessful, and he went off to find his imagined subterranean cult elsewhere. Nevertheless in conversation he returned to Triumph often, and though he had nothing of a particularly gruesome nature to recall, I noticed a distinct change in his voice and his eyes whenever the topic came up. Slowly I became convinced that there was more to this story than I was being told. I suspected my friend of no trickery, but assumed that perhaps he had only touched the surface of something, something more subtle than he had at first imagined, and though he had concluded the search was pointless, I suspected there was perhaps more to be found.

   It being summer, my friend had gone home to his parents’ house in Moncton by the time my curiosity got the better of me and I had decided on a trip to the mysterious town. I penned him a letter, explaining my intentions and asking for directions and advice. Now that I had his reply, my planning could begin in earnest. Sitting down at my kitchen table, I opened the envelope and read the following:

   July 14, 1958

   Dear Jason,

   Glad to hear from you! I’m happy to hear that everything is going well. Aside from a devastating kind of boredom, I am also in relatively good spirits. I have found work as a government clerk. It pays well but is quite tedious, and I am looking forward to returning to the collegiate life.

   So you’re planning to visit Triumph, are you? Listen, my friend, I think I should tell you at the outset that I think it’s a bad idea. It’s not for your safety that I caution you, merely to keep you from wasting your time. Triumph, aside from lacking any kind of interesting legend that I could come across, is simply not a very hospitable town. It’s a fishing village of three hundred at most, with very little in the way of modern conveniences. The local people aren’t overly fond of outsiders and will not treat you with a great deal of hospitality. Were there something of note worth recording about the folklore of Triumph (which I seriously doubt there is) you’d need the devil himself to get it out of them.

   If you are determined to see Triumph, however, I can try to help as best I can. I don’t know exactly how to get there, only that it’s quite near Lunenberg. I simply went to Lunenberg and offered a man with a pickup truck a dollar for a drive out there. I suggest you try to make a similar arrangement to save yourself some trouble; half of the small towns on the shore aren’t even on most maps, and I doubt seriously that Triumph is on any.

   Once you get to Triumph, there’s a large granite building near the waterfront. Its owner is a man named Cyrus Peterson, and he rents a few rooms to travelers. It’s hardly luxurious, but it’s the closest thing to a hotel you’re going to find. It’s also worth noting that Cyrus and his son Jebediah were the greatest help in my own research, as they are much more amenable to outsiders than the rest of the townsfolk. Cyrus is greatly learned in the town’s history and Jebediah is quite familiar with its streets and locales. He may be willing to show you around, and his father will be happy to tell you anything you care to learn, as long as you provide him an ample supply of whiskey. I will write them now and tell them a friend of mine may be stopping in.

   Beyond that there’s little I can tell you. If you’re hell-bent on going through with this then I wish you the best of luck, although again, I would advise against it. When a town like Triumph is subjected to the investigational brilliance of a man like myself, nothing remains unhidden!

   Warm Regards,
   David Riley


   The caution he advised did not seem strange to me at the time. David often remarked on Triumph’s dullness, but I knew that there were stories everywhere, probably more numerous in places where other forms of entertainment are sparse. I was quite happy to read that the town had a hotel and that what seemed like a very knowledgeable resident had been alerted to my arrival. I was certain that this was merely a matter of asking the right questions, which my friend had not done. I was getting a good feeling about this trip and felt sure I would uncover something fascinating about the town of Triumph. I packed my things and set off for the road.


   That day the weather favored me, which was a stroke of luck, because the traffic did not. I walked for what seemed like ten miles before a passing motorist acknowledged my desperate thumb and pulled over to let me in. The driver was a young woman who talked my ear off about nearly every aspect of her life. That ride took me most of the way to Lunenberg; the rest of the trip I shared with several large bags of grain in the back of a rumbling, coughing flatbed. I arrived in Lunenberg at a fortuitous time, when several residents of the nearby villages were gathering supplies. I found a teenager who was in town buying huge spools of rope and he offered me a ride free of charge, which I gladly accepted.

   The drive took about half an hour. From Lunenberg the road grew narrower and more rough. We turned on to what seemed like an access road, barely wide enough for the truck itself; once or twice my driver had to carefully detour into the woods to allow the passage of other vehicles coming from the other direction. Small hand-painted signs pointed this way and that, down roads even more close and tangled. We turned at the sign marked TRIUMPH and bumped along through clawing branches for a mile or so before the forest suddenly dropped away and I saw we were driving through a large yellowish field. Far to the right, that field drew close to the endless storm-grey ocean which lapped at Triumph’s weathered shore. A slight mist turned to heavy fog quickly as we drove, and evening began to close in. Looking out the window, I saw first scattered sheds and warehouses, then poorly-maintained houses on the perimeter, becoming more dense and somewhat more presentable the closer we got to the town proper. When we arrived at what I took to be the main road, there were very few people on the streets. Peering into windows I saw large stoic mothers preparing bottomless stews on wood stoves.

   “Well, you going anywhere in particular?” my young driver asked. It was one of a very few things he’d said since we met.

   “Do you know a Cyrus Peterson? I was told he rents rooms.”

   “Yeah.” the youth replied curtly, taking the next right. After a few seconds we were outside the hotel. Large and granite-faced, stained with the rains of decades by the sea. Not ominous, but ancient and lifeless, grey. A light, cold rain was beginning to fall. In the yellowing glow of a streetlight the rain billowed like sheets in the wind, washing against the granite behemoth. Somewhere the rain dripped and plinked onto something metal. I climbed down from the cab.

   “I live up the street here, brown house. You need anything, let me know.” I turned to thank my driver but he was already pulling away. The look he gave me as he drove away was not a trusting one.

   Eager to get out of the rain myself, I went into the hotel. I was in a sort of parlor, and the rooms were suffused in a dull yellow light. To one end of the room was a massive wooden desk. From a door behind the desk, a large man suddenly burst into the room. He was broad-chested and stout, wearing a white shirt to match his hair and chomping on the end of an unlit cigar. He gave me a grin.

   “Hello there!” he called. “Hell of a night, isn’t it?” I looked out a dirty window and saw that the light rain had turned into a proper storm. Waves of rain crashed and foamed in the street. A gust of wind shook the window in its sash.

   “Yes,” I replied. “It came on fast. I hope it’s not here to stay.”

   “Oh, don’t you worry about that,” the man smiled. “It’ll blow itself out soon. We get lots of little squalls like this around here. I’ll bet it’ll be a fine day tomorrow.”

   “Good to hear.” I stepped up to the desk. “You must be Cyrus Peterson?”

   The man nodded. “And yourself?”

   “I’m a friend of David Riley, I was told he’d written to inform you of my arrival.”

   “Oh yes, that’s right. That guy was out of his head. Thought we were some crazy people out here.” Cyrus laughed loudly. “Imagine that! I believe he’d been listening a bit too long to those shows on the radio.”

   Cyrus saw me to a comfortable room. As David had warned, modern conveniences were conspicuously absent. What troubled me most was the lack of a telephone; I had expected at least to see one behind the counter downstairs. When I asked, Cyrus told me that telephones had simply never become popular in Triumph. “Nobody sees the point,” he told me. “Everybody you’d want to talk to lives right down the street.” However, aside from the lack of the telephone and the general antiquated appearance of the furniture and appliances, the room seemed perfectly reasonable. I was suddenly struck by a profound exhaustion. I had hoped to stay up late and try to get some stories out of Cyrus, but instead I simply laid back on my bed, kicked off my shoes and drifted into a deep sleep.

   I was suddenly awoken several hours later by something I could not identify. I thought it had been a dog’s bark, but upon reflection I was sure there had been no noise at all. Nevertheless my every muscle was tensed, my hands in tight fists, my eyes staring fixedly into the inky black void in front of me. I was sure something was outside my window.

   Turning and switching on the tiny electric light on my bedside table, I walked to the window and opened it. Outside I saw nothing but the rain, lessened again now, drifting over the street like fine snow. If there was something here it was here no longer. With a sigh I turned back to my bed, prepared to surrender my search and go back to sleep. Just then, in the corner of my eye, I noticed something moving. My eyes snapped to a small figure, hidden almost completely in shadow, only the suggestion and metaphor of a person amidst blackness. A young woman, perhaps, huddling in a fetal position, hands covering eyes in equal parts shame and fear. Nothing was said but I knew her name. It was Ellen Daress.

   And then the room was flooded with light. I was in my bed. The corner of the room where the figure had been was empty. The window was still shut, the light on the table extinguished. For all its imagined reality, my encounter with the figure had been a dream and nothing more. Yet the name would not leave me and remained foremost in my mind as I climbed out of bed and looked for the shower.

Monday, September 22, 2008

The Hatmaker Cycle - Part III: Retribution

THE HATMAKER CYCLE
A Tale of Intrigue, Headwear, and Justice
Dominic E. Lacasse


Part III: Retribution

   The bastard. The dirty bastard.

   Michael pulled the chamber open and snapped it closed. It was a good gun. Well, he assumed it was a good gun. He didn’t know a whole lot about guns but the guy who had sold this gun to him told him it was a good gun, and judging by the gigantic white van full of guns that the guy drove around, it probably wasn’t unrealistic to assume the guy knew a thing or two about guns.

   In any case, it would do the job. Michael was angry- Shakespeare-style murdering-angry- he was angry, but he wasn’t stupid. And when that son of a bitch got what was coming to him, Michael wouldn’t be anywhere near the place. Peering through the massive scope, Michael would strike from a distance. He would forego the intense pleasure of seeing the bastard die, up close and personal, because he had no desire to spend the rest of his life in a Mexican jail for shooting a hatmaker.

   He sat back on his haunches, careful not to topple off the side of the wall and into the stream rushing along nearby. It was a good spot- it was out of the way with zero witnesses, it gave him a good view of the bastard’s shop and would allow for immediate disposal of the murder weapon, but if you had to pick any spot to sit your ass for hours on end, the top of an old granite wall would probably be pretty far down on your list. He hoisted the rifle again, feeling the ache in his arm as he did so. You better hurry your ass up and stand by your window for a good minute or so, you old son of a bitch.

   Michael had given the situation a lot of thought in recent days. He was queasy about killing someone. Hell, to tell the truth and save a lie he was downright terrified. But it had to be done. He was sure of that. The dirty bastard had ruined his father’s life, and a son has to honor his father. It says so right in the Bible. He wished he could have been the one to find them, not his father, his father who of course had simply left. Michael would have given the son of a bitch his reward right then, with his bare hands if it came to that.

   This hatmaker had seduced his father’s wife. Not his mother, thankfully- she had died years ago- but there was no doubt in Michael’s mind that his father had loved this woman, that her betrayal had scarred him deeply. It had driven him to that harlot, hadn’t it? And that had resulted in his almost complete financial destruction. And that, on top of everything else, had resulted in his suicide. Michael had been the one to stumble upon that scene, his father swaying gently under the tree out back, his face blue. Killed, in essence, by a dirty fucking hatmaker. Well, terrified as he was of the prospect, Michael was going to settle the score today.

   He was going to settle the score right now, he realized, as he snapped back to reality. The hatmaker had finished whatever he was working on and leaned back in his chair, just barely exposing his head to Michael’s scope through the plate glass window. Michael would have preferred to have the bastard standing in plain view but after two hours sitting on a granite wall he was ready to take what he could get. He aimed carefully. He could make the shot, he thought. He had been practicing for the last couple days and as it turned out he had something of a knack for sniping. Something he probably would have never learned if not for this ridiculous turn of events.

   Michael held his breath. He willed his hand to steadiness, squeezed the trigger slightly with a sweaty fingertip. He said a hail Mary and prepared to take his shot. Now or never, Michael.

   A flash of green.
   He pulled the trigger and felt the recoil.

   His heart thumped painfully in his chest. It had happened so fast and he had not been able to stop himself in time. Good lord, what had happened? What had he done?

   Almost against his will, he put his eye to the scope, hoping to God that it had been a trick of his eye, that the hatmaker and only the hatmaker was now lying dead.

   Oh God. A green dress. Long, blonde hair.

   Michael lost all ability to reason. He didn’t care, anymore, even if he was caught. He had the presence of mind to toss the rifle into the brook rushing by the wall, and he dropped to the ground and set off at a run for the hatmaker’s shop.

   There were screams as he reached the square. While the onlookers could only stand by and stare with horrified expressions at the dying woman, Michael could not help but run up to the angel he had inadvertently destroyed.

   The harlot. Good God.

   In a blinding flash Michael saw it all. This was not an accident. This was the work of God. There was no other explanation. He had been angry. He had been Shakespeare-style murdering-angry. But he had been angry at the wrong person. Who was this hatmaker? An honest man, a man who took pride in a simple trade. An honest man who had done wrong, there was no doubt about that, but everyone does wrong. This man’s crime was loving another man’s wife. The harlot had been the one who destroyed his father’s life, taking him in his moment of greatest weakness, pretending to love him. Michael had been right to buy the gun but he had aimed it at the wrong person. And, in the very last second, in His great wisdom, God had put the right person between his crosshairs.

   The door jerked open. “Ay dios mio!” came the cry from his one-time enemy. Michael spoke in a daze. “We need to call the police.” Perhaps he would turn himself in, perhaps he would not. He thought not. If God desired him to be caught, he would be caught. His eyes traveled up the harlot’s body and moved to meet Juan’s eye but they stopped at his chest, where a perfect hat rested atop a heaving breast. It was the most beautiful hat he had ever seen.

The Hatmaker Cycle - Part II: Violation

THE HATMAKER CYCLE
A Tale of Intrigue, Headwear, and Justice
Dominic E. Lacasse


Part II: Violation

   She smiled as the hot breeze blew across her face. Swinging by her side was a black purse, loaded to the brim with American bills. The results of her latest tragic divorce. That made fifty-six, if her count was right; a number which nobody would ever know, least of all the American authorities or any of her past or future would-be soul-mates. A lady never tells.

   This last had been a breeze, though it had taken a little longer than it should have. A wealthy American businessman, jaded as could be, saddled with a plain and aging wife who, she assumed, failed to arouse his sensations the way a lithe young blonde would. Curiously enough, however, the trouble with this last job had been convincing her mark to leave the bloated old wench. If she had believed in love she might have applied the term to this kind of utterly foolish attachment. She had nearly given up hope, resigned herself to the fact that this businessman would never allow her to become anything more than a girlfriend on the side. She laughed softly as she strolled down the street– he was either very optimistic or very stupid if he ever sincerely believed that an overweight forty-something number-cruncher could possibly satisfy a gorgeous woman like herself, and as a girlfriend, no less.

   In any case, just as she was getting ready to cut her losses and run, God proved once again that He loves a thief. She wished she could have seen the look on the old man’s face as he opened the door to his bedroom only to find his wife engaged in something rather frantic, under the covers with another man. He told her that he didn’t even say a word. He took everything that would fit in his car and drove off to find the gorgeous blonde who had stolen his heart. Because he knew they were destined to be together, forever, and nothing else mattered. Two weeks later they were husband and wife. A month after that she was strolling down the sidewalk in the summer sun with a black purse and a bank account both full to bursting.

   She was ready to go. She had grown somewhat tired of Mexico and she had her eye on somewhere a little cooler. England, perhaps, maybe work her way toward Italy. She had never seen Italy and she imagined the rich men there were as desperate as they were in Mexico, or America, or Canada, or anywhere else on this ridiculous planet. Yes, she was ready to move on, but she wanted to do one more job. Just a little one. She had no idea why but she felt compelled to pull a one-night job, the kind she used to do when she was poor and had yet to realize the full potential of a rocky divorce. The kind of job that takes no planning- find a guy, get him to bring you home, fuck him until he falls asleep, rob him blind and get the hell out. She normally wouldn’t consider risking it, but as she was ready to leave anyway the chances of her getting caught were slim to none. That’s it, then. The next shop, perhaps. I’ll go into this next shop and we’ll see what develops.

   She stepped to the door and her hand reached for the knob when she suddenly felt a burning pain in her chest. She had heard no noise, felt no impact, but it felt as though someone had stabbed her with a red-hot dagger. She considered briefly that it could be a heart attack, but that was foolish. She fell to the ground as the blood made a mess of her new green dress. And she did so like this dress.

   As her vision began to darken she half-heard the door swing open, half-saw her would-be victim staring at her in horror. She had a strange sensation that another had arrived, who? She couldn’t see anything anymore. She was briefly struck by the silence, the utter silence. And then there was no more.

The Hatmaker Cycle - Part I: Dedication

THE HATMAKER CYCLE
A Tale of Intrigue, Headwear, and Justice
Dominic E. Lacasse


Part I: Dedication

   Juan carefully shaped the leather fedora into a perfect crease. He realized he'd been holding his breath and released it in a slow, easy exhale. Another perfect hat. He sat back on his stool and looked around: perfect hats everwhere. He basked in his perfect hats. Nobody could make a hat like Juan. Fucking nobody.

   Suddenly there was a commotion outside his door. Most people who came through Juan's door were insipid tourists looking for a hat, any old hat, so they could wear it and when people asked where they'd gotten it they could say quite casually "Oh, this old thing? I picked it up in Mexico." People like that didn't appreciate a fine hat. And if they weren't tourists they were greasy workers, looking for something to keep their faces out of the sun. Juan would spend ten or fifteen minutes carefully pitching the exquisite Panama he had spent nine hours crafting with the utmost care and the dirty bastards would say "Do you have something with a wider brim?" They said it in Spanish, of course, but somehow that made it even more insulting.

   In either case, neither of his standard customers ever made anything that could be called a commotion, as such. They just sort of sauntered in through the door and peered about quietly while Juan steamed at their lack of appreciation for his perfect hats. This commotion, however, was a commotion indeed, and Juan carefully set the fedora on the counter and walked briskly to the door.

   His brain half-registered the horrified scream of an onlooker as he grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door open to reveal a woman at his doorstep. She was beautiful, he half-thought. Gorgeous, really. She had long, blonde hair, a green dress that clung lovingly to her full, round breasts. Her legs were milky-white serpents enchanting him with their visual siren's call, terminating in delicate, perfect feet clad in the finest sandals Juan had ever seen. She was also rapidly dying of a bullet wound to her left lung.

   "Ay dios mio!" Juan shouted as he watched her struggling on his doorstep. A man, running, to the door of his shop. "We must call the police!" he yelled, yet Juan himself had already grasped that the urgency so apparent in the young man's voice was unecessary. They could take their time calling the police-- the gorgeous blonde woman had gasped her last breath and lay dead on the step. A chilling quiet fell over the market square, each onlooker refusing to believe what they had just witnessed. For such a beautiful, perfect young woman to be gunned down in front of a poor Tijuana hatmaker's shop-- somehow it was more of an injustice than any of them had encountered. Juan searched his heart for the right words but found no words at all. So he was silent as he removed the hat from his head and put it to his heart, a tribute to the ravishing woman he had never known, who had been so tragically cut down in the prime of her life.

   Sweat poured down the young man's face. He was too late. He was stunned, as if he had been shot himself. The deafening silence continued. It was as if even the animals were struck dumb by this travesty. The market that was normally frantic with activity was utterly, deathly silent. Juan finally broke his gaze from the woman's bloody body; he had decided to bring the woman inside, close the door, and call the police. He looked to the young man, hoping to gain his help to bring her perfect body into his shop so that he could make that terrible call, but the young man would not meet his gaze. He was staring, incredulous, at the hat that rested atop Juan's heaving chest.

   The young man gulped twice to gain his voice. "That is the most beautiful hat I've ever seen." he finally croaked, and wandered into Juan's shop, carefully stepping over the perfect body that obstructed his path to Juan's perfect hats.

   Nobody could make a hat like Juan. Motherfucking nobody.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

A Lost Sun

A LOST SUN
Dominic E. Lacasse


  God created a male and female Leviathan, then killed the female and salted it for the righteous, for if the Leviathans were to procreate the world could not stand before them.
-Rashi, Commentary on Genesis 1:21

   June eighth, 2007. This was the day we lost the sun.

   I grew up by the ocean. The sea was a huge part of the life of my small Maine town. Everyone worked at the fish plant, or on the boats, or in the marina where all the boats were hauled and launched and painted and scraped. Everyone had something to do with the ocean; that was what it meant to live where I lived.

   However, despite living immediately next to the surging grey waters all my life, I gave little thought to their mysteries. I remember hearing that we know more about outer space than we do our own oceans. After June eighth, I am inclined to believe this to be true. The depths of the sea keep many things hidden, things which perhaps we were not meant to see, things which remain hidden for a reason.

   I once read about an event known as “the Bloop.” This was a sound recorded by an undersea microphone. It was perplexing to scientists because it carried the audio signature of a living creature, but was so immensely loud that if it was living, it must have been several times larger than even a blue whale. No creature of this size is known to exist- or indeed to have ever existed at any point in the world’s history. This sound was recorded once, and once only. It was heard twice. Once by a microphone bobbing in a hard plastic cage hanging from a buoy somewhere in the Pacific, and once by the residents of my town. That was June eighth, the day we lost the sun. Now, nothing makes sense. If a thing like the thing that came among us on that day can exist, then the world is not a place of logic. Every day I wonder if I’ve gone insane.

   On the morning of the eighth I was heading to school, making my way down Lower Water street, just above the breakwater that formed the borders of humanity. It was an unusually calm day, as I recall. The town was just waking up. All around me I heard the sounds of a new day, saw my neighbors bearing the kind of placid happiness that one only feels on a chilly morning by the sea. The sun was rising through a hazy fog over the bay.

   I don’t know if I was the first to see it. I was gazing out to sea, hoping to see a whale, or perhaps an osprey or eagle soaring over the water. What I saw was an immense darkness, a shadow bigger than a house. At first I thought it was some kind of illusion, but it neither faded nor slipped away. Rather, it was moving toward shore with sleek and elegant bursts of motion. Before it rose a crest like I’d only seen ships make, and behind it a wake that was turning the entire bay from still water to a slowly churning bed of blue-gray.

   By now others had seen the shadow. We simply stood and watched it. Nobody said anything to anyone. It was as though we understood our inability to comprehend whatever this was with words. We were silenced by the immensity of what was happening, though we did not as yet understand anything about it. Of course, we still don’t.

   The shadow slowed and stopped about a hundred feet from shore. The silence was deafening, every eye focused on the mysterious darkness that now lay motionless, blackening nearly half the bay with its immensity.

   And then, in one swift motion, the creature lunged from the water. Massive sprays of water seemed to hold glitteringly motionless in the sky as the great beast rose, higher than the houses on the waterfront, higher than the church steeple. Its great shadow covered block after block of our city as the creature finally reached its full height and seemed to settle on the sea floor.

   We were looking at a creature fully two hundred feet tall if it was an inch. The very act of its standing displaced enough water to briefly ground some of the boats on the waterfront. Its head was oar-shaped and massive, the water spilling from its sides back into the bay a roaring thunder. Below the head we could see only two massive limbs, as wide as redwood trees. Strange parasites, creatures the size of men that seemed to be all mouth, clung desperately to the creature’s flanks, so tiny in proportion that they seemed to go unnoticed. On either side of the creature’s immense head were its eyes, immense black orbs, at least twenty feet in diameter, glittering with an obvious intelligence which made the creature even more terrifying.

   We stood dumbfounded, to scared even to scream or flee. For a silent moment the creature regarded us with apparent curiosity. We simply stared back, unable to think. There we stood, human and leviathan, there we stood silent and waiting.

   And then the creature sounded its call. A minor note like the trumpeting of some unreal instrument of war blasted through our town in a cavalry charge of sound. Trees on the waterfront were broken clean from their trunks by the fury of the leviathan’s cry. A crescendo of breaking glass signaled the shattering of every window for half a mile. All who watched were thrown to the ground, the sheer force of the noise knocking us backwards several feet and sending us tumbling. Suddenly a large field of grass above Lower Water street burst violently into a maelstrom of flame. All who stood there were immediately incinerated as a vast tower of fire reached into the heavens. The note and the fire sustained and grew louder for several seconds before both suddenly vanished into the morning air. The monster stared silently.

   At last fear gave way to panic. We still could not think after what we had witnessed. We stampeded like cattle from the behemoth that had cursed us with his presence. I ran too, passing old women with broken bones sobbing in the street, passing a brother and sister clinging to each other and wailing with fear. I saw the men running up from the waterfront. Those who had been close to the monster looked like the retreating survivors of some hideous battle, with blood pouring from their ears down the sides of their faces. All was dust and smoke and glass and gravel and fear.

   As we ran the beast slowly turned and began to stride out to sea, crushing boats and raising great clouds of water until it at last slipped under the waves and was gone, as though it had never been.

   Soon we stopped running. We could no longer go on. The shock of what had happened sapped the energy from us and left us panting in the streets. I could just barely hear the sounds of the people around me, the cadence of running feet, the unnatural scream of car alarms, the too-natural wails of the injured and the frightened and the insane. And then a crack. There was a hollow, wooden cracking noise which seemed to rise from the bowels of the earth itself. And then another. The sound of cracking wood, as though some great giant was breaking a tree over his knee, crescendoed and filled the town. The screaming and wailing matched the rise in volume as we awaited with horrified certainty the next abomination to descend.

   In the field of ash above Lower Water street, a massive tree sprang from the ground. Slowly it rose into the sky, its trunk seeming to spiral larger and larger as it rose higher and higher, higher than the tallest buildings in town, taller even than the monster itself. Its branches spread like the arms of death, like a plague, and on them grew malformed leaves of black. The tree grew and grew, its boughs reaching out to cover the entire town, its leaves growing in dense thickets, bristling and dark. Slowly the leaves took over the sky, turning the grey sky black from one end of town to the other, closing us in, executing the final curse, blotting out the sun. In darkness now, we again fell silent. I listened to my own breathing and stared ahead and saw nothing. That day, we lost the sun.

   We would eventually find that the tree could not be cut by any blade we tried on it. Even when, in our desperation, we took the town’s stock of blasting dynamite and detonated it at the base of the great horror, the tree remained unscathed. We found that the branches bowed down to the ground in a wide perimeter around the city, the boughs hemming in on themselves in an unholy wall stronger than the most secure prison. We did not need to learn these things to know that we were trapped by something that could never be destroyed. We knew that as soon as we first saw the profane thing break from the roots of the earth. We investigated merely out of a sense of propriety. At the end of the day, when our knowledge was confirmed, none were surprised. We simply went home, exhausted, and sat quietly in the darkness.

   June eighth was now four months ago. The darkness has never once abated, nor have we ever managed to contact the world outside. I have my doubts that the world outside even knows. Quite likely for them there is no tree, there is nothing but a ghost town. We have lost the sun and perhaps we are all dead.

   From the ground enriched by ashes,
   Newly raked by water-maidens;
   Spread the oak-tree's many branches,
   Rounds itself a broad corona,
   Raises it above the storm-clouds;
   Far it stretches out its branches,
   Stops the white-clouds in their courses,
   With its branches hides the sunlight,
   With its many leaves, the moonbeams,
   And the starlight dies in heaven.


-The Kalevela

Quarantine

QUARANTINE
Dominic E. Lacasse


   I was in a small room. There was a small lamp in the corner, a bed with the white sheets so tight and neatly folded that I was afraid to touch it. I was on a chair in the corner, hugging my knees, my bare feet resting on the cold rung between its legs. I was not scared, because my mother was outside. She was out there somewhere and the circumference of her zone of motherly protection surely enveloped me and kept me safe. So I was not scared, but I was confused. There was something wrong with me. I had woken up with red spots on my skin and they had taken me here and subjected me to the inquiries of several unnaturally clean, shiny, cold things and now I was in a small room and something was wrong with me.

   There was a soft knock on the door. My mother’s voice, too happy, not fooling anyone. “David? I’m going to come in. I’m going to tell you what’s going on. But I’m going to be wearing a costume, alright? Don’t be scared, it’s me, I’m just wearing a costume.”

   “Alright,” I half-spoke. A costume? I wondered briefly whether I was actually awake. But the door opened and there was a thing standing there, a big green thing with a glass face and the mouth of a machine. I recoiled instantly, but the mother voice returned.

   “David, calm down. It’s a costume, remember? It’s just a costume, it’s me in here.” The thing knelt and cast its glass face on me and I saw my mother’s eyes behind the mask. Confusion overwhelmed me and I could only stare blankly at her; subsumed in the unnatural world of a sleep-deprived child, everything seemed to me a circus of dreams. I felt seconds as nauseous waves of half-awareness as I watched my mother find words.

   “David, listen to me. The doctors say you have a thing called measles. It’s contagious, do you know the word contagious?”

   I wearily turned the stone-heavy pages of my mental dictionary and found the word. When you’re contagious it means that people can get sick by being near you. A friend of mine had told me about contagious when his sister’s eye had gotten sick and she wasn’t supposed to touch people until it got better.

   “It means something that people get from other people.” I said.

   “That’s right,” crooned my mother. “Your measles are contagious, but they’re not going to hurt you. The doctors have medicine for you and you’re going to be fine in a few days. But the baby could get sick if you go home now. That’s why the doctors gave me this costume so I could talk to you.” She held out her tarp-monster arms by way of example. “This costume keeps your measles from going home with me.” she said, and the words slogged through the white cloud of exhaustion and then struck home with a vibrant intensity.

   “You’re going home and I can’t?” I asked.

   “Yes, honey. I’m sorry, but I need to take care of the baby. You’ll be fine here; the doctors and nurses are very nice and I’ll visit you every day, just like this. It’s only for a few days, baby.”

   Processing the information was like rearranging stone tablets in my mind. All I could see was my mother at home, her protected territory encircling the house and the road and the backyard, but ending well before the hospital, which was all the way over by the school. It was not horror that gripped me but a kind of numbness. The room was a medium-place between healthy and sick. My mother, healthy. Me, sick. The costume and the drum-tight bed and the ostracization from the security of my mother’s presence was the area in between. My head felt heavy. My skin had red spots. I was contagious because of measles and it was the middle of the night.

   The tarp-monster with my mother’s face was lifting me and then I was on the bed, with darkness closing around me. “I’ll see you in the morning, honey, don’t be scared, I love you.” The words suffused into a dreamy blue mist as sleep overtook me.

   “Will I be different after?” The words floated up from some unknown source within me, but they meant something I couldn’t say and the concept was soon broken apart and annihilated by the empty unease of a troubled sleep.