DP FICTION #43A: “Glass in Frozen Time” by M.K. Hutchins

I freeze time. The frothing soap suds in the sink become glaciers. Dust motes hang in the air like stars. And I move.

I catch Sadie’s plate of mac n’ cheese before it splatters to the floor. While I’m there, I wipe down the table, fix Sadie’s pigtails, then — what the heck — I run downstairs and start a load of laundry.

Then I’m at the kitchen sink, water streaming, motes spinning, and Sadie’s three-year-old voice bubbling merrily on. “— I so happy to go to my Nana’s house!”

“Me too, sweet pea.”

She tells me about her grand plans for the day, including raiding the freezer for cookies. In the middle of it, a wild gesture knocks her juice cup. I freeze time and catch that, too, before any damage is done.

A warm thrill spreads over me as I finish the dishes. Tiny catastrophes make other parents late, but not me. We’ll arrive on time and spotless.

At least in my own home, I can control all the variables.

***

Eli comes home late. I can stop time, but I can’t stop his limp. My throat tightens, just hearing the uneven thud-thump of his real and his prosthetic foot. How can he be safe in the field now? He can still turn invisible, but he’s not exactly stealthy anymore.

Eli doesn’t glare at me. He folds me against his chest and kisses my cheek. Like always. “Did Sadie have a good time at your mom’s?”

“Of course.”

Eli glances around the house. My immaculate house. I alphabetized the spice rack today and organized the picture books by word count, starting with Moo, Baa, La La La! and ending with The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.

But a frown creases Eli’s face. “I don’t think this is what the League had in mind when they gave you vacation time.”

“Mandatory leave time,” I correct, my breath twisting in my chest like an over-tightened screw. “Don’t lecture me again, Eli. I’m just…I’m just a little perfectionist. That’s all.”

Eli holds my gaze and speaks in his calm, rational voice — the one I’m used to hearing during mission planning meetings, not at home. “That isn’t all and it’s not a little. It’s not good for you or Sadie.”

Now he wants to bring our daughter into this? “Sadie’s safe. Of course that’s good for her.”

I slow time to watch his reaction: a tiny shift of his head, the tightening of the corners of his mouth. He disagrees, and he’s not ready to drop this yet. I wish he would. I let time flow.

“She’ll never learn to be careful or clean up after herself if you’re always making things perfect,” he says. “You can’t actually control everything.”

“I know.” But I can control my home. I have to be able to control something.

Eli lays a hand on my shoulder. “That card’s still on your nightstand, Allison.”

The card our League general gave me right before he kicked me out on mandatory leave. My throat constricts. “I don’t need it.”

“You ought to call,” Eli persists. “Go in.”

Eli should be the one having a hard time adjusting, not me. “You know,” I try to joke with him, “most people would be thrilled to have a spouse who never nags them to do the dishes. I can’t believe you’re complaining about a clean house.”

Eli doesn’t laugh. He holds me closer and strokes my hair.

***

I set down my water glass and get back to scrubbing the window track with a Q-tip. Soon, it will be as shiny as League Headquarters. No dead flies. No spots of grime.

“Thirsty,” Sadie declares, hopping down from the table and her crayons. Her feet patter across our spotless tile floor.

“Water, milk, or juice?” I ask, still bent over the window. It’s almost finished. Almost perfect.

The tinkle of broken glass and a sharp little “Ow!” cut through my ears and stab down at my heart.

Reflexively, I freeze time. I turn. My water glass is nothing but shards now between Sadie’s feet. A drop of scarlet blood wells up on her heel.

I am too late.

I freeze, too. My lungs refuse to work. Air becomes concrete in my lungs. My stomach tightens and tightens into a black hole. My tongue is a boulder, clogging my throat.

This isn’t a mission. There are no villains here. I should be able to control it.

But I can’t even hold onto time. It slips away. The glass skitters across the floor, Sadie turns her head, the motes spin.

But I am still frozen as panic crushes my throat.

Sadie turns her foot to look at the small gash. “Mommy!” she wails.

I can’t answer.

“Mommy!” she demands.

I couldn’t stop her from getting hurt.

Sadie plants two fists on her hips. “Mommy! You pick me up now!”

A thread of breath cracks through my throat, into my lungs. I can’t think straight, but I can obey her simple order. I pick up my child.

“To the sink!”

I step carefully around the glass.

“Wash it, Mommy.”

I wash.

“Now dry.”

I dry.

“Band-aid!”

I set her on the counter and pull the first-aid kit down from the cupboard. Sadie holds still while I smooth the bandage over the tiny, angry wound.

“Kiss it better.”

I give her a tiny kiss. She smells like soap and cotton.

Sadie pats my cheek, smiling. “Mommy, you are silly. Nana knows how to do all that without being tolded.”

“Tolded?”

“Yup. And she has kitty band-aids.” Sadie glances at the floor. “Do you need help cleaning up your messes? Nana helps me.”

“You make messes at Nana’s?”

She giggles. “When you go on your last mission with Daddy, I open all the paints! I paint me, I paint the walls, I paint the carpet!”

My mother didn’t tell me that. Maybe she knew I had other things to worry about, after that mission.

I grab a broom. I sweep up the mess. I make cookies with Sadie and then build towers of blocks for her to crash. I ignore the window track. As soon as I get her nestled down for quiet time with a few books, I pick up the card on my nightstand.

Emily Perez, LPC. The League’s recommended counselor for traumatic stress. My throat squeezes tight, but I imagine Sadie’s voice giving me instructions.

Pick up your phone.

Dial the number.

Wait.

Say hello.


© 2018 by M.K. Hutchins

 

Author’s Note: As a mom and as someone who daydreams about magic and super powers, this story came easily.

 

M.K. Hutchins regularly draws on her background in archaeology when writing fiction. Her YA fantasy novel Drift was both a Junior Library Guild Selection and a VOYA Top Shelf Honoree. Her short fiction appears in Podcastle, Strange Horizons, IGMS, and elsewhereA long-time Idahoan, she now lives in Utah with her husband and four children. Find her at www.mkhutchins.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.

 


© 2018 by Jennifer Lee Rossman

 

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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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.

 


© 2018 by Jesse Sprague

 

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.comand on both Wattpad as @jessesprague and Radish Fiction.

 

 

 

 


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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.”

 


© 2018 by John Wiswell

 

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 #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.

 


© 2018 by Amanda Helms

 

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 FictionCast 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.

 


© 2018 by Christie Yant

 

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 #37B: “Soft Clay” by Seth Chambers

I wander the Chicago streets unseen. I’m plain, drab, faceless. I’m a shadow drifting through the world of form. It isn’t all bad, being this way. I ghost into theaters and museums and concerts without paying. Guards see me bypass the lines and slip through the doors, but somehow I never quite register.

Being nobody has its perks but now I hunger to be somebody once again, to have a name again. To do this I must find the right man to follow. I wander the Chicago Loop looking for certain telltale signs of pain, longing, emptiness.

We live in a world of grief and so it doesn’t take long to find him. He carries himself with an undefined heaviness and peers through a fog of yesterdays. His emptiness drags me along.

I follow him into a coffee shop and stand behind him in line. He doesn’t notice me because there is nothing to notice. I am nobody. I am soft clay in search of a potter. I won’t know who I am until he shows me. I touch his hand. He glances back but I still don’t register on his radar.

And yet, in that brief touch I feel his longing. I loop my finger around one of his and this time he finally fixes his gaze on me. I peer up at him, only now I have a freckled face with a cute nose, framed with auburn hair. He gasps. They usually do. I smile, just the way she used to smile.

My God, he says.

Then we’re at a table, my small hands enveloped in his large ones, coffee all but forgotten, our eyes locked. I become more her by the second. Elsa is her name. His memories of Elsa blaze to life. I become a little shorter and plumper. I grow to like strawberry ice cream and mystery novels with cats in them. I fell off a horse when I was a little girl.

I hear it like a rolling echo in my head, the same words, said to me by a hundred men: Is it really you? It can’t be!

You’re right. It isn’t.

I pull my hands away and return to being plain, drab, soft clay.

No. I’m not her. But I can become her.

He glances about, like they all do, and I know what he’s thinking: Are there hidden cameras? Is this some reality TV show? A prank? A sick joke? 

I take his hands and become her once again, even more so this time, and his doubts vanish. He is hooked. We talk. We make a deal. Money is passed from him to me. I don’t tell him the truth: that I need to become Elsa as much as he needs me to be her.

We go to his Michigan Avenue hotel room and sit on the queen-size bed. We hold hands and I swim in his memories.

I say: Tell me about her.

We were in love but never got married. Then she died. It was so sudden. I married somebody else but—

He stops.

But your wife can never know how much you miss her.

God no.

We’re quiet for a long time. Then he speaks again, only this time he isn’t talking about her but to her. To me. To Elsa.

I’ve missed you so fucking much! All the stupid, silly little things you did. You would piss me off sometimes because there was that crazy energy between us. And the way you laughed! You know what I used to say about you? That you were one half sweetheart and one half lunatic.

I laugh, just like Elsa. Because I am her, more and more and more with each passing minute.

Why the fuck did you have to go and die like that? I didn’t even know you were sick. I married somebody else, you never knew her. I go away on business, like now. I never cheat. Not because of her, though. My God! It’s because of you, Elsa. Because of you.

His cell phone rings.

I tell him to answer the phone, that I’ll be quiet as a mouse. Something Elsa used to say all the time. She had lots of cute sayings like that. I let go of his hand and scootch away from him.

He answers and talks to his wife for a few minutes. I don’t really listen. I feel Elsa slipping from me. I try to hold on. Elsa had parents and went to school and held down jobs, but those memories wisp away like dandelion seeds in the wind. I search my mind for my own past, as I have so often before, and come up empty.

He hangs up the phone and looks at me, a drab and pale thing sitting on the bed of his fancy hotel room. I need to become somebody, need to be molded and directed, but it’s a strain. It takes a lot of energy.

I reach for him again. He pulls away. He’s wondering, What is this creature beside me? I’m floating away. I need to become Elsa again.

He demands, How did you do that? Did you drug me? What the hell is going on?

I have no idea how I do it. I only know this hunger to become somebody, to feel, to live. For a short time I felt his love for Elsa, poor dead Elsa, and could almost believe that love belonged to me. I ache to be her again.

I reach for him, quicker this time. I latch onto his hands, my small fingers clamping so tight he shouts. I don’t let go until I’m Elsa again, sitting on the bed. He still has questions but they don’t matter. Elsa is with him. I look like her, smell like her. My skin is soft and warm, just as Elsa’s was. He throws his arms around me and says my name: Elsa, oh Elsa!

We talk, we embrace, we order room service, we make love. We talk deep into the night and fall asleep in each other’s arms, with him still murmuring my name over and over.

Elsa, Elsa, Elsa.

***

I awake, no longer Elsa, and slip away while he sleeps. I have money now. I leave this fancy hotel and check into a cheap dive, one of those TRANSIENTS WELCOME places, where I don’t have to show ID. I get my key and go upstairs.

I enjoyed being Elsa but the strain has been great. I sleep for a long time.

*

Sometimes I’m the One Who Got Away.

Other times I’m the Childhood Sweetheart.

Or the Dearly Departed.

I sift through the remnants of other peoples’ memories. I think about the names I had. The memories and the names fade because they don’t belong to me. They are merely heirlooms I borrow. I have no name of my own, not that anybody ever asks.

After some time in the cheap hotel, I emerge and walk through the Loop once again. I’m merely wandering, not yet looking for somebody new to follow. Being Elsa was nice. The warm glow of her energy has stayed with me.

But now, as I wander through the Loop, I’m back to being nobody. It seems like it has always been this way: me spotting the right man, following after, dipping into his mind, and becoming the love of his life for one glorious night. It feels like I was made for this.

I go to a bagel shop. It always surprises people when I talk to them. The young lady behind the counter punches my order into her machine. She looks so confused, wondering why this drab, formless shape is talking to her. She seems like a nice person, though, and I want to hug her. She asks my name, so they can call it when my order is ready. I tell her Elsa. I feel like a thief, stealing Elsa’s name like this. But it’s so delicious! I have a name.

When my order is ready, the girl calls my stolen name: Elsa? I get my food and say awesomesauce! Because that’s another cute thing Elsa used to say. But Elsa is a faded memory.

When I sit down, a man looks my way. He’s somebody I’ve seen before. Something stirs inside me. Nobody ever looks at me when I wander alone, but he does. Tall, sharply-dressed, distinguished gray hair that lends him a quiet authority.

He has a laptop open but keeps stealing glances my way. Does he need me to become somebody? No, I don’t think so. Why does he look familiar?

It comes to me: He’s been following me. Just as I’ve followed so many people. How could that be? Nobody ever sees me, let alone follows. I’m not used to this. My heart pounds and I don’t know what to feel.

I pick up my bagel and step over to his table. He looks up and sees me. He doesn’t see some Lost Love. He doesn’t see the One Who Got Away. He sees me, I can tell. Plain, drab me, with no past and no name to call my own.

I have other memories of him but they’re locked away and I can’t get to them. I hear them like voices from a further room.

He reaches for my plain, drab hand. I snatch it away and drop the bagel. I’m aware that he’s standing, calling to me, but something drives me off. I bolt through the revolving door, run headlong into the crowd on LaSalle, people shouting.

Without warning, the need to be somebody descends and claws me like a ravenous bird. I follow first one man then another and another. I can’t concentrate. Borrowed memories swirl and slam through my head. It’s dizzying. I run and stumble for hours.

***

I’m on the south side and it’s dark before I finally latch onto somebody. I find him in a bar. Or he finds me. His name is Dale. He glares at me through a haze of hatred. He sees me: haggard, worn, angry. My face is drawn up in sharp angles and dry skin.

You bitch. You goddam filthy bitch, what are you doing here?

I try to tell him: I’m not who you think I am, I only look like her. As I try to explain, his memories of her seep through me like dirty oil. His only name for me is Bitch.

I told you what I’d do if I ever saw you again. I told you never show your face round here. Then, loudly to another man: Hey, Bubba, look who’s here.

Bubba looks up from where he was about to sink the eight ball. He eyes me and frowns. He’s huge and looks like a confused gorilla. He doesn’t see Bitch. He sees plain, drab me.

Dale latches onto my arm. He is very strong and it hurts. His foul energy slams into me. Other men have a grab bag of mixed feelings but Dale’s hatred is undiluted. I throw up walls inside myself but his rage invades, relentless and without mercy. Against my will, I become Bitch, more and more.

Now Bubba’s eyes blaze with recognition and he sneers: Tiffany! He throws down the cue stick and lumbers over. He slides one fat, puffy hand over my face. His memories of Tiffany crawl inside my head like spiders. I cry out and both men laugh. Somebody chucks quarters in the jukebox. Music blares. I scream for help but nobody gives a shit.

This has never happened before: two men seeing me as the same woman at the same time. I become an amalgam of their memories of this woman. My name is Bitch. My name is Tiffany. I have a thing for Vicodin and alcohol and rough sex and any other distraction the world can throw at me. When I was a kid my mother got so mad she ripped out a lock of my hair and it never grew back. I had a back alley abortion when I was thirteen.

Dale hauls me across the bar. I am Bitch. I am Tiffany. Was I always her? I can’t tell. But I’m Bitch now and she damn sure knows how to fight. I snatch a bottle from somebody’s table and let Dale have it upside the head. It shatters and Dale goes down. Bubba comes at me but I lay into him good with the broken end of the bottle.

Bitch screams. Tiffany runs.

I plow through the front door into the street and a car screeches to a stop. The driver curses. I stumble. Dale and Bubba can’t be far behind. I spot a nice car, a fancy SUV that’s out of place in this neighborhood. Tiffany knows how to hotwire cars. Do I have time?

The door of the SUV swings open and he gets out: the distinguished-looking man who was following me earlier. He opens the back door of the SUV. I dive in and he slams the door. He gets in and cranks the engine just in time because Dale and Bubba are hot on our ass.

He peels out just as the two men begin pounding the shit out of the SUV. He drives off and very soon pulls onto Lake Shore Drive. I weep in the back seat. I’m still Bitch and I hate this man and hate all men and hate myself.

Only slowly does Bitch drain away and I go back to being nobody. I weep some more. I don’t know which is worse: being Bitch or being nobody.

He drives for a long time, not saying a word. He lets me cry it out. Eventually, he pulls into a lot and parks. He turns and looks over the front seat. He sees me. I can tell. He doesn’t see Elsa or Bitch or Tiffany or anyone else. He sees me.

I ask: Who are you?

I look at him. He gazes back, a sad smile spreading across his face.

My name is Wolfgang Bollinger. I’m your father.

I tell him I have no father or mother. I had no childhood. I never fell off a horse when I was a little girl. I never had a job. I don’t like strawberry ice cream or mystery novels with cats in them. I don’t know how to fight or hotwire cars.

There is sadness about him but it’s different from the pain I look for in a man. I don’t understand. I grab his hand. He doesn’t pull away. I slip into his memories and become confused because they’re mixed in with my own. The memories that I kept locked away.

We both remember: a vast cavern of a place with all the latest high-tech equipment. I float in a warm vat of amber fluid. A younger version of this man comes by and talks to me. It’s a laboratory but he doesn’t treat me as a test subject or a guinea pig. He presses his hand against the clear side of the vat. I open my eyes, somehow knowing he is there. I press my hand against the clear wall and we smile at each other.

But I still don’t understand.

Why, oh why, would he do such a thing?

I created you to become my lovely Lisa. We were together eighteen years and I missed her more than life itself.

Lisa?

You became her and we got to say all the things we never got around to saying when she was alive. I had always been so busy with work, but then I got another chance. It was a brief but magical time.

We sit quiet. The windows fog up. Eventually, he speaks again.

I still love her and miss her and think about her. But after that night, the deep and horrible pain was gone. My heart was able to heal.

Yes, I remember now!

And then I slipped away. Into the night.

You did.

So I was your daughter because you created me. Then I became your wife for a night, because that’s what I was made for. But who am I now?

Tears flow from his eyes. He crumples in upon himself like a paper sack and pulls his hand away. He has no answer to give.

I crawl from the back to the front passenger seat. He won’t look at me. His gaze is fixed on his lap. His shoulders shake with quiet sobs. I reach over and take one of his hands in both of mine.

I say: Look at me.

It takes him a long time but he looks. I begin to change. This time I become somebody he has never seen before, but our minds are joined and so he knows who it is.

Isabelle? My God. This can’t be. It’s you. Isabelle!

His wife lost her in the first trimester. That was nine years ago. I feel myself shrinking down to child size. I giggle, my voice airy and carefree.

Hi, Daddy.

What I’ve done! What I made of you! It was a sin. I created you for my own selfish ends.

I pull his head onto my tiny shoulders and let him weep. I tell him everything is okay. I don’t need to know who I am. I don’t need a horse or strawberry ice cream or mystery novels with cats in them. I have everything I need.

I have a father who loves me.

I have a name.

My name is Isabelle.


© 2018 by Seth Chambers

 

Author’s Note: This story, along with my other changeling tales, is a way of exploring the experience of being adrift, socially invisible, and without personal identity.

 

sethSeth Chambers was born with a Pentel Rolling Writer in hand and has been pathologically addicted to writing ever since. In his quest for life experience, he has worked as an army medic, mental health counselor, farm hand, wilderness guide, bike messenger and ESL teacher. His writings have appeared in F&SF, Daily SF, Fantasy Scroll, Isotropic Fiction, and Perihelion SF. His novella, “In Her Eyes,” was a nominee for the Theodore Sturgeon Award and included in Prime Book’s, The 2015 Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novellas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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DP FICTION #35B: “Brooklyn Fantasia” by Marcy Arlin

Griffin was an undocumented immigrant griffin from Cardiff, Wales.  He lived with Bringer of Dreams, a semi-materialized entity from Albuquerque, and Fossil Leaf, an animate rock, on the first floor of a run-down salt box row house in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn.

Griffin had golden fur and an emerald beak and was extremely vain about his fingernails. Rumor had it that he had known Richard the Lion-Hearted, but since he had started the rumor, no one believed him.

Bringer of Dreams had run away from New Mexico after a minor scandal with a coyote. He usually wore a large blue, black and red mask and green tunic. He was seven feet tall with large red feet. Bringer wanted to wear skulls on his belt, but his roommates discouraged this, citing health statutes in New York City.

Fossil Leaf was flat and grey, and had once been a Zamia furfuracea cycad. He had escaped being chomped by a dinosaur, way back when, but was undone by volcanic ash. Last year construction workers at the condo site next door had tossed him on to the stoop of the row house.

The neighborhood was cheap, as yet ungentrified, and only five blocks from the semi-regular G train. There was a slummy Key Food supermarket for shopping. The housing projects on the other side of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway were a short flight away.

This September, like every last Sunday of the month, the landlord came by to collect the next month’s rent, which they left in the mailbox outside the front door. But instead of just taking the money (a cashier’s check) and leaving a receipt as usual, he banged on the door.

No one answered. He kept banging. Finally Griffin got pissed at all the noise while he was trying to take a nap. He flung the door open. Bringer of Dreams and Fossil Leaf stood out of sight, listening.

“What!?” Griffin roared.

The landlord, being a Brooklyn slumlord, was unfazed by the appearance of a large roaring golden creature. He had seen worse.

“You gotta move, you and your buddies. I sold the building last week and the new owners are going to tear this shithole down. The bulldozers are arriving on Friday.”

“We got a lease,” Griffin informed him. “Till January.”

“Sorry. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. I got one and a half mil for this place, and your lousy $850 does not compare. If you don’t leave I call the City Marshall.”

“What about the next month’s rent we just gave you?” inquired Griffin, perhaps too politely.

The landlord shoved an eviction notice at Griffin and turned to go. Huge mistake.

Griffin ate him, rent, fanny pack and all. Then he closed the door, leaving a slight red patch on the stoop.

Bringer of Dreams sighed. Fossil Leaf said nothing. He had been homeless before.

An hour later, as they sat in the living room, trying to figure out their next step, Griffin regurgitated the landlord’s bones on the kitchen linoleum. Bringer of Dreams got up from the sofa and spirit-melded them together into a jangly skeleton and hung them from the front door.

Still, it was dinnertime and discussion about living arrangements could wait. As usual, no one had gone shopping, so they decided to order a pizza from Domino’s. Nick’s Pizzeria wouldn’t deliver to them anymore since Griffin had eaten the delivery guy.

Fossil wanted broccoli on the pizza. Bringer wanted black beans and corn, which Fossil Leaf said was stupid. Bringer got insulted and tossed Fossil Leaf against the wall. Fossil cursed at Bringer and tried to smash his feet. Griffin told them both to shut up or he would claw them to pieces, which shut Bringer up. Fossil Leaf kept yammering on about what is and what is not a vegetable.

They decided to go halvesies.

Griffin hated pizza. He opened the front door, smiled at the skeleton and flew up to the roof to catch the sunset. He licked his fur and feathers until the oils reached their tips to absorb some Vitamin D. He had to think about the move.

Bringer made the call to Domino’s. The pizza came after half an hour. Bringer put the pie on the living room floor. Fossil Leaf flipped into the box and smooshed himself in the cheese. Bringer removed his mask and gobbled down his half.

When the sun set, Griffin cat-padded down from the roof, using the rickety stairs in the hallway to the apartment. He was disgusted to see a cheesy tomatoey Fossil Leaf crashed on the sofa watching The Amazing Race.

Bringer of Dreams was getting dressed for a night prowl through the dreams of some unlucky souls in the projects. He changed into his headdress, his Ricky’s Novelties acrylic fox tail and his hand-made blue and green synthetic deerskins. If he wore the real stuff, people would come up to him and yell about animal cruelty.

“You are resplendent,” said Griffin. Bringer appreciated the compliment. He worked on his appearance.

“We’re leaving,” Griffin shouted to Fossil Leaf, who was on the couch channel-surfing and muttering about there being nothing on TV anymore. Griffin needed to stretch his wings and case the neighborhood looking for a suitable place.

“Don’t forget to clean the cheese off the furniture,” Griffin yelled. “It’s disgusting in here.”

“Screw you,” said Fossil Leaf, settling on a Law and Order rerun.

“See you later, brother. Got some heads to haunt,” said Bringer of Dreams cheerily, and sauntered off under the BQE down to Sands Street, adornments jangling.

As Griffin flew over New York City, snatching rodents, he pondered their situation. This apartment they had found by pure accident. He had run into Bringer, who was also looking for a place, while roaming the roofs of downtown Manhattan. Bringer thought a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge might be fun. At the exit ramp Griffin had flown off and landed on the roof of their current house. No one lived there. They moved in and one day the landlord showed up and said they had to pay up or be evicted. That was three years ago.

Now, Bringer of Dreams materialized in Apartment 8D in the projects. A young nurse who worked at Methodist Hospital slept deeply, exhausted from a 12-hour shift. Her walls were hung with colorful tapestries and pictures of her family back home in Grenada. Bringer sang her a song about oceans and pelicans. She woke up sweating and in tears. She thought about quitting her job at the hospital to go home and take care of her mother.

At sunrise, the two night-stalkers returned to the apartment. The TV was smashed to smithereens. Fossil Leaf was lying on the sill in the kitchen next to the geraniums, basking in the southern exposure sunlight. He sobbed softly. He wailed about missing photosynthesis.

“Get over it,” said Bringer. “We’re talking 65 millions years, give or take. Want some breakfast?” He went to the kitchen and opened a package of instant oatmeal.

Griffin was exhausted. He plopped on the raggedy brown carpet in the living room, avoiding the greasy pizza box, and started to clean himself. He was sick of Fossil’s kvetching. Maybe they should just split up.

Bringer had gone into the bathroom to have a shave. He called to Fossil Leaf.

“You really should get out more, my friend. Maybe the park? Go dancing?”

“Oh fuck off, will you,” muttered Fossil Leaf. “What do you know about my life? You are barely corporeal.”

“My, my. Corporeal. Aren’t we fancy,” said Bringer. He finished shaving.

“Shut up, both of you.” Griffin squawked loudly. He put his hind leg down and sighed. “Tomorrow we got to find a place. Now I need to sleep.”

He went back up to the roof for a catnap. He curled his long sleek tail around his beak. Bringer of Dreams went to his room, removed his clothes and curled up under the light blue IKEA comforter. Fossil Leaf fell into a bowl of Lucky Charms and was soon snoring.

On Tuesday, Griffin took Fossil Leaf with him to look at a place in Park Slope that was advertised on Craig’s List. Not surprisingly, what was advertised as a two-bedroom turned out to be a refurbished boiler room with two particleboard closets.

“$2,275 for this crap!” exclaimed Griffin, and promptly ate the real estate broker.

“She said she had a place near the BQE. You could’ve waited to chow down,” said Fossil Leaf.

“I hate being lied to,” replied Griffin. “Anyway, too much pollution with all that truck traffic.”

On Wednesday, Bringer told them that he had seen a “For Rent” sign in front of a six-story apartment building in Clinton Hill, a hop, skip, and a jump from Vinegar Hill. It was a co-op whose owners lived in Dubai.

They checked it out. Bringer tried hard to look human and pretty much convinced the owner that he was a trans-species performance artist with a trust fund. The only issue was that all the renters had to be approved by the Board.

“What the hell is a credit rating?” said Fossil Rock.

“Whatever it is, I am sure we don’t have it,” said Griffin. “Too bad. Sounds like a great place, parquet floors, dishwasher, doorman.” He clacked his beak hungrily.

“Would you please stop thinking about dinner for a change?” said Bringer of Dreams. “We’re going to be bulldozed in two days.”

Griffin had a friend in Prospect Park, a golem who had been left there by a rabbi from Crown Heights. Maybe it knew of a place. Never hurt to ask. Two bedrooms and one bath. Fossil Leaf usually slept on a sofa. He had to admit he’d miss the guys if they split up.

That evening, Griffin jumped onto the top of the B69 to Prospect Park.

He got off at Grand Army Plaza and loped to the northeast side of the park. He caught and ate a bunny and a squirrel.

Golem knew of only one place, way the hell out in Sheepshead Bay, by the water. Some abandoned fish restaurant. Golem claimed the area was unlikely to gentrify any time soon, given that it was at least 90 minutes from the Financial District. There were plenty of fish. And fishermen.

Thursday night they trekked out to Sheepshead Bay to look at the ex-fish restaurant. There was a full moon. The fish were awake, snipping at bugs on the water’s surface. Small fishing boats moored at the docks gently rose and fell, giving off a sweet flounder smell. Their white sides glowed and guided the trio to the abandoned building not far from the wharves. Across the inlet a few lights could be seen from the homes of the Manhattan Beach families, waiting anxiously for the next hurricane.

It was quite peaceful.

The building was a dull weathered red, with once-white doors and window frames. Inside were cobwebs, mice, rats, mold, and rotting dampness. A sign hung off the roof that said “Sal’s Fried Fish. All you can eat-$5.96.

“That’ll be the day,” said Bringer. “You can’t get a latte for under $7.00 in Brooklyn anymore.

“I hate it,” complained Fossil Leaf. “You can hear the dead. Not to mention wildlife.”

“Would you two please stop?” Griffin was really tired. He now owed Golem a favor for finding this place for them, and you didn’t owe favors lightly to golems.

“According to the golem, some dead geezer owns the place and will let us live here, no questions asked, for five hundred a month. There’s a toilet in the back, and a phone line. I checked and there are plenty of Italian places around, so you two will be well supplied with pizza. What do you say?”

“I still hate it,” said Fossil Leaf. “Too much water.”

“You don’t go anywhere, so why do you care?” said Bringer of Dreams. He sniffed the salty air. “I mean, a person could come up with some really nice dreams here. All watery and drowny. Tangled up in nets. Getting lost in a storm. I like it.”

“I guess it’s okay,” mumbled Fossil Leaf.

The place put Bringer in a good mood. He had grown up in high desert, and the ocean breeze was a refreshing change.

Griffin flew them back to Vinegar Hill and gathered up their few possessions. They went down to DeKalb and got the D train out to Sheepshead Bay. It was 4 AM and no one on the train noticed them, or if they did, they didn’t care. Or if they cared, they pretended they didn’t. New York subways, for goodness sakes. Everyone rides it.

It took them a couple of hours to settle in. Friday morning the rising sun streamed in the front window of their new place. Fossil Leaf, in spite of himself, went to bask on the ledge in a planter that held the dead shriveled leaves of a rubber plant. It still had some dirt; he dug himself a comfy little depression.

Bringer found an upstairs room where the former owners used to take their mistresses. It still held a large gilded mirror and a cedar closet.

Griffin found a balcony that faced the inlet. The wind ruffled his neck feathers. He stretched his claws, flexed his tail, and lay down with a large sigh.

All the mice and rats left rapidly.

He thought, you know, sometimes if you have to move, you can actually find a nicer place. He closed his eyes, contented.


© 2018 by Marcy Arlin

 

Author’s Note: BROOKLYN FANTASIA began as a writing prompt by Betsy James in one of her amazing online workshops. She suggested we look at an altar we have, or one created by one of the other participants. Fellow SF writer Kathy Kitts uploaded a photo of hers that included, um, a miniature griffin, a Hopi katchina doll, and a fossil leaf.  Now what would those three creatures do together? My husband and I had just moved into a new place in Brooklyn. The four months of hellish apartment hunting came to mind. Hence, the story.

 

Marcy Arlin member of Brooklyn SF Writers group (BSFW) at The Brooklyn Commons 06/16/16Marcy studied at the Gunn Center with Chris McKitterick, Andy Duncan, & Kij Johnson, and with Betsy James. She is a fellow at the Writer’s Institute (NYC) and is a Fulbright scholar to the Czech Republic and Romania. Marcy is Artistic Director of the OBIE-winning Immigrants’ Theatre and has taught theatre at CUNY, Yale, Brown, University of Chicago (her alma mater), Pace. Marcy’s theatre work with immigrants, interculturalism and social justice is a strong influence on her spec fiction. Publications: Daily Science Fiction, perihelionsf.com, Kaleidocast 1 & 2, Broad Universe Sampler, Man.In.Fest. Experimental Theatre Journal. She is a producer/host for the BSFW podcast and is editor of Czech Plays: 7 New Works, Immigrant Artist Interviews (tcgcircle.org),Eastern European Playwrights: Women Write the New (SEEP Journal). In the works is a science fiction murder mystery. Marcy  is a member of Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers and Theatre Without Borders and lives in Brooklyn with a ghost and two cats. (bio photo by Melissa C. Beckman)

 


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DP FICTION #34A: “Hakim Vs. the Sweater Curse” by Rachael K. Jones

For our one-year anniversary, my boyfriend Kit gives me a knobbly sweater knit in irregular rows of beige, dark beige, and light beige, studded with white yarn blobs shaped like aborted ponies. The left arm—clearly shorter than the right—is tourniqueted midway by red plastic gift ribbon knotted into a bad bow.

Everything but that arm gently undulates of its own volition like jellyfish tentacles, simultaneously guileless and sinister.

“I made this for you, Hakim!” His slightly crooked teeth flash against his black skin like freshwater pearls. “It’s merino wool. Now we can match!” Indeed, Kit is wearing an identical sweater, minus the gift bow. “Go ahead and put it on so I can see how it looks on you.”

Every relationship experiences those crucial moments that make or break you, where you decide whether to commit or bail. This is clearly one of them.

I’ve been smitten with Kit since we met on the dance floor at Boneshaker’s, me in the black suspender tights and feathered fascinator I usually wore for Drag Queen Night, and him in a tacky red-and-blue thrift store sweater that made me think Hipster Independence Day. He bought me a mai-tai with a pink plastic elephant perched on the rim, and I invited him into my booth. Later, I invited him home. Two weeks after that, we moved in together.

That’s when I learned that Kit didn’t just wear those sweaters ironically.

So yes, I’m well aware of Kit’s sweater problem. But this one is undulating.

By now, Kit can read my hesitance in my lack of enthusiastic sweater-wearing. He worries the knit between his fingers, on the verge of tears. “Don’t you like it? It’s hypo-allergenic merino wool. I remember how that scarf I crocheted you for Hanukkah gave you hives all around your neck. This one won’t do anything like that. I promise.”

The sweater’s right arm undulates up Kit’s cheek and brushes away the tears.

“No, Honey, of course it’s not that,” I say. “It’s… well…”

Here’s the thing: Kit is the sensitive sort. Cries at the end of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic season finales, especially the one about the royal gala. I’ve found out the hard way that you can’t just tell him what you’re really thinking, because he tends to take it badly. Better to dial the truth back a few notches. Make it about literally anything else. “I just got back from the gym, and the super-soft absorbent yarn might get all sweaty if I put it on.” The sweater’s arm flagellates my chin three-four-five times. I think it’s trying to strangle me.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. This wool’s naturally anti-bacterial and water-repellent because they don’t strip out all the lanolin. You can wear it in the rain, like a true Scotsman!” During that last bit, he slips into a Sean-Connery-From-The-Highlander voice, because he knows I think it’s sexy when he uses accents.

And you know what? He’s right. I do think it’s sexy. I don’t want to lie to my Kit. So I do the most romantic, stupid thing I could possibly do. I tell him the truth. “Kit, that sweater’s fucking moving. It’s trying to give me a back massage I definitely didn’t consent to. There’s no way I’m going to give it access to my whole body.”

Kit’s mouth opens and closes a couple times. He swallows, that big Adam’s apple bobbing up and down under his soft black skin. His eyes shine huge and teary like when he’s four margaritas in, or when his feelings are hurt, and the feelings-hurter is moi. He’s working so hard not to cry that he can’t squeeze out more than one syllable at a time. “Bu—but it’s our anni—anniversary, and I—I made it—just—for—you…”

And that’s when I realize I love Kit. Like really, seriously, crazily love him, in the let’s grow old on the front porch and yell obscenities at the neighbor’s kids sort of way. He’s worth the endless My Little Pony reruns, and the tacky sweaters (don’t tell him I called them tacky), and even the hyper-sensitivity that creates situations like this at least once a week.

And by Lady Gaga’s meat dress, he’s worth even this tacky homemade Lovecraftian horror. So against my better judgment and sense of self-preservation, I put it on, because that’s True Love.

Kit is so relieved he practically melts into my arms. “It looks so dashing on you, Baby,” he says in his best Sean-Connery-as-James-Bond voice, because most of his fake accents are Connery-related. The hug he gives me makes it all worthwhile, until just like True Love, the sweater’s fibers begin burrowing into my skin.

I ignore the tingling sensation of epidermis melding with hypo-allergenic merino wool, and give Kit the one-year-anniversary kiss he’s been waiting for. “I love you too, Sweetheart.”

He smiles so sweetly at me, and his eyes hood seductively. But when his lips part, he coughs hard, like a cat with a hairball, and something damp and wooly flops behind his teeth. He leans over, coughs and sputters, and with every hacking cough another inch of sweater crawls up out of his throat until with one last retch the whole thing flops wetly at his feet. I look on with horror as the damp thing spreads itself out to dry like a moth from its cocoon, growing larger and fluffier: another hideously tacky sweater, this one bedazzled with Cupids, still damp from his saliva. Kit looks a little embarrassed.

But I’ve already made up my mind. I know what he wants to say. I pick up the Cupid sweater. “How gorgeous. You made this for me, didn’t you?” I pull it on over the first sweater.

“You really mean it? You like them?” He tries to say something else, but he gets all choked up again. After a second hacking fit, another sweater—asphalt gray with orange paisley swirls—crawls out instead. My poor boyfriend wilts a few inches and avoids my eyes.

The new sweater wiggles and flops around my feet, but I don’t hesitate. I’ve made my choice. “I love them.” Then I pick up the paisley one and layer it over the other two.

He’s my Kit, after all, and some sacrifices are totally worth it.


© 2017 by Rachael K. Jones

 

Author’s Note: The so-called “Sweater Curse” is a real superstition among knitters. It states that at some point in a new romantic relationship, a knitter will choose to make their beloved a handmade sweater, and the sweater will destroy the relationship. Interestingly, research finds there may be some truth to it–that for dedicated knitters, making a new romantic partner a handmade sweater often precedes a breakup–although hypotheses vary on why. I personally think it relates to the clash between the TLC that goes into making a handmade gift for the person you love, and the fact that amateur handicrafts can be objectively awful to outside eyes. You see the days and weeks of love you put into the design and knitting, but your beloved just sees a tacky sweater they’re now expected not to just accept, but to wear… in public. If they reject the sweater, they reject you, and the groundwork is laid for the kind of fight that can shatter a relationship. For the sweater-receiver, this is a moment of decision, where you decide whether you can accept the good along with the tacky. As an author who has written stories for particular people before, I can relate to the creative anxiety that underlies the Sweater Curse. Fortunately, my friends are very gracious sorts, and those anxieties have never borne out.

 

headshot-8-28Rachael K. Jones grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, and acquired several degrees in the arts and sciences. Now she writes speculative fiction in Portland, Oregon. Contrary to the rumors, she is probably not a secret android. Rachael is a World Fantasy Award nominee, Tiptree Award honoree, and winner of Writers of the Future. Her fiction has appeared in dozens of venues worldwide, including Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, and PodCastle. Follow her on Twitter @RachaelKJones.

 

 

 


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DP FICTION #33B: “Shoots and Ladders” by Charles Payseur

This is a game. There are rules that must be followed. Isn’t that what you told me when you gave me the gun, when you pointed me at the universe and fired? They are easy:
1. There is a reality where you are the winner. Where you never fear and never want and never lose.
2. The gun destroys realities.

Easy. But I didn’t learn until later, until after you were gone and I was alone, what you meant. Because who would believe it from a man you met at a hotel bar, a tired man with a fading glint in his eye who you still took back to your room despite the crazy shit he was saying? Or maybe I slept with you because of the crazy shit you were saying. Maybe that’s why you gave me the gun, because you saw that I was looking for something in you, something I couldn’t explain until you put that cold length of iron in my hand.

You were smiling when I pulled the trigger. Just for laughs, I told myself, just to make sure it wasn’t real, though the voice in the back of my mind was already asking what if? What if? The most dangerous question in the universe. In any universe. Click.

Like every time now, the first thing I do is close my eyes. It’s what they tell you to do when you’re in a building and the lights go out. Close your eyes. Count to five. Let yourself adjust. The last thing you want to be doing is running around blind in the dark. I count to five. Like always I smell smoke, though the gun never shows any signs of having been fired. It’s like my mind wants there to be some smoking barrel, some proof that something happened.

I open my eyes.

I’m inside a large home. Gleaming white marble floors and high ceilings and windows that look out over a lake. Expensive furniture. I wait as reality catches up with me, as the Assimilation hits. It’s not a word you taught me, but then you taught me nothing but point and click so…

It’s my house. It shouldn’t surprise me except that, reality to reality, I’m normally about the same. I look the same, with thinning brown hair and light skin and brown eyes. I’m bi, though not always out about it and sometimes so deeply repressed I think I enjoy watching swimming for the sport. I like the same foods and the same kinds of movies. And I’m sure I’m not into white marble.

But as the Assimilation lashes me fully to this reality, to this me, I remember that Jason and Abi outvoted me on the décor. My spouses. I smile. And then I move to the window to take in the view of our private lake in eastern Minnesota, bio-engineered miniature triceratops grazing around the banks.

I have rules of my own, now, aside from the two you gave me. The first is that I have to stay in each reality at least a full day unless I’m about to die. Which happens, occasionally, when I find myself in a reality where I’m a pearl diver that gets caught in a shell, or a competitor in some sort of death game, or coughing up my heart because of a deadly contagion, or just poor and in the wrong place. Sometimes I really can’t stay, and breaking my rule seems like a fine idea because fuck those realities anyway. Otherwise I give it a day, to see if it might be the One.

This place has possibilities. I’m a chef, like I always wanted to be, and own the hottest restaurant in the Midwest. Jason is a former swimmer, current coach at the largest private college in the state. Abi is a geneticist, which partly explains the triceratops. I only work three nights a week and have the house to myself at the moment. I wave at the window and it becomes a screen. I open the news, my gestures practiced like this isn’t the first time I’ve had a computer integrated into every surface of my home. But the skills are mine now and I try not to wonder at what really happens to the mes whose bodies I Assimilate. Are they still in here, distinct, or am I some Ouroboros skipping through realities eating myself, over and over again? I wonder if you knew and never told me, or if it really even matters?

The news helps me remember what I’ve Assimilated. The country is a queerocracy of sorts, or at least it seems to be. After a health scare generations ago, natural births have been outlawed and the restrictions on queer relationships not only lifted, they reversed. In the face of a devastating disease that was sweeping through heterosexual communities, a queer majority arose to power and has been setting policy ever since.

Which also helps to explain the triceratops—genetics are leaps and bounds beyond that reality you found me in, to make sure the disease doesn’t resurge. Want a kid? Just apply and one can be whipped up double time, regardless of whose DNA you want to use. Of course, there are articles about discrimination in the application process, but it doesn’t sound so bad. Jason wants kids but I don’t and Abi doesn’t and so we don’t really have to deal with it, and anyway three-parent households like ours get fast-tracked so there’s no rush to decide.

There’s still violence, and there are protests about income inequality and police violence and voting rights and it looks a mess. Does that mean this isn’t my reality? My One? You never really told me how I’d know, and there are days I just stand and stare at the wonders around me and think, is this enough? This is the best candidate I’ve ever seen for a perfect world. For me, at least, and isn’t that the point of the game?

My hand trembles, just the smallest of motions. I need a drink. I squint at a clock. 10 a.m. I head to the kitchen, to my domain, and open the liquor cabinet, remember my last argument with Jason about my drinking. Another thing about me that never seems to change. I find a bottle of bourbon and pour myself a glass and glide into an opulent room with the softest couch I’ve sat on and gesture to the wall to bring up my media library. I have seasons of brand new Star Trek to catch up on. I smile.

Later on Jason and Abi get home and I cook a meal and we all fuck and fall asleep on a bed that would have taken up my whole apartment back in the reality you found me in. I don’t dream. I never dream. In the morning I cook breakfast and wave goodbye to Jason and Abi and go back to the kitchen and do the dishes and then I take the gun in my hand and pull the trigger. Click.

I don’t think I’ll every stop hating you for this. Every day I think about your smile when I pulled the trigger and I think you bastard, you fucking bastard, you know now. You know if it ends with the click or if anything’s left behind. You know if what I’m doing is traveling from world to world or really, truly sending every living thing in a universe blinking out.

I can almost get myself to believe that it’s all still there behind me. That you lied or made it up to torture me or test me. That you’re God come down to Earth to give amazing head and see if humanity is really worthy of being saved and every time I pull the trigger I’m damning not just myself but everyone. It must seem sick that I want that now but at least if you were God you could just bring it back. Whatever I’ve done you can undo and I can burn in Hell a year for every life I snuffed out but it can be made right in the end.

I close my eyes. I count to five. I smell burning. I open my eyes, and I’m in space. Which isn’t really new but rare enough that the novelty hasn’t worn thin. In front of me a planet sits against a plain of stars, The Assimilation hits and I look down to find a report in my hand I’m supposed to be delivering to the captain, who is exactly my type but ever since I slept with her two weeks ago hasn’t spoken to me and has shifted my duty schedule to keep me in engineering.

Not exactly perfect, but I love space. The promise of it. I deliver the report and the captain gives me a smile that says she’s thinking about things and needs some space. I nod and take back the report after she’s signed it and busy myself with routine maintenance. I always love finding that I can do things. Like repair a spaceship. Or play an instrument. I’ve always wanted to be more musical and there’s something exciting about finding out that somewhere in the infinity of universes there is a me who is, something magical about watching your hands move with such confidence doing something you’ve never been able to do before.

Our ship is attacked as I’m repairing duct work, and I remember we’re at war. Not with some alien threat but with a splinter group of humans, ones that left Earth behind for greener pastures. Wealthy people seeking a place they hadn’t spoiled, while other wealthy people who were still making a lot on Earth felt threatened and so started this whole damn thing, which isn’t really being fought by the wealthy at all but by people in love with space, blowing each other up because that’s the only way to see the stars.

We win the fight. I do more repairs and sleep. I get a message from the Captain in the morning saying that we should talk, that we need to talk, but that everything is okay. I take the gun and I pull the trigger. Click.

I wonder how long you did this, how many realities you saw, how many ways you realized that for every good there was a better, for every better there was an even better. I didn’t kill you, I know. If you really did die with the rest of the reality I was born to, then you killed yourself. Yourself and everything I had ever known.

I think if that first new reality had been in space, or with Jason and Abi, I would have just thrown the gun into the deepest ocean I could get to or into space and forgotten about it. Let it all go. Tried to forget I was used to kill a universe. But that first new reality had been…not much. I was worse off than I had been when I met you. Not quite hungry but on my way. Not terrible but when you’re told that somewhere out there you’ve won, that all you have to do is pull a trigger and you don’t even have to see the aftermath?

I count to five. I open my eyes. I’m back in that hotel room where I met you. I freeze, waiting for the Assimilation. I remember you telling me that there are an infinite number of realities out there. Infinite. That they’re blinking out of existence every moment. That it means no reality is really unique, that somewhere out there are an infinite number of copies. Exact copies. So no harm, really, in ending a few. No harm, really, in going around until you find the one that suits you best. Why else would there be a gun, if not to act as some sort of remote control that allows you to find the channel you want to watch, for as long as you want to watch?

The memories are familiar, mine. But even as I fail to find any discrepancy between this life and the one you took from me, I wonder if I’d even know, if the Assimilation would take that from me as well. But I remember some things. The convention, the reason for being in the hotel, it’s the same. My life, the same. My plans, to get drunk in the bar, the same. So is this my reality, my original, somehow spared destruction, or is this a copy of it? And does it matter? And where are you?

If you’re here, I’ll know. I’ll know and I’ll kiss you and then punch you in the face and then maybe together we can get back to exploring the multiverse because it will mean I haven’t destroyed anything. I race to the bar, to the seat where I met you. I look around. You’re not here. I wait. I wait and I drink and I wait and you’re not here and I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what that means but the gun is digging into my back and I just want to scream, to cry, to do something that will get you out of hiding. You win, okay, you win. Whatever you were trying to tell me or teach me, you win. I scream it. You win. People look at me, make calming gestures, and I pull out the gun and see the fear in their eyes the moment before I pull the trigger. Click.

Should I just give it away, like you did? Find some poor fuck and make them pull the trigger. Find out if I’m still there when they disappear. Would it matter? There’s a universe out there that is perfect, that is fair to everyone and good to everyone. But do I even belong there? Click.

You told me the rules to the game, but if I win does that mean that everyone else loses? Click.

You shouldn’t have given me the gun, shouldn’t have killed my reality, shouldn’t have left me alone with only a half-drunk memory of you to ask questions of, shouldn’t have, shouldn’t have. Click.

Every time I pull the trigger, a reality dies. Click. Click. Click. Click.

I count to five. I open my eyes. I drop the gun to the ground, which is grassy and cold with morning dew. You were a coward. I am a coward. And neither of us deserve to win. After a moment the Assimilation hits. A world, a universe like so many others. Imperfect. Full of stars. I pick up the gun.


© 2017 by Charles Payseur

 

Author’s Note: This is one of those stories where I had the title first and the idea of this reality hopping game the main character was playing. So for me it was thinking of this game of shoots and ladders, of destruction and bridges, as well as examining the main character’s desire for something better without him having an idea of what that would look like. I tried to explore with the story and the main character the seduction of a perfect life and not wanting to work at it, wanting it given whole and gleaming, and with turning away from imperfection rather than dealing with it or trying to make it better. It went through quite a few drafts, to be honest, so sort of like the story I was never quite satisfied with what I had, but I hope that this version gets across some of what I wanted to say.

 

charlespayseurCharles Payseur is an avid reader, writer, and reviewer of all things speculative. His fiction and poetry have appeared at Strange HorizonsLightspeed MagazineThe Book Smugglers, and many more. He runs Quick Sip Reviews, contributes as short fiction specialist at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, and can be found drunkenly reviewing Goosebumps on his Patreon. You can find him gushing about short fiction (and occasionally his cats) on Twitter as @ClowderofTwo.

 

 

 


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