August 21, 2008
DEATH
| MARK TEPPO |
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The curtain falls, and the shade of your grandmother floats from stage left. She directs you to stage right where a pale-faced boy—your nephew, actually, the one who died in the lake—takes the tools of office from you. A nimble-fingered phantom lifts your crown. You try to look at its face, but it slips away, stealing the heavy earrings from your ears.
The stage manager—isn’t that your wayward uncle, the drunk who always interrupted grace by rattling coins in his pocket?—holds up seven fingers. One of them is missing a digit.
Your grandmother’s shade guides you to the warped red door of the costume room. Hurry now, she says, opening the door with the Old Country magic, there isn’t much time.
Off comes the heavy costume of the first act, dumped unceremoniously on the floor. The costume room is cold, colder still when you unzip the skinsuit and wriggle out. Once the flesh is off, the rest falls out of your body cavity like overripe fruit from withered trees.
Don’t worry about the eye, your grandmother says. They always roll under the cabinet.
Her whispery voice, a faint echo of the boisterous laughter you remember from childhood, tells you where the bin of new eyes is. After the eyes, everything else is easy, though the suit is harder to zip up than to take off. I’m not a contortionist, you complain, and your grandmother snorts a streamer of pale smoke, but she doesn’t speak of the faery-eyed boy, the one from that first year at school.
In the backless wardrobe, new costumes swing their hangers. You push the red button and the endless track clatters forward—rat-ta-kak-a-rat-ta-kak-a—a rainbow of history in taffeta and fur, silk and leather, cotton and lace. Somewhat randomly—for the future is not yet set, is it?—you let go of the button and pick an outfit.
This is your only choice.
You put on the black pants, the white shirt with needlepoint starfish, and the purple vest inlaid with mother-of-pearl and coral. In the pale sack of accessories: silver dolphins for cufflinks, a leather belt inlaid with silver waves, black-rimmed glasses, a brown wig, and a long, brown mustache.
The stage manager—your old drunk uncle—is speaking into his headset, and he gives you the once-over as you approach. When he presses his thumb in the space between your lip and your nose, making sure the mustache is firmly attached, you smell the memory of cinnamon on his hands. You can’t help but recall the last Christmas you saw him: standing next to the tree, half-turned toward the fireplace, pouring cheap whisky from a flask into his mug of eggnog.
You miss him more than you knew.
You can hear the orchestra reaching a crescendo. The curtain is about to rise on Act Two. Your grandmother busses your check with a spectral kiss, and your nephew waves as you hustle out to center stage. Your uncle is counting down with both hands—ten, nine, eight—and then, with a grimace, he stops.
He retrieves a long-stemmed flower from the wings. With a quick snap of his hands, he breaks off the long stem of the lily, and threads the flower through the boutonniere on your vest. Always wear a lily, he says, so they will recognize you.
The curtain rises, and he hesitates long enough to press his thumb over your lip again. This time, he’s marking you like the angels do. So everyone will know that you have been reborn.
Mark Teppo spent many years not sleeping. He grew fuzzy around the edges and colors ran in his presence. Now he’s quietly stabilizing. In another few decades, he may be caught up enough on his sleep to get a passing grade from his physician. When everyone else has their eyes closed, he slips off to continue his efforts at synthesizing Blackleaf 23.
Mark’s work can be found in Strange Horizons, Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy, MungBeing, Igloo, Opi8.com, Earplug, and Earpollution. His novel Lightbreaker is coming from Night Shade Books this September. He can be found online at www.markteppo.com.