|
|
MYTHOLOGISM: "Bricolage"
These steam-powered mechanical legs of mine itch like a swarm of a dozen dozen fire ants, feasting on the stumps that end just above the knees. Not indignity enough that I am become a cripple, unable to walk under my own power, but that I needs must rely on these monstrous appendages, wheezing, hissing, drippling fluids, as if I were a clanking beast from legend.
Tan Ai Ling, my saviour, my lover, my brilliant thaumaturge, she will not reveal how she constructed my peripatetic apparatus, cobbled together from a bricolage of machinery, some delicate as the gears of a pocketwatch, some as clunky as the steam chamber from a railway engine. She is a genius, and had she not been born into poverty, I am confident she might have become one of Her Majesty's finest engineers. As it is, we suffer an existence of legal impropriety, acquiring pirated silks, spices, and takar kenangan, and then selling them, discreetly, to the foreigners who visit our shores, all while staying beneath the notice of Captain Keppel, who is determined to rid all of Singapura of those who would flout the authority of the Crown.
I make my deals, trade my wares, and continue to live, rarely venturing outside to expose my lurching gait, relying on Tan Ai Ling for support, for sustenance, for a reason to continue. Never did I thank her for my current limited ability to perambulate through the rest of my days, so ashamed am I. One day, I shall overcome my pride and do so. One day.
Jason Erik Lundberg is the co-author of Four Seasons in One Day, and the co-editor of Scattered, Covered, Smothered and the forthcoming Field Guide to Surreal Botany. His solo work has appeared in over two dozen venues in the US, UK and Serbia, including The Third Alternative, Strange Horizons, Fantastic Metropolis, Infinity Plus, and Electric Velocipede. His short fiction has been nominated for the Fountain Award and honorably mentioned in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. With his wife, artist-writer Janet Chui, he runs Two Cranes Press, a critically-acclaimed independent publisher in North Carolina. He is a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and the M.A. program in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University. Lundberg maintains a website and blog at jasonlundberg.net, and produces a literary podcast called Lies and Little Deaths: A Virtual Anthology.
|
|
| |