I followed the Metal Men. I watched them load baskets of fish, meat, water, and charcoal, and finally the enormous carved pole into their steel boat. I stood on the beach as they rowed out to their silent, looming vessel, the leader clinging to the pole and barking orders to the others. And in the gathering darkness, I longed to join them. Something had changed in me. With a kind of metallic click, I found myself snipped off from my people. At the moment that the strange chief unhooked the contraption from its chain, I understood that it was not his heart, and that he was just a man with wondrous objects. The other Trojans saw this, too, but for them, it was the magic of the objects that mattered. The visitor’s watch was a talisman for them. For me, it became a compass. It pointed to a universe of technology and industry, of science and time. These things were out there somewhere, over the waters, and I wanted to go there.
Tag Archives: Fiction
Witness
The boy’s body hit the hood of the Toyota, slammed off the windshield, and then slid, falling out of sight from where Marie stood. She thought it might have been a performance, it happened so quickly, but there was no mistaking the terrible, high-whistle screeching of hot rubber on asphalt, the dull thud as the kid’s body hit the street. His bike crumpled under the front wheels as though it was fake, made of foil. People flooded the street, retail workers from the stores, good Samaritans pulling over in their cars to help, but Marie was frozen, waiting for someone to tell her it was just a joke.
A Beautiful Evening
He remembered her long nose. A Meryl Streep nose: it bisected her face on the vertical axis, while her high cheekbones and eyebrows did the same on the horizontal. When they were sleeping together, he had wanted to crack open her deadpan disinterest, to find the smoldering he knew was underneath. He never found it. Their affair had dissipated like smoke.
Murmur
The boy’s skin was very pale. Arms turned down, thin strips of black wrapped around, mapping where the skin didn’t meet. He was very handsome and Murmur was glad.
The Burglar by Mary L. Tabor
From The Woman Who Never Cooked by Mary L. Tabor, Mid-List Press, 2006; previously published by Chelsea. Mary Tabor is the inaugural grand prize winner of the SFWP Literary Awards Program.