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    Apex Magazine Issue 16
    Apex Magazine Issue 16
    Apex Magazine Issue 16
    Ebook85 pages1 hour

    Apex Magazine Issue 16

    By Apex Book Company

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    About this ebook

    Apex Magazine is an online digital zine of genre short fiction.

    FICTION
    L’esprit de L’escalier by Peter M. Ball
    Portage by An Owomoyela
    each thing i show you is a piece of my death by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer

    POETRY
    Ghosha by Shweta Naryan
    The Chorus of Dead Girls by JoSelle Vanderhoof

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherApex Book Company
    Release dateSep 4, 2010
    ISBN9781452353531
    Apex Magazine Issue 16

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      Book preview

      Apex Magazine Issue 16 - Apex Book Company

      L'esprit de L'escalier

      By Peter M. Ball

      Rat opens the double doors and the stairwell smells of baking, the air thick with dull warmth and the smell of yeasty dough. He wrinkles his long nose and wonders if it will be like this for the entire way down, or if the doughy stink will gradually transform itself into the aroma of fresh-baked. He hopes not. Rat worked in a bakery one summer, and he hasn’t enjoyed the smell of bread since. It reminds him of the finger burns and the thick coats of lard painted into hot bread trays to keep the dough from sticking as it cooked.

      He flexes his fingers. The big backpack is so heavy it’s cutting off the circulation to his arms, so he has to remember to keep his fingers moving.

      Someone has bolted a sign to the mahogany balustrade, warning people not to throw coins or pebbles down the centre of the stairwell. The guidebook says this is for the safety of fellow climbers. Every year someone is struck on the head when they’re 130 flights below, and there’s no chance of getting help in time when you’re that far down.

      There’s another sign that warns people not to jump. Rat’s guidebook says this isn’t, in fact, the warning to the habitually stupid that it appears to be on the surface. Originally it was posted as a warning to the suicides that come to contemplate the twisting drop of the stairwell’s core. It is easy to assume the stairwell has an end because that’s what stairwells do, but the fact that no-one has ever reached the bottom leaves the question open. No-one ever thinks of stairwells as being bottomless, not even the people who stand on top of big buildings like the Empire State where the ground is a distant and hazy memory over 1,800 steps below. There’s a hierarchy to such things determining what truly can go on forever. Wells? Yes. Pits? Yes. Trenches in the seabed where giant squid may live? Sure. But stairwells? No. Never. Hence there’s a sign, a warning, to make the suicides rethink before leaping.

      Rat isn’t thinking about jumping over the railing. He turns around and looks at the first step. It’s a foot high and four feet wide, a lump of grey marble that’s cracked and covered with a random assortment of tags and graffiti. Rat looks at some of the things people have written and snorts. It’s easy to write graffiti on the first step; it’s the lower ones that require commitment. He wonders how far he’ll need to descend before he reaches virgin territory.

      The guidebook says that the lowest step anyone has reached is 120,828 steps down. People have probably gone lower, but they haven’t come back. It’s assumed that the suicides make it to the bottom.

      If there is one.

      If they were lucky.

      The stairwell requires a lot of assumptions. The guidebook tells you to get used to that.

      Rat figures the guy that hit the low-point 120,828 steps down probably had better things on his mind than leaving graffiti. He shrugs off the backpack and starts searching for his sharpie. It’s a big backpack full of cunning pockets and hidey-holes for passports. The sharpie is in one of the cunning pockets Rat never uses, right next to the outer pocket that contains the plastic baggie filled with Marlo’s ashes.

      The smell of the uncapped sharpie is soothing. Its mentholated tang cuts through the yeasty heat. Rat chews on the cap for a few minutes, thinking, then leans over and writes But I love you on a blank patch of the first step. His handwriting is awkward, full of childish loops and a tendency to curve without the benefit of a ruled line.

      Rat wishes he had something better to write; But I love you seems trite, and it probably didn’t need to be said. He’d lost arguments with it before, with Marlo and others. He could have skipped the first step and used the first 500 to think of something better. He could have used the time to think of something poetic and elegant.

      No, he says, and his voice echoes down the stairwell. No poetry.

      Poetry would defeat the object. Just because something is trite, possibly even expected, doesn’t make it any less true. He hasn’t spent the last month preparing just so he could sacrifice truth for elegance. Marlo deserves better than that. So does he.

      Rat puts the lid back on the sharpie and returns it to the backpack. He snaps everything shut and makes sure it’s secure, twice. He’s only packed three sharpies. It wouldn’t do to lose them; he may need all of them before his descent is done.

      He pulls the backpack onto his shoulders again, sagging with the weight. His hands are slippery. The air’s not that hot; the guidebook says it’ll get hotter, but Rat sweats easily. He spent a whole week planning ways he can stay hydrated. One hand rests against the railing, holding him steady. Rat places his left foot on the next step and lowers himself down.

      Two, he says, thumb hitting the click-counter at his

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