City of Headstones
City of Headstones is the most recent title of an old story that resurfaces whenever the author feels like mangling an already thoroughly mangled text. It had been intended originally as a novel, briefly accepted its fate as a mere short story, but now, headstrong after receiving its own header graphic, prefers to be called a novella. It would also prefer no one even know its original title was The Plague of Hyenas. A bit full of itself, don't you think?
The story begins with the death of the protagonist's twin brother, on an otherwise harmless city street, between the jaws of a hyena. Our protagonist thereafter fixates on the varied beasts with which he shares his city, and he seeks to claim a head of each to cover the walls of the bedroom he now shares with no one. We follow him from the fanciful delusions of childhood into the fanciful delusions of adulthood, hyenas never entirely abandoning his trail, and he never entirely abandoning theirs.
Following are a few excerpts from a novella that will likely never entirely see the light of day...
Excerpt 1 ――
In the twenty years since my twin brother’s memorial service, I have had at least another dozen encounters with hyenas. The second came about a month after the first—on the very day my twin brother’s headstone was to arrive at the cemetery. My mother, father, and I arrived an hour early. I’d sniffed the whole way over from the start of a cold.
Before arriving we’d stopped for take-out.
“Chicken soup is what the boy needs,” my father insisted.
“We are not going to eat chicken soup in a cemetery!” my mother countered.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s absurd.”
After perusing the menu, my parents compromised to treat my cold with a box of fried chicken.
Immediately upon arriving at the cemetery, my mother and I made ourselves comfortable on headstones adjacent to my brother’s mound.
“Headstones are no more suitable as chairs,” my scowling and still-standing father explained, “than chairs are suitable as headstones.” I hopped back onto my feet, but my mother remained seated. “You are free to use a chair as my headstone,” she indifferently replied, while digging in her purse for a handkerchief.
“Clean your nose,” she instructed me.
I gave my nose a little buff.
“No,” she clarified, “the inside.”
“Snot, boy!” my father snapped. “Blow out your infuriatingly sniffling snot!”
While I trumpeted the contents of my nose into my mother’s long-suffering handkerchief, my father unbundled our lunch. He held the open box to my mother, then to me. With my free hand I pulled out a drumstick. I always selected drumsticks when given my pick of a bird, despite them carrying the least pleasant meat. It was the shape, of course—the sceptre of tyrants since Henry the Eighth.
My father, stubbornly refusing to sit on a headstone, squatted to gnaw his portion of chicken. I remained on my feet. My mother sat comfortably, her legs crossed and the top one bopping lightly as she chewed. Her soda sat alongside her, leaving a circle of condensation atop the polished granite slab. My father’s expression did not hide his disapproval.
“You’re angering the dead, woman,” he warned.
When my father motioned to give me a soda, finding myself in need of a third hand, I tried to return the handkerchief to my mother. Her mouth was full, forcing her to communicate with her body alone for me to get the disgusting thing away from her. Put it in your pocket, she meant to communicate, but I misread her gestures to mean that I was to throw it away. So, throw it I did, and it landed with a splat on a nearby headstone.
My mother suppressed a little laugh to keep from choking. My father, however, was only repulsed by the undeniably disrespectful sight of the slimy handkerchief slopped atop the final resting place of E. Ape, Devoted Husband, Loving Father. A moment of silence followed, all of our eyes on the headstone. My eyes were specifically on the handkerchief, horrified by how it stuck to the stone. My parents, I would learn, were instead wondering about the buried man’s name.
“E. Ape?” my mother asked.
“Unusual surname,” my father added.
“The man’s name was Ape,” my mother snickered.
“What do you suppose the E. was for?”
More silence.
“Edgar,” my father suggested. “Edgar Ape.”
“Here lies Edgar Ape,” my mother declared loudly with solemnity, “Devoted Husband, Loving Father.”
My mother and father then laughed together, harder than I think I’d ever before heard them laugh, and I eventually joined in, despite not getting the joke. I would have been honoured to have been named Ape. My eyes remained on the handkerchief, worried my mother was going to ask me to move the horrible thing to a litter bin. Could I possibly have had that much snot in me? What a monstrous thing a cold is.
With all reverence for the dead thoroughly dispelled, we buried our chicken bones in the loose soil over my twin brother’s grave.
Perhaps a word or two about my twin would be appropriate.
Despite our being twins, my brother and I had never spent much time together. No secret languages for us—he regularly told me to bug off in plain English. He was born three hours after me—three hours during which, he once explained, while drawing a dividing line down the middle of our shared bedroom, he had learned the value of having his own space.
If only he’d known that in death, he would be forced once again to tolerate my company.
You see, while choosing the headstone, my parents elected to have my name chiselled on it along with his. My father explained that when I died, the grave would be dug up to add me to it, and the stone briefly returned to the mason so that my date of death could be added. The clerk had joked to my parents that he could save them some expense by strangling me right there and then. My mother laughed, and my father likewise, but less heartily.
After clearing his throat, he told the clerk, in all seriousness, that he was not to strangle me.
Excerpt 2 ――
Another tedious stop at the florist! I tugged resentfully at the itchy collar of my church shirt.
While my mother poked through the lilies, I asked if I might wait for her at the taxidermy shop next door. She accused me of being a little ghoul, then shooed me away to do as I liked. A ghoul! An unfair accusation, don’t you think? A taxidermist’s inventory is all thoroughly dead, indeed, but flatteringly displayed as mementos of lives lived. A florist’s inventory, on the other hand, is all still alive—alive, yes, alive yet just clinging to life! Consider the ghoulishness of displaying a flower in all its splendour, like a severed head, blissfully unaware that it has been sliced from its body and its death fast approaching! Yes, mother, which of us is the ghoul?
The taxidermy shop was always thick with fantastic new dead animals, all with eyes modestly sewn shut. Perhaps I should mention that by this time my old treasured hyena head had rotted and been tossed, staring glass eyes and all, into the trash by my father. My farewell glimpse had been of what was left of it staring mournfully up at me from the bottom of a bag of sweepings and potato peelings.
“You’re all dressed up!” the girl at the counter remarked.
She was unusually glad to see me, and, as I inspected the latest additions to the peaceful menagerie, I gradually realised that she was aching to tell me something.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“No.”
Nonetheless, she grabbed my hand and scooted me with her into the very back of the back room where stood an enormous crate, alone and forbidding, surely holding something dreadful—it was covered with international postage marks and handling warnings in several languages.
The shop bells jangled, startling the girl. She still had my hand—because after her grip had loosened mine had tightened—so she dragged me with her back into the shop proper. She was relieved to see that the door had jangled only because of a breeze, because I had not closed it all the way. She tended to the door, wrinkled her nose, scolded me—not, as I expected, for leaving the shop vulnerable to stray hyenas, but rather for allowing to waft in “the damp stink of passers-by” as she put it, and then quickly pulled me back into the back corner of the back room before the enormous crate.
I was a little flushed, partly from our three successive sprints, but mostly from the unexpected thrill of her hand having somehow come into my possession.
“There’s a whole stuffed gorilla in that box. From Africa.”
She looked around, to ensure we wouldn’t be overheard. Such was unlikely. The ears surrounding us were all attached to stuffed heads.
“And…” she whispered, assured of our aloneness, “from what I’ve been told…”
I could smell butterscotch on her breathless breath.
“…its eyes are wide open!”
The next jangle of shop bells announced my mother coming to collect me. I didn’t want to be collected, but I was delivered to her by hand. I grudgingly exchanged the girl’s hand for my mother’s.
For the remainder of the afternoon we tramped among the headstones. Thankfully my mother was eager to be home before dark because of the ongoing hyena infestation. We first stopped at our family plot where my mother dropped a portion of her bouquet at my father’s grave and said a short prayer. I pretended to pray, but I was in fact only thinking of the shop girl’s hand and of the wide-eyed dead gorilla presumably in the crate. I suspected my mother wasn’t actually praying either. At that time, young and simple as I was, I assumed adults only ever pondered complex and meaningful things. So, if not a prayer, she might have been contemplating Schrödinger's cat (although, looking back, after having recently sorted through her old library, her thoughts were more likely on Garfield.)
Excerpt 3 ――
The Janitor slapped around in the dark for the light switch.
One by one, far above us, a line of fluorescent lights popped on. The source of the gamey smell we’d been following came gradually into view—starting on the floor tile as the thinnest rivulet of blood, then widening into a river, and finally into a great moat surrounding a pile of fur, legs, feathers, and bestial faces heaped below a dripping foundation window.
Never had I seen so many dead animals in one place at one time, not even at the taxidermy shop during its annual Arbour Day buy-one-get-one sale. My heart raced as I dug through the pile of mangled cats, dogs, squirrels, and birds. I had found the mother lode! No dragon ever dreamed of such a treasure hoard!
“When they clear the streets in the morning,” the janitor explained, “they dump the hyenas’ nightly gorings down here. It’ll all go into the furnace come morning.”
Frantic digging soon uncovered a horn! I pulled it out just far enough to reveal the beast to which it was attached—a small goat. I trembled at the sight of it. An animal with a horn!
To think that all of this was soon to be burned up! No, no, I couldn’t let this bounty slip through my fingers. I imagined a whole semester in wood shop happily making plaques for this great collection of heads.
“Can I take these home?”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“My uncle is a taxidermist,” I lied, not wanting to waste time explaining my obsession.
The Janitor planted a fist on her hip and narrowed her eyes.
“You truly want this stinking heap of—”
“—yes!”
She looked me over, a little flummoxed.
“Your mother wouldn’t mind you bringing home a bunch of dead cats and dogs?”
I shook my head furiously. Then thought for a moment and nodded furiously. What had she asked? I was barely listening. Time was fast slipping away and I couldn’t think straight.
“How will you get them out of here?” the janitor asked with a laugh.
A good question. There must have been over a hundred carcasses, and I wanted them all. At least, I wanted the heads. How many could I carry home at once? The squirrels and birds would fit in my pockets, but the best heads were on the bigger beasts. Would I be able to get permission to stay out all night going back and forth from here to my house? My mother was generally lenient when it came to my comings and goings, but this was a big ask!
Start with the best specimens, I told myself, just to be safe.
With much struggle, I freed the goat. Despite it lacking a back half, it was still very heavy. I’d have to drag it, and only it. At one animal per trip, I had an exhausting night ahead of me.
The Janitor stopped me before I reached the door.
“You’re not messing my floor!”
“But I can’t lift it!”
“Then you can’t take it!”
I hopped impatiently from foot to foot. What was I to do? How could I lighten my load? How, how, how—?
After clamping the goat’s torso between my knees, I gripped the horns and struggled vainly to twist off the head, the only part of the beast I actually wanted.
The Janitor, recognising the nature and sincerity of my struggle, disappeared for a moment behind the woodpile, returning with an axe and a discarded plastic grocery bag. What a woman! Compassion, resourcefulness, and classical beauty all in one package!
Excerpt 4 ――
“The bisque is excellent.”
“I am pleased that you have enjoyed it, sir,” our waiter replied, “I will pass your compliments to the chef. And is the lady satisfied?”
My wife answered with a bored shrug. Covering for her ill manners, I assured the waiter that my wife was thoroughly enjoying her bag of pretzels. Such was evident from her stuffed cheeks and from the many crumbs on her plate, on the table, on her dress, and on the floor.
The ceiling lights went out and everyone in the restaurant went silent.
Was a show about to begin? I went silent, too. “When in doubt, go with the mob,” my late father had taught me. He was a principled man, my father. He'd even helped tie the knot around his throat when his own lynch mob finally tracked him down.
My wife looked curiously around in the candlelight while munching loudly on a pretzel. Our waiter cautioned her with a finger to his lips, and then backed away from the table.
A single light appeared on the distant stage.
“Dear patrons,” a soft voice began from somewhere in the shadows, “Our program for the evening is about to begin. For the duration, we ask that you switch off your phones. Do not use metal utensils. Chew slowly and quietly. If you must signal a waiter, do so with a gesture and communicate only with notes. There are cards and pencils among the centrepiece of every table. Coughing is strictly prohibited. If there is any possibility that you might need to clear your throat during the next four hours, we ask that you leave the dining room immediately.”
This request brought me no small amount of distress.
During a performance of Pelléas et Mélisande my wife had coughed so continuously that during the third act, the singer playing Golaud—having lost his patience with both the faithless child-bride Melisande and my hacking adult-bride wife—leapt into the audience and actually slit my wife’s throat. It was a dummy stage-knife, of course, and left only a little bruise. Nonetheless, the audience cheered long and hard.
You would think that after having nearly coughed herself out of existence, my wife would have learned her lesson.
But not two weeks later, at the Last Night of the Proms—to be clear, during The Trial of Joan of Arc puppet show following the bankruptcy auction at Ed Proms Liquidation Warehouse—my wife coughed so consistently she enraged everyone in the room. “Shut your mouth, woman!” shrieked The Argyle Sock of Orléans from atop her fluttering crepe paper pyre.
Back to the restaurant. My wife looked at me across the table and let out a very little cough.
The cough was so quiet it would have been inaudible anywhere outside our icily silent present circumstances. All eyes turned to my wife, including those of the actors who had just assembled, silently, in soft little slippers, at centre stage. These people were not kidding around! I’m certain I heard the shing of a knife being drawn. We’d evidently stumbled into some sort of strange dinner theatre cult, Dionysian mysteries, perhaps, or just regular mysteries, whichever—the point being, I worried, for not the first time since we’d married, that my wife was going to get us killed.
I scowled at her and shook my head, slowly and sternly. She grinned coquettishly and shrugged.
The soft voice started again.
“The program will begin in precisely two minutes. And so I repeat, if there is anyone in the audience who cannot remain perfectly quiet for four hours, we ask that you exit the dining room immediately.”
All eyes in the room turned to our table.
My oblivious wife, meanwhile, dug noisily to the bottom of her bowl of pretzels. What possible difference could there be between the pretzels on the top and the ones on the bottom?
More knives being drawn.
With increasingly desperate pantomime I pleaded with my wife for us to leave. I suppose I could have asked her outright, as we’d just been generously offered a two-minute reprieve, but I’d lost my voice for the cold fear gargling up into my throat.
The waiter tiptoed back to my wife and gently took her hand from the bowl. She looked at him, wide-eyed. He put a stern finger to his lips, released her hand, and tiptoed away.
My wife watched him leave, then looked at me, incredulous.
“Are you going to let him manhandle me like that?”
“Yes, I am,” I mouthed.
“Get some ham?” she practically yelled. “Speak up, I can’t hear you!”
The deathly silent room tightened around our little table, surely soon to strangle the lives out of me and my wife. She certainly had it coming, but what had I done, after all, but been curious what bisque was, upon spotting it on the little menu outside the restaurant. I’d assumed it would be some sort of exotic disc, stolen in the dead of night from a seller of antiquities in some faraway land. Curse the romance in my soul!
The full text of this novella is currently available by appointment only.
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