Angelica Read online



  ANGELICA

  by

  Gabriel Archer & Jack Canaan

  Copyright©2012 MetaFic, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  This will be the last thing I will ever write. It's not that I'm out of ideas - I may have too many of them, in fact; it's just that my will to compose has vanished. EYES. Ignore these little outbursts, they'll pop up once in a while. Anyway, even as I sit down to write this, I have all the classic elements of an aspiring writer: a crummy apartment, a steaming cup of instant coffee, a couple of packs of cheap cigarettes, and an overfilled ashtray still smoking from the last butt I didn't really snuff out. To all that add a Colt revolver -- black and slick -- with a single bullet. This equals failure. KIDNEYS. Please do pardon these outbursts, but alas, they are necessary.

  I'm taking no chances. To make sure this is published, I have about a hundred envelopes all stamped and addressed to various publications, magazines, periodicals, that deal with fantasy and horror. If I'm lucky, someone will actually take this to be a clever story and expose it to thousands of readers. But in essence, this is so much more.

  I also asked a couple of my friends to publish this online, for free, on Amazon and iBooks and all the other big websites. After I mail all the envelopes, I'll come back here, light up one more cigarette, look at her picture, and start playing Russian Roulette until I lose... Or win... Whatever you want to call it.

  My real name is not important and my pen name is Unknown, since none of my work has ever been published. It just sits in the computer somewhere, thousands of digital pages, hundreds of megabytes, collecting virtual dust and wasting virtual storage space which would have better been utilized storing a YouTube video of a cat playing the piano or something. Then again, maybe I'll be one of those writers who is discovered after his death - get a little cult going, have some idiots read my work and smoke cigarettes and hate the world and think that there is no point to it all. LIVER. But there is a point. It's a secret and I know it. It's love.

  I should tell you how it all began and why it's important that you're reading this right now. At a certain time during my college years I was stricken with a disease, metaphorically speaking. It was a fever of the soul -- if you'll allow a moment of self- indulgent purple prose -- that did not allow me to complete my studies in Financial Market Enterprising but instead forced me to take up a quill and dip it into ink (again, metaphorically - I actually used a computer). I thought I had talent, and I lost myself in paper dreams of Pulitzer and Nebula prizes. HANDS. I created worlds in which I was God, king, and executioner. My characters were my children and I rewarded their heroism and punished their cowardice. I got off on the destructive power of creation. But I wasn't alone.

  I met her. ANGELICA. My critic and my muse. My victory and defeat. My Juliet and Desdemona. We fell in love and were inseparable. It was the Hollywood type of love: the one that conquers all. She saw my depth and adored my potential; swearing to stay with me every step of the way. I wrote books. I wrote short stories and novellas. I wrote sketches and articles. And she held on to me. Yes, perhaps we were not eating caviar, but the burgers we shared tasted like heavenly manna. Even as rejection letters piled on from agents and publishers, she bolstered me and laughed at them - saying it was their loss, saying they did not know who they discarded. VEINS. Saying how one day they'd be cursing themselves for passing me by. At times, even I lost faith. I would consider going back to school, getting a nine-to-five job. All this I would do for her, because Angelica deserved so much more than I could give her. But she never lost faith.

  So she continued with her studies and I worked part-time as a waiter - very traditional, very cliché (exactly the type of stuff I try to keep out of my work).

  There's no light in the room right now other than the flashes of the neon XXX sign hanging across the street, and the merciless, sharp glare of an outdated monitor on my face. I lean back in the chair and it ominously creaks under me. I touch my cheek, all thorny and bristly. HAIR. And not for the first time tonight I second-guess myself. Should I spare myself the pain? Spare you the pain? ARTERIES. Or should I go through with this and make you a murderer? Existential woes! Another staple of a struggling writer.

  I start reminiscing of the good times. Us walking in the park. Angelica painting my face with her ice cream cone then licking it away. I catch up to her, throw her into a pile of leaves. She's laughing. I'm stuffing my ice cream into her mouth. Her laugh is angelic, a chiming of bells. I wipe a tear off my cheek. Enough. Have to be firm. BREASTS.

  Life went on. I kept working days, writing nights. I wasn't sure what was more demeaning: serving coffee to guys I went to school with or getting yet another rejection to my most recent novella. My former classmates wore 'stock market' suits, they had 'bond' polished shoes and 'currency exchange' haircuts. SKIN. My only suit was the 'penguin,' stained with soup and barbecue sauce. The tux owned its life only to Angelica's resuscitation techniques.

  But I shouldn't be bitter. Life goes on, as it will after my death. Ha, Ha! (Don't mind me. That was really a desperate, inner-call-for-help laugh). Anyway, she finished college. Then she got a day job as a secretary in a real estate office and went to business school at night. After that, she found employment in the field and began to wear 'merger' skirts and 'mutual fund' makeup. For her things went as they should in life - up. BRAINS. For me? I was getting to be the oldest waiter in the catering industry. Catering industry - that's what those of us who are ashamed of our profession call it to give it luster. Kind of like fat girls calling themselves 'voluptuous' or janitors calling themselves 'masters of custodial arts.'

  I became a parasite. I used to feed off her just emotionally, now it was financially as well. Things began to change. She had work parties, power lunches (those are the hardest to waiter). Me? I had never even been out to lunch with an agent. My power lunches were power bars chased by beer. STOMACH.

  We drifted apart. LEGS. Slowly, casually at first. Like clouds on a calm day. Barely noticeable, and yet, it was there. Don't get me wrong, she was still supportive. Except that when in the old days she couldn't wait for the ink to dry on my stories before snatching them for a read, now she would pass up chapters just to peruse the latest fiscal reports. FINGERS. All this time we lived in sin just because I couldn't afford a ring and it was beneath me to take money from her (at least for this).

  Eventually, I'm not sure who snapped first, but she left me. JOINTS. I'm still not sure whether it was I who could not stand to see her blossom or she to see me wilt. She moved uptown. I stayed in the gutters. My poor tux died with her and I was forced to dish out thirty-two dollars for a new one at a secondhand store.

  And then I couldn't write. I sought inspiration. I thought another woman was what I needed. Apparently not. I tried drugs. I tried alcohol. For heaven's sake, I even saved upfor one of those writer-block retreats. HIPS. Except that when I looked at that peaceful lake nestled between majestic mountains, I saw her skin, I heard her laugh. When I looked at that blue sky, I saw her face in the clouds. The green trees were the shade of her eyes. The empty notebook with which I came, remained just that - empty.

  Goddamn, we used to make great love. VAGINA. The things we would promise each other in the heat of our passion. The way she moaned before the climax, the way she bit afterwards. BUTTOCKS.

  It appears I got sidetracked again, and once more I'm reconsidering doing this. I'm just relaxing, scourging the memories away. I suggest you do the same thing after you're done with this story. After you're done, you should take a shower and maybe a shot of something strong. (I'll take a shot of something strong too. That was a pun on the revolver...) Then forget this. Forget her. Forget her slightly crooked smile. Forget her soft scent that reminded me of the way strawberry ice cream smells. TH
IGHS. Come to think of it, I just remembered, I have a new ice cream stain on my tux. I'll have to rinse it out. Not because I'm ever showing up to work again, just because they'll probably bury me in it.

  About a year after she left, she got married and had a kid. I, on the other hand, hit the bottom. Coke, heroin, meth. Two overdoses, half a dozen hookers, and a dirty bar- floor later is when she found me. No, not her as I had prayed to God or Satan or whoever would bring her back. It was someone else. She looked dark, Mediterranean. Flowing black hair and lots of gaudy jewelry. She looked at me, her wrinkles gathering up, and then shook her head. She helped me up and took me back to my place. FEET. She propped me in the shower and made me a cup of fresh coffee, exactly the way Angelica used to.

  "You are dead inside," she said with a thick, unrecognizable accent. "You are a zombie. You belong to the other side," the gypsy said. Why did she help me? "Pity," she replied. And then she taught me what to do. All I had to promise in return was that all my work would be transferred to her after I'm dead. TOES. So, everything besides this story is now hers. Wouldn't it be ironic if in the future she became the first bestselling gypsy?

  Let me just tell you a few more things about her, if you didn't get a full picture yet, because that's important. She used to whistle slightly in her sleep, like a tea kettle just beginning to boil. When she was a kid she fell off a bike and now has a little crescent of a scar on her right ankle. Which reminds me. ANKLES. When she was angry her cheeks would puff up like a chipmunks. CHEEKS. And when she cried, her hands paled and shook. I can't think of any more idiosyncrasies.

  My coffee's cold, my cigarette packs are empty. LUNGS. I look the material over. That seems just about it. I think the spell is complete. I could end it right now. However, literary responsibilities demand that I decimate the cloud of mystery. I need an ending, is what I'm trying to say.

  Here's what the gypsy told me: This spell we're casting, it's not a love spell as some of you may think. It's a death spell. EARS. NOSE. MOUTH. There, that's more or less all of her. Oh, right. NECK. The gypsy told me to capture her essence, to capture all of her in one story. And this is it. Add a little magic and a lot of readers. All this equals homicide. See, each time this is read, a little piece of Angelica is gone, taken by the reader, until she is nothing but an empty shell.

  At this point, I must apologize to you, dear reader. I've made you a murderer, an accomplices in my sin. Together we will kill her one letter, one syllable, one word, one line, one page at a time. But as the gypsy put it, Angelica and I were meant to be together. It's just life with all its mundane problems was not the place for us. We would reunite in death, the gypsy promised me. HEART.

  I'm sorry if I dirtied your morally impeccable conscience. But I needed an audience, an audience that would absorb her, a little piece at a time.

  You shouldn't feel too bad though. I'm sure you can rationalize this away. It's just a story. It's not real. And even if it is, do you know why a firing squad always has one rifle loaded with blanks? So that every shooter can imagine, can hope, it was his gun that was empty. Same for you. Perhaps she is long dead by now, or maybe she's so far beyond saving that a reader more or less won't matter. Just a drop in the sea.

  One last thing to mention - SOUL.

  An Excerpt from

  ASHES OF HEROES

  Book One of the War of Regret Series

  By Gabriel Archer & Jack Canaan