Last Drink Bird Head Read online

  But he still kept the RPG under his pillow, just in case.

  STEPHEN R. DONALDSON

  Stephen R. Donaldson has lived a diverse life: raised in India; at Kent State during the infamous shootings; honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. A vast quantity of information can be found on his website: www.stephenrdonaldson.com

  What an odd question. “Last drink bird head” is the literal English translation of a Marathi phrase (phonetically rendered “ache dohn teen char”). But of course the Marathi meaning of the phrase is idiomatic rather than literal: it refers to “a man who stands on one leg instead of tending his buffalo.”

  RIKKI DUCORNET

  Novelist, essayist and short story writer Rikki Ducornet has received numerous awards including an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. Her work is widely published abroad.

  …As you are about to leave those sumptuous archipelagos behind and continue your journey into the perilous corrugations of a newer world, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of these, perhaps my final, words to you. And if your dreams of a future are as immense as they are—to me at least—inexplicable, still you must—I repeat myself—must indulge the Oracle of Last Drink Bird Head before your departure.

  It is your pride—forgive a father for speaking to the raw muscle of truth—and the heat of a temper inherited from your heretical mother, that so mislead you now. The task cannot be avoided and must be entertained with humility and aplomb.

  The seeress is comely despite her legendary age and bloody beak. Although her talons worry your thighs and her words tumble from her hard black tongue like marbles rattled in a can of filthy water, still you must remain rigorously standing. You must also manage to appear relaxed. She loathes a palpable show of attention to form. I know one whose shiny leather briskets were far too new. He was not heard from again. She does have an eye for fashion. Wear Roman stripe and your grandfather’s gong. Polish his gong, but don’t overdo it. Floss. Dress soberly if with flair: hair gloves, wax fittings, toupee. And although the brew is even worse than you have been led to believe, quaff it down, son, like the man I continue to wish you would be, taking care not to hit your head on the many brass pegs that stud the ceiling. Stare the biddy blandly in the eye and the toast won’t be your last. A strong show of stomach will atone for deficiencies I can only blame on the infidelic womb you unwittingly—the fault is not your own—resemble…(Here the fragment, badly shredded, ends. It appears to have been stomped upon?).

  CLARE DUDMAN

  Clare Dudman is an award-winning writer of novels and short stories. Her website is www.claredudman.com

  I saw him on the roof. He was tall like a crane. Arrogant. The world in his beak and he knew it. He turned his head to the side to look at me. A long cool look. I pretended not to look back. Instead I bent down and picked up a few pebbles and threw them at him. I tried to make it look as if it were an accident but it didn’t fool him. He fluttered closer, hopped on his long twiggy legs and settled again. Then he opened his beak.

  I have never hurt as much. A sound so pure and loud that it jumbled my insides. I couldn’t move. All I could do was look into that open beak with its warbling tongue and will it to stop. As I watched, tongue became arm, and tonsils became a head and I knew—just as the whale swallowed Jonah so this bird had swallowed a child. “Help me.” said the face.

  But then the beak snapped shut.

  He had yellow eyes. Eyelids that shut the wrong way—sideways from the beak. Feathers like scales and huge black wings as awkward as elbows.

  I picked up another stone. It was larger than the others and perfectly smooth. Like an egg. The thought formed in my head only after I had thrown it.

  It broke against him with a thud. It was full of baby bird. It trembled lifeless from the shell in frills and lacy edges. For a second he looked then stepped back, tumbled, and righted himself with his wings. His only egg. He looked around with small jerking movements. A whir and he was on me: toes pinning me down, wings beating at my face, beak jabbing my chest. All at once he stopped. The sharp point of his beak hovered above my face and came closer. It opened slightly.

  I took my chance. Quickly I reached inside with my arm and clutched at what I found there. Just a small cold hand but it clung on tight. I pulled sharply and the rest of the child tumbled out with a retch.

  She was vicious; good with her knees, nails and teeth and the bird was no match for her. When he opened his mouth to screech she plunged in with a stick and wedged it open. Without the tongue of her arm he could make no sound. We threw in rock after rock until he fell. It is bad luck to look a Last Drink Bird in the eye but we did. Then we twisted his neck backwards until it snapped and its beak fell open like a cup filled with spit.

  The poison in a Last Drink Bird is only potent after death. It smells like spun sugar and tastes of sherbet. It is irresistible but there is only enough for one.

  “Mine,” said the child.

  She was too quick for me.

  HAL DUNCAN

  Hal Duncan is a sodomitic Scots smoker who staggered drunkenly into the SF Café in 2005 with his debut, Vellum, and now has various novels, novellas, short stories, poems and essays circling in print or the aether. Further scribblings and rantings can be found at www.halduncan.com

  Last Drink Bird Head is the state of mind achieved in walking home from a party that began the scorching afternoon of the summer day before when you were sitting in the park with friends, smoking a spliff rolled by your mate and drinking beer out of the can, perhaps, or red wine from a plastic cup, and as the sun lowered with the evenfall, between you all an obvious and often-made suggestion was approved—the pub?—and you, the three or four of you, or maybe more, walked the short distance laughing, staggered in and ordered food, and sat there chatting, arguing and joking until closing time when you all realised two things, that you’d run up one fuck of a bar bill, and that none of you really wanted to go home, to call it quits, just yet, so in the end you grabbed a taxi, headed back to your mate’s house to drink more, smoke more, talk and toke more, listen to loud music, maybe take some pills or tabs and go through thrills and chills and stabs of shivers rippling down your spine so fine and twined like a snake around and right back up it to a judder of shoulders and a fuck me, man, it’s really kicking in now, and, the world began to shudder apart again to trails of red and green streaming dreams down curtains, round the edges of it all, friends’ faces glowing golden, leonine and haloed, a kaleidoscope of meaning in your head, a glorious insanity, a rapture of the charlatan subconscious that crashed in a clash of symbols, washed in waves, and peaked, peaked with a vision of wise nonsense, peaked in the truth of being here and now, and slowly faded, slowly faded to the aftereffects, the grit of teeth and ache of bones like you’d been over an assault course, strangely comfortable—fuck, almost sensual—but enough to make you grab another beer, accept the spliff passed to your hand, and let yourself unwind with alcohol and hash, relaxing in the splendid afterglow, returning to the gab and giggles till eventually, eventually, you realised it was getting light outside and so you took a slug of beer, of that last drink, a last drink for the road, and grabbed your coat, said your goodbyes and took another slug, then swirled the can to check how much was left and—fuck it—drained it and, now long past drunk and out the other side, you headed out into the break of day, dawn chorus greeting you with birdsong light and dancing as your mood, your head with that last drink becomes a reeling flutter of a myriad starling thoughts awhirl in the blue sky of a gorgeous day, riotous night and tranquil morning, the cerulean of your quietude broken only by the sweeping, swooping flock of moments that the day and sleep have not yet scattered into dreams, not yet, not yet.

  SCOTT EAGLE (cover artist)

  Scott Eagle is Professor of Painting and Drawing at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. www.scotteagle.com

&nb
sp; BRIAN EVENSON

  Brian Evenson is the author of nine books of fiction, most recently the novel Last Days and the story collection Fugue State. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University’s Creative Writing Program.

  A Priest, a Rabbi, and a Last Drink Bird Head walk into a bar. The Priest has a dirty martini, the Rabbi has a scotch on the rocks. The Last Drink Bird Head, however, asks for a large crystal vase full of vodka. The bartender pours a bottle of vodka into the bowl, then pours another, then pours a third. The Priest finishes his martini and orders a scotch on the rocks. The Rabbi finishes his scotch and orders a dirty martini. The Last Drink Bird Head, however, just stays perched looking sadly down into the bowl, staring, staring.

  ELIOT FINTUSHEL

  Eliot Fintushel is a writer and itinerant showman who makes his home in Santa Rosa, California. He performs Debussy and Hindemith on theremin as part of his traveling show, “Baudelaire: Love and Lust,” available for booking, here: www.fintushel.com

  In the history of ideas, later is not always better. For example, the ancient idea that vital qualities can be obtained through a diet comprising roots, berries, or even animal organs that suggest those qualities, a view long held to be superstitious claptrap by academic mavens and cognoscenti, is, on the very latest evidence, it turns out, true! Mandrake root actually does facilitate pregnancies. Kidney beans can, we now know, cure urinary tract disorders.

  And a reliable cure for an overly Saturnine nature, including lugubriousness, depression, angst, humorlessness, and possession by all manner of idées fixes is, yes, bird, and, in particular, bird’s head. Here one finds in abundance the compensatory qualities of quickness, agility, effervescence, alertness, and so on.

  But how to ingest so contrary a morsel? How to get it down the gullet, much less to digest it and assimilate it? The answer is simple—liquefaction. Here, then, is a recipe for a wonderfully efficacious remedy for everything ponderous and burdensome in the mind of Man…

  Bird Smoothie

  First, twist or carve the bird’s head from the body. Discard the body.

  Use a boning knife, skewers, and forceps to remove the cranial contents, including brains, eyes, and all integument. Put aside in a small glass or metal bowl. (A measuring cup will do, in a pinch.)

  Place the skull and whatever inner matter remains in a plastic bag. Seal the bag. (Make sure there is not so much air in it as to cause the bag to burst under pressure, spraying bird matter.)

  Next, place the bag of head in a sturdy vice. Shatter the head by tightening the vice.

  Empty the bag into a blender, making sure to scrape in any bits clinging to the inside of the bag.

  Add the bowl of cranial contents with two tablespoons of sugar and half a teaspoon of vanilla, and blend at high speed.

  Pour into a tall glass and chill in the freezer for fifteen minutes.

  Last drink bird head.

  Bon appétit!

  JEFFREY FORD

  Jeffrey Ford lives in South Jersey. His latest novel is The Shadow Year and collection of stories is The Drowned Life (both from Harper Collins). You can visit with him online at 14theditch.livejournal.com

  As the bartender leaned forward and set Ed Fine’s double scotch on the bar, he called out, “That’s it for the night folks.”

  “Whatdya mean?” came a rough female voice from the booths off to the left.

  “It’s fifteen minutes till closing time. Go home,” said the bartender.

  Ed worked on his double scotch as the eight other patrons at Kisser’s pushed back their chairs, spun off their bar seats, shuffled into coats. The first left and when she opened the door a current of cold swept momentarily through the place.

  “It’s snowing out there,” somebody said.

  “Shit. At least I’m loaded,” said another.

  The bartender approached Ed and nodded at him. “You won,” said the bartender.

  “Won what?”

  “The bird head.”

  “What’s the bird head?” asked Ed.

  The bartender smiled. “What’s the bird head? It’s a fuckin’ bird head. What else?”

  “What do you mean?” said Ed.

  “You had the last drink. Whoever I serve the last drink of the night to gets the bird head. It’s like a contest.” He reached under the bar and slowly brought up something wrapped in newspaper and tied with a string. Ed noticed blood stains on the package as the bartender handed it toward him.

  “No thanks,” said Ed.

  “You won it, take it,” said the bartender.

  “I don’t want that.”

  “Look, you’ve gotta take the bird head. That’s all there is to it.”

  Ed stepped off his bar stool and threw some money on the bar. He lifted his jacket off the stool next to his, put it on, and stowed his cigarettes and lighter in the pocket. “I’m not taking it,” he said.

  The bar tender shrugged, reached below the bar again, and this time came up holding a sawed off shot gun. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  Ed was trembling. “Ed,” he said.

  “Ed what?”

  “Ed Fine.”

  The bartender threw him the newspaper package and Ed caught it. “Now take the head and get the fuck out.”

  Ed pushed against the wind, his collar pulled up and his ears and hands freezing. The newspaper package was under his arm. The snow came fiercely, at an angle, and was beginning to drift. He passed down the long street of quiet buildings. When he came to the bridge, he considered throwing the package over the side. He stood for a moment, shivering, and stared out across the icy river.

  In his one room apartment, sitting at the crooked dining table beneath a fluorescent bulb, he reached for the package. More blood had seeped into the newspaper. The string was the type from a bakery, and he easily broke it. Gingerly, he unfolded the pages. Upon seeing it, he was instantly nauseous—a bright yellow parrot head, severed at the neck. A blue tongue lolled from within the curving black beak, the eyes had fallen out.

  He threw it from his window and watched it slowly fall, the yellow feathers glowing through the storm.

  RICHARD GEHR

  Richard Gehr is an Oregon writer living in Brooklyn. This marks his first published foray into fiction.

  “Could I please have a brave volunteer from the audience?”

  As school wound down, finals were finalized, and campuses quivered anew with the subliminal scent of pheromonal mischief, Professor Scarab was on the road again. He had been refining and polishing his act, such as it was, since 1970. Yet he couldn’t help but wonder, as his audience grew younger with each passing year, if it were losing its luster. While there always seemed to be room for him in certain institutions’ activities budgets, he had lately begun to wonder why.

  His snaggle-tooth canine companion, Drexel, slept and slobbered obliviously as the Professor ascended a short staircase (consisting of steps fashioned from blunt-edged swords) to nowhere. He extracted small animals from various articles of clothing, correctly determined the suit and denomination of numerous playing cards, slid knives, forks, and other kitchen implements down his throat, and endured the increasingly distasteful concoctions he subsequently spewed flaming from his mouth. His punch lines, delivered with a hint of rainforest Zen, didn’t seem to elicit quite as much knowing laughter as last year, however, and he was looking forward to climbing back into his modified panel truck and heading down the highway to the next small liberal arts college on his itinerary.

  Students stared at him dully from beneath the brims of baseball caps. Girls in scratchy sweaters huddled against dreadlocked boys. The sons and daughters of his island neighbors couldn’t be this disengaged, could they? It was going to be a long afternoon.

  “How about a volunteer brave?” hollered a voice from the crowd.

  A large, mostly naked young man dressed against the dank chill only in a rustic loincloth, sporting a carelessly painted face and Mohican haircut, bounded o
nstage. He was carrying a can of jalapeño peppers he continued to pop into his mouth and chew noisily while appearing to await instructions. As the professor explained his next trick and the part the student would play, his future comic foil’s attention seemed focused elsewhere or, more precisely, inwhere.

  Suddenly the ad hoc aborigine leapt into the air, spun around twice, and landed in a crouch. The can of jalapeños had been replaced by a bubbling beaker of unidentifiable liquid, which he consumed in a blink as the audience broke into applause. The Professor’s dog opened his eyes and growled softly at the unexpected disturbance in his field. The lad suddenly appeared taller, stronger, older, beakier, and much, much angrier than before.

  “Brian’s doing it!” cried a wide-eyed girl hanging over the lip of the stage. “He’s summoned Last Drink Bird Head!”

  Scarab was scared. Having heard whispered rumors of this particular feat for decades, he had long ago dismissed it as late-night legend. This was a science school, with a well-deserved reputation for clandestine chemical creations. But this was different. As the glass shattered, sending pitiless shards in all directions, Scarab briefly regretted never having taken that civil-service examination those many years ago.

  The crowd signaled its approval.

  FELIX GILMAN

  Felix Gilman is the author of Thunderer and Gears of the City. He lives in the post-apocalyptic ruins once known as “Manhattan,” where he hunts rats and owls in “Central Park.”

  OK. So. These four guys walk into a bar. There’s an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotsman, and a guy with a head like a bird. The bartender says, “Why the long face?” He immediately regrets it.