Above the tragic fossil nest of velociraptors crushed in their first lucid moments of life, next to a jar of alcohol magnifying the half opened eye of a monstrous entity halted in fetal innocence, beyond a fibrous mass hacked from the abdomen of a gentlewoman of good family, and several shelves beneath the impotent reach of the extinct flightless moa, taxidermic anvil bound to a patch of crumbling moss and ceramic mushrooms it could never leave, was a cluster of three conjoined umber stones not of the earth.

Glass eyes filled a Wan Li bowl with the allure of bright candy, while tape worms floated in liquid air with the killing freedom of kite string.  Collected by a surgeon adventurer recovering from a fresh bout of malaria, these offenses and oddities kept permanent residence in his Cabinet of Curiosities, sturdy walnut encased repository of the horrific and inexplicable that occupied a prominent spot in the handsomely appointed drawing room, and stood at the center of polite conversation on infanticide, dwarfism, impalement, parasitism, and venomous reptiles.

Labels resolutely identified a Puffer fish inflated to mace ferocity, the tiny rotten apple proven to be the head of an overly zealous missionary, a debunked unicorn horn correctly attributed in exquisite calligraphy to Monodon monoceros, the narwhal, and a spider conch shell with a glistening mouth that made proper women long for unattainable and dangerous things.  Alone in its anonymity, the diminutive triad of round stones was only a modest riddle, bland concretion the color of barn wood, dusted with pale green powder seen on common garden melons; it did not have the stuffed lemur’s ripper eyes—predatory orbs affixed to mild creatures by a man obsessed with big game hunting—or the scarab’s sinister aura of Egyptian death cults.   Failing to engage visitors with scars left by grisly history, the stones were retained primarily for their extreme and unnatural circularity, amusing pellets of little importance which drowned in the theatrical shadows of rainforest arachnids the size of dinner plates.

Creeping along the humid, suffocating corridors of his realm, feet sinking every now and then into the sleeping belly of a plump servant glistening with wine and bacon fat seeping from cavernous pores, the man dragged his body against punishing stone walls just to hear the scrape of existence.  Snake’s renewal, he pleaded, but the shedding of his skin was dry erosion, exfoliation of flesh so parched it coiled from the bare leg under his dressing gown as shimmering spirals, metalworker’s tailings.

Upon reaching his wife’s bedroom door, the man faltered in sweatless dread, repulsed by the cadaverous finger that rose from netherworlds beneath his chin, rigid scepter and menacing scythe that he did not recognize as his own tongue—licking his lips in metronomic anticipation.  She would be hitched to the revolutions of a nightmare, adhered to sheets that consumed her in man-o-war translucence from the sweat of a cloven mind, felled by somnolent days and thrashing nights.

Fingernails splintering hay as he skittered, knocking over and shattering a vase given to her in safer times, across bald wood broken by the sumptuous pile of  Turkish rugs—uniform texture that arched up to embrace nerves blunted by dehydration—the seeker found his nectar and began to feed deeply.  Sucking each wet strand, lapping at single droplets hanging from the spray of jagged ends, herding water beads from forehead onto right temple and into her bramble hair, running greedy fingers down the length of each chestnut shaft to squeeze it dry.

Candlelight fought with the chamber’s pitch air as a tremulous servant girl pushed open the door.  At first she could distinguish little, the hulking beast of a bed overburdened with luxury and dusted with pale green lunar powder that filled pointed windows rising out of the walls as praying hands.  The traveling beacon of a searching arm scoured the room, pooling white on a diorama of singular carnage, a feeding animal trapped in the delirium of instinct, desperation preying on infirmity and swooning with gratification.  Feral eyes bulged from the usurper’s head, swaying in frenzy as he crouched over the Queen, still held by infernal sleep.  Wet rope of her hair, raped of sweat and sovereignty, was greedily siphoned by the desiccated lips and hourglass mouth of the King.

Laminated under oaths of secrecy that made each movement labored and tentative, a goldsmith worked alone in the late hours after his workshop was emptied of souls. Hunched over his table in a primitive curl, the craftsman was a queen bee silhouette imagined in darkest lavender surrounded by the harsh, gleaming filings of his trade, which writhed and crawled as tireless workers in the crevices of a vast wooden floor.

It was one of his finest designs, a gold cup with the illusion of weight, to be chased with dragonflies brought down by coiling vines, buoyant decoration that descended into an inscrutable map of strangled arteries and veins around a regal base. So like the neck of the King when he paced the halls ignited by fear and rasping paranoia, the lurching bulbs of his eyes rotating with the sound of moving sand, under skin that ran in hot rivulets of candle wax down his throat.  But no one would remark on his expert casting or impeccable molding, the dancing threads of insect wings, and few outside the court’s innermost circle would ever lay eyes on the product of his solitary labor, a drinking vessel invented by fear.

On ordinary paper, the metal smith  began to sketch multiple views of the cup’s mount, a claw of enduring grasp that would be affixed to the bottom of the goblet—deliverance rising up through its liquid as a fist—clutching a knot of three conjoined stones the color of barn wood, each a perfect orb.

Gravely jaundiced sky settled over the King’s sight in voluptuous folds and creases.  Through a network of ivory channels and the yellow bat wing arcs of exuberant blossoms, he watched the uncontrollable country above his sovereign lands, disintegrating clouds adhered in fetid whey clusters to the serpentine muscle of zucchini vines coiling across his face.  It was early morning, and the King lay on his back in the palace gardens, wet earth holding the vestiges of his withering body with indifference, surrendering the impression of his sharp, inhuman corners to earthworms and Sexton beetles, who waited patiently to fulfill their calling—to clear the woods of the dead.

Verdant stalactites hung from thin air, rapier green plunging towards his chest.  In this suffocating cavern without a ceiling, each hovering dagger terminated only in vanishing points, which he scrutinized as constellations, simulacrum of raging heroes and grotesque monsters.  Rows of string beans prodded the flesh stretched to translucence over the King’s ribs, which rose up from the pulpy stew of his viscera as succulent, grisly unmentionables that float to the oily surface of potent soups.  He reached out for the tiny water droplets hanging from legume tips, cringing at the paucity, burn of depraved and meager gratification.  With mechanical stealth, the sovereign brought each wet finger to his lips, returning to each vegetable again and again until their bodies were scraped dry.

Melons had been siphoned dry long ago, during his first days of fear, when it was certain that his counselors had been conspiring in a frenzy of cobalt silk robes, cryptic books and altered ledgers, forked whispers and yellow eyes ever more sharply pointed at the corners. But he returned to the patch of withered globes to watch the progression of his haunted borings collapse inward, until he saw the face of his Vizier—old friend whose treacherous verity could be found in the rotting hollows of a perfidious mouth ringed with gums of turquoise mold—and then the countenance of his youngest advisor, earnest rind corrupted by devilish company until fresh mantis green ran liquid umber with conspiracy.  Under a net of low vines filtering sunlight across the King’s prone body in sewer grate diamonds, Crenshaws, watermelons, and cantaloupes lay collapsed about him, orbiting his form as fallen planets of a dying solar system.

Coursing through digestive tubes hot with function, the bezoar stones drew another layer of hard minerals around their core, and the king refused to leave his chamber for fear of being poisoned.  Calculus traveling the labyrinth of ruminant intestines—grains of sand progressing in mass to inhabit the circumference of rain drops—as the sovereign watched his food and wine tasters with hastily calligraphed eyes, waiting for one to shriek in agony and fall in his place.  Concretions accrued always in balance to maintain the perfect sphericity of the stones, forming with the calm logic of science, as the King prowled his night kitchens to drink albumen from chaste eggs still unviolated, drain liquor from oysters still entombed,  lick saline from the still eyes of overworked servants beaten into a semblance of sleep.

Cast, molded, and chased.  So advanced the royal goldsmith’s labors in pursuit of the King’s thirst, always working desperately on the vanishing train of robes sewn to the venous leather of a skeleton unbalanced by fear, wandering castle halls lacquered in aquatic madness.  When the bezoar stone was finally imprisoned in its mount, a cage soldered to the bottom of a radiant cup, the craftsman knew his monster as both antidote and harbinger.

Afternoon women awash in lilacs and the mesmerizing whirlpool summoned by a well turned spoon in a cup of Earl Grey tea, entertained their thirst for gruesome deviation before the Cabinet of Curiosities.  Clustered tightly around the surgeon adventurer to bathe in the vicarious luxury of his narrative, they clucked and shuddered at tales of the pickled baby girl cursed with a vestigial tail and parents who saw the devil, bracken fungus curled into the likeness of Rasputin that prompted the torching of a vast forest and all who lived within, Siamese piglets joined at the forehead and forced to stare into the mirror of their own lifeless eyes in perpetuity.

Behind the teapot decorated with snowdrops and crocuses, ghostly harbingers of spring, between matching sugar bowl and creamer, on the lowest cabinet shelf only visible by hanging the neck and rounding the shoulders, stood the tripartite cluster of bezoar stones that sealed the death of a King.

Copyright  ©  February 10, 2005 – Julie Rauer