A Light from Out of Our Heart
Jules Faye

It is the shared delusion of editors that we "discover" authors, and I like to think of myself as having discovered, in the present volume alone, Archie N. Roy, Carol Reid, and Jules Faye. The discovery of Jules Faye is an unusual case in that I quickly fell in love with her, seduced by the erotic, morbid, violent prose-poems she gave to me. (Some of these daring pieces have since appeared in Fantasy & Terror..) So far she has contributed two stories to Fantasy Macabre: "The Cafe of the Beautiful Assassins" and the following item, her first, which is 99 percent unexaggerated autobiography. "The Promenade of Misshapen Animals" is another recently completed story. They're all as perverse and gorgeous as the titles suggest.

It is the blackness of the night, the slow descent of spreading darkness, which stirs restlessness in my heart. Night's constant prowling casts poisoned shadows across the surface of my most beloved dreams and memories, enticing the demons in my mind to rise. For blackness is not an absence of light, it is a presence of its own, more sinister because it cannot be grasped and held against one's longing breast. Oh, I am so weary of the beasts who visit only in the midnight of my solitude. When the world sleeps I am most fiercely alone.
And at these times I cannot sleep, for Death comes crawling into my bed late, late at night and lays His cold sweat across my naked body. I must fly; I cannot bear the icy marks He leaves across my neck and brow. I wrap in capes, blood red across my lips and walk in tall skin boots into the city streets where yellow lamps caress the boulevards and alleyways. Perhaps this light that falls like shattered glass against my skin will slice into the darkness of my soul and some small measure of comfort can be had among the scattered darkness of the avenues.
I'm drawn into the bowels of the city night, through the sweet decay of vegetable and human piss. Angry gusts of steam snort and belch from rusted manhole covers and iron gratings sunk into the gutters at my feet and rise like little ghosts dancing on their toes, leering, gaping from disintegrating faces. They churn and roil in puffs of gurgling laughter then detach their limbs and dance around behind me disappearing, rising up, drifting into pieces. All around the air is thick with dancing arms, the echo of a face and wisps of writhing feet, swirling slowly in around my ankles, knees, and up around my thighs. And I feel mournful sighs against my cheeks and in my hair. I stumble forward, turning to get outside this ring of ghostly fingers reaching, but everywhere I turn, more wisps of steam roll up to kiss with disembodied lips. I twist again and stumble, sinking into something soft and wet, which holds my boot. And ripping through the coils of steam, I fall against the stony pavement, cutting chin against a broken bottle.
Suddenly the air is clear and crisp. No vapor demons tumble in the breeze. The city holds its breath and makes no sound as I lie wiping drops of blood from off my jaw. Light falls quietly from lamps above my head, indifferently embracing me with fragile warmth. It drifts across the street and past the curtain of its furthest reach where some furtive motion slithers. Nothing else dares move or breathe and then an eerie cry pierces the silence. The city shivers in the chill.
A thing with poison eyes slides quietly outside the edges of the light and utters some foul and wretched curse from its inhuman voice. I shudder and draw my cape more tightly around my shoulders. I back away from those demented sounds. Death follows even here, tormenting me as I flee into the arms of my beloved city. I peer into the grit and ash around my feet and bare my teeth, grimacing into the creature's piercing eyes. So it steps out into the center of the light on little grey feet, ripples its pretty tail and curls seductively against my ankles. It is only a lovely cat; mortal and alone like myself, a more propitious companion than He who awaits me in my bed. She turns her delicate whiskers, inviting towards the darker shadows of the street and I cannot resist. I follow her cat feet as she looks back, purring, whispering, "Yes, yes, come with me."
She skirts and slinks along the crumbling edges of mottled brick and shattered glass. The streetlight falls like stars into her rippling fur, catching there to draw me after her. And I begin to move in and out of light and shadow with her same liquid grace, leaping gently through dampened flocks of paper, which tumble in the breeze along the muted streets.
She leads me through a tiny alleyway, barely wide enough for me to follow, and there behind an iron gate, two steps set into a boarded window frame, sits another cat, majestically, its eyes reflect maniacal green light from passing cars. It sits enshrined by shadow like a prince and stares with great disdain at my approach. The two cats greet, my little pretty with her grey-spiked fur and this other dusted, stinking, one ear lying limp against its skull, and yet with noble dignity it spits onto the leather of my boot. Cautiously I, too, reach out in greeting, but the princely cat recedes still further into darker shadows, hissing as I pull away.
Grey Cat laughs, leaps down lightly and leads me out into another street. I chase after her past rows of broken buildings. The walls are slashed with boards and cracked and shattered windowpanes. Street lamps flicker and hiss above our heads and throw their amber light like darts against the jagged shards. Then Grey Cat turns into the broken stairway of what was once a fine Victorian apartment house.
The door is left ajar and we walk into a large room. Three tall windows face the street and silver light pours onto the wooden floor in great square patches. Newspapers hang from walls and ceiling and flutter in the draft like frightened crumpled birds. Gutted strips of cotton bedding are strewn across the floor in a frenzied labyrinth where mice run shrieking into fabric ducts and burrows. But Grey Cat is swift and flawless. She swipes an infant mouse, squealing in her teeth, and carries it lovingly to where I'm sunk against the wall. She drops it at my feet. The tiny beast lies stunned a moment only, and then scrambles to its toes and dashes right into the cat's big paw. She bats it on the nose, pinches its tiny spine in her teeth and lets it drop abruptly.
Now the mouse is paralyzed. It can no longer move its little legs and lolls at my feet, its baby eyes rolling. Grey Cat gently bites off its arm with a clean and simple beauty. She lifts it by the tail and drops it in my lap. I pick it up and place it in my mouth like fresh strawberries. Tiny mouse bones crunch between my molars as blood and juices squirt against the back of my parched throat. Claws spasm against my tongue and my stomach heaves in cramping waves as I belch and vomit and fall laughing in my puke.
I lie a long time, cat licking at my cheek and eyes. I watch the silvered light from tall glass windows reel across the floor and slide around the corners of the wall like spinning kites against a cubic sky. As I roll over on my knees, Grey Cat slips out the door and down the stairs. I lope after her, thoroughly seduced.
As I step into the night, a breeze lifts out of the steaming gutters blowing wisps of swirling dust and pebbles in my eyes. Paper cups and wrappers cartwheel over fur and boots, catching and hiding the wan light in little folds and crevices. A fine haunting mist descends quietly. Like a velvet cape the mist unfurls in scarves around the twin peaks rising from the city's heart and rolls down into the blackened pavements of the city night. There is no color at this hour, only shades and tones and qualities of black, white, grey and as I glance at my naked hand I see it too is grey and rippling like the fur of a cat.
She darts onto a hidden, shadowed stairs, which crumbles up between tall buildings into perfect blackness. I follow blind on hands and knees into the unlit passage, ripping flesh against the sharpened points of rusted nails and broken glass. I pause to suck my bleeding palms but she skips lightly up and up and I leap after her until the blue-black sky kisses our chins and we step out onto the rooftops far above the city streets.
We sit, cat and I, against a tall wooden box and listen to the groaning, cursing night. Great moans and sighs and hissing issue from the yards and alleyways across the sleeping districts like a monstrous beast crying in its dreams, calling out to a more monstrous god. And rising over the jagged toothy edge of shimmering city lights comes the pale, cold moon, licking lazily at the beads of mist curling down the darkened alleyways. Grey Cat walks prettily along the raised ledge of the flat roof, peering down into the rolling fog. She pauses, silhouetted by the rising moon, haloed by the rising mist. She yawns like an angel. And I watch the moon disappear between her angel teeth and see the moonlight fall on me from pointed angel eyes.
Then the box behind me shudders and I hear scrambling, scratching, plucking, and I see feathers at my feet the color of the moon. Grey Cat leaps through a tear in the frail wire above my head and wild flapping and screaming fill my ears. Cat flies out covered in pigeon blood and laughing crazy like a cat, torn wings and severed feet swinging from her jaw. And down the crumbling stairs we fly, back out onto the city street, tripping, chasing, sailing in and out of doors and passages, crossing empty streets and boarded alleys with wind and chilling mist catching in our hair and eyes.
Everything is blurred and muted flight. No light penetrates the fog. No street or house stands out from any other. Only the stony surface of the street throws points of light like shattered glass into our faces. And in this way I follow her across the city night, through angry, sleeping streets until I smell the sea and all streets come to their beginning.
Abandoned railway tracks slash across this part of town, curve past rows of little deckhouses and disappear mysteriously behind huge bolted warehouse doors. Tufts of golden weeds thrust their thistled faces through the cracks along the sidewalks and between the railroad tracks, reaching for our feet to trick and tease the ankles. Weeded vacant lots piled with rubbish sit along the dock's edge. Cat leaps into brimming mounds of fat, the molding heads and skins and delicate bones of fish and crab, hardened crusts and rinds of bread and fruit. The smell of rot dances over the street like moonlight on a waterfall. And I plunge my hungry hands into the sweetened stench to feast with cat.
And now the barest light begins slowly to fall against the glass facades, the scattering dust, and the water in the bay. The mist takes on a pearly hue. From the weeds I hear a most pathetic crackling rise. I drop the rubbish from my fist and peer intently into flags of paper caught on weeds and blowing in the wind. And there in the exact center stands the most bedraggled rooster, hunched and ruffled, no feathers left round his wrinkled neck, one foot a stump and both wings clipped. With a sweet integrity he lifts his beak and pours his wretched music up into the dawning sky. And at my side Grey Cat calls back. Then I hear another cattish cry from down the street, and then a howling dog. Soon, from every street and alleyway, the songs of cat and dog and one lone cock rise up, converging in a symphony against the water's edge of this most magnificent city as the eastern sky purples into sunrise. And in this way the sun is pulled from her long sleep and I, beast among beasts, cry out in my most inhuman voice. For without the bark and cackling howl of every beast at dawning light, the sun would never rise again and narcissistic humanity would perish.