Rinse

There was a lot of heat coming down on Tommy.

He gunned his 68’ Cadillac De Ville down Virginia Street. His six-toed cat Ernie lounged on the leather front seat, purring along to the thrumming engine.

An SUV shadowed them. Someone interested in his unpaid bills? Maybe pursuing his deadbeat status, or just one of the many citizens he’d wronged over the years.

He saw the silhouette of two massive heads, and he knew that whatever the two linebackers in the SUV wanted, it would start with a beating.

The blanched midday sun grayed the tarry asphalt of Virginia Street, and the strip malls and parking lots offered no cover for him. Then, up ahead on the right, he saw a colorful sign encircled by large metal rings of Saturn.

Carl’s Cosmic Carwash

He slanted along the fuel island and into the wash line, the long fenders of his Detroit steel nearly hanging up between the front of the mini mart and the vintage gas pumps.

A beautiful young woman in a peasant blouse and black tights beckoned him over. She held a clipboard and stood next to a large vacuum cleaner canister. He cranked his window down.

“Good morning sir. Welcome to Carl’s Cosmic Carwash. Would you like the Soul Shine Special? A Karma Cleanse? We’ll rinse your regret, scrub your sins and degrease your undercarriage, then send you on your way.”

Tommy rolled his eyes and laughed. In his mirror he saw the SUV turn into the drive and figured the more time spent in the car wash, the better.

“I’ll take the works please,” Tommy winked.

“An excellent choice sir; you won’t be sorry.” She placed a small daisy sticker on the inside of his windshield and waved him on. “You pay at the end.”

The big Cadillac rolled onto the conveyer, and rows of black felt curtains, hung in shimmying strips, blotted out the sun behind Tommy. The inside of the wash was illuminated with black lights and as Tommy glanced to his right, he saw Ernie’s eyes glowing purple – an ocular Cheshire cat co-pilot.

Suds poured from the wobbling, rocking machinery in fluorescent blues and yellows, and Tommy glimpsed huge hibiscus flowers and feathered angel wings painted on the walls of the wash tunnel.

“What’s your greatest regret?” The woman’s voice came from inside his car.

The radio played the muffled voice of Lon Simmons, the Giants announcer of his childhood. On the windscreen, he saw a grainy image of his father leaving for Candlestick Park in a black satin jacket.

“Come on Thomas, we’ve gotta go if we want to make first pitch!”

“The guys just called Dad,” Tommy heard his sixteen-year-old voice, “I’m gonna meet them downtown. Have fun. Tell me how the game goes.”

“Giants-Dodgers…” His father slinked into his De Ville, “it’s Giants-Dodgers, Tom.”  The huge car sputtered away.

The Giants won in extra innings. A week later, his father was dead from a heart attack.

The inside of the car blurred through his warm tears. Ernie’s cat-eyed glare sliced him like twin purple lasers. A six-toed paw tapped the glove box door and Tommy was shocked that the cat was speaking.

“You need to get your shit together Tom. I’ve been with you a long time and you never pay attention to the important things.”

“You sound like a girl Ernie.” The driver’s window repelled sudsy goo, which began a snail’s descent down the pane.

“I am a girl Tom,” she purred, “that’s just the kind of thing I’m talking about.”

Jets of water pulverized the ragtop. It sounded as if they were trying to drill through the roof and into his skull. The scent of patchouli and sage began to waft through the air vents and he found himself involuntarily taking a deep breath, holding it for a ten count and exhaling, releasing his bodily tension along with it.

“What’s your biggest fear?”

The far end of the carwash opened up and in the burst of white light, Tommy saw the SUV parked across the exit lane, two enormous men leaning on the fenders.

A huge rolling mop descended from the ceiling spinning tentacles toward the windshield and the outside world again disappeared in darkness.

Tommy grunted. He grabbed the chrome door handle and pushed his shoulder to the steel. The door opened and a burst of high-pressure water shot inside the car, soaking them. A rubber roller ran alongside the front quarter panel and slammed the door.

“You think that’s the last carload of thugs that’ll chase you down Ed?” Ernie’s fur was soaked and matted but she was calmly licking her paw.

“What you need is a firm change of direction.”

The steering wheel jerked to the right. The Cadillac had somehow taken a hard turn inside the carwash. Tommy grasped the wheel trying to force it to the left.

Nausea punched his gut. The spinning machinery was getting to him.

“Don’t fight Ed. This’s for the best.” Ernie’s voice was behind him now. Tommy spun to see her curled up on his backseat nursing a litter of newborn mewling kittens.

A pair of spinning brushes parted and revealed the outside. Tommy was looking straight into a soft orange dawn. The conveyor rolled him out onto a gravel pathway lined with wild grasses and flowers. He put the car in drive and rolled into the parking area next to a basket piled with clean cotton rags. His chrome gleamed.

They were on a hilltop overlooking the city. Far below was the black ribbon of Virginia Street.

“It’s a beautiful day Tom. Let’s make the most of it.” Ernie perched on the front seat looking at him. “Grab a rag and start wiping.”

“Mother, can we get out and play in the grass?” Tommy turned toward the child’s voice in the backseat and saw seven six-toed cats, nearly fully grown.

“Yes my darlings. You may play until we are ready to leave.”

Synopsis: Trapeze artist Tatiana Grekova is visited by a strange version of her friend and fellow performer Udachya, the “Lucky Leaper” who disappeared after a confrontation with Tatiana’s lover Sergey. Udachya’s return is marked by a series of bizarre accidents that touch Tatiana’s life closely and painfully.

Genre: Ghost Story
Object: Horseshoe
Setting: Circus
Word Limit: 1000

On a hot New Mexican night, Tatiana Grekova flew toward Sergey Popov’s huge hands. She passed through a dense, airless chill that made her shiver. This almost imperceptible motion threw her out of alignment. Her right hand met Sergey’s left wrist in a tiny explosion of chalk. The other hand missed the catch, and the torsion nearly pulled him from the bar he clutched with his knees. The big Ukrainian’s brute strength and her own grace saved them from plummeting to the net. She heard the crowd gasp, a sound to which she was mostly inoculated.

Shaken, they descended the fly lines and walked out of the big top and into the jumble of rusting camp trailers, gooseneck horse haulers and the throbbing diesel generators.

“What happened?” Sergey demanded.

Tatiana looked down at the sand spattered with verdant green elephant and horse droppings. “Udachya,” she said, looking at a small worn horseshoe that had been thrown by one of the ponies on its way into the big top for the grand parade.

“Do not mention him. We have discussed this.” Sergey walked back to their section of trailers. She watched his huge back and shoulders, the thick black hair of a bear curling from beneath his white leotard. He disappeared behind a tent flap.

Udachya.
Luck.
It was as if the young man had placed the curved metal shoe in the dirt to force her to say his name. He’d been gone a week.

From her bed that night, Tatiana heard a stampede of hooves and the wild, panicked shouts of wranglers and trainers. The next morning, as the circular caravan began to stretch into a long line of trucks and trailers, she heard chatter on the desert wind. A slight man, wearing a white leotard emblazoned with a blue horseshoe, had run laughing through the night camp.

Udachya’s name was not mentioned. Besides, he’d vanished somewhere in the high desert near Flagstaff. Some sick prankster must’ve taken one of the absent man’s “Lucky Leaper” costumes to have a little twisted fun. Another off-kilter resident of a world the crowd passed within inches of, unaware that beyond the magnificent painted tents was a land of campers and boiled cabbage and greasy animal shit.

A week before, after the final show in Flagstaff, Tatiana was in her trailer taking off her makeup. She sat at a tiny table between her bed and the door.

She didn’t hear Udachya enter. He was that way. Quiet. Bold. Mysterious.

He spoke of a new stunt that he wanted them to perform. He called it “The Lovers” – they would fly in an embrace. At the last moment, the two would part in midair. Sergey would wait on the platform and swing the bar out where they could both catch it at the last possible moment.

They were sitting at her table laughing when Sergey entered, drunk.

“You do not belong here Udachya.”

“And neither do you my friend,” Udachya smirked, “it is past curfew and as you know, unmarried couples are not to cohabitate.” He laughed as he pushed past Sergey and turned to wink at Tatiana. “Think about it my dear. We’ll soon be playing Phoenix and Las Vegas, not Yuma and Socorro.”

She never saw Udachya alive again. The next morning, as Antoni’s Big Top Circus decamped, Sergey and several of the riggers drove off in a wrangler’s truck. They did not reappear until that night in Gallup. Sergey warned Tatiana never to discuss Udachya again. She had been a woman in the secret world of the circus long enough to know not to question him.

As she flew below the billowing peak of the tent in Truth or Consequences, Tatiana performed her “upside down sparrow” where Sasha and Gregory flung her in a graceful arc towards Sergey, her back to the arena floor, her face thrust skyward.

She saw a pale countenance looking down at her. Udachya smiled from the tent peak as the spotlight caught the bright blue of the horseshoe on his leotard.

Hours later, one of the horse trailers lost an axle on Interstate 25. Tatiana saw sparks shower the highway and then heard a horrible sound as the massive bodies of four horses tumbled inside the metal box. She would never forget the wild look in the eyes of the beautiful white stallion as it stood on a crooked foreleg and tried to trot down the highway, falling into a ditch. A man stepped forward with a small pistol and dispatched it with three shots in the head.

The “Lucky Leaper” visited Tatiana that night.

“Stay off the rigging tomorrow. Do whatever you must.” He smiled at her, but his black eyes, which in life had shimmered, were dull and empty. She sat up on her small mattress and watched for him to leave through the metal door of the trailer, but he was already gone.

As she ascended her platform that night, she put the visit out of her head. Trapeze demanded concentration; the outside world could not impede. She’d performed flawlessly the night she’d heard her mother had died. The same after Udachya disappeared from the living.

Tatiana launched herself into her beloved emptiness – the world below the top of the tent and above the crowds. As she flew toward Sergey, she heard the bullwhip sound of guy wires slicing the hot, dry air. Both platforms crumpled. Sergey’s startled face plummeted beneath her, his huge body slamming into the ground.

She felt the cold embrace of two sinewy arms. She could smell the tang of death on Udachya’s frigid breath. Their bodies sailed, entwined, and four arms reached for the bar suspended from the crest of the tent by two thin cables. Then he was gone again. His laugh faded into the dust and chaos below. It seemed an eternity before anyone looked up and noticed her, the tiny girl hanging alone from the bar above.

Amaia
by Mark Maynard

The most captivating woman ever to enter the studio of Waléry never smiled. Not in the short time I knew her.

My employer photographed all of the beautiful girls in Paris, the flourish of his W written on the corner of thousands of famous pictures.

La Baker – Josephine, in her skirt of bananas and her flawless brown skin. Mata Hari, in her beaded costumes and gaudy jewelry. Isadora Duncan, graceful and charming. All of these women – and countless others, perched on our silk tapestries, Waléry’s lighting captured the moon curve of their breasts and the sculpted angles of their jaws.

It was cold the day the young woman arrived at the studio. She walked in and presented me with several of Mr. Waléry’s nude postcards, which were found all over Paris in 1926. She carried a large bottle of wine.

“I would like for Monsieur Waléry to take my photograph.” Her dark eyes narrowed, insisting that she wouldn’t leave until she was satisfied.

She was obviously not Parisian; the rugged clothing was from the country. Her black hair extended past her shoulders. Girls that came into our studio always had short hair bobbed well above their necks and dressed stylishly. I grasped her elbow to escort her back to the street before Monsieur Waléry was disturbed.

The photographer’s studio lay down a red-papered hallway leading from the small parlor where I greeted customers. Flash powder exploded in the room beyond, and the olive-skinned woman darted down the hallway and barged into the studio.

“Monsieur Waléry! My name is Amaia Bidarte and I am here to have my picture taken.”

A mustachioed head full of unkempt hair appeared from beneath the camera’s black cloak.

“Eugène, please. I am not to be bothered.” Monsieur Waléry squinted at me and turned his head to look at Amaia. He was as struck by her presence as I had been.

“Monsieur Ribeaux, I beg your pardon,” Waléry addressed his subject who was sitting stiffly in an armchair in the studio, “but would you excuse me for half of an hour? You must be tired from posing for so long. Please, tell Henri at the Café du Nord to refresh you, and he may charge it to me.”

I escorted the wealthy gentleman out of the studio. He dressed in a hat and scarf and I heard him descending the stairs to the street.

Once Monsieur Ribeaux left, I remained in my parlor so that subject and photographer could speak discreetly. Of course I knew that by standing near the studio doorway, I could listen to conversations while obscured by the velvet drapes that hung across.

Amaia wished to be photographed in the nude. I was surprised that she insisted her image be printed and distributed throughout Paris. Furthermore, she offered to pay Waléry a handsome sitting fee for the privilege. They were negotiating these terms when Monsieur W. summoned me into the studio. As always, I paused before entering through the curtain.

I could only see the photographer. He was draping a wooden platform with a bolt of silk embroidered with rectangular patterns. On the floor of the studio sat the bottle of wine.

I could hear the rustling of a woman removing her clothes from behind a small screen.

My employer didn’t look up from his work to address me.

“Eugène, please go to my apartments and bring me two wine glasses and a corkscrew.”

Amaia emerged from behind the screen. Her eyes met mine, but she neither smiled nor cast her glance aside. The young woman’s body was muscular from physical labor. Her breasts were pear shaped and tapered to perfectly round, coffee-colored nipples. A triangular tuft of glossy black hair nestled neatly between her thighs.

I took the staircase up to Waléry’s apartments and let myself in. The rooms seemed draped in wool, gray and silent. From his kitchen, I grabbed two small wineglasses and a wood handled corkscrew and worked my way back down the stairs, through the parlor and into the studio.
When I returned, Waléry was setting the flash powders and choosing the best angles for light and composition. Amaia sat on the platform, her legs pulled up to her chest. She beckoned.

“Eugène,” she whispered, “Monsieur Waléry has promised me that these photographs will be seen all over Paris. No matter what happens, you must make sure that he is good to his word.”

I nodded and crossed toward the box camera where I set the wine glasses and corkscrew on a small table next to him.

The two of them became so engrossed in the posing and photographing that I was able to remain in the corner of the studio, observing. I remember them taking the last picture, the one that would forever capture the sadness and beauty of Amaia.

“This is my husband’s wine,” she said, looking straight into the glass eye that obscured Waléry behind its elongated bellows. “He brings it from the Pyrenees and sells it in Paris. He keeps a woman here. Whenever he sees this picture, he will regret ever leaving me behind.”

She held the wine bottle between her thighs and dug the coiled metal of the corkscrew into the soft wooden plug.
Waléry punctuated her lamentation with a blinding flash of brimstone.

She stares out in that moment from thousands of postcards, those sad dark eyes driving regret into her husband’s heart and a melancholy love into the thousands to whom she is a stranger.

I walked Amaia to the door that day. Waléry was anxious to begin making the prints. I watched her cross the street in her wool farmer’s jacket and disappear into the Métro.

It was some moments after I saw her disappear below that she threw herself under a train carriage, destroying the body whose image would soon haunt our city. Her work complete, it was now up to Waléry, and to me, to preserve her.