Dark Rome: And Other Stories

By Brenda Paske

There is a sotto-passagio that starts at the top of the Via Veneto and twists and turns underground. It is lit with flattering pink lights in a long strip on the ceiling. The passage goes past the train connections and the Roman Sports Club. Ultimately it arrives at the bottom of the Spanish Steps, saving you the cautious walk down the slippery, uneven Steps themselves.

And out you go, into a different, darker Rome.

Dark Rome and Other Stories is a four-part collection of twenty-three fantastical stories takes you on journeys of unforeseen resolution.

Dark Rome offers tales of an alternate Eternal City where an ancient serpent rules a crumbling palazzo and ones fate can be decided by a single misstep.

The Day People is an unfinished novel set in the near future, where one woman forever changes the face of humanity and bold intentions end in devastating consequences.

In Between shares stories of the present seen through a looking glass, where ordinary things have extraordinary qualities and the female obsession with handbags is revealed as a dark quest for power.

Far Kingdoms tells tales of other lands, populated by mysterious insect-like beings who imagine themselves to be human.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 31, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450252836

Brenda Paske

Brenda Paske currently lives in Los Angeles, City of Hopeless Dreams, with her ex-husband and two cats. She is an IT Consultant with five previously published books.

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Contents

Preface

DARK ROME

DARK ROME

THE HOUSE OF TODAY

AND TOMORROW

THE SERPENT ARCOBALENO

THE HOUSE OF THE SHAH

IN SANREMO

THE DAY PEOPLE

THE DAY PEOPLE

RAT ROAD

(Mrs. Weisinski’s Story)

THE BLACK BUS

SUMMER’S CHILDREN

WINTER’S KING

THE WAR APARTMENT

IN BETWEEN

SOULBAG

THE MICHO

THE LOST

DANCE ME OUT OF HELL,

PRETTY SHOES

THE HOMELESS

DREAMHOUSES

DEAD MAN’S FUNERAL

BILLY BADMAN

ALMOST HUMAN

FAR KINGDOMS

MIDNIGHT, CINDERELLA

THE CITY OF FORGETFULNESS

THE THIN MAN

SHADELAND

Preface

People ask me--where do you get your ideas? And my only possible answer is--how do I stop them? They’re twirling about in my head twenty-four hours a day, awake or asleep, and I’m always clutching a pen and notepad to record the next (apparently) dazzling thought. I don’t even turn on the radio in the car while I‘m driving--I’m too busy thinking about things.

These are stories of journeys and escapes. Of vengeance. Of pre-emptive, possibly mistaken, betrayals. Of not ending up where you intended. Fantastical journeys born of panic and trepidation, that don’t always end as happily as self-help manuals want us to believe. Sometimes we are urged ahead that others may study our mistakes and profit by them.

Like Mrs. Weisinski, of ‘Rat Road’ or Sharmilla of ‘Summer’s Children’, the ones who fare best here are those with a vision of their own purpose and importance, however flawed. It’s not enough to be Joanne of ‘The Day People’, knowing there is another truth, but not what it might mean. Or the Silver Princess of ‘Midnight, Cinderella’ who delays escape until her only option is revenge and utter destruction.

‘Soulbag‘ came about when a male member of my book club asked dismissively What’s so great about those designer handbags anyway? My mouth opened but no sound came out, as my mind raced with possibilities and I thought Oh buddy, if only you knew!

And ‘The Micho’ which started when someone wondered if my shorty-tailed cat was one of them Manxes?, which he is. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was an alien disguised as a cat? A bossy, intrusive alien with plans of his own?

So many questions are out there--What if you really could talk to dead people? What if the eldest sister was really the best one? What if not everyone who looks human really is human?

What if?

It starts in the real, the visible world. The House of the Shah in Sanremo does indeed exist…it is a real place in Sanremo. And so is the sotto-passagio at the top of the Via Veneto in Rome and the tiny rooms Lizzy finds within it. And staring at those little rooms amid bustling noontime crowds I imagined a race of little people living secretly in them, at night when the tunnels are empty, and a lonely traveler might stumble upon them and feel afraid.

I don’t necessarily know what I am writing about until I’m done. In ‘The Serpent Arcobaleno’ I theorized a race of timid Immortals, chained to an ancient snake who protects them from the world at a terrible price. A reader told me it was a perfect metaphor for drug addiction, and when I looked again, it was.

‘The Day People’ series came about because of my lifelong fascination with genetics and DNA. It takes place in small towns much like the Midwest town I grew up in. One year at work we had a Halloween party for all the employee’s kids and I was part of the makeup crew. All the little boys wanted to be pirates with scars. All the little girls wanted to be princesses with glitter. And all the little black kids wanted to be white.

I have never forgotten that. And I wondered…what if we could? What if we could remake minorities in our own image? At that point in history we were supposed to be ‘beyond race’ so it really struck me that those kids still wanted to be white. (Yes, I did smear white makeup all over them, as instructed. Mostly they didn't like the results.)

‘In Between’ has more contemporary tales, some with their only fantasy element the assumptions of others. There are ghosts who don’t want to be scary. Dreamhouses that are really nightmares. Shoes that are redemptive. Exotic pets that choose their keepers.

And in ‘Far kingdoms’ beings that are not human, but don’t realize it.

And for those who think they see another theme in the stories presented here, I can assure you that some of my very best friends are men!

To Peter Windsor and Dennis Clark, all for their suggestions, encouragement and copy-editing. Thank you!

DARK ROME

DARK ROME

There is a sotto-passagio that starts at the top of the Via Veneto and twists and turns underground. It is lit with flattering pink lights in a long strip on the ceiling. The passage goes past the train connections and the Roman Sports Club, then finally spits you out at the bottom of the Spanish Steps, saving you the cautious walk down the slippery uneven Steps themselves.

And out you go, into a different, darker Rome.

When Lizzy went into the bathroom the emergency pull was swinging by itself.

David! Come here.

He looked at the evidence of her stupidity with contempt. It’s the air currents. He stilled the cord, then swung the bathroom door back and forth briskly to demonstrate,

The cord didn’t move an inch.

Ghosts, thought Lizzy. Some old woman must have died in the hotel room. She had pulled the cord desperately, and no one had answered. She was pulling it still.

No one wanted to sleep there, that was why this magnificent fifth floor room with a view was still available at mid-summer, for only 150 Euro a night.

At the front desk, they said Did you feel the earthquake?

There’s an active volcano not twenty miles from Rome that no one knows about, that no one thinks about. Not yet.

David and Lizzy walked through the misty Villa Borghese. It was 5:30 AM, long before the free hotel breakfast, long before the cafes opened, long before anything, especially in Italy. They were jet-lagged and could not sleep in their fabulous five-star hotel near the bottom of the Via Veneto, across from the church with the ossuary of the Capuchin monks cemented into its basement.

One small bent old woman was hobbling up the gravel path of the park ahead of them. Another sleepless one. They quickly overtook her. Coming the opposite direction a cold-eyed little man swept his gaze over them and then on to the old woman.

He’s going to snatch her purse, said Lizzy.

It’s not our problem.

But worried Lizzy looked back through the mists. She did not see what she expected. The man was on the ground, the old woman leaning over him. To help?

No, she leaned down shakily, reached with long twisted fingers and took something from his chest pocket. His soul? The man shuddered once and was still.

David!

But oblivious David has walked on.

God, so old, remarked David callously. Why doesn’t she just die?

Shh, she’ll hear.

No one speaks English in Trastevere.

They were across the river, in the poor part of town. The shopkeeper was old, wrinkled and bent in the traditional way, wearing the traditional black. But perhaps not a widow. There was an old man in the dim back room of the candy shop.

How can anyone bear to go on and on?

I would, said Lizzy.

She looked at his mean little eyes and finally thought the thought she had been waiting for. It’s not possible to grow old with you. I will have to save myself.

La vita e per piu potente, said the old woman, and handed Lizzy her violet-scented sweet, which she immediately ate.

Life is strong? Was that what she had said?

It was not quite what she had said.

David sniffed his candy doubtfully and threw it away, right in front of the old lady.

It was then Lizzy recognized her, the old woman, the one from the park.

David was not prepared to like Rome. It was crowded, disorganized, loud, and smelly. It was Lizzy’s fault for suggesting it, of course.

Paris had been good. The City of Light and Lightness, built as it was on a shell of catacombs and sewers. Of course David had chosen that city.

And the Italian men who whistled at her new thinner figure and called her Biondina--Blondie. How angry David was. Stop encouraging them, he hissed.

After a very late dinner he announced the coffee was undrinkable, the language incomprehensible, the exchange rate unconscionable and she was a fool for not having known it. He stomped off without looking back, knowing she had no choice but to follow.

This time Lizzy watched his receding back, going the wrong direction, saw the moment of realization when he knew she wasn’t following him, or perhaps that he didn’t know where he was going. An indiscernible pause, then he went on, compounding his mistake rather than admitting he was wrong.

Lizzy knew where she was, exactly, and went back along the Via Condotti to walk up the passage. It seemed to never end. The motorized walkway was broken and the tunnel seemed steeper on the way up than it had been on the way down. Had she missed her turn? Unexpectedly the tunnels were deserted at that hour. In Rome the streets are either crowded or absolutely empty.

She wasn’t sure at all that they had come this way.

But then at last there were the glassed-in displays lining the passage, showing granite counter-tops, purses, exquisite shoes, tiny cabinets in tiny rooms to display the cabinet-maker’s art.

And tiny people in them, dancing, talking, drinking tiny apertifs. Little women in pretty little frocks. A small man’s eyes met hers, and blankly turned away.

You are dreaming…but Lizzy knew she wasn’t. The thick glass blurred her view, but she knew what she was seeing. Terrified she froze, just when she should have strolled on, pretending to have noticed nothing.

And the pink lights went off.

There was utter silence. She heard only her breathing.

Where was she going? Up the tunnel in the dark. But why go back up to her haunted hotel room, to share with an angry little man?

She turned and reached out cautiously to touch the wall in the featureless dark. With one hand in front of her and the other one brushing the wall she slowly retraced her way back to the Spanish Steps.

All the while listening, but not a sound, not a sound behind her.

There were lights in the Piazza d’Spagna. Old gas lights. And people in strange clothes. Road flares with circular metal shells like bombs lined the outer limits of the Piazza.. It was dark, but here was light. It seemed the electricity had failed in the typical Italian way.

Come to the party, said the smiling people. The Immortal Ones. The ones who did not sleep. And the old woman she remembered led her up alley stairs to a beautiful large apartment facing the Piazza. The same old woman who sold Immortality in a sweetshop in Trastevere.

All day the shutters were closed and all night they danced in the mirrored hall and no one interrupted them, for this was a time when no one questioned the rich.

Lizzy recognized the room, grown large. Had it been an optical illusion? The display in the sotto-passagio really a window behind thick, focusing glass? Up high on the wall she saw the wide lens, but all was dark behind it.

And so what had seemed frighteningly small was really only something very far away.

Sometimes when she went out it was bright noon-day. All the plant and animals were gone, radiation had burned them away. But still the people remained. Lives were shorter, but people survived.

The so-called Temple of Minerva had its dome back. It had fallen in 1828. It was a costume party. Flickering torchlight and the people in strange clothes. But the trains still ran beside the dome. The time was not unknowable.

Under it all was a dark little door.

Through this all must pass, they told her. It was about two feet high and seemed not able to hold her, like the funerary boxes for cremated remains that had given her nightmares when she first saw them.

In an ante-chamber a head lives in a golden dish of blood. Torches flicker in the dish. His name is Nitron and he knows the future. He has lived over 2000 years.

I know nothing of Christ. I was just a child. Everyone asks that. Everyone. He wasn’t well known until later. They keep me here because I see the future and that protects them.

Cautiously Lizzy touched the liquid in the dish. Yes, it was really blood.

Kill me, I beg you. 2000 years in a dish. Have pity. And the bearded head wept tears of crystal because he couldn’t weep real tears any more.

And the old woman from Trastevere was there, big diamonds in her ears, glittering like the pools in her eyes.

Don’t do what he asks, she said. He always asks the new ones. Don’t be fooled. He’s better taken care of than most of us. I am three centuries old and must still work for my living. You’re lucky to have changed while you were still young. They chopped off his head for a reason you know.

It was like a fairy-tale, a choice to be made, but which choice was right?

There were two beautiful blonde women, one tall, one tiny. The little one had beautiful purple eyes. They held each other’s hands silently and smiled at the room.

Beside them on the couch was a wax doll, beautifully dressed in embroidered silks. The eyes flickered. An animated wax doll, but the eyes were real.

She’s very, very old, said the taller blonde woman. She’s inside, with a little padding all around her limbs, but you wouldn’t want to look at her. She’s a mummy now. Bent and dried like a grass-hopper. That’s why she’s inside a doll. At least this way she is pretty again.

And in a small bedroom, a tense-looking woman, beautiful, with long blonde hair. She moved slightly when Lizzy entered and she realized she was looking at a mirror.

Already I have changed, she thought.

The clock struck midnight and suddenly Lizzy knew it was decision time. She went boldly into the ante-chamber, seized the golden dish and flung Nitron from his home forever.

Thank yooouuu.. he whispered and died.

Outside the sounds of gaiety stopped. The curtains were flung back as the party-goers crowded in the door.

The old woman stepped forward, lips pursed in exasperation. But we need a fore-teller, my dear. It’s essential. Someone must end with his head in a dish. The sum of life still stays the same. If you want more, someone must have less.

As Lizzy froze in fright, she added, It doesn’t need to be you.

THE HOUSE OF TODAY

AND TOMORROW

Sarah and Jim went first to a small nondescript hotel near Termini, the train station. Room 314 was on the fourth floor, because the ground floor, the piano terra, started at zero. It had two beds, a large one and a smaller one shoved into an alcove, and an incongruous balcony off the bathroom that overlooked the alley and sideways to the street beyond. That was appealing. That and the 70 Euro rate.

They were fleeing and still Sarah could not believe it.

In Des Moines they had had a nice life. An accounting business, with financial advice on the side. Jim’s side. They had had friends, a house, a life.

And on the last day, an argument with Steve and Debbie, two of their closest friends.

At first Sarah thought it was a mistake. But after they had left in anger, well past midnight, Jim’s face told her everything. She should never have let him into the business. But who else would give him a job? He was going to jail. And she would be paying the bills. They might even charge her too. She could be considered an accessory.

Total ruin was in front of her.

The next morning they went straight to the bank and took out $40,000 in cash. Jim took $25,000 from the business account, Sarah $15,000 from her personal funds. The air tickets were charged but never to be paid--they threw away their credit cards at the airport. They could not be traced. It was a cash life now.

They landed in Amsterdam fifteen hours later, with their two suitcases, far from their final destination. At the train station they booked thru to Naples, but got off in Rome and took a room in a nearby hotel. Loud noises in the hall all night--drunken Swedish tourists behaving worse than they ever would at home. The sheets changed once every three days. Breakfast was lukewarm cappuccino and dry toast.

How the damned complained in the antechamber to hell.

Sarah imagined herself, quite clearly, decades from now, weeping in the faded lobby of that cheap hotel. Tall Roman policeman staring at her, uncomfortable with an old lady’s sorrow. Old and alone, no money, Jim dead upstairs of some heart attack or stroke.

She knew they must leave soon or it would all come true. But Jim was comfortable there, had chosen his bar, his restaurant, his daily unwise walk up the Via Veneto, among the ever-changing parade of tourists.

That week an Indian man, Salinder, moved in to the smaller room next door. From the first Sarah didn’t like him. Too friendly, too agreeable, neatly pressed white business shirts, every day wearing the same old-fashioned suit. He was staying in Rome for some weeks, settling ill-defined ’business’ dealings. And always smiling, smiling, the smile that says you don’t know yet what I will do to you.

He tried to enter the room one day when Jim was gone. Sarah abruptly shut the door in his face. She was learning to be rude. Jim was away more and more frequently, impatient with her presence, showing too much money, spending too much money. One of them had to always be in the room, guarding the rest of the money or they had to take it with them, crammed into her purse. Perhaps that was what had attracted Salinder. Jim didn’t understand her distrust of the Indian and put it down to her paranoia and prejudice. So they went invited to his room one evening for a drink and conversation.

Sarah poured her drink down the bathroom sink, when neither man saw her. Returning to the main room she sighed frequently and let the conversation lapse. They went back to their room early.

It can’t be, she thought, as Jim vomited in the bathroom that night. She thought with fear of being trapped here, Jim dead of poison. Questions. Then relief…she could simply leave without explanation, before anyone knew what had happened. Jim cold and silent on the unmade bed. The money would go so much further without him to drag her down.

But Jim didn’t die. They left two days later, as soon as he could walk. Salinder had left for the morning, after cheerfully inquiring if he could bring them up anything. They could prove nothing against him, and anyway dared not report it.

This is the price we pay, she thought. But I did nothing wrong. Why should I have to pay? But even the criminals saw to it that you paid somehow.

Trastevere lay across the river, the shabby side of Rome, buildings covered in savage graffiti, drunks passed out in the street, trash blowing in the gutters of the market, nowhere to wash the fruit they had bought. One, two nights, in a hotel far worse than the first, stared at by everyone, obviously out of place. No breakfast, bugs crawling on the walls, angry shouts at 2:00 AM, in Italian this time.

They frantically searched for an apartment. There was hardly one to be found, the agents never answered their calls and they were only shown one dirty room without even a stove or a working kitchen for 800 Euro a month.

Sarah found the house by accident one tired afternoon, turning down the wrong back alley in the hot streets. It should not be hard to find a cheap place for less than 1000 Euro. But she wanted a far place too. Somewhere away from the main streets, somewhere the tourists didn’t go, where some Des Moines acquaintance wouldn’t eventually trip over them and betray them. She didn’t say that to Jim. She had thought about taking all the money and running. She wondered if he had thought of it too.

And there it was. A house in hiding. A house impossible to find and impossible to escape. Casa Oggi e Ieri said the battered plate by the door. Affitarsi, said the hand-lettered sign. There was an overgrown garden, covered with weeds. The entrance invisible from the street. It had been built behind and against the squalid apartment building, the Casa Domani, that faced the road. 600 Euros a month they paid to the old crone who owned it. Two rooms, each with one dirty window, a small kitchen and a smaller bath. The walls stained and not quite true.

God, is this what we have come to? complained Jim, but put up no further resistance. He was drinking more and more, but had settled into sullen lassitude and no longer struggled against her. She was the one who went out now, shopping and getting the newspapers from home, never with any news that concerned them. She cut her hair short, let it go brown again and wore large sunglasses. No one would know her, even if they stumbled over her in the market one afternoon.

The hot days passed quickly. Sarah no longer worried about being caught out. The people in the apartment building behind the house avoided them as if they, too, were hiding from something.

She noticed when it was no longer possible to find their old haunts. The people dressed strangely, and smiled at her accent. How long have we been here? she thought. Time was blurred for her. She had not worn trousers in a long time, not after the stares and comments.

Do you know where the bakery went? she asked Jim, but he only grunted. Every business in Italy stayed for decades, even longer, was passed down in the family for generations. But things were disappearing quickly.

Sarah changed their cash into gold. Heavier but harder to trace. No one hesitated to take it in this part of town.

And then one day she woke early, before dawn, and saw them, the vampires of the Casa Domani.

Tiny, wizened old men and women slinking forth from the stains on the wall, the ill-fitting dark corners, sliding down from the ceiling to fasten their long sharp-nailed and bony fingers around Doug’s neck, and then bending forward to sink their uneven teeth slowly into his flesh.

They smiled politely at her, showing more of their ragged fangs. They didn’t mean to frighten her, but still they did. Old yellowed fangs, from long before modern dentistry.

There’s safety in numbers, they told her. Don’t be afraid. We like you. We want you to join us. But you must stop cooking with so much garlic.

She shrank back on the bed while Doug tossed and mumbled beside her.

You’re perfectly safe, said the bright-eyed old woman, their landlady. No one can cross into your yesterdays to find you any more. It’s 1950 here. You should remember enough of this past to live safely forever.

Des Moines was lost, lost forever then. She should have realized that before, but she hadn’t wanted to know.

Then she realized that Des Moines, 1950, was now safe for her too.

The first ray of dawn touched the window and the old people vanished in a brilliant flash.

Doug rolled over. What are you doing? he asked her.

Just going for a walk, she said, and fetched her purse. It’s so hot. I’m going to the park. Don’t worry if I’m gone for a while.

THE SERPENT ARCOBALENO

Blanquita first realized she was doomed on the bus to Piazza Barberini.

There had been signs, hints. More than hints. Sebastiano’s black-bearded rage, as he hissed You’re getting fat! one morning when she dressed, shoving herself into underwear and clothes that were now a little too tight, a little too young.

It was real rage and real disgust. At her, not at some failed business dealings the night before. This, on a holiday in Sardinia when he was supposed to be proposing marriage.

She was getting old. There was nothing to be done about that, was there?

And all those older, frazzle-haired, frantic women she had regarded with such sly amusement, she was one of them now.

He was forty-eight, and his tastes growing more bizarre, requiring humiliating costumes and equipment, and worst of all, pain. Protests brought an angry slap. Who knew where it would end?

You’re not some virgin, he would say.

Exactly as they used to say, After all, it’s not a Christian, when they beat the donkey in her fishing village back home.

Why was she still there? She was sure the day would come when she’d wake alone in some hot, sleazy hotel room by the beach near Positano, without even the money to pay the bill.

Maybe he just wanted to use her up first.

Her beauty, her Portuguese albina beauty, palest yellow hair and purple eyes. None of it working any more. Her hair had become coarse and strange, she wore sunglasses all the time for her bad eyes like a forgotten movie star, her skin hideously pale compared to the tans of the young girls on the beaches.

The smirks of the others at dinner. No one to flirt with, nowhere to go.

So you’re Pepper, said a man to the pretty new girl. The young black-haired one. Peperita. Then turning to Blanquita. And you must be Salt, Salato.

The laughter was not kind. Not any more.

She pretended thirty, but she was thirty-seven.

It had started out so well, so very long ago.

Like lilacs, they said then, of her eyes. A perfect figure. Born poor. Not much good at sums and things. Mature when she was twelve. A woman when she was thirteen, thanks to her drunken older stepbrother.

Her first real boyfriend at fourteen was ten years older, Belgian, and the lead singer in a grunge band. He seemed to love her desperately, his little Albina Blanquita. Dead two years later of an overdose, a horrible unexpected scene in a strange hotel bathroom in Spain. She had taken whatever money she could find and run.