Ghost of Iambe

What follows is the last posting by Iambe:

Posted: Mar 22, 2006

BABA YAGA ON THE BOULEVARD

The Sun itself danced on the hood of my car, spinning bright pirouettes. Or so my fatigued mind romanced itself into believing on a wicked Wednesday morning commute. I was practically on autopilot as I changed lanes. Signal, find space, gun it and celebrate with a yawn. I forgot to shoulder check. But there was no crunch, crank or crashing to be had. Victory was mine! Another drawn out yawn.

I looked back into my rear view mirror to determine how close I had cut it. The traffic was heavy and every other driver around me was feeling the morning crunch. Ten minutes until start time, ten short minutes before the work day began. Ten long minutes in the car surrounded by jerks and jackasses with driver’s licenses and varying degrees of common sense and caffeination. Plenty of space and thus nothing to worry about, I had found a rare traffic pocket and would defend it with all the full mass of my car. This was a typical morning on the Boulevard – 12 lanes of inner-city superhighway designed to move as many as possible, as quickly as possible through the metropolis that is Philadelphia.

I carried on, just another two lights and I would turn into work. I would need to move over once more; this time recalling the importance of the shoulder check. I made my change, pointing my vehicle toward the turning lane I would eventually have to be in. Again I glanced back into my rear view mirror. What I saw in the car behind me, a champagne corolla nova trying to pass by, chilled me to the very quick of my soul.

I stopped at the light next light and the driver of the Corolla pulled in behind me. My heart raced. In the passenger seat of the not-so-styling but economically sound sedan was an elderly woman, a woman so old she appeared dead to me at first glance. Her face, framed by a thick wolf fur lined hood in 50 degree weather was the waxen grey seen only on silver screen necromancers and the nearly departed. Her eyes were deep pits of plum black, visible only in contrast to the absence of all but shade on her face. Her mouth was an outline in a colouring book and the crayon used to fill it in was primary red. 0,100,100,0! She had coloured outside of the lines.

The driver, sporting a similar wolf fur lined heavy coat, her face filling the frame to the point of bursting beyond it’s drawstringed boundaries, appeared 40 years younger than the crone occupying the passenger seat. There was a bit of life in her skintone, blood still flowed in her flesh and pooled in her lips of a plump burgundy. Her focus, behind knockoff sunglasses, remind firmly forward, oblivious to my backwards attentions or the world around her.

It was entrancing to look behind me and soak in the macabre commuters I shared the road with this morning. The passenger, the corpse crone noticed me and laughed, the minute the red lines of her lips parted, I had anticipated greater blackness. Instead a fiery golden flash rode the sunbeams into my mind. Her mouth was, I hope … I pray, full of golden teeth. I must convince myself of this as the only other option is hellish to conceive. I looked away upon seeing the fiery flash and returned my eyes to the dull red of the traffic light holding me in place. Then I caught movement out of my peripheral vision and without thought looked again, directly into my rear view mirror. Hanging from the sedan’s own rear view mirror and bouncing up and down in a perfect hypnotic beat was a toy on a spring. Indeed an unusual ornament in a car driven and occupied by two so old, so out of place, so out of time.

I refocused on the two women and found them both laughing and pointing at me, both revealing fiery maws. Chills ran up and down my spine giving me just enough energy to break the basilisk gaze I had on them, and on their bouncing trinket. Energy enough for me to look forward.

The light changed to an emerald green, a verdant green. My car crept forward and I hoped in this busy traffic I would be able to make it and traverse the intersection. I did not look back again. I also did not make the light. Instead, I pulled my car up to the line, right at the crest of the intersection and again began the long wait. I idly watched the cars passing in front of me. As my eyes followed a particularly broken down pickup truck trundle through the intersection, I noticed that next to me, in the lane directly to my right, the champagne sedan idled. Both the larger woman, and her passenger looked directly at me, heckling and pointing. I got a better look at the bouncing trinket. It was a fat black witch with a red mouth and diaphanous wings, bouncing up and down on coiled wire.

Dear Friends, I now know a horrible truth and issue to you a warning. Baba Yaga has left her Russian wood and traded in her mortar for a more modern conveyance, a late 80’s Toyota Corolla. Vasalisa, while we had heard, escaped her clutches, has actually joined her as a companion. There are better prospects, less questions to strip the life out of her, for here, in the New World. She cruises the city’s superhighway on morning commutes, entrancing victims of urban sprawl with her hypnotic charms and burning, hungry maw. Beware. And somewhere, perhaps in Mayfair, or Germantown, or Fishtown, resting chicken legs lay attached to the bottom of a stone-faced row home, waiting again to dance.

WHERE YOU BEEN?

Working, more working and some resting. I have given notice and will soon have details on the new job It should be a lot more relaxing