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Hellbent and ChapstickBy Christopher Sloce QuailBellMagazine.com Tins of lip balm impress ovals into the backs of my khakis. My lips look like streets after earthquakes, the way my tongue attacks them, and in my younger years they called me “Pitbull” because of that habit. But I no longer buy Chapstick. I can’t stand the smell or look. It makes me break into sweats even when my wife or someone in one of my classes put on lipstick. I have to sigh and say, “It’s a mirage, Conner. Hold onto yourself.” When they do this, I turn around and bite my lips. I’ve thought about sewing pockets in my coats. Secret ones to hold my balm like Kennedy’s barbiturates. My vision is failing now. I don’t wear Clubmasters anymore. I wear horn rims and plaid and corduroys and grey flannels. I stand in front of the mirror some mornings, knowing long ago I’d have called myself a faggot. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
DrumsBy Gregg Williard QuailBellMagazine.com Editor's Note: This story has been illustrated by two artists: one of Quail Bell's illustrators, Rachel Jones, and the author of the story, Gregg Williard. In a far away kingdom the people were killed for their skin. It was flayed, cured and stretched over hollowed trees to make drums for the king. Such drums were highly prized for their ability to be heard over vast distances with no diminution of signal or sense. With these instruments the king alone wielded the power to direct his armies, trade envoys and spy networks, and control what little his own people knew of the outside world. But one morning the people woke to the sound of a new drum. Its pulsations had a unique resonance that seemed to reach deep into their anguished hearts. The people drank in the sounds, thirsting for respite from the martial menace of the king’s beat. If the king’s drums were like having a jar of angry bees inside your chest, the new drum was a mother’s song to her child. The king raged: what drum was this? Only the royal drums, and their rhythms and register of awesome power could be played. Surely that must be the only music his people could hear, would ever hear! Who dared to send these messages without his consent or control? No one knew who the new drummer was, or where. And no one in the court knew what the new rhythms meant. By Rachel Jones Outside In the streets the people defied royal decree to talk about the new sounds. Over time they came to understand – or claimed to understand-- an entire language spoken by this drum, known to them alone. The king dispatched his secret police, and the artists of pain soon went to work, dallying over elaborate filigrees of agony to enliven the tedium of their task: demanding the people reveal the secret of the drum, only to receive the same nonsensical answer again and again: the drum is made with the skin of the drummer himself. The torturers demanded as well the identity of this fableddrummer, but one after another prisoner died with the same unhelpful answer on their bloodied lips: It is the drummer who has given his own skin to the drum. And its language can only be known by those who suffer the reign of the king!
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