Sunday, March 17, 2019

The Stories of Bernard Benison: Extracts


THE RED BIRTH

There had been no children born in Masura since the time of the Last Plague.  The youngest boy was touching his teens now, and the youngest girl the same – though she looked older and scorned him.

THE LOST TWIN OF SUMMER

In those days there was a season called Ulmar, that fell between Tavorl and Autumn. You cannot imagine it now I know. The delightful freshness of Spring, the fullness of Summer, the astringent contentment of Tavorl, the mellow shifts of Autumn, the cold focus of Winter, all you know and love, but Ulmar is lost to us.

THE WEEPING STONES

In the south wall of the transcept, passed the tomb of Saint Cecilia there are a pair of stones that weep blood.  No one knows for certain why, but when I was young there were stories. Most we thought nonsense – entombed lovers, stones repurposed from the pressings of heretics, concealed murders, but one was different.

THE CAT WHO LOOKED ROUND

“A tribble”, the Trekky typed, “is a cat whose centre is everywhere equidistant from its fur.”  “A tribble,” the SF reader reposted “is an inflated Flat-Cat, and Heinlein could have sued".

THE STEP TOO FAR

The hopscotch squares had been sketched with chalk in the alley as usual, Jane noted vaguely as she dragged the groceries home.  In one way it was good that the old games still persisted, despite the war, yet something else in her cried out at the brutality of tradition, of repetition of sameness: she did not notice then that the pattern ended in an extra square.

CAN STARS SING THE BLUES?

They say now the expansion of the universe is speeding up.  But those of us who read the stars know that we are in the mid-life crisis of the universe, where space-time tires itself and tries to recapitulate the rapid expansions of the first attoseconds.  Soon this surge will pass and all things falter and begin to fall, the star light turning blue and melancholy.

MYSTERY CARS DRIVE BY

“But mother, who still drives cars?”  “Hush my darling, cars are an old toy some can not put aside: we must have sympathy for those who can not wrap or vinkle.”  “But not even fly mother, they’re just being stupid!” “Sythor-Pi-Menichor, that’s so Doist, I’ll not have a daughter of mine be so judgey – wrap to your room at once and not a vinkle do I want to qleep from you ‘til luncheon.”

THE THING HE DID

Inventing a new sin, is the very pride of Hell. But it is harder than you might imagine. For many days of sub-celestial time, each of which is an indivisible tormenting eternity, Exorial the Fallen had brooded in his laboratory.  He had a number of deceased and damned souls of the various fallen vermin-species, held in his testing cages – and occasionally when the Eye of Heaven blinked, or chose to permit for its own tyrannical whim to loosen his bonds – he was able to manifest upon a darkling world and snatch a living specimen.  It was perhaps (much as he hated the word) only fair that this be permitted, if God could take His Favourites to Heaven still living – there were those who deserved to taste of Hell before they died.

TALES OF THE DROWNED CITADEL

There are fish swimming now through the great stone halls, and barnacles and backs of oysters lie where the soft silt spreads across the upper stories that still protrude from the waves.  When I was a boy you could still enter the buildings, although the ground even then was sodden or flooded more than it was dry, and all the ground floors and basements had been abandoned or filled in.

KULKULCAN THE GATEKEEPER

They imagine Saint Peter here, the ‘moderns’ – why I’ve never understood, it isn’t even in their holy book: but they should have known a Kindly God would have a place for all the Powers that Prefigured His Truth in the minds of Mankind.  Yes, it is amusing to watch certain fundamentalists creep closer afraid that Heaven is overseen by Dragons and Old Gods; but then – it's not as if I’m going to let them in.

GREEN BLAISE DEMONS

You don’t associate competitive Bowls with Black Magic; or at least I didn’t until I’d retired and come to a little village in the middle of England that I’d better not name. This isn’t a matter of worrying about being sued. I’ll literally be torn to pieces if I do: I’ve signed the Bowling Club Book.  The bigger one, bound in that soft red leather.


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