Big Pulp: The Purloined Pearl

By Big Pulp

A modern amalgam of the classic newsstand of the golden age of pulp and popular fiction, Big Pulp publishes exciting, challenging and thought-provoking fiction and poetry by the best emerging and established genre writers from around the world. This collection begins with "The Purloined Pearl," a new Indonesian folk tale by James Penha, in which a young fisherman steals a dragon's pearl for his lover, unaware of the toll their avarice will take on all they hold dear.

This issue also includes the blackly humorous “There Was Something We Didn’t See in the Dark,” by Belgian writer Thomas Gunzig (translated by Edward Gauvin), in which a group of friends on their way to a party encounter a beautiful woman on a dark, deserted road, with disastrous results; and “Aunt Anika’s Unicorn Horn,” a whimsical mystery set in 17th century Amsterdam by Anna Sykora, an expatriate New Yorker currently residing in Germany. From the UK, this issue features “A Box Full of Midnight,” a pulp thriller by Tony Haynes; “First Up,” a science fiction romance by Aliya Whiteley; Ian D. Smith’s whimsical “The Angelfish;” and “Jenny,” a tale of lust and webcams by Andrew McLinden.

This issue also features “Uvlechenie,” a tale of Russian asteroid miners by DeAnna Knippling; “Mercer’s Ghost,” an eerie tale of old west vengeance, by Milo James Fowler; and “The Summer Mr. H Drove Alex Santillanas Around,” a suburban crime story by Jen Conley. The rest of the issue is packed with more great fantasy, science fiction, mystery, horror and romance fiction by Beth Cato, David Cybulski, Shannon Schuren, John Davies, Libby Cudmore, Chanté McCoy, Jason Radak, Harri B. Cradoc, Jeffrey Caminsky, John Medaille, Adam Miller, and Wayne Scheer, and poetry by James F.W. Rowe, Joanna M. Weston, Bruce Golden, and Elizabeth Barrette.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Big Pulp
• Release date: Jun 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476229003

Big Pulp

Since 2008, Big Pulp has published the best in fantastic fiction from around the globe. We publish periodicals - including Big Pulp, Child of Words, M, and Thirst - and themed anthologies.

Book preview

Big Pulp Spring 2012

Smashwords Edition

Exter Press

Bill Olver, editor

Big Pulp Vol. 3, No. 2

(whole issue # 5)

June 2012

ISBN # 978-0-9836449-3-4

Big Pulp is published quarterly in March, June, September and December by Exter Press. 
All credited material is copyright by the author(s). All other material © 2012 Exter Press

The stories and poems in this magazine are fictitious and any resemblance between the characters in them and any persons living or dead – without satirical intent – is purely coincidental.

Reproduction or use of any written or pictorial content without the permission of the editors or authors is strictly forbidden, with the exception of fair use for review purposes.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of our writers.

Table of Contents

Fantasy

The Purloined Pearl by James Penha

The Slaves Of Cortagne by James F. W. Rowe

A Good Eye by Beth Cato

Mystery

The Summer Mr. H Drove Alex Santillanas Around by Jen Conley

There Was Something We Didn’t See In The Dark by Thomas Gunzig (Edward Gauvin, translator)

Aunt Anika’s Unicorn Horn by Anna Sykora

The Queer Quintet or The Secret Of The Chateau Specter by David Cybulski

Adventure

A Box Full Of Midnight by Tony Haynes

Mercer’s Ghost by Milo James Fowler

Heart Of A Pirate by Shannon Schuren

Horror

The Panic Cell by John Davies

The Devil’s Cousin by Libby Cudmore

In A Graveyard by Joanna M. Weston

Career Calling by Chanté McCoy

Deep Flux by Jason Radak

Science Fiction

Pluto’s Lament by Bruce Golden

Uvlechenie by DeAnna Knippling

Witness The Ice Maker by Harri B. Cradoc

Dates And The Desert by Elizabeth Barrette

Navigation Of Memory by Elizabeth Barrette

Astropolis by Elizabeth Barrette

Field Study by Jeffrey Caminsky

Above Snakes by John Medaille

The Angelfish by Ian D. Smith

Romance

Ayo 1 by Adam Miller

First Up by Aliya Whiteley

Jenny by Andrew McLinden

Upon Reflection by Wayne Scheer

Cover illustration by Pete Schmitt

James Penha, a native New Yorker, has lived in Indonesia for two decades; his adaptations of classic folk tales from the archipelago have appeared in Big Pulp, Columbia, THEMA, and in his book Snakes and Angels (Cervena Barva Press, 2010).

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THE PURLOINED PEARL

suggested by the legend of Fubo Hill, Guilin, China

A Guilin fisherman hears the wind and the sea even when he sleeps. He dreams breezes and tides, and beneath his lids eyes follow every ripple of the river until his current meets once more the sea. When, in his tent on the shore of the Li River, Chaoxiang awoke, he could smell the rice and nicotine scenting the snores of his blanketmate, so close was Duyi’s mouth still to Chaoxiang’s. Duyi’s hand flaccidly warmed Chaoxiang’s almost ironic morning erection, and Chaoxiang was tempted to allow their contrapuntal respiration alone to ease him to emission. But then how would he have the energy to face the river?

And so he reached for Duyi’s hand and moved it to muffle its owner’s pungent snorts and whistles. They turned to gasps and coughs, and Duyi’s eyes opened knowingly.

Let’s go, said Chaoxiang, and in ten minutes the pair was rowing their bamboo raft as they drank tea and devoured sticky rice, still warm inside the banana-leaf wrapper.

Where to? Duyi wanted to know. The estuary, right?

Where we shall fight for trout with every other fisherman and cormorant from Guilin?

You have never shied away from such competition. And why would you? Everyone knows you are the most powerful and skillful caster of nets on the river.

Chaoxiang stood up. That’s just it. I need bigger fish to fry as the saying goes.

But Duyi wasn’t listening. I remember when you threw your net in the pentagonal space between the five needle rocks without even a nick to a fiber. The net landed as gently as a paper kite. But this was not merely an artistic success! You dragged in more fish—

Let’s head there! Chaoxiang pointed toward Fubo Hill.

Duyi blanched, gathered himself, and pinched his friend’s ass. Chaoxiang, dear, you are no longer dreaming. This is the real world!

I know…and by the way, that hurt! But we are going to Fubo Hill.

No way.

Way! Chaoxiang insisted.

Duyi drew his oar out of the river; the raft spun slowly a half-circle. Chaoxiang, we cannot throw our nets near Fubo Hill. You know that!

Because of Shen Lung, the horrible dragon who lives in the cave of the Hill.

Exactly!

The dragon you have seen so often…

Not me, but—

The dragon everyone else has seen?

No one we know personally, maybe but—

And maybe…just maybe… Chaoxiang’s voice fell to a whisper. No one has ever seen Shen Lung…because the dragon is an old… queen’s tale. Chaoxiang stared into Duyi’s languid eyes.

But, Chaoxiang, even we have felt Shen Lung’s angry floods and seen its terrible lightning.

Duyi, there is no Shen Lung.

Chaoxiang—

I have considered. There is no reason to avoid Fubo Hill. But there are thousands of reasons to go there. And they are all called rainbow trout!

Chaoxiang always said, if he could, he would give Duyi anything he wanted, and, indeed, he had. Chaoxiang had forsaken his home in the north to be with Duyi, and so too had he given up his parents who forgot his name when they understood that their beloved boy had chosen to give them no grandchildren. When Duyi’s eye had strayed for a second of longing upon a tiny jade Buddha pendant, Chaoxiang traded his dog for it and pretended to have found the jewel in the street when he bestowed it on his friend.

But although Chaoxiang’s devotion to Duyi was total, he had a simultaneous and equal loyalty to his own ideas. Duyi knew when this latter passion was in force: he could see it in the veins of Chaoxiang’s neck and forehead; he could hear it in the intensity of his articulation. And Duyi, who would likewise do anything for Chaoxiang, knew when to yield.

When the raft reached Fubo Hill, they rowed away from the shore toward the mid-river mouth of the promontory’s cave. Chaoxiang took their net and ordered Duyi to keep the raft steady just in case.

Just in case…of what?

Just in case you are right about Shen Lung. Chaoxiang smiled broadly before he blew a kiss toward Duyi and cast his net as he waded in the shallows toward the cave. Every array of the net brought a few trout back to Chaoxiang who carefully untangled them from the criss-crossed jute of the net and deposited the fish in his sidesack. Encouraged by the success of his plan so far, Chaoxiang followed his quarry into the pool of the cave itself. Daylight only dabbled fifty meters or so into the cave, and so when it became too dark to find his catch, Chaoxiang carefully folded his net, affixed it round his neck, and sat on a protruding rock to rest before the return trip. Chaoxiang found the rock comfortably warm. Ah, he said aloud, there’s a hot spring near by. Chaoxiang arose curious to find the source. The rock, he discovered, was more of a long shoal than a boulder and so he followed it as it alternately sank beneath and rose above the water until he heard the percolation of a hot spring. The bubbles weren’t boiling hot, but delightfully lukewarm, and so Chaoxiang immersed himself in the spring. He swam in small circles so as not to get lost in the depths of the water, and held on, in fact, to one of the two natural tunnels that seemed almost to exhale the heat into the pool. The lining of these passages was surprisingly soft, and so Chaoxiang drew his own face closer to them to see if the tunnels were lined with algae or some other weeds or creatures. But with his head fast surrounded by each of the tunnel entrances in turn, it was far too dark to discern what life might be there. Nonetheless, the tunnels felt remarkably pliable and cushioned as if, Chaoxiang said in perfect silence to himself, they were indeed alive.

Stepping backwards from the source, Chaoxiang lost his footing on a particularly slippery rock and flailed to hold on to it with his hands to protect his head from crashing into it. The rock was, he felt, absolutely smooth and round and easily loosed from the riverbed. It fit neatly into the cupped palms of his hands, and as Chaoxiang lifted it to the surface, it refracted into colors slivers of sunlight, some of which sparkled in two wide reflectors each perched atop one of the soft tunnels of the spring.

Chaoxiang waded and then dove headlong into the water, stretching his hands far in front where they remained close upon the smooth stone like the nose of a dolphin. He kicked his legs as quickly as he could to propel himself to the daylight.

Outside the cave, he craned his head and looked for the raft. Duyi! he screamed. DUYI! DUYI! DUYI!

HERE! HERE! , said Duyi from the raft, gently floating up behind Chaoxiang who spun and crawled onto the bamboo as quickly as if he were being chased by a shark. Chaoxiang sprawled face down across the raft and breathed heavily.

Terrified, Duyi, knelt to his friend and turned him over, ready to apply life-saving techniques to a drowning man. But Chaoxiang shook his head and opened his eyes to prove he still lived, although he was not yet able to speak.

Duyi embraced his lover warmly—literally—to battle the chill of the river that had Chaoxiang shivering. Duyi stretched out his arms to hold Chaoxiang’s hands which were still tightly clasped, extending like an arrow beyond his head. When he felt Duyi’s hands, Chaoxiang opened his own like the shell of an oyster and there Duyi saw an enormous and exquisite pearl. But this, said Duyi, cannot be real!

Chaoxiang rolled the jewel into Duyi’s own hands, and replied simply, But it is. It is a gift…from Shen Lung. Chaoxiang explained about the boulders and the springs he now knew to be the body and the nose of the dragon.

He must have been asleep, Duyi reasoned, for otherwise I’d be a widow.

No. Chaoxiang explained about the reflectors: the dragon’s eyes were wide open. He saw me take the pearl. He let me take the pearl.

Why would he do that?

Because he knows how much I love you. Chaoxiang wrapped his own hands around Duyi’s and the pearl. He knows how it becomes you.

No, yelled Duyi sternly as he let go of the stone. It fell between two beams of the raft and rolled quickly down the track toward the water. Chaoxiang fell flat and grabbed the pearl before it found the river, but Duyi was quickly on him, prying his fingers open. Please, let it go. It’s not ours. Let it go!

Wait! pleaded Chaoxiang and Duyi did so. Let us sit here with the pearl steadied in the raft. Let us just wait. If the dragon comes for it, I shall return it without a fight. I promise, Duyi. But I tell you he won’t come…because he could have stopped me…could have killed me. And yet he didn’t. Let us just sit and wait.

For how long?

Until nightfall.

And then?

You shall rival any king—any queen—with such a gem around your neck.

I would feel like a fool. I would feel like a whore.

That’s seems fair.

Duyi glared at his friend who laughed so uproariously that he had to join in. But seriously, he said when he caught his breath, I don’t want it.

Then we shall sell it to Ah Tjong, the Amoy Street merchant, and we shall never have to fish again.

Never fish again? And what shall we do all day?

Chaoxiang grabbed the back of Duyi’s shorts and pulled them down to his thighs from where he let his middle finger enter his friend’s bunghole. Oh, we’ll think of something.

As the sun sought refuge behind the limestone mountains of Guilin, Chaoxiang turned to his friend who nodded in resignation more than in joy. With the pearl tossed in the brailer bag that would ordinarily have borne the day’s catch of fish, the pair brought the raft back to shore. They headed to their tent, just as most of the other shelters were being emptied by men heading off for night fishing. Duyi and Chaoxiang were not popular among their colleagues who were savvy enough to understand that the two were more than just pals. But the country boys like You-you, new to the city, couldn’t have imagined and wouldn’t have believed, even if they were told, in sex between two men. You-you, in fact, had been warned by his older cousin Eng-chin, that Duyi might want to put his mouth around You-you’s penis and that he should not allow him to do so. You-you found this hysterically funny and told his cousin that, really, he wasn’t so much of a bumpkin as to believe anything he was told here in Guilin, even by an elder and a kinsman. In any event, when You-you, on his way to the river, passed Duyi and Ling, he wondered aloud if they really had been on the water since early morning.

Chaoxiang explained, Well, we went as far as Yangshuo—three hours—and caught so much on the way we decided to sell the fish there at the mid-day market. We only have one big one left for our own dinner. Chaoxiang held up the bag. We’re too tired to go out again tonight. Where are you headed?

Maybe we should try Yangshuo tonight. What do you think Siah-heng? You-you’s partner, equally a hick, nodded. Why not?

Just be careful as you pass Fubo Hill.

You-you frowned. Maybe we’ll try Yangshuo tomorrow. I’m in no mood to risk meeting Shen Lung in the dead of night. Siah-heng nodded. You wouldn’t mind if we traveled alongside you tomorrow, would you?

Not at all, said Chaoxiang, but we have another chore to attend to tomorrow, so you’ll have Yangshuo to yourself.

Well, okay, then. Thanks so much for the tip. We’ll show my cousin just how successful farmboys can be on the river, eh, Siah-heng? The pair continued to their raft.

Duyi and Chaoxiang entered their tent. Do you want to see it? Chaoxiang asked Duyi.

No.

No?

No!

Chaoxiang dropped his shorts and walked toward Duyi with his boner leading the way. Then close your eyes…but open your mouth.

Keep your mouth closed, my love, said Chaoxiang as they approached Ah Tjong’s pawn shop across from the harbor on Amoy Street. Let me do the talking.

You mean, the lying.

I call it business, and Ah Tjong will negotiate with an honesty equal to ours.

Yours. I shall remain silent.

And your silence will, within minutes, be golden, my dearest Duyi.

Ah Tjong inhaled deeply through his open mouth, looked up and acknowledged the entrance of the two fishermen with a loud wheeze but without enthusiasm. What have you netted that could possibly interest me? he said, barely looking up from his desk where one looped eye was examining a Vacheron Constantin pocket watch. A water-soaked compass? One more ceramic bowl? A golden slipper?

Chaoxiang made no reply except to drop his sack with a thump on the blotter in front the pawnbroker.

Well, if it’s a ceramic, it must be a good one, said Ah Tjong as he removed the contents of the bag. He rolled back his chair and let the loop fall into his lap. And God said it was good, he muttered. He replaced the loop in his right eye and brought it close to the pearl. Real. Real. No doubt. He scaled it. Half a kilogram. Unbelievable. And you said you found this in the river? Ah Tjong, excited now, puffed like a Pekinese. His eternally clogged sinuses forced him to breathe through his mouth.

I didn’t say, said Chaoxiang.

No, of course you didn’t.

I did not steal it. That is all the law requires me to say, Chaoxiang added. What do you offer?

Fifty thousand yuan.

Fifty thousand? A pearl like this is worth six times as much.

Look, Chaoxiang, I am no fool. A pearl like this can only belong to Shen Lung. You may have found it in your nets, but there is no doubt that Shen Lung expects you to return it to him.

If it belongs to Shen Lung, the dragon could have prevented my taking it from the river. Chaoxiang quickly added, If there is such a thing as a dragon. Which there is not. I thought you were a businessman, Ah Tjong, not another superstitious fool.

Have it your way, Chaoxiang. But you tell me this pearl is from the river. If there is a Shen Lung—if, if, if—then it expects obedience. It will expect you to return it. It will not expect me to fence it. I will be paid for the risks I take. That is what I call business, my friend. He stared at the fishermen like a hound dog now, one with droopy eyelids and an open mouth.

Come on, Chaoxiang, interrupted Duyi, who grabbed the pearl and made to go. It’s not worth it.

No, but we’ll take the fifty thousand yuan, said Chaoxiang as he took Ah Tjong’s hand and shook on the deal.

Chaoxiang decided that he and Duyi should hire a carriage to take them overland to Yangshuo where they could open an account at a bank where no one knew them enough to wonder at their sudden good fortune. Duyi agreed and, although deeply unsettled by most of Chaoxiang’s recent decisions, tried his best to enjoy this sudden chance to travel the countryside in style. But with the curtains closed until we get out of town, warned Chaoxiang. I’m sure we’ll figure out something better to do than just sightsee, my princess.

Duyi knew that Chaoxiang meant, with all his heart, to use this new-found wealth to allow them to live together, like aristocrats. There was no selfishness in Chaoxiang’s greed, and that made Duyi all the more guilty, all the more worried, and all the more in love with Chaoxiang. He proved the latter as they rocked along the road to Yangshuo. Safely out of town and, as well, out of Duyi, Chaoxiang raised the curtains of the carriage. The view was spectacular from the pass; they could see both Guilin to the west and Yangshuo to the east with the beautiful ribbon of river threaded among the limestone hills between the two towns. They were blessed, Chaoxiang said, and Duyi hoped he was right.

At the First Bank of Yangshuo, the pair deposited most of the yuan and then had the carriage proceed to the best riverside restaurant. We shall see now, said Chaoxiang, what a master chef makes of those beasts we used to catch.

Incredible, said Duyi when he finally pushed himself away from dinner. It’s not just the quality of the fish, is it, Chaoxiang? It’s the spices, the timing on the grill or in the wok; it’s the look even that makes the taste great. Incredible. He raised his cup of tea to his friend and was about to sip when a