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L'art de l'invisibilité
Apr. 28th, 2011 01:48 am“So, I heard you used to be a magician,” she hums the words with a casual but cautious diplomacy, her tone echoing a second hand friend’s inquiry into the status of an ex-lover’s whereabouts.
Her statement ambushes me cold in the doorway, leaving me unable to fully enter or take my leave. Not that’d I want to. She’s laying topless across the bed. Broad thighs splayed open and wrapped knee-high in white tube socks with little red rings binded around plump calves. Between them a rickety plastic skull I snagged on the down low out of an Agnes Scott art show sits between the flank. The top of the cranium is missing and she uses its interior as an ashtray. Stuffed in a mandible with a broken hinge, a pair of black panties with a white keyhole emblazoned on their crotch. Behind the hollow sockets of the skull’s gaze, the stripped promise of a sweeter death to come.
I weigh my answer out, but it comes up too heavy for small talk. Instead I blow a sigh through puffed cheeks and shrug: “Depends on what you mean by ‘magician’, I guess.”
She lights up a cigarette, rolls her eyes in contemplation and with a aimed blow of smoke, sends a wave of nicotine fog drifting over the summit of her breasts and flow across the belly before cascading into the valley of her lap behind the skull. “I don’t mean, like, pull a rabbit out of your hat magician… I mean like the real heavy shit.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“Y’know what I mean… Kabbalah and pentagrams and all the Harry Crowley stuff.”
I have to laugh at that last one and do so with a stunned shake of the head: “I see…”
The old days come back, not in a vision but in a blur . The warehouse temple hunkered along the shores of the dead railroad tracks hidden deep in the heart of no-go ghetto Terminus. The initiation ceremony. The blindfold and the oath. The candle lit faces peering solemnly from beneath the hood. Most of them young, soft and with the meek nervousness of the perpetually social awkward hanging off their bespectacled glare. But the older ones, those amongst the ranks who knew, willed, dared and were damn well silent about it, they had a different look. One I knew well from my time in shithole motel rooms and ramshackle apartments doing the money math to make the deal happen. The stone wariness of the career criminal; scowls etched by the scars of a cruel wisdom and unyielding stares with intentions veiled shrewdly that do not waver from your approach. The criminal and the magician struck me as two sides of a coin loaded with the same hooded face.
“You there?” She snorts, flicking ash into the cranium and sending a shiver down my spine that focuses me out of the fugue.
“Was,” I smirk in that way that passes for a smile from me, “but I’m back now.”
“So is that a ‘no’, then?”
“More like a ‘know’… and we should probably leave it at that.”
She scrunches up her nose in baffled contemplation.
“Tell you what,” I snap her a wink that you could actually feel even if you were blind, “how ‘bout I do a trick, a little spell if you will, just for you?”
“Really?” Raising her brows with interest and suspending them in perfect suspicion.
“Watch!” And I step into the room, kick the door closed behind me and kill the light switch with my elbow, “There… I’m invisible!”
“Asshole,” she mutters and turns on the reading light on the night stand before her. The room illuminates in a soft green-gray glow revealing no me.
“Jack?” She calls out.
“…”
“Jack… quit playing!”
“…”
She basks in the silence and the light uncomfortably, shifting her weight on the mattress as she cranes to look around the tight confines of the room. That’s when I pop the top half of my face up from the foot of the bed, doing my best impression of the zombie from the original Dawn of the Dead poster, and shout – “Boo!”
In response the skull-ashtray goes careening over the bed and misses my own skull by inches.
I pounce up onto the bed besides her as she assails me with a series of mock slaps and giggled protests. Her smile draws from me a kiss, her lap the gentle layering of my hand, her nipple the softest of pinches.
“So whatever tricks do you know there, Aleister Potter?”
“Turn the lights out and you’ll see!”
Her statement ambushes me cold in the doorway, leaving me unable to fully enter or take my leave. Not that’d I want to. She’s laying topless across the bed. Broad thighs splayed open and wrapped knee-high in white tube socks with little red rings binded around plump calves. Between them a rickety plastic skull I snagged on the down low out of an Agnes Scott art show sits between the flank. The top of the cranium is missing and she uses its interior as an ashtray. Stuffed in a mandible with a broken hinge, a pair of black panties with a white keyhole emblazoned on their crotch. Behind the hollow sockets of the skull’s gaze, the stripped promise of a sweeter death to come.
I weigh my answer out, but it comes up too heavy for small talk. Instead I blow a sigh through puffed cheeks and shrug: “Depends on what you mean by ‘magician’, I guess.”
She lights up a cigarette, rolls her eyes in contemplation and with a aimed blow of smoke, sends a wave of nicotine fog drifting over the summit of her breasts and flow across the belly before cascading into the valley of her lap behind the skull. “I don’t mean, like, pull a rabbit out of your hat magician… I mean like the real heavy shit.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“Y’know what I mean… Kabbalah and pentagrams and all the Harry Crowley stuff.”
I have to laugh at that last one and do so with a stunned shake of the head: “I see…”
The old days come back, not in a vision but in a blur . The warehouse temple hunkered along the shores of the dead railroad tracks hidden deep in the heart of no-go ghetto Terminus. The initiation ceremony. The blindfold and the oath. The candle lit faces peering solemnly from beneath the hood. Most of them young, soft and with the meek nervousness of the perpetually social awkward hanging off their bespectacled glare. But the older ones, those amongst the ranks who knew, willed, dared and were damn well silent about it, they had a different look. One I knew well from my time in shithole motel rooms and ramshackle apartments doing the money math to make the deal happen. The stone wariness of the career criminal; scowls etched by the scars of a cruel wisdom and unyielding stares with intentions veiled shrewdly that do not waver from your approach. The criminal and the magician struck me as two sides of a coin loaded with the same hooded face.
“You there?” She snorts, flicking ash into the cranium and sending a shiver down my spine that focuses me out of the fugue.
“Was,” I smirk in that way that passes for a smile from me, “but I’m back now.”
“So is that a ‘no’, then?”
“More like a ‘know’… and we should probably leave it at that.”
She scrunches up her nose in baffled contemplation.
“Tell you what,” I snap her a wink that you could actually feel even if you were blind, “how ‘bout I do a trick, a little spell if you will, just for you?”
“Really?” Raising her brows with interest and suspending them in perfect suspicion.
“Watch!” And I step into the room, kick the door closed behind me and kill the light switch with my elbow, “There… I’m invisible!”
“Asshole,” she mutters and turns on the reading light on the night stand before her. The room illuminates in a soft green-gray glow revealing no me.
“Jack?” She calls out.
“…”
“Jack… quit playing!”
“…”
She basks in the silence and the light uncomfortably, shifting her weight on the mattress as she cranes to look around the tight confines of the room. That’s when I pop the top half of my face up from the foot of the bed, doing my best impression of the zombie from the original Dawn of the Dead poster, and shout – “Boo!”
In response the skull-ashtray goes careening over the bed and misses my own skull by inches.
I pounce up onto the bed besides her as she assails me with a series of mock slaps and giggled protests. Her smile draws from me a kiss, her lap the gentle layering of my hand, her nipple the softest of pinches.
“So whatever tricks do you know there, Aleister Potter?”
“Turn the lights out and you’ll see!”
