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      The Neo-Comintern Electronic Magazine  --  Installment Number 205
 .... .. .  .   .    .     .      .        .      .     .    .   .  . .. ....
    `""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""'
      
                  Subversive Literature for Subverted People

                  Date:                        June 16, 2002

                  Editor:                                BMC

                  Writers:              Margarina Cataclysma                                              
                                                


  d""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""b.
 ;P                      Featured in this installment:                     .b
 $                                                                          $
 $                    On The Beach - Margarina Cataclysma                   $
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                                EDITOR'S NOTE
                      (please do not read the following)

  I just got back from talking with the neighbourhood kids, exchanging
  witticisms and whatnot.  We were talking about the nice weather, the nice
  beach, and the nice article.  If you are a nice person, I'm sure that
  you will enjoy this nice issue.  That's all I'll say.  Melatonin has been
  encouraging me to say as little as possible on Sunday mornings.  

                                                                       ,o$o
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                                                               `  `$b 
 d$'                 On The Beach (Paranoid Fantasy #4)                  ,$
 $:                       by Margarina Cataclysma                       ,$P
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    `"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""'

  He wheeled himself off the thick carpets, through the doors which had
  been protecting him from the fresh breeze.  He rammed his chair next to
  the railing.  It was beautifully sunny.  He yelled, "Ernesto!"

  The man below raised himself from the tulips, where he was digging with a
  small trowel: "Sir", he said.

  The bald man on the second floor said with a trace of jollity in his
  voice: "It's beautiful, Ernesto."

  Ernesto, squinting upwards through the sun, replied "Sir."

  The bald man said, recklessly, "Ernesto, I think I'll take some air on the
  beach."

  Ernesto replied, "Sir", and placed his trowel in the little wheelbarrow
  with the other tools.  In less than a minute Ernesto was at his side, and, 
  curving his broad back over the small bald man, he lifted him from the 
  chair.  He placed the frail man on the cloth-covered table.  He pulled the 
  pyjamas from the man's flopping legs.  He sat him up, supporting the old 
  man's back with one hand, pulling the sweater and shirt off with the
  other.

  The old man was excited: He was saying, "Ernesto, I do think that the
  fresh air and fresh water of this sea will do me wonders."  Ernesto
  acknowledged, "Sir."  The old man continued.  "The other day, Ernesto,
  when you held me off the rocks... I swear, Ernesto, that I felt my toes in
  the cold spray."  He grinned wildly.  Ernesto smiled.  He said, "I believe
  we will have a low tide this afternoon, Sir."  And the old man leaned
  himself toward the window where he could see some ships floating on the
  horizon.

  Soon the old man was outfitted in his snug blue trunks, his yellow banded
  hat with, for extra security, its soft chin-strap, and the dark glasses
  that wrapped around his thin face, protecting not only his eyes but his
  eyebrows and cheekbones.  Small wads of cotton were lodged in the old
  man's ears.  Finally, Ernesto smeared a little bit of zinc paste on the
  old man's nose and lips.  Ernesto picked the old man up, vigourously, for
  the old man was beaming from ear to ear.  Ernesto backed out of the room
  and trotted down the stairs, out another door, across the patio and down
  across the lawn where Ernesto had previously been digging.  The old man
  closed his eyes under the glasses.  A thin singing whistle emerged from
  his tight joyous throat.  The sound trembled in time with Ernesto's
  footfalls.  The old man re-opened his eyes, even though the light was
  blinding.  He squeezed Ernesto's arm: "Stop, stop for a minute," he said.

  Ernesto did, and the two men looked from their perch atop the cliff down
  the grade to the rocky beach where bits (from here, bits) of lumber and 
  flotsam had been deposited lately.  All the way across the blue sea,
  flashes of light glimmered.

  They descended.  At the bottom, Ernesto bee-lined for the soft golden
  patch of sand near the center of the beach.  There was no trail: he
  stepped over the sharp uneven rocks and logs, between which could be
  glimpsed the dry husks of dead fish and snails and kelps.  It was, as
  Ernesto had counseled, a low-ish tide and the air was seasoned with the
  smell of drying molluscs and sea-weeds.  He set the old man down on a
  smooth log which had, at its back, a flat rock, a natural seat.  The two
  men inhaled audibly.  Their chests rose, stretching the muscles that in
  normal times heavily restrained the lungs.  The old man with the
  sunglasses exhaled first, all in a blow, and then, seemingly decades later
  (the old man thought to himself anxiously), the younger man, evenly and
  lightly.  Ernesto put himself to arranging a blanket and small folding
  backrest, which things he took from a sack that he had carried on his back
  from the house, in the center of the soft patch of sand.

  "I think you will like it here, Sir," he said.  "Conditions are perfect,"
  he said, referring to the heat on the small patch of sand, the way that
  the tall rocks and haphazardly deposited logs provided shelter from the 
  persistent breezes.  The old man agreed, "Yes."  He was watching some
  reckless gulls flying on the breeze which was thus visibly evident but
  could not be witnessed directly in this sheltered portion of the seashore.
  He knew it existed, could see its effects.  He remembered it from not
  three minutes ago, on the exposed up-side of the beach.  He felt himself
  sleepy, as though the wind had pulled from him some portion of his
  previous night's rest.

  Fighting, he said, "Ernesto, please lift me into the water."  And lifting
  him by his underarms, Ernesto held the little man out before him, trundled
  him to the edge of the water, and perching on the brink of one of the
  shore's black rocks, dipped the old man's useless feet into the water.
  The old man curled his head anxiously, watching the point of interception
  between his legs and the water.  "Eee," he said, "more, Ernesto."  Ernesto
  lowered the man past his knees, to mid-thigh.  Some splashes struck the
  old man's torso, Ernesto's hands, the old man's glasses.  "Eeee", he said,
  and Ernesto lowered him further, until the halfway mark on his trunks was
  wet, and the old man inhaled with real shock.  Ernesto lifted the man out
  of the water and sat him down on the edge of the rock, holding him gently
  upright, letting the feet dangle in the water.  The old man turned his
  dark glasses toward Ernesto.  "I don't know, Ernesto."  And Ernesto
  nodded.  He looked at the horizon. The old man leaned head down, looking
  in the direction of his feet.  The action of the waves pushed and pulled
  his feet in and out from the rock wall.  Some time passed in this way,
  with the water moving in and out, the birds calling overhead, and the sun
  shining on his shoulders and legs.  He could feel Ernesto behind him.
  When he looked up he had an unexpected yet not unpleasant feeling of
  vertigo, wherein the entire world rushed in toward him.  He moved his arm
  back to tap Ernesto on the knee, and Ernesto, understanding, lifted him
  back toward the small beach's patch of sand.

  When he recovered himself, he was reclining upon the blanket, his head
  carefully supported by the pillow Ernesto had placed upon the little
  folding backrest.  Not seeing his faithful man, he called to him,
  "Ernesto!"  And immediately the head bobbed up over the rim of the low
  tidal pool where the man had been playing with the sea creatures there,
  like a boy.  Ernesto waved at his employer and came to his side, from
  whence, after some words and moments of dottering with sun-creme, he was
  sent forth to attend to matters of the household.  There was to be a
  dinner that evening, and it would be remiss if Ernesto neglected
  preparations.  The man heard Ernesto's footfalls diminishing in the
  distance and imagined him climbing the stairs regretfully but with purpose
  in mind: the ease and comfort of him, the thin weak man, lying on his back
  on the beach.  The old man sighed, and dropped his head onto the pillow.

  For a long time he could not doze.  He lifted his thin arm and made a
  shadow over his eyes with it.  He watched the gulls reeling overhead.  One
  gull hopped and jumped on the verge the beach, dipping down into the
  hollows and bounding back up onto the rocks, angrily.  It tilted its head
  examiningly at things.  It pretended to ignore the man, and defended its
  territory fiercely from other birds, one or another of which arrived
  periodically, to bother and annoy it.  The man closed his eyes and the sun
  made sparkles on the insides of his eyelids.  He breathed as deeply and as
  slowly as he could.  A trickle of moisture appeared at the junction of his
  glasses and the skin of his face.  He shifted his torso slightly.  "There
  will be a nice colour," he thought to himself, "Julia will surely be
  pleased."  His head throbbed gently in the bright light from which it was
  mostly shielded, and the man imagined himself in his white linen jacket,
  perhaps dancing, holding forth, holding Julia's attention, enjoying a
  faint blush under her eyes.  He imagined her body beneath her own clothes,
  and thought of the blush which would spread on her chest.  He felt a blush
  on his own chest, dreaming there on the sand.

  Exhausted, he slept.  He slept while the gulls wheeled about over him,
  while the sun ate the wispy remnants of clouds and tilted itself across
  the sky, while the water tugged itself further and further away from his
  safe patch of sand.  He slept, his mouth fell open, and he snored.
  Whether it was the noise he made that made them curious, or whether they
  routinely surveyed the area, it is impossible to say.  It was a lone crab
  who first ventured up the beach to the old man.  The gull cried its high
  note and shuffled its feet.  It had not dared attract the attention of the
  man.  The crab walked and touched, looked and chased.  It palpated the
  light underside of the man's foot, then dashed off.  The man's breathing
  sent slight vibrations down through his leg.  He did not sense them.  He
  did not sense the crab's next tentative touchings, nor those of its
  friend, soon arrived, or of it's friend's friend, and so on.  Soon the
  gull was overcome by a sense of danger and it shrieked to itself, and
  maybe to the crabs at the man's feet.  It hopped up into the air and flew
  rapidly to sit on a rock slightly farther away.  The man knew nothing of
  this drama.

  The water slowly moved out, revealing deeper ledges and clefts of the
  rocky beach.

  There were not really many so crabs around the man's feet.  Most of the
  crabs that the receding water revealed were excited to play with the 
  sea-stars and sea urchins wilting there under the hot sun.  The sea-stars 
  tried to make their escapes: stretching themselves downward, after the
  tide, trying to distance themselves from the pinches of the quick crabs.
  The man himself dripped a droplet of saliva from the corner of his mouth.
  A crab pinched him on the leg.  Another pulled at a veiny bump- blood
  flowed sluggishly beneath the surface of his unevenly furred skin.  A crab
  pulled at the leg hair.  His pedicured feet were tugged upon by the crabs'
  relatively tiny rasping podipalps.  An aeroplane passed overhead, leaving
  a condensation trail which the sun consumed tidily.  The man slept.

  The point of entry was an old, stubborn, blister on the side of his thigh,
  just above his knee, where his chair had rubbed.  The scab, which had been 
  carefully tended by Ernesto for a period of nearly two months now, peeled, 
  without difficulty, off of his warm, slightly sweaty flesh when a crab
  pried at it.  Three other crabs attacked the first crab for its scabrous
  prize.  It scuttled off quickly and devoured the thing.  Two of the first
  three engaged in a claw-clacking battle over the wound-site, and the third
  tasted of the wound itself and was soon joined by no fewer than four
  others.  In a short time they had opened the wound to a pleasant size
  where ten or so crabs could dine.  They moved as a mass.  Some crabs moved
  over his body- over the soft folds of his old man's torso, which was
  softly heaving.  The violent entry must have stimulated some shock.

  At the party, some of the guests were becoming raucous.  There was talk of
  a duel.  Too much wine had been drunk.  He and Julia were trying to find a
  quiet place alone, where she could continue to touch his flesh like she
  was, but they were being persistantly bothered by the other dancers.
  Julia was being pinched lasciviously, as was he, and he was terrified to
  hear her scream.

  The man suddenly came to awareness.  The beach was strangely cold.  His
  nap had not refreshed him.  He sat up as far as he could, squinting
  against the sun, aware of something unusual- a feeling, a vibration- in
  the air.  He heard a gull scream desperately.  He crossed his hands in his
  lap, and brushed his hand against some part of him that was unfamiliar,
  and then, he felt his hand pinched.  Abruptly aware that something was
  indeed wrong, he moaned, "Eeee!"  When he saw the shifting red blanket
  that covered his lower half, his first thought was that he was horribly
  sunburned.  He realized that this was overly optimistic, however, and
  emitted another "Eeee!"  He sat up straight.  He looked about, in all the
  directions.  Panicking, he rolled himself over and lunged away from the
  folding backrest.  He pulled himself, with his not-very-strong arms, up
  the beach.  The crabs disapproved.  Several larger crabs ran up to
  restrain him.  They were tugging at him, making him squirm and twist.  He
  hit at them with his fists.  He smashed one, and another.  And ten more
  emerged almost as from their very corpses.  He sat himself up, yelled
  hoarsely, "Ernesto!  Ernesto!  Ernesto!" and stopped, hoping to hear some
  reply, a concerned horrified scream, perhaps.  But overhead he heard only
  the gulls.  In the house, he imagined, one of the women would be noisily
  pushing the vacuum cleaner or trying to occupy Ernesto with some boring
  feminine detail.  "Ernesto!" he cried again.

  He was now pulling himself over the sandy footprints of his man Ernesto,
  toward the rocks of the upper beach.  "If I can gain that log," he told 
  himself, "They won't be able to find me and perhaps I can wait it out
  until Ernesto arrives!"  And he gained a little territory upwards, while
  the preponderance of crabs lingered behind.  He looked behind him and saw
  that they were, presumably, getting their wits together.  He cried feebly, 
  "Eeeeee," and tried to hurry.  But his first burst of panicked strength
  had left his muscles weak, and his arms were trembling.  He smashed again
  at the crabs which were within reach.  This flailing put him off balance.
  He fell to the sand heavily, rolled over clumsily, and pulled himself
  along, frantically, on his bum.  He pushed his hands deeply into the sand
  to lever himself along.  The crabs did not lose him in his flight.  From
  time to time he saw bits of muscle under the moving, impatient blanket of
  crabs.  He flapped his arms at the creatures, to remove them from his
  legs, and they bit at his hands.  He fell over again.  He hoisted himself
  up, and unfortunately lacerated his hand on an old bottle.  Blood dripped.

  He continued to pull himself along the beach, up, toward the impossibly
  distant log bench, toward the stairs, toward the lawns and the house where 
  Ernesto would pluck the things from his body, and bathe and bandage him 
  tenderly.  The crabs found his fresh wound, he smashed at them.  He
  screamed, at them, at himself, at Ernesto, at the sky above him.  He was
  exhausted.  He whimpered to himself.  The gulls, excited by the spectacle,
  screamed around him, and again he had a sense of vertigo.  He closed his
  eyes for an instant to stop the effect.

  On his eyelids was the colour red.  Two colours of red, in fact: crab red
  and blood red.  He saw not his own flesh ripped and fed upon, but his
  fist, smashing the body of crab, and its opened, pulped body, with
  mysterious organs and shards of broken shell.
                                                       

 .d&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&b.

  The Neo-Comintern Magazine / Online Magazine is seeking submissions.
  Unpublished stories and articles of an unusual, experimental, or
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  Submissions of 25-4000 words are wanted; the average article length is
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  Contributors will receive copies of the most recent print issue of The
  Neo-Comintern; works of any length and type will be considered for
  publication in The Neo-Comintern Online Magazine and/or The Neo-Comintern
  Magazine.

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  the neo-comintern

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