Bonus Fiction: “Melquíades Is Dead.”

Another old story, written around the time of HUMAN. This one was directly inspired by characters and events in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was my first exposure to magical realism and which blew my mind. This story is also an early foray into 2nd person and was published in the inaugural issue of Earwig Flesh Factory, I think mostly because it was the right length to exactly fill the issue’s final page.

“MELQUÍADES IS DEAD.”

Through the fine silk sheets you are aware of the coarse grass mat between your shoulders, providing little more comfort than the hard earth beneath it. Objects in your field of vision look bloated, distended. Try to remain as still as possible—any movement in this state is uncomfortable. The hut around you already has its own sense of movement. The room is tilting on its side so slowly that no one but you seems aware of it. Realize for the first time how strange the weight of your beard feels on your chest.

Your head is propped on the knees of an old gypsy woman. The air around her moves ponderously, burdened by fragrant perfumes and scented scarves. Her hands as they stroke yours feel like calloused parchment. She is wrapped in a thick, brightly-dyed woolen blanket as defense against the cold. The grease in your hair moves down your temples in warm rivulets.

Smell sulphur. Ignore the fact that the only sulphur in the room is against the far wall among your other treasures in a small, tightly-sealed vial. Smell it anyway. The stench lingers forcefully in your nostrils.

Science has proven that the devil has sulphurous properties.

Remember when you were first shown a telescope—how you marveled that science has succeeded in eliminating distance. Close your eyes and feel all the distances around you and from you shrinking. Time, too, becomes transparent as glass, each point in it as close as the sheets resting against your chin. Look ahead and see a troubador that you do not recognize drink from a small jeweled bottle. As he begins to melt into a thick, steaming puddle, he focuses his bleak blue eyes on you and utters those three fearful words.

Stand silently as he evaporates.

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