SEX FOR POETS - 07 - ICEBURG
SEX FOR POETS - 07 - ICEBURG
a rough draft, released chapter by chapter
WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT
Reader discretion is advised for scenes of unique and creative sexuality, pervasive lewd imagery and language, and down the line, scenes of violence that may be offensive to some readers. If you have delicate sensibilities, best move along.
CHAPTER 7: ICEBURG
3 weeks before the festival
CLARA
The first time Clara saw the symbol, it was smudged across the back of her grandfather’s hand.
The second time she saw the symbol, it was marked on Mister Embry, across the hall.
And this morning, she sees it for a third time, spray painted across a street banner advertising the Morality Jamboree Festival.
Clara deposits a grocers bag of produce in her trunk and latches it before walking closer to the road. Closer to the banner. At the bottom is a large logo for the All Women’s Chaste Collective of Art, which has been a sponsor for the last four years. On each side of the Collective logo are other sponsors, the size of their logos a direct link to the hierarchy of their contribution.
And right in the center, defacing the painting of a lotus flower—Johanna won the festival poster contest this year—is that same mysterious symbol that stained the skin of her grandfather, and likely many of the other elderly residents of New Wonder Manor.
A family strolls past the sign, pausing to make note of the graffiti as well. The mother points. The father shrugs. The toddler fusses.
And then they are gone.
Clara detects a sweet, pungent fragrance in the air, like the hint of ozone before lightning. But the sky is endlessly blue. A twinge rolls across her belly like the onset of indigestion before fading away just as quickly.
Scrawled in marker on the back of wrinkled hands, the symbol was a challenge to decode. But here, on a flat pane of vinyl, she can better see the distinct black circle, the V bisecting the shape and descending into a sharp triangle below the hoop. But where it emerges above, the stems hook back down to form what appears to be horns or antlers. It reminds Clara of a buffalo, mighty and fierce, the horns like wicked cornucopias mounted to its skull. And somehow the symbol also reminds her of water. Dangerous water. Maybe it’s that small v dipping below the circle like an iceberg crowning into existence. And above, an unwavering block of devastation burgeoning just beneath the surface and hidden from sight.
“A water buffalo,” Clara says to herself.
As if in response, a small drip of paint, still wet, falls from a horn and paints the center of the lotus black.
Clara looks across the street and down the alley, seeking movement. She spins, searching the parking lot for a bandit fleeing. Nothing moves but for the exiting shoppers of the grocery.
She walks closer to the road, peering up and down each lane, spotting nothing of interest. But when she turns, she sees the vandals have attacked the back side of the banner as well. One short sentence, a trickle of paint still falling and drying in the morning sun. And a single word emphasized, underlined amidst the others, as though screaming for attention.
WE ARE ALL ANIMALS
DAHLIA
Tonight, when once again Dahlia cannot sleep, she sits beside Clara in The Common Area, and together, they watch the window. Passing cars illuminate the glass, casting generous beams of light across their feet so bright that Dahlia expects to see clouds in the sky, hear birds in the trees.
Johanna and Laurel are up late as well, though they remain sequestered in their studio.
“What could they possibly be working on so late? Is it for the festival?”
CLARA
Clara shrugs into the darkness as she drops a third sugar cube into her tea.
She should turn on a light. The night is oppressive, squeezing her shoulders, tugging at her ankles. It’s funneling down her throat. She should sip her tea before it cools.
She doesn’t.
Dew collects against the warm glass and falls down the window as though raining.
As though weeping.
DAHLIA
Dahlia sinks into the sofa, painting her tongue with another splash of hot chamomile.
Someone has drawn some sort of design on the foggy window with their finger before disappearing into the night. Dahlia did not see the culprit, but despite the sheeting water on the glass, the lines still hold. A circle with a V down the center.
“Do you see that?” she asks, leaning forward. “What is that?”
“You should get some sleep, Dahl.”
“I’m waving the flag.” Dahlia plucks a sugar cube from the bowl on the table and throws it at the window. “See? That was my white flag. Nothing says surrender like a flying sugar cube.”
She smiles at her friend.
CLARA
The sugar cube clatters against the window and Clara jumps.
Dahlia raises an eyebrow at her, and Clara tries to smile, but the action has been removed from her muscle memory, and she doesn’t even look over. She just stares straight ahead. At the window. At the mark. Somehow the night grows darker. The air tightens.
“What’s wrong tonight?” Clara asks. “The bridge dream?”
“This one was different,” Dahlia says. “I walked straight into the river.”
Clara smiles. “That sounds lovely.”
DAHLIA
“Lovely?”
Dahlia turns toward her. Clara’s hair is tangled, her face dirty and unwashed. Does she actually smell lemongrass and jasmine, or is that a figment of her imagination? Her body’s Pavlovian response to Clara’s proximity?
When Clara does not respond, Dahlia turns back to the window.
“I couldn’t stop myself,” she says. “In my dream. I could hear people on the bank screaming at me to come back, like they knew me. Like they were trying to change my mind. And I wanted to go back, but I couldn’t control my legs. They just kept going deeper and deeper. The first time I woke up, the water was to my chest. It was squeezing my ribs and I couldn’t breathe. When I fell back asleep, I was fully underwater, like I’d left the room during a movie and missed a scene. The ground was giving way under my feet and I was sliding. I could still hear the people screaming, but their voices sounded like they were drowning, too. I took a deep breath underwater to end it all, and that’s when I woke up again.”
Clara hasn’t touched her tea. Steam no longer rises, and Dahlia can see the undissolved lumps of multiple sugar cubes mounded at the bottom.
CLARA
“Clara?”
Clara hears her name, but the room is so loud—dense with static and interference—that Dahlia’s voice sounds miles away. As though coming from the shore as Clara walks into the river. As she goes deeper and deeper, the water to her chest now, squeezing her ribs.
Clara takes a deep breath and waits to wake up.
“Something’s coming, Dahl. Something bad. I can feel it in my skin.”
“What does it feel like?”
“It’s a kind of tightening. Like I have these seams connected to all my limbs. Like there are strings attached to my ankles and wrists, and someone’s pulling the seams extra tight.”
The Common Area is so utterly quiet—absent of life, absent of breath—that Clara’s voice worms inside her own head. If it weren’t for sound waves tickling the hairs inside her ear, she would wonder if she said anything at all.
DAHLIA
Dahlia looks to the window where the moisture has finally disintegrated the odd mark someone left behind.
The street lamps filter through the dripping condensation. That nightly menagerie of liquid gemstones. In the pattern, Dahlia spots nothing. It is now just an endless expanse of little bubbles.
She looks over at Clara, placing a hand on her knee. Clara only nods, pinching her lower lip so tight that when she releases, the indentation stays, flesh doming on either side of the fissure.
