Fantastic Metropolis

With foolish pride the younger man set down his camera, unbuttoned his shirt and removed it. The chest and arms revealed a modest proportion of décor—An arrow pierced heart, a toad with tongue extended, the head of Jimmy Cagney,—but the major item of attraction was on the back, which was offered to view without the slightest pretence at modesty.

“What do we have here,” the Professor said, his normally impassive voice modulating toward interest. “A plant of some kind?”

“Yes,” Lum replied proudly. “But it is a special plant—A Venus fly trap.”

In truth the object decorating the skin of his back was especially strange. A sheaf of lime green stalks ascended and spread out from the base of his spine, each one terminating in a claw-like cup. Several of the cups, or traps, were closed—The legs of a daddy longlegs stretched out of one… Others were open, the centers of those spring-like traps a vivid, almost bloody, pinkish red. A fly sat nonchalantly on one of Lum’s shoulders, poised just above its gaping, outstretched doom.

“Most unusual; the fly looks real enough to swat,” Professor Black said, with a strange twist of his mouth. And then, after an awkward stall: “I suppose we might as well get on with the interview portion now.”

“Yes… But… What do you think about the photos?” Lum asked nervously, replacing his shirt and picking up his camera. “It would really be nice if I could just fill up a roll or two.”

“Of course, after the interview.”

Without leaving opportunity for further debate, the Professor led the way back to the sunken living room. Lum had many questions on his mind as to the collection, and the modes his host might have used in making acquisition. At the right opportunity he would ask; just then he sat himself down on the couch, with a rabbit fur pillow tucked behind his back, and listened, while Professor Black prepared drinks and told his tale.

“As a child,” he said, uncorking a bottle of old brandy, “I always had a fascination with animal stuffs: feathers, bones, leather, shark teeth, fur—It is not uncommon in boys, to pick up a little something while out on a walk; a bird’s nest, with a few robins eggs and some strands of down.

“I had a collection of such things,” he continued, handing Lum a glass of the amber liquid. “I kept them in a small tin chest—It was rusty and painted with an old fashioned map of the world. Yes, inside there was the inevitable skin of a snake, a few skulls of small rodents, and a dried up claw—I suppose it was a badger’s.”

Lum sipped his brandy and listened, jotting down notes in his pad.

“To be honest,” Black said, “I believe my initial interest was more in touch than sight. Things are curious that way. I remember clearly: During a certain period of my child hood, when I was quite young, I shared the same bed as my mother. I believe that I was afraid to sleep alone. One night I awoke from a nightmare—I was being devoured by wild beasts,—and the first thing I came into contact with was a sort of soft, hairy mass. Of course it was only my dear mother’s arm, but it frightened me—As well as intrigued.”

The voice echoed in the high ceilinged room, and seemed to linger in space before entering Lum’s ears, and subsequently becoming part of his thought process.

“At the circus I saw the Zebra man, and later the tattooed woman. She was beautiful, or at least I thought so, and I might as well admit that she piqued more than just my young curiosity… Amazing, isn’t it, that decades later, she could still stand foremost in my mind?”

Lum tried to make sense of this question, but could not quite bring it all together. The pen stuck from between his fingers, immobile, and the glass sat empty near him. It must have been shortly thereafter that Professor Black’s dialogue terminated. He looked at his guest’s sagging form with eyes devoid of sympathy. The rays of the setting sun slashed in through the window, and glinted off the scalpel held in his hand.

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Brendan Connell has fiction either forthcoming, or already published, in a number of magazines, literary journals and anthologies, including RE:AL, Tabu, Heist, Penny Dreadful, Monas Hieroglyphica, Fishdrum, The Dream Zone, Darkness Rising 3 (Cosmos Books, 2001), Redsine (Cosmos Books, 2002), The Best of Devil Blossoms (Asterius Press, 2002), and Leviathan 3 (Ministry of Whimsy Press, 2002). He has had translations published in Literature of Asia, Africa and Latin America (Prentice Hall, 1999).