Rain comes from the constellation of Orion, my grandmother used
to tell me: one million arrows, blunted by their travels, plapping down
on the generous and the selfish alike. Well. I don't travel much in the
rain, even though I'm sure I could use it.
	I came back from the convenience store with a carton of milk and
batteries for the flashlight. Our power goes out most nights now for at
least a few minutes. Darkness comes from Cassiopeia, the moon, the
asteroids -- too many places to fight it, really, but like most people
I'm used to warding the dark off one way or another. Lately it doesn't
inconvenience me as much; in the dark I still sketch monsters. Half of
the pencils, maybe more, turn out well enough for me to bring them into
work and flesh them out into background characters on Fairy Fairground,
my children's show. It hasn't worked out how I envisioned it. When I
told the producers I thought we were headed down the wrong path, they
suggested I could work more on atmosphere, less on the plots. I took the
hint.

	If you've ever poured cough syrup over a candle before lighting
it, you may have noticed the candle then burns longer and brighter. I
don't know why this is. I lit some NyQuil candles and sat down at my
easel. I had the flashlight right next to my feet where I could keep
track of it at the same time as I was drawing, in case the candles went
and I needed a light source to retrieve my matches, which stay in the
kitchen.
	My first few pieces filled in gaps left by the departure of my
show's only corpulent actor. Children can sense, when a skinny actor
wears a fat suit, that they are not interacting with the body directly.
These new creatures I drew, like the ones they are meant to replace,
live in Antarctica, deep below the surface. The Fairy Fairground
scientists have a plan to increase the world's supply of giggle scoops,
you see, but the plan calls for Antarctic exploration. These monsters
prevent the world's children from eating ice cream out of giggle scoops
for now. Some time in next year's run I expect all that will change.

	The moon, visible squarely in the center of my window, put out
the candles, one by one, just as I tried to extend the night's run of
successes into a sketch for a genuinely new character, something the
audience would never have seen before. Some types of dark are fine for
pencilling; not all. I kicked the flashlight back and forth with my toes,
finding it reassuring in its heaviness. Work could wait until the power
returned, I thought.
	I unscrewed the lid off the cough syrup and took a long drink.
The Red Fairy, I used to call it. I'd made a point of not picking up any
more at the All-Nite, earlier, so what was left from prepping the candles
only just barely got me off.
	Grandma said gravity was Mars' gift: all and only gravity. I
can't always say yes to that gift, but last night in my chair, with the
syrup and the dark and half a monster's forehead on the easel, I damn
well soaked it up.

written for Amanda Barry in my living room 1/21/02
revised 1/29/03

Hey, I'm back. The fact is that I cheated with this one -- I started it a week or two ago and then froze in terror at how it was failing to take shape. It sat in the typewriter, in my room, until this afternoon, when I realized I was being a wimp. The IDEA was that this only takes an hour of my life, no matter how well or poorly it goes. No guilt, no hubris.

After all that, I thought of an ending which I think nearly redeems it. I don't know how it'll work for you, dear reader, but I feel the last two paragraphs are pretty smooth. I'm glad that I ended up with something tolerable to give to Amanda, who is (to date) the only patron I've met in a bar. Three cheers for her (and a quieter auxiliary cheer for my spiffy new business cards).

On the other hand, spending six weeks not writing has eaten into my willingness to accept sloppy writing as a matter of course. Doing the novel may have compounded the effect. So, what next? I don't know; hopefully more of these, with something else thrown in.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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