the necromancer

by James Callan

I was thirteen years old when I discovered the most beautiful thing in the world. By “thing,” I mean image, and by “beautiful,” I mean this: a limited edition 1990 Bob Mackie Gold Barbie Doll, encased in an orange Jell-O mold. At the time, I was obsessed with Jurassic Park, which I saw in the cinema seven times. Since then, I have re-watched the mosquito-in-amber scene so many times on my family’s VHS copy that my favorite scene now bears scars of static fuzz, its images degraded on the worn-out film. With my older sister in college —a KU Jay Hawk— I had free rein to explore her bedroom, total reign over her belongings. With my sister in college —myself, a vulture— I scavenged her Grateful Dead teddy bears, her refillable Zippo lighters, her gel pens and magic mushroom decals, and, the Holy Grail of all relics, her Barbie Doll collection, which put my Beanie Baby “museum” to shame.

Michelle had them all; all the best Barbies. From Native American to Holiday Hostess. From City Style to Scarlett O’Hara. From Eskimo to Party Barbie; Movin’ Groovin’ to Tree Trimming Barbie. All the essentials. Nothing missed.

I’d sneak into my sister’s room and smoke one of her old cigarettes. I’d pick up the stubby butt and press the lipstick smudge against my lips—my first kiss. I’d light up with Michelle’s Zippo lighter and cough for five minutes straight. I’d hack away, right through the entire rendition of Girls Just Want to Have Fun, which played like my personal sermon from the church of boombox, denomination Casio CK-200.

Sometimes I touched myself while I looked at Michelle’s poster of Marylin Monroe. I had to stand on a chair to press my penis against the wall, against her lips, which, had they been real, and not a picture, would have been able to swallow me whole, let alone my kid-size dick. She was so hot, I’d think, and then I’d remember she was old, remember she was dead, which made me think I was the worst of the worst; somebody who gets off on the dead. I looked up the word—necrophilia. Did this make a necromancer? I was confused, and scared for my soul. But I still humped the wall with regularity.

I wanted to bring Marilyn back to life with the Power of Love. It was weird, with Huey Lewis wailing jovially on from the Casio, but it felt like magic, like a spell. Even so, Marilyn stayed dead, no matter how many times I tried to fill her with something vital. I tried and tried, until I was nearly fourteen, until Marilyn's lips tore open to expose the spider’s nest tucked behind her plump, pouting lips. That was the end of our romance. The flame had died.

When Michelle came back home from KU for Christmas Break, she screamed about the poster. “What happened to Marilyn?!” She shouted.

I pointed at the mass of spiders that had grown, almost to adults, settling on Marilyn's eyelashes. They were black and glossy and looked like mascara. Marilyn looked like a goth. Queen of the dead.

“Gross!” Michelle screamed, then hurried off before returning with a vacuum, sucking up all the juicy arachnids and flaps of Marilyn's savaged lips. She glared at me, tore down her ruined poster. She was so distraught, she didn’t notice the other discrepancy in the curated heaven of her bedroom. High up on the shelf, above the window in the alcove of the reading nook, there was a gap between Jamaican Barbie and Scarlett O’Hara. Two rooms down the hall, in a shoebox tomb with a Zippo lighter and a lipstick-soiled Camel cigarette, a goddess rested, quiet and beautiful: Bob Mackie’s Gold Barbie.

Michelle’s time in Kansas had dulled her eagle eye for detail. She didn’t notice the missing trinkets, the green Jerry Bear or the fly agarics decals. She didn’t notice the clean silhouette of the Gold Barbie, the halo of dust that had settled around where it used to rest, proudly on display. I tried not to stare at what seemed to me so obvious—the neon flashing sign that screamed Your little brother stole the Holy Grail! The gap on the shelves was as wide as the Grand Canyon.

“What are you looking at?” Michelle followed my stare.

“Scarlett O’Hara,” I lied. And I swear it, the Southern Belle winked in my direction. She shared a glance with Jamaican Barbie, who I was certain would spill the beans and throw me under the bus. “I can see under her dress.” It was true, and besides, I thought this comment might detract from the missing Bob Mackie gold standard.

“Little pervert.” She has no idea. “Come help me hold these corners down.”

Michelle put a new poster over the vacated spider horde. Her university’s mascot, a bobblehead bird of prey in primary colors. I read the sporting chant slogan: Rock Chalk, Jayhawk! No doubt about it: my days of wall humping were behind me. 

***** 

But I still had Jurassic Park, and Laura Dern in shorts. I still had the jello scene when the green cube wobbles on the end of the spoon as the young girl trembles in fear. The protagonist screams in fright. The velociraptors, in menacing hunger. Me, in ecstasy. I no longer mourned for Marilyn. I’d moved on.

It was the 74th time I watched Jurassic Park that it all came together: the mosquito in amber, the golden haired girl, Laura Dern on her knees dusting at ancient reptile carcasses, the green jello wobbling on the spoon. I put it all together, all of my favorite things. The divine equation. A connection with god. It added up to this: Bob Mackie Gold Barbie Doll submerged in orange Jell-O. Penetration. Injection. Bringing back the dead to life.

At thirteen and a half, I was no longer a boy. I was a man —no— more than a man. I was a wizard. A scientist and miracle worker. I stood shoulder to shoulder with God. I was the keeper of the sacred object. And now, I knew what to do with it. I was more than a man. I was a necromancer of the highest order. 

***** 

In Jurassic Park, the geneticists extract “dino DNA” from mosquitoes that have been encased in amber, blood sucking insects preserved in crystal for hundreds of millions of years, tiny vampires entombed in fossilized tree resin fresh after sucking the juices of a stegosaurus or T-Rex. After this, there are some hurdles yet to leap, like the incomplete sequence of code in the brontosaurus DNA. But man is industrious, and he leaps like a frog to a suitable solution. He “borrows” DNA from an extant frog, splices the adequate pieces from a modern day, minuscule amphibian into an ancient, megafauna reptile. Voila! Dinosaurs in the modern age. Move over, Godzilla. Fuck off, Barney.

I was thirteen and three quarters, a teenager; I was fast becoming virile. I wasn’t yet fourteen, but already I was a brilliant scientist, and the king of the underworld. I was about to raise the dead in my kitchen. I was about to animate the lifeless, a soulless object, with semi-solid dessert and liquid lust. Did this make me god? Or just one of the many? It made me cool, certainly, if not popular. I had oral sex with Marilyn Monroe, for Christ’s sake! More times than I could count. Like the belly of a whale who dove too deep and scraped against the rock, I have a smooth pink scar under the base of my penis to prove it. Love hurts.

I entered the lab. Mom was not at home. Michelle was out with her girlfriends. My dad could’ve been anywhere. He left me and my sister, my mom, for a flight attendant named Chastity when I was two years old. My dad could be dead. I could bring him back to life, but I wouldn't. The bastard can rot, wherever he may be.

In my lab, I opened the packet of Jell-O. Orange, artificial flavor. Science.

I emptied the contents, like gold dust, into a Duralex bowl, a goblet made of sand, soda ash, and limestone. I wondered what it would be like to sniff the dry Jell-O, like cocaine, like fairy dust, like Pixy Styx, like finely diced magic mushrooms. Another time, perhaps. Another visit to the lab. Another experiment. But not that day. That day, I would raise the dead. That day, I poured one measured cup of boiling water to collide with the mound of Jell-O crystals. I stirred for two minutes, entranced by the deep color, like rust, like the Jerry Bear upstairs that I would take next. Then, a cup of cool water. And last, refrigerate for four hours, but first…the essential ingredient.

I unearthed the hidden sarcophagus, the queen within. I used a butcher knife to sever the original seal, to open the box that had been left to ferment with monetary value. Money is nothing. There is nothing half so precious as life. I had no remorse when I cut savagely into the cardboard, the plastic bonds that shackled my Bob Mackie Gold Barbie like a sex slave to her cell. I was too excited. Too vigorous with my cutting. I sliced open the pad of my palm nearest my thumb. Two drops of blood fell into the bowl of liquid, becoming an ever-so-slightly darker shade of orange. Burnt sienna? Tiger’s Eye? Jasper?

Amber.

With scientific relish, I baptized Barbie in the saccharine soup. I watched her platinum hair float to the surface like golden strands of kelp, pushing it down with a fork. My fingers trembled with a discoverer’s excitement as I shrouded my queen in Saran Wrap, applying the protective membrane to the “egg”that would hatch her, anew and alive.

Do the dead dream? I decided to ask Gold Barbie when the four hours had passed, when I would return to the lab and wake her from her cryo-sleep among the Sub-Zero fridge, rousing her from her sleep capsule among the Tropicana and Heinz.

To kill some time, I watched Jurassic Park —twice— and when the credits rolled for a second time the four hours had just expired. I was still alone in the house, for which I was grateful. I did not want to share that moment with anyone. I did not want to split the credit. This would be my achievement, by god! And besides, I was aroused at the prospect of what would come next. The reverse extraction. The injection of life into a dead vessel. The process was delicate, and required privacy.

I entered the lab, and nearly slipped as my socks slid over the clean, kitchen tiles. I opened the fridge, and was flooded with light. I took hold of the Jell-O mold, the Bob Mackie Gold Barbie within, and as I handled the soda-lime goblet, my hands trembled with excitement, as much or more as a young girl frightened by dinosaurs. The Jell-O wobbled, like Laura Dern’s endowments. It was soft and wet. I was hard and getting wet.

This was it: science; magic; necromancy and fireworks; life. Sex.

I thought of The Sword in the Stone as I plunged my hot meat into the cold Jell-O mold. I thought of a fiery brand dipped in water, a sword, tempered, fresh from the forge. Like flames from a roaring furnace, the orange Jell-O was vibrant, so cold against my navel that it burned.

My moment had come. I had come. Injection, deep within an amber globe. I poked something hard, something plastic, and it hurt, but I was too frenzied by my lust to care about one more scar of passion. It lasted seconds —ten at most— but the experiment was a wild success. It was miraculous. And then, I was to witness the fruits of my labor, artificial, and yet alive.

“Jimmy?” Holy shit! My sister was back.  “Jimmy, are you there?” Michelle was home, and there I was with my dick in the Jell-O and an animated doll mere seconds after her “birth.”

I heard laughter across the lab, beyond the kitchen. I heard girls chatting in the foyer, hanging up coats and removing shoes.

“Jimbo?! I’m home!” More laughter. More chatter. Girls, and all of them alive! What was I to do?

I pulled up my Umbro shorts and kneaded my boner to sedation. I scooped up the mold of Jell-O, its ruined fragments, my creamy seed within. I took the Bob Mackie Gold Barbie and, desperate to silence her, slammed her head against the corner of the kitchen table. I couldn’t risk her spilling the beans. I dare not risk her squealing. She did not bleed, but she stopped breathing. So my secret was safe, my science safeguarded. I gave Barbie life. But she was gone. He who giveth may taketh away.

“What are you doing?” My sister came in with her friends, who were, to a thirteen-year-old boy, all goddesses and queens (living beings of the opposite sex).

“Nothing.” Behind my back, I dropped Bob Mackie Gold Barbie into a large vase with nylon water lilies. In front of me, on the kitchen table, the ruinous Jell-O lay in chunks and fragments like a war torn village.

“The Hell’s that?” Michelle asked, and her friends all tittered, looking down on me in the best possible way. They wore KU shirts, primary colored tank tops that read Rock Chalk, Jayhawk!

“I killed the Jell-O,” I admitted.

Michelle walked over to me, plunged her hand into what was left of the dessert, the cream-filled me inside, and shoveled a gelatinous fragment into her mouth. “Still tastes good,” she smiled, and mussed up my hair with her sticky fingers.

Then her friends sat down and, one by one, ate my science experiment. They consumed every last morsel of my work, every last drop of me, and it was so holy, so miraculous, that it raised to life something dead within me.

My heart fluttered. My lungs took in air. I watched as my sister and her friends passed along the bowl, cleaning the soda-lime goblet with their tongues of greed, and it restored me, cleansed me, brought a part of me back to life.

Photo of James Callan

BIO: James Callan is the author of the novels Anthophile (Alien Buddha Press, 2024) and A Transcendental Habit (Queer Space, 2023). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, BULL, X-R-A-Y, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. He lives on the Kāpiti Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand.