Jakub's Conceit

Jakub was a nervous man. He went through life believing himself the butt of every joke. Travelling down the street, he would from time to time pass men and women whispering to each other, and would think to himself, "What terrible things they must be saying about me!" Sometimes he would hear laughter from a window up above and would scowl, "Listen to their cruel snickering! What have I done to them?"

Nor did Jakub trust any of the few friends he had. If a group of them were to meet at their tavern, he would always arrive early so that he could watch them laugh and banter from outside the window. He would squint and try to read their lips, convinced of the vicious rumours about him they were spreading. And when he would finally go in, he was always bitterly resentful of the spiteful things that had been said in his absence.

One day, grown sick and weary of all the malicious attention the world gave him, Jakub went down to the gypsy quarter in search of a witch. A leathery-skinned gypsy woman, wearing a toothless grin and holding a small child to her left teat, approached him with the palm of her free hand outstretched. She had been expecting him, and would give him, for only two kronen, a potion that would let him see through the eyes of others. He did not ask her how she knew what he had wanted, for he feared her and what she was capable of. He paid and thanked her, and left with the potion, though he secretly believed she had sullied the drink with urine - on account of its predominantly yellow tinge - just to amuse herself at his expense.

He went home and swallowed it in a single gulp. It tasted rancid, but did nothing else at first. Feeling cheated, he scowled in memory of the old woman, and went to bed in a sour temper. He tossed and turned for several hours before eventually falling into a fitful, feverish sleep.

He was awoken by a gentle arm pressed against his chest, and, puzzled, opened his eyes to see Milena, the wife of his 'friend' Radek. Bewildered, he made to leap out of bed and conceal his dignity, but found himself powerless to control his body. Then strange, foreign thoughts began overpowering his own. Mmm, beautiful Milena. How sweet that she wakes me. Look at that little line beside her lip, adorable. Why does she frown so beautifully? And what day is it this day? Of course, Monday - I must get to the bank! I am such a fool, why did I leave all my papers with Kazimir? That idiot will surely lose something irreplaceble... Jakub wanted to yell at him to shut up, but discovered he was helpless to stop the endless flow of Radek's thoughts.

Then, with a jerk, he was staring through the eyes of old Lenka, the wicked hag one floor below him, whom he felt certain watched him with great hatred from the peephole in her door, whenever he passed by. Only, here he was, in her body, seeing the world as she saw it. She was busily swatting flies in her kitchen - there were dozens of them. And somehow he shared her emotions, her anger, her fury, her revulsion. Sweet lord in heaven, curse these wretched insects! I hate them, their disgusting eyes, their feet, their dirt. I hate it all. Ohhh, if only Josef were still alive. Ohh, my Josef. Where are you to help me when I am suffering so much from these horrible flies! And he was then overtaken with a deep sadness, unlike any he had ever felt.

Then, just as suddenly, he was looking out through the glass window from the eyes of another friend, Mirek, sitting next to his old colleague Karel. They were there, in the old tavern, drinking warm beer and waiting for him. "Why is Jakub always so late?" Karel asked. Mirek shrugged, then said, "This winter will be cold, do you not think?" Karel nodded, "Yes. I feel it in my bones already. God, there are days when I hate this land." "Sure," Mirek said, "but at least you have a wife who can keep you warm, and a family to bring you bread when you are old and rheumy. I, on the other hand, will die alone in a barren room, sick and cold and forgotten."

Then, with a jerk, Jakub found himself transported again. So it continued, from person to person, for what seemed an eternity. He thought and saw the sights and thoughts of others, but could never in any way intervene or make his presence felt. And out of all the people he had ever known, passed in the street, or had any sort of dealings with at all - and these numbered in the many thousands - only a handful ever called his name or memory out of the darkness.

In time he found himself back in his own body, immersed again in his own thoughts. He was discovered lying in his bed, just like that, when the neighbours some months later began to complain about a smell. The only notable impression he would ever make in his life was upon those who had the misfortune of removing his body. They, alone, would remember Jakub's face, that had contorted in the moments before his death into a terrified expression of loneliness.

The Daydreamer

Somewhere in the world, at some point in time, there was a classroom with a window. Beside this window sat a boy, who stared upwards into the clouds, though his eyes saw nothing of the sky. His mind was fixed on another world, in another time, with a classroom much like his own, yet different. The tables were bonfires, the chairs were prisons, the books were onions that molted infinitely, and the teacher was a powerful emotion whose lessons consisted of indelible regret.

The boy visited this world whenever he had the chance, for he found it, at first, far more agreeable than his own. But one day he discovered himself, entirely by chance, sitting in a prison before a fire and an onion, witnessing a powerful emotion that taught him the meaning of regret. And he gazed out the window and imagined a classroom with books that were books, tables that were tables, and chairs that were chairs; and from that day onward the boy could never sort out which world was real and which had only been a dream.

The Umbrella

When they were children, Samantha and Jim would play in the garden row behind the houses in their lane. They would jump over the mossy stone walls that divided one plot from the next, and in landing crush to death the poor flowers on the other side. They would roll and laugh in the dirt and mud, and every once in a while splash in a puddle of rain. They were friends, and had been ever since their parents first moved next to one another in the tiny Northampton neighborhood.

One day, after a particularly miserable storm, the children set off down through the gardens. Weaving their way between hedges and rose bushes, they came upon an old wrought-iron gate they'd never seen before. It led outside of the gardens towards the blackened skeleton of an old red brick house that looked just about ready to collapse. The rusted gate dangled from one hinge, and shrieked like an old cat when they pulled it open.

They wandered through the ruins for a few minutes, but found only charred and splintered bits of wood, broken beams, and shattered brick. Even worse, there was an indescribable quality to the old building that made them feel unwell. Just as they turned around to leave, their curiosity more than sated, they were stopped in their tracks by the strangest of sights: a tall black umbrella hung open in the air in front of them, as if supported by the wind itself.

"It's just like Mary Poppins!" said Samantha, and Jim agreed. Being of an adventurous sort, the children grabbed hold of the big curved handle, and sure enough were whisked off into the air over the gardens, then the houses, and before long the entire city.

Over the next few years, the children spent many a wonderful and breathless afternoon soaring in the skies above their town. No one ever seemed to notice them, which made them relish all the more the private thrill of seeing the world fall away. And bound by the knowledge of their secret joy, their friendship grew and grew.

The first few times they returned from flying, exhausted and giddy, the children simply left the umbrella among the rubble where they had found it. In time, though, they became nervous that it might get stolen, and so took turns keeping it at each other's houses. Many years passed in this way, and all was well.

When they were older and preparing for University - Samantha to Oxford and Jim to London - they had their first real fight over the umbrella. Both wanted it, and neither would relent. They argued so terribly that one night they almost came to blows. With tears of frustration streaming down their faces, they agreed through clenched teeth that the umbrella would be best stored in a locked box in Samantha's basement, while Jim kept the combination.

And so, bitter and hurt, they packed up their things and went their respective ways. Many years would pass before they spoke to each other again; but they never forgot about the umbrella, or the agreement they had made.

It came to pass that both of them found love in the same year. Samantha met a shy but brilliant mathematician, and Jim found himself a talented actress. Each of them began to think about the umbrella, and how perfect a wedding present it would make. So they called each other up, and thus began their second terrible fight.

It lasted for many weeks. They each desperately wanted the umbrella, and their fury was heightened by the many years they'd each spent without knowing the thrill of flying freely above the world. They brought lawyers into the dispute, and then took it to court - though the judge could not account for why anyone would care so profoundly for a simple household object. It was, in any case, decided in Samantha's favour, since she possessed the object itself, though not the means of accessing it. Jim was ordered by the court to provide Samantha the combination, or else rumunerate her for the cost of legal council. Jim relented.

Samantha, victorious, returned to her parent's Northampton home to retrieve the umbrella. What she found, instead, was a burned red brick building, covered in soot and ash, and just on the brink of falling over. Jim vehemently denied any involvement in the fire, and was duly acquitted after a brief investigation by the police identified faulty wiring as the probable cause. Even so, Samantha and Jim never spoke after the incident. Nor did either of them ever see their beloved umbrella again.

Tale of a Hundred Suns

There once was a race of creatures who lived and died by the light of a hundred small suns. These suns described a luminous filament across the sky, and the farthest of them lasted only a day before vanishing in a flash of its own exhausted light. Just as soon as one sun died, another took its place on the other side of the galaxy, in the farthest corner of the empyrean.

Now, each one of these creatures, genderless to the last, was hatched from small mounds that bubbled up through the planetary soil, and each of these mounds was in turn fertilized by the planet itself. Just below the surface ran a network of a hundred million porous fibres, each conducting a viscuous, golden liquid so lambent and dazzling that it would blind a human eye to gaze upon it but for an instant.

Once born, these beings slowly climbed their way onto one the innumerable smooth rock formations that dotted the geosphere, and flattened themselves against it. Their skin was a leathery golden that gleamed without cease. If you had stood upon their soft soil with those suns at your back, you would have seen spread before you a glimmering forest of reflected light.

And upon those rocks the creatures would remain, sometimes for millenia, absorbing the light from above. There is no human word for what these entities, strewn across the surface of their planet, felt within them when the light reached their skin. One could describe it as a state of perpetual, unwavering joy; or as the sweetest moment of catharsis multiplied a hundredfold; or as a million other things, all of them hopelessly dark by comparison.

Their bodies did not change from birth till death. Nourished completely by light, they could have lived until the last of their burning suns vanished from the sky forever. Yet, in the end each one turned willingly to dust, and rejoined the sand from which it came. Without so much as a spark or a glimmer.

Now Showing: Playwrights

Circa 38 AD. A crowd gathers before a small atrium in Rome, at the foot of a hill, in preparation for a showing in the final day of the Ludi Scaenici. It is dusk and the autumnal air is tinged with a slight chill. A porter accepts a quincunx from each attendee, and cracks a few jokes with his rotund companion about the excesses of Gaius, to which a man in the crowd rejoins a comment about hermaphrodism that is lost entirely on all but him.

Inside the atrium the crowd seats itself on the rows of concrete benches. The low murmur of anticipation builds as men and women file into the open space. Two boys distribute a type of honey-roasted meat for a semuncia, and the director - Sextus Luminus - steps onto the raised stage. The murmur dies down, only to start again moments later when the director makes no indication of wanting to speak. He stands there, silently, until the entire crowd is seated. A few minutes pass, and the opinion is formed generally that he emerged onto the stage too soon.

Finally, he speaks. It is an oration both terse and poignant. Silence falls. It becomes immediately apparent that the man possesses no sense of humour or wit, and the room's expectations of levity begin to fade. He finishes his brief introduction, nods solemnly, and steps off the stage.

The curtain is drawn, and a playwright is pushed forward by two large and muscular men. The playwright, his hands tied behind his back and a bundle of papers shoved ignominiously into his mouth, stands sheepishly in the front of the stage. A whip is drawn behind him, and cracked into the darkness off stage. The playwright jumps, his eyes wide and bloodshot, and begins to dance.