Miranda Read online

  Miranda

  A novella by John R. Little

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  Baltimore

  2011

  Copyright © 2011 by John R. Little

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  132-B Industry Lane, Unit #7

  Forest Hill, MD 21050

  http://www.cemeterydance.com

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead,

  is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-58767-263-7

  Cover Artwork Copyright © 2011 by Alan M. Clark

  Digital Design by DH Digital Editions

  Dedication

  Miranda is for my beautiful and brilliant daughter, Peri. I thought of you when puzzling through some of the challenges in this story, Kiddo. You’ll always be in my heart.

  Turning, Turning Back

  An Introduction by Gary A. Braunbeck

  “We can never know what we want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.”

  --Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

  In 1940 novelist Robert Nathan wrote a remarkable novel entitled Portrait of Jennie, the story of an impoverished new York artist who one day meets a young girl in the park who is dressed in clothes that are decades out of date. He draws a sketch of her, sells it to an art dealer, and over the course of the novel, builds a successful career out of painting portraits of this same girl – who, every time he meets her, seems to have aged only a few years, despite their meetings taking place sometimes decades apart. If you’ve not read Nathan’s novel, you should seek it out, because Nathan was arguably the great-grandfather of what is now called “slipstream” fiction. He was definitely a fantasist ahead of his time, an author of exquisite fabulist fiction before that term even existed. Portrait of Jennie is considered by many science fiction and fantasy scholars to be the first genuine time-slip story. (If that term is one you’re not familiar with, then check out Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five and meet Billy Pilgrim, who has become “…unstuck in time.”)

  What set Nathan’s work apart from other fantasy being written at the time was that he never apologized for his decidedly, classically “Romantic” world-view. There’s a great deal of darkness and loneliness in Nathan’s work, but there is also a fierce, even morally vindictive, belief underlying all of his novels that – laugh it off as you might in these ever increasingly cynical times – the power of love is the single most determining force in the spectrum of human fate and experience.

  It would not surprise me in the least were I to learn that John R. Little is a Nathan reader, because throughout reading the astonishing novella you hold in your hands, I was constantly reminded of Nathan’s romanticism, imagination, and his ability to take the simplest concept and infuse it with an almost mystical depth. (This is not to say that John R. Little is a Nathan imitator, by no means; were one to say that, one would also have to point a finger at Jonathan Carroll, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kobo Abe, and William Kotzwinkle. Not bad company to be in, if you ask me.)

  Miranda is, to oversimplify it, a time-slip story. It’s also a love story in the vein of Richard Matheson’s Bid Time Return, a metaphysical mystery worthy of Umberto Eco, and a profound study in loneliness and alienation that at times seems like a Bradbury-like variation on Camus’ The Stranger.

  Have you figured out by now that this is not an easily pigeonholed tale?

  Like Little’s previous works, Placeholders and the Bram Stoker Award-nominated The Memory Tree, Little is fascinated with the exploration of regret, self-redemption, longing, humankind’s place and purpose in the quantum structure of the multiverse, and, of course, love. His work tackles big themes, asks big questions, but never becomes so concerned with grappling with said questions that he forgets to tell the most fragile, intimate of stories.

  And Miranda is a very fragile story; not in structure or its writing – that, like Nathan’s, is so sharp, so lean and poetic and crystalline, that the words often threaten to shimmer right off the page – but in its subject and the emotional content that lies at its core. Yes, it’s a time-slip story (you’ll know that as soon as you read the first line), but – again, like all of Little’s work – it never succumbs to the temptation to deal with something as banal, trivial, or clichéd as, say, the time-travel paradox. Little isn’t interested in playing with pulp-era gimmicks here, he wants to explore the timelessness of longing and the ramifications of a single human being’s inability to let go of the hope that he or she will one day meet their soulmate, the love of their life, the one person with whom they can travel through the remainder of their days and never look back in regret or sadness.

  Over the past decade I have been asked to provide introductions or afterwords for numerous books, and while I have always felt honored to oblige these requests, only three times in my career have I felt privileged to do so; the first was when my friend, the poet Christopher Conlon, asked me to write an introduction to his stunning short story collection, Thundershowers at Dusk (Christopher is a better short story writer now than I can ever hope to be); the second time was when Thomas F. Monteleone and Charles L. Grant asked me to write the introduction to their short story “When Dark Descends,” revised for its re-release by Borderlands Press (not only because I fervently admire both writers’ work, but because it turned out to be the last published piece of fiction by the late Mr. Grant); and the third time was…well, is, for Miranda.

  I am now going to say something that very well may be seen as hyperbole by some, but I would remind these folks that, in all the introductions and afterwords I have provided, I have never said anything even remotely close to the following:

  Mark this moment, because you are about to read a piece of work – a masterpiece, in my opinion -- that will outlive all of us, and will one day take its rightful place beside such influential works as those I previously mentioned in this introduction – and I’ll add one more to that list: Daniel Keyes’ “Flowers for Algernon.”

  In short: you are about to experience one of the most moving, superbly-written, and exhilaratingly imaginative piece of fiction that it’s been my privilege to encounter. And when you’re done, when you’ve read the last, heart-wrenching chapter of this amazing novella, come back and re-read the quote from Kundera I used at the start, and see if Little hasn’t given it a new depth, forced you to see it from a parallax point of view.

  I envy you this first reading of Miranda. Do not read this piecemeal; set aside a block of time so that you can become lost in Little’s mesmerizing prose and his spellbinding story. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to have a few tissues on hand as you near the end; few novellas these past twenty-five years have packed the emotional wallop of Miranda’s final sequences. Understated, poetic, and with such raw honesty you may very well feel that Little has somehow managed to glimpse into your soul.

  I wish I’d written Miranda. But I will be content to know that I was among the first to experience it and that, for a brief moment, it was mine and mine alone to hold close to my core, and feel that it written just for me.

  This was written just for you. Treasure it. Mark the moment. And know that love matters. Even in these bleak times.

  Thank you, John R. Little, for introducing us to Miranda.

  Now go and meet her for yourself. I don’t think you’ll ever be the same again.

&nb
sp; --Gary A. Braunbeck

  Lost in Ohio

  March 20, 2008

  Chapter 15

  I was 65 when I died. Well, un-died would be more accurate, wouldn’t it?

  I remember the heart attack shocking me to life. Then the pain disappeared, and I was here. I remember screaming, surrounded by doctors who were trying desperately to resuscitate me. Three of them, I think. All old men, older than me. I couldn’t talk to them, since I didn’t know the language. They pounded on my chest, urgently at first and then less so. The paddles shocked me with an awful jolt, but then that pain fell away as fast as the paddles themselves.

  “!gnitserra s’eH” one of the doctors shouted. Then he swiveled to face the other doctors. A sharp metallic smell hung in the air.

  They pulled back and ignored me. I blinked, and my mouth opened. I didn’t know a word of English and only lonely syllables emerged.

  I had no idea what or where I was. I existed for the first time.

  The world was scary. Fucking terrifying.

  Time inched backward, the clock reclaiming each second.

  The pain trickled away, and I lay down in my narrow little hospital bed. I remember being very frightened.

  Tiny ticks sounded from the equipment by my bed.

  Bright light surrounded me, but I didn’t squint. I yawned and closed my eyes, as if I hadn’t a care in the world. After all, the heart attack hadn’t happened yet.

  I held feebly onto the bars of my bed and started to nod off.

  The doctors and everybody else marched forward in time and would see me die soon. They all thought I was just like them, moving into a collective future. Nothing I did ever removed that notion. But, my consciousness moved backward; I grew younger over time, not older.

  The scary parts of my life were in my past, unknown because I hadn’t experienced those events yet. Right after I sprang to life, I could relax because the pain of my death was over and wasn’t going to come back.

  It felt good to be alive.

  Of course, I had no reference point, no memory of anything at all beyond my death a few minutes later. All in all, though, it was good. Breathing was easy, and now that I could take the time to appreciate it, the air felt wonderful filling up my lungs.

  Beeps and other random noises bounced around me. At first, I didn’t know what those sounds were, but over the course of my half-year in the hospital, things sorted themselves out. I knew those sounds weren’t speech (at least I was pretty sure of that), since I had heard the doctors talking their strange language after they brought me to life.

  I soon grasped the concepts of gravity, thirst, and hunger. Somehow I just knew what “human” meant, as opposed to inanimate objects. I didn’t see any animals while in the hospital, except on the occasional TV show, but when I later saw dogs and cats, there was no confusion. I was a baby in an old man’s skin, learning much faster than the most bright newborn.

  My eyes closed and I slept.

  “.nosnhoJ retsiM, tser doog a evaH”

  I woke up and stared at the nurse. I didn’t know what she was saying. She’d walked backward into my room and swiveled around to face me, smiling a big grin before speaking.

  She must’ve thought I was an idiot. Hell, I didn’t blame her. Like everybody else, she was moving forward in time, from birth to death, and I was traveling in the exact opposite direction.

  Now, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t know that at the time. This is a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking going on. If I only wrote what I knew at the time, this would be a pretty damned confusing story. All I knew then was that the nurse was speaking gobbledygook to me. I had no idea what she was saying, and it was pretty frustrating. Probably as much for her as it was for me.

  It was only later I realized she was speaking forward, but I was listening backward.

  She had a big toothy grin, and I couldn’t stop staring at it. Her hair was chestnut brown and pulled back into a tight pony-tail. When she’d backed into the room, her hair swung behind her shoulders like a squirrel attached to her neck. It was fascinating. Again, this is mundane to you, having seen it your whole life, but for me, every tiny new detail was a revelation.

  I tried to talk, but I didn’t know how to control my mouth.

  The nurse rolled up my sleeve and attached me to one of those devices that measures blood pressure. I can never remember its name.

  “.emit tsal sa emas -- ytenin revo ytriht enO”

  She pumped the little ball at the end of the tube and listened through her stethoscope.

  I felt the pressure on my arm grow and then subside as she started measuring my blood pressure, taking the bandage back off.

  She pursed her lips. “.yadot gniod si erusserp doolb dlo eht woh ees s’teL”

  I stared at her again. The grin was gone, replaced by a frown. I wondered if I had done something wrong. She moved her hand above the small trash can, and a Kleenex jumped up into her hand. She unfolded it a bit and wiped the snot from it into my nose.

  I felt what I would eventually know as embarrassment. She unfolded the tissue a bit more and painted some drool on my chin.

  “?ew llahs, pu denaelc uoy teg s’teL”

  She un-scrunched the tissue and pushed it back into the box beside my bed.

  “.nosnhoJ retsiM, gninrom dooG”

  The nurse (Nurse Tamblin, I now read from her nametag), stepped backward, giving me one last smile as she swiveled out of my room.

  I was alone again with the beeps and snot.

  Chapter 14

  I was in the hospital for six months. Don’t worry, I won’t tell you all the details of every burp and fart. You all know how miserable it is to be in a hospital, especially when you’re dealing with an end-of-life situation. Nobody knew mine was actually a beginning-of-life situation -- not even me, since I had nothing to compare it to.

  I was scared. All the time.

  It took about three months for me to lose the constant confusion I felt. I was able to figure out I was at St. Joseph’s Hospital in a place called Oakland. The name meant nothing to me. Since I was bed-ridden and a newborn, I didn’t know anything about Oakland other than the name.

  I had a television, but for a long time it was useless. I didn’t even know how to turn it on for the first two months. Then, without understanding English, it was all nonsense but was something to do other than eat, sleep, and watch the four walls.

  Eventually, TV turned into my teacher. I studied game shows every day and began to pick up words, one at a time. Pat Sajak and Vanna White taught me English, while soap operas showed me how people lived. I wanted to be a good student.

  The room I was in was big enough for three other patients, and usually the beds beside me were occupied. During my hospitalization, there were four times a dead man was rolled into the room and deposited on a bed. It was fascinating to watch them groan back to life after a few minutes or hours, and I could see how my own life had begun.

  Sometimes the strangers beside me stayed in the room for a few days, but never very long. They also seemed instantly able to interact with the world, joking with the nurses, standing up and moving around. A couple of them tried to talk to me, but I had no way to answer.

  I started to get frustrated. Why couldn’t I understand anything? I knew I wasn’t stupid.

  Was I?

  It was a sunny summer day when the “aha” moment hit me. It was the first epiphany in my life. All the doctors and nurses who visited me spoke backward. The other patients understood them because they spoke backward, too.

  I was stunned. Why didn’t I think of that before? Who said words should be spoken front to back?

  Some gutter instinct told me something was very odd, but I finally started to understand my TV shows a little bit.

  From that point on, I picked up English much faster. It felt weird to reverse my speech, but after a couple of months of practice, it became second nature to me. I learned to say words, then sentences.

  Talking was hard
, but it was harder to listen to other people speaking to me. They were almost certain to use words not in my vocabulary, and I had to pick those out in addition to changing everything back to front.

  I remember my first coherent discussion with a doctor, where I finally understood every word and could carry on a very short conversation.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow.” This was one of the doctors who’d been there for my un-death. Dr. MacKay. Long gray hair, square-framed eyeglasses perched on a long nose. Fake smile.

  He didn’t like me. Not that he ever said anything like that, but I could tell. That’s okay, because I didn’t like him, either.

  He’d just backed into my room one morning, glanced around at the other patients, swiveled around to face me, and erased some notes on my chart.

  I nodded. My blood pressure was always fine.

  “There. 120 over 80. Perfectly normal.”

  Pause.

  “I’ll just take your blood pressure.”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “How are you feeling today, Mr. Johnson?” Then his smile disappeared, and he backed away from me, out of my hospital room.

  Jerk.

  I never had any visitors in the hospital. I wondered if I had any family. Kids. A wife. Presumably not, since they never came to see me. No friends. Nobody who I might have worked with.

  Just doctors and nurses. And orderlies to bring my urine in bedpans.

  The other patients who sometimes shared my room would all have visitors. They’d laugh and kiss and hug and talk.

  Sometimes I could smell the visitors. They were just so different from all the old nearly-dead patients.

  I often wondered what it would be like to have visitors who smiled and chatted about the weather. Maybe kids who would talk about baseball or school.