Last Drink Bird Head Read online

  “You’ve brought it?” Last Drink asked, or more like rasped, the stink of that breath like the cheapest, nastiest Stonewall’s Revenge or some such similar well whiskey.

  “Uh huh,” says I, the bucket sloshing its stuff onto the red clay as I strode up.

  “Set it there and turn around,” says Last Drink, and, pistol or no pistol in my jeans, I did as I was told.

  “I heard—” but like all the best hucksters and real-deals, Last Drink was there, back and a mile gone again.

  “I know,” came right over my shoulder and I heard splashing from the bucket. “You’re ready to be rid of it, and you’ve paid the price.”

  I didn’t say nothing but I couldn’t have even was I so inclined. I was thinking of little Joseph, thinking of his mother, thinking of what I’d done to her and what she’d done to him. I cried a little.

  “Get your shovel,” said Last Drink, and I did.

  RICHARD BUTNER

  Richard Butner lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, the City of Oaks.

  “We can build another raft,” Curve Handle Shiny Cone says. Cone has been hunting for crabs on the other side of the big gray rock, ignoring the splashes of the encroaching tide. Tiny False Log Cabin is huddled over the fire, poking the coals. Endlessly correcting, in search of the perfect flame. Last Drink Bird Head is lying on his back, his gritty forearm shielding his eyes.

  “To die in the sea, like the ones before?” Cabin says.

  “To find another place,” Cone says.

  “Why has no one ever returned from this other place to tell us?”

  Cone sets down the wooden bucket. The crabs inside snap their pincers and crawl over each other, but none escape.

  “I would rather die trying than die here,” Cone says.

  Before Sharp Red Plastic Teeth and her baby died, Cone did not speak about rafts. Now the three men are the only ones left on the island.

  “This is an old argument, Cone. I am trying. I am working in the Crypt of Tomorrow. Discovering. That is where we will find another place. Head, why have you not brought the water?”

  Last Drink Bird Head does not move. Cone plucks a crab from his bucket, drops it on Head’s taut stomach. Head brushes it away quickly and jumps up, kicking sand.

  “I have brought the water,” Head says. He reaches back and with a flourish lifts a gray piece of canvas away to reveal the battered cookpot, full of water collected from the rainstills.

  Cone hangs the cookpot from the hook over the fire, then begins stacking crabs in it. Head stalks off into the brush. He walks past the sleeping hut, past the graves, to the center of the island where the Crypt’s door gapes. The totem around his neck bounces, pecking his name against his chest as he goes.

  The Crypt was once entirely the domain of Tiny False Log Cabin, but Head has claimed his own space there. Cabin perches atop a stool when he examines the sacred objects arrayed in the cabinets and on the tables with his magnifying glass. On the floor, the items he discards make up Head’s nest.

  Head is allowed to touch the things Cabin has cast aside: a jar containing a pencil, crayons, and a straight edge. A painting of a red flower. One rubber glove. Head wears it when he draws. He has been drawing portraits. First Cone, and then Cabin, and then himself, stealing glances in the looking glass on the table of sacred objects. Today he draws Sharp Red Plastic Teeth, and her baby who did not live long enough to have a name.

  He rolls up the portraits and seals them in the jar. He walks back to the shore on a different path, so as not to encounter Cabin and Cone.

  The tide is going out now. Last Drink Bird Head walks toward the sea, jar in hand, looking for escape.

  CATHERINE CHEEK

  Catherine Cheek has published short fiction and reviews. She is a graduate of Clarion San Diego class of 2007. She has a BA in Linguistics, a brown belt in karate, and a garden that doesn’t yield nearly as much as she would like. When not writing, she throws pots, paints, binds books, and plays with molten glass. She keeps an artblog on: www.catherinecheek.com and a webcomic about chickens at www.coopdegrace.com

  Ma said Dad wanted to name me after the first thing he saw when I was born, like they say the Indians did. He was sitting at the bar across the street from the hospital when the call came that Ma had a boy. I might have been called “Tequila Stain Coaster” if the weirdling one hadn’t shown up.

  He told me about it on my nineteenth birthday, sitting at the broken table in our apartment under the flickering fluorescent light, drinking beer and staring at what time had done to us. What time had done to me, anyway. He hadn’t gotten any older.

  “I tried to bargain with it,” he said, savoring his beer like it was his first and not his third. “I heard somewhere you can do that. Didn’t get much. Just the one deal. Said when you were older I could swap with you.”

  Mom wasn’t home from work yet. Maybe that was his plan, that I’d flit out on my grand adventure and he’d be here to fill her in on the details. Not that I didn’t want to. I wanted it bad. Working the shit jobs I had wasn’t what anyone wanted to do out of high school, and every time I put another damn box on another damn truck I thought about leaving for good.

  “My boss ain’t human, you know. Body of a man, head like a sparrow.” Dad looked like me. I didn’t like how much he looked like me. “Not a bad boss, and the Realm, well, it’s a good place for a young man. Adventure, excitement…You’ll like it there, George.”

  “You got no right to call me that,” I told him. Ma had wanted to call me George after her Dad. “You know my name. You wrote it on the damn cocktail napkin.”

  “Don’t get mad, this is a big chance for you.”

  “I ain’t going anywhere. So you just get out of here now, before Ma comes home.”

  “You don’t wanna pass this up, son.” He smiled like he was trying to bullshit me into buying snow. Maybe it worked on Ma, back when he was handsome and she was young enough to think love could solve anything.

  “Get out.” I stood up; flexing the muscles I’d earned hefting boxes all day. “Now.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said, walking slow towards the door like I’d change my mind.

  But I didn’t. I wanted to go see what the bird man was like, wanted to have adventures and never grow old and do all the things he got to do. I wanted that more than anything. But I wanted him to leave even more. For Ma’s sake.

  ’Cause Ma said knew Dad wouldn’t stick around long. He wasn’t that type. But even so, she loved him. She loved him so much that even though she hated the name “Last Drink Bird Head”, she wrote it in on my birth certificate anyway.

  MATTHEW CHENEY

  Matthew Cheney’s fiction has appeared in One Story, Weird Tales, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Electric Velocipede, and elsewhere. He lives in New Hampshire.

  Last Drink Bird Head was last seen stumbling out of a bar in Athens, Georgia, muttering something about R.E.M. and selling out. His brush with fame had become a toilet plunger, and he knew when to call the cards and order a bombing, but what’s a guy to do once everything is blown to bacon bits and the preserved cum of kings is the latest academic fad, eh? Too bad he was landlocked, he thought–and that’s when he started drinking, thinking even Kansas might become a port city given enough time and climate change, thinking Dorothy and Toto could swim their way home, thinking home was too big a word to fit inside a mouth full of other people’s disappointments, and so he tried to swallow, and that’s when he drowned.

  MICHAEL CISCO

  Michael Cisco is the author of The Divinity Student (winner of the International Horror Writers Guild award for best first novel of 1999), The San Veneficio Canon, The Traitor, and The Tyrant. His web page is www.prostheticlibido.org. He lives and teaches in New York City.

  “‘Last Drink Bird Head’ is the name of a painting, now lost, by Willie Bylette. While there is still some difference of opinion as to when it was painted, that it was produced no later than October 1954 is beyond dispute. Bylette, whose r
eal name was Percie Willaim [sic] Calum, was a good friend of Tommy Turk and, through him, associated with Charlie Parker.

  “Willie Bylette would be at the Royal Roost setting up an hour before anybody in the band got there. It was his custom to order two fingers of bourbon, neat, and make it last all night. In order to keep the management pacified, he would purchase drinks for his friends—often for perfect strangers. Before the show, he chatted quietly with the clientele and his various acquaintances, mixing his paints as he did so, but the moment Bird and company took the stage, he turned at once to his canvas. The first stroke of his brush was a mute accompaniment to the first note of the first piece.

  “He usually went through several canvases in a night, recording the aural sculpture of Parker’s lightning in kaleidoscopic abstracts. On one occasion, very nearly at the end of Bird’s stint at the Roost, Bylette painted nothing for the duration of the set, until a haggard Bird stopped at the edge of the stage to brace himself with a quick drink in preparation for the explosion to come. Then Bylette fell upon the canvas with the abrupt force of inspiration, and, by the end of the night, had largely completed what was to become his most famous work: a portrait of Parker named ‘Last Drink Bird Head.’”

  —Timothus Iqbal, Nestfed

  (—what is last head what is last bird last drink, a few weeks before he died watching him in the wings, his bright eyes like a hot seam in a thunderhead as he tips the glass at his lips—he was onstage, i saw him transfixed in the passionate kiss of a solid golden python, voyaging in time as he sipped and inflated to fill the expanse of his days from end to end—the gold embrace cinches tight around a core of wind, choking it, until it bursts from its prison in crystal darts of sound, and the sweat pours down—i saw charlie take his drink by the side of the stage and i saw charlie at the same instant there with his horn already playing what he was about to play and had never played before and simultaneously i saw that he was dead. lying dead in a rooming house as he played on the stage before me as he drank at the side of the stage, and i painted what i saw—)

  Virtually the moment she first set eyes on the painting, Alice Thibodeaux, a woman who had been present for that performance at the Royal Roost, began screaming uncontrollably.

  GIO CLAIRVAL

  Gio Clairval is an Italian-born speculative fiction writer who commutes between Paris and the Lake of Como. She can be found at gioclairval.blogspot.com

  My husband knows about you, but he can’t keep you away. You’ll come when the sun frays his way through dark clouds above the stubs of Paris’s ruins, burning the pitted asphalt, and we’ll sit in the shade and drink chilled mint tea.

  You’ll walk in like a friend. I’ll think Who’s this man with a bird’s head and wings? Then I’ll recognize you.

  Yesterday, Paul scanned the sky for your shape. “He won’t possess you, Jacqueline. I’ll ask the oracle.”

  “Don’t!” I cried.

  I’d seen the Sibyl under Pont Mirabeau before the caved-in central arch. Sightless, she sensed my body heat and jerked her head with metallic noises. The oracle’s fresh prizes reeked of rot. She told me you would come in the summertime. I’d already known. I’d felt it in my guts.

  I said to Paul, “No, chéri. The price is too high, and I know the answer.” But he went.

  Paul is strong as a rock, yet, when he returned last night, tears blinded him. “She accepted the thimbleful of your blood and she drained it.”

  I only saw the bloodstained bandage covering his hand. For payment, he’d chopped a pinkie off, pierced it and hung it with the others on her belt—there the Sibyl’s prizes dangled, some shriveled, some gnawed.

  After a moment I asked, “What color were her lights?”

  He looked away.

  The tiny red lights on the oracle’s chest told him he could do nothing to stop you.

  Today, summer has come and you are here, smiling your bird’s smile. You sit down next to me while Paul cuts vines outside. He hasn’t seen you enter.

  You’ve brought a glass of chilled tea, for me.

  My hair is gone, but you don’t mind; my voice is weak, but you listen. You know every word I say is true. I cry. I laugh. I scream. My life has been tasty, perfumed, cruel. Your wing brushes my cheek and your voice speaks in my mind. You won’t let me lose myself in the heat of my pain.

  I call Paul to my bedside. He rushes in, knife ready, glares and wants to defy you, but I need to introduce you. You shake your feathery head. We must be alone, you say. You and me. No others. The choice hurts.

  “Why can’t I have both?”

  You say it’s me you want. Now. Your wings spread. I panic. I don’t want you to go.

  Paul clenches his fists; blood spurts from the rot on his hand—nothing ever heals.

  You hold out the glass. Drink, lover.

  I take the glass and offer it to Paul. He smiles. “See you soon, chéri.”

  When I slit my beloved’s throat with his knife, his four-fingered hand clutches mine.

  You scream with your jealousy and pin me down to my bed, your cold black wings folding around me, your fury in my belly.

  All warmth is leaving me. On and on, I hear the glass crash on the floor.

  ALAN M. CLARK

  Alan Clark’s illustrations have been published in books of fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, young adult fiction and children’s books, while his writing, short fiction and nonfiction, has appeared in magazines, anthologies and educational books. He has sold four novels. www.alanmclark.com

  I was drunk and should not have been driving. And I was still drinking! Somehow I had myself convinced I wasn’t a danger to others.

  I could see the bird coming from a long way off. It wobbled as it flew above the highway. I thought maybe it was sick. Then it dropped toward the road so that I was headed straight for it. I was traveling so fast I figured the wind of my passage would just shove it out of the way. A truck passed in the oncoming lane just as the bird met my airspace. It threw the poor creature into my windshield with such force that it pierced the glass. The body of the bird remained outside while the little head popped off and miraculously dropped into the tumbler of bourbon in my lap.

  I’m not a religious man, but there was no doubt this was a sign from the heavens.

  BRENDAN CONNELL

  Brendan Connell has had fiction published in numerous places, including McSweeney’s, Adbusters, Leviathan 3, Strange Tales and Fast Ships, Black Sails. His books include: The Translation of Father Torturo, Dr. Black and the Guerrillia, The Architect and Metrophilias. His blog is at: brendanconnell.wordpress.com

  He threw the Northern champion in less than four minutes, the Southern in less than three.

  His name was Last Drink. The people called him Bird Head. His grandfather had trained him; after his grandfather, the sun and wind, and he had learned from the stars and rivers. Before his moustache was fully grown, he had beaten over one hundred challengers.

  Thick, soft, doughy muscles, body anointed with mustard paste; he was short with a sharp nose and hair on his back.

  He wore neck-weights, did rigorous squats and plyometric press-ups and exercised with a thick length of bamboo to which a large stone was affixed. He ate pulses and fish seasoned with turmeric and drank chickpea water.

  When Razor Lotus Laughing, with arms thick as the trunks of banyan trees, came from the East, everyone knew it would be a great match.

  The two men stood in the pit strewn with sand and sprinkled with milk and gazed into each other’s eyes. Last Drink Bird Head was less than half the size of his opponent.

  The two struggled, many rare holds and locks.

  Razor Lotus Laughing was thrown with a flying mare and landed with both shoulders on the sand, bout over.

  The victor raised his hand and voice and claimed to be the incarnation of Vishnu. Many believed, others ran to the woods.

  After that, no one would challenge Bird Head.

  People asked him for advice.

  “T
he world is an illusion and this knowledge an even greater one,” he would say.

  One day he was looked for in his hut, but only his foot was found. Around this the people built a temple adorned with over six-hundred carved statues and musicians played and others sang in strained voices about his feats.

  PAUL DI FILIPPO

  Paul Di Filippo, a Rhode Island native, has lived in the Lovecraftian stomping grounds of Providence for the past thirty-one years. He sold his first story in 1977, and well over one hundred since. His new novel, Cosmocopia, has been published by Payseur & Schmidt.

  The last Last Drink Bird Head in the world sat in a locked room, drinking, dipping his bird-head’s beak into a tumbler of gin. This was his last drink before he blew his bird head off with an RPG looted from one of the dead soldiers that littered the city. The RPG might have been overkill, but he wanted to make sure he didn’t survive his suicide attempt even for a few seconds of additional pain.

  Suddenly there came a knock at the door.

  Even through the gin fumes, the Last Drink Bird Head could smell a female Last Drink Bird Head on the other side of the door.

  He put down his drink and weapon, stood, moved to the door, unlocked it, and opened it.

  The beautiful female Last Drink Bird Head held up a bottle of a type of gin superior to the one that the Last Drink Bird Head was drowning his troubles in.

  “Would you ever consider switching brands?” she asked. “I have a coupon here for a discounted purchase… .”

  The Last Drink Bird Head would so consider, and did so switch, and lived happily ever after with the last female Last Drink Bird Head in the world.