Sybil’s Garage No. 7 Also from Senses Five Press Sybil’s Garage Nos. 1-6 Paper Cities, An Anthology of Urban Fantasy (Ed. Ekaterina Sedia) Winner of the 2009 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology Sybil’s Garage No. 7 Edited by Matthew Kressel Senses Five Press Brooklyn, New York Sybil’s Garage No. 7 © 200 Senses Five Press Editor: Matthew Kressel Associate Editors: Paul Berger, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Rajan Khanna, Devin Poore, Mercurio D. Rivera & Greer Woodward Copy-editors: Paul Berger, Rajan Khanna, Matthew Kressel & Mercurio D. Rivera Editorial Assistant: Matilda Prevost-Hart Cover design & interior layout: Matthew Kressel “By Some Illusion” © 200 Kathryn E. Baker “The Dead Boy’s Last Poem” © 200 Kelly Barnhill “The Tale of the Six Monkeys’ Tails” ©200 Hal Duncan “Emigrant” © 200 Lindsey Duncan “Schehirrazade” © 200 Amal El-Mohtar “Seven Leagues” © 200 Lyn C. A. Gardner “Rain” © 200 Juliet Gillies “Kid Despair in Love” © 200 M.K. Hobson “The Unbeing of Once-Leela” © 200 Swapna Kishore “Glourious Homage” © 200 Avi Kotzer “Thinking Woman’s Crop of Fools” © 200 Tom Crosshill “Other Things” © 200 Terence Kuch “The Telescope” © 200 Megan Kurashige “The Ferryman’s Toll” © 200 Sam Ferree “The Noise” © 200 Richard Larson “An Orange Tree Framed Your Body” © 200 Alex Dally MacFarlane “The Poincaré Sutra” © 200 Anil Menon “My Father’s Eyes” © 200 E.C. Myers “The Hyacinth Girl” © 200 Adrienne J. Odasso “The Watcher Thorn” © 200 Cheryl Barkauskas “How the Future Got Better” © 200 Eric Schaller “Indian Delight” © 200 Alexandra Seidel “A History of Worms” © 200 Amelia Shackelford “Suicide Club” © 200 Amy Sisson “Candle for the Tetragrammaton” © 200 Sonya Taaffe “Pathways Marked in Silver” © 200 Marcie Lynn Tentchoff “One October Night in Baltimore” © 200 Jacqueline West “Under the Leaves” © 200 A.C. Wise First Edition ISBN: 978-0-9796246-1-2 Senses Five Press Please visit us online at: http://www.sensesfive.com For Christine, to read on the beach, perhaps They come into my house, stinking of weed and prostitutes and sweat. They look at the indentions in the sheets where my family once slept. They cry. They say a prayer. They curse God. The floor is rotten from all the tears. Sometimes I hold their hands. They do not feel me. Sometimes I whisper in their ears. They do not hear me. Sometimes babies look up at me and giggle and ’ point and cry when their mothers can t see me. I touch them all to try and leave a fragment of myself behind. But they forget. They always forget. How many will remember me in a year? “ ’ My father always said, Don t curse the darkness. ” Light a candle! I thought that was a silly, useless saying, until I heard you sing. You heard my screams, Jeff, and turned them into music. Contents Fiction By Some Illusion Kathryn E. Baker Suicide Club Amy Sisson 7 The Noise Richard Larson A History of Worms Amelia Shackelford 2 Thinking Woman’s Crop of Fools Tom Crosshill 3 The Unbeing of Once-Leela Swapna Kishore 37 How the Future Got Better Eric Schaller 47 The Telescope Megan Kurashige 67 Under the Leaves A.C. Wise 79 The Ferryman’s Toll Sam Ferree 93 The Tale of the Six Monkeys’ Tails Hal Duncan 05 The Poincaré Sutra Anil Menon 5 Kid Despair in Love M.K. Hobson 3 My Father’s Eyes E.C. Myers 43 An Orange Tree Framed Your Body Alex Dally MacFarlane 157 The Watcher Thorn Cheryl Barkauskas 169 Other Things Terence Kuch 79 The Dead Boy’s Last Poem Kelly Barnhill 83 Poetry Seven Leagues Lyn C. A. Gardner 5 One October Night in Baltimore Jaqueline West 29 Indian Delight Alexandra Seidel 35 Candle for the Tetragrammaton Sonya Taaffe 77 Emigrant Linsdey Duncan 9 Schehirrazade Amal El-Mohtar 113 The Hyacinth Girl Adrienne J. Odasso 129 Pathways Marked in Silver Marcie Lynn Tentchoff 155 Rain Juliet Gillies 87 Non-Fiction Glourious Homage: Quentin Tarantino’s Love Letter to Cinema Avi Kotzer 5 Contributors 88 Editor’s Note to the sound of Two-Headed Boy by Neutral Milk Hotel... You may haVE noticed something’s different around here. Like the size of the book you are now holding in your hand (unless you’re reading the e- book version, in which case you’ll just have to take my word for it :-). This little ’zine has changed. We’ve abandoned the so-called “half-legal” print- size familiar to connoisseurs of ’zines for a more traditional 6x9-inch size. And for the more astute among you, you may have noticed we are using an ISBN number instead of a magazine’s ISSN number. Well, what does all this mean? It means, quite simply, that we’ve grown. The little magazine that could, which started in the back of a print shop in Hoboken in 2003, is now being distributed all over the world. To facilitate our growth, we’ve had to make some changes. But the heart of Sybil’s Garage, the excellent fiction, poetry, and artwork that you have come to know and (I hope) love, will remain. In fact, these changes have allowed us to expand the issue into the largest one yet. And this issue is, in my humble opinion, the best one so far. What has not changed is my dedication to make each issue a unique work of art. It is also my sincere hope and desire to continue to publish Sybil’s Garage far in the future. I hope you thoroughly enjoy the poems, stories and essay that follow as much as I do. If the quality of these works is any indication of the future of the magazine, I’d say it’s a bright one. —Matthew Kressel, Brooklyn, New York, June 200 SYBIL’S GARAGE By Some Illusion Kathryn E. Baker to the sound of Around You by Ingrid Michaelson... “This is red.” THI“This is blue.” S “This is orange.” “This is green.” I could only imagine that this is what being on a rolling sea would feel like. I want to vomit. I want to scream. I want to reach out and touch the vivid blues and greens, oranges and reds. Everything had shape in my world, and now it seems my world has changed forever. I long to touch what Jane names a sweater and wrap it around my shaking body. If not just for the warmth of its embrace but to regain the sense of limitation. I want to be squeezed and secure again. This is too much. Touch has become a poison now as I run my fingers along something she calls “grass” and qualifies it with yet another color. I know grass. I know the prickly — yet soft — feeling upon my bare feet. Her words don’t match my own. The only way to define what I feel involves using concepts such as “kaleidoscopic” and “confusion.” Ultimately, these are the states of mind that I’m beginning to marry. My stomach churns again as I look up. I begin to drown in whispered, “white clouds” and “blue sky.” I manage to point a shaking finger at a blob that quickly takes shape as a “bird.” A “seagull” to be exact. I sway. Jane steadies me. Despite her efforts, I lose my colorful and textured lunch all over the front of my yellow sundress. I remember the smell. I vomit again. Jane is careful as she undresses me and walks me into the shower. She pours a thick liquid in her hands which smells like pomegranates. “Pink,” SYBIL’S GARAGE she offers. “Your hands. What are they?” I ask, for the first time remembering Jane is not just words. “Flesh... peach, um, white,” she responds as she calmly starts to wash my body. My body! Curves of my breast, my hip, my legs, and my feet. I point excitedly to my toenails which do not match the rest of my skin. “Purple. Don’t you remember? I painted them yesterday,” Jane says with a smile upon her lips. Pink lips. I lean forward and brush my own against hers. She closes her blue eyes and for a moment I am tempted to ask her to open them again. She slips a hand around my waist and pulls me close. Water slides from her neck, off the arteries which throb with each heartbeat. Her breath quickens with each tender touch as I trace my lips down her chest. Now she is the one to sway as I find myself upon my knees. She is so beautiful. Black dresses. Black high-heeled shoes. Black jackets. Black-tie. “Burgundy,” Jane whispers as she anticipates my next question. The curtain is drawn to each side of the grand stage where musicians are tuning their instruments. The conductor bows and taps his wand upon the music stand. Each instrument is lifted to ready lips and hands. “Somewhere over the Rainbow” begins to play as a larger-than-life woman appears upon a large screen behind the orchestra. I immediately grab Jane’s hand. “Dorothy Gale?” I whisper and Jane nods. “Black and White?” “Just wait.” I grasp onto Jane’s hand as the tornado lifts the house and then quickly drops it. I follow Dorothy as she opens the now-brown door. Subtle changes suddenly overwhelm as she opens it. Jane is watching me instead of the movie. She hands me a Kleenex. I suddenly realize that I need it. Jane sleeps heavily. Her eyelids flutter rapidly as she twitches and reaches out to pull me closer. Her chest rises and falls under the overly large shirt which has ridden up over her hip.