Vivian Reflects:
Vivian
My ‘husband’ was filling the tank with gasoline, so I was left to myself, alone in the car. I took the time, as I often will, to reflect on how I had gotten to where I am today: a killer of boars amongst people, transforming, denaturing, into a murderer of real, decent human people - into a killer of children.
It reminded me of the kill that began everything, brought my choices crashing down to fall upon my head.
The weapon I held first was a rock. It was gray, unintelligent looking and now tucked away in my home. It is still covered in the dried blood of Wilhelm, my brother’s cat. I had liked that cat, but not my brother. One of these emotions ended up being stronger than the other.
I could not identify when I stopped thinking of that rock as a rock, when I started thinking of it as a weapon, but I can come very close. I would say that it happened between the first second, where I picked the rock up, and about the third, the moment when my arm courageously brought it down. Though nominal, this shift is important to me; it did not happen during the second repetition, even the seventh. It occurred when I chose to make my brother suffer - to smash his cat. It occurred as I made death a weapon by which I could lash out, a death itself a weapon to make an even greater, blood to bring tears, my brother’s tears. The target of the suffering I created was not some stupid cat. It was my brother.
His name was also Wilhelm. ‘Was’ since he is dead now - it was not me.
That blood did draw out my brother’s tears. This is without a doubt. But after father finished telling him that these things happen in life, that sometimes cats like Wilhelm walk into streets, that my father had run over my brother’s cat by accident, Wilhelm fell asleep and dreamed a child’s dreams.
Then, once all was calm and dark, father looked over at me and simply asked “why,” ever so quietly. It was strange; he is not a quiet man, but he was then, with his only son sleeping in his lap, the tears I summoned up staining his paints. Then just as I had used the weapon of death, Wilhelm’s death, against my brother, I became aware that father had turned it on me, and exactly what I had done, came to me. Then I cried too, but there were no words of comfort for me, no lap. There was only guilt.
When I heard a click, I opened my eyes and looked over at the driver’s side door. I had not realized I had closed them. B. looked at me strangely and held out his hand. He spoke. “Brought you a water bottle, will this be all right, dearest fraulein?” I nodded my head.
“That was very thoughtful of you, dearest englishman,” I replied, but I was very thirsty. I forced the memories out of my mind, and decided to concentrate on the path ahead of me. I had walked the path for a long time now, and it was paved with blood.
Boris entered our car and said “On to London then!” He handed me the bottle and the engine roared.
Arthur: On the Run
An educated individual, other than myself, will tell you that when you are high, you need to just go along with things. I have never been high before. At least not more than a contact high that I got a few years back from a girl I’d rather not think about. This seems to be becoming a bit of a pattern, but, anyway, I can tell you that there is no way that I was in my right mind at that moment.
If you put a gun to my head, as evidently some phantasms of my darker reaches were trying to, I’d have to guess that I was still cozy in my bed, that I had indeed pissed myself in my sleep, not a habit - not even remotely - and that whatever I had drank from that bottle was abjectly not, or at least not only, vodka. It was only pretending to be vodka. Vodka does not make one see wizards or give one dreams about people shooting you.
Anyway, there is no chance that guns actually sound in real life like they do in films. Bang Bang all you like, I know you aren’t real. And the bloody bike taxi - sorry, “rickshaw” - well, who the hell runs from gunmen, in car, on a sodding bike cab. A true Merlin would do better. He’d have a broomstick or something. Get in, he says? Fine. I’ll get in, and see where this takes me.
I hopped into the cab with the lunatic and, to my surprised, it started moving on its own. No driver, nothing. It literally started peddling itself. That’s when the something very horrifying happened. “This is not a dream, boy,” the old man said, looking back and forth over his shoulder as the sound of an engine got closer. Another couple of shots rang out, clanging and clattering into pavement and shattering some nearby windows. I let myself smile.
“Oh, and how are you supposed to prove that, Merlin?” I accused wickedly. The old man fumed. I would enjoy this more if my dream-wizard wasn’t in denial. It looked like I would have to convince myself…myself.
“Fine, but do you know what would happen if you were to die in a dream?” he asked. Actually, I did. That’s when the serious part began to come into perspective.
I said, “you have a heart attack and die in real life.” I wasn’t sure if that were actually true or just some kind of myth. Frankly, I didn’t put much in it, but one can’t gamble one’s life away on this sort of event.
In any case, my creepy subconscious wizard had a point. That’s when I realized the rickshaw-taxi-bike-cab thingy was going at thirty or forty miles an hour, and yet we were still hearing gunshots. I chose to ignore the impossibly fast bike-cab and focus on the more immediate danger. I said, “Right, listen, can we turn, because going straight doesn’t seem to be helping much,” I paused, “in whatever activity we’re actually trying to, er, help.”
Street lamps flicked by us at regular intervals, making everything seem like it was happening from second to second, like a strobe light at a party. One instant the old man was poker-faced, the next, dark, and the next, he was grinning. “Turn left at the intersection!” Merlin yelled out to the air, and the taxicab obeyed, and the force of the turn nearly hurled me out of the carriage.
For a moment, I was not sitting on anything, hovering inches above my seat, waiting for my head to smash against the pavement or my body to be hurled through a shop door. Air roaring, hands groping at the small metal roof above, I genuinely thought I was going to go over, but then the mad taxi-bike’s course reoriented, becoming once again straight, and I landed back in my seat with a thick impact and obligatory thump. More gunshots split the silence and I heard the screeching of tires from behind.
They were still following us. Then again, Merlin had nearly done half their work for them with that sharp turn.
“Lesson two, always buckle up, Arthur!” cried the old man. Then, to reassure me or whatever, he began laughing hysterically, as if he had made the world’s funniest joke. I, for one, was not amused.
My face felt flush, as if I had been hanging upside down for too long, and my eyes were watery. I rooted around for a seat belt, deciding to take the advice, but it turned out that Merlin had already clipped himself into the only one. Wonderful. Positively, wonderful.
Then came the sound of automatic weapons, and I began to realize how very serious my situation might be. I wondered if it was suicide if your subconscious is trying to kill you and save you at the same time. The old man answered, even as I was beginning to suspect he would, “that seems probable.” As if to chime in with his answer, a bullet clanged off the front supporting bridge of the taxi-shaw…rickshaw. That was it: rickshaw.
“Good lad, rickshaw,” said Merlin. “Now, your getting at it.”
I lost it and said, “Stop reading my mind, dammit!” Another gunshot brought me back to reality.
Legends
2014
Westminster, England
The Flat
In England, our England, a legend is told about a great and goodly king. The court of Arthur Pendragon, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Wizard Merlin are common knowledge. It has proliferated in cinema, progressed in literature, and vaulted itself onto the constellation-like Mythos of the West. Any child of a few years will tell you that “He who pulls this sword from this stone is the true and rightful King of England.” Any child would also jump at the chance to pull such a sword from such a stone - which demonstrates how incredibly dull children are. Worse, I fear that many of adults would do much the same. In any case, it matters little. There is one, and only one, Arthur Pendragon. All that Mythos, all that rot about the knights and things, is just a legend. Well, sort of. I should say: It will be a legend.
You see, a few generations back a man named sir Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte D’Arthur, and may I say - as a fellow of the Order myself - he was balls at being a prophet. He told what is now considered the legend of Arthur. It’s wrong. We, rather I am aware of the truth. Sorry, I sometimes forget that I am the only one left. I will always be the only one left.
Little. Old. Me…A tad frightful, but that’s alright. I’m not completely unhappy.
When it rains and I look out my window into the alleyway across the street - it is said (by me) that his journey begins on a rainy day - I pour myself the last drops of cold tea from previous night’s pot. It’s Earl Grey, usually. I sip down as much of it as I can in a single go and then try to catch my reflection in the leftover residue. I can usually make out a beard, eyes, and maybe a few distinguished wrinkles. You may laugh, but this little ritual reminds me who I am. It reassures me that I am not mad; I am Merlin, the man meant to carry the weight of the truth.
It’s far less elegant than Malory would have you believe. The truth, I don’t mean being Merlin - that is fairly elegant. It is this: A University student named Arthur is going to run into that very alleyway, tug loose a screwdriver embedded in the concrete sidewalk, and go home. Shortly thereafter, people, ultimately people anyway, will begin trying to assassinate him. This is natural. I have never heard of a king who didn’t have to worry about attempts to take his crown. Ah, the point, sorry again.
Legends start as prophecies - most things do. A legend, in my experience, is a prophecy that has been carried out. Malory was writing a very poor analogy for a prophecy. The true Legend of King Arthur will not exist for many centuries. People have to confuse reality with a story first - and that is what it is, for now: a story.
Every story, even the worst ones, needs to start with an event. This one begins with a young man, a younger woman, that younger woman’s father, an accident, a screwdriver, and, of course, a rainy day.
