CRYSTAL TOPPINGS
A collaboration with Margaret B Simon
Published 'Dead Lines' 1995
Colin Shale was an unpretentious fellow, to say the most and the least about his characteristics. Yet, as the old saying puts it, you can't be sure what's inside until you catch the kid with the underground comix mag inside the cover of a Social Studies book. Or cracking open a geode, but Colin wasn't interested in rocks, per se, unless they were to be thrown at the less fortunate of his classmates, those he called "wimps", to be precise, whenever nobody was looking and the occasion afforded.
Shale wasn't a little kid anymore, and he'd had his share of getting rapped on the fingers, the bottom, whatever was most effective to bring him to attention. At 34, Colin had apparently settled into a more or less ordinary life hauling rock for his uncle's company during the week, and a satisfyingly shallow lust affair with his uncle's wife, according to opportunity.
Aside from this, Colin had shown no capacity for original thought until recently, and then only to the barmaid who didn't take his hairy, sweatstain-smelly horny bastard self seriously. And Colin knew that.
It was only three weeks ago, when Colin was situated on his usual perch, third from the end of the counter on the stool that creaked ominously louder as the years went by, and the meat on his shoulders grew to hamhock size, when a wild scheme occurred to him. Colin, with muscles of steel and icy blue-white eyes set close together - too close together (to the discomfort of the barmaid) discovered an original thought.
Yes, why not? Lucy wouldn't mind. In fact, Lucy didn't HA VE to mind, did she? He shrugged-- without appearing to move his shoulders, wondering how long his mind would endure. However, he soon sank back into his drink.
killing was never to be taken lightly
The bar lights flashed on and off, neon emeralds and fiesta reds as if some distant message from the gods.
Colin knew what THAT meant, of course, and he swallowed the dregs of his diluted crystal ball, forgetting that he had forgotten something. Outside, the coastal February air bit hard, winds drumming at his back in revolutions as he made his way to the truck. He swore, fumbling with the keys. Dropped them to the ground, already a network of hoarfrosted lace. As he stooped to recover them, he heard a woman calling his name.
"Colin! COLIN SHALE!" A slender figure wearing a woollen shawl stepped from the shadows. Wanting suddenly very much to see her face - I can't see I must know - Colin started toward her when she flung back her arm and something hit him between his too-close-together eyes like a reminder, Remember, Colin? Remember what you thought about, now? Isn't this a good time, Colin, love?
Blood on his hands. Wet-warm fresh slagheap dollopped with crimson. His blood. His own killing is never to be taken lightly blood. His rocks. His uncle's rocks ... and he sank to his knees, remembering.
********************
Around the foot of a menhir was a band of light that came with the dawn. Like the meniscus on vodka. An alignment of standing rocks stretched into the distance, like drunken armies on parade, all frozen into rough and ready sculptures of fear and retribution. Colin had spent a freezing night sleeping rough. He had not wanted to go home carrying someone else's blood upon him. In any event, after daybreak he was safe from actions he might have taken amid the draining tides of darkness.
Killing could never be taken lightly.
Nor had he ever been able to withstand the timeless coastal village where a nunnery sat with the top of a chapel abbey bearing a roughly hewn statue of a saint instead of the more customary cross upon its spire.
The fact that Lucy was his aunt by law and not by blood didn't excuse their bodily excursions ...
He suddenly recalled crashing the truck over the cliff, dropping himself from the cab at the last minute.
Crazy crazy crazy to believe that his perilous state could be blamed on such an accident. If only he were dead. That would mend everything. Even his reputation.
Within the nunnery, lonely hooded women dotted the niches and alcoves in a passion of quiet novitiation. A slender figure in a woollen shawl moved among them with a feeding bowl and large wooden spoon.
Shadows concealed the color of the treacly fluid she thus dispensed...
Colin squeezed shut his eyes to search the shadows of his own vision. The rocks were ill-shorn phalli of impotent gods, yearning skywards with no real hope of redeliverance. Hanging tombs of bone arched around his brain like a white spider in half-pounce.
He climbed to a particular rock-one that had fallen on its side-could the coastal winds have caused it to topple? - and he laid himself out upon it. .. as a screaming edge of sun lit the cliff-edge plain of menhirs.
Melting the crystal balls of winter
As the sun warmed his bones, Colin became aware of an itch in his crotch. His hand involuntarily summoned itself to comply. Softly he scratched, then harder and rasping, gouging at the skin of his privates. A single fly buzzed around his head and lit on his upper lip, which sufficed to finish shattering his reverie.
"Menhirs? Tombs? Where am I? What the fuck-?" Adjusting his pants with a final pawing of his privates, Colin rose and slid down the rock. He glanced to his left, for a shadow woman was approaching carrying a bowl and offering a wooden spoon. Her hand was fishbelly white, her eyes hidden by the cowl she wore.
Stunned, Colin stood, vaguely aware that he wanted to scratch himself again, and yet this didn't seem to be the best time to do this and where in the hell did he get these damned little shits you don't get them anywhere except whorehouses everyone knows that ... and there is something about his reputation he must remember, he must remember what -
"Colin, my love." Her voice, Lucy's voice breathing through the shawl. "Here, I have mended something for you." She extended the bowl, and dipped the wooden spoon inside it.
"Lucy?" Colin took the bowl, then reached to draw aside the shawl on her head. After a moment, Colin looked into the bowl.
"Colin?" Her skull was showing through shreds of shrivelled blue skin. That most provocative full mouth was now a gaping toothless maw. Yet her eyes held him, clear and green-flecked as kelp on a moonlit shore.
"Yes, Lucy?"
"I was in the seat with your uncle when he died. I came to thank you for your original thought."
"Yes, Lucy?" Colin gazed blindly into the brimming bowl of warm alizarin bubbles. He screamed as she pushed him backwards, his head splitting on the menhir behind him. Lucy's apparition vanished, along with the need to scratch his balls, along with his one original thought about how
killing could never be taken lightly.
A final flash of sun rays lit the culprit ghost in red ice. The pub would be open, shortly. Colin Shale drifted into the apex of a geodesic comic book, dreamed deep into himself and closed his eyes.
