Photography

Moist hands slicked the doorknob with the stinky nectar of fear and uncertainty. The Earth shook with a ferocity never before recorded. Volcanoes dwarfing Vesuvius rose from the quaking ground, each setting a new devastation record before being bested by the next. The room was smoldering, mostly ash by the time the piss had soaked my shoes enough to clear my throat and turn the handle. I pushed forward, pressing my weight hard against the door, nearly collapsing through to the other side.

Breaking through the looking glass, I find myself in the dojo of tranquility, stomach churning and on the brink of violent regurgitation, yet, a slow calm starts to take over. The magnetic grip of the Lion’s stare. After four or five minutes counting the dimples in the ceiling tile, I meet his gaze with my own. At this point, he’s armed to the teeth. His forehead wrinkled with curiosity and his eyebrows tucked in, he ponders my existence with the gentle benevolence of a superior being. His eyes glow blue-white as he levitates off the faux-leather couch and the deafening hum of his aura shatters my eardrums.
I approach carefully, introducing myself in my native tongue. He seems to recognize the dialect and he relaxes his face muscles. I continue, explaining my history in wet, stuttering detail, momentarily putting him to sleep before reviving him with the shock of his own boredom.

At last, he speaks.

“Okay’, he utters, and the force of a thousand winds throws me many miles.

By the time I hike back, my shoes now ground down to mulch, he is ready with a question, “Can I please have a copy of my performance before I leave tonight?”
My nose streamed with a river of blood and my ears burst into flames; my granular speck brain grinding itself to dust, trying to string together enough pretend words to simulate a response.

I coughed them out, “Well actually, I can send it to you. Not today, to-today no. But yes! In a day, maybe this week? Later this week I can-n. Yes, but not toda-tonight. Do you have an email?”

His eyes burned brighter and his skin grew hot. It was like watching the birth of the Sun.
He turned his head and sneezed into his notebook. “Okay”, he smiled.

“FREE PALESTINE”, shrieked the woman in the second row, flicking her forked tongue across the lipstick that stained her teeth. Her chipped fingernails were wrapped tightly around a sweating rocks glass filled with melted ice and a splash of Malibu rum. It was her third glass of the night.

He remained composed from the stage, looking down from his vantage point, squinting through the impenetrable spotlight to make out the pockmarks and crumbs of dried blood that tainted her freshly wrinkled complexion.

The crowd began to stir. Drywall fell in chunks from cracks in the ceiling as a rolling thunder of boo’s and what-nows shook the room like Haiti in January.

The able-bodied scoured the room for weapons: they sharpened table legs, concealed forks up their sleeves and practiced their judo on the wait-staff, while the lame, doing their best, hurled spit and vulgarities in the direction of this universal annoyance.

I was in the back of the room, sipping stale coffee and picking grinds out of my teeth, when I heard the commotion, like elephants stampeding across cymbals. It was the Salem Witch Trial and the verdict was unanimous.

“Now’, I laughed, ‘it is time for pictures”.

I breathed hot breath across my camera’s lens and shined it dry with the non-tainted edge of a used napkin, sparing it barely from a particularly odorous glob of barbecue and mayonnaise as one of the cannibals lunged for my leg.

Back on stage, he raised his hand, casting a hush through the foaming masses, satiating their thirst for blood and dilating their tight ears. His wry smile calmed the room like a flute would a snake as he settled into his stool.

He turned to the woman in the new silence, offering her an olive branch and a safe route home, away from the black-eyed wolves. He explained that he had no issue with her credo and that he was at work and that she was on camera.

“FREE PALESTINE”, she responded, as I lowered myself in position, directly between the aggressor and the pro.

He rolled up his sleeves and everyone held their breath.

We were all smiling.

Story here.

Hannibal Story.

Stavros Story

“Superman is stronger, sure, but Batman is cooler”.

Jammed into the eight inch space between the arm of the sofa and the looming 10-foot mirror, I struggled to hold the camera. Fixed on the great interviewer as he lead his subject through this waltz; a single tremor could upend the entire operation. The mirror mocked me with my own image. My periphery was a needle in the white of my eye.

The interviewer nodded, “Of course’, he said, ‘and I take it that means you love the Beatles?”.

The air was champagne. This was a victory lap. Just moments ago, the subject was a conductor with a compelled orchestra of the drunk and untamed kneeling before him. They flailed in their semi-circle like restless voyeurs, watching intently as his voodoo magic raised the dead from the dirt.

A woman in the front row, cat-eyed and overzealous, stretched her torso long enough to claw at his skin, desperate to steal any speck of him with her glued-on-fingernails. A half-dozen martini glasses rattled around her table as she lunged toward him. With her mouth open wide, something that resembled English spilled out and dirtied the air.

He evaded her attack, side-stepping her swing with tip-toed grace. She regained her balance, dusted off her jeans and rushed the shaman once more. With a quick two-step, he avoided this second charge, spinning behind her then and going on the offensive. By now, security was on the stage, hoisting this demon from her feet and carrying her to the curb like a bag of flour.

He reveled in the rattle of the walls, snatched the floral jacket she'd left behind and tossed it across his shoulders, whirling the crowd into a frenzy. For his last trick, he lifted her half-full glass of gin and toasted the room, downing the only swallow of spirit she hadn't.

My eardrums burst from the sound of the cheers. The stage was ablaze, igniting the booze-fumed breath of the front row. These new dragons howled as they spit, flapping their wings and circling the room, egging on the bedlam as the night grew blacker.

Back in the green room, still soaked in stale liquor and sweet sweat, he stroked his chin.

“Well’, he concluded, ‘I guess it’s hard to beat the Beatles.”

Anthony Rodia Story