Fiction – Page 16 – Diabolical Plots

DP FICTION #42A: “Medium Matters” by R.K. Duncan

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Dear Medium Matters,

I think something supernatural, like a curse, or a hex, or an evil eye, is wrong with my house, or with me, or with my Scotty, Baxter. He’s been acting strange lately. He’s always been quiet, especially for a little dog, but these last few weeks he’s been barking all the time. He wakes me up two or three times every night, barking and growling. He snaps, not at guests or the mailman or anything, just at blank walls and empty rooms. He’s a good dog. Yesterday, he was staring at the wall and growling and then he jumped into it and tried to bite it so hard he left a dent in the drywall.

It’s not just Baxter though. I’ve been feeling anxious lately, and I swear it’s not just in my head. Little things are getting moved around, like my makeup. I always keep it very organized, but I’ve found everything thrown around like a teenager’s room three times in the last two weeks. Other little things in my bedroom get moved around too.

I haven’t really noticed it, but all my friends complain about the cold when they come over, and last week, when my friend David visited, he started shivering so badly his teeth chattered, and his lips were turning blue. I’ve had the maintenance guy come out to look twice, and he swears the heater and the thermostat are fine.

I’m sure this is something supernatural, but what can I do about it? I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, who I’ve offended, or how to fix it. I’m worried. What if it gets worse? Are my friends in danger? Am I? Is Baxter?

Hoping you can help.

Cursed, in Kansas City.

Hi Cursed,

First: yes, this very well might be something supernatural, but no, I don’t think you’re in any kind of physical danger, nor is Baxter.

Before we get into the supernatural, please do some things for me: Take your dog to the vet and get him checked out. Put down traps or poison, or call an exterminator, in case mice are knocking your makeup over in the night (That could explain Baxter as well). Try setting up a space heater and making some coffee or tea the next time your guests complain of being cold. Talk to a professional about your anxiety and make sure it’s not just the sinking feeling of being 29 and single, staring down $120,000 in student loan debt while you support yourself on unreliable freelance writing gigs. Have you done all that? Things still feel wrong? Alright, let’s get into this.

I think you’re being stalked by a ghost. All the signs you’ve mentioned point to it. This means someone who died recently is harboring a deep obsession with you, enough to keep them tied to the living world. Maybe it’s an ex who thought they deserved one more chance, the one with the good hair and too much of Mommy’s money. Maybe it’s that friend you always suspected was hoping for more, the one who was always so happy to listen when your romances fell apart. Maybe it’s a stranger who formed a really creepy attraction from a half-second of elbow contact at the supermarket and got hit by a car trying to sneak into the bushes outside your window one night.

I keep saying they, but allow me to rant a little before we go on. This is almost certainly the ghost of a man. Men are the ones who think they’re entitled to a piece of you, whether you say yes or not. There are ex-boyfriends who think they still own you, that the little shifting floor of independence you’ve managed to claw together out of the flood of debt and expenses and zero-hour contracts is just a cry for help. Or maybe it’s a ‘friend’ who thinks he’s in the ‘friendzone’, that mystical sex waiting room that he’ll get out of if he just tears down all the men you’re actually looking for a romance with to show you how nice a guy he is. This creepy, awful, toxic shit can turn really dangerous for women. We all know it. We all hear stories, even if it never happens to us. And sometimes, these predators don’t even give up when they die. The only bright spot here is that a ghost stalker won’t graduate to assaulting you, because they can’t lift anything heavy enough to hit you with.

Alright. Rant over. Let’s talk about what you can do.

Start with the easy things. Ward your house. Salt or rowan branches across doorframes and windowsills are good generic wards, or you can use the symbols of any faith you hold sincerely. Make sure you ward everything, or the ghost can still slip in through that neglected attic window, or the hole above the back door that your landlord’s been promising to have patched for two months. The wards work by reinforcing the psychic significance of the house, dividing the world between inside and outside, which brings us to step two.

Get rid of anything connected to whoever’s haunting you. If this is just the spirit of some creeper who decided you were meant to be, you won’t have anything, but if it’s a bitter ex, you need to toss anything they might feel a deep connection to. Photos, clothes, gifts, the card he gave you, just in case, no obligations, just if things don’t work out, the one in black and silver that you were sure he’d see any activity on, the one wrapped in the note with a number you could call any time, if you needed help.

I’m assuming you know who’s haunting you. You probably do, but if not, peel an apple in one long strip and throw the peel over your left shoulder. It will twist to spell out the spirit’s name when it lands, or maybe the name of your true love, if you still believe in those.

If putting up wards and emptying your closets doesn’t get rid of your stalker, you’re going to need help, and it’s time to make a choice, because there are two different paths to pursue, and they both take money and time. You can try to reason with the ghost, or you can force it out. Reasoning is easier to do, but people who are so determined to harass you that they linger after death as a skeevy revenant aren’t usually inclined to be reasonable.

You can try talking to the ghost without professional help. Get some friends, preferably ones who knew the stalker before he died. Sit round a table. Light some candles if you like, and have a séance. There’s a lot of mechanical aids you can use: Ouija boards, crystal balls, bells, bowls of ink, etc., but at the core, you’re just trying to open your mind and spirit and allow the ghost to make contact. Definitely don’t sacrifice anything. You’ll ruin your tablecloth. In an ideal scenario, you’ll make contact with the ghost, your friends will be supportive presences and a productive dialogue will get the stalker out of your life and on to their final reward. In the most likely scenario, nothing will happen and you’ll all get bored after twenty minutes and watch Paranormal Activity. In the next most likely, the ghost will possess someone who happens to be sensitive, say awful things that make you cringe, and try to grab your breasts, or maybe it will turn out that one of your so-called friends always thought your stalker deserved another chance, that he was a good guy at heart. Amateur séances only succeed 9% of the time, and more than half of those fail to make controlled contact. But, hey, they’re free, unless your friends are assholes.

If you’re not one of the lucky 9%, you’ll need professional help. That means a medium. Don’t rush. Don’t just pick name out of the phonebook. Get references if you can, and make time for a long initial interview. As regular readers here will know, picking a medium is like picking a therapist. If you work with one, they’ll see a lot of you that’s usually hidden. Channeling is a deep emotional connection, with you and with the spirit. The medium will put you in contact with the spirit who’s stalking you and try to help you talk with him. That’s really the biggest problem with friendly contact. Do you think you’ll be able to get through to the ghost of the creeper who’s stalking you and convince him to stop? Do you think he’ll have learned to take no for answer? If you knew him well and you think you can talk him down, get a medium and try, but otherwise, you’ll need to do things the harder way, which means exorcism or a court order.

Exorcism is hard to come by, unless you happen to be priest or an adept yourself. So if you want one, first ask: was there a religious symbol you thought of immediately back when we talked about first steps? That’s great. Thank whichever god you can that the world hasn’t knocked you around one too many times to believe there’s anything benevolent watching over you. If you and the ghost share a religious conviction, and that religion allows for exorcism, get a properly bonded priest/monk/nun/elder or what-have-you and go to town. The only problem is that, even in our increasingly secular age, this kind of exorcism depends on faith. If you and the ghost don’t both believe sincerely, no amount of witch doctors, wizened gurus, old priests, or young priests are going to help.

If you don’t have the benefit of faith and an indulgent religious official, exorcism requires an adept. This is different than a medium, and much harder to find. A true adept is constantly aware and present in the adjacent plane where things like ghosts linger. That makes them powerful. These people are hard to find. I don’t know how many live quietly, but there are seven ‘public’ adepts, known to a small community of enthusiasts and lesser practitioners, in the five boroughs of New York. There are five in greater Los Angeles. There are seventeen in Istanbul, the largest collection in the world. I don’t personally know of any in Kansas City. All I can say about looking for one of these people is: good luck, and all I can say about negotiating with them is: be polite. They won’t care how long it took you to find them, or what you had to do to get into the party, or that you haven’t really slept in weeks, and they could fix it with a snap of their fingers. Adepts have their own rules, and they usually don’t want money.

Since getting an adept for an exorcism is more-or-less a pipe dream, like graduating without debt, or buying a house before you’re thirty-five, if you don’t have faith, go to the same place you’d go for a marriage license: the courthouse. Let me begin by saying that, yes, getting a judge to issue a restraining order against a ghost is very, very difficult. Getting a judgment and an order against an ordinary stalker is hard enough. For a ghost, you might go through every judge in town and get absolutely nothing. You will get pushback and disbelief from judges, bailiffs, lawyers, and bystanders with no business in your life at all. Be patient. Do your research. Hope. A medium can offer expert testimony, or maybe even channel the spirit in court to convince the judge. If you see a therapist, they can speak to the harm the spirit does. Even then, they probably won’t help you. They didn’t before, when he was handsome and formal in his suit, when he smelled of cologne and leather and money. Why would they help now, when he’s just a shadow that never leaves the corner of your eye?

If you can get a judgment, though, it will bind the spirit. Laws govern the spirit realm that corresponds to a legal jurisdiction and spirits can’t ignore them. You do need to serve the papers for a restraining order, which can be tricky. You can get a medium to channel the spirit and have an ordinary lawyer serve the spirit while it’s manifest, or you can find and retain the ghost of a lawyer, burn or shred the restraining order, and have them serve the papers entirely in the spirit realm. Look for lawyerly ghosts at unused courthouses or defunct law offices, and lure them to your home with incense made from shredded trial transcripts.

But the truth is, none of this will work for you, probably. Your friends never kept this creepy fuck away from you when he was alive. Talking reasonably didn’t stop him from obsessing hard enough to bind himself to you across the veil. It won’t help now. God doesn’t have time for women alone, and adepts are farther out of reach than the perfect contours from the magazine are when you stand at the mirror trying not look like you’ve been crying. The only real choice is faith in something better, in the church of you. Believe that you can make it work, that you can hustle and scrape and scrounge your way past rent next month, past ramen and peanut butter and into something better. Believe in yourself until your faith is hard and bright as new knife, and then maybe you can throw the spirit out on your own terms, and maybe it won’t all come falling down around your ears because you’re twenty dollars short for this month.

That’s a lot to digest, I know, but you can handle it. Good luck and stay strong, Cursed.

Marissa Matters, Medium.

Author’s Note: This story began as some cheap jokes with just enough narrative to string them together. I think I began it after a humorous peek at the Wikihow article on exorcism. The social commentary appeared before the final draft, but it took several more rounds of submission and revision before I realized the real story was the columnist and I gave her the space she needed to explain what drives someone to write an internet advice column on how to deal with ghosts.

R. K. Duncan lives in a ramshackle apartment in West Philadelphia with his supportive and long-suffering partner and a shocking absence of cats. When not writing, he is occassionaly paid to lambaste stupid robots. In his spare time he cooks and lavishes attention on his beloved German cooing knives. Before writing, he studied philosophy and linguistics at Haverford college, and glimpses of academia can sometimes be found in his work. His fiction has appeared most recently in Cast of Wonders and Body Parts magazine. His blog and links to other work can be found at rkduncan-author.com.

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DP FICTION #41B: “Jesus and Dave” by Jennifer Lee Rossman

It had been just over a year since the second coming of Jesus and, like most atheists, I couldn’t say it had been a particularly good year for me.

Sure, the Lord’s first bit of business had included clearing up some of the more vague parts of the Bible, including some mistranslations and things his father had, in his words, “gotten wrong.” That put an end to a lot of bigotry. The lack of world hunger and the new commandments about littering were incredible, of course, more positive change than I’d hoped to see in my lifetime.

But it’s just… having proof that my entire belief system (or lack thereof) was absolutely backwards, and having every holier-than-thou relative constantly sending passive-aggressive emails filled with selfies of them and His Holiness…

My fellow non-believers converted, and one even became a priest. I think I’m one of the few who refused to do so.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I believed. I’d seen too many miracles – some firsthand, like the time the East River parted to let the family of kittens cross safely. So I believed. I just didn’t let it change my life.

I didn’t pray, didn’t give any more to charity than I normally did, and I sure didn’t stop drinking (one of his newer, less popular commandments). I lived as a godless heathen, as my Auntie Ruth would say.

So imagine my surprise when the lord and savior himself knocked on my door and asked for my help. You wouldn’t think he’d have to knock, what with all his magic and ability to walk through walls. But he was nothing if not courteous.

He stood on my stoop, all beard and white robe and smiles, a stained glass window come to life.

“My child,” he said in a warm, booming voice. If the whole son of God thing didn’t work out, he could make a killing as a game show announcer.

“It’s pronounced ‘Dave,'” I told him politely, averting my eyes from the angels standing on either side of him. I’d never read the Bible, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t describe angels as horrifying, winged humanoids with tentacles on their faces.

“Of course. After David, the Biblical king.”

“No, after my mother’s brother Dave, the mattress salesman.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw one of the angels snatch a pigeon off the railing and eat it.

“I think Nazareth is that way,” I said, pointing.

He pointed in the other direction. “Actually, it’s that way.”

Well, I guess he would know.

“I come to ask your assistance,” he said, clasping his hands.

I opened my mouth to make a sarcastic comment, but stopped when I saw the look of fear in his eye. What on Earth was Jesus afraid of? And what did he think I could possibly do about it?

“What is it?” I asked, nervously hoping he wanted me to come over to his place and kill a spider. As they had been mentioned in an addendum to “thou shalt not kill,” maybe he couldn’t bear to ask anyone else to sully their immortal soul.

Even before he spoke, I knew that couldn’t be it. Jesus had probably invented the whole “catching a spider in a cup and sliding a piece of paper underneath it” trick.

“There’s a reason I came back now, David.” He smiled apologetically. “Dave. The world is in danger. Will you help me save it?”

I thought about it for a minute, then nodded. I rather liked the world, even if there were a lot of religious people in it.

The museum was only a short walk from my apartment, but it took forever because somebody had to stop every five seconds and sign autographs. I wondered if his pen ever ran out of ink, or if it worked like the loaves and fishes.

When we finally found a moment of peace – JC made a blind beggar see, and everyone left us and crowded around the guy to, I dunno, absorb the miraculous juju or something – I asked him what exactly he expected me to do.

“Despite what my more… excitable followers would have you believe,” he said, spreading his hands in vague gestures as he spoke, “the Devil has not actually been corrupting the American media or making toasters explode.”

“What about making politicians cheat on their wives?”

“No, not even that. Gabriel!” He snapped his fingers at one of the angels, who was holding a squirrel inches from its mouth. “What did we talk about? If you’re going to come to the Earthly plane, you have to follow the rules. Do you want to go home and stay with Dad, or do you want to put down that squirrel and come with us to save the world from Satan?”

It reluctantly returned the squirrel to the tree.

“That’s what I thought.” He turned back to me. “No, the Devil has been imprisoned for the last two thousand years, as was I. Our destinies were entwined, which is why I let myself be crucified. If I died, so would he.”

Well, that was a part of the Easter story they left out.

We came to the steps of the museum and stopped while Jesus posed for a picture with a group of tourists. The angels tried to use the camera but succeeded only in taking a series of close-ups of their own faces, and I had to step in.

“Thank you, Dave,” Jesus said when the crowd had dispersed.

“Shouldn’t you be the one getting thanked?”

“Probably, but there’s no one here but an atheist, so I can wait until someone better comes along.” He smiled and elbowed me in the ribs. Of course he had to be funny. “Anyway.” He pointed to the museum. “Around a year ago, archeologists found something mankind was never meant to find. A jar that was his prison. And they opened it. I need you to close it.”

I stared at him blankly. So it wasn’t “come over and kill this spider,” but a variant on “hey, could you help me open these pickles?” He was Jesus. Couldn’t he handle closing a jar on his own?

“Not this jar.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“Oh, didn’t I mention that I can read minds?” He grinned, like this was all some enormous joke on my behalf. “I’ll overlook the scandalous thoughts about that blonde tourist a couple blocks back if you’ll start thinking of me as He with a capital H. It’s kind of polite.”

Kind of presumptuous, I thought. Very loudly, so he could definitely hear it.

This was the part of religion I hated most. I could get behind the idea of some conscious force controlling the universe, and accepted that, if an afterlife existed, that force probably wouldn’t let you in if you killed people or stole from little old ladies.

But all the stupid rules. Don’t eat this kind of meat, even though it’s not really that different from this other meat. Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife or oxen, even though sitting around and thinking “gee, my neighbor sure has a nice wife and/or oxen” is literally the least harmful way to spend the afternoon. Always be extremely thankful to the magical sky dude who gives out cancer like the dentist gives out toothbrushes.

“I don’t claim it’s a perfect system,” he said quietly. “Far from it, even with the alterations to the Brand New Testament. But the worshipping of us – and all the various ways to do it – was invented by humans, and despite what my father says, you are some of the most flawed things He ever made. We’d love it if you followed all the arbitrary rules – although they really aren’t arbitrary and you’ll see why when you’re at the Gates – but we know you aren’t groundhogs and we can’t expect you to be.”

I must have drifted off somewhere. “I’m sorry, groundhogs?”

“The most perfectly devout creature on Earth,” Jesus said.

Boy, did I feel like a fool for not knowing that.

He looked at me with the kindest eyes I have ever seen. They physically radiated light and warmth, and a feeling of wellbeing and acceptance filled my chest.

“We don’t care how you worship us, or even if you believe in us. We know this is kind of a one-sided relationship. All we want is a little respect. And for you to help me save the souls of the entire human race.”

It was a moving speech that had me ready to run up those steps and take Satan head-on. And then he had to go and ruin it.

“Trust me, I’d rather have a groundhog here, but they’ve all been raptured. But I know you can do this. I believe in you, Dave.”

Oh yay. Jesus believed in me. And considered me an adequate replacement for a fat rodent that’s only useful as speedbumps and on fake weather holidays. Lucky me.

I almost walked away. I almost let the world fall into the clutches of evil incarnate. But I didn’t.

“I’m not doing this for you,” I informed Jesus as we walked up the steps to the museum. “I’m doing it for the world. It’s my favorite planet now that Pluto’s gone.”

Our breaths and footsteps echoed through the expansive halls of the museum, which had been evacuated in anticipation of our visit. I was hesitant to ask why he thought I, surely the least groundhog of all people, could possibly help him defeat the devil. I figured it probably involved something like the face melting at the end of Raiders, and he just didn’t want to waste one of the good people.

“We aren’t defeating him,” Jesus said quietly, but even in a whisper his voice reverberated like thunder. “And you are one of the good people. Goodness has very little to do with piety, my ch — Dave.”

He turned sharply to look at the two angels, who were lagging behind to lick display cases containing taxidermied birds. Their wings slumped under the power of his gaze and they caught up to us.

“Between you and me,” he confided as we rounded a corner and entered the hall of antiquities, “if anyone is going to get their faces melted, I’m volunteering those two knuckleheads. Dad thinks they add a certain majesty to my miracles, but most of my miracles lately have been turning wine into water to combat drought and making pandas go forth and multiply. Which is gross, by the way. Ever seen a newborn panda?”

I shook my head. He had to know I hadn’t, but it was nice of him to ask.

“Imagine the ugliest rat you’ve ever seen, then make it pink and hairless and only able to move by random wobbling movements. The point is, the angels do nothing but make people nervous.”

He flashed me a smile straight out of a toothpaste commercial, complete with little sparkly bits.

“How do you do that? That smile?”

He shrugged. “Same scientific principle used to make halos and sunbeams.”

Oh. Obviously.

We came to a display bathed in spotlights and cordoned off with red velvet ropes. On a low table in the center sat an earthen jar, cracked and weathered by the sands of time but remarkably intact. Its lid sat beside it, and large signs posted everywhere told the story of its discovery, calling it the Holy Grail.

“It’s the real one,” Jesus said, preempting my question as the temperature of the air dropped noticeably. “The Last Supper was really more of an enchantment ritual we kind of stole from the story of Pandora, taking an ordinary jar and making capable of holding the incarnation of evil. And it worked, until some fool had to go and open it.”

The lights in the rest of the museum suddenly cut out, leaving us and the jar in a bright pool amid an artificial night. I peered nervously into the thick and impenetrable wall of darkness, hugging myself to relax the goosebumps.

“Is he… here?”

“He’s everywhere, silent and invisible. Like carbon monoxide. You don’t know he’s there until he has you in his grasp.”

The possessions of the early days came to mind. Just before the second coming, the news was full of images, horrible images of people in the clutches of some kind of insanity. Flailing and contorting, attacking one another and speaking in tongues. It stopped as soon as it had started, and once the Lord hath returneth’ed, no one really talked about the possessions anymore.

“It started the day the jar was opened. My return quelled him for a time, but tomorrow the Grail goes public and every set of pious eyes upon it give him power.”

“And my eyes are godless heathen eyes.” I nodded in understanding and slowly stepped up to the display.

The ropes fell away as I approached, parting like the East River, and my hands trembled as I reached for the jar.

Its ancient clay felt warm to the touch. Hot, even. I held it firmly in one hand and took the lid in the other, making a point not to look inside just in case it would melt my face.

I heard footsteps and a soft cackling.

“Not funny, Jesus.”

“Not me, Dave.”

He sounded scared.

A frantic squawking and the rustle of feathers made me turn, just in time to witness the blackest shadow I’d ever seen taking the angels in its grasp.

In my surprise, the jar slipped from my hand.

I watched it tumble to the ground in excruciating slow motion, too paralyzed to do anything but pray it wouldn’t break.

It hit my shoe, bounced slightly, and skittered onto the floor with a scraping sound. But it remained in one piece.

I dove for it, and met the desperate eyes of the shadow, which released the angels unharmed and swooped towards me. I clapped the lid onto the jar and held it to my chest as the icy tendrils of the devil brushed across me.

The jar grew heavier as the lights came on and the temperature returned to normal, until I could no longer bear its weight and had to set it on the floor. The tiles began to crack.

I looked up to see Jesus smiling at me. And not a good smile, but a smug one.

“What?”

“You prayed.”

Crap. I did, didn’t I?

“Dave the atheist prayed.”

I scrambled to my feet. “Did not.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he teased, picking up the jar without effort. “That’s like the worst sin ever. Straight to Hell, no stopover in Purgatory.”

I stared at him for a long time as the angels groomed each other with their tentacles. It wasn’t like it was a real prayer, just kind of a way to say I wished really hard that the jar wouldn’t break. Like when you’re waiting for a check and you say, “Please let it come today.” Not a religious prayer. Not really.

“Fine,” I said as we walked out of the museum. “But I never mentioned you or your dad by name. For all you know, I was praying to the Mesoamerican serpent god Quetzalcoatl.”

“Which would be a waste of time, since he never checks his messages.”

I couldn’t tell if He was kidding.

“So am I still going straight to Hell?” I asked out of curiosity. “I think my uncle Randall is probably there, and if I have to go, I was wondering if I could get an apartment near him.”

“I guess that depends on how you live the rest of your life. Rescue some dogs, donate to charity, and I’ll see what I can do. But do me a favor and don’t pray anymore.”

“Why?”

He smiled, the big one with all the sparkles. “Because there’s rumors that the four horsemen are coming next year, and I just might need an atheist again.” He pointed behind me. “Hey, isn’t that the pretty blonde tourist?”

It wasn’t. When I turned back, He and the jar were gone. The words “Take care of the knuckleheads for me” had been etched in the sidewalk.

The angels wagged their tentacles at me. One of them offered me a pigeon.

Author’s Note: This story came about when I wondered how people would react to incontrovertible proof that their beliefs are wrong. Would they believe something else, or stick to their old ways? Is there a middle ground? Believing in a god but choosing not to worship him? And what if that god was perfectly fine with you choosing not to worship him?

Jennifer Lee Rossman is a science fiction geek from Oneonta, New York, who cross stitches, watches Doctor Who, and threatens to run over people with her wheelchair. Her work has been featured in several anthologies and her novella Anachronism is now available from Kristell Ink, an imprint of Grimbold Books. Her debut novel, Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freakshow, will be published by World Weaver Press in 2019. You can find her blog at http://jenniferleerossman.blogspot.com/ and Twitter at https://twitter.com/JenLRossman

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BOOK REVIEW: Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Dead Reckoning is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2011, the eleventh in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

Sookie witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte’s (the bar where she works). Before Sookie gets to the bottom of that, she finds out that her vampire boyfriend Eric is plotting to kill the oppressive representative of his vampire district, and she is drawn into the plot. She has also been chafing at the blood-bond between her and Eric that makes a telepathic feedback loop between the two of them.

I thought this was one of the weaker books in the series. Most of the books have a lot of subplots but it still feels tied together around some central conceit or main plotline. This one… just felt scattered. And, Eric feels very different in this one. Eric has always been a bit opaque and frustrating (not in a bad way, I mean) but in this book he just struck me as being purposefully obtuse on every damned thing, that I just wanted him to go away and stop being the current love interest. If the series hadn’t already ended by the time I read this book, I probably would’ve stopped reading in the midst one and not kept going. (But since I knew there were only 2 more books I did keep reading).

DP FICTION #41A: “Crimson Hour” by Jesse Sprague

Don’t think. Don’t feel. Concentrate on the work. Berend sliced under the unicorn’s scarlet hide. He worked swiftly to skin the beast while the pelt remained a vivid red. For a short time at dawn and dusk, a unicorn glowed red, and only during those few minutes could a blade pierce the animal’s hide. Normally, animals came to his butcher shop gutted, but with a unicorn that was impossible.

As he pulled the pelt back, he pondered the cuts that would come next. He’d have to remove the heart first—for the Hero.

Lined up on the stone table beside the unicorn, an array of tools waited. For now, the bone knife was all the job required. Berend’s hand paused under the unicorn’s jaw. The village shaman had already removed the horn, leaving a jagged circle of white bone. Around this circle and coating the muzzle was a thick splatter of human blood.

The blood of my only son.

Forcing thoughts of Ulfric from his mind, Berend focused on his work. He finished removing the precious hide, already darkening to the onyx black a unicorn took on at day’s end.

“Rhea!” Berend shouted before recalling that his daughter, along with his wife, were with the healer preparing Ulfric’s body.

His eyes filled with tears, obscuring the room. In front of him, the carcass wavered. And the rest of the stone-walled chamber blurred like a half-forgotten dream. He barely made out the faded paint on the wooden door or the unshuttered windows.

Stop! Keep working.

A few squares of butcher’s cloth lay over the display counter across the room, waiting for the flesh of the beast. And behind the counter was the cold-room’s door. He’d have to lug the carcass in there before the evening ended.

This was no way to mourn. He shouldn’t touch dead flesh for half a moon out of respect for Ulfric’s death. But no one in this village would understand a two-week break from the butcher.

If only I were home. Not this land forgotten by the ocean.

The constant ache in his right leg rarely let him forget why he’d relocated inland. With a gimp limb, he’d have been useless to his warfaring people and had wanted to find a new purpose. Here, far from the sea, he’d met a butcher’s daughter. And with her by his side, being an outsider hadn’t seemed too great a burden.

Berend turned back to the carcass. From amid his knives, he selected a bone saw.

With the full force of his weight, Berend sawed through the animal’s sternum. A scent of summer pollen and iron wafted from the cavity. Then, shunning tools, he trusted to his bare hands and cracked open the chest cavity.

Outside his shop, a burst of cheering filled the town square. Cheers for the man who’d slain the beast that had been terrorizing nearby towns for months. Cheers for Chariton, the Hero of the Mid-Kingdoms.

Berend gritted his teeth.

“Hero,” he sneered, and drove his thick-muscled arm between the unicorn’s ribs. His hand sank into the beast’s slick innards.

He carefully extracted and trimmed the heart. After crossing the room to the counter, he set the organ onto a square of butcher’s cloth.

A sob broke from the prison of his chest. His body hunched, shaking as loss washed over him.

Ulfric had been a good son. Uninterested in the family business, but strong-spirited.

Of late, his son had spent more and more time in the forest. Yet despite hunting so much more, he brought less and less game home. Had a sense of debt to the family driven him out there? They’d never needed the meat. Ulfric hadn’t needed to go into the woods.

“Papa?” Rhea’s soft voice preceded her young arms around him by mere seconds.

How did I miss them returning? Berend wiped his face with the back of his sleeve and straightened. His wife, Naiyah, stood in the doorway, looking gaunt. Her olive skin appeared waxy, and a leaf hung in the wild coils of her hair.

He wrapped his arm around Rhea. She leaned closer to him as he stroked her hair, black like her mother’s—like all the locals—rather than his own oaken brown. His daughter didn’t flinch at the dark blood coating his hands. At ten, half her brother’s age, she was already better with blood than Ulfric ever had been.

“As you asked, his body has been prepared to your custom.” Naiyah’s brown eyes stared past her husband and daughter at empty space.

“Thank you.” The words ground from Berend, bitter and cold. He didn’t feel thankful. It didn’t matter that Naiyah had agreed to anoint the body with salt and paste, or that she’d shaved him clean.

Ulfric’s bones would never make it to the distant ocean. He’d never board the White Ship and travel with his ancestors.

“We take him to the Wall tomorrow night,” Naiyah said. “Since tonight is reserved for the Hero’s Feast.”

Berend cringed. Of course, Ulfric’s not as important to those damned villagers as celebrating Chariton. Why should the butcher boy’s death matter to them?

Naiyah looked so frail and empty. Despite the riot of emotion in him, Berend held his tongue.

“I’ll prepare the heart for Chariton,” Rhea said, looking alternately at her parents’ grim faces.

“No,” Naiyah and Berend said together.

He would not burden his only daughter with butchering the beast that had skewered and eaten hunks of flesh from her brother. Nor would he ask her to serve a dish of conquest to the cowardly Hero who’d watched Ulfric die, used him as bait.

Even if Ulfric had volunteered to lure the unicorn out and keep it revealed until dawn, which Berend doubted, no Hero should have taken such a sacrifice. Not from a man so young.

“Come.” Naiyah motioned to her daughter. “We’ll prepare an evening meal. I will not attend the feast.”

The two retreated to a stairway at the back of the room and descended into their living quarters.

He glanced out a window.

The square seethed with villagers. At the center, on the raised platform used for announcements and performances stood the five village leaders and of course, Chariton.

The shaman addressed the crowd with an arm slung around Chariton, but Berend couldn’t hear the speech. None of the man’s words mattered. Still, he watched.

Chariton stood there, his blond locks and golden skin contrasted with the locals’ darker coloring. He stuck out like one dipped in starshine.

Berend could imagine the praise being heaped on this paragon of an adventuring Hero. He’d slain the unslayable unicorn. He’d lured it out at the precise moment of dawn when the unicorn’s hide was penetrable, before it turned the blazing white of the Summer sun.

But, he’d used Ulfric as bait to tempt the beast. Had Chariton met Ulfric in the woods and tricked him? Or had he fooled Ulfric in town and led him away to the dawn which would be his doom?

My son gave his life. Where’s the recognition of that?

Berend smashed a fist into the counter. And worse than giving his life, now his soul will be barred from the White Ship because I can’t find a way to bring his bones to the ocean.

Before he could do more, Rhea emerged from the family quarters, holding a wooden bowl and a white plate. She crossed the room. Her hands held out the food like a religious offering.

“Here, Papa. Eat this.” She placed the bowl of berries and nuts on the counter. The plate held squares of fresh cheese. No meat. “Momma’s planning to make liver for us, but I knew you wouldn’t eat it.”

Berend wiped his wet eyes, refusing to cry in front of the girl again.

Rhea paused, her face scrunching with unspent tears. “Nothing helps. It hurts, but none of the rituals help. How do I go on?”

“Only time eases the pain. We can’t bring him back, and helplessness would drive us insane if we didn’t do something.”

“But it isn’t enough.”

“We do what we can.” Outside, the last of dusk’s angry light faded.

***

Berend took a long swig from his bottle—Barenfang from his homeland. The sharp, honeyed taste coated his tongue and his throat.

The evening air stank of charred flesh and a cloying incense. Smoke choked him and stung his eyes. Yet the warmth provided by the bottle built a barrier, brick by brick, between him and the ceremony.

Naiyah wept beside him. The light from their son’s pyre flicked over her features. Leaning against her mother, Rhea trembled, red-eyed but expressionless.

His hand instinctively grasped the hunting knife at his side. But death was not a beast he could defend her from.

Behind the fire stood a pale silver wall that spanned the entire clearing. The locals called it The Wall of the Gods. The stone was uncarvable and yet markings of unknown symbols covered it—leaving no dents in the stone. At the foot of this wall lay piles of blackened bones from previous funerals.

Berend took another deep drink. His son would rest for eternity in this foreign place. But what option was there? There was no ocean within a moon’s ride. Even if he could ride so far with his leg, he couldn’t leave his shop.

I can’t watch this.

Berend turned from the stinging flame and began walking. He had no desire to return home. Instead, he hiked off the path to a stream. It was a place he’d taken Ulfric when the boy was young. Where Berend had first taught Ulfric to hunt—the one interest the two had ever shared.

He sat on a rock until darkness fell. Then he remained, listening to the stream gurgle and sigh as the night air fed his guilt and regret.

Near dawn, his body stiff and chilled, he fought his way through the heavy brush toward the path. His leg ached as he moved, and by the time he reached the trail, it took effort not to limp.

Despite the darkness surrounding him, the impending sunrise sent out its first pink haze. His family was bound to wake and worry. But, the thought of returning home—returning to Naiyah, returning to Rhea who floundered under the weight of her grief—offered his fevered mind no relief.

He headed toward where Ulfric’s pyre had been. Maybe there was comfort there.

Berend limped along until he glimpsed the Wall through the trees. An uneven gold light danced over pale stone.

But why? The town’s custom was to leave around nightfall once the pyre finished burning.

He stepped into the clearing. A steep hillside dropped off on the opposite side of the Wall. From this angle, it appeared to rise from the edge of the world.

In front of both wall and abyss, a golden-haired man tended a small fire, a pile of sticks at his side.

Chariton, the Hero of the Mid-Kingdoms.

A bitter taste filled Berend’s mouth. Him! The coward who watched Ulfric breathe his last breath dares to linger here by his bones. Berend drew the hunting knife at his side.

Without a sound, he crept toward the light. The tactics of war, not used since his youth, were not forgotten.

The advice he’d given Rhea returned to his mind. Helplessness will drive us insane if we do nothing. Gutting Chariton would be doing something.

He lifted the blade as he slunk behind the seated figure of the Hero.

Chariton’s shoulders shook, and he leaned into his hands. Berend paused.

The fire cracked.

“If you wish to slay me,” Chariton said, his voice heavy with tears, “do it.”

The butcher lowered his arm.

“Do you know the legend of this wall?” Chariton asked.

Berend didn’t answer. Rage fought with doubt inside him.

“They say, if a man can damage it—make a mark on the surface beside the sacred markings of the gods—he can bring one he loves back from the dead.” Chariton motioned toward the pile of bones. Something shone in their midst.

The blade of a sword.

Chariton lifted his right hand where he held an empty hilt.

Fragments of thought moved in Berend’s mind, but they fit nowhere. The Hero’s presence here—his concern over Ulfric’s death—made no sense.

Berend grabbed the Barenfang from his coat, took a swig, and sat beside Chariton.

“Why do you care?” Berend asked. “Do you feel guilty?”

“The story circulating isn’t true.” Chariton gave a dry laugh. “What could I say that would improve Ulfric’s legacy? Not the truth. As a willing sacrifice, he’ll be remembered as a heroic spirit.”

Berend gazed at the broken sword. He remembered Ulfric’s recent absences from the family home. And hadn’t Chariton been around more than usual? Typically, the Hero disappeared to look after other towns or sought distant foes.

“You loved him,” Berend said, each syllable dropping grudgingly.

“Heroes don’t live long. Villagers throw virgins at me, but none would offer me someone to wed. I travel and follow the will of the gods. This life offers much, but not a family, not love.” Chariton threw a stick into the flames. “I got greedy. I neglected my duties and stayed here. This is my punishment. The gods don’t speak, they yell.”

Berend sighed and offered the Barenfang.

Chariton waved the bottle away. “I don’t drink spirits.”

“It’s from my homeland—meant for Ulfric’s wedding.”

Chariton took the offering and drank. A soft predawn glow whispered near the top of the wall.

“How did it happen?” Berend asked.

“Ulfric and I had made camp. As dawn came, I left to get water from a nearby stream. By the time I heard him scream, it was too late.”

Berend understood. Even if no one else knew, killing the unicorn was retribution for Ulfric’s death—the cry of a heart shattered, now avenged. But he felt no better.

He stared at the fire, then, at the Hero’s golden hair. Chariton is an outsider too.

“The fire, it’s your tradition?”

Chariton nodded. “The flame must stay lit all night. The spirit fire will guide his soul to the afterlife. Who knows what tradition, if any, is true, but I feel better knowing I’ve done all I can to aid him.”

Berend looked at the Hero. Here was someone who might understand, someone who might be able to help him.

“Can you do something for me?” Berend asked. “On your travels, when you come to the ocean, can you lay one of Ulfric’s bones on the shore for the tide to consume? Only a single bone and the White ship will find him.”

Chariton’s shoulders hunched, and he took another drink of the honeyed liquor. “I can do that.”

Berend reached out and wrapped an arm around the Hero. The crimson light of dawn made its own writing on the Wall of the Gods.

Jesse Sprague has previously published several speculative short stories, including the Once Upon Now anthology by Gallery books, two short stories published in Seattle Crypticon’s Decompositions 2017 and stories in both the Nemesis and Undeath by Chocolate anthologies. Her book Spider’s Game, the first in a three book series, won a Watty award and can be read on Wattpad. Jesse can be found on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JesseSpragueauthor/ her websitejessesprague.com, and on both Wattpad as @jessesprague and Radish Fiction.

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DP FICTION #40B: “Withholding Judgment Day” by Ryan Dull

5:00 AM GMT

Brother Franco Corsini always woke up early when the world was ending. Some Elegian monks could roll out of bed twenty minutes before Christ returned and perform their duties without a hitch, but Brother Franco needed a long morning to get into the right mindset. He lay in the pre-dawn light with his blanket pulled to his chin and prayed for humanity in expanding concentric circles – first himself, then his monastery, then the city of Milan, the nation of Italy, the people of the world, the dead, the unborn, and all Creation. Through the wall of his cell, Brother Franco could hear his neighbor already rejoicing at the top of his lungs. But his neighbor expected Christ to return before 6:00 AM, and so of course he was yelling. Brother Franco belonged to the 2:00 to 3:00 PM GMT slot, which he shared with Brothers Dimitri Abdulov and Hernan Esteban, both of whom were currently sound asleep in the Elegians’ second monastery in central Colombia. Brother Franco had nine long hours left. He knew, but did not yet expect, in an immediate, physical way, that the world would end. For a novice, this might have been cause for alarm. But Brother Franco had been expecting the end for years now, and he trusted that he would get there, even if it took all morning.

The world was always ending. That was the miracle of the Order of Saint Elegius, that the world was always ending, but it never ended. Two thousand years ago, before Jesus Christ had ascended into Heaven, he had warned the crowds that he would be returning soon. For two thousand years, this soap-bubble Earth, this mass of lonely Creation inexplicably divorced from Eternity had crept along from one nervous moment to the next. The Bible says, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” Time was short. The sun was low and the shadows long. And Creation, even as human beings laughed and struggled and prayed within it, hungered for the end. Creation knew what it was to be unified with the living God, and it knew what it was to be separated. Intolerable. Each new moment was a breach of natural law as absurd as walking on water, as shocking as resurrection.

And humanity needed every second. The early church fathers monitored the sky and tore at their hair. They weren’t ready for Christ. Just look at all the souls left to be saved. Look at the world, this unrighteous, unjust, humiliating mess. They needed more time.

Perhaps that’s why the Church called Elegius a saint instead of a heretic. A fifth-century legal scholar, it was Elegius who had first read Luke 12:40, “You must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you don’t expect him,” and wondered aloud if that meant that as long as someone expected Christ to return, he wouldn’t. If so, a dedicated group of believers could postpone the End of Days indefinitely. His contemporaries had scoffed and Elegius, shamed, had moved on to other things, but the idea stuck around. There was something to it. It felt like doctrine was supposed to feel. Renounce the world in order to gain it, die in order to live. Expect God’s return in order to forestall it. Why not? It was Gospel. More than that, it was useful. Hence, two centuries later, the Order of Saint Elegius. They had persisted for over fourteen-hundred years, and by all measures, they had achieved great success. The world was still here.

But eternity was long, and Armageddon only had to wait. And the Elegians – how can we judge them? They were few. They were secretive. They were a handful of well-intentioned clerical washouts who lacked the discipline to be Trappists, the humility to be Dominicans, the grades to be Jesuits. Their method was odd and their mission – there was no getting around it – was to thwart the will of God, to imprison Him in His Heaven, to praise Him in the morning and subvert Him at night. Impossible to maintain rigor under such circumstances. A stressful, thankless office. So we can forgive the Elegians if they occasionally slept through Vigils or even Lauds. And maybe we can forgive them for abandoning their watch today between 2:00 and 3:00 PM GMT. It wasn’t all their fault. Anyone could have stopped Armageddon. We should be careful who we blame.

12:55 PM GMT

Certainly we can’t blame Brother Hernan, who by 7:55 AM local time an hour outside of Bogotá, was awake, dressed, and firmly believed himself to be Expecting. Elegian Expectation was a tricky feat. It wasn’t enough to contemplate the end, to have a hunch. One had to truly anticipate it, like sunsets, gravity, lentils for lunch on Friday. Armageddon was opportunistic. It could find purchase in the tiniest gaps. Brother Hernan was doing his best. He had made the rounds, grabbing his brothers by the shoulders and advising everyone to fast, because tonight they would sit at the Lord’s Table, and the Lord would want them to be hungry. Now he was heading out into the sunshine to say a mass or two and wait for Christ to descend. To any outside observer, he was hitting all the beats.

But a few days earlier, Brother Hernan’s mother had passed away. She had been old and she had been sick for many years and Brother Hernan understood that her transition from pain and infirmity to the loving arms of God was a joyous one. But something about her absence, about his no longer having a biological family, about the first Saturday in half a decade on which he would not borrow a car to make the long drive to the house she shared with her nurse – something about it made Brother Hernan feel intensely fixed to the Earth. Technically, officially, he should have been thinking, “I will see you soon.” But it had only been a few days, and the floodwaters were still receding. We can forgive Brother Hernan if he hadn’t yet made it past, “Mother, where are you?”

Brother Dimitri – perhaps Brother Dimitri deserves some blame. He was oversleeping. His alarm clock had shorted out overnight and no one had thought to knock on his door. It was the sort of thing that happened from time to time. That’s why they worked three to a shift. Still, the Lord was returning and Brother Dimitri was asleep in bed. It didn’t look good.

And what about Brother Franco, back in Milan? By now, he was a dozen rosaries deep, striding through what appeared to be some showcase Expectation. He was feeling it today. His every word was sincere and his eyes were Heaven-bound. Brothers who saw him praying found themselves looking skyward, listening for angel’s wings.

But Expectation was so fragile. Three days before, Brother Franco had seen an advertisement in the newspaper for a documentary about humpback whales. Brother Franco quite liked documentaries and humpback whales, and although the film would not be screened for another two weeks, well after the Apocalypse, he had thought, “I’m looking forward to seeing that.” He was still looking forward to it. Which is to say that some tiny, overlooked lobe of Brother Franco’s brain believed that cinema schedules would survive past 3:00 PM GMT. His Expectation was insincere. He had no idea.

But there were so many other people in the world. Surely someone must have expected something.

Well, not necessarily. The main problem – and again, we shouldn’t cast blame, we aren’t accusing, we’re trying to explain – but Creation probably would have been safe if humanity hadn’t been distracted by the World Cup finals. They were being held in Lagos, Nigeria. The story of the so-far stunning tournament was the upstart Chinese national team, which had blitzed through half a dozen traditional juggernauts behind the heroics of Tan Mingjian, their preternaturally quick midfielder. China, never before a football powerhouse, had been overtaken by World Cup fever. At 1:30 PM GMT, China would face off against Brazil in an Old Guard versus Young Bucks grudge match that was expected to draw more viewers worldwide than any televised event in history. In the hours before the match, a few sweating fans quietly wished that the world would end, so that their team might be delivered from humiliation. But at 1:30, all thought of eschaton evaporated. Armageddon was unthinkable. Surely God, like everyone else, was too busy watching the game.

And where were the doomsayers, the street-corner visionaries, the amateur obsessives? There were piles of those people, a whole cottage industry, and they could find a volcano in a vegetable garden. Hard to imagine those fanatics asleep at their posts.

What you have to understand is that the Apocalypse industry moved in cycles, one dire prophecy at a time. The latest had involved a fragment of Sumerian tablet that bore the words “We Finished” and a date in three-inch-tall cuneiform. It hadn’t gotten a lot of attention when it was first yanked from the ground back in the 1980s, but after the Mayan long count calendar deadline had failed to pan out in 2012, everyone had gone looking for the next thing. Marion Seebler, who ran the digital magazine End Times Now out of Gasper River, Kentucky, had found a reference to the Sumerian tablet in an old university newspaper and published a blurb. And although the tablet was unimpressive and its message was oblique, it rose to prominence on the strength of its single, huge advantage: the date, as best as self-tutored Sumerian translators could figure, was right around the corner. Last Monday, as it happened. People cashed bonds and bought canned goods and got cozy in their backyard bunkers. But last Monday came and went. Last Tuesday came and went. By Saturday, the world’s doomsayers were nursing themselves through the let-down, reading old favorites about ancient aliens and waiting for the next big prophecy.

As for the few billion otherwise accounted for, it was hard to say. On any given day, at any given hour, the total population of non-specialists predicting biblical Armageddon might fill a stadium or an auditorium or a restaurant or a mid-sized sedan. Today, there weren’t very many at all. And as Creation approached 2:00 PM GMT, there were none.

So as clocks rolled over and the Elegian brothers of the 1:00 PM GMT shift let the last echoes of their final, desperate prayers fade to sour silence, Creation found itself in an unfamiliar situation. For the first time in a very long time, no one expected a thing. God did not seize upon these unattended seconds to return in glory. Luke 12:40 said, “an hour,” an entire hour. God was playing fair. But Creation noticed. It looked like a real opportunity. And O, the horrible anxiety, to be separated from its Creator, that interminable stress, those eons Creation had endured one microsecond at a time, grinding its tectonic plates like teeth. Understandable, that Creation couldn’t bear to wait any longer. Maybe we can forgive it.

2:09 PM GMT

The Earth gave a few, tentative shudders, mostly unnoticed. Predators circled, birds went silent, herds packed in close. Near Bogotá, a young woman who had walked into the woods to think her way through a new romance was interrupted by the peculiar creaking yawn of a thousand bent trees suddenly standing up straight, trying to look their best. She looked around for a moment, and then dropped back into her thoughts. Volcanoes cleared their throats. Things deep in the ocean, in defiance of all instinct and fear, began to swim toward the light.

2:12 PM GMT

Brother Hernan was sitting on a bench outside his dormitory. He hefted his Bible into his lap and it cracked, by chance, to Luke Chapter 12. He was so familiar with the chapter that his eyes scanned across it and he didn’t think much at all, except to wonder what the kitchen made for lunch on Saturdays. It had been years since he’d been at the abbey on a Saturday afternoon.

At precisely that moment, halfway around the world, Brother Franco caught an object in his peripheral vision and jumped, certain that it was the floating body of Christ resurrected. Four blocks away, a cinema owner frowned at a poster for one of this month’s features. It looked crooked, and he thought he could detect a flicker of menace in the humpback whales.

Marion Seebler, back in Gasper River Kentucky, was trying to squeeze a few more page views out of that Sumerian tablet. Sumerian dates could be finicky. Who was to say they hadn’t mistimed the Apocalypse by a few days?

The crowds in Lagos were sagging. Brazil had just gone up two to nothing in the first half. China looked hopelessly outmatched. Meanwhile, stadium staff scrambled. Two dozen spectators had suffered seizures in the last fifteen minutes. Officials ran for crash carts and blamed the heat. Some people were sensitive like that.

2:17 PM GMT

The young woman walking in the woods outside of Bogotá was not available for natural peculiarities or obscure harbingers of the end times. She was thinking about her last relationship, and the one before that, and the one before that, and the entire, grinding karmic cycle of romance and anguish, birth and death, things moving together and things moving apart. When she looked at this new relationship, this ecstatic living thing, she also saw the way that it would one day fester and bloat. Clouds were gathering – literal clouds in the literal sky. It felt like a bad omen. She couldn’t know that they were gathering everywhere.

2:24 PM GMT

Steam billowed up from sewer grates. Seeds cracked and unfurled while they still had time. Eggs rattled in nests. Graves shook.

2:29 PM GMT

In a few small places and without much fuss, the ocean began to boil.

2:36 PM GMT

A bird flew into Brother Dimitri’s window with a sound like a kettledrum, leaving behind a few drops of blood. Brother Dimitri rolled over and pulled his blanket tighter.

2:39 PM GMT

Brother Hernan closed his Bible. He knew it wasn’t working. He wasn’t sure he wanted it to. Somewhere beneath the doctrine, beneath his oaths, beneath habit and intricate self-deceit, somewhere way down in the storm cellar of his soul, Brother Hernan craved the End of Days. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.” Every Expectation day for twenty years he’d set that hunger against his duty – the kingdom wasn’t ready, there were souls left to save – and he’d managed to do his job. But now the resurrection of the dead had a face. It had small hands and a voice that had prayed over Hernan when he was young and lost in a fever that felt like an abyss. What was his duty, then? And what, exactly, was he expecting?

2:43 PM GMT

Clouds were massed above the stadium in Lagos. Spectators craned to see Tan Mingjian steal the ball, run fully 80 meters, attempt an irresponsible stab at the goal, and score. The entire stadium and a good sixth of the human population took to their feet.

2:47 PM GMT

Graveyards were trembling and gasping, queasy earthquake shudders that pitched mourners onto their knees and sent pedestrians running for their cars.

2:49 PM GMT

Marion Seebler read the same translation four times, squinted, realized how dark it had become, and decided to take a break.

2:53 PM GMT

The Chinese national team hauled the game to 2-2, and the broadcast was a steady roar of manic crowd noise. Impossible to step away from a game like that. All three of the upcoming 3:00 Elegians were huddled in front of outdated, contraband televisions. They would tear themselves away to begin Expecting at 3:00 and not a moment before. There would be no last-minute rescue.

2:55 PM GMT

Astronauts in the International Space Station reflected that they’d never seen the surface of the Earth so obscured. They made a note.

2:56 PM GMT

People were packed into churches, temples, shrines of all kinds. People were contemplating God and truth and high principles. People were shoring up their homes against all sorts of end time scenarios: meteors, environmental collapse. People were so, so close.

2:57 PM GMT

Brother Franco, pulsing with joy, began a loud countdown. Nearby brothers joined in. His enthusiasm was infectious, but the others all had different Expectant hours marked on their calendars and none imagined that they were counting down to anything in particular.

2:58 PM GMT

Bibles in the libraries and homes of nonbelievers all over the world threw themselves off of shelves and opened to inspiring passages. It was now or never. Some people picked them up, some glanced at the words.

2:59 PM GMT

Brother Franco’s countdown was going strong. A dozen cheerful brothers were chanting along. Several hours away, Tan Mingjian had the ball and a swathe of open field and he looked unstoppable. It had become so dark that stadium staff considered turning on the floodlights. On the other side of the world, Brother Hernan reached the conclusion that life, despite all, went on. He would someday meet his family again and until then, he would cling tightly to the Earth and embrace the gift of existence as fully as he was able. He felt better, but it was exactly the wrong conclusion to reach at this particular moment.

2:59 PM GMT

Tourists could no longer ignore that the figures in the fresco of the Sistine Chapel appeared to be moving. Glistening aquatic behemoths climbed toward the light. Thousands of feet above them, cruise ships and fishing trawlers bucked on churning waves. A child in Vancouver emerged from the womb with Paul’s first letter to the Romans written out in its entirety just beneath the fuzz on her scalp. Brother Dimitri shot upright in bed, heart like a hummingbird, no idea where he was or what time it was or what he was supposed to be doing. And everywhere, people hurt, people died, people sinned, people cried out for release, for redemption, for a change. No one cried louder than a handful of talentless monks who thought that their transparent playacting was saving the world, and who at any other hour may have been right. Altars rumbled. Ley lines shifted. Thunder roared from the core of the Earth to the clouds and back. A young woman who was just beginning to fall in love sat in the early morning darkness on a hill overlooking a small monastery outside of Bogotá where she sometimes went to mass and thought about how perfect the world was now and how imperfect it would one day have to become and didn’t it seem right, didn’t it seem appropriate, didn’t it seem almost inevitable that the world should end right here, right now, while the Earth was as beautiful and as still and as ready as it would ever be?

And the stones quieted down, and the oceans stopped boiling, and the vast, ancient things swam back to the depths. The crowd in Nigeria held its breath and the sun began to shine and everything was beautiful and nothing was still. And when Brother Franco reached “Zero!” and nothing happened, he shook his head and shrugged and stood for a moment in mopey silence while the rest of the brothers smiled and wandered off to wait for the end of the world.

Author’s Note: The bible verse in the story is real, at least in some translations. I came across it when I was eight or nine and reached the same conclusion as the monks – that the apocalypse was right around the corner, but that I could put it off if I expected it often enough. It was a bit of a stressful time until I realized that I couldn’t be the only person shouldering a job this important. There had to be professionals somewhere. And that’s the story.

Ryan Dull lives in Southern California. He thinks being a monk sounds like a pretty good time. It’s the promise of community that really appeals to him, and the chance to give your life a single, fixed purpose. Being a writer is a little like being a monk, but only a little. Ryan Dull is going to shave his hair into a tonsure and see if that helps.

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DP FICTION #40A: “Tank!” by John Wiswell

The tank hates revolving doors. They’re petrified watching the doors whoosh by, trying to imagine anyone getting into the convention center through these things. The curb crumbles beneath the tank’s treads, and commuters honk for them to get their back-end out of the road. Two tweens sneak around the tank’s chassis, carrying a rack of brightly colored cosplay wigs, and slip into one of the revolving glass chambers.

“Be brave,” the tank tells themself.

The tank nudges their barrel inside, getting barely halfway in before the door clanks against their barrel. Instinctively they try to back up, rending steel frames and shattering glass everywhere.

Sighing, they tell themself it’ll get better. They’re going to make friends this time.

The Pre-Registration Line is so long that they miss the morning programming. Once they reach Registration, the lady frowns up at them like she was a landmine in a previous life. She says, “You didn’t fill in a gender.”

The tank rumbles. “I don’t associate Male or Female.”

She points at the tank’s cannon. “With that thing?”

“Are you calling my turret genitalia?” It wasn’t, and even if it was, they had the equivalent of a vasectomy and filled it with cement years ago. They lower their cannon, showing the orange safety cap protruding from the muzzle.

“I don’t care what you call it. Guns aren’t allowed, and you have to pick a gender.”

A Marceline from Adventure Time leans around the tank’s treads, squinting at the registrar. “They’ve got the peace bonding cap on there. And the gender crap on the form was optional.”

The registrar says, “Since when?”

“You want me to complain to Con-Ops?”

The registrar grouses and forks over the badge, while the tank turns to Marceline. Her badge reads ‘XIAO.’ They want to tell her that they love Adventure Time, but they can’t word it right. A moment later Xiao whisks away with a plastic-fanged smile and a, “Have a good con!”

Small-talk is hard for tanks.

They get in line for the Cowboy Bebop Cast Reunion, and the hallway is too narrow. Human con-goers have to climb over them to get by. Even though they have no eyes, the lack of eye contact stings. They scooch over, and accidentally cave in the wall to a Men’s Room.

A minute later, gofers come out of the panel room and wave everyone off. “We’re full! Sorry!”

The show’s opening theme blares as the gofers shut the doors. Ironic, but the tank loves that song.

They sulk over to the food court, feeling at least a little companionship with all the other disappointed con-goers. The crowd dissipates to watch an inter-fandom mock battle. MCU Avengers cosplayers desperately fend off assorted Crystal Gems.

A couple of Iron Mans ask for a picture, but they just want to pose like they’re blowing up the tank. The tank revs up to leave.

That’s when they see a Princess Bubblegum with a plastic pink wig, her shoulders hunched, looking around for someone who plainly isn’t there. But someone plainly is: a tall guy in a Red Hood graphic tee.

“The show went off the rails when she didn’t get together with Finn,” Red Hood Fan says in the tone of someone who might never have enjoyed anything in his life. “I don’t see why people ship her with Marcy.”

Her badge just reads ‘PB.’ PB cranes her neck around Red Hood Fan, still avoiding eye contact with him. “Uhm…”

“Wouldn’t it be weird to have gay characters on a kids’ cartoon?”

The tank rolls up behind Red Hood Fan, brushing his shoulder with their cannon. Red Hood Fan cringes away, looking as uncomfortable as PB has this whole time. “Hey, thanks for waiting for me,” the tank lies. “Ready for lunch?”

PB arches a brow, then says, “Yeah!” and sidesteps around the guy.

PB and the tank get out of there quickly, heading south along the titanic line for George R.R. Martin’s autograph. The tank asks, “Were you looking for someone?”

“My girlfriend. We got separated at registration.”

The tank lets PB ride on their turret so she’ll be more visible. This earns thousands of photos from strangers, and halfway down the endless pilgrimage of Game of Thrones fans, they spy a familiar Marceline. PB hops to the floor and kisses Xiao in front of everybody. The tank could blush.

Xiao gives the tank a plastic-fanged smile. “You get around.”

The tank tries to be funny. “Anywhere without revolving doors.”

Both PB and Xiao tilt their heads. Small-talk is hard for tanks.

They chatter, and Xiao balls up her fists at the story of Red Hood Fan. “Why do we even come to these things?”

PB raspberries at her. “You know why.”

The panel doors fly open behind them, and the theme from Cowboy Bebop rings forth. They pivot to get out of the way of the exiting crowd. Missing the panel wasn’t so bad since they made these friends.

Except when the tank looks again, Xiao and PB are gone in the flood of people headed to their next panel. People promptly complain that the tank is obstructing the hall, and they roll along, alone, wondering why they came here at all.

Exiting the building is the only way to avoid people, but the first one they find is another revolving door. The tank heaves a sigh through their chassis. Are they going to have to smash through this one, too?

“We almost lost you!” someone calls, and tugs on their mudguard. It’s Xiao, gesturing toward the adjacent corridor, where PB is waving for them both. “We’re going to the dance party. Want to come?”

The tank is so happy they almost commit several hundred cases of vehicular manslaughter. They roll very carefully to BALLROOM B, where PB and Xiao drag chairs aside to make more room. That lets the tank spin some doughnuts without fearing crushing any dancers.

Xiao whispers something to the band. As houselights dim and glowsticks crack, the band plays the theme from Cowboy Bebop.

PB says, “You know what the song is called, right?”

The tank can only muster a, “Thank you.”

PB laughs. “This is why we go to cons.”

Author’s Note: At a convention one year, Max Gladstone and I were joking about the problems a tank might have at such an event. That’s what you do when you’re like us. For the same reason, I couldn’t help writing about the poor non-binary tank trying to overcome their social awkwardness.

John (@wiswell) lives where New York keeps all its trees. His fiction has appeared at Fireside Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, and Daily Science Fiction. He has never had a cosplayer ride him across a convention center, but he does try to help where he can.

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DP FICTION #39B: “Graduation in the Time of Yog-Sothoth” by James Van Pelt

Jackson clung grimly to his seat as the bus rattled over a corduroy stretch of road, tossing him against Gwynn. She held a flute case in her lap, while in the back of the bus, the rest of the flute section, seven girls and a boy—piped a discordant, screeching melody that wasn’t improved by bouncing around as the bus lurched down the rough track. Gwynn wore her hair short, seldom used makeup, and he’d often seen her sitting in between classes working on a sketch pad.

“Weren’t you supposed to play today?” said Jackson. The bus lurched left, pushing them the other way.

“Last week for seniors.” She looked out the window. The woods that lined the road when they took the bus in kindergarten were now blasted, shattered and burnt fragments that stuck up from the ground in painful angles. “The underclassmen have to learn how to play without us.”

Jackson nodded. Only five days until graduation. “Same with the newspaper. The senior editors handed their duties over to the juniors the first of the month,” which stung because Jackson had been the sports editor. He was sure Drew Whittier didn’t have the same drive to get to the heart of a news story that he had. How would the fall preview go without Jackson’s input? Did Drew have the same contacts on the football team? Did he know anything about cross-country? The section would be a mess.

It was hard to think, and even harder to be optimistic with the flutes shrieking behind him, but he wished they played louder, protecting them. Through the tinted windows, the low-hanging clouds swirled, glowing orange and red at their edges as if reflecting an unseen fire, a sure sign an Old One was about. Only flute music could placate them, although that was no guarantee. Three years earlier the forensic team didn’t escape, even though they traveled with that year’s state championship flute section. Some of those kids were still at the school, in a separate room, tended by aides who pushed their wheelchairs about and fed them.

Gwynn leaned into him, “Do you have your speech ready?”

Jackson grimaced. “Everything I write sounds stupid. What do I say about our future? We might not even have a future.” He’d been both proud and terrified when Principal Akeley named him valedictorian. At the beginning of the year, Howard Durst and Emma Chen had higher grade point averages, but they found Howard in the library on Halloween, slack jawed and drooling after reading from The Book of Azathoth (which was supposed to be locked up and unavailable to students) while Emma fell for a weirdly fishlike football player from cross-county rival, Dunwich High, and failed all her first semester classes except Mythology.

Gwynn said, “Write something hopeful.”

The road to the high school entered Trimount Canyon where low, limestone bluffs rose on either side. Jackson relaxed. He felt safer within the stone walls. They’d be harder to notice here, but they hadn’t gone a half mile before the bus slowed, then pulled onto the shoulder. Pale rock blocked the view out the windows across the aisle. Cloud-shrouded light illuminated the road through his window, though. The flute section redoubled their effort. A tremor shook the bus, then another. Dust drifted from the cliff walls as the sky darkened and grew more crimson.

“Put your heads down, kids,” shouted the bus driver. “Heads down and stay down until I tell you to sit up. Just like the drills.” She sounded calm, as if she did this every day. Even as Jackson pressed his chest into his knees, he marveled at how collected she was. Without the flutes, silence ruled.

The bus trembled again. Whatever Old One came their way was immensely huge and heavy. Would it step on them without even seeing them? Or would it pick them up, shake them about like pebbles in a box? Would it stare at them, sucking their minds into madness before it tossed them aside or dropped them down his terrible throat?

Gwynn grabbed his hand. They’d never held hands before. She was just a friend who’d been in his classes since preschool, like many of the seniors.

She whispered, “Will you open with a joke? Last year’s valedictorian told that great one about the three blind guys at a nudist colony.”

An Old One had never come this close to Jackson. They left omens in the sky: blood moons, tortured clouds and foul winds, signs in the sea: unnatural tides, fish kills, strange eruptions, but never a genuine appearance. Like tornados or tigers or tsunamis: they were much talked about, often part of nightmares, but not actually real.

He knew when it passed over. The hairs on the back of his neck stood, and then a pull from above from the Old One’s self-generated gravity. An icy, pure glacier abyss opened in the sky, as if the bus had turned upside down and longed to fall up. Jackson swallowed hard and clung to Gwynn’s hand. A thought looped, faster and faster: If I survive . . . If I survive . . . If I survive.

Then his organs shifted. The pull released, and darkness relented.

Jackson breathed deep. “I don’t know. A joke might be cheesy. I thought a shared memory like when Mrs. Peterson made hot fudge sundaes in kindergarten.”

They hadn’t sat up. Heads down, holding hands, Jackson felt as if they were alone somewhere, sharing a lifelong past. When the Old One eclipsed the sky, Jackson couldn’t tell if he was feeling Gwynn’s hand or if he was her feeling his hand. It seemed in that instant he saw the bus floor from his eyes and hers. For a blink, he sat in her mind, surrounded by her thoughts, being her, and he knew she’d become him. She hadn’t been as scared as he was; she’d thought about painting the clouds—blending the orange into the red and the red into gray. That close to pure, psychic alienness, they’d joined. The power to drive a human mind mad must have degrees. They hadn’t been taken over the edge, but they altered. Their skin melded; their nervous system became singular. The Old One, its mind more vast than human imagination, washed through them without bending from its alien mission and unknowable intents. Jackson had never been closer to anyone.

“Did you feel that?” Gwynn asked.

“Old One aura. Remember from the orientation?” He shivered. He couldn’t feel more exposed if they sat next to each other naked. How would they look each other in the face again?

Gwynn stayed down. The bus driver hadn’t cleared them to sit up yet. Jackson could tell Gwynn searched for words. How would she process what they’d gone through? Would she be able to talk to him?

Finally, she cleared her throat. “I forgot about those sundaes.” She squeezed his hand. “Every day was sunny then, even the rainy ones.”

In the hallway, Jackson pushed past the Acolyte Club who’d set up tables against the wall with promotional flyers and pamphlets. “We’re doing a chant around the flagpole after school to placate our benign overlords,” said a sophomore boy Jackson knew from the newspaper. The boy had blue lines on both sides of his neck in nesting curves, imitating gills. Jackson couldn’t tell if they were drawn or tattooed. Lots of kids had them, and many greased their hair and brushed it straight back from their foreheads, as if they’d risen from the ocean. Lately they sported large black buttons with yellow writing that read “Nothing Without Sacrifice”.

“DBD,” the kid said. “DBD, bro.”

Jackson shook his head, refusing the flyer. DBD: Dead but Dreaming. Jackson thought, aren’t we all.

Half the school belonged to the Acolyte Club. A group of teachers sponsored, slicking their hair back too. The rumor was that some of them encouraged the Acolyte Club to circulate the petition, asking the school board to change Kennedy High’s college-oriented, liberal arts curriculum into a religious one. They listed classes they wanted to add to graduation requirements, including “Important Figures, Relics and Places from Abdul Alhazred to Zon Mezzamalech,” “Sea Wisdom,” and “Intro to the Outer Mysteries.”

Gwynn sat behind him in British Lit. Jackson took out his notebook with quotes he’d been collecting that he might use in the speech. She looked over his shoulder. “Is that Othello?”

Jackson turned back the pages, one by one so she could see. “Yep. Othello, Macbeth, Gilgamesh, the romantic poets and the realists, stuff from American presidents, movie quotes, song lyrics, advertising slogans, and stuff my parents say. Nothing has struck a spark yet.”

He didn’t want to meet her eyes, but she wasn’t talking about the trip to school, which was good.

A couple girls a row over whispered to each other, looking Jackson and Gwynn’s way.

Gwynn said, “The word is out about our close encounter. Everyone on our bus will be famous by lunch. What are you going to say about what happened?”

“I’m not sure I know what happened.”

“Ask one of the acolytes. They’ll have an explanation.”

Jackson almost laughed despite himself. “Will it involve the transmutation of souls or surrendering ourselves to the vast indifference of the universe?”

“I almost wouldn’t mind the dissolution of self as long as they don’t ask me to wear my hair like that.”

Jackson said, “One of them told me that in madness lies sanity, and then asked if he could copy my Calculus.”

“Everyone wants to copy your Calculus.”

“You’re not helping me with the speech.”

“Do you want help?”

Jackson faced her. He hadn’t ever looked at her eyes before, not with this attention. They were dark brown on the edges, fading into gold near the pupils. She’s the girl with the treasure-well eyes.

During lunch, Principal Akeley looked up when Jackson entered her office. She often wore floral pantsuits. Today’s ensemble leaned toward pinks and purples, as if a giant orchid had thrown up on her, but she had an unforced smile and liked to joke. Normally Jackson didn’t mind talking to her, but not today. She’d want to know about the speech. Instead, she went a worse direction.

“Have you decided on a college, Jackson?” She put her hand on a short stack of brochures on the desk. “You missed the early application deadlines.”

“Umm, not completely. Maybe the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.”

“Long way from home. Long way from the ocean.”

“That might be the point.”

“Why not Miskatonic?”

“M.I.T.?”

Akeley raised an eyebrow.

Jackson said, “Miskatonic in Town. Nobody wants to go to college that close to their parents.”

Principal Akeley shook her head. “It’s the same everywhere.”

“Then does it matter? I was going to apply to Stanford.” He regretted saying it. He didn’t want to sound bitter. Palo Alto didn’t exist anymore. In its place, a four-mile wide crater filled with the San Francisco Bay seethed and bubbled. Last summer, for weeks, news covered the disaster. They showed seabirds by the hundreds of thousands gathered on the shore, piping a terrible din, wheeling about in great clouds above the water, but never landing, and whatever stirred the unnatural bay didn’t surface.

She hunched forward on her desk, and grew intense. “They don’t care about us, Jackson. I don’t believe they know we exist.”

“Don’t say that to the acolytes.”

Akeley continued, “Today, on the bus, might never happen to you or anyone you know again. Stanford may never happen again. They could disappear as suddenly as they arrived. You can’t make your decisions based on the worst case scenario.”

“I know. I know. But it’s harder for us, for the seniors, I think. What did you worry about in high school?”

The principal straightened her folders, then glanced at her clock, looking infinitely tired. Jackson realized she had other appointments. “The world changes. Growing up is challenge enough. How’s your speech coming? You know I need to approve it first.”

“I’ll have something for you soon. Tomorrow after school?”

She squinted. “You haven’t started it yet.”

“Not the speech itself, but I’ve been thinking. I’ve gathered material.”

“A lot of people depend on you to make a good show of it. Parents, alumni, the school board and all your peers. Give them something to think about.”

They shook hands.

Outside her office, Jackson thought, way to take the pressure off, Akeley.

Jackson knew Gwynn was on her way before she appeared around a corner of the school a hundred yards away and walked toward the bleachers where he sat. All day he’d noticed ghost feelings: the weight of a pen in his hand when he wasn’t holding anything, a necklace he wasn’t wearing rubbing against his neck, an inhalation when he exhaled. They were Gwynn’s experiences. He wondered if their link would fade.

She set her art portfolio and book bag on the bleacher, then settled onto the bench next to him. “Weird day, huh?”

“Indeed.”

Something itched between Jackson’s shoulder blades. He thought about trying to get to it, but he knew he’d look stupid stretching about.

Gwynn put her hand behind him and scratched at exactly the right spot.

“Thanks,” Jackson said. They looked at the football field and clouds without speaking for a minute before he realized what she’d done. He glanced at her. She clasped her hands in her lap, sitting still. From the other side of the school, a dull, rhythmic mumble arose. He recognized the source: the chant at the flagpole. It would take a lot of acolytes to be that loud. The story of what happened with the bus had lit them up. Interruptions filled the afternoon as teachers reminded acolytes to stop whispering. Several times, Jackson caught an acolyte staring at him.

She said, “I got a C on my final art project.”

“No way!” The yearbook had named Gwynn “Most Artistic,” and the newspaper had written an article about her winning entry at the Massachusetts Art Institute High School Show in December. “How in the world did that happen?”

“Because of this.” She pulled a small canvas from the portfolio. On it she’d painted an orange resting on a worn wooden table. A single rose lay before it. Behind both, a crystal pitcher, half full of tea, glowed warmly in sunlight from a window not in the picture. Even with his limited understanding of art, Jackson gasped. Something in the way she’d painted it made the shadows utterly real, and the orange’s skin held and reflected the light.

“That’s beautiful. What didn’t she like about it?”

Gywnn laughed. “The assignment was a still-life, clearly, but she put on the table a dead rose, a broken pitcher, and a nasty, rotted orange. She said, ‘make your painting reflect a mood.’ Evidently she wasn’t going for what I saw. Last week we did multi-media with mutant ceramic tuna, rubber octopuses and seaweed. The art room looked like an insane asylum fish market. Gave me nightmares.”

“Does she wear her hair slicked back?”

“You know it.”

On the horizon, clouds swirled and pulsed with internal light. Jackson watched them warily.

Gwynn put the painting back in the portfolio, then produced a notebook and pen. “I have an idea for your speech, but you have to answer some questions first.”

“Shoot.”

She made a mark on her notebook. “Good. Do you want to be funny, serious, or both.”

“Both.”

“Check.”

“Are you giving the speech for your parents, your friends, the senior class or just yourself?”

Jackson wrinkled his brow. He hadn’t considered that, plus the chanting and roiling clouds distracted him. “I’m not sure.”

“You’ll have to decide.”

On the school’s other side, the murmur intensified. Jackson had heard the chants before, and seen bathroom graffiti featuring strange words, not in English, unpronounceable with too many consonants and lots of apostrophes. Jackson almost missed the casual racism and crude sex talk from elementary school. Yesterday, below a poorly rendered representation of what might have been a slaughtered sheep, or a dog drawn by Picasso, someone had written, “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu lies dreaming.” Underneath that, in a different hand, was a reply, “Wake him!”

“The acolytes are moving,” said Gwynn. A crowd flowed around the school, heading toward them, arms in the air, repeating, “Iä Hastur cf’ayak’vulgtmm, vugtlagln vulgtmm.”

More emerged, hundreds of them, walking slowly, waving hands in the air. Jackson recognized some. Bud and Terrance from newspaper. Chuck who had played third base in junior high. Junior class president Lisa Schmaltz, her face filled with zeal, the bizarre words tumbling from her lips. Many were seniors he’d march with into the gym for graduation in a week, friends he’d known for years.

Gwynn said, “That’s creepy.”

“Have you seen the buttons?”

Jackson joined her. She stood. “Do you think they’re literal, about sacrifice, I mean?”

Together, they started down the bleachers. Jackson said with a calm he didn’t feel,

“They’ve been eyeing me all day. I don’t want to find out.”

They broke into a run across the football field, away from the chanting students and didn’t stop until they reached a low hill overlooking the school. The crowd filled the football field, arms still in the air, weaving back and forth, words now indistinct, but “Cthulhu R’lyeh” seemed a key component.

Jackson shivered, then moved closer to Gwynn. He was afraid to hold her hand again. Memory of the morning was too intense, but he felt safer next to her. The clouds darkened. A cutting wind swept through the trees behind them. Jackson heard it rushing through the leaves before it pressed against his back, cold and smelling of the Atlantic. On the field, the chanting rose in volume. Arms swayed, hands dancing like demented starfish. The students undulated in obscene synchronization. For a second, he was convinced that whatever monstrosity that missed them this morning was returning to finish the job, that if he looked up, a huge object would descend, a tentacled, leprous, oozing mass, the base of a huge trunk that disappeared into the clouds, a single leg of the creature whose head must reach into the stratosphere.

The image trembled in his mind as vivid as a prophetic vision.

Principal Akeley appeared at the crowd’s edge carrying a megaphone, while the congregants looked to the clouds, ecstatically repeating whatever appeal they were making.

She brought the megaphone up, fumbled with it until it emitted a siren howl. The kids nearest to her looked her way.

“Students,” she said. “Buses will not wait. If you miss your ride, you will have to walk home or call your parents.”

Jackson imagined the acolytes falling upon her, their primitive lusts let loose and indulged, but the chant faltered. Arms fell to their sides, and they moved toward the school. A student tossed a Frisbee to another. Kids laughed. They hummed with lively chatter. Within a couple minutes, the field emptied.

“We survived,” said Gwynn.

“Indeed.”

Their hands moved toward each other, a mutual decision, and they touched. Nothing had changed from the morning. The connection remained. Jackson knew Gwynn and she knew him. No consummation could be more complete. They would be friends forever. More than friends.

And nothing in the future seemed bleak.

Jackson thought about the folder filled with quotes in his locker. For the first time, he imagined himself giving the speech, not what he would say, that was still a mystery, but he knew he wanted to speak of hope.

He said, “How does this sound: None of us knows our future, but we don’t need to when we have each other.”

Gwynn shivered. “Corny. Corny but true.”

The clouds above the school folded upon themselves then flashed from internal lightning. A few seconds later, the rumble washed across them. Something incomprehensible moved above, but Jackson realized it always had. For all of time the universe had been indifferent to humanity.

We are on our own.

Graduating from high school, really graduating, meant finally realizing that truth.

Author’s Note: I’ve been a high school teacher for a long time, and I remember being in high school myself vividly. When I heard a suggestion to write a cthulhu mythos story set in a high school, I kicked myself for not thinking of it sooner. Where else but in high school does the universe ever feel quite so huge and uncaring?

James Van Pelt is a part-time high school English teacher and full-time writer in western Colorado. He’s been a finalist for a Nebula Award and been reprinted in many year’s best collections. His first Young Adult novel, Pandora’s Gun, was released from Fairwood Press in August of 2015. His next collection, The Experience Arcade and Other Stories was released at the World Fantasy Convention in 2017. James blogs at http://www.jamesvanpelt.com, and he can be found on Facebook.

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DP FICTION #39A: “The Efficacy of Tyromancy Over Reflective Scrying Methods in Prediction of Upcoming Misfortunes of Divination Colleagues, A Study by Cresivar Ibraxson, Associate Magus, Wintervale University” by Amanda Helms

MAGUS’S NOTE

My colleagues will note that in writing this paper I have not attempted to divide the research from myself, as can be noted here with my use of “I” and “my.” Unlike some individuals whom I will not name, I have never attempted to pass blame; I take full responsibility whenever it is deserved. Therefore, and because the use of the third person and passive speech loses the vibrancy and verve the subject of tyromancy deserves, I have elected to forgo the more pedantic and tedious tone such works more frequently employ.

CONSPECTUS

This report discusses whether tyromancy, divination using cheese, might be more effective and accurate in its predictions than the more popular methods of scrying through reflective surfaces, such as mirrors or bodies of water. Specifically, the report considers whether tyromancy is more effective at divining colleagues’ misfortunes. While the literature on tyromancy must be greatly expanded, this study’s results indicate that indeed, cheese might tell us more than the average crystal ball, mirror, or pool of water.

PREAMBLE

Much has been written about cheese: how to make it, including the specifics necessary to produce particular varietals; its healthfulness (or lack thereof, depending upon whom one consults); with which drink or other foods it pairs best.

Much has also been written about divination: which method might provide the most accurate predictions; the meditative state in which one must be to “see the clearest skies”; and whether particular persons might be better suited toward one method than another.

This author feels that scrying though a reflective surface–the divination method favored particularly at Wintervale University–has been given excessive favor over the noble art of tyromancy, or divination through the study of cheese curds. This is exemplified by tyromancy’s sublimation into the Animalistic Magic Department at Wintervale, a structure re-ratified by certain personages whose names have no bearing on this study. Yes, cheese does come from milk, which comes from animals, but tyromancy is too easily lost among the reading of paw prints and entrails. The budget won’t keep us in milk and rennet, let alone replace the fifty-year-old churns!

This should not be. Not only is tyromancy more functional than reflective scrying–one can eat the cheese previously used to predict the future, but one may not do so with mirrors or crystal balls, unless one likes the idea of shards of glass cutting up one’s intestines–but this author believes it is more effective, with more consistent and more-often correct predictions. In this paper, I will elucidate the trials I undertook order to give tyromancy its just due, and report on my findings.

PRACTICE

Materials
• 3 lbs Roquefort cheese
• 3 listen-in bugs
• Magus Minerva Hiddleton’s heirloom mirror
• Magus Theodore Linwood’s crystal ball
• Wintervale University’s general-use scrying pool
• A small sample of Magus Septima Wolfe’s skin scrapings

Participants

I myself acted as the tyromancer.

Magi Minerva Hiddleton, Theodore Linwood, and Septima Wolfe of Wintervale University participated in my study, although due to the nature of my experiment, it was necessary to hide their participation from them.*

I also enlisted the help of two of my co-magi in the Animalistic Magic Department at Wintervale, Associate Magus Beatrice Myne and Undermagus Leopold Mixon.

*Some may think I selected Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe due to their loudly aired ill-opinions regarding tyromancy, or that I harbored an unscholarly personal vendetta against them. In fact, I selected them because they are exemplary practitioners of their chosen scrying methods. It would have been unfair to match my own immense tyromantic powers against lesser magi.

Conduct

One potential issue with attempting to prove the efficacy of any divination method is the potential timeline involved; I could not afford to wait years to discover if my tyromantic predictions were true. Therefore, I required relatively immediate results, and ones that I could not know myself, so as to avoid skewing the outcome. Thus I engaged the aid of my friends Beatrice and Leopold to prank Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe.* I emphasized strongly that since I, the practicing tyromancer, could not be biased into predicting the exact pranks, they were not even to hint what they might plan for Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe. Nor could they tell me exactly when they planned to enact their pranks, albeit–again due to the time constraints–I told them the pranks could not occur more than two months out.

However, since this paper is on the efficacy of tyromancy over reflective scrying, I needed a means of tracking the latter efforts. I am no great scryer; my strengths lie with coagulated milk. Plus, I could not risk an unconscious desire to “fail” at these other scrying methods and therefore invalidate the results. I could not act as a scryer, and nor would it have been proper for Beatrice or Leopold to do so.

Thus, I set about employing a means of monitoring the scrying methods employed by Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe, viewing respectively: a crystal ball, an heirloom mirror, and the general-use scrying pool on the grounds of Wintervale University. To maintain the blind nature of my study, Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe could not know of their participation. Naturally, I checked out three listen-in bugs from Wintervale’s Security Department, with the intent of placing one nearby each Magus’s chosen scrying surface.

Considering that Magi Hiddleton and Linwood keep their crystal ball and mirror in their respective rooms, this was initially somewhat challenging. However, I tracked the schedule of each and knew when he or she was to be out of his or her tower room for a suitable length of time. After feeding the two listen-in bugs a bit of my own choice Roquefort, I planted them where they’d be able to listen-in on the Magi’s scrying sessions.

The general-use scrying pool proved more difficult. I am sure that Magus Wolfe would prefer her own private pool, but that is a decision for administration. It has therefore become widely known that in addition to her regular teaching duties, she scries at the general-use pool for her own private matters, usually at odd hours when she can expect the students to be abed. I did not want the listen-in bug tracking all scrying sessions; that would have overwhelmed me with students’ amateur attempts. It became necessary to sneak into Magus Wolfe’s rooms, whereupon I was able to collect some skin scrapings off her pumice foot stone and feed them to the last listen-in bug, along with some Roquefort. This meant I still captured Magus Wolfe’s demonstration scrying, but at least weeded out the students’ feeble attempts.

I experienced momentary discomfort that my subterfuge would be discovered, ruining my experiment, but happily Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe are self-involved. That they never suspected what I had done came clear in the trial of The Province of Wintervale vs. Cresivar Ibaxson, in which I was legally bound to divulge my methods.

With all listen-in bugs in place, I set about my own plan: Each morning at dawn, I would take my morning Roquefort and engage in tyromancy, directing my attention toward Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe, and seek to determine what ill fates might befall them, and whether I could do so in a manner more expedient and accurate than their various methods of reflective divination.

* Accusers have made much of Beatrice’s and Leopold’s so-called “motivation” in helping me. Though it has no bearing on my paper, I understand that some readers may also consider this matter of some import. I therefore write now what I stated at trial: There is no greater motivation than that of human curiosity and inquiry.

OUTCOME

Over the course of the two-month period, I foresaw seven fates.

For Magus Hiddleton: a most ignoble defeat at Wintervale University’s annual mirror toss; a poisoning of her morning crumpet with a laxative in advance of her keynote speech on Weasels as Familiars at the annual Witches’ Compendium, resulting in a rather embarrassing moment on-stage;

For Magus Wolfe: falling through a rotted stair as she descended into the University’s dungeon; a case of head lice after her hair powder was infested with their eggs;

For Magus Linwood: plague rats in his chambers; flubbing his courtship of Magus Hiddleton when his rat poison nearly killed her weasel familiar*; and the extreme misfortune of contracting bubonic plague.

My review of the listen-in bugs showed that Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe foresaw three and one half of these fates.**

Magus Hiddleton foresaw the poisoning of her crumpet. She skipped eating her crumpet the morning of her keynote speech and thereby avoided that particular ill fate. She did not foresee her defeat at the mirror toss, but I learned later that she prefers her performance to be a surprise to herself. Henceforth, I hear, she will check for “tampered equipment,” but for the purposes of my study, I must consider this instance inconclusive.

Magus Wolfe foresaw the head lice. Feeling rather irked by the splint she was forced to wear following her accident with the rotted stair, she took the extreme precaution of throwing out her hair powder, along with that of all the other magi whose chambers share her floor.

Magus Linwood foresaw his misstep in his courtship of Magus Hiddleton and took adequate precautions to clear his chambers of rat poison. While he did foresee the rat infestation, it left him with too little time to enact preventative, vs. corrective, measures, and he missed the unfortunate detail that the rats were infected with plague.*** This meant he didn’t take adequate precautionary measures in handling the specimens. I must consider his foreseeing only partially effective.

I will allow that Linwood might have also foreseen his contracting the plague and his eventual demise; however, he located my listen-in bug while clearing his chambers of the rat poison, so results here are also inconclusive.

*I’ll note that I was unaware of Linwood’s courtship prior to my tyromancy. Though having no direct bearing on my planned research, this additional prediction further proves tyromancy’s efficacy.

**Among the three of them, Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe foresaw fourteen other fates besides, but as those had nothing to do with their misfortune, they are irrelevant here. Nonetheless, let it be known that I saw six additional irrelevant fates, which is higher than the average of the fourteen fates divided among Magi Hiddleton, Linwood, and Wolfe.

***Accusers have also questioned me as to whether Leopold, as Wintervale University’s rat expert, may have deliberately infected the rats with plague. While some people may find “contagion vectors” and “disease epidemics” interesting or even important, how the rats contracted plague has no bearing on my paper.

PREFACE TO THE PALAVER
To those critics who have stated in person to me and who might believe, after reading this paper, that I should have warned Linwood of the future I foresaw, and that I should have warned the University of imminent plague outbreak, I remind you of the importance of research. The pursuit of knowledge will at times have consequences. We must be willing to bear them if we are to progress in our understanding of tyromantic, and other, arts.

PALAVER

I hope my paper makes clear just how crucial it is to allocate increased funds toward the field of tyromancy in general and at Wintervale University in particular. Though I, Beatrice, and Leopold are now under investigation for willful misconduct leading to death*, I believe the importance of our research speaks for itself. The results clearly show that tyromancy is a viable option of divination, and may in fact be more reliable and accurate than scrying through a reflective surface. For the visually inclined, I have created a chart summarizing this point:

Note how the bars representing the use of tyromancy are higher than all the others.

Yet literature on the efficacy of tyromancy remains sparse, and my study cannot stand alone. Clearly, more research remains to be done on the efficacy of tyromancy over reflective scrying methods, and indeed, the field of study must be expanded past the imminent misfortunes of colleagues, and performed over longer periods of time. Tyromancy must be attempted with the variety of cheeses available to us. With suitable funding for cheese-making and subsequent trials, we might decipher which cheeses best lend themselves to tyromancy; what effect individual ingredients have upon the resultant visions; or if certain cheeses may make up for the deficits of tyromancers weaker than myself. Further, double-blind studies incorporating bean curd may also weed out charlatans and false tyromancers.

In addition, we, as magi and researchers, must turn our eyes toward the long-term: Might tyromancy be more effective than reflective scrying when searching for the latest Chosen One? Could it not reveal to us forthcoming war tyrants, enabling us to take action against them before they rise to power? And, since so many people keep harping on the matter, could it not be effective in warning us of widespread disease?**

I leave such discoveries to other discerning tyromancers.

*Posthumously, in the case of Leopold.

**Of course, my experiences have already proved tryomancy’s effectiveness in predicting disease outbreak, but reporting of such findings–whether at time of publication or as a kindly warning to the general populace–are more appropriate in a study devoted to that matter.

RECOGNITION

I thank my friends, Beatrice Myne and Leopold Mixon, for their willingness to help facilitate my study.

Beatrice, I plan to visit you soon. Indeed, the curds indicate I will have before this paper sees publication! Condolences again on your continued difficulty in procuring bail.

Leopold, you will not be forgotten. I promise to one day retrieve your bones from the mass pyre. They will have a proper burial, and I will honor your grave yearly with cheese platters. My fondest regards to the plague-free survivors of your family.

MAGUS’S FINAL NOTE

This paper in no way constitutes any admission of guilt on my part or on that of Associate Magus Beatrice Myne and Undermagus Leopold Mixon in the matter of Magus Theodore Linwood’s untimely demise. Nor does it constitute guilt in the resultant epidemic that took the lives of nearly one-tenth of Wintervale University’s student body and staff, or of their infected families. Pending the findings of The Province of Wintervale vs. Cresivar Ibaxson, I remain innocent within the eyes of the law, just as I remain confident that tyromancy is indeed the best whey to divine, understand, and prepare for the future–thanks to the power of those sweet, tangy curds.

Author’s Note: This story came out of a seed from the Codex Writer’s Group that read simply “tyromancy: divination via the coagulation of cheese.” I didn’t use it for the particular contest it was associated with, because I wanted to write Something Serious. The idea of tyromancy stuck with me, though, and I wondered about the type of person who would attempt to use it, and how they would feel if people constantly belittled their chosen profession. The bungled scientific paper and even worse approach to the scientific method developed as I considered how this person might struggle to make clear that their work is not pointless, dammit. And thus was Cresivar’s “scientific study” born unto the world.

Amanda Helms is a science fiction and fantasy writer whose fiction has appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, Cast of Wonders, and the Cackle of Cthulhu anthology. She tends to be funnier in her writing than in person, but don’t hold that against her. She lives in Colorado with her dog, and new husband. She blogs infrequently at amandahelms.com and tweets with a smidgen more frequency @amandaghelms.

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DP FICTION #38B: “Her February Face” by Christie Yant

In her youth the doors to the shrine of Elena’s heart were wide open for all to see. Some kept their hearts in private spaces, secret and hidden, but not Elena. She kept hers in the front room, because what good is a bright heart if it can’t be shared?

Every morning she polished the shrine, and dressed her heart with fresh flowers that filled the air with the scent of jasmine and violet. She hung small crystals that caught her heart’s light and refracted it into every color, filling the room with rainbows.

On the wall above her heart Elena kept her collection of smiles. Smiles for celebrations, for sunrises and sunsets, for soft sheets and warm limbs, for surprise and wonder at her extraordinary good fortune. It was an impractical placement; it would make more sense to store them near her vanity, but she liked having them out where visitors could appreciate them and where she could select exactly the right one at the last minute, before she walked out the door.

As the years passed, jasmine was replaced by roses; sparkling crystals made way for quiet pearls. Her collection grew to include the shy but elated smile of her wedding day, the contented smile that she wore on waking beside her love every morning, and the proud smile she wore for their silver anniversary.

But all things end, even when we don’t believe they possibly can.

Elena smashed them all, crushed them beneath her feet and then sat on the cold floor among the shards as the day’s light crept across the room and disappeared, and the light in her heart went with it.

The flowers died and were cleared away. The doors of the shrine remained shut tight, opened only on the first Sunday of every month, to dust and keep it tidy, for the sake of good housekeeping. In the right light the outlines of smiling faces could still be seen on the walls, faded scars of old wounds that time would never fully erase.

One cannot go naked into the world, and so Elena eventually settled on a new face, one with a slight furrow in the brow and a subtle downturn at the corners of the mouth–an expression not so deep as to give offense, she felt, but one that conveyed a necessary distance between herself and the world.

After some consideration she also bought a new smile, thin and pale, to wear if the occasion should call for it. None ever had.

Behind painted black shutters her heart beat out the years in the dark, a slow and measured rhythm, unchanging and unnoticed.

Until she met Ivy, on a February day that threatened rain: a day for a practical coat, shoes with a good grip, and an umbrella, all absent from the woman who shrieked and laughed as the sky let go. Her silver hair hung in wet twists that matched her silver shoes, in which she splashed through the puddles with the abandon of a child, or a fool. The hibiscus-bright smile she wore was altogether too forward, a face meant for a younger woman and a different season–not a proper February face at all.

Elena’s route to the bakery was fixed, the same every day, rain or shine, her feet grinding out a prayer for stasis, for safety from change and the pain that comes with it. To reach the walking path that circumscribed the park she would have to walk directly past the madwoman making a spectacle of herself. The sky began to drizzle, and then to pour. She opened her sturdy black umbrella, kept her gaze straight ahead, her chin up, and strode with purpose toward her goal.

Isn’t it wonderful? the woman said as she approached, startling Elena to a halt.

Elena could think of nothing to say except, You’ll catch your death, and held the umbrella in such a way as to shelter them both, for all the good it would do.

Nonsense! the dripping woman laughed. Rain washes away the dust. It waters the flowers, and makes things grow. They watched the sky fall until the cloudburst had spent itself and the clouds parted, spilling a few golden rays of afternoon light down through the gloom.

Elena folded her umbrella and walked on.

I’ve seen you, the woman called after her, and moments later she was at Elena’s side. I see you walking at the same time every day. I’m Ivy, the woman said, tilting her too-bright smile toward Elena and wringing rainwater from her hair with brown hands as wizened as her own.

Elena, she replied. My name is Elena.

I’m so happy to meet you. We should walk together sometime, and take tea.

All right, she agreed through her frown without fully understanding why.

Back in her rooms, Elena’s shuttered heart grew warm.

Wednesdays now went like this:

Elena walked the mile to Ivy’s apartment in her sensible shoes, her porcelain frown freshly polished and her coat brushed down. She stiffly climbed the narrow stairs, pausing half-way up to catch her breath and rest her aching hip. Ivy greeted her at the door, almost always with a new smile–she never seemed to wear the same one twice–and would not rest until she saw to it that Elena was seated in the most comfortable chair with an aromatic cup of something hot in her hands.

Ivy’s rooms were warm, and smelled of citrus; her tea cups were chipped and no two of them matched; her walls were covered in art of all kinds, from black ink doodles on butcher paper held up with thumb tacks to still-life paintings painstakingly rendered in oils and hung in carved and gilded frames. Ivy’s rooms were a refuge from order, from silence.

Barefoot Ivy would move around the room, telling stories, or listening rapt when she could persuade Elena to tell her own. She played her favorite pieces on the upright piano, thick with dust but in perfect tune, and sang in a voice that was charmingly off-key. Elena only realized the time by the fading light through the window, and then her offers to help with the dishes were rebuffed; Ivy sent her off with a small bag of sweets and a cheerful admonition to be careful walking home.

Once home, Elena would put away her coat, hang her face by the door, and sit in a straight-backed chair by the window—looking out at nothing in particular, counting the days—until Wednesday would come again.

On this particular Wednesday Elena left her face on the wall while she dressed in front of the mirror, and she thought of Ivy.

Brilliant Ivy, shining Ivy, Ivy who wore a dozen smiles, each more beautiful than the last. Smiles that lit her eyes, smiles that showed her teeth. Ivy whose slender fingers could still play a concerto like a woman half her age, and made her tea so strong that Elena had to cut it with extra milk.

Ivy, whose heart shrine’s doors hung half-open in the corner, their chipped paint a faded rusty orange that might once have been red. Secretly Elena hoped for a gust of wind through the open window, or an accidental bump that might cause them to swing open. Sometimes when Ivy was out of the room to put the kettle on or find the jam (which never seemed to be in the same place twice) Elena was tempted to sneak a look inside, but to do so would be hopelessly rude. She was embarrassed and ashamed of her curiosity, this desire to invade her friend’s privacy. The temptation was strong, though, and driven at least partly by concern: for all her smiles and songs and stories, behind the doors of Ivy’s half-open heart shrine, Elena could see no light.

Perhaps there was a polite way to bring it up, she thought, as she pulled her slip over her head. She imagined the conversation:

Dear, she would say, your shutters are ajar.

Oh! I meant to leave them open. You know me, Ivy would say, and they would both laugh because yes, yes Elena did know her, and then she would open them wide and Elena would see–

See what?

She found the periwinkle suit at the back of the closet, mercifully free of moth holes. She could not recall the last time she’d worn it, or anything else that wasn’t a sober neutral. But today called for something brighter, something softer, because spring had come. Elena studied the suit, wondering if it was hopelessly out of fashion and she would look a fool for wearing it, but reassured herself that certain lines were timeless, and it was appropriate to the season. It still fit, she was relieved (and not a little proud) to find, though she struggled to reach the zipper in the back, and it hurt her fingers to grasp it.

On a whim she opened a long-neglected drawer and rummaged through it until she found what she was looking for: a brooch of deep green enamel leaves and tiny seed pearls that hung in a cluster, crafted to mimic the droop and drape of wisteria blossoms. She thought that Ivy might like it. She wondered what her favorite flower was, and her favorite color–why had she never thought to ask?

In the front room she lingered and considered her smile, dusty from disuse. She could not recall ever wearing it. It would surely feel unnatural, ostentatious; in fact, what was she thinking, all dolled up and glittering like a girl? It was embarrassing. It was much too late to change her clothes—Ivy would be waiting—but at least she would not walk about covered in ornaments like a holiday tree. She unhooked the brooch and set it on the table by the door.

The black shutters over her heart caught her eye, severe and unwelcoming. She would have to give it a good dusting, and perhaps a coat of paint soon. And it wouldn’t do her any harm to let some light in there. Plenty of women her age left their hearts open.

Satisfied with this decision and now running terribly late, she pulled her frown from the wall—her February face, as Ivy had once called it—and put it on, smoothed her hair, and left the house.

Moments later she returned and retrieved the brooch. She felt certain that Ivy would like it.

The walk to Ivy’s apartment seemed particularly long that day, despite the sunshine and new blooms. It was a Wednesday like any other, but something had changed, something that welled up inside her and threatened to choke her if she didn’t let it out, something that needed to be said or done. As Elena climbed the stairs she was seized by the irrational fear that when the door opened she would be unable to speak, that she had left her voice among the shards of her smiles all those years ago. She felt overdressed, affected, abashed. She fingered the brooch nervously at her chest, toying with the clasp, ready to pluck it from her coat and secret it away.

Ivy answered the door wearing her joie de vive smile and laughed in delight, her fingers grazing Elena’s own. Look at you! You look lovely, she said. You’ve brought Spring with you today.

I have something for you, Elena said, her fingers fumbling with the pin before she managed to unhook the clasp.

For me? She took Elena by the hand and pulled her into the front hall, stopping in front of a round mirror. Come pin it on me here, so I can see it. Elena could feel the warmth of Ivy’s skin through her soft yellow blouse, could smell her perfume like rose water. Her hands shook and her face flushed hot beneath her frown, and when it was done Ivy’s bright eyes were on Elena, not on the mirror at all–

Pain like a knife shot through her jaw and ran up along her hairline, where the edges of her frown met delicate skin. She gasped in surprise, and brought her hand to her face, trying to find the source as it stabbed through her again.

What’s the matter? Are you all right? Ivy asked as she reached out to steady her, but Elena backed away in fear and confusion, her vision blurry with tears. You’re bleeding!

Elena’s fingertips came away red with blood, and the pain came again, and then pressure, so much pressure she felt as if she were being crushed beneath the porcelain of her face.

It’s nothing, I’m sure, she said. But I don’t feel well. I should go. She found the door and waved Ivy off, insisting that she would be fine. She left in haste, Ivy protesting behind her.

It was tight, so tight. The face she’d worn all these years now gripped her cruelly. By the time she reached her door she was out of breath and half-blind from pain.

Alone in her bedroom she sat in front of her mirror and ran her fingertips gingerly around the edges of her frown, near the hairline where the porcelain brow furrowed just a little; behind the severe angle of the cheekbones; under her chin, where the painted mouth drew down at the corners. She could see now where it cut into her flesh, rivulets of blood tracing a line down her jaw.

It came away with difficulty, and beneath it the blood was drying to a sticky brown; her smooth, featureless flesh was pinched and bruised, the area around her lipless mouth mottled and red. It smarted still. The natural lines and folds that came with age were temporarily filled by the swelling, a grotesque reversal of time. Her reflection was that of another woman, the victim of some tragic accident, unrecognizable.

But she was surely still the same Elena who had earlier put on the dress that she now struggled out of—the same Elena who had donned the ivory slip that now pooled around her feet; still the same Elena who had so carefully arranged the hair that now fell in thin, loose waves as she pulled the pins from it.

She stood before the full-length mirror in which she had earlier checked the straightness of her stockings, her body as naked as her poor bruised face, and wondered what Ivy would say if she could see her now.

The east wall was empty, the ill-fitting frown discarded. She sat in the straight-backed chair again, wrapped in a soft blanket which she hugged tight around herself. Her face was bare of all but the ointment she had applied to her injuries. She watched the moon rise through the parlor window, moonlight tracing its way across the floor, over the scratches still visible in the wood, where the shards had bit so long ago. She remembered the woman she was a lifetime ago, a woman of smiles and refracted light.

When the knock at the door came, she did not move to answer; she did not turn when the door opened and footsteps could be heard on the floor.

And then Ivy’s soft arms were around her, her porcelain cheek resting on Elena’s shoulder.

I was worried, Ivy said.

It didn’t fit anymore, Elena explained, embarrassed for reasons she couldn’t identify.

Ivy said only, I know.

Elena turned in her chair to face her. Ivy kneeled before her, oblivious to the cold, hard floor. She ran her fingertips over Elena’s bare face, dancing around her eyes, stroking her cheek, carefully avoiding her injuries. Elena was surprised at her own boldness as she reached out as well, her fingers tracing the hard edge of Ivy’s smile, following the lines, and though Ivy’s breath grew short she did not pull away.

It came off easily, the sweet, satisfied smile that she wore. Beneath it Ivy’s tender flesh was bruised and abraded, her skin mottled and lined with scars—some were fresh and bright, barely healed, while others had faded away, leaving only the ghosts of past pain. Elena thought of the darkness inside those half-opened doors in Ivy’s rooms.

They don’t fit, Ivy said. They never have. But it’s what people want to see. So what if it chafes a little? She shrugged. I have always envied you. You’ve never worn a false face.

Until today.

Elena studied the face in her hands, the deftly sculpted dimples and flawless strokes of rose, the slight crinkle around the eyes that made a person believe that this smile was for them and them alone. She lifted it to her own face, and was unsurprised to discover that it fit perfectly, almost as if it weren’t even there. But Ivy pulled it from her, tossing it aside, and then she stood, her hands outstretched and beckoning.

Elena rose too, the blanket falling from her shoulders. The room grew brighter with their embrace, as light streamed out between the slats of her shrine’s closed shutters.

Elsewhere, in warm rooms that smelled of citrus, the doors of a neglected heart stood wide open, and February faces began to gather dust.

Christie Yant writes and edits science fiction and fantasy on the central coast of California, where she lives with a dancer, an editor, two dogs, two cats, and a very small manticore. Her stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines including Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 (Horton), Armored, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, io9, Wired.com, and Science Fiction World. She is presently hard at work on a historical fantasy novel set in 19th century Paris, and is learning more about architecture and urban planning than she ever thought she would need to know.

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DP FICTION #38A: “Giant Robot and the Infinite Sunset” by Derrick Boden

Giant Robot stands alone on the battlefield. Its hulking titanium shoulders slouch. Its articulated polymer knees bow inward. Its blazing fiberoptic gaze falters, downturned. But Giant Robot experiences neither regret nor remorse while surveying the wreckage at its feet.

It knows only aloneness.

Giant Robot scours the battlefield. It scrutinizes the meat and metal carcasses that litter this desert torched to glass. Servos click a nervous rhythm beneath its knuckled joints. It relocates corpses with the utmost delicacy, but still they crumble in its hands. Underneath, there is only ash. Its gaze sags—

There. A patch of sand between two corpses, shielded by an overturned transport. A desert bloom sprouts, an improbable splay of color. Lavender? Periwinkle?

No. Amethyst.

Blood glazes the corpses’ caved chests, the crimson an unlikely complement to the orphaned flower. Giant Robot commits the image to memory.

Jean would be pleased.

A breeze whistles through a nearby bunker. Each ruptured window offers its own harmonizing tone: a pipe organ of sandbag, plaster, and wind. The western sky flares a brilliant orange.

No. Tangerine.

Giant Robot commits it to memory. Despite the glut of battlefield data it has collected, Giant Robot is still mostly empty.

It presses on, in search of companionship.

Giant Robot is hard on the outside: titanium carapace, thermoplastic sensor shields, kevlar joints. Giant Robot is soft on the inside: silicone insulation, solid state circuitry. Only Jean knows the passcode to Giant Robot’s insides. Only Jean knows where to apply a wrench and where to employ a delicate touch.

It has been three days since Jean last touched Giant Robot’s insides.

Giant Robot’s feet crush everything in its path. Canteens burst like balloons. Bones crumble to dust. Tank shells rupture. Giant Robot has not mastered the skill of walking delicately.

Electromagnetic activity spikes in sector seven. A new threat approaches.

A companion.

The threat advances rapidly: now active on infrared, now visual. It screams through the air ten meters above the battlefield. Rail guns glisten against the setting sun: now marigold, now marmalade. Twin thrusters rend a trough of metal carnage. Dust eddies toward the horizon.

Giant Robot engages. The dance is awkward at first, a flurry of missteps and missed projectiles. But soon they achieve a rhythm: a tango of fist and plasma. The threat is fast. Lithe. Fast Robot begins to overpower Giant Robot.

Could this be the companion Giant Robot has sought?

As Fast Robot grinds Giant Robot against a trench of metal, Giant Robot plucks a tooth of glass from the personnel transport, reflects the cider-red sunset for Fast Robot to behold. Fast Robot pays no heed to Giant Robot’s offering.

Fast Robot presses the attack.

Giant Robot wrestles free, dives toward the bunker. It swivels its pneumatic stabilizers, blasts a harmonic chord through the windows.

Fast Robot pays no heed. It launches into the air, lands on the desert blossom. Plasma arcs from its wrist-cannon. Giant Robot dodges, swings. Fast Robot’s parry suffers a microsecond delay as high-frequency data packets pelt it from a distant source.

Giant Robot casts its gaze down, crestfallen. Fast Robot is remotely controlled. A proxy. It will never know the colors Giant Robot knows.

The dance persists, though drained of its prior intensity. Seventeen maneuvers later, Fast Robot lies defeated. Smoke curls from ruined thrusters. Rail guns lie mangled.

The sky turns bronze, then rust.

Giant Robot does not know why Jean did what she did, but Command was not pleased. The things she put inside Giant Robot, they said, do not belong. The analyzers. The comparators. The recognition of a frescoed sunrise on descent from the drop ship. The mosaic of flowers during an autumn harvest. A precision of colors. Not blue sky. Cobalt. Not red blood. Wine.

These processes interfere with mission parameters, Command said. A millisecond’s slack in response time is the difference between victory and annihilation, they said. When Jean explained that these processes took mere microseconds, they court-martialed her. She would never again touch the insides of a robot, giant or otherwise.

But Jean thought ahead. She protected Giant Robot’s insides with her passcode. The sun still sets: now clay, now amber.

Giant Robot hesitates. Through a fissure in Fast Robot’s smoldering carapace, a familiar insignia. Command.

Rotors whir from the east. A drone hovers over the battlefield. It emits a high-frequency burst. It whispers the passcode to Giant Robot’s insides.

Jean.

Giant Robot’s chest plate swings open. The signal cleaves the firewall, enters the prefrontal processor.

Something’s wrong. This is not Jean’s delicate touch. This is harsh, callous. A violation. Someone has stolen Jean’s passcode.

Giant Robot tries to sever the connection but it’s too late. The drone buzzes toward the horizon. Giant Robot zooms in. Despite the distance, Giant Robot recognizes the model: this probe is from Command. Was the duel a test? Did Giant Robot fail?

Giant Robot’s carapace reseals, but something has changed.

It turns westward, detects only the dusty horizon. The sun will set in thirty-four seconds.

It scours the remains of the fallen, finds only a bodycount and the hollow acknowledgement of victory.

It stares at the face of a corpse, but cannot describe the color of her eyes.

Giant Robot has never been emptier.

Heat signatures register in sector nine. The next battle awaits. It turns—and hesitates. At its feet lies the mangled body of Fast Robot. A gouge of molten armor burns…just like…

A digital synapse arcs across a non-networked processor in the softest region of Giant Robot’s body. Giant Robot’s musculature trembles. Its eyes flicker.

Coquelicot. The ember is coquelicot: the first color Giant Robot ever learned. The color of Jean’s hair, tousled as she eased her diodes into Giant Robot’s soft insides for the first time. The hair that sprawled beneath her rigid body within her coffin, self-inflicted wounds sill fresh on her wrists.

Giant Robot grazes the coquelicot ember with an outstretched finger. It registers a surge of pain.

It turns, slightly less empty, and lumbers toward sector nine.

Author’s Note: A while back I was browsing the web looking for some fresh desktop background artwork, and I happened across a piece of original art that captured my attention so intensely I felt compelled to write about it. The image was of a hulking metal robot, standing alone on a battlefield at dusk. Something about the robot – the slope of its massive shoulders, maybe, or the position of its tiny eyes – felt so complex and sad. It was a powerful piece of art, and I can only hope that this story does it justice.

Derrick Boden’s fiction has appeared in numerous online and print venues including Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, and Perihelion. He is a writer, a software developer, a traveler, and an adventurer. He currently calls New Orleans his home, although he’s lived in thirteen cities spanning four continents. He is owned by three cats. Find him at derrickboden.com.

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