The Rake Magazine

Disappointed in love and broken

at forty she married a small town

in Ohio

it made no brash promises whispered nothing

sweeter in her ear than good morning

good afternoon good evening good night

my dear

good night my darling

good night my dear

in the morning

I'll still be here

Burch woke up one morning in a ditch in some low-lying country. He had no idea where he was and no recollection of how he might have arrived there. Whatever possessions he might once have owned --and he had a vague recollection of a backpack full of belongings-- were nowhere to be seen.

He was thirsty as the devil himself for a can of Coca-Cola.

Alongside the damp ditch in which he found himself there was a poorly-maintained dirt road, its surface pocked and worn with deep ruts. In the distance Burch could see smoke rising from the chimneys of a little town, and he set out along the road in the direction of this unfamiliar village.

As he walked it became apparent to him that somehow, and somewhere in the lost stretch behind him, he had acquired a rather pronounced limp. Burch felt a dull ache extending from his left buttock all the way down to the area behind his knee. The pain became more acute as he hobbled along the road.

An angel appeared to him just as he was approaching the outskirts of the village. Burch watched as the angel glided down from the bare branches of a tree.

You are to undertake a quest, the angel told Burch. An old horse will be provided for your journey, and you are to learn that the heart can be killed anywhere on earth.

That, Burch said to the angel, does not sound like a quest. It sounds like a sentence.

To which the angel replied, That is only because you fail to understand the full meaning of the phrase.

Burch considered the angel as it fluttered there above him on gray and dusty wings. This, he thought, was a most unwelcome and untimely visitation.

It seems to me that the phrase could not possibly be plainer, he said.

Only because you cannot yet see clearly, the angel said.

Burch was in no mood or condition to argue with an angel. For his part, the angel felt obligated to remind his charge of the seriousness of his mission.

You will understand, I'm sure, at what grave peril to his soul a man refuses to carry out the orders of an angel, he said.

I understand no such thing, Burch said. And surely you understand that you are looking at a man whose soul is already in considerable peril, if, in fact, it has not already been entirely lost to him.

What I am telling you, the angel said, is that there is yet hope for you. You are being given a rare opportunity.

I can barely walk, Burch said.

That is why you are being provided with a horse, the angel told him.

From the village Burch heard the ringing of church bells.

I suppose, he said, that I am to regard that as a sign.

The angel cocked his head and listened to the sound. The bells? he said. That is nothing more than a custom of the village.

Burch spit into the road and pawed at the dirt with his boot.

Let's have a look at that horse, he said.

Slayed.

Slaughtered.

Shattered.

Crushed.

Obliterated.

Burst.

Busted.

Broken.

Destroyed.

Rubbed out.

Squashed.

Flayed.

Annihilated.

Massacred.

Snuffed.

Shredded.

Spent.

Jolted.

Struck.

Moved.

Electrified.

Blown wide open.

Stunned.

Tickled.

Elated.

Overjoyed.

Lit up like a jack-o-lantern.

Delighted out of all proportion.

Rocked.

Resurrected.

Reborn.

Waking, by reason of their continual cares, fears, sorrows, and dry brains, is a symptom that much crucifies melancholy men.

--Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

All he could do was transcribe the interminable babbling voice of the night, the insinuating perverse voice of the demons.

--Pietro Citati, Kafka

What if an individual is perceiving a daydream and a series of external sensory inputs at precisely the same time, and has lost the capacity to distinguish one from the other? What happens to his perceptual world? Clearly he will be peopling his universe of awareness with elements that are altogether private, presences generated from within which for him will be a genuine part of the real world; these are what he sees, or hears, or is otherwise sensing. And should he then be unable to differentiate these from his everyday perceptions, then indeed he may move into a haunted, nightmarish world, and be a very troubled human being.

--Joseph D. Noshpitz, "Reality Testing: A Neuropsychological Fantasy," in Comprehensive Psychology

A common notion about the relationship of sleep to mental health is that total sleep loss...deranges the mind and may result in some kind of breakdown....When serious sleep disturbances are present, as they almost always are in the mentally ill, the patient's history often indicates that the sleep disturbance preceeded the actual break from reality.

--William C. Dement, Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep --Exploring the World of Sleep

On particularly dark nights the seven black rabbits that live somewhere in the bushes in my backyard emerge from their burrow or bunker (or whatever it is that rabbits live in) and move about upright, staggering and lurching around on their back legs.

It seems to me that they're uncommonly large for rabbits. Some of them probably stand at least four feet high. There's nothing even remotely human about their movements.

They were particularly active in the winter months, and I spent a good deal of time watching them closely from the darkness of my room. One night, quite inexplicably, I saw them hang a puppet from a tree by its neck. I eventually concluded that they were members of some kind of rabbit version of a religious order. I'd see them coming and going from my garage at all hours. I gathered they were building tiny coffins.

I surmised this last bit of information from the fact that I had seen what were unmistakably funeral processions and burials. I'd watched as the rabbits shouldered caskets through the snow in the moonlight, and dug holes with their long legs. It was clear that my backyard was becoming a rather crowded burial ground.

What exactly the rabbits were burying remained a mystery for a number of months, until the night I saw several of them drag a baby across the yard and disappear into the garage.

They've been a bit scarce of late, now that the snow's gone, but I have occasionally seen them out there milling around the garage or skulking furtively up and down the alley. The last time I saw them I could have sworn they were smoking cigarettes.

I'm not sure how exactly one would go about negotiating with rabbits, but I would very much like to strike some sort of deal that would involve these creatures delivering to me a living infant. I've wanted a little bitty baby of my own for quite some time now, ever since I lost contact with so many children of my acquaintance.

Should I somehow manage to procure a child from these animals, I shall name it either Ezra or Ezrena (or perhaps Theodore), and I will love the child and it shall be the King of Nothing Never, and a keeper of beasts, and full of joy.

The victim of insomnia, having seen the slowness of the dawn, arises with every nerve tattered and the capacity for happiness ruined. His morning is a desolation.

--Arnold Bennett, Things That Have Interested Me. Third Series. 1926

Melancholics are not so sleepless as maniacs, yet the want of sleep is often an early and prominent symptom. They do not readily sleep, and if they do, they awake soon to be tormented by the vilest misery that it is possible for human creatures to endure.

--A.W, MacFarlane, M.D., Insomnia and its Therapeutics. 1891.

Under [insomnia's] influence injurious changes are permitted by the patient to be made in his daily habits; pursuits which formerly engaged his attention no longer interest him; even important business concerns are sacrificed; and against such tendencies no pre-existing vigour of intellect will afford any defence; the strongest minds (intellectually considered) may sink into apathy and feebleness.

--James Russell, M.D., "On Sleeplessness." British Medical Journal, November 16, 1861.

After dinner, my friend drove me, in a carriage, some five miles back into the country --the greater part of the way, along the margin of Migunticook Lake, and under a terrific precipice, whose boulders every moment threaten destruction. In fact, the whole of a bright sunny day, cooled with healthful zephyrs, was spent in pleasurable excitement. Interesting conversation beguiled the evening; and, after family worship, I sunk to rest in a luxurious curtained bed. Ere long, I slept; and, about five o'clock next morning, was awakened by the crowing of the cock. This was the only night's sleep I have had these last six years and seven months; so help me God. Since then, my nights have been tedious, as usual, without sleep, and some of them distressing.

--"An Example of Protracted Wakefulness," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. July 31, 1845.

Experience in private practice, and extended observation in the wards of general and lunatic hospitals, have taught me that the ordinary hypnotics are frequently unreliable, and that in some instances their use is attended by results as bad as, if not of more serious consequence than, the conditions they were intended to remove. I do not wish by this somewhat sweeping assertion to be understood to condemn the ordinary hypnotics, or to doubt their efficacy in suitable cases; but it seems to me that we run great danger of becoming routinists in the matter of sleeping-draughts....Like most of my fellow practitioners, I constantly meet patients who have run through the whole gamut of sleep-producing drugs, and find their last condition, in many instances, worse than their first.

--Edward N. Brush, M.D., "Some Clinical Experiences With Insomnia," The Practitioner, January 1889.

He knew how to make the heart sing and yodel and howl with joy, could coax from it creaks and croaks and murmurs. He seemed to be able to make it confess its secrets, its hopes and desires, fears and needs.

His performances were uncanny, the stuff of growing legend, and would leave audiences spellbound. He had the ability to make people believe that what they were hearing was an expression of the universal heart, yet in a way that felt both ancient and painfully real and personal to each individual who heard it. Some people proclaimed him an expert in the mysteries of the human heart; others believed that he literally had the ability to channel these mysteries.

In what was left of his own battered heart, however, he knew that he was at best a mimic or a conjurer, at worst a complete fraud.

The heart's ventriloquist was a solitary and broken man. His work exhausted him. After each show he would retire to his dressing room and lock the heart in a metal trunk. And then he would go back to his motel room and spend the night drinking, smoking, and reading novels.

He recognized that many of the words the heart spoke came directly from the novels he read, and he often felt like he was trapped in a past that not only wasn't his own, but, more pathetically, wasn't even real.