THE LAST STORY

by Kristy Dark

It’s winter. Ghosts and grey ashes. Too cold for the rattlesnakes, or I would seek them out. A poetic way for a writer to die, but it’s such an illusion to think I could ever escape.

For the past 24 years I have scribbled countless words on countless pages, magic runes that transported me to other worlds, other times. Stories that could bring riches and fame. But I never showed them to another soul, and tonight I burned them all.

Watching the dying fire, I realize there’s one thing I would like to do before he comes for me.

* * *

I was born a double Scorpio, and that means trouble. Passion. Revenge. Demons in the closet. And occasional flights on golden wings over the Himalayas into God’s country.

It was when I was 8 years old that I gained the world, then lost it — all in one day.

Listening to Mrs. Wagner’s chalk squeak across the blackboard, I wiggled my toes in their thin white socks and patent leather shoes, trying to warm them up. Emily sat next to me picking her nose, and my ex-boyfriend Tommy kept trying to get my attention from the far end of the table. After awhile he wrote something on a scrap of paper, folded it into a tiny square, and passed it down to me.

I ignored it for a few minutes, knowing Tommy was watching, then finally unfolded it. Printed painstakingly in block letters were the words "I LOVE YOU". I’d caught him kissing Emily in the coat closet, and he wanted to make up.

I wrote "I HATE YOU!!!" on another scrap of paper and passed it back.

Mrs. Wagner stopped writing, turned to face us. "Today we’re all going to write stories," she said. "You can write anything you want, but use this as the first sentence."

I copied the words from the blackboard onto a piece of paper, then stared at them, twisting my pencil. "The boy and girl went out of the house to see what they could find." What could they find? I racked my brain. Something scientific...

I lowered my pencil to the page, and to my total surprise, this is what I wrote: "Lo and behold, they found a little baby dragon."

After that I wrote of magical flights. Of danger. Of love and rescue. When the bell rang for recess, I was so startled that I dropped my pencil. Tommy picked it up, and I gave him a half-smile, still flying with the dragons in that other world.

I couldn’t wait for school to be over so I could show it to someone. Not my dad, who’d left to be with another woman. My Mom, who was a writer — exactly what I was going to be.

But when I got home, I knew something was wrong. No sound of the carpet sweeper dragging back and forth or my Mom’s typewriter. Only a heaviness in the air, pressing down on me like layers of forgotten souls in black overcoats.

I held my breath, tiptoed into her room.

The shades were down, and in the dimness the first thing I saw was the white chenille bedspread. The bed looked wide and flat as a barge, and when my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw her lying there, unnaturally still, the fingers of one hand trailing the shag carpet like water. I tried to raise her pale hand, but her wedding ring caught on one of the shags. That’s when I began to cry.

Today as I look back, I see that wasn’t the saddest thing about my mother’s death. It was her lost words.

* * *

For years afterward I tried to write stories about my Mom, the memories all thick and twisted inside me like tree roots. If I pulled hard enough they would come out, but with dark crumbling pieces of my soul still attached.

One spring day when I was supposed to be in school, I took my mother’s ashes to a deserted field and let them go. As I watched them hover like ghostly grey butterflies above the golden mustard, I felt an overwhelming desire to sleep. But I was afraid that if I closed my eyes in that field, I’d never open them again.

Although I’d hoped that day would change everything, I soon discovered a sad truth. It was only my mother that I’d set free. I was still paralyzed, ensnared in the web of life.

Mythology says spiders are the architects of language, the patterns of their webs the letters of some ancient, mystic tongue. And religion says in the beginning was the Word, that first delicate strand of silk from which the cosmic web was woven. I knew there was only one way out for me. I had to become the letters, the words, the silken strands of the web, and every particle of teeming life trapped inside. I had to write.

Unfortunately, the words wouldn’t come. Oh, I could string sentences together, but they were just black marks on a page. No life. No magic. No salvation.

I tried everything. I read books, took classes, went to seminars, joined writer’s groups. I practiced self-hypnosis, then meditation and prayer. I even lit black candles at midnight while chanting a spell I’d found in an old book. Afterward I felt silly and threw the book away, but it was the very next day that I met Dr. M.

I’d spent a restless night haunted by strange dreams, then slept through the alarm. Praying to make my 8:00 Milton class on time, I raced across the UCLA campus to Royce Hall, and as I scurried along its arched colonnade the bells began to chime.

I slipped into a seat as the last bell sounded and flushed with embarrassment when I saw the professor staring at me. I had the feeling he knew exactly why I was late.

More frog than prince with a squat body, black hair that looked like broken shoelaces, and thick glasses that seemed to be perpetually fogged up, he draped his arms over the podium and addressed us.

"My name is Dr. M. Sorry to have to inform you that my esteemed colleague, Dr. Schuyler, suffered a heart attack last night and will be unable to continue teaching this course. I have been asked to take his place. In many circles I’m considered quite an authority on Paradise Lost, so I believe you’ll find my teaching..." The fingers of his left hand drifted to his scalp, tied a few of the shoelaces. "Enlightening."

Someone raised a hand. "What about our papers?"

"In my box by 5:00 today. No exceptions."

Dr. M handed our papers back the following week, but I listened in vain for my name to be called. Just as I was about to raise my hand, he looked directly at me and said, "If you did not receive your paper, please see me during my office hours, 6:00 to midnight."

I was in anguish all day, wondering whether my paper was so terrible that Dr. M had to break the news to me in person. Was he going to suggest I drop the class? Tell me to find another major? Finally, when sunset streaked the sky like colored ribbons, I set out to discover the terrible truth.

Dr. M had taken over Dr. Schuyler’s office on the third floor, and I climbed the stairs mechanically, my thoughts lost in a dark labyrinth. Suddenly something cold and wet pressed against the back of my leg, and taking the next step too fast, I nearly fell.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw it was only a dog, a large black poodle. The poodle stared at me for a moment with deep-set eyes like coals burning in a pit, then bounded past me up the stairs.

When I reached the third floor I looked around for the poodle, but he was nowhere in sight, although I thought I heard a muffled bark as I walked down the hallway.

I stopped in front of the last office and, heart pounding, stared at the thread of light beneath Dr. M’s door. It’s just one grade on one paper, I told myself. But deep down I knew that wasn’t true. If I stepped through that door, the Universe would unravel.

Finally I knocked, and hearing "Entrez-vous, mademoiselle" from the other side, went in.

Dr. M was seated at the desk, half in shadow, and I could just make out a black beret perched jauntily on his head.

"Are you French?" I asked, but immediately felt foolish, for as he turned toward the light the imagined beret vanished.

"I could just as easily have said..." and Dr. M rattled off strings of words in what sounded like 17 different languages. "Now, if you’ll close the door and have a seat, we have something terribly important to talk about. In English."

I shut the door, then looked around for a place to sit. There was nothing but a high wooden stool, and as I clambered onto it, I saw Dr. M held the paper I’d written, rolled like a dunce’s cap, in his hands.

I hung my head, cheeks burning with shame. "So tell me what’s wrong."

"The only thing wrong," he said, tossing the paper to me, "is the way you’re skewing my grade curve."

Unfurling the paper, I saw, written in bold strokes on the first page, A+. I stared at it for a moment, then flipped quickly to the last page to see if he’d written any comments. He had, but the words were all runny, covered with red splashes.

"Sorry about the wine stains."

"That’s o.k., but I can’t make out what you wrote. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and...’"

"‘You saw brilliantly how it led to the power of naming.’"

I looked directly into Dr. M’s eyes, and they were like black, bubbling pools of tar where an animal could get stuck fast — or a human soul.

"And the power of not revealing a name," I said. Not a ripple in the tar pools. "Well, it’s getting late..."

Dr. M held me fast with his eyes. "Concentric circles. Destiny."

"I don’t understand."

"Have you thought about your future? Perhaps you’d like to become a scholar, a teacher."

"I want to be a writer."

"To be a writer is easy. All you have to do is sit down and write."

"No, I want..." and I proceeded to tell him about the experience I’d had as a child, flying with the dragons.

"Ah, you want to be a Writer."

Shimmering, the word hung in the air. I reached for it, felt the letters slip in through my fingertips.

"Go home and write," Dr. M said.

* * *

As I walked across campus, it began to rain. Large, cold drops that soaked me until my being seemed to run like watercolors, blending with the darkness.

I heard a noise behind me and, turning, saw the black poodle I’d seen earlier. He was shivering and bedraggled, and the thought flashed into my mind that I should take him home with me. But my apartment building had a firm policy against pets, so I hardened my heart and walked away.

When I got home I changed out of my wet clothes, lit a fire, then went straight to my writing desk — where I made an unfortunate discovery. I’d left a nearby window open, and the rain had blown in.

I sopped up the puddles on the wooden surface scarred by years of attempted writing, then pulled soggy half-written stories and scraps of ideas from the cubbyholes. Unfolding them, I saw all the orderly patterns of ink had been destroyed, leaving only chaos.

I felt a dreadful pain somewhere deep in my soul. Everything I’d ever written, irretrievably lost. My entire past as a writer.

Suddenly I heard Dr. M’s voice, as clearly as if he were in the room. "Claim your future."

I sat down on the hearth, stared into the flames, and picked up my pen. It hovered like a dark angel above the white paper, then suddenly swooped down.

I wrote until 4:30 in the morning and fell into an exhausted sleep afterward.

When I woke, my stomach hollow with hunger, I realized it had been 18 hours or so since I’d eaten. As I threw together a quick breakfast, the smell of sizzling bacon drew a cockroach out.

"Careful, or you’ll fry," I said, shooing him away.

I ate quickly, jotting down a line or two between bites, and when I finished eating, simply pushed the plate to one side and kept on writing.

Immersed in a world where people measured time by the faces of their gods, when I finally set my pen down I was amazed to discover darkness beyond the windows. I snatched up my alarm clock. Still time to catch Dr. M if I hurried.

I raced across campus, then up the stairs and along the hallway to Dr. M’s office. I was elated to see a thread of light under the door, but when I knocked, there was no answer. I tried the knob, and to my surprise the door opened.

I peeked in, caught a movement in the shadows. "Dr. M?"

Something stepped into the light, and I saw it was the black poodle who’d followed me in the rain last night.

"Well, hello. I didn’t realize you belonged to Dr. M."

He ran around me in circles, then let out a huge fart that smelled like rotten eggs.

"I’ll be back in a little while," I said.

The door was wide open when I returned, and Dr. M, bare-chested, a flowered lei around his neck, greeted me with a cheery "Aloha! How’d it go?"

I handed my story to him.

He scanned it, the dark vortex of his eyes sucking in all the words, then picked up a red pen. "In the description of the Mayan ceremonial headdress, I think you should substitute something for ‘awkward’."

Good lord, I thought, he’s going to rip the whole thing apart.

"I think you should say, ‘A dark, feathery object sailed through the air like a grotesque parody of a bird.’" He handed the story back to me. "Other than that, it’s perfect."

"I was really there!" I said excitedly. "A world that existed thousands of years ago. I climbed the pyramids. I watched the sacrifices. I ran with the jaguars in the jungle. And I just wrote down what I saw and heard."

"I know."

"Can I do it again?" I asked.

"If you’re willing to pay the price."

"I suppose you want me to cut my finger and sign in blood."

"No need to cut yourself," Dr. M said, "if it’s the right time of the month."

For a moment all I could do was stare at him, realizing he’d violated something. Perhaps my innocence, perhaps only the rules of the game.

I fumbled the door open behind me, turned and ran.

I ran all the way home, and somehow it cleansed me. By the time I reached my apartment, I had only one goal — to get back to my writing.

I soon had a blaze going in the fireplace and, pen and paper in hand, stared into the flames, hoping to re-create the magical experience of the night before. But the words wouldn’t come.

I forced myself to write something, anything — and what I wrote failed to transport me anywhere but to a literary dunghill. I threw pen and papers across the room, sending a large black spider scuttling into a corner.

"Dr. M, damn you to hell!"

* * *

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Unburned Manuscript Fragment

RETURN OF THE ANCIENT MAYA

******************************************************************************

The following morning I overslept and was late for my Milton class.

When I walked in, Dr. M threw his volume of Paradise Lost onto the podium with a loud thump. "The greatest tragedy," he said, looking directly at me, "is that they were no longer connected to the Word."

That night I went to Dr. M’s office.

He was wearing a bishop’s mitre on his head, and he greeted me with silence.

"Aren’t you going to say something in Latin?" I asked.

"Estupidus eternus."

"Somehow that doesn’t sound flattering."

"I offered you the Universe."

"And I’m here to accept your offer."

"Unfortunately, it’s too late."

He wore an ornate signet ring on his left hand and, stooping, I kissed it. "It can’t be too late."

Dr. M considered for a moment, then handed me a sheet of paper. "Sign."

"But it’s blank," I said.

"What do you want, words of fire?"

"How long will I have?"

"24 years."

* * *

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Unburned Manuscript Fragment

THE SHAMAN

******************************************************************************

For months I devoted myself to my writing. I’d already dropped out of school, but I needed to do something about all the hours wasted on earning a living. I thought about selling my stories, but they were the only pieces of my soul that still belonged to me. So I wrote a letter to Dr. M, asking for financial assistance.

The next day my father suffered a massive coronary. The inheritance he left was enough for me to live on quite comfortably for the next 24 years.

I rushed over to Dr. M’s office and flung the door open, not even bothering to knock. He was spooning ice cream out of a carton, and I saw how it melted on the way to his mouth.

I threw the ice cream in his lap. "You didn’t have to kill him!"

"Why would you care?"

"He was my father."

"He was the man who abandoned you and drove your mother to suicide."

"You never loved anyone, did you?"

He looked at me for a long moment. "Only God," he said.

A few days later I moved to an apartment without cockroaches and went on writing.

* * *

Twenty-four years flew by, and all I could remember of that time was the writing. The time spent among Mayan priests, and with ghosts in the sugar cane fields of Hawaii. The confessions of fallen angels. The dreams of vampires.

* * *

******************************************************************************

Unburned Manuscript Fragment

SUNRISE

******************************************************************************

At last I set my pen down and look at the fire. There is a large dark spot among the flames, and a few unburned fragments of my stories are fluttering up toward the chimney.

The next thing I know, Dr. M is standing beside me, stirring up the fire with a brass poker. "There, that’s better."

Removing his black wool coat, he settles into a chair, and we watch each other for a long moment. "Was it worth it?" he asks finally.

I toss my manuscript to him.

"Ah," he says. "The last story."

A terrible sadness comes over me as I suddenly realize I’ve spent so much time in other worlds — but not nearly enough in my own.

"There wasn’t enough time," I say.

Dr. M, jotting notes on my manuscript with a red pen, doesn’t even hear me.

"I’d make the dog a poodle," he says, "and give him eyes ‘like coals burning in a pit’."

* * * * *

© Kristy Dark 2001    All rights reserved.

"The Last Story" first appeared in The Year's Best Writing, from the Editors of Writer's Digest (March 2002).

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