Subscribe now

What an upside-down world.

The gentleman: town confessor, listening ear, advisor on marital discord, financial predicaments, and cosmic questions, has been shuttled outside to stand alone in a vicious storm.

The people of the mountain are conflicted. Some have closed their curtains and sit silently by their fires with the weight of what they’d done. Others watch out their windows, silently mouthing their gratitude and asking for forgiveness.

The gentleman stands against the large fir across from Marvin and Bros Mercantile & Post, drenched, his ragged shirt melting from his body, his lips pulled back as though he is asking, What have you done to me?

That summer, there’d been a terrible drought. Crops dried up, animals died, babies cried, and dust coated everything: food, clean laundry, the insides of noses and mouths.

It was near midnight, and the moon was behind clouds, so nothing could be seen on Main Street but a candle’s flame in the window of Marvin & Bros Mercantile & Post.

Birdie was talking to the gentleman again, sitting near him in the corner, where dust collects.

This heat! she complained.

It was unbearable, and her apartment above the shop was stuffy, and on top of that, she’d outgrown her affection for her wife, who was prone to rambling on and on—in stuffy apartments, of all things. Also, Birdie’s wife was lazy, frivolous, and a slovenly eater. There was a time, Birdie told the gentleman, that she found Minna enchanting. What happened?

It would help, Birdie said, if she would speak with you as I do. But truthfully, she lacks the ambition.

The gentleman looked sympathetic, baring his teeth in a frown, his painted blue eyes focused on some distant thought—likely a thought about Birdie’s wife and her fallen status, and especially a thought about Birdie’s unfortunate entrapment.

Anyhow, you’re a good egg, old fellow, and a much better listener than Minna, said Birdie, looking energized after such a lovely chat.

She took her pocket knife and snipped off a sliver of the gentleman’s fingernail, then placed it on her tongue where it sat sharp and unpleasant, though not all that different from chewing one’s own fingernail, all things considered.

Upstairs, in her stuffy little apartment, Birdie found Minna sleeping on the sofa, flushed in the heat. She must have been plucking a button on her dress—it now hung loosely from its thread. Her dusty slippers were marking up the cushion Birdie’s mother made when she was small—a stiff little pillow, fern-green velvet on one side and embroidered dogs on the other. Birdie marched over to the sofa and pulled the cushion out from under Minna’s feet, and Minna opened her eyes.

Oh, Birdie, how lovely. I thought you’d be working all night—

This is my mother’s cushion. She made it.

Yes. I know. Funny little dogs…

The dogs were terrible, vicious-looking creatures, with tiny open mouths and gargoyle eyes. They used to give Birdie nightmares. She’d always kept the embroidered side flipped over, but now look. They had dirt on their poor little faces!

That night, in Birdie’s dream, the gentleman walked toward her as smoothly as a living person walks. His eyes were the same bright blue, only real and shining and so full of kindness, Birdie felt she would break open like an egg, spill out all her innermost thoughts and deepest feelings.

She rose from the bed and slipped downstairs with her candle, nearly expecting the gentleman would be sitting comfortably near the stove, cheerfully lit, and drinking a cup of tea. But he was standing, as he’d always been, propped in the corner, and the stove was dark.

Birdie told him about her dream. Then she told him about other dreams, specifically the one she frequently had as a child where she floated off like a balloon on a great wave of wind into the sky, watching her home grow smaller and smaller, then barely there, then gone.

The gentleman is a sublime listener.

When people speak with him, they feel he expresses concern when they are overburdened, or quiet laughter when they are being humorous, or sympathy when they are downcast.

No one knows how old the gentleman is, because he has always been there, in the memories of the people and their parents, and so on. His clothes are simple, handspun, and in a great state of decay. His eyes, long since dissolved by the elements, have been replaced by smooth stones painted with bright blue irises, and his lips are drawn back to reveal small brown teeth.

There are rumours: he was once a great philosopher in London, whose brain was meant to be studied upon his death, but when a terrible storm hit the city, he was stolen by a friend, or a cousin, or a lover, and brought across the ocean, packed in a steam trunk. Or, he’d been a world-famous clairvoyant, and after his death, was carried over the mountain trail by a travelling circus, then sold to a hermit, who was in need of a friend after discovering that his solitary existence was far more lonesome than it was spiritually enlightening. Or, he was a mountain mystic, a wanderer and a teacher, found in the caves over which Mr. Haas’ grand old house now resides, where he’d starved himself in a final act of protest against the War of the Succession in Austria, his homeland.

In any case, the people of the mountain know the gentleman to be wise, brave, sympathetic, and sharp-minded, with an appreciation for the delicate beauty found in human frailty, like a goodly doctor or patient teacher.

Minna was doing many things at once, and she didn’t care one whit that she was sweating like a boiled kettle while doing it. She was painting the banister fern-green, she was eating a hearty sandwich (roast pork and cabbage), she was listening to the gramaphone at its loudest volume (some orchestra playing some wild thing), and she was thinking about Birdie, who put up with so much, and was the most intelligent girl Minna had ever known, and was a real go-getter in every sense of the word, and a prime example of modern womanhood (working, thinking, planting her heel, et al), and an all around exemplary human being whose only real flaw was working too damn hard!

Minna was grateful for her wife, who put up with it all. Meaning Minna’s Problem.

Minna was prone to the worst stomach pains, and there was nothing really to soothe them. Though she’d tried. Rosehip tea, prickly tobacco, Pink’s Treatment for Female Pains and Inconveniences, hot compresses, cold baths, standing on her head while breathing the steam of stewed nettles. When these pains came, and they did with some regularity, she found that eating dry crackers was about the only thing to bring the slightest relief. That, and lying with her feet propped on a pillow and her head flat.

When Minna didn’t have The Problem, she was filled with reckless excitement, a frantic and bumbling energy, as if her body alone couldn’t quite believe she was free, if only for a moment. Free to do things and go places and see people. And so, when Minna was well, she painted banisters, scrubbed floors, read from her worn copy of Greek Myths and Legends, washed the dust off fern-green velvet pillows with embroidered dogs, baked cakes and brought them to neighbours, listened to Birdie’s gramophone at the loudest volume, went on vigorous hikes, and talked at length with anyone she ran into. She had ideas, and wrote them down (or, in her excitement, forgot them), she planned plans (which she rarely fulfilled, due to the inevitable next bout of Problems), and she ate ravenously, to make up for the diet of dry crackers that sustained her when she wasn’t well.

Throughout it all, her love for Birdie changed, but it did not diminish. When she was laid up, her love was grateful, a soft and quiet longing just to be near her. When she was well, her love was free. A vivid display of admiration, a real joyous and overflowing affection. But in either case, it remained strong, and big, and everlasting.

She wondered, as she painted the final brushstroke on the last spindle, what Birdie would think of the new colour. She imagined her smile growing with each step up to their little apartment.

Few had come to the shop that day—the heat was oppressive, and concerns over dying crops were too great. Birdie took down the open sign in the window and sat next to the gentleman, her brow damp and her dress sticking to her in the evening heat. In the candlelight, his skin looked yellow, like polished wax. His mustaches were mostly gone, but what remained were long, in the fashion of some bygone time. Fitting of a true gentleman.

Perhaps, said Birdie, you were once a professor. In tweeds. Spending your days in research at some ancient library.

The gentleman looked pleased to hear this. Perhaps she was right, or perhaps he was simply acknowledging that, given the opportunity, he would have made a top-notch professor.

Birdie placed her chin in her palm. Or you were a great adventurer. Exploring ancient ruins, feasting on monkeys’ brains. Discovering rare reptiles.

The candle sputtered, and outside, a dog howled from some distant farm.

I’ve always been here, raised there. She rolled her eyes upward to indicate the apartment. As you know. Such a small town. And I feel large! Like I should be sailing the seas or walking city streets or…

Birdie spoke with the gentleman until the candle was only a hissing nub. Then she went upstairs in the dark, where paint fumes assaulted her like poisonous air. When she touched the handrail, her fingers came away sticky with thick paint. Oh, Minna!

In their room, Minna was sleeping, splayed in the middle of their small mattress. After scrubbing the paint off her hand, Birdie brought a blanket to the sofa where the green velvet pillow was placed neatly against the arm, freshly cleaned and pressed. She turned it over so she didn’t have to look at those hideous dogs.

Throughout the next day, several came to visit the gentleman. Mrs. Bakshi confessed that she was becoming forgetful, and her hand shook so noticeably that she was forced to hide it beneath her other arm. She wondered if she should prepare her children for her inevitable departure? (The gentleman clearly agreed that this was the most responsible choice.) Mrs. Beddoe said she was more often than not left in a gentle stupor from her prickly tobacco, and she preferred it that way. She asked the gentleman if perhaps she was not made for this world, considering she needed to remove herself from it as often as she did? (The gentleman assured her that she was not removing herself from the world, but rather immersing herself more fully in it, and so she was free to enjoy the prickly tobacco as often as she wished). Mr. Cates confessed that he felt a stirring when he looked upon sweet Mrs. Kovalyov, and had taken to visiting her when her husband was away. (Of course, this was normal—healthy even—and nothing worth burdening oneself over.) And so on.

And each confession was followed by a sort of prayer to the gentleman—to please, if it was at all possible, put a stop to this wretched drought! After which, the visitor took up the little knife hanging by a piece of yarn, and sliced the teeniest bit of the gentleman to place on their tongues: a bit of hair, a bit of earlobe, an eyelash or a callous. A long strand from his moustaches, a short hair from near his navel. Wanting to preserve his dignity and, some would say, his handsome appearance, most avoided marring his face. And so, if a person were to lift his tattered and rotten shirt, they would find countless nicks all over his torso, little slivers of skin tidily excised and consumed for prosperity, love, luck, vigor, good weather, health, wealth, and (occasionally) vengeance.

Minna had another good day, following three bad ones. Good in body, that is, though she felt a small disturbance in spirit. Birdie hadn’t seemed herself in some time. And Minna couldn’t quite place her finger on why.

But she put that aside, and let herself enjoy the buzzing energy of a person who had been ill and now wasn’t. She cleaned the apartment, picked wildflowers for the dining table, the corner table, the bedside table, and the windowsill. She sat in the sweltering park and read her Greek Myths and Legends (poor Icarus!!), made cold chicken salad, played the piano, brought several jars of soup to Mrs. Bakshi, who was laid up. But beneath it all, lay a constant current of her concern: Birdie was not happy. Finally, after she could stand it no longer, she spoke with the gentleman while Birdie delivered a package.

It felt strange. She’d never gone near him before, always catching glimpses from behind the counter or the bottom of the stairs, from where, to Minna, he looked like a gruesome sort of doll. His eyes, though skillfully painted, of course, were a little too bright, a little too direct, his mouth curled back in a way that seemed, from certain angles, unfriendly. Minna began to speak to him, stiff and halting, but it wasn’t long before she felt the unburdening of her soul, the softening in her spine.

I love Birdie so much, she whispered, fanning herself with an old book of songs. I love her so much my heart feels enormous, filled to the brim, but I fear— she leaned in, close to his ear and lowered her voice further. I fear I’m a burden to her. I fear she doesn’t love me in return. She told him there was a time when they laughed and talked and dreamed of their futures all throughout the day, without tiring of each other. And at nights, they dipped their heads beneath the blankets, and didn’t resurface for hours.

But now we feel like strangers!

A little hair twitched, and a tiny beetle crawled out of the gentleman’s ear. Minna flicked it away and sat back to regard him. The gentleman stood in a ray of sun from the window, and his eyes, once so startling to her, had taken on warmth and light. Further, she was certain he smiled, as if to reassure Minna. As if to remind her that real love is rarely demonstrative and never simple. Eros waxes and wanes. Like a candle’s flame, philia is sometimes steady, and other times it flickers, yet it remains to guide their path…

He seemed to go on in this way, and when Minna left, she felt healthy and refreshed, as one does after spending the day near water, in a lovely breeze, while feasting on fresh fruit.

But now it was late. The shop below closed hours ago, Minna was alone, and the chicken salad had congealed into something ugly and inedible.

At picnics, and parks, and during school recess, the children sing:

Gentleman, gentleman, where have you been?

I’ve been to London, to see the queen.

Gentleman, gentleman, what happened next?

I was a war hero and came back a wreck.

Gentleman, gentleman, what was in store?

I followed the railroad, feeding the poor.

Gentleman, gentleman, what then, if you please?

I went on to cure illness, sad plights, and disease.

Gentleman, gentleman, what’s on your mind?

You, my dear friend, for we are entwined.

Birdie had poured the gentleman a cup of cold tea, wondering how she hadn’t thought to do it before. How rude! She apologized, and he looked humble, but not at all put out.

Do you suppose, she said tentatively. Do you think it’s possible that this place is too small for me? Her spine straightened with a current of excitement. I mean, this place, this store, this town. Minna. Do you think that, out there, in the wide world, there’s a better shop, something more interesting than dried beans and bolts of brown calico? Do you think there’s a better girl for me? Someone more interesting. More willing to do things and go places… and be, I don’t know. How to say it. Affectionate? Clever? Less laid up.

She felt many things as she spoke. Guilt. Strength. Fear. Excitement. The gentleman was looking directly at her. In the candle’s flicker, his eyes were lively and certain, as though he were saying Birdie was meant only for greatness. A notion reflected in her very name. Do birds survive long in cages? No. They live short lives, dull lives, friendless and unchallenged. What Birdie was feeling, the gentleman seemed to say, was the very natural impulse of all winged creatures, and she would only be truly free when she obeyed this impulse to fly away.

Birdie smiled, her cheeks flushed and her heart fluttering like the very bird’s wings the gentleman was almost certainly telling her about. She was so happy that when a new light filled the room, it took her a moment to realize it was Minna with a lamp, and not her happiness, that created the glow.

Hello, Birdie, said Minna, seeming a little uncertain. I made dinner, if you…

Birdie was not hungry, but she was also rarely rude. She looked at the gentleman, and he, of course, was still looking at her. She stood and took the little knife, then sliced off a bit of tough skin over his knuckle, placing it on her tongue, then turned to Minna, who she once loved so furiously. And she followed her up the fern-green stairs.

That night, while Minna slept, Birdie packed her bags.

Though nearly everyone on the mountain had implored the gentleman to put an end to this drought, nothing changed. Crops and rivers dried up, Misters Pike and Kovylov lost two cows, and Irving’s horse dropped dead under the scorching sun. Maybe they needed to do more than beg. Maybe they needed to help the gentleman help them.

Minna, not usually known for being subtle or sly, planted the idea so expertly that no one was quite sure who came up with the plan to place the gentleman outside, directly in the very weather they wanted him to influence. But, as Minna watched, alone from the little window above the shop, they did just that. She continued watching until they hammered the last nail through his tattered clothes into the great fir, then she let the curtain fall.

And, three days later, when the skies turned black and the rains rushed in to flood streets and pool in fields, she suggested that, given the calm of his expression, the softening of his posture, he prefered to remain outside. Look at him! The people agreed.

And though Minna never visited him again, she set a chair directly in front of her bedroom window, where, when she wasn’t ill, she watched the gentleman, her heart as empty as it had been full only days before.

The gentleman, back when he had a real name, now forgotten, back when he was five and out for a swim while his mother picnicked on the bank, found a pretty little leech on his belly. The leech squirmed, shimmery and black in the sunlight. The boy went to touch it with his finger, gently so as not to scare it, and as he did so, he thought maybe he could bring it home with him. Keep it safe in a little bowl of water. Name it!

Frederick, he whispered.

Someone gasped—his mother, who flew at him and ripped the leech off, throwing it into the pond. Blood ran down the boy’s stomach like water, and he cried because he thought it was the leech’s blood and that the leech had died. And further, though the leech couldn’t speak, and had no face for expression, he felt certain that it had been friendly and wise.

That’s your blood and that filthy worm was stealing it! said the boy’s mother. Oh, stop crying. That leech would kill you without a second thought, if he was big enough for it.

What an upside down world.

Though he was too young to reason it out or form it into a clear thought, the boy absorbed this notion of upside-downness. He absorbed it like moss absorbs rain, and on through his young years: Good people become sick. A horse can’t heal from a broken leg. Old men are the most talkative and the most lonely. Salmon berries are the most beautiful, and the most sour. School makes you dumb, not smart! Teachers are mean.

Some mothers are angry. Some fathers are gone. Some children are as lonely as old men.

The gentleman’s soul became swollen with the rot of unfairness, and by the time he was old enough to mull things over and create opinions, ideas, and life philosophies, he didn’t much care which way the world was turned, and certainly didn’t want to think about it. Sure, the world might be upside down (or maybe it wasn’t), but he was upside down, too (or maybe not, who’s to say). Maybe everyone else was upside down, and he was right side up. He didn’t care.

The gentleman burned down his first house at twelve. The gentleman went to jail eight times. The gentleman laughed when his mother became sick. Why? Because she looked all funny and yellow, because she turned as skinny as a broomstick. (Of course, in a hundred years or so, this laughter would be viewed through the lens of psychological understanding, and people would recognize it as a thick coat of armour over top a sad and rotten soul, but by then the gentleman will have been forgotten and so this benevolence is lost to him)

The gentleman died face down in a farmer’s field, all drunk and piss-pants, his little brown teeth showing through grinning lips. The gentleman was embalmed by the new young doctor with new modern methods. The gentleman was stolen in the wee hours from the embalming table, and put on display in the corner of the new general store, where Birdie’s great-grandfather, Marvin P. Coates, instructed them to place him in the corner, where, to make up for his incredible debts, folks paid a penny to view him. And, after his debts were paid, the gentleman continued to stand, silent and still, as the people gave him a piece of their minds once and for all.

The gentleman isn’t meant to be out in the rain. He swells. His skin peels off in soggy sheets. His little brown teeth fall out from rotting gums, and his painted stone eyes slip from drooping sockets.

The people of the mountain continue to visit during the rains and after the rains subside. They share their problems and joys, their fears, dreams, and petty complaints. And though he no longer has the brilliant blue eyes with which they can feel truly understood and regarded, they’re convinced, in the end, that eyes aren’t all that essential. They are still relieved when they walk away, and they are still comforted by a sort of clarity of mind, having purged their dark thoughts and fretful distractions. And the gentleman, drooping now, with one arm slipping out of his sleeve, and with his neck bent sideways, and his toothless mouth gaping open for creatures to nest in, seems to say he believes every good thing will come to every person, and nothing bad should befall them, and all will be well at all times, and further, none of them have done anything wrong, nor will they ever…

And the people take the rusted knife, now tied to the great fir the gentleman is attached to, and snip off a little piece, place it on their tongues, and walk away quite pleased.

Share

Tell us your origin story as a writer. When did you begin? What first drew you to writing as an instrument for asking questions that can’t be explored any other way?

ANGIE ELLIS: I started late! In a serious way, that is—I’ve always dabbled. We had our family quite young and that, coupled with shift work and all the rest, didn't leave me with much time to pursue other activities. I think this worked out for me. Sometimes I wonder what I would have been writing in my 20s, and though it would have been nice to begin developing my skills back then, I needed to figure myself out a bit first.

I find that when I write, it's like tilling a garden, turning up all the questions, concerns, baggage, and curiosities lurking in my mind. It’s so satisfying to put words to those things that would otherwise remain unformed and unvoiced. And I love reading stories that provide that same experience. A story that asks questions, digs around in your subconscious a bit. In both instances, the writer and reader are on a journey together, thinking things through, a little uncertain, puzzling things out days later.

What does your writing routine look like? Do you thrive in structure or wildness? And when you begin a piece of writing, what tends to announce itself first: a voice, an image, an unease, a philosophical conundrum?

AE: I’m a chaotic and completely inefficient writer. It’s a messy process of writing my way into tone, character, story, themes—letting those things emerge as I flail about. If I sit down with what I think is a clear idea or plan, I end up with trash. Every time. So, I flounder until something feels right and I get this little thrill, like, Oh! There it is! It's a matter of letting my subconscious do the heavy lifting, I suppose.

Because this is what works best for me, my starting point is always very, very small. A flicker of a feeling, a certain hairstyle on a faceless character, a type of house, or the blurry shadow of a relationship. I can’t start big. Especially with themes. Those have to sneak their way in pretty late in the process. It took me a long time to figure out how I work best—and it's interesting how different that can be from writer to writer.

Most artists are preoccupied by certain obsessions: lust, longing, death, the self. What persistent preoccupation—emotional, intellectual, or spiritual—threads through your work? Are there motifs, themes, or impulses you’ve tried to abandon but that keep returning, insisting on their relevance?

AE: I grew up with some pretty hard core religion, and that does tend to creep into my work—usually with a twist. I can recognize it quite heavily in The Gentleman, with elements of confession, communion, prayer, disillusionment. Death is often a big part of my stories. Repression. Some light nihilism. Hedonism is fun. Animals and nature often play an important role in my stories. Also familial histories, or generational trauma. And now, perimenopausal women with an axe to grind ;-)

I have learned that some of these can crop up out of habit and I do try to avoid that. For a while, I was writing a lot of middle aged women who were directionless, slightly dark, a bit off-beat, and I got pretty tired of that. So now I ask myself: Am I writing this because it’s easy? Because I've written it before? I want to watch out for that.

If not a writer, who would you be?

AE: So many things! An archaeologist. A set designer. A chef. Master gardener. I’d love to spend my life restoring some old abandoned house in France, honestly, but let’s face it...I’ll have to save that for another lifetime.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received? Alternatively/additionally, what’s something you’d like to offer as advice to emerging writers trying to make a mark?

AE: I’ve heard so many helpful things over the years! I like, “argue both sides” from author Colin McAdam. And from Tom Jenks, “If it's hot, write cool. If it's heavy, write with a light touch.”

I think both of these are important for new and old writers alike. The first helps you avoid caricatures, basic good guys and basic bad guys. The second helps you avoid melodrama.

What are you working on now and how is it trying to ruin your life (in a good, necessary way, of course)?

AE: A collection of linked stories. “The Gentleman” will be included, so that gives you a taste of what I’m going for. It’s been a lot of fun, and aside from being a slower process than I'd like, it hasn't yet ruined my life at all! Maybe that'll happen when we start shopping it around ;-)

Who are the artists—writers, filmmakers, thinkers, internet oddities—that have shaped your sense of narrative? How have they rearranged the way you see the world on the page?

AE: Oh boy, I feel like this list could go on forever. I recently rewatched The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which I find really inspirational in the "Why CAN'T you write that??" sort of way. You want a wholesome, singing, dancing killer cowboy that becomes a singing, floating angel? Sure! It's truly thrilling to see movies and tv shows that free themselves from the tired and expected. I'm inspired by surprise, and like to be surprised while I write as well.

Right now I'm reading The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock, where you'll frequently meet a new side character with a long, detailed backstory, and then never see them again. I love it. Somehow it works, but I feel like we're often told to rein in that sort of thing. I love seeing people fly through these imagined barriers in successful ways. I mean, why would we want to rein ourselves in? Weird.

I LOVED The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley. She wrote it in a style that reflects old Norse sagas: distant and plain and almost monastic. You might think that couldn't possibly work for a long novel, but it's a beautiful book—one of my favourites. Because she chose to write in this ancient sounding way, the experience of reading it is completely transportive. And again, I think giving ourselves permission to choose differently can result in beautiful things. I want to be brave enough to take those chances.

Bo Burnham’s standup might not seem like a good fit for this list, but his work is so completely outside of what we've always seen, and still always see. He's created his own genre that's vulnerable, hilarious, dark, challenging, goofy, uncomfortable. I love that creative freedom, to go where your talents lead you, but also your anger, your questions, your insecurities, your weirdness. And it challenges me to ask: what can that look like in story?

Basically, I've been moved lately by broken rules, unusual arcs, wobbly structure, sparse language and flowery language, and the unique print that only that particular artist can leave on their work.

Please recommend a piece of art (a painting, a film, an album, anything that's not a piece of creative writing, really) that you love and would like everyone to experience.

AE: Portrait of a Lady on Fire. It's a beautiful movie in every single way.

Leave a comment

ANGIE ELLIS lives on Vancouver Island, where she is working on a linked short story collection, which will include “The Gentleman”. Some of the other stories in this collection have been featured in Story Magazine and the Masters Review. Her first novel was published in 2025 and she is very grateful to have received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council.

Notes on Art

We’ve paired this piece with Remedios Varo’s Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle (1961)1. Women sit in a tower, stitching the world into existence — houses, rivers, boats — from threads that spill out the windows and become real. They’re enclosed, dutiful, working from a pattern someone else set. But the fabric has a life of its own. Angie’s story has that same quiet tilt: a small mountain town stitches meaning onto a body that can’t speak back, and the meaning spills out and becomes real to them. Birdie stitches a whole escape plan from a dead man’s silence. Minna stitches love onto everything she touches. The gentleman just stands there while the town embroiders him into a saint.

Subscribe now

Mother of the Beast

The beast was her gift, an ugly thing given to pay for a pretty thing taken—to bed, to brood, to Italy. While her husband gave his mistress everything she was denied, Queen Catherine threw pitted plums through cage bars and watched the beast devour them, his beard slick with sweet juice. While her husband the king consulted his mistress on affairs of state, knowledge no doubt acquired at the cocks of previous consorts, Catherine the Queen commissioned portraits of the beast. She sent them to her relatives. See the fruits of your machinations. Though my husband has not given me a child, he has given me a beast.

I am Pavel of the Far Isles, the beast said. Please let me go.

Queen Catherine laughed, and flicked an apricot through the bars. Well Pavel of the Far Isles. I am Catherine of Italy, and see what that has gotten me.

For the first year following the beast’s arrival, noblemen and women pressed velvet pouches swollen with coin into Catherine’s plump palm just for a chance to see the beast, to speak to him, to paint him, to touch him. For more coin, Catherine left them alone with the beast. For a young man such as Pavel, pig-snouted and covered in hair, any attention was a gift, the only rational response, gratitude. To be a prized possession of the powerful is a privilege people would pay for. Though Pavel had not.

But the year passed, and with it, the beast’s novelty. Queen Catherine saved the plums for herself, plugged her ears with putty at night to drown out the snorts and sniffles that emanated from the cage. They said her husband had started a war, that his mistress walked amongst the soldiers, protected by the new bulge of her belly. Queen Catherine tossed in her goosedown bed, the beast on the flagstones at its foot. Queen Catherine dreamt of bellies and babies and beasts and beauty, and when she awoke, she knew what she would do next.

Wife of the Beast

The peasant girl Catherine trekked to the palace from the town. When she arrived, her muslin skirt was muddled with mud, hairline honeyed with sweat. In a long line of better-dressed hopefuls, the Queen pointed at Catherine and said, “That one.”

Catherine curtsied, and in hoisting her skirt, she revealed still muddier shoes.

“Clean her up,” said the Queen.

Catherine stood naked in a gleaming copper tub. The Queen’s hard-faced attendants scrubbed scrolls of skin loose with horsehair bristles. But Catherine didn’t mind the pain. She was transfixed by the room, by the sumptuous surfaces that beckoned in velvet, brocade, and silk. She felt she was inside a jewelry box, the kind she’d only seen in shop windows.

Once she was clean, the attendants rubbed her pink with thick, warm towels.

Legs crossed, clutching her nascent breasts, Catherine asked, “When will my family receive their money?”

But the attendant only shrugged. When she left the room, a key clunked in the lock.

Catherine stood in the center of the room until the attendant returned, water plunking in fat droplets from the tips of her hair. She worried a scabbed, red welt at the base of her neck.

The door opened again to a cloud of shimmering white. All that was visible of the attendant was her hand, hoisting the dress by its high collar.

As Catherine stepped into the dress, she asked, “When will I meet him?”

The attendant chuckled. “Sooner than you’d like.” She sucked her teeth and clicked her tongue. “Sooner than you’d like,” she repeated, cinching the dress tight as a vice.

Mother of the Beast

The common girl resembled her husband’s mistress in the same way all pretty girls resemble each other. The same pert noses and breasts. The same wide, surprised eyes. The same heart-shaped lips. The same placid skin, marked only by the occasional girlish flush of blood to their cheeks, a reminder of their physicality, of the pink that lay just beneath the surface of their skin. Queen Catherine snapped her fan open in front of her face.

The girl leaned forward as she walked down the aisle of the great hall, bobbing slightly with the effort required to drag her dress. She was weak. That much was clear.

When the girl curtsied, Queen Catherine snapped her fingers. “Bring out the beast.”

The cardinal bent his hatted head in acknowledgement, before disappearing behind the dais. Moments later, two shuffling sets of footsteps approached, but the Queen did not care to see the beast. Him, she had seen plenty. She fixed her eyes on the girl. She wanted to see the moment the pretty face cracked, the moment she saw what her beauty had bought her.

The girl inhaled sharply through her nose, lips pursing in towards her delicate cheekbones. Queen Catherine leaned forward.

The girl exhaled. Her lips blossomed back into a heart, face placid as a reflecting pool. The beast took his place across from her.

Long fronds of black hair swayed from every pore in his face, clipped artfully so his black eyes were visible in their deep sockets. His strange hands, gnarled in a claw-like rictus poked from the embroidered ruffs of his wedding costume. He extended them to the girl. She did not flinch as she took them, as the cardinal bound their hands together with a length of lace, symbolic of their eternal union. She did not shed a tear as the cardinal spoke the words to pronounce them husband and wife.

When the ceremony was concluded, the girl thanked Queen Catherine and said, “The money will be sent to my family today.”

Queen Catherine nodded and waved her away. Unabashed trollop. Concerned only with money. Beauty is no indication of character.

Wife of the Beast

Back in the jewel box of a room, the beast would not look at Catherine. She couldn’t look away from him. He removed his jacket, placed it on the back of a chair. Beneath the billowy white muslin of his tunic, hair was visible, thick as a second shirt. Still not looking at Catherine, he said, “I won’t touch you.”

Catherine said nothing, only sat and unlaced the ribbons of her shoes, pulled the heeled slippers from her feet, and began to massage the arches of her feet.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?” asked Catherine.

This, at last made him turn around. Beneath the fur, his eyes were glassy, his jaw clenched. “I know this isn’t what you want.”

Catherine turned her back to the beast. “Can you unlace this please? It’s quite painful.”

The beast fumbled his knotty fingers in the corset strings. As he worked the tight knot at the base of Catherine’s spine she spoke again, “I got what I needed. Just not how I expected.”

The knot sprung free, and Catherine peeled the boned cage loose from her chest. She turned to face the beast.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Pavel,” he said, averting his eyes from the pique of her nipples beneath her undershirt.

“I knew it. I told my sisters you must have a name other than beast.” She sunk onto the edge of the bed, sighing. “Though I warrant I’ll never return to the village to tell them I was right.”

The red welt on Catherine’s neck glimmered with pus.

Mother of the Beast

Despite the beast’s relocation, Queen Catherine had not removed his cage from her chambers. Seated at her writing desk, she stared at it now, the threadbare mattress, spitting feathers on to the flagstones, the bars beside the bed worn shiny with the beast’s nervous ministrations.

“Is she with child yet?” Queen Catherine asked her attendant, who was also the village girl’s attendant.

“No, your highness,” the attendant said, hands full with a full chamberpot. “She’s just bled again the day before last.”

“Take that out, will you,” Queen Catherine responded, snapping at the malodorous pot.

“Yes, your highness.”

Queen Catherine returned to writing her letter to her mother.

The girl will be with child soon. A beast cannot resist such a pretty, young thing for long. What are beasts but men, and men but beasts, after all? I pray my next letter will bring tidings of miniature beast children. They will occupy me as the beast once did, pass the time until my noble husband, the king, returns from war. Perhaps you will visit to see the strange creatures as you did the beast? I miss you—and our home. All my love, Catherine.

Wife of the Beast

The room became their cage. It was bigger than Pavel’s previous cage, and had a better view of the lush fields and distant mountains, but a cage with a window is still a cage. Catherine spent long hours at the window. Pavel knew the difficulty of adjusting to a life of confinement, and so he spent hours speaking stories to her back, telling tales of princesses, dragons, knights, talking frogs, wishing wells, and spinning wheels.

After one story about a maiden who shed the skin of a swan, Catherine turned to Pavel and said, “How is it you know such stories? Are you able to read?”

Pavel shook his huge head, sending the fronds of hair dangling from his face swishing back and forth. “My mother.”

“And did she look like you?”

“No,” said Pavel. “But my father did.”

Catherine nodded. “Does the Queen know this?”

“Unfortunately,” Pavel said. Then, he asked, “And what of your family?”

“What of them,” said Catherine to the bees beneath the window.

“They sent you here,” Pavel said, but his statement was a question.

Catherine turned to face him. “I am one of seven sisters. We raised sheep.”

“Do you miss them?”

“As much as you miss your family,” Catherine nodded. “But we had too many sisters, not enough sheep. Something had to be done.” She shrugged, “I was the oldest.”

“I’m sorry,” said Pavel.

She shook her head. “Nothing is promised.” Her hand jumped to the puckered white scar on her neck. “Who knows? A worse fate might have awaited me.”

“Do you—” Pavel began to ask.

But Catherine interrupted him, “We used to tell stories while we spun the wool to yarn,” she said. “My sisters and I.” She turned back to the window. “So, I’d like to hear another story, please. If you know one.”

And so Pavel resumed speaking, his rumbling, tumbling voice joining the hum of bees outside the window as they pollinated lavender just out of reach.

Mother of the Beast

Queen Catherine could not understand the girl’s barrenness. Surely, the pair had consummated their union. Men could not resist, after all.

She sealed a letter to the King and thought of their wedding night. It had hurt to make him happy. But she had taken pleasure in the pain, pride in the successful fulfillment of her duty. She may never know the ecstasy of men, but she knew a fraction of it when she watched the King’s brow knit in pleasure, lips part and pant in satisfaction—satisfaction with her. Her pleasure, anyways, was in what the pain promised. She would never be king, but she could create her own kingdom from what lay between her legs. A kingdom of love within these castle walls unlike any she had ever known, its only subjects her, her husband, and their children.

She pressed the wax seal to the parchment. Her attendant approached as she wafted the letter in the air, letting the seal set. When it had dried, she placed the envelope in her attendant’s hands.

“See that he gets this,” she said.

And as the attendant’s head bobbed in a curtsy, something flashed in her placid face, something the Queen did not like at all—a swift, sad smile.

The Queen would consider the appropriate punishment for this insubordination later. Now, she had visitors.

Wife of the Beast

Pavel was finishing a story when the attendant opened the door to their bedroom. She never knocked.

“Guests,” she said in that flat-as-a-pan voice so unlike Pavel’s.

As the two followed the attendant from the room, Catherine slipped her hand in Pavel’s. He flinched only slightly before letting his fingers relax around hers.

The attendant did not tell them which guests were visiting or why. It did not matter. These visits always proceeded in more or less the same fashion, varying only in degrees of horror.

Today, it was only a mother and her two daughters. Catherine watched Pavel’s shoulders relax, though he still flinched at the children’s shrieks. Catherine had never asked Pavel about his past. She had not needed to. She knew enough from her time in the village to recognize the prints left by pain.

“Oh my,” the noblewoman exclaimed, pressing her white palm against the crepey wrinkles of her bosom. She lifted a bottle of smelling salts from a gold chain between her breasts and waved them under her nose, repeating the admonishment. Oh my.

Her daughter burst into tears and buried her face in her mother’s skirts, begging her mother to put it away.

The boy ran in circles around them chanting gleefully. Beast. Beast. Beast. Beast.

These noble people were so wearily predictable, Catherine thought. Pavel, at least, was singular.

Back in their room, when the attendant closed the door, Catherine did not release Pavel’s hand.

She brought her other hand to the thick fur on his cheek. He flinched away.

“It’s what she wants,” Pavel said. “Little beasts.”

“I know,” Catherine said, stroking his face. “But it’s what I want too.”

She moved in closer, but paused, her pillowy lips inches from his furred ones. “I don’t want to be like her,” she whispered.

“You’re not,” Pavel said.

“You want this?” she asked.

And Pavel kissed her.

Mother of the Beast

Queen Catherine watched the peasant girl writhe on the bed. She was shrieking for Pavel, but though it was a beast’s birth, there were still standards of decorum to uphold. Men were not permitted in the delivery room. The King had not been there, after all, when the Queen delivered her first child, or her second, or her third. He had been visiting foreign dignitaries. And hunting. She did not know where he had been for the fourth, and final, stillbirth, but it was soon after that he sent Queen Catherine the beast.

The attendants’ hands probed amidst the blood and excrement to extract, first a head, and then a body, and then tiny, flailing legs. The girl shrieked and heaved and gasped like a cow, like a beast herself. But then the attendant wiped the baby with a towel, and Queen Catherine had eyes only for it.

She took the beast as the girl reached for it. It was everything she hoped for—covered tip to tail in thick fur, but with the same bland beauty as its mother. A pink gem of a monster in miniature. A truly singular creature, one lords and ladies would travel far and wide to see. Even the King, she thought, might be compelled by such a temptation. Or, perhaps, her family?

Wife of the Beast

Bella, named for Catherine’s mother, was barely a month old when Queen Catherine opened the family’s room for public viewing. Noble friends from far and wide visited to see, as Queen Catherine called her, “The Incredible Miniature Monster.”

Catherine was forced to nurse the baby while onlookers peered at her child’s furry face. The Queen advised them to observe the flare of the nostrils, a tell-tale sign of a developing snout. She pointed out the size of Bella’s ears, turned out in the manner of an elephant from India. The knuckles! The curl of the lips! A bump on the backside! Could it be a tail?

And Catherine remained silent throughout it all, clutching Bella, as if her arms could shield her child from the onslaught.

Mother of the Beast

When the child was six months old, Queen Catherine received a visitation request from another Queen, the wife of a King of a neighboring kingdom. Queen Catherine accepted happily. The miniature monster’s fame was growing, to garner such a visitor. Soon, she thought, her husband the King would visit. Or her mother.

Queen Catherine ensured the creature was dressed in the embroidered blue velvet of her house, displayed in a hand-woven bassinet, frocked with lace. The mother of the beast lurked like a swollen shadow. Childbirth had not treated her well. Everything about her seemed to spread and sag—her features, her breasts, her hips. With her lips turned down in a sullen frown, she completed the picture of the bestial little family.

The visiting Queen tittered appreciatively when she saw the three of them arranged so in the room. It was a gruesomely satisfying tableau, one which Queen Catherine knew would supply months of anecdotes for her visitor.

But, the visiting Queen wanted more.

After a few rotations around the bassinet, stalked by the sulking shamble of the beast’s mother, the visiting Queen turned to Queen Catherine.

I would like to buy the little beast, she said. How much?

The neck of the beast’s mother snapped at this statement, eyes fixing fast on Queen Catherine’s. Queen Catherine was surprised, but not displeased. The peasant girl was already with child again. The attendant had informed her. Clearly, the couple could not control their animal instincts. A little market of beasts. It would make the castle a compelling attraction. Important people may come from far and wide if they know they could not only behold a beast, but have one for themselves.

That could be arranged, Queen Catherine said. Let us retire to the parlor to discuss specifics.

A low growl escaped Pavel’s lips. The visiting Queen hitched her skirts like a shield, stepping back from his bared teeth with a simpering disgust.

After all this time, I thought he was domesticated, she hissed at Queen Catherine.

Oh he is, the Queen assured her, shooting a chastising glance at Pavel. She did not want him to disrupt this potential deal.

Well, said the visiting Queen, releasing her skirts, and relaxing somewhat. If you’re sure. I’d have to know they could be domesticated, you see. She pointed at the baby. If I’m going to have that one around my children.

The baby’s furry paw protruded from the bassinet, reaching for its mother. It let out a tiny, strangled cry, like the mewling of a cat.

Wife of the Beast

It wasn’t Pavel that leapt at the Queen then. It was Catherine. There are beasts that are born and beasts that are made. Beasts beget beasts. Beasts birth beasts. But Catherine thought of none of this as she leapt towards the Queen, vaulting over her baby’s bassinet. Claws clamped on corset until they found purchase. Teeth sunk into skin. The white, fluttering flesh of the Queen’s neck, one of the last beautiful bits left of her, was shaken loose from the red wet of her esophagus.

Catherine’s head snapped back and forth, blood flying from her lips, spattering the squealing noblewoman who ran from the room, arms over her head, red speckling the pale pink of her gown. Queen Catherine fell, and Catherine fell on top of her, the two Catherines tangled upon the floor in a pool of blood that spread inexorably. Catherine stared at the growing puddle, head cocked, contemplating how this small wound might soon touch everything.

Mother of the Beast

And as Queen Catherine died, upon the floor where she’d once caged the beast, her lips spread in a small smile. Maybe this would be enough to bring her husband home. Or, at the very least, her mother. It had been so long since she had seen either of them. Since she was a girl, really. Not much older than Catherine. They would come soon. She smiled at the thought. Blood bubbled up her throat to line the spaces between her teeth before dripping like drool from her yawning jowls.

Wife of the Beast

Pavel brought Bella to her as she spit a scrap of skin to the stone. She took Bella in one arm, shielding her blooming belly with the other. In months, this second child would cleave her open. She wasn’t afraid. Life was demarcated by cleavings—from innocence, from family, from children. But not yet, not yet. Pavel hugged her, Bella, and her belly safe between their bodies. For now, for now.

Share

Tell us your origin story as a writer. When did you begin? What first drew you to writing as an instrument for asking questions that can’t be explored any other way?

Caroline Beuley: I came to writing because I have always love reading more than almost anything else. As a child I especially loved reading fantasy. I loved the magical worlds, and I loved how the words on the page worked their own kind of magic to conjure them. I had a very sad period in my life where I got lost in the wild woods of the corporate world and stopped writing, but even then I was always reading. Eventually, reading brought me back to writing. I've been writing consistently for the last six years, and it's been absolutely amazing. I think writing is the closest thing to real magic—the way simple words, when said in the right order, make a whole world.

What does your writing routine look like? Do you thrive in structure or wildness? And when you begin a piece of writing, what tends to announce itself first: a voice, an image, an unease, a philosophical conundrum?

CB: I am obsessed with structure, deadlines, and to-do lists. I map out my week every Sunday night to make sure I have time to get my work done for my job, write two pieces for my Substack, and make progress on my novel. Occasionally, there is time for a short story, and it's always amazing when that happens. When I’m writing a story, I find that the concept usually comes first. For “Two Catherines,” for example, I read a piece on Substack about how “Beauty and the Beast” was based on a real genetic condition that causes hair growth everywhere. I knew I wanted to tell the story of someone with that condition. As I wrote, it became “Two Catherines.”

Most artists are preoccupied by certain obsessions: lust, longing, death, the self. What persistent preoccupation—emotional, intellectual, or spiritual—threads through your work? Are there motifs, themes, or impulses you’ve tried to abandon but that keep returning, insisting on their relevance?

CB: Shit is hard for women. I would say that is the theme/message that weaves itself into my writing even when I don't mean for it to. It feels more important to write about now than ever, and it seems I just can’t resist its pull!

If not a writer, who would you be?

CB: Something in fashion! After writing, fashion and styling is my favorite way to be creative.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received? Alternatively/additionally, what’s something you’d like to offer as advice to emerging writers trying to make a mark?

CB: The factor that will most determine whether you make it as a writer is not innate ability but rather your ability to keep writing after rejection. If you don’t let rejection stop you and you keep writing eventually you will be a published writer. My professor and mentor, Jason Mott, told me that. I think about it at least once a day. It’s so simple, but also so hard. You just have to keep writing.

What are you working on now and how is it trying to ruin your life (in a good, necessary way, of course)?

CB: I am working on Hunted, a young adult fantasy novel inspired by fairy tales (very on brand). I described the concept to my friend and she said it sounded like “a much more violent Shrek,” which is now my favorite way to describe it. Basically, all the magical fairy tale beasts and creatures have been rounded up by humans and banished beyond a wall. The protagonist is competing to become a Huntsman, the elite force that patrols the wall. But as the novel progresses, the boundaries between good and evil, magic and humanity become much more blurry. I hope the novel will, in it’s final form, say something about who is allowed to live where, how we treat difference, and how magic cannot be conveniently divorced from the people who possess it. I’m really excited about it, but I’m on my fourth draft, so I’m also very ready to be done with it.

Who are the artists—writers, filmmakers, thinkers, internet oddities—that have shaped your sense of narrative? How have they rearranged the way you see the world on the page?

CB: George Saunders’ craft book A Swim in the Pond in the Rain forever impacted the way I wrote short stories. Kelly Link and Karen Russell’s wildly imaginative short stories have really pushed me to be more weird and creative in my writing. I have always really admired Carmen Maria Machado’s ability to write a brilliant, engaging, story that floors you at the end with a resonant message about our world, so I always aspire to do the same in my writing. And, of course, fairy tales are probably my greatest and most impactful source of inspiration. I love to draw on the fairy tale aesthetic and imbue my writing with the magic, wildness, darkness, and bravery that are so emblematic of the fairy tale tradition.

Please recommend a piece of art (a painting, a film, an album, anything that's not a piece of creative writing, really) that you love and would like everyone to experience.

CB: My favorite movie this year was Strange Darling because of its creative structure and unique approach to storytelling. It’s a thriller told in six chapters, but the chapters aren’t presented in order, and its’ amazing to see how the chosen order and structure changes everything.

Leave a comment

CAROLINE BEULEY is an alumni of the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference and is pursuing a Fiction Writing MFA at UNCW. Her writing has been nominated for Wigleaf's Top 50 and Best of the Net. She is at work on a story collection and YA fantasy novel. She is co-editing an anthology, Between Our Legs, forthcoming from University of Iowa Press Fall 2026.

Fairy Tales by Caroline

Fiction, fairy tales, and essays, delivered every Wednesday and Sunday

By Caroline Beuley

Notes on Art

Lavinia Fontana’s portrait of Antonietta Gonsalvus (c. 1595) is a painting1 of the daughter of Petrus Gonsalvus, a man with hypertrichosis who was kept at the French court of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici. Antonietta is maybe six years old in the portrait, dressed in the brocade and lace of nobility, holding a letter that explains what she is.

Fontana was one of the first professional women painters in Europe, and there’s something in the care of her gaze that resists the voyeurism the portrait was commissioned to satisfy. She painted the child…as a child. The letter in Antonietta’s hand, though, tells you someone else decided what the painting was for. “Two Catherines” lives in the gap between those two impulses — the human gaze and the transactional one — and asks what happens when a woman caged by one system turns the key on someone else.

Subscribe now

ABOUT THE VOICE ARTIST: Abdulsalam Joki-Lasisi is a Nigerian engineer and professional Voice Over Artist. From lending authority to multinational brands to breathing life into diverse animation projects, his vocal range is matched only by his passions for gaming, reading, and sports.

Raise a plastic fan and hold it next to your head. Turn it slowly, your head facing forward, until you start to hear sounds. The sounds change every night; running water, TV static, a stampede, whispers, a festival, but never turn your head to look. With your other hand, reach across your face and feel the air around the fan, closest to where you think the sound is coming from. Feel, until something licks you.

That is when you know you have found Them.

There are many stories about how She came to be. Some say She was born when lightning struck a boulder at the base of Shere hills. Aunties tell their nephew that She was a babalawo’s illegitimate child, created by the gods to punish him for his infidelity. All versions are useful, have power.

There is one story that isn’t shared as much. I wonder why. But, you’ll need this version to be able to get her to do what you want.

The story goes thus:

They were born dead, spirit hovering over their lifeless pudgy forms. They were born in a tub, in a bathroom with high clay walls and a flimsy zinc door. They slid out of their mother, a soul with a tightly curled body. She didn’t scream, this mother. She rinsed the body, that silent breathless baby, then washed herself. They watched, curious.

Her lips tight, their mother dug out a spool of thread and a needle attached. Their curiosity morphed into horror and they tried to scream. But spirits cannot scream to the living, so, they could do nothing but watch, dread curling, as the mother pricked her finger, then stabbed the dead baby’s stomach. and blood began to flow along the thread, white to red as it flowed into the body.

Then the body’s eyes opened, and it began to cry. The mother cried too, and hugged the body. The body looked at where They floated, close to the yellow bulb, hatred clear in their eyes. And it smiled. Through its tears, it smiled, and curled further into the mother.

“Thank you God,” the woman cried out, voice hoarse from hours of unaided labour.

Like a summoning, the zinc door flew open with a grating squeal and a man barged in. He nearly tripped over his hastily tied wrapper, almost bashing his head against the enamel tub. And They winced, annoyed at Their failure. He re-tied the wrapper hastily and loomed over the wife, smiling a smile that chilled Their bones.

“It’s a girl,” the mother whispered. And handed the body to her husband. The body that now lay so still, it was like watching a statue passing hands.

“Yes,” he said, his lips curling. “Yes it is.”

When you find Them, when they have licked your hand, draw it back. If you don’t, their teeth will follow. It is not time for the teeth yet.

You will feel afraid. Your heart will pound and nervous laughter will tickle your throat. Laugh and be nervous, sweat even, as you make dinner and think about what you want to do. What you want them to do for you.

But when you hear the gates swing open, when you hear Musa’s welcome sa! good evening sa!, compose yourself. Smooth your hand over your headtie as you walk to open the door. Hug your husband and inhale his Dior Sauvage like you have missed his scent all day, and cannot wait to have him all to yourself.

“Ah ah, is that how much you missed me?” he will ask.

Smile and say yes.

As you close the door, your eyes will find it. A red thong, leftover from your afternoon dalliance with Fatima.

Look quickly, to see if he saw, then swipe it with your toe, nimble as a gymnast. You might make a noise.

“Did you say something?” he will turn and ask.

Shake your head no. He will frown, like he doesn’t believe you, and your heart will start to pound. But don’t panic.

Pout your lips and graze his arm with your newly manicured nails. It doesn’t matter that you feel nothing, like touching a tap. Do it till his pupils dilate, and his breathing changes. Then leave him and go back to making dinner.

It always used to work on Rhoda, and it will work on him too.

That night, after he has fucked you (never the other way around), tell him you want to shave his beard. His smile will be confused, but rub his chest. Feed his vanity; make him think your fingers’ only purpose is to be glued to his body.

As you lather his chin, leave a small patch without shaving foam.

Shave the rest, carefully, stroking his face so his eyes flutter and he has a constant placid smile.

“Let me use my tweezers.”

Pluck the hairs, dark and short with their whitish root/follicle, and place them inside a square of tissue. Your heart will race, and your fingers will tremble, but force yourself to relax.

Later, when his snores make the windows rattle, and makes you want to slap him, grab your fan again. Reach for them, to the place where They are. This time, when you reach across your face around the fan, give them the tissue-wrapped hairs. Their teeth will graze your fingers, and latch onto the hairs, and a wet, cosre tongue will tickle your fingertips. Then they will disappear.

Seven days later, they will give you several pouches of powder, and you will poison your husband for the first time that night, watching with satisfaction as he swallows each morsel of pounded yam and laced afang soup.

Every time the mother had gotten pregnant, she’d had a miscarriage. That is what They are made up of, the spirit of each baby she miscarried. Each tragedy was an omen from the Old spirits, a warning that she should not have her husband’s baby.

You see, the mother and her husband had gotten married despite her parents’ pleas. They’d even locked her up in her room, threatening to sell her to the highest bidder should she accept the man’s proposal.

Everyone in the village knew who he was. They kept their daughters behind them as they danced forward every Sunday to drop their offering, or to receive anointing from his Goya olive oil bottle. No wife ever went to see him without her son or husband, and spiritual deliverances were always a family affair.

But the mother…the mother was different. She would go to see him alone, and each time returned to her parents’ house with a pious fire in her eyes, singing hymns and dancing tilll 3am when the neighbours would band their windows and say, “will you shut up!”

Her parents tried to talk to her. But they did so in discreet terms, words that made little sense to her, to anyone who would need protecting.

“Plangnan…haven’t you heard…he’s not…”

But the girl didn’t understand. He was kind to her, spoke in a soft voice and stroked the back of her knee every time she went to see him. He was handsome, skin like clay, and brown eyes that sparkled when he lit his kerosene lantern at night. And he was the first man whose touched moved her, made her skin prickle and her nipples pebble. A person that wasn’t a girl, that wasn’t her “best friends” over the years.

So, she believed then, that he must have some ungodly power, since no man had every drawn moans from her the way Shitna’an and Miriam and Blessing did.

She had gone to him for deliverance, for counselling, when she heard his first sermon condemning homosexuals, and she felt something ugly choke her chest. It was the same feeling that suffocated her when at 19, whispers began to follow her. At the river side, in the marketplace, in the village hall.

“Did you hear?” “Hear ke? I saw them with my own eyes! Her and that Deborah.” “Tufiakwa. And you did not kill them??” “What’s my business?” “Let me catch her first. If I don’t chop her up, change my name.”

She hated the words, hated the fear that took root in her, that fed on her apparently ungodly desires. So, of course, she’d gone to the pastor for help.

“You see,” he whispered as he stuck a finger inside her and she writhed, clutching her breasts. “How can you be gay?”

She married him, and the whispers stopped. No one ever whispered against a pastor and his wife.

Until she miscarried four times in a row, and the whispers arose again, triumphant, vindicated.

“When she has been doing rubbish with that other girl for years, what do you expect? I’m sure that’s why God closed her womb. Useless girl.”

She would lock herself in her wardrobe, and cry till her husband came home to berate her over semo and kuka about her childlessness five years into marriage.

They did not know that it was the spirits handiwork. Spirits pay attention, they see the future, written in the actions of the past and present. They knew what would happen should the man have a child.

Then one day, she took matters into her own hands, and fucked another man where eyes could not see, where whispers could not be birthed, and even spirits were oblivious.

And gave birth to her daughter, the girl who would be her downfall.

Your problem, your husband, will be like an overnight pimple. Irritating, disfiguring, and you will want to pop him as fast as possible.

Bide your time. Every day, you will want to increase the dose. Don’t. Be like Beatrice Achike, like Giulia Tofania. They were careful, and no one found out till it was too late, till their problems were dealt with.

He will invite his friends over for his 40^th birthday celebration, and they will drink all the booze in the house, till you have to send Musa to buy palm wine from around the corner.

“Please be fast,” you will say. Because you do not want them, him, to be sober.

You do not want him to be able to understand the looks that pass between you and Miriam, Bello’s wife.

The first time you met him, at your introduction, he’d seen the look.

You saw a look too, one that made you roll your eyes. As you walked past him from the front door to change out of your clubbing clothes, you took in his big-bellied figure. Greed, potent and oily, shone in his eyes and in the way he stroked his beard. He was nothing new. The newest in a long line of men who’d visited the house over the past two months, you thought you could dispose of him too, prove to be so hard-headed they would leave.

No matter how much money they stood to inherit from your oil tycoon of a father, no man wanted a headstrong wife that they couldn’t control.

So, when your mother called you from your room, you mad sure to emerge in only a towel, tattoos on full display.

“Sochi,” your mother said. “Come and meet Isaac.”

“No,” you said loudly, and the room fell into silence. Your mother’s mouth fell open and she rose, the beads on her arms and neck rattling. She raised her hand to slap you, and you flinched, closing your eyes. Nothing came.

You opened your eyes to find her wrist stayed by the man. The way he looked at you then was different from the other men. Pitying, triumphant, possessive. Your knees trembled and you bit your tongue. Real fear crippled your nerves and you fiddled with the edge of your towel.

“Let me talk to her alone please,” he said. Everyone agreed. Your mother, father, uncles, all filed into the kitchen, and silence descended between the two of you.

He said nothing, simply pulled out his phone and scrolled and tapped a few times, then handed it to you.

You threw the phone across the room. It burned your hand, and the picture collage on it was scorched into your retina, and angry tears welled up.

“How the hell did you get that?” you whispered.

It’s fine babe, Rhonda had said. No one will know. Yet, there the two of you were imprisoned on his phone, lips locked and hair tangled in one another’s hair, chest smooshed together. In another picture was one thathad you both staring at each other’s eyes, two girls clearly in love and damning the world.

Isaac smiled, and his oily wretched face turned triumphant in your sight.

“Marry me,” he’d said. “Marry me or I’ll tell everyone what a dirty lesbian you are.”

The skin on your arms pimpled and you hated him instantly.

“Tell them,” you said. The smugness slid off his face and for the first time, he looked unsure. You smiled, your confidence returning in bits, masking the fear that thrummed in your veins. Then he marched past you into the kitchen.

He told them, and the next week, you were married.

Two years now, and you still hate him, want him to suffer for the life he has trapped you in, a life created out of fear for your own life.

But he doesn’t know that your boldness has gone nowhere, despite the gold handcuff on your ring finger. You are still that girl in the towel, her tattoos now covered by bulbous bubus. It is that same boldness that led you to find a witch, one who didn’t fear your husband, who had his own army of babalawos, thanks to your father’s money.

“I can’t help you,” she’d said. “I will die. But I know who can help you, someone your husband cannot touch, because she is already dead.”

Thanks to her instructions, now you have the poison, and soon, you will be free. Maybe not to go back to Rhonda, who is married with two children now. But to live a life where you do not have to think of someone else when being fucked.

When Musa returns, Isaac’s eyes will be a little less glazed.

“What took you so long?” you will snap at Musa.

“Sorry ma,” he will reply. “E don finish before, but dem make new batch special for oga.”

As you transfer the palm wine to a jug, Miriam will join you in the kitchen.

“Let me help you,” she will say. Her voice is soft, and has always done something to your belly. This time, for the first time, her fingers will graze yours as she lines up glasses on a tray. They will linger, as will your eyes on her fair face, breasts hugged by sugar lace, and a mouth ringed in kohl. Then she will drift past you to the stairs, up to where she knows your bedroom is, where you have gossiped about your husbands. And their many girls. And whispered, coded desires. As she walks up, one shoulder of her dress will fall. There will be no bra strap. You breath will stutter and your eyes will remain on her till she disappears past the landing.

All that’s left is to deliver the palm wine, then join her.

You pause, then pour an entire pouch of powder into the jug. Because they are the same, the men drinking and laughing in the sitting room.

No one she told believed Her. Her grandmother had slapped her and said to stop dreaming up stories.

“You want the devil to use you abi?” she said.

Her mother hadn’t said anything, simply stared at Her till she began to doubt what had happened. Maybe I am exaggerating, she thought. No father would touch his daughter that way, the same daughter he fed strawberries at breakfast and made faces till she collapsed into breathless giggles.

You see, one day, Plangnan had come home early from church choir practice. That particular day, she was not interested in being fetted, fawned over and asked to deliver prayer points to her husband. She packed her bag and faked a headache, and left. Somehow she still ended up with two written prayer requests.

On getting home, she fished out her key from her purse, when a soft, whimpering sound made her pause. She stepped to her left and squinted to look into the window, wondering if there were thieves raiding their home so early in the evening.

What she saw stopped her heart forever.

On the couch lay her daughter, clad in her nightdress. Kneeling in front of her was the pastor, his hands beneath the nightdress, a smile on his oily lips.

Plangnan retched. Outside the door, she emptied her stomach of everything ever ingested. The lies, the faith, the sermons, the belief. Then she sat in the putrid mess and prayed, prayed she had mis-seen, because no father would do that to his own daughter.

She replayed her counselling sessions with him, how he’d fingered her. This time, she paid attention to the look in his eyes, not how her body felt, a body that now felt like a betrayal, a supreme lie. And for the first time, she saw it. The look. Punishing, triumphant, wicked.

She kicked the door, feet stinging, and swept on them. Her bag became a gavel, metting out justice onto her husband’s back. He cursed and tried to overpower her, lifting his hands. As soon as he did, she whacked his face with her shoe and scooped up her daughter and ran, locking them both in her room. Her daughter shook in her arms, tears glinting in the wam yellow light of the overhead bulbs.

“Plangnan!” he roared and pounded on the door. All night he threathened and shouted, voice going hoarse. Till he finally left, and her daughter slept, and Plangnan’s heart still did not resume its natural ryhthm

Naturally, she’d gone to her family for help, for solace and protection, the same people whose warnings had falling on her deaf ears, the same people now ho dismissed her.

How could a father do something like that?

Soon, stories of her accusation began to spread. People stared as she and her daughter picked out pawpaw and cashews in the market. Their eyes tracked her daughter’s movements, looking for the pastor’s fingerprints on her skin. And when they didn’t see any, when she looked normal, eyes burned with anger, lips curled, hissing. Plangnan hurled a few cashews, toppled a few pepper heaps.

Normal to them was not normal to her. She knew from how her daughter didn’t complain about buying overipe mangos, how she didn’t beg for boiled groundnut, how she pulled Plangnan away from every male trader, that her daughter’s scars lay in her bones, swam in her blood.

And she knew those scars demanded retribution.

She went home and performed for her husband. She pouted her lips, grazed his arm, caressed his shoulders as she served him dinner. She laughed as he joked, made he saw the heat in her eyes, made sure he mistook it for smoldering. Her daughter’s sadness and betrayed expression at the dining table clawed at her chest and almost broke her resolve.

That night, after he fucked her (never the other way around), and he dozed off, his stomach full of pounded yam and egusi, Plangnan steeled herself, took a knife, and plunged it into his fat kneck, where his rosary rested. And blood coated the cross, gargling till his struggles fell silent.

They saw, the spirits of the children that died in her womb. They saw what this woman had done in the face of what they had foreseen, the injustice that would have been committed against them too. And They smiled.

She went to wash her hands of his blood, and They descended, possessing the man’s body. He rose from the bed, a quiet zombie, blood leaking from his throat onto his night shirt. He walked out into the night, guided by Them under the watchful moonlight.

When Plangnan returned to the room, she screamed. Then she turned the whole house upside down, movenents frantic and deperate. She ran outside, searched the nearby bushes for him tilll the sun rose and her eyes were blood-red.

For days, she could not sleep. She waited for his resurgence, his resurrection and her subsequent damnation. For what dead man stood up and walked away ?

But weeks passed, and he didn’t return, and her confidence grew, even as people whispered about his disappearance.

The next time they were in the marketplace, the people stared, once more looking for the truth. And they thought they saw it, in the lightness of her daughter’s footsteps, the way she walked with her shoulder’s high like a layer of slime had sloughed off her. They thought her, the re-happy 5-year-old, responsible for her father’s disappearance.

Plangnan felt the fiery hate in their eyes, the pitchforks and torches that would come for her daughter if they believed her guilty. The fear tore at her throat, and her heart became irregular.

That evening, she called Deborah, who now lived in the city, a successful banker.

“Hello?” the voice pulled at something deep and long-forgotten in Plangnan and she had to stifle a sob.

“Deborah? It’s Plangnan.”

“Plangnan! Long time! How-”

“I’m going to die soon,” she interrupted. “And I want you to come and take my daughter away.”

Deborah was silent, shocked. “Why?”

Tears ran down Plangnan’s face. “You know what this village is like.”

She didn’t need to say more. Deborah agreed, and they scheduled the pickup for two days later.

That night, she went to Mama Iyabo’s beer parlour. She sat for hours, ordering cup after cup of burkutu. She poured them all over her dress when no one watched, so by the tme the moon graced the sky, she smelled like Katlong, the town drunkard. Then, heart thumping, she climbed onto the table. She took a deep breath. Then began to scream.

“I did it! I killed him! I killed the useless man.”

Jumping from table to table, kicking cups and plates, sending meat and booze flying. For the first time since she was a girl, joy filled her heart. She was no longer a dirty hell-bound homosexual, a stubborn girl, a barren wife, a lying wife and mother. She was a mother, fighting for her daughter, taking her protection into her hands.

It didn’t take long before people captured her, tied her up at the tree at the base of the mountain. And they stoned, hurled and threw until her body bled in all places. Her wrapper and clouse tore to shreds. But she laughed. Laughed because she knew her daughter would be safe.

As the life flowed out of her, and her connection to this side of life ebbed, she saw Them, and They reached out hands to her.

“Who are you?” she asked, voice cracked. Another stone hit her temple and destroyed her left vision.

“We were to be your children by that man,” They replied. “Join us, mother.”

Plangnan smiled, and the last stone hit, and she joined her children.

It will look like you will fail.

One day, he will come home to find you dozed off on the couch, phone hanging from your hand. He will take it and his body will go rigid. Fury will twist his dark face, till he looks like a pudgy potato.

The first blow will clear your sleep, and feel like nails driving into your cheek. The next will fold your stomach in on itself. He will grab your hair and pull you from the couch. Pain will explode at the base of your skull and tears will run down your cheek.

You will swipe helplessly at him, but pain has weakened your body, and the only thing you can do is scream and sob.

“I thought I told you to stop this nonsense!”

They will come to mind, Fatima’s red thong, Miriam’s lace-covered breasts, the countless women that have kept you sane, stopped you from taking your own life just to escape this prison.

He will do all these things, and your patience will break. This is where They will come in. They will come from the shadows and enter his body, replace his soul. He will jerk and try to fight. Then his fingers will unclench from your head, step back and watch.

He will tear himself apart, from hair follicle, to fingernail to skin flaps, till he is nothing but a mess of bone, suit scraps and blood.

Sometimes, there is no such thing as a clean ending.

Fear will try to overtake your body, will freeze you to the spot. Take your bags and run. Run towards your new beginning, one that starts with a plastic surgeon who will replace your face with an unrecognisable one, bland and mundane.

When they find his body, see what has happened, the insects living in his skin, they will call you witch. But not to your face, because it doesn’t exist anymore.

Witch, they will call you. Witch, they called women miracle workers. Divine, they called Jesus. Does it really matter? Witch, devil, they called Plangnan. She is the She they tell stories about, the witch they use for horror stories. Maybe they’ll use you for a story too.

And sometimes, for the sake of those who come after, our stories are more important than what they call us.

Share

Tell us your origin story as a writer. When did you begin? What first drew you to writing as an instrument for asking questions that can’t be explored any other way?

Plangdi Neple: Until 2020, I didn't consider writing as a thing I could do professionally. By then, Covid-19 had made me bored enough to try anything. Plus, I was unhappy with my chosen field of study: Chemical Engineering.

My real draw to writing came about 2 years later, when I was considering stopping for good. Until I found what I really wanted to do with words. I don't talk much, so, writing (and the accompanying research) is my preferred way of asking questions I can't say out loud, and for talking about important things.

What does your writing routine look like? Do you thrive in structure or wildness? And when you begin a piece of writing, what tends to announce itself first: a voice, an image, an unease, a philosophical conundrum?

PN: 90% of the time, structure. Wildness can occasionally help and surprise (that's actually how “To Whom It May Concern” started out), but has more often led to incomplete drafts that taunt me every year. Structure helps because I need to have a clear road map. If not, I'll retread old/familiar themes and stories.

The thing that comes first is usually a question: what if...? Followed by a twist on something I've been preoccupied with. For example, I have a story that started as "what if I wanted to steal money on its way to an ATM?".

Most artists are preoccupied by certain obsessions: lust, longing, death, the self. What persistent preoccupation—emotional, intellectual, or spiritual—threads through your work? Are there motifs, themes, or impulses you’ve tried to abandon but that keep returning, insisting on their relevance?

PN: Oh my friends would have a field day answering this! The most consistent thing in my work (right now) is queerness. It wasn't always there when I was growing up, especially in Nigeria, and writing has given me the power to surround myself with it. Another thing is that a lot of my characters go to others for help/power. A part of it is that I think it's important to know when to ask for help (something I'm not very good at), and to understand the need for community.

If not a writer, who would you be?

PN: Probably an engineer, if my parents had their way!

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received? Alternatively/additionally, what’s something you’d like to offer as advice to emerging writers trying to make a mark?

PN: The best advice I've received is from a friend: do it afraid. And it's the same thing I'd say to emerging writers. You already have so many things working against you in the world right now. Don't let fear be one of them.

What are you working on now and how is it trying to ruin your life (in a good, necessary way, of course)?

PN: I'm afraid I'll invoke them if I speak. Oh well, what's a little curse. I'm working on a novel and a short story collection. One is about beauty, fashion, and the body, and one is about gender essentialism, surveillance states, and addiction. I'll give you 3 guesses.

Who are the artists—writers, filmmakers, thinkers, internet oddities—that have shaped your sense of narrative? How have they rearranged the way you see the world on the page?

PN: There are so many people I can think of, but I'll stick to a few. Tee Noir, Cat Sebastian, Mina Le, Octavia Butler, Wole Talabi. I didn't really grow up questioning the world around me; I grew up Christian. These writers and creators gave me the language to express things I already felt, and exposed me to history and concepts I was otherwise oblivious to. They're also just really fun! Wole has a story (An Arc of Electric Skin) about a man using his skin to destroy the Nigerian political system. Delicious doesn't begin to describe that narrative.

Please recommend a piece of art (a painting, a film, an album, anything that's not a piece of creative writing, really) that you love and would like everyone to experience.

PN: Two very recent things come to mind: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Maison Margiela Artisanal 2024 show.

Leave a comment

PLANGDI NEPLE is a Nigerian writer. His work has appeared in several publications, including FIYAH, Cast of Wonders, Flame Tree Press, Afterlives 2024: The Year’s Best Death Fiction, and others. He is a Voodoonauts 2024 Fellow, a Tin House Alum, a member of the Clarion West class of 2025, a Nommo Award Nominee, and a Brave New Weird Award winner.

Notes on Art

We’ve paired this piece with Wangechi Mutu’s The Bride Who Married a Camel’s Head (2009)1 Mutu builds hybrid women from magazine cutouts, medical illustrations, and ink—figures torn apart and reassembled into something fiercer. This bride kneels in tall grass, flowers erupting from her head like a crown or a wound, one hand raised as if casting or catching something. She’s ornamented and monstrous, trapped in a title that sounds like a folktale warning and a curse. And then we look at her face and realize, viscerally, that she’s not afraid. Neple’s story takes off from that look.