Excerpts

Shit Cassandra Saw That She Didn't Tell the Trojans Because at that Point Fuck Them Anyway Lightbulbs. Penguins. Bud Light. Velcro. Claymation. The moon made out of cheese. Tap dancing. Yoga. Twizzlers. Mountain Dew. Jell-O Colors she can eat with her eyes. Methamphetamine. T-shirts. Thin and soft, they pass from person to person, men to women, each owner slipping into different teams-Yankees, Warriors-and out again with no bloodshed, no thought to allegiance or tribe. And the words! Profusions of nonsense. The Weather Is Here, Wish You Were Fine. Chemists Do It on the Table Periodically. Cut Class Not Frogs. Words everywhere and for everyone, for nothing but a joke, for the pleasure of them, a world so careless with its words. And not just on T-shirts. Posters. Water bottles. Newspapers. Junk mail. Bumper stickers. Lists. Top ten Halloween costumes for your dog as modeled by this corgi. Top ten times a monkey's facial expression perfectly summed up your thoughts on NAFTA. Top ten things your boyfriend wishes you would do in bed but is too afraid to say. Cassandra has not noticed a lack of men telling women what to do. Perhaps this will be a pleasure of the future, a male desire that goes unspoken. A desire that is only a desire, and not a command. Then there are the small words, the private words, hidden within romance novels, mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy. Heaving bosoms, astronauts, and ape men. Pulp paperbacks that live brief but fiery lives, the next torrent of words so swift behind they must sell or be destroyed, only enough space on the shelf for the new. And lives, of course. Cassandra would rather see only the fictions, the objects, the colored plastic oddities of the future, but she must see lives as well. Here are two little girls. They sit in the dirt and dig at a boulder. When it is finally unearthed, the possibilities! A passage to the underworld, a buried treasure, a colony of fairies-anything but dirt. It is essential that they will never succeed, never dig up the boulder, and of course they don't. Their plastic shovels move the dirt aside; new dirt, dusty and thin, blows across their eyes. One of the girls becomes an engineer. One is raped by her college boyfriend. This second girl will run a bakery on an island where she loves to hike. She will have three children, all boys, and she will die when she is quite old and quite unwilling to go. Her boys will have lives too. Everyone does. Lives on fast forward, on silent, even the best life, even her own, swiftly boring. Cassandra is tired of running at wooden horses with nothing but the flame of the smallest match. She is tired of speaking to listening ears. The listening ears of the men who think her mad drive her to madness. She wishes she could move far away to an island and own a bird. She will never do this because she knows she never does. It is said that Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy-this is true. It is said that, when she refused his advances, he spit in her mouth so that she would never again be believed. A virgin the same as a seduced woman the same as a violated woman the same as a willing woman, all women opening their mouths to watch snakes slither out and away. Cassandra is done, full the fuck up, soul weary. Still, as Troy is sacked, as she clings to the cold marble legs of the statue of Athena in the sacred temple, she cannot accept what she knows to be true. That soon, Ajax will arrive and rape her. He will smash the statue of the goddess she worships and curse his own life; and worse, her goddess will not help her, will turn her shattered face away. Cassandra will be carried across the sea, made another man's concubine, bear twin boys, and be killed by Clytemnestra. But before this comes to pass, there are visions Cassandra burns to share with the women of Troy. The women of Troy might listen. They know that Cassandra's curse is their curse as well. That Apollo spit in her mouth, but it was only spit. Here is what she might show them. Tampons. Jeans. Washing machines. The cordless Hitachi Magic Wand. Elastic hair ties. Mace. Epidurals. And here is the best thing of all, the thing that makes Cassandra smile as the men storm her temple, exactly as she has always known they would: someday, Trojan will not be synonymous with bravery or failure, betrayal or endurance, or the most beautiful woman or the most foolish of men. A Trojan will be carried in every hopeful wallet, extracted with abashed confidence, slipped over the shaft, rolled to the base. Perhaps the Trojan men would laugh if they knew, or be humiliated, or pause to think about the indifference of history and the hubris of the man who hopes to be remembered. But the women, once they saw that blue streamer unfurl, the women would rejoice, would wave it over their heads like a new flag, like a promise of better things to come. A Few Normal Things That Happen a Lot A woman walks down the street and a man tells her to smile. When she smiles, she reveals a mouthful of fangs. She bites off the man's hand, cracks the bones and spits them out, and accidentally swallows his wedding ring, which gives her indigestion. A woman waits for the bus and a man stands too close to her. He puts his hand on her ass, with no idea that she is the first successful subject of a top-secret science experiment. She turns and points her laser eyes at him and transforms him into bus fare: two dollars and seventy-five cents in cool coins. A woman is at the grocery store and a man in the frozen food aisle says, ÒNice legs.Ó He follows her past the broccoli and peas. ÒWhatÕs a pretty girl like you doing here alone?Ó Past the tubs of Cool Whip. ÒYou got a boyfriend?Ó Past the ice-cream cakes. ÒDonÕt you want to say something nice?Ó She stops at the endcap. ThereÕs a sale on chips and salsa. Yesterday, she would not have acknowledged him. She would have moved on, feigned fascination with the cheeses, lingered over the pasta sauce, waited for the man to get bored. She would have left, buying nothing, the dark parking lot endless, every car disguising a threat. Luckily, last night she was bitten by a radioactive cockroach. Underneath her clothes, she is covered in armor. He asks, "You shy or just a bitch?" Her senses are heightened. She hisses at a decibel that shatters the jars of salsa, studding the man's chest with small shards of glass. Salsa splatters everywhere and a chunk of tomato lands on the hem of her skirt, which is sad, because she just had it dry-cleaned. In the dark, arms full of groceries, the parking lot is beautiful in a way she's never noticed before. A fine rain drifts across the weak lights. The asphalt shimmers, and the cars hide nothing. A woman sits alone in her apartment where she can hear her neighbor, who is drunk, banging down the hall. She does not check her lock, tug the chain to make sure itÕs secure. Instead, she picks up her remote control, given to her by a witch. If anyone tries to come inside, she will point the remote control at the door and turn him off. A woman jogs on a cold day and a man jogs fifty, thirty, twenty feet behind her. They are the only two people on this path, a narrow ribbon tracing the river. ItÕs her favorite place to run. She speeds up, and so does he. Her heart begins to hammer and she curses herself, stupid bitch, people have told you not to run alone, you know better, stupid bitch, but then she remembers, thank god! Very recently, she was scratched by a werewolf! The woman allows herself to change a little bit, turns to the man, and pulls off her gloves. Her hands are covered in fur, the paw pads black and leathery, and when she extends her claws the man yelps and runs away. The woman rubs her cold cheeks with her soft fur. She breathes deeply and falls back into an even pace. A woman is on the subway and a man sits right next to her even though there are many empty seats. The woman folds her small hands in her lap. The man takes out his dick and begins to masturbate. The woman stands and exits at the next stop. The womanÕs heart is not racing, she does not feel nauseous, and she does not wonder what she would have done if the man had followed her. No, once she steps onto the platform and the subway doors close behind her, the woman never thinks about the man ever again. This is her superpower, bestowed upon her as a baby by her alien mother. She feels absolutely fine, and she even does bit of work in the early evening before deciding she's tired and ordering Chinese. She sleeps deeply. A woman goes on a date with a man and while they are walking to the restaurant, they see another woman bite off another manÕs hand. The man on the date rushes to the man on the ground, who is bleeding profusely. The woman on the date asks where the biting woman got those fangs. ÒThey look great on you,Ó she says. "Do you think so?" the other woman asks. "They're exactly what I needed for that extra boost of confidence." For the rest of the date, the man with two hands is extremely respectful. The cockroach woman goes to the bank and hopes someone will rob it, so she has an excuse to use her new and amazing powers. Instead, the man in front of her is having a conversation with a woman and he interrupts her. ÒThe thing is,Ó the man says, ÒitÕs just too easy to generalize, you know?Ó The cockroach woman considers ripping off the manÕs arm, but that would be an overreaction. She deposits a check and feels glum as she walks to work, her newly grown antennae vibrating in the breeze. The same man from before takes his dick out on the subway. He is sitting next to the woman with a mouthful of fangs. She freezes for a moment in disbelief, but itÕs really happening, itÕs really happening, and so she leans over and bites off his dick. She spits it out. No bones in it to break. She leaves it, harmless, on the floor and gets off at the next stop. She keeps her face calm-she is accustomed to ignoring the screams and the blood-but the taste lingers in her mouth all the way home. The woman with the magical remote control carries it with her everywhere, in her purse next to her pepper spray and a half eaten bag of M&Ms tightly twisted closed. She would never use the remote in public; there is no way to be sure that sheÕd hit her target. In a recurring nightmare, a man is yelling at her for messing up his order, a two-shot half-caf skim latte you stupid cunt and in her anger she shuts off the entire coffee shop, the entire block, the whole world, and she presses rewind, rewind, but itÕs too late. As she walks down the street, she enjoys a fantasy in which she slips her hand into her purse and presses pause. In the still city, she can do anything she wants. She walks for miles, down small alleys, through wooded parks, past the corner where the homeless man yells obscenities, but see, he's quiet now. She's brought them both peace. Werewolf-woman has never before loved being in her body, but now she shakes her fur out whenever she is home. SheÕs at her most powerful when sheÕs naked. Sometimes, late at night, she stands in the backyard and howls-not because she is sad, but because her lungs are strong and it is a joy to turn air into sound. Her husband sees how happy she is and he asks her to scratch him, to turn him too. She wants to want to. She tries to explain to him that this is kind of her thing, that she needs this thing for herself. What she canÕt find the courage to say is that she needs it to not be for him. He says he understands, but she knows heÕll never quite forgive her. The fanged woman eats a donut on a park bench, although the fangs make it difficult. She is in a bad mood. Her tongue is sore, her cheeks nipped raw, and her blazer is dusted in powdered sugar. She wishes a man would make some comment so she could bite him, but nobody does. The fangs, after all, are easy to see. She calls her friend, the woman who forgets. "Most days I'm fine," she says, her s's emerging with a slight sibilance. "It's just days like today, I'm tired." "That sounds terrible," her friend says, though she wishes they weren't always talking about men. The friend who forgets picks at a seed stuck in her dull teeth. The woman with fangs dusts crumbs off her fingers and says she needs to go. A woman walks down the hallway of a large academic building after hours. She is eighteen, a freshman, and at least once a week since sheÕs been at school she has received a mass email from the college about a sexual assault in the area. At the bottom of every email is a bulleted list of ways to keep herself from harm. Despite the warnings not to be alone at night, she is there to pick up a paper from her professorÕs mailbox. When she gets to the mailroom, the door is locked. All this for nothing, and here is the stairwell again. When she was fourteen, a man in a stairwell stopped her to ask a question, pressed her against a wall, groped her breasts. She runs down the stairs, empty tonight except for the men she peoples them with, and they reach for her like the branches in Snow WhiteÕs dark forest. She hates that she is such a coward, and is angry for calling herself a coward. If her imagination were not occupied, she would notice a twenty-dollar bill on the final landing. She would pick up the money and spend it on a novel or a movie, maybe pay back a friend for lunch. Later that night, a sophomore man finds the money as he is walking calmly down the stairs. He thinks about a movie he's going to make with his friends, which they will shoot in the park at night while getting high. He will enter it in the college film festival and place second. Years later, he is a director of indie films. Excerpted from Shit Cassandra Saw: Stories by Gwen E. Kirby All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.