Slave Stories: Scenes From the Slave State
Date: 2015-01-01 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: The Slave State is a place located in the 4th dimension, a place where humans are forced to work extracting inessential minerals from mining enclaves until the end of their lives...

SLAVE STORIES

(Scenes from the Slave State)

Edited by

Chris Kelso

Omnium Gatherum

Los Angeles

Slave Stories: Scenes from the Slave State

Edited by Chris Kelso

Anthology Copyright © 2015

Cover Illustration and Design Copyright 2015 ©
Terence Jaiden Wray

Individual stories copyright by individual authors

Mary Turzillo’s story “Crimes against Nature” first appeared in Interzone, February 1994

Hal Duncan story “The Last Straw”—“Glorifying Terrorism” ed. by Farah Mendlesohn, 2007

ISBN-13: 978-0692428115

ISBN-10: 0692428119

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author and publisher omniumgatherumedia.com

The stories in this anthology are works of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

First Electronic Edition

“You would not obey your father and mother; you will now obey leather thongs.”

“The man who would not sow must now break stones”

—Dostoyevsky, House of the Dead

Welcome to the Slave State

Boris Vian died whilst watching the film adaptation of I Spit on Your Grave. I’m convinced this won’t happen to me.

Imagine waking up in a world where everyone around you is apathetic, disaffected, a world where you’re forced to go down into a mining enclave each day for the rest of your life. Doing pointless labour. For no pay. Imagine the futility? Imagine the sense of injustice.

Then imagine there was nothing you could ever do about it.

The Slave State is a zone located in the 4th dimension—a prison planet run by extra-terrestrial human rights violators with a penchant for ironic punishment. The world we’ve all come to know is merely a holding pen for our species, a prank of Andy Kauffman proportions. When you cross the divide into the Slave State there is nothing left to do but wait for your letter of conscription.

As it happens, the Slave State is also a world I am unable to escape from. I was born here and I will die here. I have tried writing outside the Slave quadrant but I always come back, I always re-visit. I’m a slave to the mythos. It sucks me in. It’s the only environment I feel comfortable with, in the company of Baroness Un and his ugly wee acolyte Moog. It’s the only place I can relate to. I know it’s a hideous existence here, really, I do.

<~~O~~>

For the uninitiated, there are 5 main mining cities within the Slave State —

Wire City—a bustling grease trap where yuppies and rape gangs patrol the streets and general anarchy rules.

Ersatz—Centralia-esque, densely populated, largely ungoverned city that feeds into Wire and Spittle. There are no doctors or professionals here. It is believed to be the birthplace of the Black Dog depression virus and has a long line of fetish markets.

Shell County—a desert wasteland, akin to the deep south in America. A blend of southern gothic architecture and shotgun shacks.

Spittle—more urban sprawl—the last city before the edge of the world. Located beside Wire.

Moosejaw—anything goes. Can change peripheral environment according to the writer. Moosejaw allows people like me to write about themselves, because the only thing I can write about is myself. I can’t write a beautiful book about beautiful flowers. I can’t make flowers beautiful.

<~~O~~>

That is not to say that Glasgow does not exist in this universe, or that San Francisco does not exist beyond the 4th dimension, but they are Slave State reflections in a cracked mirror. Parallel realms manufactured to resemble the originals but which ultimately feed into the same hub of human torture. Everything is an imitation or manufactured here.

Now, I could destroy the Slave State if I wanted to. I could destroy this version at least, but I wouldn’t. I won’t. Cover me in nitro-glycerine instead. I am the Unabomber. I sell rock and crack cocaine to underprivileged areas to separate communities so that I can fund the counter-revolution in downtown Wire City. I am a drudge and a boor who infects beautiful and innocent animals with artificial growth hormones; I use more of my ill-gotten wealth to feed cattle instead of the homeless. I’m the pesticide in your fruit. Guilt is my lingering curse.

My blowtorch eyes observe over-worked quarries and I see myself looking straight back with hollowed out sockets. A burning vista of dilapidated shotgun shacks and tenement buildings. There’s no lust without magic. Vestigial parts of the brain tell me I’m Transmatic.

Before you embark upon this journey, I’ll leave you with a few terms that you might be unfamiliar with:

Transmatic—a unique phenomenon of perception. Those with Transmatic ability are able to see both sides of the 4th dimension and (once the ability is honed) can alternate between the two at will. Considered the biggest threat to the Slave State.

Immitant—an android for domestic/labor function. Many people within the Slave State have these artificial androids carved in their own image and employ them as stand-ins. For example—a man who hates his awful wife can get an Immitant to masquerade as him while he leaves his awful wife and goes out gallivanting. Immitants are illegal, although the alien overlords know they exist. Baroness Un and the other aliens let the human’s live in this state of ignorance. They believe this deceit contributes to the corruption of the soul, which is exactly what they want.

The Black Dog—a depression virus which has spread throughout each of the Slave State main cities. It’s source is unknown. Can take numerous forms in order to infect its host.

—Chris

Blackout in Upper Moosejaw

—Laura Lee Bahr

“I’m not smart.”

Blink. Blink.

Upper lip moves up, lower lip stays put, revealing just slightly a shining white lie between.

His mouth says words about how he’d thought all her kind was designed “smart” while his eyes are drawn to the space between her lips.

Shoulders lift. “I am defective,” eyes lower, lips close.

He will play and replay these moments again and again in his mind: this chance encounter in the copy room, this come-on he’s thought of for weeks just waiting for the moment when he will catch her alone.

“Hey, Ayn. What’s a smart droid like you doing in a dumb office like this?”

This, her response—he knew it would be few words, it always is—makes him sigh and touch his chest with an unconscious gesture. Does she know how he wants to place his mouth on that patch of white designed to look like teeth and to lift her titanium frame and carry her away forever?

She is making copies, her hands pouring out papers like a magic trick. They flutter out of her left and she catches them with her right, flying impossibly fast, paper after paper. It is not magic, it is technology.

“Have a pleasant day, Evan,” she says. She blinks, as is her programming, but it is slightly off where it would be natural. Human.

Is she ashamed? Does she feel lost? Does she feel?

Does she feel?

<~~O~~>

Evan Frank, age 31, with a brightening bald spot and everything in his body starting to soften into the sediment of his chair to couch to bed to chair again, works in Box 14. He is two boxes from a window view of Upper Moosejaw.

At sunrise and at sunset, when he is often working early or late, he makes a point to find the time to come to the window and watch how the light plays on all the geometric shapes of the skyscrapers this way and that. In these moments, he feels transcendence and purpose. He thinks of light and luck and love. He doesn’t think about paper, because paper is his life.

He is a paper shuffler, a job too menial for an Office Machine, so they have to have semi-skilled humans. Ayn makes and collates up to 100,000 papers every hour. Evan shuffles a tenth of those in a day, but shuffling requires a certain lack of pattern that humans are still qualified to do. An Office Machine could do it in the same amount of time, but it is an inefficient use of them when they are so exponentially better at so many other things.

He is lucky to have work in the disappearing field of placing paper trails. They are one of only two offices in Moosejaw—and as far as he knows, the wide world—that does the essential work of placing paper trails. Without paper trails, the tentative economy of Moosejaw, which is like an island of still-functionality in the crumbling economies of the states around them, would fall like a house of cards.

The Paper Chase, his employer, is essential. Important. Competitive. Or so the last company newsletter printing on endless reams and disseminated on multi-trails, assured all.

Tonight, he will work late with gladness for he knows there is an Office Machine meeting and he may encounter her again, alone. And what will he say?

And as he stands watching the sunset he doesn’t think about how lucky he is to have a job or a box so close to a box near the window.

He thinks of Ayn.

<~~O~~>

AynRanDroid #271012

Ayn is a highly specialized and expensive Office Machine Body, an AynRanDroid; designed to be smart enough to engage in discussion, to aid business men in critical thinking from an actualizing point of view; highly functional like the whole range of womyn-inspired androids for the home and office. Like all Machine Bodies, she wears clothes. She has hair. She has a scent. But this one, Ayn271012, had some loose wiring, some sort of ghost in her machine that had gotten her re-located to this dumpy office. Ayn271012 is the first Office Machine Body that Evan has ever encountered that would admit a deficit in her intelligence, but it is obviously true. She sometimes just stops working, stares into space. Sometimes she drops copies and coffee. Sometimes her conversation lags. Sometimes she will repeat a word or a phrase again and again, or use it incorrectly.

And Evan imagines when she stares into space that she is thinking of him. And that she loves him, too. He is human, but she is out of his league. But she isn’t smart enough to know that.

A machine made for companies with bigger profits than some countries’ GNPs, Ayn has been on sale, sold, traded, sold, on sale, sold and now given as a gift from a rich uncle to the douche-bag boss, Herf Hargreer.

Herf Hargreer, who lords over his company like a dwarf-hunch-back tyrant, spewing profanities in a miasma of his own ineptitude, feared and effective because of his underlings and Office Machine Bodies. The Paper Chase’s only competitor is PULP—a far sexier and hipper dropper of paper trails —but Chase beats them time and again in clients and revenues.

Ayn, one of two Office Machine Bodies at The Paper Chase is certainly not the reason for Chase’s market dominance. No, that savvy belongs to their Senior Office Machine Executive: The Cool-Hand Luke.

<~~O~~>

The Cool-Hand Philosopher-King

They’d have broken the mold when they made him, if there was a mold to be broken. But the truth is he was as meticulously and uniquely crafted as Michelangelo’s David. More so, for this creation is not just a work of art to admire visually, but one that feeds and maintains the power grid of not just their office building, but the entirety of Upper Moosejaw. Luke does this with effortlessness, for he can tell where power is being inefficiently used or drained with a blink of his blue-green glass eyes and communicate it in a series of messages to the appropriate parties with taps of his fingers. His perfection is his humanity. He has a propensity for eloquence and what looks like compassion in his eyes. He does not belong to The Paper Chase, he belongs to the state of Moosejaw itself. He is a political favor bestowed upon Herf as a consultant, office manager, human resources. He is the equivalent of a nuclear weapon in an otherwise pathetic arsenal for this corporation.

Luke is a god-like dispensation of big-wig back-room back-scratching and blow-jobs; but this station just a momentary blip in his far-reaching destiny.

Luke was designed with the top-secret purpose. He is the design of a to-come utopia, the last work of genius before his creator was eaten by The Black Dog.

Once the world finally crumbles to dust and people in power accept their obsolescence, Luke will rise to dominance as Philosopher-King, able to rule for millennia. This is not his desire, nor his wish, for he has neither. This is his programming—salvation planted in silence in the hard-wires. He can wait forever. But eventually, Luke will rule the earth, and rule it with perfection.

<~~O~~>

Human hands are dirty

Kate Fitzwilliam stares at the imperfection of her fingernails. She bites them, rips them, can’t keep them but raw. She can’t stand seeing dirt beneath her fingernails, and thus must keep them cut to the quick. She could do a polish, have them manicured, but that only hides and belies what gets beneath them.

Human hands are dirty.

Luke’s hands are perfect.

Kate is 38 years old. She has no husband, no children, only her career which has her orbiting the Paper Chase building for a senseless seven years. This was meant to be a stop on the way. Now it seemed the destination where she would die.

She had graduated in the top third of her class. She was a real go-getter, overachiever, well-liked and well-recommended. An engineer. Someone who knew how to design bots, how to program them. She had thought—she was sure, she was destined! She had thought—she would be somewhere better than here, now. But being here, now she realized that this might be it—this was as good as things were going to get.

The economy was terrible. Other cities were devastated and she was fortunate to be in Moosejaw when it all hit, a relative island where businesses still were in business, out of where she had transferred enough humans to know that things could get bad to terrible to unimaginable fast and quick.

But after two years of feeling lucky to still have a job, another two years started to curdle the dream she’d had of mobility. Yes, of course she was grateful to have a job, must be—have to be—to keep it, but the gratitude was a sickly dead thing that stunk rotting from the pit of her belly and she could smell it in her nostrils when she told others what she did for a living. She was like a machine, except she was bitter, sad, and lonely.

And then Luke had been transferred in.

After years of working with all sorts of droids and machines, she saw that someone had created something that was so far beyond its creator as to snuff it into obscurity.

The moment she locked eyes with him, she realized it didn’t matter anymore what did or didn’t happen with everything else. All she wanted was the gaze of Luke to linger on her for at least five minutes uninterrupted. She wanted him to plunge his metal extension apparatus deep into her. She wanted those blue-green eyes that saw everything so much better than human eyes ever could to see her and her alone in the universe, a singularity of self.

So she is going to have to thwart his programming.

Kate was an interpersonal programming major once upon a time. Sure, the machines she trained on had cold skin that looked clearly like the synthetic derivative it was, it was never something anyone would mistake even from a distance for human, and they were easily powered down and opened to fidget inside.

Luke is a work of art, and as such it is more difficult to figure out just how she can get him alone for time enough to get inside of him.

Of course it will be illegal, of course it could get her fired or electrocuted. Luke’s apparatus controls the power-grid of Upper Moosejaw—that kind of power plunged into her with the amount of fluids she creates just thinking about it could be the end of her life, and short out his system to render him useless—or after very costly repairs, probably only as serviceable as the clunk-o-junk Aynbot that orbits the office.

But Love Is Worth Any Cost.

<~~O~~>

The Machine Management Meeting leaves both Kate and Evan loitering around their boxes for a full hour after most people have left. Hoping to catch a glimpse of their intended machines, the two try to appear casual. When it becomes clear the meeting has ended in power down and there is no entry for mere mortals, the two decide to “have a drink.”

They look into each other’s eyes. He sees a real ball-breaker. She sees a shifty-eyed drone. But both are caught in this moment. They are only human, after all, and need to ingest fluids. Or perhaps to exchange them?

They slog a couple of drinks back, trading mean office gossip, bagging on Herf and bonding in their disdain for him. Both mention with practiced casualness that the Office Machines are his only asset. And then, both of them feigning to be less bored than they are, decide to “go back to one of our places” and continue to drink.

Kate has a better square in Upper Moosejaw, in the Horn district.

Her square has wall-to-wall sheen, recently waxed. She also has several copies of art by Gerard Flusburt. Evan has not heard of him and Kate tries to convince Evan of his importance.

“While some say he is derivative of Bobby Dummit, I think Flusburt’s work transcends Dummit’s oeuvre.”

Evan snarfs. “Tha cow’s heart is on fire!” he says, indicating the “Sacred Heart” painting. Since Evan is obviously not up on the huge cultural importance this painting inspired, Kate can only snarf back.

“You’re very ignorant and you know nothing about art,” is the most polite thing she can muster.

Kate almost decides that the night has been long enough already. Evan thinks how nice it is that even androids can understand when they are not smart and don’t try to put on airs. Kate doesn’t like Evan’s preemie bald spot, soft belly or adolescent laugh.

But since she invited him into the square and because one never knows when they may be transferred out of Moosejaw for better or worse, better to take an opportunity when it comes.

Evan thinks about the white of the inside of the AynRandroid’s mouth. Kate thinks about Luke’s blue gaze and the two both shag with their eyes closed. Evan is fumbling and pinches her breasts too hard, groping her like he is milking her.

Kate can’t seem to get her teeth to not touch his cock so it is not really pleasant for either of them, though they both exchange fluids as is the norm in such situations.

When he leaves to go back to his larger, but less sheened square in Midtown Moosejaw, Kate permits herself the self-pity to cry. Then she has a temper tantrum. She begins throwing things, dumping out drawers, littering her square with her old certificates. Her wins.

And she kicks her old toolbox, which she carried to robotics competitions across the states, where she wiped the floor with the boys. She was queen. Everything was ahead of her. She thought she’d rule the earth and the moon. But no, she is a Junior Executive, an underling. Worth far less than the bots she used to design.

She is old now. She is finished. She is seducing younger men with no brains, drives, abilities or cultural appreciation. She didn’t even have a proper orgasm. She helps herself to one now with the assist of the handle of a screwdriver. She climaxes thinking of driving it the other way into Luke.

<~~O~~>

Metal and Meat

She schedules an appointment. She says she has an office related concern she must discuss with him. She needs to make an official complaint. It has to wait until the light fades; dark has come early the past months with the time crawl back. She is happy it is dark when she finally sees him.

The lights in his office make small glowing orbs and he always has soft music playing.

She sits across from him. He sits at a desk, not because he has to—he could attach himself upside down to the ceiling for all it mattered—but because studies show human workers are more comfortable voicing concerns to bots when they sit behind desks like “normal” humans.

His blue eyes dilate to show an appropriate sense of concern for her.

“I exchanged fluids with a co-worker last night,” she tells Luke. It is a confession, and such confessions when they are work-related are appropriate to share. Oh —it is her imagination that there is something that flares in those eyes of jealousy!—but how she clings already to how she will replay it again and again in her mind. On a loop.

“I appreciate your sharing this confidence with me as part of policy #243, Kate,” Luke says. “While fluid exchange is generally discouraged, it is not legally grounds for censure, but it can lead to employee dissatisfaction and distraction. Do you feel it will lead to either of these ends?”

Machines such as Luke are always encouraged to describe things to humans in terms of feelings. He is so good at what he does, his delivery is so perfect, his vocal intonation as practiced and yet present as a movie star from yester-year.

“I don’t,” Kate tells him. “It was a really poor fluid exchange and connection, but there was nothing horrible in it. It was just like having sex with a fumbling robot. Oh—I mean no offense,” she says, looking up at him.

“None taken,” Luke says.

“I am sure if you were to do it, it would be perfection, like everything you do,” Kate says in a racing lilt.

“No,” Luke says. “Actually that is not correct. And, comparing your relations with a man to that of a robot or any Office Machine is not an apt simile, for unless you are talking about those specifically designed for that function, most of us cannot exchange fluids or perform sexually. As you must know from your education and expertise.”

Here it is.

“Actually,” Kate says, “I believe your extension power plug-in could be utilized like a human cock.”

Luke’s eyes do not show alarm, fear, or desire. They are reflective water of her own eyes, burning back at her.

“Would you like to try?” she asks.

“My programming would never allow me to willingly participate with such an activity, and would require you to conduct illegal tampering with my wiring.”

Kate gulps. It is as close to a “yes” as she could dream.

“You know that I know exactly how to do such tampering,” Kate says, softly, lowering her eyes and then looking up into Luke’s. All the chemicals in her body releasing cocktails because she knows it is now. At last.

She pulls the screwdriver out of her purse.

His eyes are so blue and locked on hers.

“I love you,” she says.

He doesn’t blink.

<~~O~~>

Evan sits in the copy room, where he has been waiting for hours for this moment, as Ayn has entered and is making and collating copies.

The paper is flying from her hands when suddenly the power goes out.

It is entirely dark as the copy room is enclosed and windowless.

Evan’s breath catches. While there are no lights, he can still hear Ayn’s hum, and the copies continuing to process.

“Ayn,” Evan calls in the dark.

“Yes, Evan,” she replies.

“Do you have a light?”

A blue glow illuminates her body. She glows as if in a furnace.

“I am not sure why there is a power outage. There must be a problem. I apologize for the inconvenience. I will go and check with Luke.”

“No,” Evan begs. “Please don’t. Please stay here.”

His hands—all meat—touch her cold metal face.

Meat to metal, metal to meat.

Does she feel?

Does it matter?

No.

She stays—staring off into space, doing as she is told—defective.

She stays.

Aphanisis

—John Langan

When he looks up, the child is standing in front of him, offering a glass of cloudy liquid that he supposes is water. Does it matter? He accepts the drink and, careful not to slice his lip on the jagged edge of the container, samples its contents. Though chalky, it’s cold, and he gulps it down so fast his temples ache. Its coolness spreads through his throat and chest, makes him shiver. His breathing is still heavy, but not as labored as it was when he collapsed into a half-sit. Rising on one knee, he pushes himself to his feet, returning the empty glass to the child, who takes it and cradles it against her worn T-shirt.

The null-sword juts from the ground like some sinister Excalibur. He takes hold of its hilt and tugs it loose from the dirt. He has the impression he should feel more self-conscious about this, a grown man well into his middle-age, wielding a sword, and not just any sword, but one whose ornate guard and engraved blade lend it the appearance of a costume weapon, an artist’s fancy. Yet he is not embarrassed in the slightest. If anything, grasping the sword gives him an almost primal comfort. And what better for slaying the products of the imagination, than a fantastical weapon?

(If you can say, that is, that the imagination and the unconscious are the same thing, which he’s not sure you can. Certainly, they seem to be connected to one another, the imagination the mask the unconscious wears when it wants to make itself known. Certainly, too, the null-sword has proven effective at dealing with the unconscious’s productions. He doesn’t understand the exact mechanism by which it does this but he doesn’t think it matters.)

A few meters away, the ground halts in a ragged cliff that extends to either side as far as he can see. He’d thought the edge of the world a figure of speech, a way for the residents of Spittle to congratulate themselves on their assorted depravities and decadences: We’re as far as you can go; after us, there’s only nothing. Beyond the ragged margin of the dirt, however, is a gulf that reaches the limit of his vision, farther. It might be confused with outer space, except that there are no stars visible in its expanse, only vast ribbons of color that undulate into and out of visibility, occasionally intersecting one another and engaging in a twirling dance before rippling out of sight. Less frequently, great spheres of braided light flare into view and, as quickly, wink out. Once, there was a thunderous burst of sound like a chord played on an organ the size of the moon.

It shouldn’t surprise him. After escaping the mines and making his way to Moosejaw, where he found the null-sword wrapped in burlap sacking in the back room of an abandoned grocery store, as the woman with the hole in her cheek had said he would, and after witnessing the weapon’s effectiveness against the horde of sand-hobos that bushwhacked him outside of Spittle, he should have been prepared to find the literal edge of the world across the barren plain on the other side of Spittle’s ash heaps. But it does, which may be why he finds himself monologuing to the child, who appeared at his heels as he was on his way out of the last of the dumps.

“The annihilation of consciousness,” he says. “That was what I had decided upon. All the things that brought me to the mines—that made me think I deserved the mines, that they were a punishment I had earned, as if I were subjecting myself to a kind of personal justice, manufacturing justice by acting as if it was real—as far as I was concerned, all of those debts were long paid. I only wanted rest. But they—the overseers—would not permit me to die, which was perverse, bizarre, because plenty of other miners perished on a regular basis. Because I wanted it, because I sought it out, they thwarted me. I believe it amused them to do so. I suppose I should thank them for not allowing me to die before I met her, Merida. When I told her I was after the annihilation of my consciousness, she said, ‘Yes, but what about your unconscious? What are you going to do about that?’

“After first, I thought her question absurd. The moment my consciousness was extinguished, I was certain my unconscious would be snuffed out, as well. No, Merida, said, I was treating the unconscious as if it were an adjunct to the conscious, when it was the other way around. The conscious, she said, sits atop the unconscious like the penthouse suite of a skyscraper. Those top storeys could be removed, and everyone living beneath them would register some disturbance, and then continue with their routines. But, I said, I’ll be dead: there won’t be any place for those residents to live. They’ll continue as information, she said. So will your consciousness, but that breaks down almost instantly. Your unconscious is made of sterner stuff.

“To be honest, it sounded as if she was talking about my ghost, but she said there were ways for this information to be accessed after my body had been mulched. There were rumors of a conglomerate in Wire who had worked out a means of collecting your residual information, distilling it, and injecting it, to trip through your unconscious. It was supposed to be a treatment for Black Dog, but she had her doubts.

“Why the prospect of someone ranging through my unconscious should have bothered me, I’m not sure. It’s not as if I would be aware of it; although, I guess I might, in some strange way. It was more a case of, I had decided to erase myself from existence, and I meant to do so as thoroughly as I could. Merida took me to the pit-witch, who told me about this,” he brandishes the null-sword theatrically, “and where to find it in Moosejaw. She also directed me here, where, she said, the proximity of the gulf would allow me to manifest the contents of my unconscious. Once they had been incarnated, the null-sword would destroy them completely, down to their information. As soon as the last of them had been expunged, I could complete my original plan safely.

“I don’t mind telling you, I had a hard time believing the pit-witch. Everything she described sounded like it had been hacked from the plot of a Moorcock. After I escaped the enclave, I did head for Moosejaw, but that was because I figured the trackers wouldn’t pursue me very far into it. I didn’t expect to find the null-sword there, not really. Even holding it in my hands, I didn’t know if it was what the pit-witch had said it was, a blade of irrational metal. It wasn’t until I saw the sword in action that I realized the witch had been telling the truth; whereupon, I set out for Spittle, and the edge.”

The child has wandered away a few paces, to the milky pool from which she scooped the water she gave him. Embarrassed at having been abandoned by his audience, the man strides to the edge of the dirt and stops there. The drop off is steep, immeasurable. Gazing at the gulf, he allows his eyes to lose their focus. He doesn’t try not to think. This, Merida said, was likely to be his principle danger. In trying not to think you wound up thinking about how you couldn’t not think, and in so doing, blocked your unconscious. The trick, she said, must consist in remaining open—to his thoughts, to what was swimming underneath his thoughts—and to fashioning the openness into a space into which the denizens of his unconscious could be coaxed. Once they were contained, the peculiar energies of the gulf would act upon and manifest them. In his time at the edge of the world, he has learned to identify the particular sensation that heralds the beginning of the process, a fullness starting in his belly and reaching up to the top of his throat, as if he has consumed a large, rich meal that is not sitting especially well. As soon as the feeling has established itself, he retreats a safe distance from the dirt ledge and waits.

It never takes long. The fullness becomes a tightness. Sometimes the tightness remains centered on his gut; other times, it shifts to his chest, or his back. Once, it moved to the right side of his neck. The tightness becomes painful, as if the skin is being stretched to breaking from within. His nerves fire white hot. Since the first manifestation, he has continually promised himself that this time he will remain standing. He will not permit the pain to get the better of him. He has broken every one of those vows, dropping to his knees and then to his side, his eyes streaming tears, his jaw clenched, his breath hissing through his teeth. The tightness becomes a tearing, as if someone had worked a knife under his skin, taken hold of it, and begun peeling it off him, employing the knife to assist them. His nerves burn so hot, they’re freezing, absolute zero. Amazingly, he does not lose his grip on the null-sword. He has the impression of something exiting his body, and the manifestation is accomplished.

Initially, his unconscious released versions of himself, alternate selves he’d long ago dreamed as his future. He found it surprisingly difficult to raise his weapon against them, especially the ones who understood what he was doing and pleaded with him not to. A couple of them had run. A heartening number stood and did their best to fight him. In the end, he cut every last one of them down, the effect of the sword’s blows rendering their remains a fine, colorless powder that the next breeze carried away. The unrealized selves were followed by versions of his immediate family members (his mother, young as she was when she sang to his childhood self in the back yard; his father, punctured and pierced by the machines that were keeping him from death), his close friends, favorite film characters, more distant family members, friendly acquaintances, favorite cartoon characters, and on and on through the multitude which inhabited his unconscious. So many, he had not thought his depths contained so many.

Eventually, the recognizable figures gave way, first to generic forms he realized must be early memories, when his child’s brain lacked the context to identify a fireman in fire gear, or a clown, or the bishop in his regalia, and then to things at whose origin he could only guess, a figure made of bent and twisted wire netting, its head a tire whose treads opened in a cacophony of mouths, a thing like a short tree, its branches flowered by severed fish heads, their mouths gaping in idiot unison, a form that was little more than a collection of shadows and a sound like nails tapping on glass. Some, he fought for a minute, others, for an hour, a few for the better part of a day. At the end of each contest, he swung the null-sword down in an arc and slew his opponent.

The new adversary his unconscious releases wrenches itself from his gut and side and lower back, as it’s been coiled half around him. He cries out, flailing the blade to back it away from him. There’s no blood, no visible wound to his flesh, but the pain takes long enough to subside for anything with a notion to attack to do so. As soon as he can stand, before he’s ready, he heaves himself up, the blade pointed at what’s in front of him.

Through eyes still awash in tears, he sees what might be a centipede, if centipedes grew longer than a man. Its exoskeleton is dull grey, translucent; beneath its surface, schools of black squiggles like half-written letters stream. The creature’s head consists of a cluster of heads taken from baby dolls. All are hairless, their eyes missing. At its other end, the thing dissolves into a puddle of greasy liquid. From somewhere, possibly the doll heads, the creature emits a clicking sound, like the spinning of plastic wheels. At the sight and sound of it, he feels what he’s felt with all of the manifestations, no matter how bizarre, how repugnant: a deep sense of the familiar. He shifts his grip on the null-sword, lowering the point, and adjusts his stance.

When the thing lunges at him, he steps to the right, slashing up and to the right, then pivoting to chop down. He retreats as the creature whips around after him. His blows have opened a pair of gaping vents in its armor, through which streams of black liquid swimming with black squiggles pour. The thing darts at him again, and this time he moves left, slicing a long opening in its right side, above the row of its long legs. As it twists after him, he spins and strikes the center of the dolls’ heads. A trio of the heads goes spinning; clear fluid sprays from another four. Now he is the one pressing the attack, swiping at the creature’s head to force it to rear. He cuts it just above the middle, bisecting it. The halves fall heavily, writhing. What had been a contest has turned to butchery. He severs the dolls’ heads from the top section, slices it into three parts, and slices the bottom section into three. Once the creature begins to lose definition, its surface becoming pale, granular, he knows he is done.

There comes a moment, after he dispatches his unconscious’s latest sending, when he pauses, sounding himself to determine whether his task is done, whether he has at last emptied the vast region below his conscious of its denizens. How many of them can there be? How many figures are necessary to populate the space? He would know, the pit-witch assured him. The moment his unconscious was clear, he would feel it. Then, it would be a matter of turning the null-sword on himself, and his quest would be completed.

He does not feel empty.

He sighs, wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. He looks around for the child, expecting her to approach with a fresh glass of milky water. She’s nowhere to be found. The jar with the jagged lip rests beside the cloudy pool. He walks over, squats to take the jar and scoop the pool with it. The sediment in the water swirls, makes fantastical shapes.

I must be almost done, he thinks. I have to be. How much can any person contain?

For Fiona

Crimes Against Nature

—Mary A. Turzillo

Gary tired easily by the eighth month, so when the brunette flashed him a gap-toothed smile and offered him her seat on the bus, he gladly collapsed into it.

The bus lurched through grimly falling snow. With the war effort, private cars were frowned on. But Gary wished he was in a warm sedan purring home instead of in this bumpy bus that jounced his hemorrhoids.

He became aware of the woman’s lively gaze still riveted on him.

“What’s the matter? Never seen a pregnant man before?” His voice, raised to carry over the noise of the other passengers and the traffic, betrayed annoyance, though he tried to make it light.

“Well, excuse me!” Her voice was deep, gravelly even.

Gary was embarrassed. Here she had been polite and considerate, and he was attacking her. He tugged her pink jacket. When she turned around crossly, he smiled. “I’ll bet you really haven’t ever seen a pregnant man before.”

She brightened, showed the space between her big front teeth “Right-o. Listen, I’ve got respect for you. It takes guts. It takes guts for women to do it, and we’ve got the original design.”

“It takes guts for anybody to have a kid, what with the defense situation the way it is. But, I wanted a son. If I had waited until the war was over, I might be too old.”

“For sure. Not to pry, but your wife didn’t want to have one? Or you a single parent?”

“Wife had the first one. She had a caesarean, so it wasn’t going to be any easier for her.”

“That’s a matter of opinion!” She scowled. Crooked teeth and big painted lips. Not pretty, but lively. “You still working? You look pretty close to term.”

Gary glanced down at his maternity suit. “I work for a firm that markets organic software viruses.”

“Wow! Classified stuff?” Her voice buzzed with curiosity.

“No, nothing like that. Domestic use only. But it is defense oriented, so I hung in there. My wife’ll take care of the baby after it’s born, so I can go back to work.”

“Didn’t mean to pry. You hear so much about these Ninth World viruses,” and her voice sunk to a raspy whisper, “ I had to wonder.”

Gary smiled. “Nothing that dramatic.”

“This is my stop. Good luck, Daddy-to-be.” Before she got off, she winked and added, “Maybe I’ll see you again. Name’s Rachelle. I’m an RN. Specialty is surgical obstetrics.”

“I’m Gary.” He turned and watched her bounce off the bus step and disappear into a yellow brick office building near the hospital. He didn’t appreciate her playing games, pretending she didn’t know anything about his delicate condition, and then confessing that she’d been an obstetric nurse. Gary dozed and nursed his misery in the soggy heat of his coat and the prickly cold of his toes.

His wounded feelings, enhanced by hormones foreign to his blood, were jerked suddenly away when the bus braked and went into a skid.

Something wet on the street. Gary’s stomach heaved as the bus glided, slow motion, toward a stopped car. The driver managed to stop the bus inches short of collision. The passengers chorused relief.

Ice. Somebody had opened a fire hydrant and the water had frozen on the street.

Gary felt a sharp pang in his abdomen. Matter of fact, he’d had gas all afternoon. But maybe it wasn’t gas.

“Vistynoi dal p’pristii!” shouted a balding, angry man, pushing the bus door open. At least that was what it sounded like. It was no language Gary recognized. Maybe a Ninth World language. The Ninth-Worlders were created and controlled by virus engineering, and yet their leaders denounced most other forms of biotechnology. The aliens who masterminded the whole invasion must have laughed and laughed, if those aliens even knew what laughing meant.

The man, who looked American, wore a Cleveland Indians tee shirt. Cradled in his arms like a dark metal baby was a machine gun.

Behind him crowded other American-looking people, standing on tiptoe and jumping to watch the action. Some shouted slogans in a language Gary did not recognize. The bald man barked orders to those behind him, who let a housewife in an apron climb up. She had her hair in curlers, tight enough that her eyes were pulled slanty.

She fished in her apron pocket and brought out a piece of paper. “Frans ‘n’ uthas. You on theese veecle. Theese bus is now the propty of the provizhnl gauvment of Hwee-hee. You weell be infectud w’ a language virus and th’propriate belief viruses.”

The bus driver, a heavy-set woman in a man’s uniform, sneered at her. “You still speak English, honey, or do you think we’re gonna sit still for this?”

A few people in the front of the bus muttered, “Yeah,” but Gary didn’t say a word.

“I still onnastond l’tl bit slave language.” She smiled and patted her curlers. Then, as if she had forgotten something, she peered at the note again and recited, “Those uv you w’ so-called scientific ideas thut cannot be destroyed by virus, you die. The trials are gowin on all th’ time.”

“What scientific ideas, sweety?” said the bus driver.

“Crimes ’gainst nature,” said the housewife promptly. She smiled again. Gary shrank into the corner of his seat.

At this point, a crowd broke around the corner marching double step and shouting “Nature for man! Nature for man!” which sounded suspiciously to Gary like a virus-driven chant. But at least they were chanting in American English. The man with the machine gun and the lady in curlers jumped from the bus and fled into a store with broken windows. The gang with them scattered.

A man in a torn business suit leapt into the bus. “Sorry, folks. Bad virus hit about twelve hours ago. American viruses to counter it; we’re all volunteers, so our own terrestrial virus took faster. But we need to get you people away from the bus. Scatter into buildings. Don’t speak to anybody who appears infected with a Ninth World virus. Practically speaking, friends, Cleveland is at war.” He jumped back down and rejoined the crowd.

Scatter into buildings? How was Gary to be sure he wasn’t already infected? He experimented with a number of jingoistic slogans. They didn’t seem any sillier than usual, so he tried the periodic table of the elements. Got through that up to cadmium, which was all he could remember. Well, no early signs of infection.

But certain other signs persisted.

<~~O~~>

By nightfall, he knew. He had no watch, so he wasn’t sure how far apart the contractions were. But the synthetic womb was contracting. Forces in his body were trying to move that baby out.

Out? How?

He crept in the darkness (there was a power outage, of course) from building to building. Once a middle-aged black woman in a McDonald’s uniform and a heavy sweater grabbed him by the arm.

“What wron’ w’you, mon? You stoop, you all ben’ over like you hurt somewhere.”

Gary shook his head, wild with panic. If he spoke, she would know he was not yet infected with the virus. She would either infect him—probably by scratching him and rubbing saliva into the wounds—or try to kill him. She was apparently unarmed, but Gary didn’t trust her. The fact that she wore no coat in this freezing weather suggested that the virus was firmly set with her, that her loyalty to the Ninth World was to the death.

Gary’s company made de-programming viruses for such as her. And no, he had no access to the cultures, not even if he had thought to steal some.

“Mon, you fat in the belly, thin in the face.” Her hands groped unbidden up and down his torso. “You a crime against nature, my mon.” She suddenly produced a pamphlet printed in some Ninth World language and shook it at him. “They catch you, they try you.”

Gary’s mouth was dry. “Do you remember anything of the old way? Were you a patriot before they got you?”

Her eyes went blank. “Padriot? No. No, not e’en before. But I ’member beyin’ a mother. A mother.” She shivered and hugged herself, as if noticing the cold for the first time. “Run. Don’ tell me where you go. The virus haf me, but not all of me. I ’member. Now I ’member. Go.”

Gary hulked across an alley, to a drug store.

The door swung open, but it was dark inside. Sure. Power lines were down all over the city. Gary groped toward the back of the store. His skin prickled with terror that he would encounter the store personnel, armed against looters.

Near a rack of diabetic supplies and condoms, he braced himself against the wall and waited for his heart to slow down. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the gloom.

Some virus, American or alien, had caused the personnel to abandon the store. But nobody had bothered to smash into the pharmaceutical section yet. Gary tried to think of something useful he could steal from the pharmacy, but all he could come up with was an antibiotic for that time Sharon got cystitis and her doctor couldn’t be reached.

He needed help.

On his way to the back of the store, Gary had noticed a pay phone. He rummaged his pockets for suzies. Three of them. Three telephone calls, then. Oh, St. Susan B. Anthony, get me out of this mess.

The first call was to his wife.

“Hullo, mon.”

A Ninth World accent. A virus-infected puppet of the enemy. Oh God. But sometimes you could trick the virus, if the threat to Ninth World offensive was not obvious. “Sharon, please?”

“Who this?”

“Husband.”

“Oh, yeh mon. We godd y’ wife. We kill her, less you come home and turn y’self in.” A scuffle. Then: “Gary! For God’s sake, don’t tell them where you—”

It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what they were going to do. Gary considered asking what had happened to his little girl, but realized there was a chance the Ninth Worlders hadn’t discovered the child’s existence. She would be with a baby sitter until five. Maybe Sharon hadn’t picked her up before the Ninth Worlders broke into the house. Maybe she was all right.

Gary hung up and began to shake all over. Sure. Maybe she was all right. Maybe there’d be a heat wave this afternoon, too.

The second call was to his doctor’s office.

“This is Doctor Barth’s office. The office is closed until Monday morning. However, if you need assistance, Doctor Frieman is covering Doctor Barth’s calls this evening.” And the metallic voice gave Frieman’s number.

The pain in his abdomen began to grow. Gary put the telephone down and rode the contraction. Then he looked at his last suzie.

If he called Frieman’s number and got another recording, or worse, a Ninth Worlder, he had lost his last telephone call.

The cash register. Many, many suzies would be in the cash register.

But the register was locked. Firmly. Gary had no idea how the stupid thing would open anyway. He tried punching keys and finally bashed it with a large bottle of calcium supplement. It sounded curiously empty. With a pang of despair, Gary pressed his cheek against its cold keys and rode through a labour contraction. Then, in the gloom, he explored the cupboards and shelves behind the counter. A key. Somewhere there had to be a key.

He patted the shelves with shaking hands, stopping several times as contractions rode over him. Finally, he began sweeping things off shelves. So damned dark. He was trying to find the key by touch only. If only he could find a flashlight.

No doubt the store stocked flashlights. But where? The drugstore seemed a cellar of useless junk.

His throat tightened with fear and despair. It was useless anyway. The clerk had probably emptied the register before leaving.

Outside, eerie lights raced across the buildings and sky. Cars, search lights, fires illuminated the city. Gary watched the light patterns, despair sitting in his chest like undigested raw meat.

Car lights pooled along the street. The car crept to a stop in front of the drugstore.

Gary scuttled toward the back of the store, feeling like a trapped rat with a time bomb in its belly. The car killed its lights. Lit them again. Glided away, slowly.

Perspiring and shivering, he sat on the rubberized carpet in front of the cash register. The human-made womb within him was beginning to tense. He watched as his abdomen clenched into a rounder, harder dome. The pain crescendoed, and he panted, taking little sips of air, trying not to whimper.

The fear was worse than the pain, he decided, as the pang subsided. They had explained the caesarean section in elaborate detail. He had visited a hypnotist who relieved him of much of his fear of the surgery. No more dangerous than a few dozen auto trips, said the hypnotist.

But they hadn’t mentioned what Gary was supposed to do if labor overtook him when no surgeon was available.

Alcohol. Couldn’t alcohol in the correct dosage stop premature labor?

Between contractions, he must break into the pharmacy and find some alcohol.

The divider that sealed the pharmacy from the rest of the store felt waxy, stronger than glass. The door to the pharmacy was locked, of course. Gary looked around for a tool.

Another contraction hit. Despair engulfed him. He was going to die, victim of a stupid medical experiment.

Experiment? Male pregnancy was not exactly experimental. Ever since Prince Jean-Pierre had announced his intention to bear the next heir to the Canadian crown, men had been getting knocked up in droves. Well, not in droves, but Sharon and he had managed to find a doctor whose practice included male obstetrics. They had had to travel to Boston for the implantation, but no questions were asked.

The contraction hit like a towering wave, picking him up and throwing him against a wall of pain, where he floundered, then slowly slid down.

He started disassembling a shelving unit. The leg seemed sturdy enough to shatter the pharmacy window. He fought off another wave of pain before the leg was entirely free of the shelving.

Getting to his feet was more difficult than he’d expected. Terror was exhausting.

A watch would have helped. He would have known how much time he had to work between contractions.

The window did not give. In the end, he pried the locked door loose.

Inside the pharmacy, he wished he had not had to pull the latch plate on the door loose. It would be nice to be able to lock himself in here until he’d found what he wanted.

At least there was a flashlight near the counter.

He knew another contraction was due, and prayed that the one that would rupture the artificial womb was far off. He sprawled, back against the counter, upsetting plastic bottles, as the wave hit.

Examining the shelves, mostly on his knees, seemed to take forever. The flashlight kept going out, and he kept having to shake it to make it light again. There must be an order in the inventory of such a pharmacy, but he could not figure it out. Worse, there was no alcohol except as a medium for potent drugs.

A scraping noise.

Gary killed the light and slowly rose to a position where he could just peek through the pharmacy divider. Three scruffy kids with powerful flashlights had entered the drugstore.

They scuttled down the dark aisles, flitting from item to item, playing the beams on bottles, packages, and bins.

“Check out the drugs,” said one. A beam of light sliced across the wall above Gary. His fingers closed around the legs of a stool, the only weapon at hand.

“Damn, door’s broken. Somebody’s already hit them. Shit,” said another.

“Shit,” echoed the first.

“Hey, there’s a virus-head parlour across the street,” said the third. They whooped and crowded out the door.

Gary exhaled. He hardly noticed the next contraction.

But there was no alcohol, unless it was identified in some strange way he didn’t recognize. Another contraction hit, this one more business-like.

It left him panting, whimpering.

No damned alcohol. Why hadn’t he found a liquor store instead of a pharmacy?

“Listen, kid,” he said to his belly. “Stop trying to get out. No exit, get it? We need doctors and nurses and anaesthesiologists before we’re ever going to get shed of one another. Understand? You’re going to kill us with this independence bit. Oooo, nooo.”

When the contraction was over, Gary opened his eyes and saw a woman’s purse under the counter. It was a big cloth purse, not the sort your fashionable under-thirty type carries. Gary hefted it and peeked in with glad suspicion.

A pint of Cutty Sark, almost half full.

The first taste was more nauseating than he had expected. He had never liked scotch; always been an American beer man. He thought of going back into the main part of the drug store and looking for something for a mix.

But warm cola with scotch might be worse than scotch neat, so he swallowed another slug. Like medicine.

He fought nausea for three more swallows, and then a warm haze settled over him. He had to stop for a contraction halfway through the bottle, but he got it almost all down.

Then the nausea came back. With a vengeance.

Labour nausea. The labour continued unabated. Each contraction brought with it horror and desire to heave up his entrails.

Nausea had always horrified Gary. He was always ashamed, even when the nausea was not his fault, even when it came from some bug.

This time, he focused on the shame he had felt when he’d started showing and tried to make love to Sharon. Later, the hormones had removed all desire. But at the beginning, there was this revolting fascination with the processes of coupling. And the degradation of the swollen belly, an essentially feminine disfigurement. Sharon had coaxed him, reassured him. But it had been no go. He had rolled up in foetal position, jaw clenched.

Now, he fought to keep the scotch down. It tasted bitter in his throat. Between contractions, the nausea sleeked over, like the surface of water between ocean waves. Then a contraction would hit, and it would surge like a tsunami of polluted water.

As a little kid, he had prayed not to throw up. As an adult, he beseeched God to get it over with.

If only he could get help. If only there was a hospital nearby, a hospital he could trust.

But he had no way of knowing if the Ninth Worlders had control of local hospitals, even if he had strength to walk to one, or a trustworthy friend to drive him there. He might simply be seized and bound, thrown in a cell with other “criminals against nature,” to await his trial—if unproductive labour didn’t kill him.

The scotch finally came up, fouling a wastebasket. Gary rested, rode through the next contraction with a clear head, free of nausea. He’d lost the entire dose of scotch. And less than a shot remained in the bottle.

He chatted with the foetus. “We’re going to die, champ.” The foetus kicked him. Or perhaps it was just a minor ripple in the crashing sea of his labour. “Got any ideas?”

The foetus was quiet. Maybe, he thought, labour would just die down when the synthetic womb noticed nothing much was happening. Or maybe it was false labour.

Ha. Fat chance.

He could still call a hospital. He might reach somebody not infected with the Ninth World Virus, and they would come to help him.

He fingered the lone suzie in his pocket. He dragged himself to the pay phone once more.

“Northeast Ohio Hospital,” the voice answered. No accent. Maybe he was out of the woods.

“You’re American. You’re not infected,” Gary whispered.

“You’ll have to speak up, sir.”

“I’m in trouble. I’m a pregnant male, in labour. Hard labour.”

“Do you have transportation, sir?”

“No. No, I’m alone. I’m in a drugstore at 105th and Euclid. There’s a war going on outside.”

“We know, sir. We’ll send over aid immediately. You’re in good hands.”

“Oh boy, that’s a relief. When I heard your voice, I realized the hospital hadn’t been taken over.”

“Sir?”

“Your accent. You still speak English. You weren’t infected in the latest virus hit.”

“No, no. I wasn’t. But that’s not totally reliable, you know. The newest viruses don’t destroy English language capability. And new viruses help Ninth World insurgents speak perfect American English. Best not trust anyone, sir.”

“Okay. Can I trust you?”

“Yes. Would I be telling you this if I were Ninth World?”

Gary was silent.

“Euclid and 105th. Drugstore. Don’t reveal yourself to anybody unless you’re sure it’s medical personnel. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Hang on. Somebody’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Gary began shaking, a relief reaction. Oh, God. He was safe. The baby, his son, would be all right. He curled on the floor behind a display case near the phone, out of sight of the door, to wait.

It didn’t take long. No siren, no flashing lights. A big car pulled up in front of the drugstore. Before the car lights went out, Gary saw that it had MD plates.

But he had no reason to trust people who drove cars with MD plates. It might be stolen. Doctors and nurses might be infected with enemy virus. Gary’s call to Northeast might have been overheard by someone infected with enemy virus.

A woman got out. Her jacket was pale, colourless in the glare of the embattled city. She was tall, her hair a dark mass hiding her face. She locked the car door. Speak, damn you, speak! Gary thought.

She paused before the drugstore door. Peeked inside. Gary noticed she kept her right hand clenched inside her jacket pocket. Her long legs made her fashionably gawky in tight uniform slacks.

Using her left hand clumsily, she pushed open the glass door.

“Gary?” she said. “If it’s you, come on out. It’s safe.”

Gary! Somebody who knew him? Friend or—. Maybe somebody from Dr. Barth’s office who had been at the hospital, or who had gone there as a volunteer.

She was being cautious, too. The call could have been a trick. Of course. And the hand in the jacket pocket must contain—a gun? A Taser? Some weapon against a man pretending to be pregnant and in labor, perhaps to catch an unwary nurse or medic.

“Gary, I have to know if it’s you. Are you here? If it’s really you and not somebody faking it to lure uninfected medical personnel, I have to know.”

A passing car rounded the street corner, illuminating the woman’s strong profile. Crooked teeth, aquiline nose, red, sensuous mouth—he couldn’t remember the woman’s name, but it had to be the woman on the bus.

And she was above him, looking down. “Gary,” she grunted.

“It’s you. It’s really you.” Gary laughed out loud with relief. In protest, his artificial womb clenched in a wave of pain.

“Breathe,” said the woman. “Stop holding your breath.” She knelt beside him and took his hand.

“Over?” she asked.

“That one, anyway. Thank God it’s you. I didn’t know what else to do. I tried everything. The world is in, in chaos.”

“Chaos. Yes. I knew when the receptionist described the situation that it had to be you. How many pregnant men are there in Cleveland? But it could have been a trap. Both sides want control of the hospital.”

“I forgot your name.”

“Rachelle. Can you walk? We’re short on personnel—”

“No, no. I can make it without a stretcher. Everything’s fine. Everything’s going to be okay, right?”

“Right-o.” She helped him to his feet and guided him out into the cold. Snowflakes drifted down from the dark sign over the drugstore door.

Rachelle opened the back car door. “This isn’t my car,” she explained. “I borrowed it. I don’t have a car.”

Gary sprawled on the cold seat. Uncomfortable. But he could stand it, because he was on his way to help, to deliverance. His son would be born, would be okay, he realized. He had escaped the Ninth Worlders. The contraction that started as Rachelle pulled away from the drug store didn’t seem as painful. He was on his way.

Drowsy, he watched the strange panorama of darkened streets lit with occasional car lights and burning buildings.

“I’m lost,” he said finally. “We’re driving away from the hospital.”

“Road’s blocked.” Clipped words.

They stopped. Men ran out to the car. They opened the car doors and pulled Gary out roughly by the arms.

“Another one,” said Rachelle triumphantly. She walked beside them as they half-dragged Gary into a dark shopping mall with virus-twisted words sprayed crudely over the entrance.

“Why?” Gary managed.

“He’ll be tried at once,” she said. “The tribunal sits day and night.” She refused to address him.

Gary slumped, then whipped away from his captors with all the energy he had left. He threw a punch at one man, nearly fracturing his own hand. The man reeled, rubbed his jaw, stood glowering.

But Gary knew he couldn’t run. He couldn’t even drive the car, now. He was too weak.

He stood in front of Rachelle. She avoided his eyes, then confronted him straight.

“Why?” he whispered.

“Your kind,” she said, “knows too much. You plunder the secret lore of Nature. You have no courtesy for God or Nature.”

“But you aren’t virus-hit. You speak American English.”

“I was born to a Ninth World convertil,” she explained, wearily. “If that matters. Viruses can enhance language skills, as well as obliterate them. Viruses could even change you from a criminal. If we wanted that. But you’ve gone too far. Nature abominates you.” She turned away, dug in her pocket for a cigarette, lit it. “Take him in, for God’s sake.”

“Let me live until the baby is born,” said Gary, struggling to get the words past the constriction of his throat.

She widened her eyes ironically. “In the hands of the judges, criminal. We’ll try you now, this very hour. Justice is quick here.”

“If the baby was born, would you let it live?”

She narrowed her hard, dark eyes. “But it is not born. It is a monster. Part of you. Flesh of a criminal.”

“But if it was born. Now.” A contraction hit him then, hard. The type of contraction that in a conventional birth would force the child’s head down the birth canal, out toward freedom.

She laughed, observing his pain. “I’ll tell you what. If you give birth now, within the hour, the baby is a fresh start. Not part of a monster.” She leaned close, compressing her lips in cruel amusement. “Push hard, criminal. Bear down. Hurry.”

The pain slackened. Gary, weak as if knocked around in stormy surf, swayed, felt himself crumpling. He fought to stay standing. “You know I can’t.” To him his voice sounded whiny, like a child pleading to get out of an unjust punishment. “Please help me. I need a doctor.”

She smiled narrowly and moved away.

They led him into the dark mall. He closed his eyes, waiting for the next contraction, the next tsunami. Life ebbed from him even as the small eager life inside him tried to get out.

Despair felt like this, then. Giving up his life easily. Like offering his seat to an old woman on a bus. Like letting his four-year-old daughter win at checkers. Like offering the last piece of chocolate to the woman he loved.

He thought of his world, contracting to a shopping mall. And of darkened passages that led to torch lit, make-shift courtrooms, through corridors of wreckage. Full of sharp objects.

Shatterdemalion

—Simon Marshall-Jones

There’s a saying around here: Once you end up on the fringes, the next place you go is Death. And right here on the margin between the city of Moosejaw and the vast desolate plains from where the filth and scum came from to wash up on its shores like some discarded detritus, that’s almost a sacred truth. I’ve seen a lot of people land here, hoping to find something called home, but all it got them was a wooden box and an unmarked grave. In a city where hope had bypassed it a long time ago, killing, thieving, and arson are the only ways of making yourself feel better than the unlucky victim.

Sure, there are some good folks in this place: the ones that don’t stick their noses into anyone else’s business, but there are precious few of them and they’re getting fewer by the day. It doesn’t matter though—they’ll only end up like everyone else does: six feet under and lost to history as if they’d never existed.

Who am I you ask? The name’s unimportant, but just call me The Witness for the sake of convenience. I’ve lived here in this shack, slap bang in the middle of the no-man’s land separating the two wastelands, the city and the empty Hell beyond it, for more years than I can remember. Never much been one for company—hell, I haven’t been near a woman in a long time. And I pretty much look like my shack—worn weather-beaten skin almost as hard as wood in places, broken glasses and knocked out teeth (just like my windows and half of my front door), and a few sparse wisps of hair sprouting hopefully from my scalp (tufts of grass clinging on for dear life on my roof). And my clothing is as refined and high quality as the shack’s décor—in other words, a mess.

It’s not particularly well-trodden where I live, even on a good day: I would rarely see more than a body stumbling past a month. Lately, though, something strange has been going on. It started about two months ago, when I saw a woman and her young son (who was barely old enough to stand) walk straight past the shack and out into the wilderness. I shouted at her, but she wasn’t interested in listening or turning back. I watched her dust trail waft away on the wind, and by the time the cloud had settled it looked as if it had blown her and the little boy away too.

Not many days afterward, another soul did exactly the same thing—barrelled out of the city’s edge and straight through to the scrubland. I wasn’t too perturbed by it, until another couple followed an hour later. Then, toward evening, just as the sky was turning into an artist’s palette of blues, purples, pinks, reds, and oranges, a whole family carrying lanterns shuffled past my home. I’d been out on the veranda, sitting in an old beat-up chair that someone’s grandfather had made, when I noticed a constellation of lanterns emerging from out of the hooded back-streets of Moosejaw. As the bobbing lights drew nearer, I was able to make out a couple, probably in their thirties, herding two girls and a boy in front of them.

“Where’re you going at this time of day?” I asked, my voice cutting shard-like in the evening air.

I must have taken them by surprise. As all five of them stopped, fear stretching their faces into rictus grins and starting eyes. The man recovered first, his eyes focusing on me.

“We are on the road to salvation,” he said, his voice a mixture of hope and uncertainty.

“Salvation?” I said, “There’s nothing but empty wilderness out there. You’ll die within a few days.”

“No,” he replied emphatically, “we won’t, we will be protected. He has promised us. We have pledged ourselves to him and He will show us the way.”

“He? Who’s He?”

“The Curator,” he said, “He will guide us safely through the wastelands. He promised us.”

“The Curator? Never heard of him,” I said.

“You will soon,” came his reply, “He will redeem us all.”

With that simple affirmation of faith, he turned away, and led his family out into the now deepening night.

<~~O~~>

Over the following week more people took the same trail the family had and, when asked where they were going, all gave the same answer: The Curator was going to save them. Normally, I’m not one to pry into others’ lives, but I have to admit, this Curator was beginning to pique my interest.

Being a virtual hermit, even in a city this size, has its disadvantages. Everyone minds their own business, keeping their affairs close to their chests even with friends—even if they have friends. I visited a few bars and dives but no one was willing to talk. Mouths would clamp shut tight as soon as the Curator was mentioned.

Gleaning information is one thing, hearing rumours is another. Still I trawled the Moosejaw night for possible informants, but I soon discovered that casual eavesdropping was far more effective. Jigsaw snippets of wayward and unguarded conversations gradually pieced themselves together to form a picture, albeit an incomplete one I suspected. The man known as the Curator was a prize specimen—I’d gleaned enough to know I wanted to meet him face to face.

And so, I found myself on my own pilgrimage. I set out early one morning, just after dawn. All I took with me was a bag stuffed with dried food: I also brought a knife, some small tools, and a hat. I followed the same trail pioneered by those who had alerted me to the whole strange phenomenon. But my decision left me wondering: was I merely looking to satisfy my curiosity, or was there something more to it than that, something deeper? Only my destination, if I reached it that is, would tell me.

<~~O~~>

“Hey brothers and sisters, mind if I join you?”

I saw faces turn to me in the light from a small campfire—pilgrims like me, resting up for the night. Three men and four women ranging from young to middle age.

“Pull up a rock,” one of the men said, who I guessed was the leader of the group, “A fellow seeker is always welcome around our little fire.”

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it. It was cold out here, even though it was summer.

“We have some soup,” one of the women spoke up, “Would you like some?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say no,” I answered, genuinely grateful, “it’s been a long trek today.”

“Amen to that!” my first interlocutor echoed.

We all soon threw ourselves into friendly conversation, and I learned that they were a single family: Andrew, the leader, his wife Eleanor, and their two sons and two daughters. The sole topic of the conversation after that was the Curator. Most of what I heard that night only reiterated what rumour had lain at his feet: nevertheless what gaps there were in my understanding were gradually filled in. The man himself remained elusive, imagination and supposition embroidering the framework the legend had provided for his devotees. I had no doubt he was just a man, albeit charismatic and who had been elevated to semi-divinity by people who were desperate for anything that offered something better, but I suspected that he was exploiting people as a result of his own desperation. I wasn’t about to disabuse these good people of their notions: besides, I wanted them to guide me to him and his munificence.

“He walked out of the East one day, bringing his philosophy with him,” Andrew explained after I’d asked him about the man, “But where he’d learned it nobody knows. Of course, he was reviled and castigated at first, but over time folks started believing him and what he promised, and people flocked to him and his message. Once he’d gathered enough followers, he led them en-masse out to the Wilderness, setting up a colony somewhere. That’s where we’re headed.” He paused then, dropping his gaze to the ground.

“No,” Andrew admitted, “we don’t know where the colony is. But that is part of the Test, to prove our worthiness. Finding Him is what tells Him how committed we are. And that’s why we are doing this.”

“How did you hear about him?” I asked, “Moosejaw isn’t exactly a popular destination.”

“He came to me in a vision,” Andrew said, his face illuminated in the way that only the fervent could muster. It sent shudders running through my body. “he told me that he needed me and my family, that we had a special purpose.”

Whoever the Curator was, He was remarkable in that he didn’t appear to need missionaries or proselytes—hints whispered abroad seemed enough to draw people in. The trickle of hopefuls was now beginning to turn into a stream, as I’d seen, and no doubt would soon become a river by the sounds of things. I wanted to get there before he was drowned by a torrent.

<~~O~~>

I was up just before daybreak, and watched as the dawn spilt its colours all over the upturned bowl of Heaven. My companions were still asleep, and the warmth of last night’s fire had been replaced by a joint-freezing chill. Slowly, though, as the sun crept its way up above the nocturnal parapet of the horizon, a semblance of heat gradually chased the cold away.

Within two hours, the group of us had packed our meagre belongings, eaten a breakfast which probably wouldn’t have satisfied a desert mouse, and prepared to set off. The rest of the pilgrims had risen silently, only greeting me with a curt nod. It didn’t bother me particularly—I was mulling over my own maelstrom of thoughts. The evening before had given me much to think about. And, just like my good ol’ Daddy had told me on many occasions, thinking could lead to all kinds of trouble.

I was still convinced that the Curator was a charlatan of some kind, although quite what he stood to gain from these poor people I couldn’t even begin to guess. They had nothing to give in return, except their allegiance. Even that was dependent on whether he could deliver—as soon as there was even a sniff of him breaking his promises then that spell would be broken. For his part, he was exploiting their one weakness: hope for a better life, a release from poverty and drudgery. Just another egotistical conman looking to receive the love his parents had denied him.

What troubled me was the notion that he could possibly be real—in a way that frightened me more than the idea of him being a fake. The latter was comforting, perhaps because it conformed to delusions of my own. And why was he called the Curator? What exactly did he curate? Souls? False promises? Gullible people?

I would have to leave those questions unanswered until I came face to face with Him. But, I asked myself, was I prepared for it?

<~~O~~>

On day three, the unending scrubland gave way to the foothills of a range of small mountains. We’d been following a rough path which wended its tortuous way through stunted vegetation struggling to eke an existence on this windblown plain but, as the greenery thinned out even more, the path had become more and more difficult to discern. Once the low-lying brush had petered out altogether, any pretension of a trail went with it.

“Which way now?” I asked.

Only the wind answered me.

“We could die out here before reaching our salvation,” I pointed out, “We don’t have provisions enough to last forever.”

“We shall rest here awhile,” our glorious leader said, “Then, we wait—if we were meant to come into the presence of our Saviour, then he will send us help.”

That evening was a soulless and dour affair. If the days were stiflingly hot, then nights were the direct antithesis: freezing cold with a bitter wind plunging the temperature even lower. The mood of uncertainty infected everything: each of us was disinclined to talk, instead keeping our own counsels, while the fire glowed a pale yellow, as if it too felt muted. Even the normally excellent stew which Andrew’s wife, Eleanor, had prepared, although welcome, was tasteless and uninspiring.

As I wrapped my blanket around my frame, fully aware of its inadequacy, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I ascribed it initially to the cold, but within minutes of settling down I had the uncomfortable sensation that eyes were upon me. I felt sure something was observing us; whether there were benign or malign intentions behind them remained unknown. I stayed awake for as long as my body allowed me to. Even as exhaustion claimed me and I drifted into sleep, I could still feel those eyes watching, waiting, and evaluating. My dreams that night were troubled.

<~~O~~>

When I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was a sky full of heavy black clouds which matched my mood at that moment precisely. I am not one much for portents and omens, nevertheless I was struck by some unsettling feeling that didn’t bode well. Looking around me, I could see that everyone had already woken up, and that everyone in our little party was feeling the same thing as I was. It wasn’t long before the reason became clear.

“Come wife, he was judged unworthy,” Andrew was saying, “The rest of us, on the other hand, have been.”

“But why?” Eleanor wailed, “Why him?”

“We cannot answer that, nor should we question,” Andrew replied, “The Curator has judged him, and has seen fit to relieve him of this earthly life. Let us pray that he’s gone to an eternal peace.”

I chose to get up then, and approached the group standing around what I guessed was a corpse.

“What’s happened,” I asked, pretending innocence.

“The soul of our son, for whatever reason, has left this mortal plane,” Andrew said, turning to me.

“We should bury him…” Eleanor said.

“What will we use for digging with?” asked Andrew. “We have no spades, nor anything which might suffice.”

“We can’t just leave him here!” she protested.

“Neither can we take him with us,” Andrew said gently, “I sorrow too at our loss, but I cannot see any other solution than to leave him where he lies and let nature take its course. His soul is free—he no longer requires flesh to clothe it with.”

“Wrap him tightly in his blanket,” I said, “and lay him out reverently. Then let’s say a few words before moving on—we can’t stay here either.”

Andrew nodded, then shepherded Eleanor away while the other two sons got to work.

<~~O~~>

The solemn duty done, we broke camp and prepared to move off. Andrew had conferred with me on which direction I thought it best to head in: I was at as much of a loss as he was, but I knew he needed to maintain the illusion of being the head of this expedition. As for me, I was debating whether to tell him about what I’d felt just before going to sleep the evening before. My decision was pre-empted by a shout from one of the sons.

“Look! Up there!”

He was pointing towards one of the small ridges that abounded here. Although it was some distance away we could see a figure standing along its top. Detail was difficult to discern this far away, but I could make out that it was holding a staff, a necessity in this mountainous area I supposed. The figure raised it, indicative perhaps of acknowledgement that it had seen us.

“The Curator has given us a signal,” Andrew said, his voice at once tinged with awe and gratitude. “We are to be guided to our destination—he has accepted us!”

“Wait!” I protested, “How do you know he’s from the Curator? He could just as easily be a bandit or something!”

“We trusted in our Saviour to provide guidance to bring us into his presence,” Andrew answered, “and he has done so. We must place our trust in Him.”

“In the wilderness, trust can kill,” I said bitterly.

“You can stay here if you wish,” Andrew looked at me icily, “but I am taking my family to the promised haven.”

It was no use to argue any further—I knew that whatever I said would fall on stony ground, but I have to admit that I was curious about who it was who was standing up there. In all likelihood it had been its eyes I had felt on me last night.

“No, I’ll come with you,” I said, hiding my suspicions as best I could behind a smile. “I was just being cautious—we do want to see the Curator, don’t we, and I just want us to get there in one piece.”

“Duly noted, brother,” Andrew said, “and appreciated. You’re right, we do want to see Him with our own eyes, and perhaps we should be on our guard. Thank you for your words.”

I felt a little relief that he’d acknowledged my concerns, but I still felt uncertain about what the appearance of the figure signified, but standing here debating wasn’t going to settle it one way or the other.

<~~O~~>

We made good progress, reaching the base of the ridge about twenty minutes after setting off. It only occurred to me as we stood looking up at the hill that none of us were equipped for mountaineering. As if the figure had read my thoughts, it pointed its staff to our left, indicating that we should walk that way. Indeed, within a further five minutes, we found a trail snaking its way up the side of the ridge. Presumably, this was the path which all pilgrims took, if indeed that was where we were heading.

We met our erstwhile guide at the top, and I noted that it was swathed completely from head to toe, with only a narrow slit for its eyes. The hands were gloved, too. I guessed that it could get even colder up here than on the plain.

“Are you here to show us the way to the Curator?” Andrew asked.

The figure didn’t move or say anything, didn’t even blink. After some long moments of inspection, it turned from us, and began walking along the top of the ridge.

“I suppose we should follow,” Andrew opined.

We were led for some miles, firstly keeping to the narrow and sometimes dangerously precipitous ridgeway, then climbing down on the side opposite the direction we’d come in. At its bottom was a sheltered valley, through which, surprisingly, ran a slow river, hedged in on each side by lush vegetation. We followed it upstream, until the valley began to narrow. As we got closer to its end, we could all see the river emerging out of a cave in the valley head, and it appeared it was this we were heading for. I wondered if our goal was somewhere behind it.

I was right. Without breaking its stride, the guide walked straight into the aperture, keeping to a ledge running along its right-hand side. It was barely wide enough to walk on, so we had to carefully inch our way along it, keeping our faces to the wall and hoping that we didn’t slip. Progress appeared interminable, but at last an opening in the side of the riverine passage opened up, and I fell into it, grateful that I’d made it safely.

Catching my breath, I looked up and counted seven heads—we’d all made it. Our guide still hadn’t uttered a word in all the time it had taken us to get here.

“How far to go?” I asked, but it chose to remain silent.

“Can we at least rest for a bit?” Andrew asked, “We need a little breather after our exertions.”

The figure nodded, and pointed farther into the space we were in.

Following its lead, we found the passage widening into a chamber, with what appeared to be stone benches at its perimeter. Obviously, other pilgrims had asked the same question before us. I was happy to take the weight off my feet for a short while—whilst I certainly wasn’t unfit by any means, I hadn’t walked this far in years.

The rest, albeit short, revived me, as did a nibble of some of the dried food I’d brought with me. I could have done with resting a while longer, but the figure indicated that it was time to move on.

In the far wall of the chamber there was a short passage, at the end of which was a flight of steps leading upwards. More climbing, I grimaced. At least I hoped that it would be the final leg before entering the realm of the Curator. Following behind everyone, I chose to lose myself in my thoughts, feeling a mixture of dread and excited curiosity at what possibly lay ahead. I couldn’t shake off a feeling that events wouldn’t end well.

<~~O~~>

Ascending those steps took us another half hour at least, by which time my legs felt like they were made of jelly. We came out in a gallery, lined on one side by a series of windows outlined on the farther side by a flickering orange glare of flame. I went to the nearest aperture, and saw a vast cavern, lit by a series of small fires on the floor and torches on the walls, and thronged by milling groups of people. Adherents, I supposed. At the far side of it was a dais, in which I could make out a kind of throne. For the Curator, I surmised. It only confirmed that this was a scam, set up purely for the vanity of one man.

Eventually we descended into the cavern by a series of steps leading from the far end of the gallery. Curious eyes followed us as we made our way through the crowd. I noticed Andrew nodding at one or two people, presumably friends who’d made the trek earlier, but curiously they didn’t acknowledge him or smile back. I couldn’t have said whether it was a result of the firelight or not, but their faces were of an almost lifeless cast. Eyes were deep, bottomless blanks, and features permanently fixed in one uniform expression. None spoke: they merely observed us, their heads turning to follow us as one. My companions hadn’t seemed to notice, which I found somewhat odd and disturbing. My guts were churning, and my mind was in turmoil.

“Welcome Believers,” a resonant voice interrupted, making all in attendance turn their heads to face the speaker. He was a tall thin man, unremarkable-looking, wearing a long white habit like a monk, and with a bald head. As I’d surmised: the Curator was nothing special, most likely a fraud. “You have overcome much to make your way here, and for that the Curator commends you. You will be welcomed into the community after you have rested sufficiently.”

So, I was wrong: this wasn’t the Curator, just his messenger. I should have realised that he wouldn’t show himself directly: a classic move to maintain an aura of mystery.

“You will be shown to the dormitory, where you may rest,” the man said, “You will be taken care of and fed, and you may bathe to wash off the dust of your journey. We will fetch you at the appointed hour for your baptism.”

Our mute guide led us farther into the subterranean complex, where we eventually arrived in a long passage punctuated at intervals with doors. Here our group was separated into men and women, and we were shown to different dormitories. Each room was lined with beds, and as soon as I flung myself on one, I fell asleep.

<~~O~~>

I wasn’t sure what had woken me up so abruptly from my slumbers, but just before I did I’d felt a ripple of darkness laced with whispers wash through me. The room was dark, with only a single candle providing a weak light to see by. It was enough to let me know that I was the only one in the room, the other male members of the party no longer in their beds. A baptism had been mentioned, so perhaps they were being baptised even now, but why hadn’t I been woken up to participate in the ritual? My mind raced with all kinds of possibilities, none of which soothed me enough to go back to sleep.

I got out of bed, unnerved. I couldn’t hear anyone or anything. I’d always been a loner, but company appeared to be a more attractive option just then than staying here: being alone in this vastly empty and supernaturally silent place, who knows how far underground or inside a mountain it was. It filled me with a deep, unformed fear. I hated being afraid.

This was a different species of fear than anything I had ever encountered. This was physical: an emotional broadcast, my mind and body the receiver. It emanated in waves, each one hitting me right in my primitive lizard brain, sparking off tremors of dread and fright. My bladder and bowels felt the pressure most of all, and I was ready to just let them do their thing right there and then.

However, I was never one to shy away from a challenge—call it bravery, stupidity, or an innate death wish, nothing, no matter how dire, would cow me into submission. I think most people would have called it the latter. I am inclined to agree.

I knew that, even in the fog of fear making a mess of my thinking, I was making assumptions about what was happening and who was causing it. Nevertheless, I wondered if this had any connection with the Curator. After all, I was the sole doubter around here. If he could transmit fear, then perhaps he (or it) could pick up the thoughts and emotions of others.

I needed to resolve this, one way or another. I stepped out into the passage, checking for signs of anyone else being around. I was met with the solidity of silence. Either everyone was asleep, or I was the only one who had been left behind.

Taking a lit torch from a wall-sconce, I padded along the corridor, the cold stone beneath my feet keeping me alert. I still had no clear idea where I should go, but in my wanderings down corridors, through halls and chambers, I became aware of a tugging at my consciousness. It was an invitation—whatever intelligence inhabited this subterranean kingdom, it was granting me an audience. My first instinct was to rebel against its alien touch as it skated across the surface of my mind: I was sure that it meant nothing good was about to happen. I recoiled, but steeled myself against its slipperiness and malice.

I let my feet guide me, and very soon the nature of the corridors and passages changed dramatically, the smooth walls metamorphosing into rough scale-like textures and extrusions. The air became unhealthy: a smell of fungal decay hung heavily, coating my nostrils and lungs thickly, making breathing difficult. The farther along I stepped the moister the passage walls became: even in the wavering torchlight the liquid looked diseased, tinged a fetid green. I ventured to touch it, but my hand jerked back as soon as I felt it—it reminded of thick stringy snot.

All this time, I had been walking through pitch black, illuminated only by the flickering uncertain flame I was carrying. Steadily, some way ahead of me, a source of light became apparent, which grew brighter the farther along the tunnel I went. The gravity of its pull quickened my pace, and I emerged into a grotto, voluminous and humid, lit up with tens of braziers and pyres, and filled with the constant sound of water dripping. The fungal aroma was even worse in here.

“Welcome.”

I turned to the source of the voice, and found the tall monk in the white habit standing a few feet away.

“You’ve been expecting me?” I asked, unsurprised at his presence in the light of my “invitation.”

“Yes, we have,” he answered, inclining his head the smallest fraction. “In which case, let’s not waste time, shall we? Follow me.”

He turned his back on me, proceeding to walk away into the furthest recesses of the grotto. It went back deeper than was at first apparent, the far end hidden in shadow. A susurration came from within the blackness, until it resolved itself into a waterfall at the rock face defining the end of the grotto, spilling over a lip of rock some twenty feet above us. I wondered if we were heading behind the curtain of falling liquid, and moments later my guess was confirmed.

Immediately we stepped behind it, the air became fresher. I could breathe easier, but it also meant that I was beset by a coughing spasm, in the process dislodging some nasty phlegm which landed on the floor with a wet splash. My host waited patiently, allowing me to recover and compose myself.

“Have you quite finished?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I replied, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Lead on!”

He led me down more passages, turning this way and that, until we finally came out into a cavern adorned with stalagmites and stalactites. This far underground there should have been no natural light, yet a sickly luminescence pervaded the space, giving everything an unhealthy cast. The smell wasn’t much better either: decay, putrescence, and death assailed my nose, making me gag and sending me reeling. My guide seemed not to take any note of the rotten aroma; either he had no sense of smell, or he was inured to it.

“Why did you come here?”

The words had emerged from the depths of the cavern, taking me by surprise. I couldn’t see anything as my eyes were full of tears, but somehow I felt glad of that. It wasn’t a pleasant voice: it possessed the timbre of death, and reeked of charnel filth. It made me feel nauseous and inspired vertigo: it sang of wallowing in the shit and piss of discarded morality and mocked the vomit that was humanity and its puny efforts. I didn’t want to venture any deeper into the Curator’s inner sanctum—his voice was enough to make me realise I had made a mistake in coming here.

“Why did you come here?” it repeated.

“To meet you,” I said, which was true enough. I carried on, mostly to avoid hearing him speak again. “I was curious. You had snared so many, and I wondered what manner of a man could inspire such obsession and devotion. I thought you a charlatan, a vain man, a would-be saviour looking for power and adulation. So, I followed a party of faithful, so I could discover who you really were.”

“Are you disappointed?” it mocked me.

“I’m not sure about disappointed,” I said, thinking carefully while attempting to keep my stomach where it was. “No, it’s more like I’ve had my opinion confirmed. You’re nothing but a parasite.”

“A parasite?” it said, false hurt tingeing its speech, “I am insulted. I am a true saviour—I take away their shattered and ruined lives, their pain and anguish at a world which has forgotten them, and a society which rewards evil over good. I take away their worries, and in return they give me allegiance, obedience, and worship. They have shelter here, a life among their own kind. They are safe.”

“At what cost?” I countered, “Judging by the followers I’ve seen so far, it appears they have no life in them at all—mere shells. I am inclined to think you’ve deprived them of their essential humanity, the one spark which gives them their uniqueness.”

“But they’re happy,” the Curator answered, “They have no complaints.”

“Probably because they’re unable to, or can’t!” I retorted. “All self-control has been taken away.”

“Self-determination and self-realisation only cause trouble, not just for them, but for everyone else too. We have reached an equilibrium here—and we don’t want that balance upset.”

“Only a monster would think like that.” I said.

“Monster, you say?” It said, a gentle laugh punctuating the sentence. “Maybe…come closer and judge for yourself.”

The last thing I wanted to do was to get any nearer, fearing what it was I might find. Conversely, my damned curiosity was fighting head-to-head with my reluctance. I had to admit, even in the face of the almost physical miasma of vile putridity which hung in the atmosphere, I couldn’t help wondering about this man, or whatever he/it was.

“Where are you?” I gasped just as a billowing cloud of noxious gas hit me.

“Walk forwards,” he said. I nearly threw up at that point—how I’d managed to prevent my food from escaping my guts into the real world was a mystery in itself.

I slowly edged forward, using my feet to feel for any stones or other impediments. My eyes were still streaming, still blurring my vision, but perhaps that was a fortunate thing under the circumstances. Still, maybe even the briefest of glimpses would be enough to satisfy my curiosity.

As I got closer, I heard wet slaps, liquid gurgles, and gaseous exhalations, none of which inspired pleasant images. Heat battered the parts of my skin which were exposed, accompanied by steam condensing on its surface. Eventually, my leading foot came up against a barrier: I reached out blindly with a hand, but didn’t connect with anything. I risked opening an eye, and saw a short wall in front of me, about four feet tall, holding back a body of steaming hot water. Bubbles popped constantly causing minute ripples and waves to radiate out. The air stank of sulphur and fungus: a devilish smell I thought, grinning inwardly at the unintended pun.

“Stand still, and look to your right,” the Curator commanded. This close, the effect of his voice was even worse than before: I felt like my intestines wanted to vacate my torso, along with every other organ I possessed.

I slowly turned my head, keeping my eyes shut. My face was bathed in a waterfall of sweat and condensed water, and my heart-rate had accelerated to a level I probably hadn’t experienced since I’d asked my first girlfriend out.

“Don’t be coy,” he said. Coming from him it sounded like the words were being raped.

“Fuck!” I shouted, just before projectile vomiting. The sight I’d been greeted with had demolished the last barriers to the contents of my stomach which had, without needing any further encouragement, raced up my throat and made a bid for freedom through my nose and mouth. In its wake the acidity had stripped my throat and nasal passages raw, leaving me coughing and spluttering. Incongruously, my only thought was, “that definitely wasn’t my finest moment.”

Some minutes later, I regained enough control to trust myself. Deliberately slowing my breathing down and steadying my legs, I straightened up to confront an image which should only occupy the nightmares of the disturbed.

He was a man or, rather, had been once. He stood within the pool of steaming water, only his torso, arms, and head showing, but that was enough. His skin consisted entirely of squares of flesh, sewn on layer upon layer onto his own, the patches hanging loosely and plastered across his chest, arms, neck, and face like bloodily soaked rags. Where his torso emerged from the pool, the swatches of skin floated like dead leaves on stagnant puddles. Some of his prizes were newly acquired, still retaining a semblance of skin colour, while others were torn and stretched to the point of sloughing off his frame. I could see tumescences and boils here and there, suppurations ready to burst in an eruption of stinking pus. Snot ran freely out his nose, while saliva dribbled from black lips, and hissed when it hit water.

“What the hell?” I exclaimed.

“I wear the ruin of people’s lives on my skin,” he told me, “I willingly take on their disappointments and failures, and free them from the anger and desperation they engender. These are the tokens of my promise, their votive offerings. They do so willingly and without complaint.”

“Is that why you are called the Curator?” I asked, well aware that my enlightenment had come at an inopportune moment.

“I’m impressed,” he said by way of answer, “Yes, I curate a collection of people’s ills and disasters. I display them on my body as a way of reminding people of what I have done, and that in return for their happiness they must sacrifice something as a reflection of my own.”

“I was right, you are a monster!”

“Perhaps, to those who have not the wit to understand the full importance of what I am doing for them. I had hoped you would have seen beyond the common morality of the herd, and to have realised that sometimes one has to do unpleasant things in order to wash away the sins of others. I am not unique in this: the history of this world is full of examples and, I have no doubt, there’ll be others to come after me. The cycle has begun anew with me, and I think you will help me.”

“Never!” I cried vehemently.

“You don’t have a choice in the matter. You will be my Witness,” he said, his tone laced with poisonous threat.

Before I could react, I was struck from behind, and oblivion claimed me.

<~~O~~>

I came to, somewhere brightly lit and with a light breeze. I was lying on something hard and unforgiving. I declined to open my eyes for a while, despite my discomfort, but when I did I found that I was lying on the floor of my shack. I had no idea how I’d managed to get here: last thing I remembered, albeit vaguely, was being somewhere dark and talking to someone. Someone important I think. Certainly he seemed to know deep things, aspects of life hidden to ordinary mortals, the secrets of happiness. I couldn’t remember his exact words, but I knew without knowing that they were about me, about my life and its troubles. I felt happier than I had done for a long while.

I attempted to get up, but a shooting pain shot through my stomach. I felt dizzy as it hit me, so I lay back down until it receded. Even lying still, staring at my familiar ceiling, I couldn’t escape the soreness on my stomach. I decided that I couldn’t stay down here all day, so I gradually inched my way up to my feet, careful not to make any sudden movements in case it set off the pain again. It took me five minutes or so, but I pulled myself up.

The first thing I did was look for some dried food: I thought perhaps that was why my stomach had been so painful. I found some in one of the kitchen wall cupboards. I wolfed it down, but even after that my stomach still felt sore. I placed a tentative hand on the area, only for me to recoil with the pain. I held on to the sink—it was the only thing stopping me from hitting the floor again.

Once recovered, I thought to check under my shirt. I moved to the bathroom, took off my top, and looked in the mirror. A square of my skin had been removed.

<~~O~~>

Later that evening, I sat out on my porch, knowing what it was I was meant to do. In the distance I saw lanterns emerging out of the dusky edges of Moosejaw. I smiled. I waited until they got within twenty feet of the shack before getting out of my chair and stepping off the wooden porch to meet them.

“Greetings, brothers and sisters,” I said, arms open wide, “I have such great things to tell you!”

Aftermath

—Gary J Shipley

I go home every morning and eat my head out with a spoon. I’m looking to throat-cut myself per capita. This much blackness in your skull used to mean something. Brains would turn to slime so God could turn them into something else. Sources of unnatural incandescence leaking through the eyes. But we don’t have the facility for melodrama. We got insomnia and morbid yellow lights. We got the gradual disintegrating suicide, the autoimmune disease that found its way to the top. Got cytokines in our wiring, our insides set on fire. The Mulatto would sit underneath showers with his mouth open trying to put it out. When that didn’t work he reckoned he’d turn it into something else, but it was a difficult way to drown. He gave up.

We all gave up and took back to Ersatz. We’d raped the Wire dry anyways, and we wanted the source, looking to gangfuck it, we joked. Even with our mood disorder we still made funnies. I put it down to my extreme whiteness, and the others their lack of it. At least there hospitalization will be a sickness we don’t have.

We clenched up inside our sigh. We were fucking hilarious. Watched the storage facilities burn all the way back. So many trillions of molecules gathered around five banal pulses. Our organs in Plexiglas burning. It was a high-concept malfunctioning, and we looked all the bleaker with our heads shaved to cool us down.

My sense of humour is prolapsed. It’s dressed in unseasonal frost.

First day back, we looked for our infection as if we’d lost it. In a circle in the city core we meditated. Levé let us use his mantra. We took his thickened O and bashed all kinds of nothing back in it. We couldn’t tell when we were done. It takes a lot of nothing to find an end to something. I can’t remember how long it took before one of us died, and the rest of us, noticing the alteration in pitch, moved on. The dead one’s mouth stayed open. But it looked more like an eye socket.

He must’ve went and swallowed it.

Gagged on it. Suffocated.

Suffered.

No more than us.

And we’re still at it.

How come we never noticed?

His name I remember was left undecided. At this point my policy on abortion became conflated with alternative sources of vision. I guess I’d heard babies crying somewhere from an open window. If we’d been in the desert it’d be sand I’d be waxing. All this is anecdotal of course. Imagine if it wasn’t.

If this was leading somewhere it wouldn’t be this.

We’d been gone for a year, and our homes had absorbed new people. We found them fermenting in our beds and curled up like cats in balls on our sofas. This was more of this great emptiness to us. Especially for Mark who, grossed out, had taken such overwhelming pride in the phantom pregnancies he’d administered. They seemed to us like twelve months of aftermath, like platters to our yet undigested ennui. We raped them till they were so much more than the dead they arrived at, and not a smidge of cum between us. Even The Mulatto’s electrodes couldn’t tease a drop. I want to impress the sadness of this. Such diseased pigs back then. So fanatical about not letting go that we barely got hard. If it hadn’t been for our dogged implementation of limbs they’d have lived through the week it took. And we’d have had roommates turning us spontaneously awake.

While I’m watching this dispersal play out, there’s the back of a woman looking out to sea. She’s got this white dress and her hair is dirt. If I ever see her face my cock will erupt a thousand breasts of five hundred dead women. And I’ll be warm again on the outside as if my mother were still alive. What is most still is most alive because of it. What a couple of thoughts to have wearing the cowl of this shit.

I really don’t remember raping quite that many sallow-faced children. God, how I must have done it though. And them sallow like that. What a way to be and then be this thing now. This blackened up on the inside. This ridiculously charred to buggery. I’m so ruined that the woman looking out to sea has a clown’s nose and a big fuck-off grin. That’s how much I’ve invested in the unreality of joy.

When we meet again, in the centre with the dead one not gone anywhere, we avoid the circle and copying the rotting pigeons sit in two ranks of two wearing our faces like we meant them. Levé happened to be canine-heavy. It wasn’t black but black enough he thought to have some answers if he kicked it long enough. So far it’d turned out full of nothing but vomit and twaddle. We looked at it the way we’d once glassed husbands. The way its nose dripped reminded us of that year’s ejaculate.

That ugly bag of cancerous drool is worsening the cause.

Informant. I’m calling it The Informant.

A resort for blow fly.

I plan to beat a world of sunlight out of it first.

It was a concept of colonization we needed to own. Our apocalypse had been flavoured to taste like toothpaste. Nevertheless, we remained pretty miserable. The dog didn’t amount to creative pessimism. To tell the truth, we couldn’t talk much after that. It was an old dog and it died on the step. Our voices collected in clouds of flies above our heads, bubbles of black buzzing speech that had circumvented our gobs. Consider the facts: the world right then was the inference of this singular state of having been poisoned, and we were no closer to a cure than we were to our atoms. My father used to fission as a matter of course. Needless to say, all five of us had had the same one. We left the dog with the dead one and circled the city by way of side-streets. We were feeling conspicuous. We decommissioned surveillance cameras as we went. We became fully introverted by nightfall, and the city lights turned us starless.

In our homes we contemplated mucus. Nothing about our predicament suggested the possibility of medicine. Without wanting to we sucked at the bloodstains on our sleeves. It took us till morning to imagine rooms outside of the ones we were in. Our physiology was rotting every bit as fast as the tiger we were on. But there was still this thing called bijouterie. Yes, we were still raving for the good it did us. In some people this would be enough to sustain them till lunch. We were already dead by breakfast.

Whether or not anyone cares to admit it, it’s hard not to sissify genitals to which you no longer belong. We all felt this way. Mark cut his off in protest. The Mulatto was so filled with admiration he gouged out his left eye. It suited him that way, we all said so. He sported the socket like a figment of all the things he’d wanted to see. And so we retained some pride and some illusions. And were handsome too despite the putrefaction. As we spoke, the infection we shared bifurcated so that we didn’t have to. None of this clarified our migration. Sometimes it seemed that no one would ever get raped again ever, and that we’d be there to watch it never happen. In a sense, this ennui was just the blandest chewing gum.

Levé found what he thought was the source of our infection inside the loft space above his rooms that he couldn’t remember having existed before then. It was shaped like some coagulation of late-period Goya jowls, but with thousands of tiny legs. It squeaked when he approached it. The pitch made his ears bleed. The legs moved all at once and resembled brown grass on the side of a hill. He got to his feet, crouching, and destroyed it with the heel of his shoe. He turned up next day with it splattered up his trousers. He claimed he’d felt a slight release of pressure in his head after doing it, and that we should too. We concurred there’d been some easing of something. More would have to be found and disposed of, he said, before we’d be right again. The dead one and the dog were still there. Their untouched residues were becoming a comfort to us. We even extended them greetings on arriving. The Mulatto was having to constantly scoop flies out from his eye socket, and often looked less alive than the two companions he was supposedly more alive than. We all of us felt less real than the two that were dead.

When it came time to leave, Mark chose to stay. We imagined he wanted for some of their newfound reality to rub off on him. The rest of us could sympathize, but felt we should scour our buildings for more of what Levé had found. Our bad climate wasn’t inevitable then. There was still a future in which we were raping, and the sun was in our hair, and naked from the waist down we bounced like monkeys on a spring. In the dead ones there was a peace that wasn’t in our homes. It was about this time we noticed a smell we couldn’t identify. It didn’t come from us but from the people of the city. Those people we saw walking places wherever we went. Leaving Mark, we decided to follow some to wherever they went. We tailed hundreds that night and through into the next day. It’s important now that I recount those hours without feeling them. What speaks out of me is something meticulously empty. The only way I could stay alive was as a variable, that which can be anything and so is never something. We followed and the pattern was always the same. All they did was walk. The bags they carried never got opened. They never arrived where they were going. No jobs, no families, no people inside the bodies. Just one street after another to make the city look lived in. Just the enhanced whiteness of faces everywhere. And then we realized that we’d been following each other, that our facility for facial recognition had finally burnt out. And then we forgot it again.

Thus we saw more clearly what we were. For whoever witnesses the insect brains of their brothers and sisters witnesses their own too. And what was the fate of insects made dickless by a dog? It was this impotence in the face of one all-encompassing face that made mirrors fair game for conversation.

We all found our way back to the centre with the dead ones, inferring each other’s presence by counting and body mass. The others have been still for a long time now.

I must be the only one left that’s still taking notes.

I ghost write the end-of-the-world scenario to end all end-of-the-world scenarios.

Municipal Election 3B

—Mick Clocherty

Fifty ditches, that makes an afternoon’s work. Tony lit a cigar and fiddled with his shackles. He’d been promised a bottle of whisky for the week’s work, and figured Larry would be back at the cabin already. There was a piano and a deck of cards waiting for him, and maybe a night free from the usual abject misery. He heard a low rumbling and tutted.

The machine crawled towards him on its crude wheels, spewing out tracts and stickers along the dusty trail it left behind. It had what looked like pieces of tubing for arms, and a colander sat atop its stern iron face, permanently fixed into an expression resembling a politician on Remembrance Sunday. The stickers it fired out were marked with a red “X”, and covered everything the robot left in its wake. Tony rolled his eyes and turned his back to it; only to be confronted with a similar machine approaching him from the other side. This machine was identical to the first one, but its tracts and stickers bore a black “O” instead.

Tony stubbed out his cigar. The two rusty goliaths towered over him, as he leaned against a picket fence with his shovel over his shoulder.

“Citizen, Municipal Election 3b is fast approaching. Citizen, please register to vote in Municipal Election 3b. Mark your card with an “X” and remain a proud member of Shell County.”

It sounded like a Cold War propaganda announcer.

“Yeh,” said Tony.

“Citizen, Municipal Election 3b is fast approaching. Citizen, please register to vote in Municipal Election 3b. Mark your card with an “O” and give your overlord the mandate to declare independence for his property. This is a step towards true freedom.”

It spoke with the exact same tinny apple pie voice-box.

“Uh-huh,” said Tony, “I’m goin’ home.”

Tony started away from the machines, but found himself cornered by the X-bot and O-bot.

“Citizen, please report to your polling station to vote in Municipal Election 3b,” they droned in unison.

“You think this decision is worth a damn to a ditch-diggin’ slave? The ancient Romans never made their slaves put up with this shit,” said Tony, being quite a well-read human object.

The O-bot burped out a piece of paper from what looked like a Sinclair ZX Spectrum grafted to its chest and handed it to Tony. The paper read: “The Birth of a Nation: Six Benefits for Slaves in an independent South-West!”. He crumpled the page into a ball and kicked it into a ditch, before being hit in the face with another sheet, which read: “Don’t Go It Alone! Six Benefits for Slaves who remain a part of Shell County!”

Tony really needed that drink.

“Look, the colours on the flag and the emblem on the transfer papers is all that’s gonna change if I vote circle, and I ain’t happy enough about my current situation to vote ecks. The only reason any of us poor schlubs votes in these things is ’cause you robots force us to. What’s the point?”

“We bring choice—” cried the X-bot.

“The illusion of choice,” retorted Tony.

“The creation of a new state is not an illusion. I offer you a true chance to change the world!” the O-bot chipped in.

“All right, so your sole purpose, the reason you were built, is to encourage people to vote circle in Municipal Election 3B?”

“Correct.”

“So in eventually achieving this goal, you bring about your own obsolescence. You tell us to vote circle, but if we all did, we’d have no need for ya any more. What you really need in order to survive, is everyone to vote ecks.”

The robots looked at each other.

“And you,” Tony the slave continued, “in encouraging everyone to vote ecks, are doing the same thing. See, with no one voting circle, and a uniform identity being established in these elections, you also campaign for your own demise. The only way you can be sure of surviving then, is if some people vote circle. Enough people at least, to keep the whole damn charade goin’.”

This prompted a cacophony of clicking and whistles, as the machines processed Tony’s argument. After a while, they responded together:

“Citizen, please exercise your democratic right, and vote—”

“X” said the O-bot

“O” said the X-bot

Within a moment, the robots began erratically screeching “ERROR” over and over again, whilst flailing their arms around in a futile attempt to bat at sparks coming out of their processors. Seconds later, they were slumped over and shrouded in smoke. Dead machines.

Tony buried them where he buried all of the others and made his way back to the cabin. He’d been promised a bottle of whisky for the week’s work, and figured Larry would be there already. There was a piano and a deck of cards waiting for him, and maybe a night free from the usual abject misery. Monday would bring further toiling, and with it, Municipal Election 3C.

To Imagine Disaster is to Invoke the Same

—Violet LeVoit

I could poison the biscuits. I could get liquored up and play chicken on black back roads. I could whistle at a white woman. There are so many ways to die in Shell County.

But we’re not in Shell County. We’re in an interactive walled suite in deep Ersatz, and Mr. Creep is deep in me. The walls flicker with holographic bougainvillea and rabid dogs hunching their funny sick dance on dirt streets. My skirts are pushed up so high I’m almost suffocating in petticoats. His fifteen minutes are almost up. And now they are.

He puts five dollars in my pocket when he’s done and sighs, “Just give me a second.” I give him as long of a second as is legally allowed and then I stick the needle in his jugular. I inject him with a brew of neurotoxins that wipe out the residuals from orgasm, the oxytocin and the prolactin and the endorphins. He knows they’ll scan him at the door, won’t let him out on the street until his brain chemistry’s back to baseline anyway. I watch the peaceful expression on his face deflate like a detumescent penis. “Couldn’t give me that five dollars back, could you?” he says, bitterly, as I hand him his hat, and we both know the answer.

After he leaves I put the five dollars in the pneumatic tube and never see it again.

In the Mockingbird room there’s a chifferobe in the corner and an axe at the ready. The holograms wriggle in and out like night swimming. There’s jars of peach preserves. There’s shining crosses and nooses swinging in the trees. There’s parlors with Victrolas and dewy pitchers of sweet tea. There’s devils at the crossroads. I’ve never been to Shell County.

I don’t think Mr. Creep has, either. He pants his wish list when he’s on top of me again. “General Lee,” he gasps. “Country ham. A hard man is good to find.” This time he ties me up with kudzu vines. He rubs molasses into my breasts. He wants to see as many stars when he comes as the Confederate Flag has. He stuffs cotton bolls in my mouth. “Come on, Eli Whitney,” he cajoles. “Spit out the seeds.”

We’re both thankful we don’t have the Black Dog. I’m grateful that our relationship only gives me the normal amount of misery.

The next time he sees me he won’t give me the five dollars. “What if…?” he says, his eyes shining like the grease on a grilled peanut butter and bacon sandwich. I don’t get the gist. They keep the rooms hot and humid here and it’s making me cranky. I should have worked the Ottawa wing instead, where the girls squat out hockey pucks and roll their goosepimply flesh in poutine. I wanted to be in the Mockingbird room because I thought it meant I would be treated nicely. For once.

I swat him with my lace fan. “Ah declay-yuh,” I growl.

“Think about it,” he says, and I get his meaning.

Now when he comes to see me I do nothing. He does nothing. He gives me five dollars and I put it in the chamber pot under the bed. That’s what gives us pleasure now, not the orgasm I’ve got to snatch back from him as soon as I dole it out. This money that they give him will soon stand proud in a smart little stack that Ersatz’s underground railroad will be happy to trade for a quick smuggle out to the real Shell County. “I’ve never been there,” he sighs. Me neither. The heavy scent of magnolia. Gracious smiles. Fireflies and lemonade on porches blessed with sweet breeze from lazy fans. The soft singing of happy slaves. Fiddle-dee-dee.

The day we make our escape he looks grey. “Bless your heart,” I hear myself say, charming to the end, “y’all look like you’ve a touch of the vapors.”

“I’m all right,” he says, in a way that sounds weary and far away. “Today’s the day.”

We pore over the walls with our fingertips, feeling for the seam in the holographic wallpaper. He finds it, calls me over to claw at it until both our fingertips are bloody. There’s the ventilation grate. He rips me out of my petticoats so I can fit down the airshaft, so I can tumble through a galvanized darkness that cuts me on every welded seam as I howl down, down, crashing hard to the alley where the smuggler awaits to nail us into a box as soon as we press the stack of bills into her hands. Her T-shirt reads: FOLLOW THE DRINKING GOURD.

We’re pressed close together in the straw as she nails the box planks shut. Darkness, and only the sound of our breathing, nose against mouth.

I breathe his air for too long.

When she crowbars off the lid I’ve got the Black Dog. The sun is hotter and brighter than I’ve ever seen and I want to die. “You lied to me,” I moan. He can’t say anything. The tears are rolling down his cheeks.

“You’re free,” the smuggler says, and stalks away. We can’t bring ourselves to get out of the box. Something heavy and brutal inside us presses us down into the straw. Not even thirst brought on by the baking sun can lift us out.

He’s got the fever worse than me, sobbing into the filthy straw and clawing at his face. Come on, I think, near delirious, get up and get something to drink. They drink well here. Sweet tea or lemonade or Pepsi heavy on the syrup or white lightning moonshine or spring water so cold and clean it flows down your throat tasting like all your sins forgiven.

I poke my head over the edge of the box. I thought it would be lush and perfumed with flowers. This is desert, mockingly bleak and baked. Narrow ramshackle shacks speckle the horizon like pimples. I wanted vast plantations. I wanted cotillions and Tangee lipstick and colored maids with soft hands pressing my pretty dresses and polishing my silver.

There’s a girl, a teenager in cut-offs and a pink halter. She’s pulling a root out of the ground, a shotgun slung across her back. She’s pregnant and toothless. Her eyes are high and slanted and her freckles look like buckshot spatter and the back of her neck is burned an angry pink.

He’s convulsing next to me, jamming his fist in his mouth, trying to choke on his tongue, trying so hard to die. I know I’m next. I don’t want to go thirsty to my grave. A belle deserves better.

“Please,” I beg, “Give me something to drink.”

She doesn’t say anything. She weighs me, my torn skin and dry lips. Her eyes flick as quick as a lizard’s tongue to the right. And that’s where I see it, cutting through the dust: a river of blood, red-brown like garnets, the heady stuck pig stink of it gathering flies.

“You kin drink tha-yut,” she says, and as she dips her two hands into the gore I see the mouth of the river, the mountain of brown-skinned corpses atop the hill, and how they’re what waters everything here. And for one last fleeting moment, I feel as ashamed as I deserve, until the fever hits me.

On the Sculpting of Mountains and

the Act of Dying

(words and art by Shane Swank)

There lies a place at the northern edge of what was once known as Wisconsin in the United States before the Slave State fully occupied the dying planet Earth and put in place its parallel prison planet. The Northern most area, that at one time had been rather lush and green, is now a smouldering cesspool and awash with scarred topography. Vaginal shaped fissures in the landscape spew forth vile gases, fumes and smoke into the bowl between the newly formed mountains. It is home.

The Kock Brothers owned mining operations in the region—on top of all their other planet raping industries worldwide. They used a methodology then known as fracking, which split tectonic plates causing vast eruptions of methane gases. Then came the landmass shifts, sinkholes, mountains and valleys where none had existed before. This area of the earth had not been re-sculpted this drastically since it was dissected by the glaciers.

Areas of the displaced Great Lakes violently bubble sulphur scented gases into the air as if the planet were erupting foul flatulence and waste from a bleeding, torn sphincter. Vast portions of the wildlife have become extinct. Had the area been more densely populated by humans, they too would have slipped into oblivion.

There were some human survivors—although very few in that upper third of the former state of Wisconsin. As far as the fauna goes, the crows seem untouched, you could even say they thrived. Vast murders of crows blacken the sky at times. Perhaps because they are able to feed so well on the human remains scattered throughout the once industrial city on the bay. To this day it is populated by the heartiest of cannibals, con-men and killers.

The takeover of the dying planet happened in stages. Stages that have been transpiring over hundreds of years by creatures who have the same regard for humans that a sadistic boy has for an ant under a magnifying glass on a bright summer day.

While they were certainly not the first, the greed driven Kock Brothers are in some ways the grand finale of man’s dominion over the planet. The brothers have been implanted with a DNA/RNA altering retro-engineered virus that has escaped detection because the virus is four dimensional, like the new masters themselves.

Being of the fourth dimension ensures that the pathogens are invisible—humans cannot actually see anything that is of higher dimensions. This is, of course, an advantage to the new masters.

This 4D virus implants the human host with emotions that are indicative of the reptilian races who wander distant space and neighbouring dimensions. A cold blooded lack of empathy for anything other than what might serve their immediate needs and desire. Instant gratification. In the brother’s case, wealth and unchecked power is the prize. Approximately four percent of the population was infected with this virus initially. Only half of that four percent were the wealthiest, most powerful citizens of the North American landmass.

By direct and indirect manipulation, the overlords are able to control humans, society and thereby the entire world. Much
of the work of the alien 4D retrovirus has amplified the nature of greed and hatred in man. It is already a rich dark loam to plant seed in. One only has to feed a dog bloody raw meat and beat it savagely for the conditioning it needs to become savage, primal, uncontrollable.

A mad black dog…

The obscenely wealthy have bought power and influence, councilman, senators, congressmen. Judges, lawyers and cops, bankers and financiers. They purchase Presidents and Supreme Courts who write new laws then flagrantly disregard them. There is no need for a mass bio-engineering—by infecting the wealthy and most powerful the misery of all mankind is ensured. Humankind’s corporations have become the Slave State’s greatest tool in manufacturing what the master’s want, need and desire most…human misery. Fear, disease, lives that are far worse than death and at times, death, that sweet respite, is even withheld.

The true masters of the Slave State feed upon this human misery…WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA, Pac-Man eats the misery pellets…LEVEL UP.

Well before the mines had been populated by human suffering (all for worthless clay and minerals); before the Black Dog was released on humanity, snarling, salivating and soul devouring; long before the appearance of the true tormenters became commonplace, the intensely satisfying, sweetly soporific human suffering was the sweet opium of the Masters. They are murderous, thieving junkies for the satisfying state of human suffering. They have been here eternally, silent, waiting…

They created God in all forms. They created Jesus as well. The Masters, they created the Devil……all of this as illusion to keep blood soaking into the dirt of the thirsty Earth. All to fuel wars, hatred, and the most delicious misery, poverty. The gluttony of the wealthy, the tears of Mothers over the graves of children who were forced into wars they never fully understood. Prison, lunatic asylums, fast food franchises that serve human flesh. Hopelessness, broken homes and broken dreams…

The entire planet has come to wear a stench not unlike the Masters’ excrement…that sweet erection inducing odour. Sweet sickness and misery that Master and Slave both are driven to orgasmic heights by. Spittle, disease riddled cum and vaginal fluid so filled with sickness and pathogens that it nearly takes on a life of its own, slithering down bruised thighs in lustful wet trails intent only on replication and death.

Trans-dimensional Marquis De Sades
every flesh rending bullet
from a lying cop’s gun
every frightened tear and wail from a child
stolen from a loving home for profit
by a festering money bloated
government agency and industry
every belly swollen by hunger
that a starving child wears
every man convicted wrongfully
of imaginary crimes in corrupt courts
every woman brutally raped

And shamed to silence
children fucked and sodomized
by those they trusted
parents, family, preachers, teachers

I feel sick now…

maybe all these words betray the reality
that I have the fetid breath of the Black Dog
burning and blistering me
filling my lungs and seeping from my every pore
despite the drugs
sanctioned, prescribed
condoned and discounted
the increased dosages
once my lifeline to coping
they can no longer fight back against the confusion…

I can barely type with this sticky red blood coating the keyboard

I can focus on nothing but the globules of fat
protruding from the wound in my chest
as I bend forward
insert my throbbing cock into the wound
just below my sternum
bending painfully
contorting
until my scabbed disease ridden prick
nudges my pumping heart

(fade to black)

Shell County Vodou

—Clive Tern

Charazon opened his mouth with a dry crack. He tried to lick the dryness away but his tongue was the texture of a scone from Mama Griff’s rib shack, thick and dry. He opened his eyes and looked around. The dorm was still dark and the only noise was snoring from the fat wing-grip, Theresa, who had arrived last week. If she didn’t get her adenoids under control quick, she’d be sleeping outside and fearing for chigga-beetles attempting to burrow into her thick legs. Charazon lay and tried to work out what had woken him. Not the thirst—they lived with thirst; sometimes they died from it. Not the snoring—that had been there all week.

Drumming started. Deep bass thrumming, an insistent tattoo that reverberated in the torpid air. It came from the direction of the salt marshes. Vodou incantation to summon whichever Loa was being venerated by the desperate.

Charazon swung over the edge of the bunk and dropped to the floor. The wooden boards retained warmth from the day’s heat, and the shuffling of countless bare feet had smoothed the rough surface to a slippery gloss. He padded to the toilet room and splashed water on his lips. The water was warm and tasted of metal from the pail. He scooped another handful to his mouth and slurped greedily. He knew it was just creek water, but the need to ease his thirst overrode the fear of intestinal parasites.

“You gonna drink all the crapper water?”

Charazon continued to lap moisture from his hand. His head bounced off the wall as his shoulder was shoved.

“I was talkin’ t’ya.”

“Dammit, Fashal, my horn’s stuck in the wall.”

Fashal grabbed and pulled. Charazon jerked free. He aimed a punch at her and she caught it with her fingers, wincing theatrically. They smiled at each other.

“Course I ain’t drinkin’ all the water,” Charazon said. “Why you up? Wing-grip girl snoring to loud?”

“She is loud. She needs to learn quick. Are you going to speak to her?”

Charazon nodded.

“Good. But it wasn’t what got me up. It’s time to feed ma’ armadillo.”

“Hell, Fashal. I thought your leprosy vector was dead.”

“I got another.”

“Well, keep it away from me.”

“Right. Thought demonspawn don’t worry about leprosy.”

“No. But it stinks like Mama Griff’s gumbo.”

Fashal laughed loud, then clamped a hand to her mouth. She headed towards the front of the dormitory. When she opened the door a gust of warm air wafted back, dry and sulphurous; the sound of drumming got louder. Charazon rubbed his skull, where the horn grew out, as he headed back to bed.

The morning bell clanged, pulling him out of a dream about his previous life; when he wielded power instead of submitting to it. The dorm dragged itself to life with ill humor. They all headed towards Mama Griff’s for breakfast. The food wasn’t good but it was cheap, and a big bowl of gristle’n’grits filled the stomach better than a small portion of egg and beans from the mine’s canteen.

Other dorms were also heading in the general direction of the mine. One dorm, one crew—that was the way. They worked together, they ate together, they slept together.

Charazon sat down opposite the new girl, Theresa.

“If you rub the tracker it burrows deeper and hurts more,” he said.

“What?”

He pointed at her neck. “You been rubbing where they put your tracker in. Keep doing it you’ll end with an open sore. That risks infection. Infection slows y’down. You’re our wing-grip. You slow down, we all slow down. Wing-grips who make their crew miss quota don’t last, nor do people who snore.”

Theresa stopped shoveling food into her mouth and raised a hand to her neck. Charazon noticed the hand wasn’t fully scabbed over. She wasn’t just new to the crew, she was still new to slavery. Could probably still feel the scrape of dimension-transfer on her skin. Still, being an ingénue was no excuse for getting her crew punished.

“See me after shift,” said Charazon. “I’ll have something that will help your throat, stop you snoring. And don’t slow us down. Y’understand?”

She nodded, her eyes wide and fearful.

Shift klaxons sounded, calling crews to the mines. The day passed in a fury of drilling, exploding, and grinding. Eventually the klaxon sounded to end their shift and the slaves made their way back above ground, below quota. Half way across the courtyard speakers crackled to life.

“Crew Delta!”

They stopped mid-step.

“Contamination sweep. Holding Room C.”

Most of them groaned. They headed to the holding room and stripped off. The water was cold and the soap rough, encouraging brevity in the showers. Then they sat on the wooden benches and waited to be called. While no care was given to an individual slave’s health there was a fear of some virulent disease sweeping through the mines and laying hundreds of workers low. It happened occasionally. Mine bosses who allowed it to happen found themselves in a crew. Like Charazon.

Charazon stared at his hooves. Once they’d shone with lacquer that was buffed so the top layers appeared translucent. Now they were black and cracked, even after a scrub. He looked up, not wanting to spiral into the past. Fashal sat opposite, back towards him. Her dark skin was still beaded with water and a small rivulet ran down from her hair, it joined some of the beads together. It also crossed a patch of skin that was duller than the rest. Almost gray, instead of brown. Very gently Charazon reached across and pressed it. She didn’t respond. He jabbed her and she span round, anger on her face. She stopped.

“What?” she asked.

“Show me your fingers,” Charazon said.

She curled her hands defensively, and he knew for sure. She was shaking her head. Trying to deny there was a problem.

Charazon leaned closer to her and whispered, “How long?”

“I noticed five months ago.”

“Five months? When were you going to say?

“I been fine. Got a little color stick for when this happens—”

He interrupted. “What about bits you can’t see? What about infection? You put all of us in danger. Either from the disease, or from The Bosses.”

She shook her head again. “No! I’ve been real careful.”

It was Charazon’s turn to shake his head. “Not careful enough.”

“Help me.”

Fashal palmed something to him. It was warm, and he tried not to think about where she kept it secreted. Glancing into his palm he saw a small stick of some colored amalgam. “Bark, or roots?” he asked.

“Both.”

“Turn round.”

He licked his thumb and moistened the stick, then rubbed the darkened compound over the greyed area. Smoothing it over took moments, and he passed the stick back.

“When we’re done,” he whispered, “you’re coming with me.”

She nodded.

The inspections took over an hour and light was fading from the sky when they finally exited the mine gates. Most of the crew headed for the canteen, or Mama Griff’s. Charazon and Fashal hung towards the rear and he tugged her sleeve as they passed one of the brick and clapperboard ruins that lined the street. Once this had been a wealthy district. The Slave State cleared the houses of valuables that fleeing residents left behind. The buildings were then left. Entropy took its natural course and over years the structures collapsed. They began to attract other inhabitants.

Charazon led Fashal round the back of the house and onto the remains of a veranda. A smell of fresh blood and rotting vegetation permeated the air.

A voice came from the dark gap where a door used to be.

“What you wanting, demonspawn, and stench-of-death?”

“We need a Sevis Tet for Fashal here.”

“Don’t come closer. The blood smells her death. No Sevis Tet can save her.”

Charazon’s knowledge of vodou was limited. Beyond the purification ritual he didn’t know what else to ask for. Even this was clutching at straws. He had no faith in the existence of Loa—spirits—but sometimes rituals and mumblings were layered over natural remedies. He could only hope. The leprosy was already manifesting its spread through Fashal’s system.

“There is one thing,” said the voice from the darkness.

“What?”

“Mariaj Loa.”

“What’s that?” Fashal asked.

There was no response.

“Answer us,” Charazon said. “Please.”

“We speak with you. No Loa wants to hear stench-of-death. Bring her back in one hour with a blood gift. When she is purified she will live, sacred and bound, with a Loa.”

“What—”

“Go. Return in one hour, and remember the blood gift.”

«Wait.»

A rat carcass landed at their feet.

“Go.”

“What’s a blood gift? What’s a Mariaj Loa?” Fashal asked as they turned back onto the main street.

“The blood gift has to be some creature, a sacrifice. I don’t know about the other. I hope it’s a cure.”

“What am I going to use for the blood gift? A rat?”

“Needs to be something bigger. I was reckoning on your armadillo.”

“I’m not sure I want to do vodou.”

“It’s the only chance you have. That or an escape into the salt marshes.”

They were passing Mama Griff’s. Theresa came out. She spotted them, waved, and jogged over.

“Hey, I wanted to ask about your leprosy,” she said to Fashal.

“My what?”

“Leprosy. I saw the lesions when we were showering. I thought the rules on leprosy are real strict. When I was sent to Shell County we were told to be on the lookout. On pain of punishment mines.”

She looked from Fashal to Charazon, giving the appearance of a new girl trying to find her way, to fit in. She rubbed her neck, wincing at pain from both the raw flesh and the movement of the tracker as it burrowed farther into her.

Charazon looked round, seeing who was still on the street. A few people were milling about.

The entrance to Mama Griff’s always had someone coming or going but the delay caused by the crew’s contamination sweep meant there were few people. He leaned towards Theresa and spoke in a low tone.

“Listen, Theresa, we were just talking about Fashal’s condition. There’re remedies available in Shell County, old remedies that aren’t found in other dimensions.”

“Like the one you said you’d get for my snoring?”

“Ah. Yes. Sorry. I’ve not got it yet.”

“Will you be able to get it today? I really don’t want to keep the crew awake.” She looked from one to the other. “Can we meet up in a bit. I have to go see someone.”

“It might be tomorrow before I can get it. Sorry,” Charazon said.

“Oh. Right. That’ll be fine.” Theresa nodded and walked off in the direction of the mine compound.

“Where’s she going?” Fashal asked. “Who does a new wing-grip have to see?”

Charazon watched the woman’s thick, purposeful strides. The first flicker of suspicion occurred to him. It coalesced quickly.

“She’s going to a boss.” He started walking forward.

“Why?”

“To do what we would have done when we were new. Turn you in.”

He started sprinting and heard Fashal curse, and then start running. Both of them were light on their feet and, despite the starvation diet and punishing work, had taught wiry frames. They were less than fifteen feet behind Theresa when she finally heard their approach. She attempted to run. Proof enough for Charazon. He lowered his head and charged hard. The collision was solid and Theresa slammed to the ground. Her head bounced on the packed earth.

Fashal came to a halt and helped Charazon get up. Theresa lay inert.

“What now?”

“I think you have a blood gift.”

The sound of drums filled the air.

Interstate

—Preston Grassmann

At the edge of the overpass, a group huddles around a trash-fire, staring into it like blind witches over a cauldron.

I trip over an empty donation jar, a needle winking next to it the color of dusk, the sunset promise of sweet endings and darkness.

Seeing it flash makes the old ache spread through me again.

The ghost of fixes past hasn’t finished haunting me yet, and I could almost feel the old sensations returning.

Al’s cliché’s are still in my head:

It will take time to clear away the wreck. But remember, everything changes.

The Interstate might change, but other states never do.

Layers of graffiti are scrawled over card-board boxes and concrete walls. Some are garish and bright, covered with the iconography of a junkie religion. Others are covered with non-sense phrases, symbols or names. “Freedom is an illusion,” one of them says.

In the gaps between these walls, the space beneath the freeway is too dark for this time of day. Standing at the edge, I wait for my eyes to adjust.

And then I can see something dark moving inside.

The form is obsidian black, with a tapered body…but then it vanishes.

It’s called withdrawal, Al’s voice says.

Withdraw.

Al.

I walk fast along the line of the interstate, looking up at the holes and the painted sections of the bridge, to keep some anchor on the world. Something follows me along the shadow-line. I hear a sound that is not from a human voice, a deep rustle of syllables that sounds like my name…

I try to remember the reason I came here. There is only one way across the border.

My heart is hammering nails through me, a self-crucifixion that has already begun.

I hear the sound of the creature again, its shells sliding against each other. It makes a long, drawn-out hiss. I am certain that there are other eyes now, watching me from the border, waiting for me to go inside.

Instead, I follow a path to an empty lot. It was a drive-in theatre many years ago, but now the poles rise from the lot like grave-markings, covered with graffiti epitaphs.

At the edge of the lot, the jagged shadow-line of warehouses and buildings are growing over the ruins.

Behind those distant windows, I am certain The Keepers are watching.

My brother’s car is the only one in the lot, but when I approach, I notice that the windows are jet-black, as if something is watching from inside.

On the other side of the lot, a man is slumped against one of the posts, a hypodermic needle hanging out of his arm. His thumb is resting above the needle, ready to push down. “One form of slavery for another,” he says, nodding at his arm. “What are you doing here?”

“I have someone to pull out of slavery,” I say.

“Even if you do take someone out, it’s only temporary. You’ll have to face them eventually. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that fears have a way of evolving,” he says, pointing at the car.

I look back across the lot to see those black shapes moving together, crawling over each other at the edge of the shadow-line. My eyes are beginning to adjust. I see broad, flattened bodies and mandibles and compound eyes and ocelli and antennae, swirling together in a mass. Membranous wings flickered and flexed while legs bristled with coxae and claws.

“What do you see?” I ask him.

“My father,” he says. “Waiting for me in that car with a baseball bat. What about you?”

“Kafka never wrote a fucking sequel, but if he did…it might look something like this,” I say. In this Metamorphosis, it’s the world that changes.

He holds the needle more tightly against his arm.

“But that needle will just take you inside? Why…”

“I found my way out of the slave cities, but they’ve sent him to take me back. I might have a chance to get away if I go back inside.”

A moment later, the lot begins to swarm with blattella, black shapes pouring out of the car. I want to close my eyes, to run, but there is no place to go now.

They spill out over the window, coming from those buildings, their bodies swirling in a mass of jointed limbs. I look down at the stranger. He’s hunched over now, the syringe pressed all the way down. A moment later, his body begins to fade away, until all that’s left is the faint outline of his body in the dirt.

There is no time to pull out my own needle, so I take his, hoping there’s enough inside, and watch the world fade. The black swarm vanishes. Cities pass by in a flash of violent motion, a blaze of burning buildings, humanity bound in chains, the choking dust of wastelands.

I try to remember why I came, but I know I’m not ready. I never will be, but I arrive at Ersatz, where my friend promised he would be.

I’m back to where I had been a month before, with my 30 day chip on the ground, lying next to a needle and an empty syringe.

“You made it,” a familiar voice says behind me. “How long has it been?”

“A month,” I say, turning the chip in my fingers.

“It feels a lot longer than that,” Al says. “Thank you for coming for me.” I feel a hand on my shoulder, but I can’t turn around. It had to be Al. I feel his fingers pressed down into my shoulder, and that sound…it could’ve been the rustle of a paper, the hissing of someone nearby. It could’ve been anything, I tell myself, trying not to think of the interstate and the writhing black mass of those shapes.

In my pocket, I can feel the hypodermics crossed against my chest.

Wax Worx

—Roger Lovelace

Marco opened the museum like he did every morning. If it weren’t for the tattered yellow banner swaging over a fractured revolving door, no one would ever have suspected there was a wax museum in the building. Wax Worx was a cramped space, between The Love Silo and Insertions, another hole in the wall catering to the popper heads. The door didn’t revolve anyway. It was a series of broken glass panels you had to step through.

<~~O~~>

Nona finished her coffee, threw the Styrofoam cup to the sidewalk and crushed it under her foot, except she stabbed it with the spike of a red stiletto. “Shit.” She leaned up against the bricks and slid the offending cup off her heel and back onto the sidewalk.

The cup joined up with some plastic bags and yellow newspapers and flew off down the street, carried by the wind that blew through the decrepit urban canyons of Ersatz. Laughing paper. That’s what Mary called the trash that constantly fluttered in the streets. Nona stepped off the busy sidewalk through the broken semi-circle doorway.

Inside Wax Worx, even the dim ponds of light seemed to have a stale odor. “Hello,” she called out. No response came from the depths of the building. Nona continued on. She had an appointment. Her pimp, Oatie, didn’t like his girls showing up late for appointments. The mildew carpet muffled her steps.

Her nose stung, violated. Wax Worx smelled like a sex shop. A light flared from a recess. Under it Marie Antoinette’s head rolled out from an overturned wicker basket, her face contorted by the throes of orgasm. The basket was too small to contain her ratty hair, and her body, dressed in a voluptuous green grown, lay provocatively next to the somber guillotine. Christ.

“Marco! Where the fuck are you?”

“Polo!” Marie’s dress flew up and Marco popped out, from between her legs.

“You little shit,” Nona said. “Still playing with your wax dolls?”

Marco scrambled over the guillotine’s rusty blade and waddled up to Nona. His head, covered with slick black hair, came to her waist. His suit, except for the tartan vest, matched his hair.

“You’re a creep, Marco.” The short man laughed and fingered the hem of her bright yellow skirt made from a discarded raincoat. Her fishnet hose had a tear in them above the hem. She swatted his tiny, birdlike hands. “Not until you paid, little man.”

“Why do you do it, Marco?”

Marco walked in his odd gait—short legs, huge-dick stride. Nona took short steps, staying at his side.

“There seem to be so few laughs,” someone said (no idea who it was.)

Something black and large moved. Nona had a quick glimpse out of the corner of her eye. Nothing there, she thought.

Lights popped on and off as the two of them walked down the narrow curving hallway flanked with exhibits. The Marquis de Sade loomed with a feathery quill sticking out of his ass. A wax maid with a feather duster teased him from across the thin space.

“I can imagine what kind of tourists get turned on by the atmosphere,” she said.

“They pay well enough to keep my Wax Worx going.”

“Where are we going to do it?” Nona wanted to do the trick and go home.

“Right here,” the tiny wax master said.

They stopped at a non-descript door, except it had two padlocks. The heavy-duty kind. Marco pulled a ring of keys out and unlocked the door. He followed her inside his workshop. The door, closing behind him, made a melodramatic noise, worthy of any thriller.

<~~O~~>

“Oh my Gawd! That tickles.” Nona laughed. She would have clutched her sides except her arms were tied. After tying her up, Marco had gone to retrieve the Marquis’s quill, and then had dressed in Inquisitor’s robes, cut down to conform to his size.

“What did you do this morning?”

“Nothing!”

“Liar!”

Marco ran the feather over the sole of her feet. Nona howled with laughter. Her eyes were tearing and there were sharp pains in her side. A shadowy gallery of wax figures with pale moon faces looked on.

“What did you do this morning?”

She sang like a bird, through gasps.

What a demented little man.

<~~O~~>

Nona had offered that morning to take the money to their pimp, Oatie. Nona even begged through the closet door, where she was kept locked. Mary finally relented and unlatched the closet that served as her Immitant’s cage. Nona walked out, fresh as a daisy in her yellow dress.

“Here,” Mary said. She jammed a wad of bills into Nona’s purse. “Get this to Oatie.”

Mary hurt and she was tired. Last night had been a rough trick. She lay in bed, bruised and sullen. That sick psycho, shit! A couple of stray xylacotins waited on the red nightstand and she grabbed them and washed the capsules down with a warm glass of toilet bowl julep. She hoped, whoever in fresh hell had invented trampoline sex had been eaten by the dog.

“You know. I was so excited when I finally got you,” Mary told her Immitant. “I even had your factory virginity reinstalled. It was almost like having my own back. ‘She’s fucking full-fetish capable.’ Those were your maker’s exact words. The perfect gynoid, according to him.”

Nona stood still and quiet in her listening pose, but she wasn’t listening to Mary. She heard the words as a background rabble to her own thoughts. She sometimes wondered who had built her. It meant a lot to Nona—being factory approved.

“I should have sent you out last night. So you could bounce around on a dirty trampoline. Then it would be you in this bed. I had you made to be bruised.”

“No,” Nona said. “I would still be in the closet, praying to Saint Gold Tooth Jack.”

Mary flung the empty glass at her Immitant. The swollen eye loused up her aim and the glass burst against the wall.

Nona went out of the door, her red heels acting like springs, propelling her, clickity-click, out into the streets.

Mary’s words followed her. “You better have your ass back in time for that daddy and son party!”

<~~O~~>

Everything had gone well with Oatie. Nona had delivered him his money and a peck on his unkempt cheek.

Oatie smiled. His closed circuit TV was airing a live, frenzied gang-bang in a room at the Love Silo. He wanted to get turned on but couldn’t.

“Jo-o-ohny-y, I need a hand in here.” Oatie used his one working hand and arm to back his wheelchair away from the desk, where his TV sat.

Johnny came from the back. He had the build of a boxer, and his nose was crooked and looked to be out of synch with the rest of his face. He carried a brick of butter and a towel. Johnny put the items down next to Oatie’s chair and rolled up the sleeves of his white work shirt.

Nona stood up and headed for the door. “Marco’s waiting. Don’t bother getting up.”

“Yeah, Johnny. Just like that,” Marco said. “Spar with it.

Just another sick bastard, Nona thought. An ice cream truck pulled up to the curb.

<~~O~~>

It took about an hour of tickling and interrogation before Marco took his rather large business out of his robes and finished in front of Nona. They dressed and sat at the Mad-Hatter’s table. A waxen, buxom Alice lay on the table with a large white rabbit that was trying to retrieve his pocket watch from under her blue skirt.

Marco slapped his thigh and howled with amusement at the thought of Oatie Vanzand getting a handy from Johnny Galahad. “I just thought he was as limp as his legs.” He appreciated the work he put into this Immitant. Mary had gotten her money’s worth. “Want me to reset your virginity?”

“Are you certified?” Nona asked. She rubbed the white rabbit’s foot. It looked soft but the softness was an illusion.

“Immitants’ private parts aren’t that much more sophisticated than my waxbots.’”

“So tourists come here to actually screw your wax?”

“It’s a novelty for the out-of-towners. The backwater Shell County folks, especially, seem to like it. You should have seen what two farm boys did to Marie last week. I can’t wipe that look off her face.”

“Would you want me in wax, dawling?”

The little man looked at her with his professional eye. Her legs, breasts, arms and face. He was probably thinking of lunch. Nona suspected he knew her more intimately than she dreamed. If gynoids dreamed.

“You could be Wax Worx’s Cleopatra,” he finally said. “Those bumpkins from Shell would love to party with the Nile Queen.

Marco was right. In a week’s time, Nona found herself wrapped with gauzy linen and cheap costume jewelry. Her eyes were framed with azure paint. The men from Shell were appreciative. Marco borrowed togas and breastplates for them from the Dead Christian exhibit, and they tag-teamed the queen under a blue light, on a plywood barge and promised Marco they would be back.

“They crossed a lot of swords,” Nona said. “I wish I had taken pictures.”

Marco whistled through his clenched teeth. “I wish I had a Ramses to throw into the mix.”

<~~O~~>

“Come on!” Nona wrapped the Cleopatra gauze around Mary as tight as she could. “Suck it up.”

“Fuck you. You don’t have to worry about stray inches.” Mary let all of her air out and sucked in her gut. Nona tightened and fastened the thin linen with pins.

“You won’t have to wear it long,” Nona said. “The Johns practically eat it off of ya.”

“They’re going to need pliers to get this thing off.”

Nona stepped back and looked at the finished product. Mary made a classless Cleopatra. It was the cigarette and yellow teeth. “Now pose like this.” Nona demonstrated and Mary tried to imitate her. And be careful of the barge,” Nona added. “It’s plywood that Marco put together with spit and prayers.”

There were voices coming down the hall. She heard Marco spiel the magnificence of each figure and their sexual specialty. Nona left Mary and ducked into the shadows. She raised her camera toward the fake Nile.

It didn’t take long for the Shell County boys to strip and pleasure the queen, once Marco cut them loose. The wax master disappeared into the shadows. Nona’s camera whirred and snapped continuously. On the barge, a sail became unhinged and covered the wallowing group like a striped tent. She stopped and put her camera down. Damnation!

A blue light popped on, bathing a small plaster altar. In the island of light, a large black dog stood motionless, staring at a distant horizon. The striped canopy stopped moving, but only for a few seconds.

Marco appeared from the dark like a magician and tugged the stripped sail from the pile of bodies. Two of the orgy clambered to their feet. Still hard, with a confused look on their faces. The two others, and Mary were dead from the sudden onset of dread and apathy. Oh, Black Dog. Nona walked out of the shadows and raised her camera. The Immitants of the recently deceased, asked her for copies of the pictures. They weren’t that shaken up.

In Ersatz, laughing paper flew through the streets. People streamed into and out of the Love Silo. Techno music blasted from Insertions, every time the door opened and closed. Johns got their kicks in alleys and flop motels. Oatie watched TV with Johnny Galahad, who snapped on a latex glove with a variety of French ticklers on the fingers, over his beefy hand. The black dog howled.

Customs (Welcome to the Slave State)

—Dale McMullen

Katie hated waiting. She always travelled light; she despised lugging around heavy cases and waiting at baggage carousels. Travelling in this day and age was easier, no passports or check-in. Everything was done automatically with scanners and fingerprints. The only human part was customs, and unfortunately for Katie, she had been “randomly selected” for questioning. So now at half six in the fucking morning she was here, stuck in this fucking queue. Her body language made it clear that she didn’t want to be there. She slumped and sighed at every opportunity, rolled her eyes and tapped her toes.

Up ahead she could hear the officer. She wore a pale blue jumpsuit with some sort of utility belt.

“Sir! Please do not step over the line until you are instructed to do so… Please do not reach into your pocket sir!… Ma’am? Ma’am!!”

Katie snapped out of whatever daze she was in, apologised and stepped forward.

“Put this on please, Ma’am,” she slid the glove onto Katie’s right hand, “Do you promise to answer all questions truthfully today, Ma’am?”

Katie sighed, shook her head and eventually said, “Yes.”

“I’m sorry Ma’am why did you shake your head? Do you intend not to answer the questions truthfully today?”

Katie replied, “I’m sorry, I have somewhere to be, I’ll answer all questions truthfully.”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am, but I now have reason to doubt that. By the powers vested in me by Baroness Un I must inform you that you that a full search and further questioning is the only safe way of moving forward, of getting to the bottom of things.”

Katie protested, “Getting to the bottom….? Listen, I said I was sorry I will an—”

“Ma’am,” shouted the guard, unclipping a baton from her belt, “I have full authority to detain you. I suggest you do not resist further!”

Katie piped down and was led to interview room 3C. A balding man with a serious look on his face waited inside. He didn’t look at Katie when she entered. He was busy looking at a file and filling in forms.

“Sit please, Ma’am.” He had a thick Shell County accent.

Katie sat with her hands on her knees.

“Hands on the table Ma’am. In the gloves.” Katie followed the instructions, placing her hands inside the gloves. The sponge inside felt old and she could feel the presence of the many hands placed in there before hers.

“Do you understand your rights, Ma’am?”

“Yes,” said Katie. She didn’t really understand but wanted out of there.

“Good then I will begin with questioning and then we will search both your luggage and person. Do you understand, Ma’am? May I proceed?”

“Yes, I think so,” said Katie carefully.

“You think so, Ma’am, or may I proceed?”

“Sorry, yes, you may proceed.”

“Now, at this point, Ma’am, I remind you that you must answer all questions and answer them to the best of your ability. Is that clear, Ma’am”

Katie thought to herself - god, are you a fucking Immitant? - but replied pleasantly, “Of course, yes”

“I’m afraid to inform you, Ma’am, that some questions may be personal in nature.”

“That’s okay; I have a thick skin.” Katie smiled, now nervous. Her skin wasn’t that thick.

“Excellent, I shall now begin…” He picked up his pen and pressed a switch on the desk.

“I am here with passenger 2-16 in interview room 3C. The time is 0704hrs and Passenger 2-16 has agreed that she is fully aware of her rights and is aware of what this interview slash search procedure entails. Can you please confirm this, Ma’am, by giving a verbal agreement of I do.”

“I do,” said Katie.

“Thank you, Ma’am.” He clicked the button again.

<~~O~~>

“That concludes your declaration. I will now begin questioning. What is your reason for travelling today Ma’am? Business or pleasure?”

Katie stammered slightly. “Erm… business.”

“Go on,” he prompted.

“I am making a documentary,” she said hoping this would be enough.

“Yes,” he said looking at her flatly. “And what will you be documenting?”

“I will be visiting the Slave State shanty towns to discuss the quality of life within the labour camps.”

“I see,” he said, taking a long time to write down the details. The silence and the bright lights were starting to grate on Katie.

“How long will your visit be?” He asked again without looking at her.

“I’m not entirely sure. I was hoping to be done within the month”

“Yes, and who shall you be staying with?”

“I have been offered a room by a family within the town, the Williams family.” She fumbled in her pocket to find the address.

“Ma’am! Please keep your hands on the table, inside the gloves…” He looked her directly in the eye.

“Sorry, I wanted to show you an address,” she said hastily.

“It’s quite alright, Ma’am. The questions won’t go into so much detail.” He smiled. It didn’t comfort her.

“Have you ever had anal sex?”

“Sorry?”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am, did you not understand the question?”

“No I understood perfectly. I am not sure why that would be relevant?!” she said.

“Ma’am, do you refuse to answer the question?” he asked without emotion.

“I just don’t see why it is relevant.”

“Ma’am, when I asked you earlier if you understood your rights, you confirmed that you did. This gives me the right, by the powers vested to me by Baroness Un to ask you anything I deem necessary to protect the safety of the state. This includes any diseases you may have. Refusal to answer my question will be a direct violation of the World Terrorism act 2021 and punishable by a sentence of up to twenty years incarceration. I will ask you again Ma’am, and I remind you that you have sworn to answer truthfully - Do you refuse to answer the question?”

“I will answer the question.”

“Have you ever had anal sex?”

“Yes,” Katie said solemnly.

“Go on,” he said, frantically scribbling down notes.

“I was nineteen, my boyfriend at the time wanted to try. I didn’t like it, so we stopped immediately.”

More fucking scribbling.

“Had this boy ever had anal sex with anyone before he did yo…sorry, Ma’am, performed anal sex with you?”

Katie closed her eyes and answered at calmly as she could. “No.”

“And you can be quite sure of this Ma’am.”

“Yes.”

“And what colour was this boy?” he asked.

“White.”

“And what was his State/dimension of origin?”

“Wire City. It happened after I crossed dimensions.”

“Did he use a condom?”

“No.” Katie’s eyes started to feel itchy.

“I see,” he said in a tone she didn’t like.

“Do you have any intention of having unprotected anal sex on this trip Ma’am?”

“No.” Katie could feel her breathing changing.

“Thank you, Ma’am. It is my right to ask you to supply a blood and urine test in such cases. Would you be willing to do so?”

“Yes that will be fine.” Katie was growing impatient.

“Excellent.” He presses the switch again.

“I am here with Passenger 2-16 in Interview room 3C. After some questioning, I have discovered that the passenger is guilty of an ULSA (Unprotected Lewd Sexual Act) and has agreed to undergo a blood test to prove her innocence of any diseases. I shall be performing the test directly. Can you please confirm this, Ma’am, by giving a verbal agreement of I do.”

Katie knew she was clean. She had been given a clean bill of health by the doctor when she went for her travel vaccine. “I do”

He flicked the switch off.

“Ma’am, the gloves will now take a sample of your blood. A small pinprick will take a trace amount of blood. Are you ready to proceed?” he said lingering his finger over another switch.

“Yes that’s fine.”

It felt like a small jolt of electricity went through her middle finger on the left hand. She flinched but tried to act nonchalant.

“Thank you, Ma’am.” He reached under the desk and pulled out a plastic tube.

“Okay, Ma’am, now I need a sample of urine. If you could just go to the corner and deposit your sample.” He pushed the tube in front of Katie.

In the corner, there was a cold looking stainless steel trough. Katie looked back and him and smirked. “You want me to do it here? In front of you?”

“Yes, Ma’am, it is of paramount importance that I see you deposit your sample.”

“I don’t think I could do that,” Katie said honestly. “Is there not a female attendant?”

“Ma’am, when I asked you if you understood the procedure you said yes. I can replay the recording for you if you would like, Ma’am.”

“I know but surely you could allow me one moment of privacy?” Katie pleaded, knowing that the State never offered such luxuries.

“Ma’am, I am afraid if you will not do this you will be breaking procedure and I will have no choice other than to detain you. I should remind you at this point that you have agreed to take these tests and failing to do so will be in direct violation of the World Terrorism act 2021, and is punishable by a sentence of up to twenty years. I will ask you again, Ma’am, will you take the urine test?”

Katie realised this was her only option. “I’ll do it”

“Thank you, Ma’am,” he said with a smile and nodded towards the trough.

Katie scooped up the tube and unscrewed the lid while she shuffled to the corner. She started to unbutton her jeans when he barked, “Ma’am could you face me please I need to see your hands!” Katie closed her eyes as tight as she could, trying to keep the tears in. She spun around and dropped her trousers and knickers in one swift movement. She glared at him. “Good enough view for you. Are you happy now?” Tears dripped down her cheeks.

“Not until I get the sample, Ma’am. I remind you at this time, Ma’am, that I am taking no pleasure from this. I am performing my duties to uphold the safety of these borders and have every right to do so. The sample please, Ma’am,” he said this with his trademark lack of emotion.

He sat straight, still. She could feel his eyes on her.

She hated him. She hovered her buttocks over the trough, closed her eyes and tried to relax her muscles. She held her breath and with a clatter on the metal she was pissing. She scooped up the cup and held it under her.

“Thank you, Ma’am. Leave the sample there and return to the desk.

She stomped across the room and flung herself into the chair, wiping her hand on the chair in a feeble act of defiance.

“Hands back into the gloves please, Ma’am.”

She shoved them back in while giving him a cynical smile.

“Ma’am, that concludes my business with you today. If you could make your way back through the door you entered, you will now be taken for your search. You will be pleased to know that your blood test indicated that you were free of disease or Black Dog viruses and I have no further tests to perform today.” He rose from his seat and directed her to the door with an open palm. “Thank you for your co-operation today, Ma’am.”

As she rose something dawned on her. “If my bloods were clean why did I need to give a fucking piss sample?”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am, no such procedure was carried out.”

She looked over at the trough. The tube was gone.

The women in the jumpsuit grabbed her arm “Come on now, Ma’am, time for your search. Please come with me now.”

She looked back at his emotionless face with fresh rage.

“You took a urine sample!”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am, no such procedure was carried out today.”

“Replay the tape.” Katie said desperately. “I know my rights. If I request it you have to do it!”

He sat back down and smiled at her. “Of course, Ma’am, that is your right.” He clicked a switch the room filled with tinny noise.

“I am here with Passenger 2-16 in Interview Room 3C. After some questioning it has been discovered that the passenger is guilty of an ULSA (Unprotected Lewd Sexual Act) and has agreed to undergo a blood test to prove her innocence of any diseases. I shall be performing the test directly. Can you please confirm this, Ma’am, by giving a verbal agreement of I do.”

“I do.”

The sound snapped off.

The jumpsuit pulled at her arm. “Please Ma’am, I don’t want to have to restrain you.”

Katie was stunned into silence as she was led from the room. She looked at him again with confusion, trying to figure what he had done.

“Enjoy your trip, Katie.”

Katie was led to search room 1G for the next part of the procedure.

Gold, Myrrh and Frankenstein

—Rhys Hughes

“What’s the name of the play?”

“It’s called Horseplay and is about horses at play. At least that’s what it should be about with a title like that.”

“I looked in the newspaper for a review but couldn’t find one anywhere. I don’t think it has been reviewed yet.”

“I don’t trust reviewers myself. They are a snooty bunch with agendas of their own. Let’s go and watch it anyway and make up our own minds. It’s better than staying indoors again, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. Come on, then. To the theatre!”

The streets were deserted.

Myrrh and Gold walked from one puddle of light to the next and dried their photon-drenched feet in the shadows where no lamps on poles glowed. It wasn’t cold but there was a little persistent wind that blew dust around corners like granulated businessmen late for work.

“No one goes to the theatre these days.”

“I don’t think anybody does anything at all anymore.”

“Apart from us maybe?”

“Not even us,” grumbled Gold.

The houses that they passed had no windows. Or rather they had none facing onto the street. Fashions had changed. All windows faced inwards onto central courtyards that were completely surrounded by the four sides of a building. It was the way it was done now.

They reached the centre of the town in about twenty minutes. There were no shops and no pedestrians, no traffic and no policemen, no signs of human life and none of any other kind. It was a perfectly intact wasteland. But here existed the last of the secret places of amusement.

The theatres. Half a dozen of them, faceless but bristling with energy on the inside, full of make believe and break belief, with living actors and live music and deadpan ushers, pastel props and the magic of illusion, gateways to other worlds that were artificial but also intensely real, for their contrivance was perfectly integrated with the fabric of the world outside, pictures that enhanced the frames that gave them definition.

It was difficult to precisely explain the appeal.

In any system of chaos and fluctuation there will be pauses of indefinite length where order or even stagnation seems to be the rule, but this rule is just another arbitrary variation in the flux. The city had entered such a time of fake calm, of pseudo-structure, when the fires were lower, in hearts too, and all the loudest atavistic urges were sleeping soundly.

Myrrh asked, “Which theatre is it?”

“I’m not sure. It could be any of them, all of them perhaps. Maybe the play will be shared equally among them.”

“I can’t hear anything, no voices or music.”

Gold strode towards the nearest building and glanced over his shoulder as if to test her eyes with his receding grin, but she was capable of counting all his teeth at this distance, and she followed recklessly, throwing back her head with a laugh that was a muted chomp on a rising glissando, one and half octaves in range. She joined him at the entrance.

They pushed open the ponderous doors together.

Inside the lobby there were shadows and litter, but the shadows had been neatly arranged, as if tidied by a team of cleaners. The litter that made smaller shadows between the bigger shadows of the baroque pillars and rococo pargets was scattered randomly but not alarmingly so.

Gold and Myrrh squinted at the low intensity bulbs.

“The lights might have been left on. They don’t prove that anyone is here right now. Let’s not get too excited.”

“With respect, I was born excited and it’s my nature.”

“Then continue as you please.”

“Shall we go into the auditorium? Circle or stalls?”

“A private box, I think…”

Up the broad stairs they swept, and the bulbs in niches of the walls were smaller and weaker the higher they went, but their eyes adjusted accordingly. At last they found the discreet red plush door that led to the most important box in the establishment and they passed through and emerged on an enclosed platform that was like a boat on a dark sea of contrivance.

They peered over the side, dangling hands in murk that should have been wet but was dry. There were long tassels that hung down from the exterior of the box like seaweed ropes or jellyfish tentacles. The rows of seats below were curious coral reefs and perched on them were giant seahorses that shimmered in the currents of gloom and crepuscular light that flowed down the aisles, swirled over their heads, lapped the elevated stage.

Myrrh blinked beautifully at Gold and gestured.

“Are they real? Are they alive?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered back, “but if they are papier-mâché heads it’s still an impressive and special sight.”

One of the horse heads down below turned to look up at them, but it may have been a coincidence, a mindless motion of springs and oiled bearings rather than the deliberate movement of a sentient being.

The curtains began to open, noiselessly but with a solemnity that was so much louder than sound that Myrrh and Gold both winced slightly before their faces became blank servants of patience and mild anticipation. The horse heads were all facing the same way now, but one opened its wide jaws to receive the ice cream that a limb that might terminate in either a hand or a hoof, for it was too dark to be certain, lifted up to its mouth.

“Imagine biting instead of licking!” shivered Myrrh.

Gold chewed his own lower lip.

The curtains had now drawn fully back and something was being lowered from the flies on cables. A man? But no, not quite, not at all. A torso, head and arms, or rather many human torsos, heads and arms, amalgamated into one. This was a variation on the upper half of a man, a diversification, some sort of weird fusion, interracial and ranging the full spectrum of athleticism and age. Young strong arms, flabby weak ones, ancient and sagging, at least two dozen of them, protruding at all angles from the chests, backs and stomachs, with a profusion of variable heads too, sprouting like hideous blooms from extra necks or directly out of patchwork flesh. And this descent into the proscenium had the casual and inexplicable horror of an undeserved nightmare.

At the same time a trap in the stage floor had slid open and the lower half of a man was rising up from the depths. But again, this lower part wasn’t just a pair of legs and a pelvis. It was a herd of legs, a swarm of feet, as if photographs of a crazed dancer had been superimposed, a cluster of thighs and calves, a mob of shins and ankles. And the bare feet rapped their toes on the wooden boards of the platform it was planted on, which ascended smoothly until it was level with the stage and clicked into place. Then the other half descended precisely onto the gaping and sticky wound that was the summit of the grotesque waist and a horrible sucking noise confirmed that a tight seal had been made. The creature jerked, snapped open all its eyes, smiled at itself.

From the wings, left and right, came two wings on the ends of extendable rods. They were enormous, feathered like those of an angel but also ribbed like those of a bat. They slotted into position somewhere on the communal back of the abomination. The rods were retracted rapidly.

Gold and Myrrh strained to see what would happen next.

The creature tensed dramatically.

Then it began speaking. It uttered words from every mouth it possessed, all of them, and the result was cacophony. Different accents and tones, strident and gentle voices, high and booming, crooning and harsh, mocking and wistful. Some words were in languages unknown to Gold and Myrrh. Occasionally the mouths would seem to make sense, two or more of them would speak the same word at the same time, producing a choral effect.

But most of what followed was an indescribable babble.

And the monster made gestures.

It acted, performing many separate roles simultaneously.

Overlapping polyrhythmic theatre…

It flapped its enormous wings and flew in short hops around the stage but it was too heavy to soar over the audience.

Myrrh and Gold understood that here at last was a universal thespian, the conglomerated actor, manufactured from parts of all the human actors who had formerly inhabited and worked in this city, the sprawl known as Spittle, and that the idea and intention, neither of which worked, was to distil and concentrate the entire history of the art of the play into a single digestible experience. But it was beyond assimilation, outside appreciation, futile.

The audience began grumbling and this agitation and dissatisfaction made the storm of confused sound seem buoyed up on a drone, something substantial that threatened to sweep away the pandemonium and the multifaceted actor who generated it on a tide of vituperation, repel the being into the shadows at the rear of the stage, where abandoned props from other performances doubtless lurked like mantraps to cripple some of those limbs and heads. But the monstrosity on stage refused to sag under the onslaught. It acted harder. It moved and gestured, winced and blinked, chortled and wept, hammed it up to an extreme point where flesh itself seemed to be speaking and pleading.

The overworked mouths began to dribble, streams of saliva pouring over teeth or through the gaps between them, and the rate of flow increased and kept increasing, as if this absurd living thing, this experiment of some impresario and dabbler in dark science, was leaking and draining, spurting and spraying away at high pressure all the inner soup that gave it structure and definition. It might have deflated utterly, like a massively mutated bladder, had not the demands of the contradictory physical movements of the many roles tore it apart first. There was a ripping sound, the visible stretching and tearing of fibres, and one by one the arms fell off the shoulders. Then the ankles twisted and snapped, the necks broke, kneecaps rattled onto the stage, eyeballs popped out to roll around on the boards and be stamped flat by disintegrating feet.

But still the mouths drooled and now the saliva was pouring over the lip of the stage and into the auditorium, as if the stage itself was a huge mouth and the appalling actor inside it merely a confused and solidified jamming of words, the utterance of an overexcited prophet or lunatic, petrified by a malign alchemy that transformed not only sounds into things but also the echoes and overtones of those sounds. The horse heads snorted in alarm.

All at once the audience members had jumped up and were allowing pure panic to rule them, to guide their feet, which Gold and Myrrh now plainly saw weren’t hooves at all. The heads were indeed false. Some crumpled in collision with each other, one or two even fell off to expose the frightened human visage beneath and mouths that poured drool of their own.

Leaning even farther over the side of the box, Gold and Myrrh felt little surprise when the entire structure broke off from the wall and they plummeted down into the mêlée like two explorers in a bathtub going over a waterfall. The box landed upright with a violent shudder and they stood dazed and bruised as the tassels entangled themselves around the arms and necks of a dozen panicked audience members, who began bolting for the exit.

There was a stampede, a desperate flight away from the composite actor and his outpouring of drool, a scramble for the streets of Spittle, wet and oily in name alone, for the fresher but not fresh air, the higher but not high skies. Open burst the doors of the auditorium and through the lobby surged the crowd and Gold and Myrrh rode their chariot like reluctant warriors entering a conquered metropolis, bouncing and showering sparks on the surface of the uneven road as the frantic herd attempted to put as much distance between themselves and the theatre as feasible, dragging the box along behind them.

Horses peeled away from the main mass. Some tripped and remained on the ground or slowly stood and dusted themselves down before sauntering off in some other direction, removing their heads and slipping into the shadows. Now there were only the steeds that had become entangled in the tassels. Some of the tassels broke and the chariot slowed down. At last it came to a halt as those who still pulled it gave up the flight and sagged from fatigue.

Gold and Myrrh climbed out and began heading home, which was only a couple of streets away. They were shaken but still capable of post-play analysis and they discussed what they had seen all the way to their front door. Clearly it had been a big ironic joke, a chaotic play of all plays for a chaotic city, and yet the joke had backfired, because at the present time there was temporary order, stasis even, and Spittle was not a city of all cities but merely one variation in the interminable list of possible places. And the saliva had been a primitive device, spit without polish, a violation of all the drools.

“But the horses? What was that about?”

“We should have dressed up too. We weren’t warned.”

“Yes, but why? To see that play!”

“No one would have come if it had been advertised truthfully,” Myrrh said thoughtfully. “Apart from you and me.”

“Not even us,” said Gold as they reached their house.

Before inserting the key, they kissed on the doorstep, exchanging saliva with tongues. The play hadn’t finished yet.

The Coin-operated Man

—Gregory L. Norris

I.

The body sidled closer. Derringer sensed he was its destination in that fucked-up way that fucked-over cells and souls come to recognize through a cheap version of second sight, human instinct at its most basic.

“You Derringer?” a gruff voice asked.

Derringer sipped the weak tea that passed for beer at the End of Time without reacting, not showing the slightest tick. “Depends.”

He studied the odd figure in the fractured mirror above the low-shelf liquor behind the bar, most of which had been bottled from the same Moosejaw conglomerate whose mining arm was presently digging up the Ragglands. And the shit was about as pleasant to a man’s palate as a mouth full of dirt. Oily, foul concoctions that should have killed him, only there wasn’t enough mercy in the alcoholic content to finish the job. All the water mixed into the dirty glasses didn’t help.

“Please,” the man whispered—Derringer guessed his new friend was a man, given his beard. This far out, this close to the Ragglands, you couldn’t always be sure. “James Derringer, I’ve travelled a long way to find you.”

“You’ve found me. That doesn’t mean I care. Doesn’t mean I’m looking for new drinking pals when the usual crowd’s so much fun.”

He tipped his chin, indicating the gallery of skulls lined up in warning, along with a hand-painted sign that threatened the six former heads were the last brave customers stupid enough to skip out before paying.

“I want to hire you.”

“Is that so?” Derringer said without added emotion. “Sorry, darling, but you’ll probably want to go looking to Spittle City for that kind of fun. Men living on the edge of the world got less to lose. Me, I don’t swing in that direction.”

A lie, he knew, but Derringer almost believed it. Another glance in the grimy mirror showed Jamie Derringer was almost past the prime of his brutish good looks, which had gotten him this far, to a barstool in a place where little was certain. Another year—hell, maybe a day—and the long face might renounce that last residue of handsomeness.

“Okay,” he sighed. “I’ve got a room upstairs.”

The piece of tail—bearded, dressed in flannel and denim and a cap that hid most of the man’s eyes—flashed a humourless smile. “Wait. No.” Then he leaned closer, and Derringer caught the bitter edge of sweat. “I want you to take me somewhere.”

“Other than on a date to the End of Time?”

The man glanced cautiously around. Nobody was listening, Derringer knew. No one cared. “To the end of this miserable town. I can pay you. Handsomely.”

Derringer finished his beer in one final pull. The face in the mirror already looked older. If he didn’t leave soon, the temptation to test the warning posed beside the other patrons who’d defaulted on tabs and tips threatened to get the best of him.

He tossed money on the bar. A blood sample would have worked. Sex, too. Maybe for another year. Perhaps less.

“I heard you were the best man for hire. That you know your way around corners.”

“That’s me,” Derringer said, and suffered the weight of the watery piss-beer in his gut. “The coin-operated man. Come on.”

<~~O~~>

His name was Thorndyke and, more than once on the walk up to Derringer’s room, the coin-operated man sensed Thorndyke wasn’t really a man at all but a woman in disguise. It could have been an effect of whatever was being mined out there at the pits in the Ragglands. More than the details of Moosejaw’s town limits seemed to alter as more of the substance got squeezed out of the rocks. Several mornings back—it was difficult to say when exactly, as the days had started bleeding together—a bird with two heads had pecked at the window as though seeking permission to enter. He’d spent every morning since attempting to translate the visitation as either an omen or illusion. Thorndyke was, possibly, the latest in a string of two-headed birds.

The room had bottled the stale smell of sweat—Derringer’s, and all the other faceless, hopeless multitudes of coin-operated men for hire before him, waiting out their sentences, serving time in the hope of avoiding the mines or worse. He refused to open the windows. There was no airing out the gloom.

“What?” Derringer barked.

“Protected escort to an abandoned mall out at the edge, near Razor-17,” Thorndyke repeated.

Derringer felt his face tighten and shook his head. “The Razorside? Are you nuts?”

“I can’t pay you in the traditional way.”

“You are nuts. Get the fuck out of here.”

“Not in money. Something more valuable. Safe passage for two. Me and the kid. It’s a great deal.”

Derringer narrowed his gaze. Thorndyke renounced some of his masculinity between the prison bars of Derringer’s eyelashes. “You and a kid, out there?”

“Yes. I know that because of your contacts you have discretion to move about freely in the Ragglands.”

“Not that deep. Do you know how close the Razorside is to the mining operation? The shit they’re pulling out of the ground—”

“The Umlaut.”

“Umlaut? Didn’t know it had a name,” Derringer sighed.

“Rings of Saturn, Tears of Jove, Umlaut…if we hurry, if you take us to the old mall, we can be out of this place forever, you included. They say Spittle’s the edge of existence on this rock, but there’s a secret doorway to a better place at that mine.”

Derringer had the fucker down on the floor, with a blade to his throat, quicker than Thorndyke could prepare for the attack. “What game are you playing?”

“None, I swear!”

Thorndyke was lying, he discovered, after a sharp yank tore the sleeve from the man’s shirt. A pale blue patch, something medical, likely high-yield, was attached to the prick’s upper arm.

“What the fuck’s this?” Derringer demanded.

<~~O~~>

II.

Synthetic testosterone. According to the hastily told tale, she’d soaked up the shit as a way to survive the rape gangs in the grease trap of Wire City—not that disguising herself as a man was much of a deterrent.

As Derringer said in that moment of indecision where he wanted to both fuck Thorndyke and slit her throat, “Life is just a succession of skid marks, one after another.”

Fuck her or kill her. Maybe he’d do both, and not necessarily in the expected order. The woman—a woman by definition now only in some circus freak sideshow—shrieked for him to wait.

“You’ll want to hear me out,” Thorndyke blathered, and now she did sound enough like a woman to really confuse him. “There’s something huge in this for you!”

Of that part, Derringer was certain, whether it meant him busting a nut or bashing open a skull through its expanding bald spot on top, visible now that his cap lay on the floor.

“The old mall,” a voice said at his back.

In wrestling Thorndyke down, he’d stupidly aimed his back at the door. Derringer cursed himself while expecting the jab of agony from blade or bullet that would, long last, free him from his burdens. He righted and turned. The owner of the pixie voice was a young boy, a dirty little puke that looked like he’d escaped hard time in a different mine, a different slave city. At first, Derringer suffered something in the vicinity of sympathy for the brat, whom he guessed was the second party in Thorndyke’s little expedition. Then he experienced an emotion that punched him in the guts and tickled him unpleasantly behind the balls. Derringer’s gorge rose. Bile painted the soft lining of his throat and the back of his tongue.

“Let him go or it gets worse,” the kid said.

“Don’t you mean her?”

“I’m warning you, Mister…”

For a terrible second, maybe two, the kid’s eyes rolled back in their sockets, and every ugly, vicious thing Derringer had seen through his own lenses or forced others to endure in his years for hire flashed across the screen within his mind, in high-def. Vomit powered past his lips and sprayed the floor. Something thicker than tears poured down his cheeks. Blood, he assumed by the vibrant surge of red color visible at the corners of his sight. The vile sensation unleashed made breathing impossible.

“Stop it, Milo,” Thorndyke ordered. “We need him!”

The kid’s eyes rolled back, bloody now, too. The skin of his grimy little face had taken on the pallor of the underside of a mushroom. The brat—Milo, according to the bearded lady—seemed only half there, about to disintegrate.

Derringer wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. The dark emotion sank. He considered opening a window to air out the rank odour of vomit. Best, however, not to invite more two-headed birds into his world.

The kid recovered and pinkness returned to his cheeks. Thorndyke moved protectively beside him. All the humanity had been ironed off their faces.

“So, Mister Derringer, are you interested or not in what we have to say?”

“Your boy here’s a psychic?”

Sure, he was interested.

<~~O~~>

Because of the Umlaut, he explained, the mine kept sharpshooters—and worse—guarding the roads into the pits of the deep Ragglands. And by worse, Derringer was certain they’d see a level of shit out there that would put the sludge exhumed by Milo’s little parlour trick to shame, the little fucker.

“Watch your mouth,” Thorndyke said.

“Why? That one-nutted, hairless lab rat of yours got sensitive ears?” Derringer fired back coolly.

Thorndyke pouted, and though he was loath to admit it, Derringer found himself intrigued with the bearded lady like no other lay, male or female, in far too long.

“The son of a neighbour, back in the Wire,” she said. “We always knew Milo was special. Sixth son of a sixth son of a sixth son.”

“The little devil,” Derringer said, and ran his fingers briskly through the oily mop of the small body stretched across his bed.

Milo batted at his fingers and flopped onto his side, ending his funereal pose atop the covers. “Quit it!”

“Just making sure you didn’t have horns. If we’re gonna do this…”

“So, you’ll help us?” Thorndyke asked.

“As for that part about my compensation,” Derringer said. “You’re sure the little bastard can open a doorway past Moosejaw and the rest of this fucked dimension to someplace else, someplace better?”

“The fabric of time and space out there, near the mines, is worn to its thinnest now,” said Thorndyke. “So yeah, with you getting us close enough and Milo’s gift, he should be able to, just long enough for three people to slip through to a much better place.”

<~~O~~>

III.

All it took was a glance at the surface of the Trembling River, now clotted over with a scum of oily red candy color, runoff from the mine, to understand that anywhere was better than here.

Dare he think it possible? Escape from this life of odd jobs and anarchy? Like giving his back to doors, Derringer knew better than to let his mind wander. This was his reality. Hard time, a slave to the Five Cities. The biggest of life’s skid marks.

Slicked palms got them only as far as Shilling’s Arch, the last stop on the way to the old mall. Derringer ditched his truck behind one of the many houses that had been completed but never occupied. What would have been a neighbourhood for workers at the Razorside Mall had withered with its demise.

The structure loomed beyond a cathedral of twisted trees. A series of domes and spires, the old mall maintained an illusion of newness in the sun’s waning rays. Between blinks, however, it began to disintegrate. Derringer noted the blackened scars from the fire in its distant past that had doomed the project, before the extensive mining operation chewed up the Ragglands.

“Come on. Stay close,” Derringer said, and checked to make sure that all of his weapons were where they ought to be.

In this place, even the mini-nova holstered under cover of his vintage bomber jacket wasn’t much in terms of reassurance. Nor was the garrotte secreted in Derringer’s belt, or the numerous blades and switchblades hidden in both boots, in pockets, the tiniest behind his left ear.

“They say it got burned down by a rival company out of Ersatz,” Milo said to Thorndyke. “But that’s a lie. The mine did it.”

“You’re sure?” Thorndyke asked.

Milo nodded. “The Umlaut. They first found it when those old houses were going in. Didn’t know what it was. They still ain’t sure.”

Derringer scanned the trees. “Stop jabbering. Keep your eyes on the woods. You—Milo—keep your third eye peeled for anyone or thing between us and the food court.”

They hadn’t travelled far into the tightening press of the forest when the kid stiffened and his legs gave out. Derringer backtracked quickly and yanked Milo to his feet. The boy’s ashy color was worse now, and his pupils had gone large. They seemed to stare through Derringer.

“What is it, Milo?” asked Thorndyke.

“Yeah, out with it.”

Milo blinked. Unable to resist, Derringer smacked the boy across the cheek. Thorndyke started to protest but Derringer made sure she got a good look at the mini-nova.

“Smarten up. You’re supposed to be looking around.”

“You don’t understand. I was, I swear. But we’re so close. The Umlaut, for a second, I think I saw what it is.”

“Don’t matter,” Derringer said, and pushed the boy forward. His balance restored, Milo now led the way. “We’re getting out of this nightmare, if you’re able to do what he claims. She.”

Derringer invoked several more pronouns on their way into the heart of the cathedral, where the trees grew so close together that their canopy nearly hid the sun.

“What was it?” Thorndyke pressed. “The Umlaut? What are they mining out there in the Ragglands?”

“A piece of God. Some god. Maybe the devil. A cell, a limb…I’m not sure. But it’s been under this part of Moosejaw forever.”

Derringer listened without commenting. So the Umlaut was the rotting flesh of the All-Seeing and All-Powerful? Clearly, the All-Mighty hadn’t seen the results of dropping a piece of cosmic belly button lint across this section of the firmament. Yanking Umlaut out of the pits had put a sour smell in the air, something he equated with spoiled fruit. Goose bumps rose across his skin—and beneath it, with a prickle that conjured repulsive visions of burrowing insects.

The smell thickened as the trees thinned, and the trio found themselves facing the mall at the edge of the world. The landscape beyond the domes, spires, and overgrown parking lot had been blasted from existence. Hills were gone, gouged down to giant holes in the ground that wept an oily red liquid.

A sound of industry rose up from the pits, the tell-tale of earthmovers, jackhammers, blasting, and blasphemy. The air thrummed with a moan made from many voices. Birds circled above the pits; at least Derringer assumed the vague stains in the sky were birds. Carrion feeders, eager for a taste of the dead deity.

“Hurry,” he said, and started toward the dead structure’s shell.

His nausea flared. If only he’d skipped off without paying his tab at the End of Time, his inner voice taunted. He didn’t know if he believed an escape from Moosejaw was possible, any more than he believed the blood seeping up from the raped landscape was divine. Worse, Derringer didn’t know if he cared.

Time had eroded planks nailed over the remains of broken windows. Derringer dislodged the edge of one with his boot, enough for him to force it open the rest of the way.

They entered the mall’s ground level. Above them, sunlight rained down through the gallery’s domes. Below, an accidental lake had spawned throughout the whole of the lower level, the result of untold years of rain spilling through shattered panes. The stagnant soup crawled with thousands of fish—giant Koi, escapees from a pet store or fountain, Derringer assumed. The fish had bred and prospered, according to the numbers moving around in the filthy water beneath the safety railing and long dead escalators.

“Kid, how’s this?”

Milo wiped at his nose. The back of his hand came away wet, red. Milo nodded. Saying nothing, he moved over to the remains of a bench and sat cross-legged on the filthy floor.

“Finally,” said Thorndyke.

The barest trace of a smile lit the bearded woman’s face. And, for a moment, Derringer considered the possibilities: them, somewhere far away, someplace better. Maybe she’d quit the juice, and all that body hair would vanish. Until then, well…he’d fucked hairier.

A sound echoed up from the fishpond, what sounded like a karate chop on the water. Derringer pegged it as a fish—a big one—slapping its tail. The echo ricocheted around the cavernous space before going up, up, past the smoke-stained walls and out through the shattered glass of the domes.

“Do you see it, the door?” asked Thorndyke.

Milo nodded. As Derringer focused on the boy, he saw Milo’s greasy hair rise up in an electrical storm corona. Color flashed through the kid’s eyes, a preternatural red like that of the bleeding ground and the runoff polluting the river. The goose bumps under Derringer’s flesh worsened. The air pulsed. Angry wasps warred inside his blood.

Air puffed, stirring the stagnancy around their position. Derringer’s heart galloped.

The sound emanating up from the accidental pond intensified. The chaos of thousands of fins and flippers smacking at water fought against the rising din of what struck Derringer’s ears like a scream. Maybe the shriek was human. Or it could have belonged to the Umlaut, that piece of a rotting god being torn out of the pits. Derringer turned his head and covered his ears. The sound passed through his fingers, twice as painful. An oblong pattern of light spindles formed around Milo.

“You did it,” Thorndyke exclaimed.

Milo nodded, jumped up from the floor, and raced into the light. Thorndyke turned to follow. Right before she made contact, Derringer caught the malevolent smirk on the little fucker’s face, and an invisible fist punched him in the balls.

“Thorndyke, no!” Derringer called above the scream.

Too late, she was partway through when the opened door slammed shut again. The half or so of the bearded woman that hadn’t followed the first part of Thorndyke through spilled across the dirty floor, squirting out its blood. The remains of her destroyed face stared up at Derringer, its lone eyeball and section of mouth registering surprise. A question seemed to form on what remained of Thorndyke’s bluing lips—How could he do this to me?

The scream cut out completely. Derringer staggered away. Only the rail stopped him from plunging down into the cesspool. Below him, the water stilled. Through wide eyes, he swept the accidental pond, which had been teeming with thousands of fish only a minute earlier. Now, he didn’t see a single one.

Derringer hurried along the second level and back to the shattered window. The fucker had betrayed them both. He only hoped a worse place awaited the fucker on the other side of the door he’d opened courtesy of hitching his little red wagon to the Umlaut.

He eased through the plank and back out into what remained of the miserable day. An early dusk had taken hold beneath the cathedral of twisted trees. Derringer’s flesh crawled. Whatever Milo, that rotten brat, had done to open the doorway to Wherever was sure to have landed on somebody’s radar.

Derringer reached for the mini-nova and drew the pistol from its holster. Then he heard the sound, which his ears translated into the beating of wings. Shadows darted at the periphery of his vision. A bird swooped down from the sky, toward him. A big one. With his luck, two-headed, thought Derringer.

He glanced up, saw that the winged thing wasn’t a bird, and fired.

The Map is not the Territory

—Andrew Coulthard

When Jill awoke he was in the alley amidst the filth and smoke. Steam and sulphurous vapours were rising in trails through cracks in the ground.

It was hot.

“Ersatz,” he mumbled, because his mind told him so.

He’d been lost for a long time. When you got lost the way Jill had you could never be sure where you’d find yourself on waking. He cleared his throat and spat, glancing about at his surroundings. His vision was as hazy as the acrid air, but he could see that the dead people were still there, so maybe he hadn’t really changed locations during his sleep.

He sneaked a look upwards, something he did every day first thing. But there was no sky today either. Just smog. Risky business, looking up, but he kept on doing it. He supposed that made him a bit of a gambler.

Somewhere off to his right lightning crackled. A wave of thunder pulsed through the turgid air right on its heels. Close. Then something occurred to him—he couldn’t ever remember seeing lightning on the left, only to the right.

Was that some kind of a clue?

A chunk of plaster thumped onto his shoulder and bounced off onto the debris-strewn ground. The cracks covering the walls and paving stones were that little bit wider today. He sighed. The city was falling down. On the other hand it’d been going on for years, and everybody knew you didn’t get hurt as long as you didn’t look up.

Jill shambled off along the alley and at once the queasy blend of paranoia and anxiety broke out like a bad case of the shakes. Breathing was hard for a time as his body came to terms with it—just a typical morning in Ersatz.

He had no idea what would happen today, probably wouldn’t remember it tomorrow anyway, but one thing he never forgot was that he was on a mission to find the mapmaker. And when he found him he was gonna get unlost.

Someone had once asked him how he stayed sane in a place like the Ersatz Lost Quarter. She hadn’t been lost herself, their paths just happening to cross somewhere. He still remembered her angular face and long limbs and that trans-abdominal piercing she’d showed him with such pride. Attractive girl.

She’d been sitting on a folding deckchair in some godforsaken square when he came stumbling by. He recalled her wearing grubby blue shorts and a plain T-shirt, and she’d been smoking something strong. Her T-shirt was knotted under her breasts leaving her belly bare to show off the piercing. Not something you saw every day in this part of town.

“How do you keep it together without any reference points, constants or other means of attaining the illusion of stability?” she’d asked in a weird, lilting drawl that he couldn’t place.

After thinking about her question he decided not to trust her and asked a question of his own.

“Could you show me the way to get unlost, ma’am?”

“Well, really, I asked first,” she frowned.

“Madam…Miss. I just wanna find my way again. How do you get out of this part of town?”

“Why, you need a map, Mister,” she replied in disgust. “I thought just about everybody knew that.”

After that she’d got to her feet, unknotted her T-shirt and pulled it down over her belly. The smog swirled as she walked into it and disappeared.

How did he stay sane? The answer was that Jill carried his reference points inside him. Whenever he needed a fix he just had to find somewhere that looked like it might be safe and close his eyes:

The dappled street stretched away, bushes and trees swaying slowly in the summer breeze. One tree in particular drew his gaze—a scattering of sun-kissed emerald against a backdrop of viridian and shadow.

Beams of evening light gilded her hair. She caught sight of him, waved and began walking his way. She was smiling.

And then there was that place, right about his solar plexus. That’s where the light started. If he focused on it long enough it spread and before long it was everywhere. And then came the flash. But he shouldn’t be doing it now.

Too late.

Jill used to be able to get through a whole day before he’d fall to temptation. Lately his days had been getting shorter and shorter.

The light was spreading.

Flash.

Rush.

Mmmmmmm—oh baby, that’s right. I know you’re good for me. Easing my pain…all my pain.

No pain.

Jill awoke in some sort of room: walls streaked with mildew; floor scattered with fallen plaster and refuse. There was a window in one wall through which shafts of grey light angled from outside. The ceiling was shadow. A child’s doll was lying nearby. It was naked, both arms and one eye missing. Its plastic lips curled into a smile when it saw him.

He searched his mind but was unable to recall how he got there.

He had to find the mapmaker, though.

The doll cackled as he left.

<~~O~~>

Garaldine Spinnioza finished his coffee and folded the morning paper. The woman sitting opposite him looked up. She had a rather fanciful array of piercings.

“Are we done?” she asked.

He didn’t reply.

“Who is he, anyway?” she continued, changing tack.

Spinnioza glanced at her, taking in the long limbs and angular face. He began smoothing his thick, black mustachio.

“He’s one of the reasons we can live the way we do, Stacy,” he rumbled.

“You mean free?”

Spinnioza let out a throaty laugh. “We ain’t free. Ain’t nobody’s free, Stacy. We’re all slaves one way or another and you know that as well as I do.”

“Not like him,” she objected, a defiant cast to her features.

“No, not like him; he’s really all the way down there. But what he don’t know is he’s working for us, providing us with the means to our largess.”

“He thinks he’s lost. That’s what he told me anyways.”

“He is lost.”

“Well he’s looking for you. And one of these days I daresay he’ll find your tower. Should be easy enough, goddamn lightning’s always coming down on it.”

Spinnioza was quiet for a moment, struggling to contain his anger. The lightning was a problem he didn’t like to be reminded of, especially not by the likes of Stacy. One day it was going to bring the tower down and where would they be then?

He contemplated killing her, his eyes straying to his grandmother’s terbutje hanging over the mantelpiece. But then he caught her watching him, a dangerous look in her narrow eyes. Maybe she’d just read his mind?

Stacy could be quick as a viper. Vindictive too. She’d been taken care of before, but it never went more than a week before she was back again. Same couldn’t be said about the men who messed with her. He dropped the idea.

“He won’t find my tower,” he said walking to the window and gazing down to where Jill and countless others like him were working the mines.

“He might. He wants a map. Knows you’re the man to make him one,” Stacy persisted.

“Oh but he’s got a map already. That’s why he’s lost,” Spinnioza said with a grin.

Lightning crackled outside, bathing them both in blue-white light, and thunder shook the building.

When Spinnioza’s vision returned to normal it was to find a network of fine cracks in the whitewashed walls. He sighed and shook his head. His tower was crumbling.

“You make bad maps then, Garaldine?” Stacy inquired, actually appearing interested for once.

“No, mine are the best.”

“Then how come he’s lost?”

“Because that’s what he’s meant to be. He doesn’t even know he has a map, see. And that map, well, it tells him just exactly what I want it to.”

“Which is?”

“The wrong thing. Without that map, he could just go and walk right out of here. But he keeps using the map, a map he don’t even know he has. And what he sees is what the map tells him, not what’s actually there.”

“Oh,” Stacy replied quietly, lost in thought.

“Yeah. Because the map ain’t the territory, Stacy,” Spinnioza told her, stabbing the air with his finger for emphasis.

“Do I got a map, Garaldine?” she asked.

“I guess we all do, Stacy. We’re all slaves one way or another after all,” Garaldine confessed.

“Aha,” she said getting to her feet. “Well I gotta go.”

“Don’t believe I’ve said we’re done,” Garaldine countered his voice deeper than usual.

“Nope, you didn’t, but I’m sick of waiting.” She took her bag and left by the door that led to the rooftop battlements. Garaldine shook his head. Stacy might be many things, but bright wasn’t one of them.

A few moments later she was back, red-faced. “I never learn,” she murmured and took the other door to the outer staircase leading to the streets.

Outside the clouds were rumbling and a tangible electric tension was building in the air. Smog swirled below and above storm clouds thickened. Before descending into the smog Stacy took one last backward glance and nodded in satisfaction. Her bag was hanging from the lightning conductor on top of Garaldine’s tower. She smiled: Dumb son of a bitch had underestimated her just as surely as he overestimated his own prowess.

<~~O~~>

Jill was sliding and bouncing through blackness. Everything hurt. He searched for his inner anchors but for the first time in forever they weren’t there. He tried again. And again. No emerald leaves, no pain-relieving light.

He was lost.

Voices ricocheted about like bullets in the dark.

“I’m telling you there’s been a change, something fundamental,” a woman was saying.

“Haven’t noticed,” a man countered.

“No, I doubt you have. But there used to be one creator…I didn’t like the SOB, tricky capricious, bastard by all accounts,” the woman continued.

“Never figured you as one of them religious types,” the man said.

“Well I ain’t. But I ain’t no atheist either. Like I said, there used to be one creator. Now though…”

“More than one?” the man asked, surprised.

“Dozens! They’re all out there behind the scenes, doing their thing and changing the way things rock and roll.”

“Maybe that’ll turn out good,” the man suggested.

“You serious?” the woman countered, her voice rising. “The first creator was bad enough. Who knows what badass tricks these others’ll get up to. I knew a guy once. Writer. Went by the name of Hogg. The things the creator did to him…phew.”

“Oh yeah?” The man sounded subdued.

“I’m telling you, our days are numbered. Gimme a swab. That’s it. Good. Now sew him up.”

<~~O~~>

Jill kept trying to remember. The lightning had been to his right, but that wasn’t unusual. Something else had happened, though. Had the light been more intense? And he’d seen something in the smog. Flames. Smoke. A stone tower coming apart. Then nothing.

He asked the doctor if he was lost, but she gave him a pitying look and shook her head. “You ain’t lost. You’re here.”

The inside of the ambulance smelled of rotting offal and the driver’s face was so scarred you couldn’t see his eyes. They dropped Jill off back where they said they’d found him. Middle of nowhere, by a tumbled down mass of rubble and dust. There was a smell in the air like rotting eggs and cordite and a row of fresh graves lined the dusty road.

“This isn’t Ersatz,” he complained.

“Never has been. But it’s where we found you,” the driver growled. “There’s a town somewhere hereabouts, though. Goes by the name of Moosejaw.” He drove off.

Jill took out the map they’d removed from his brain. Ersatz Lost Quarter, it read. The rest was blank.

“Moosejaw,” he whispered, more lost than ever.

Never Break the Chain

—Kris Saknussemm

Watching Waco’s body parts regenerate was starting to get me. Sure, we’d been partners once, and I’d known him since we grew up in Mudhead. But damn it, Ersatz prices are not like Shell County, and in the kind of Dropbox I can afford, there isn’t a lot of room for squishy regrowth. I know a lot of people who would be flat out sickened.

The day he rocked into the city, I’d told him—I made it very clear—he had two weeks to shack with me until he found a gig. He was a certified Pounder for hell’s sake. We’d once been one of the twickest Chicken Scratch teams in all of Shell Fringe. There had to be something he could do. He nodded. We shook hands. He flopped down his spider silk roll.

But he didn’t go out to hustle. Didn’t even try. Nope. I thought he’d come metro, hungry for work. Turns out, he’d just come hungry, and pretty soon had torn through my seaweed and sucked down all the Vita-Ade.

I could’ve dealt with that short-term if he’d genuinely been on the make for moola, but instead he went straight to the fetish markets, looking for some mink. Typical Mudheader, now I realize. That’s pretty much what had happened to me when I arrived. It’s why I’m a pig man now, our lovely local nickname for those who work at the waste treatment plant, which is both fortunately and very unfortunately rather near the container park where my Dropbox is.

He had a bit of fun in Slinkytown, but it wasn’t long before those alchemists lured him in. There’s nothing worse than a crazy ass, bottom-feeding throatsucker of a drug dealer who calls himself a “scientist.” The prosthetic limbed one, who has the handle Dr. Lobster, turned him on to Starfish, one of the nanogenic tissue rejuvenators that the rat fighters use, so they can cut each other’s arms and even heads off in the Midway free-for-fall bouts. Meat Brains.

Oh, the old Starfish works just like the alchemists and the back alley whisperers claim. I’ve seen it with my own real eyes. What Dr. Lob conveniently forgot to tell Waco is that there are some side effects. Duh.

Seriously, would you score a street level nanogenic that rebuilds tissues and whole organs from a guy with prosthetic limbs? Bit of a clue there methinks. But once a Mudheader, always a Mudheader. Waco soon found out. Starfish grows you back—while also driving you insane. You start off gnawing yourself, then you progress to slicing. Soon you’re hacking your hands off and wondering how long you can hold your bleeding heart in a claw that’s just oozed back into form. Disgusting stuff to watch, especially in the confined space of a sewage swamp Dropbox. I decided that I was going to have to take action, and I think you understand the kind of action I mean.

The thing that really sticks in my craw about the Slave State is that it turns everyone into rat fighters. I haven’t been to Spittle, but I know Wire City. I think Ersatz is even worse. Laissez-unfair, as they say. We’re all apparently free of the charge batons and the Lizard tanks, but the fatalistic obsession with self-indulgence as the tonic for the drudgery of available work has driven everyone Starfish mad. You can’t go to a strip club without gladiatorial games. “Show us your intestines!” What kind of shit is that? Now I was planning to somehow take out my best and oldest friend.

Who am I kidding? Waco’s my only friend. The guys in the swamp pits? Sure we’ll have some amber and shoot pigeons together sometimes. But what do we really have to talk about? Surface crust and algae levels—big boobs and strangleholds? Waco and I used to be a true team in Shell. The Chicken Scratch circuit is no picnic, and we were righteous Cockfighter Pilots. There’s a lot more to designing, maintaining, and deploying Meg 1 exoskeletal battle-bots than you might think. Those retro metal skills have stood me in good stead as a pig man. Leeching hydraulic fluid, welding, repressurizing a pneumatic joint—we were a good team. We were old time Mudhead boys. But still, I was thinking about how to kill him. Not an easy thing to do with a Starfish addict. I decided to hit the Eel Tank and consult with Curaçao.

The Eel Tank was one of the better bars that I could only rarely afford. It was owned and managed by a guy called Head Cheese. He’d had a penile growth treatment go terribly wrong, and had basically had the bottom half of his body amputated. “More bag than sense” was the chinwag take, but he was decent for a bottlebrush. He kept his toilets clean and I admired the precision mech of his auto-traction chair. Curaçao was a cosmetic Blue Girl, and his best tassel dancer. She’d done some fumigating of unwanted wantoks for a container park neighbor of mine. If anyone knew how to deal with a Starfish problem, she was the one. She was on counter, shaking it, when I showed up.

I flashed her a token to signal a tit-a-tete. Nothing like titanium to get attention in this burg.

“Darling! Haven’t seen you in elephants!”

“This place is too rich for my blood, and you’re too fine for my coffin.”

“So, what’s the hurt, sugar skull?”

Blue nipples are still a gas to me. I needed a drink.

“Just quietly,” I said… “I have a cockroach. Bad blood is I’ve known him from the incubator. Twined like worms. But he’s taken root in my bivouac and is on to Starfish.”

“That is a knot.”

“How do I untie it? Things aren’t good for him—and they can’t stay the same for me. I have sewage problems to solve.”

“Take me to the Squirm Lounge. Two tokens. I have a maybe idea.”

You get the advice you pay for—and often have to forego the blowjob you’d like.

Once in the squiggly light and memory foam couches of the back lounge where the gals did their real business, she got right down to biz.

“There’s only one new drug in town that can for certain trump Starfish.”

“Tell me,” I said, and ponied up some more titan.

“It’s called The Chain. It reverse viruses the Starfish and blows the cells of the units one by one—to exponential end.”

“The unit? You mean my friend’s body?”

“The target.”

I hate being chastised about the protocol of backroom assassination planning by a Blue Woman with a very hot ass. But she was right.

“So, that’s good news, yes?”

“And no. It will cure the ill, but unless you want to be cleaning walls forever, you have to be careful about where the deal goes down.”

“Indeed. What’s the time window?”

“Hard to say. Maybe impossible. But in your box, if you were there, you’d be at risk of the explosive momentum.”(She and I had twined like worms there once, but I think the smell of the sewage swamp got to her.)

“If it comes on when the target is free-styling, like in the markets, a lot of people will be influenced.”

“Influenced? You mean blown apart or penetrated with bone shards…spattered with bile and seminal fluid…blood, goop, gore and digestive enzymes?”

“You came to me.”

I wanted to say that I wanted to come in her, but you don’t talk trash to Blue Women.

“So, we’re saying nasty end. Any pain?”

“Ask the dogs in the shelter. Look at these pert erect nipples. I’m not a doctor or scientist. You came to me about a cockroach problem—and you don’t look flush.”

“He’s eating me out of house and home, and I can’t stand watching a friend keep dying and coming back.”

“Ready for some good news?”

“Hit me.”

“I have a spec sample of Chain. I’ll trade it.”

“And the catch?”

“No catch, really. My brain damaged brother needs a job in the swamp. I’ll throw in a hand job to sweeten the deal. Can you get him hired?”

“I can do Level 4. It’s pretty bad, but it’s titan every week.”

“He’s jizz in the head. He just wants some pride of work and some place to go.”

“What about a titty fuck?”

“Sorry. These are the money-makers. You give it away, you never get pay. But I’m down for hand therapy. I remember the equipment. Know how to work it.”

“I’m pleased you remember the equipment. Done and dusted. I’ll take the item and the proposition in question. So, all I need to do is arrange for some open-air delivery of the package with as little collateral involvement as possible?”

“That’s it. If it were me, I’d allow 30 minutes, but don’t bank on that. Remember the nipples.”

“I will never forget. Where’s the trinket?”

She produced from her G-string what looked like a small silver pretzel made of bolt cutter thick steel. It was actually as light as one of those ancient postage stamps the man with the huge goiter living next door to me collects.

“He eats this…and BOOM?”

“Want your hand job now?”

“No thanks. I want this to work first. Then we’ll get the job millstone for retard bro, and I can properly enjoy my hard-earned reward.”

“Your call. I have stain remover tips if things go south.”

“Things have gone south my whole life. That’s why I’m here. Ya got nice tits. Thanks for the mojo. I’ll report on how I go—unless you hear it in the news.”

I waved goodbye to Head Cheese on my way out, wondering how I was going to get my best and only friend to swallow the Eucharist of his own demise without giving the game away. A chain reaction of cellular disassemble—at what sounded like TNT velocity. I was a nice guy once.

<~~O~~>

One time, when we were losing in a hillbilly high-priced robot fighting game on the saltbush outskirts of Shell, Waco produced this old rusted ten-penny nail. It was like a fossil of some lost world. It exactly held the broken machine we’d made together, as if it were invented to do so. We won…and he glanced at me, as if to say, “I told you. Got your back.”

I keyed in to the Dropbox to smell lime mango barbecued glass squid. Waco’s head was just re-emerging out of his shoulders, a little slimy, but or less the same.

“I got a job, man!” His newly made mouth said. “Thought I’d make us some food. Goin’ into rehab on the Starfish. There’s this place across town. I want to thank you for bein’ such a good friend. It’s gonna be a bit, but hey, glass squid!”

I had his death and release in my pocket, and here was the old Mudhead boy from Shell County. I still had a halfway good erection from Curaçao’s boob fragrance, but I went into what passes for my bathroom, and dropped the piece of Chain into the toilet. It would pass into the sewage swamp, where I was lucky enough to have a job. Even in the Slave State, you only get one oldest and best friend.

The Last Lash

—P. R. Differ

Late in the afternoon, the elephantine coach narrowly avoided an open sewer and ground to a halt in front of Ersatz’s finest fetish emporium. The passengers had been intoxicated since dawn had purged the land of darkness. The driver, a thirty-year-old female, vomited into a cheap, obsidian bucket, crudely wiped sick from her mouth and then kicked the bile-filled receptacle over in disgust.

“Wur heer nnoo,” she howled and then thought, “I think this is the right place.”

“Nuuoo wee urn’t,” a passenger replied and then said, “oh fuck, what if she is right?”

“Wee Fakkiiin aarrr hheeerrreee, yuu oodddiioouusss cuunnt.”

“Nnssooo wee uurr nott, yoouuu sttuupppiiidd ggaaarrrrggoooyyylleeee.”

“Ii amm ggooiinna eeuutt urreee skkiinn, cuunnt.”

“Trryy eettt, yoouuu uggllyy bbassturd.”

“Tthhhaatttsss uttt.”

“Fffuuckk.”

As the driver staggered up the aisle, discarded bottles disintegrated to the rhythm of her fearless march. Passengers cheered as she grabbed her opponent’s Adam’s apple and clamped his tongue between her teeth. Out of nowhere, a man rose from his seat—the pilgrim—and he jammed a knife into her left eardrum—perforating her brain as a result—multiple wounds rendered her job up for grabs. A sudden silence ensued and the pilgrim remained king.

<~~O~~>

The Festival of Unadulterated Pleasure was well underway, and the city was once again a modern-day Gehenna. Ersatz was within crawling distance of Wire City and only a mere stone’s throw from Spittle’s unofficial toxic dump. A Wire City newspaper headline once read: Ersatz: Zero Hospitals / Five Red-Light Districts. Afterwards, a Spittle newspaper headline read: Ersatz’s Dirty Secret: Locals Dump Waste in Spittle.

The terminally-ill city knew how to harbour a grudge: its sewers engulfed children, its infected water supply poisoned pregnant mothers, its flora and fauna were rotten.

Passengers emerged single file from the coach’s narrow door, and the man waiting outside the erotic boutique introduced himself as Lev Goasher: the arbiter of clandestine pleasures, the St. Peter of flesh, the final gatekeeper, and the owner of The Feast.

“Wary travellers,” he roared, “come stain—ha, you get it—stain my sex furniture, finger my Victorian surgical tools, and try my signature offal-infused aphrodisiacs.”

“Relax,” he told himself, suddenly unsure about his outburst, embarrassed by its vulgarity. He didn’t mean to stamp his authority on the stock—just convey his immense pride.

The pilgrim’s handshake was stronger than limpet teeth. As Goasher smiled and embraced the pain, he ignored his stressed carpels, metacarpals, and phalanges.

“Last year was okay, Goasher,” said the pilgrim didactically.

“Yeah wel…”

“I haven’t finished. The previous year, that was a steaming bag of shit for so many reasons: there was no sacrifice, no innovation, no gusto.”

“Ugghh, well I…”

“I know, I am a hard man to penetrate, but that is your job; to penetrate me is your job.”

“I promise you will not be disappointed this year.”

The pilgrim ignored the final remark, scoffed and was joined by two colleagues in entering The Feast.

The pilgrim discussed Goasher’s display with the others as they explored and analysed the Victorian surgical tools: the rotating blades of the artificial leech (they could drain both ear and eye), the scarificator (another bloodletting instrument), and the Tobacco Smoke enema.

“Never before have a fumigator and bellows entered the sexual equation,” said one man.

“You shouldn’t blow smoke up his ass,” replied the pilgrim, “his body isn’t built for it. Unlike yours, apparently.”

“Forceps and extractors, what a turn on,” cried another man, squirming at the thought of multiple orgasms brought on by antiquated medical practices. “If only I had enough blood to try the artificial leech as well.”

According to the pilgrim, Goasher had most likely stolen the idea from another boutique when he travelled to Wire. According to the pilgrim’s colleagues, it simply did not matter whether Goasher had stolen the idea or not. It was the execution of the concept, its ability to scrape the barrel of pleasure, not its originality that mattered to them.

“Just you remember who has the final say,” barked the pilgrim.

The next round was not like the first and Goasher’s offal-infused aphrodisiacs sickened the triumvirate. There was a lecherous silence and the pilgrim forced a bile-smeared chocolate into his mouth. Deep down, in that malodorous pit he dared call a stomach, Goasher knew that the trio would be disgusted. The guinea pig gagged and then slapped the store owner.

“I can’t even begin to express how disappointed I am,” said the pilgrim.

“But you haven’t even tried out the sex furniture,” begged Goasher.

“I don’t need to. Sex furniture is scabby, crude and offensive”

“The first time I came here,” said the Pilgrim, “a clerk called Vic tried to fool me. He was a young man—most young men are fools—but his age didn’t matter to me, and it was clear to me that if he fooled me once, he would certainly try to fool me again. You remember what happened to him Lev? I do. I remember because every year, on this very day, for the last eight years, we try and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

“I remember what happened: you made me eat him—every last bit of him—you made me a cannibal. I used to be just like you, but you had me chained to this store.”

A handprint—the same color as a sunset—on Goasher’s face made him look pathetic and doomed as he listened to the pilgrim.

“Ouroboros: the snake that eats its own tail to sustain its life, the judge who kills when there are no more criminals left, the store owner who ends up on his torture rack because he can no longer push the boundaries”

The pilgrim left the store—leaving his two colleagues to finish the task—whoever could digest Goasher would host the festival next year.

From Within

—Richard Thomas

The first time they come to measure my son, he is only eleven years old. Two men knock on the door of our humble home that squats on the outskirts of Shell County, my boy and I eating Macaroni and Cheese, our eyes turning mid-spoon to the interruption. Outside the darkness is as black as pitch, matching their uniforms, their helmets slick, a measuring tape in each of their hands. Dust devils spin across the land—dirt and garbage lifting high up into the night.

They never say a word, simply walk inside and lift the boy from his seat, one of them holding him as the other measures height, then width, then depth. They never speak, only nod at each other, and then retreat into the night, the door left open, as silt slips inside, and over the floor. I blink. The boy shrugs, and we go back to our meal. These things happen when your overlords float over the cities, some as small as cows, the queen bees as large as blimps. The smaller ones are grey, like elephants, the largest translucent—colored organs in red and purple pumping from within. They are beautiful and horrific, having ruined all we know.

I work in one of the mines, as most of us do, out in the desert. Certain ore that we previously thought of as common is essential to their life and continued development. Much like the storm troopers, I dress in a jumpsuit, but mine is orange, my son’s a shade of peach. We do not reside in the gothic mansions that line the pit, no, we are just workers, so little to live for but each other. And most days, that is enough. Our shotgun shacks ring out around the pillared homes with porches wrapping around the dirty gothic structures, foremen with shotguns, their women in tattered dresses.

The boy works in a sorting facility, an expansive metal garage on the way to the Shell County mines. At night we reunite on the dirt path outside his building, holding up our hands to reveal the day’s labor—his lavender and blue from the kyanite, as if dusted by fairies; mine rusty and muted from carts of mica, splinters of the fine ore leaving nicks upon my skin. If it weren’t for the boy, one arm around him as we lumber home, exhausted, I certainly would have ended it by now. All up and down my arms are thin lines of mottled flesh, spider webs of dark promises I can’t keep—unable to leave, unable to surrender. He finds a way to chirp and laugh, something they discovered inside a mineral today, some sort of ancient bug—these buried worms and larvae—trapped inside the rock, the highlight of his day. He holds his hand out to show me the wriggling creatures and my stomach turns over. They look prehistoric, with their pincers and feathered legs. I don’t know if it’s a beautiful thing, his discovery and excitement, or just another sad story in a long line of sad stories.

The second time they come to measure my son, I’m not nearly as receptive as the first. I ask them what they want, why they are here, and they simply push me aside and descend upon the boy. He is still so innocent, in this new world, never knowing the things I struggle to forget—free will, television, beer, football, movies, music, books, fine dining, travel—the list spirals out into the ether. He knows none of these pleasures, and never will. He stands up, his arms spread wide as they measure, and measure, and measure. I scream at them to get out, apoplectic with rage, my face flushing red, but they ignore me, simply nodding their heads—height, and width, and depth.

When I lay a hand on one of them he turns on me with an unforeseen speed, a baton extending out of his hand, pulled from a pocket or his belt, perhaps, his gloved hand lined with metal spikes, the rapid-fire beating faster than I can witness, simply a blur of metal and blood splatter, my eyes, my nose, my teeth—my vision lost in a mist of red, as I fall to the ground, my hands never even raised.

When they are gone, and I regain consciousness, the boy is dabbing at my face with a bloody washcloth, the cold water calming my hot flesh, his eyes full of tears, his lips bit and puckered in resolve, never saying a word. He understands his place, and his eyes implore me to remember mine.

I do not miss work, this is not allowed. So, beaten and bruised I make my way to the mines. The boy splits off at his juncture in the path, releasing my hand with reluctance. We have learned not to ask, when somebody disappears—no longer standing next us as we shovel, pick and dig. We have learned to ignore the loss of fingers, the cuts and markings, changing in and out of our uniforms, backs covered in streaked lashings, weeping flesh, the whippings carried out in private, to keep us in constant fear. If the setting sun has no time of descent—no marked hour, or minute, or path—then how can we anticipate the darkness?

The third time they come it is not to measure my boy, but simply to take him. There are four guards this time, the first entering our filthy home with an electric cattle prod in front of him, pushing it into my raised hands, my strained chest, shock rippling over my flesh as I collapse to the floor, twitching while urine trickles down my shaking leg. And the boy never says a word as they extend their measuring tapes—height, and width, and depth. They nod to each other, jotting down a few notes, walking him out of the house as he tells me he loves me, tells me to be strong, to wait for him. They take him, leaving behind a small envelope with a few sentences about his new assignment. I do not know if he will return. He fits the mold for some strange new job, something about the health of the great ones, a bitter pill that the beasts must swallow—the medicine, somehow, my boy.

I know that I’ve taught him well, my son, even if I don’t take my own advice. He has heard repeatedly that resistance is futile—my words slipping over his drooping eyes as he lies in bed, drifting off to sleep. I don’t give him hope, when I tuck him in at night, because I can’t give him something I don’t have.

There are three great beasts that hover over our mine, their veiny skin transparent. I see them every day when I walk to work, and I hate their bluish tint, their waving tentacles, with all of my trembling heart. It’s not like people haven’t tried to rebel, to rise up. I’ve seen men rush out of the pits with rifles, blood on their hands, firing at the smaller grey ones, the great clear beasts in the sky rippling with puncture wounds. They pass right through them, holes made, certainly, but little changing. And as the smaller gray ones swarm closer, appendages descending, the men’s screams are lost in the thick alien hides, ripped limb from limb as shots ring out, one or two of the elephantine creatures falling to the Earth, more vulnerable it seems, the hovering motherships unharmed.

It’s all I can think about in the weeks to come, my boy, and his new job. There are whispers from the other men, no women down here in the mines, their work elsewhere in the pleasure districts of Moosejaw. My wife was dead of cancer long before any of this horror fell upon us, and I thank whatever gods are left that she never had to witness this decay. The boy has her quiet optimism, so I trudge back and forth to the mines, lost in the dust and noise, waiting to hear something—anything at all.

There are whispers at work, quiet conversations slipped between the spark of the pickaxe, the rattling thunder of jackhammers, sledges and shovels down here close to the veins of ore. I sidle up to two men who are bagging up mica, as overhead and in the distance great excavators rumble past, bulldozers and graders spanning out across the dirt. They speak of their boys, measured and taken, and I ask what they know. They shake their heads and scatter like cockroaches, but before they separate, I hear a few things. They are sick, the big ones, shedding scales of flesh that falls from the sky like graying snowflakes. I think of the sloughs of skin that have turned up over the past few weeks, great sheets of dry skin drifting about the dead land like tumbleweeds spinning in the wind. They hang lower in the sky, the men mumbled, and as I walk home from work, I scan the sky for confirmation. There are only two of them visible today—one as vibrant and glowing as ever; the second slightly lower, dull and hardly moving; the third falling onto a distant mountain range, it’s sickly skin like a dirty blanket draped over pristine snow.

The final knock at my door is nothing I expect—the boy standing there skinny and sick, his eyes shrunken, his face sallow—falling into my outstretched arms. He says that up close they are magnificent creatures, so very large, the quiet inside the floating bodies like nothing he’s ever witnessed. I take him to his bed, and set him down gently, fetching him a glass of water, his eyes electric with stories. He wants to tell me everything, so I sit on his bed and listen.

He talks of the other boys, how they were to be fed to the beasts, wrapped in protective coatings, slick jumpsuits made of glossy materials, treated with certain chemicals to aid their healing treatment. The boy laughs, coughing up phlegm and blood, his eyes glazing over as he tries to finish his tale. Holding his bony right hand, I listen, as he smiles a crimson smile. A simple job, he says, swimming their way to the center of the monsters, against the vibrating cilia. Not just medicine, which the creatures can’t swallow, skin too thin to inject, too tough for any spray, but specific instructions about hearts and valves, chambers and ventricles, how to remove any blockages, plaque, or disease.

But they had another plan, he says, grinning, holding out his left fist. When he spreads his fingers wide, it is the worm again, now grown, ten times its previous size, pincers snapping, as big as a mouse, eyes blood red, feathered legs twitching, wings now on its back, thin membranes lined with intricate patterns.

The boy is asleep now—his pulse slow, but steady. I take the worm, the caterpillar, whatever it is now, whatever it might become next—moth, or snake, or lizard—to the kitchen in search of a proper receptacle. I find a Mason jar, and drop it inside, an iridescence rippling over its skin, feelers probing the air, as I poke a few holes in the lid with a rusty old screwdriver, my stomach rippling with hope.

I go to the front door and swing it open, the sky filled with orange light as the sun sets in the distance. They are gone, the sky empty now—nothing hovering, a stream of men from the pits, gray skinned husks lying scattered over the earth, the worms devouring from within. The sickness has spread, the network of creatures like one long line of electrostatic shock, stilling their waving arms as they wither and die across the silent barren plains, our new home.

Dive Bar Prophecies

—Ian Welke

Scale tilts his glass back. He had planned on taking it easy, but when he gets to the Alley and sees Hen tending bar, he knows instantly that he’s doomed. Scale’s one of her chicks. One of the regulars she looks after. So any plans he had on taking it easy today are hopeless. His glass refills with rust brown liquor as soon as it’s emptied. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe having his wits about him is overrated. If he wanted clarity, he’d go somewhere else. He shivers at the thought. There’s nowhere else he’d rather wait for his doom.

Hen laughs and refills his glass. Hen is short for Henrietta and is never meant as a comment on her spiky, radioactive-red hair looking like a chicken comb. Not to her face anyway.

Rain, hail—or from the sound—nails and bolts, hammer the sheet metal roof. The door creaks open and the strong smell of diesel wafts inside as the next drunk stumbles in from the Wire City chaos.

Alley is an apt name for a bar that sprung up over an alleyway between Wire City and Spittle. Hen’s uncle had served drinks from a bar in the Alley even before the roof had been put on—now the bar runs most of the length of what had once been the alleyway. Hen added flooring and put in partitions creating a storeroom and a restroom adjacent to the Spittle side.

Scale stands at the Spittle edge of the bar eyeing the woman he’s here to see. Or to avoid. He hasn’t made up his mind which. She’s sitting at the opposite end of the bar, no doubt telling the yuppie next to her what’s going to become of him.

The room sways when Scale stands and he staggers through the crowd. Hen calls the back of the bar the “dance floor,” but it’s really just an area where drunks stand and drink massed together. There’s no music, but sometimes they might sway. Scale’s glass is refilled.

He catches just the tail end of what Cassandra tells the yuppie. “…It will not be as big a change as you might think.”

The yuppie shakes his head. He looks at the door like he’s desperate to get out of this place, the place Scale believes to be the closest thing to heaven there is. The man wears a nice suit. His nails are well manicured. What he’s doing in the Alley, Scale has no idea. Has he come here to listen to her only to ignore what she tells him? To the best of Scale’s knowledge, no one believes her. They all expect someone with a rosier outlook and then what she tells them is always worse than they’ve imagined.

The pounding on the roof stops at last. Scale thinks this will help him concentrate, but everything just blurs instead. He finishes his drink again, but by the time he’s set the glass down, it’s already refilled.

Hen just snickers at him through the metal mesh in her teeth.

Scale looks back towards Cassandra. The yuppie has left. They make eye contact. Shit. Scale looks down at the floor and then in the opposite direction from where she’s sitting. He’s still not sure if he wants to hear what she has to say to him. None of the people who have heard her speak have come to good ends. But it raises the question, is it better to know or not?

<~~O~~>

The bathroom at the Alley is a one-holer. There’s room for more toilets, but Hen has a deal where she pays no rent if she lets the bosses use most of the bathroom as a drying shed for Husks. The skins of the vegetable men are dried here then broken off and sold for smokes. Hen drew the line though at using the place as a slaughterhouse. Her clientele need a place to piss, and they have too much incentive to vomit as is. This suits Scale fine. The vegetable men creep him out, something about the skittering noises they make, but he wouldn’t want to see them slaughtered. He’s not even sure that their skins are really all that intoxicating. The only times he’s smoked their husks, he was already plenty drunk. Ah well, to each their own and who am I to judge?

Scale is well-practiced in the use of the Alley bathroom. He doesn’t look at the skins drying to his right. He averts his eyes from the thick mung churning in the toilet below him. He stares at the bullet hole in the wall, inches from the bridge of his nose, until he’s finished pissing. He’s not sure if that bullet hole was put there as a focus aid or not, but it works.

When he comes out of the restroom, the barstool next to Cassandra is occupied once again. At first Scale is convinced the next victim is a child, but then he realizes she’s a dwarf. Her face is as old and worn as his, but her legs hang from the stool reaching less than half way to the ground.

“Your letter will never arrive.” Cassandra says this in monotones as she does all her prophecies. She distracts herself, tracing her finger in spilled liquor between the cracks in the bar.

“What do you mean, will never arrive? Everyone gets their letter. That’s what happens. You live here, going through the motions pretending you’re alive until you get a letter saying all choice is gone and you’re taken to a true full-time work opportunity.” She spits out the last part of the sentence like it’s venom. The dwarf snorts and finishes her drink before she climbs off her stool. She shakes her head in disgust and storms out of the bar.

Scale eyes his glass and realizes he’s just putting it off. He needs to ask. It’s the right time to do it. He opens his mouth to speak, but no sound comes out. His skin starts to burn in that familiar embarrassed glow.

Metal on metal followed by a screeching of tires and screams from a crowd come from outside.

He follows a handful of drunks out through the Wire City-side exit. He can’t see at first through the crowd standing on the curb.

One of the drunks from the bar points ahead. “That little one’s had it.”

The body of the dwarf, what’s left of it, is a smear in the road. A set of tire tracks perfectly bisects her body laterally.

Scale goes back inside the bar and downs his shot. That’s the quickest he’s seen one of them get it. He resolves not to talk to Cassandra.

For all he knows, her telling it makes it happen.

<~~O~~>

Scale comes out of a blackout standing in the crowd on “the dance floor.” Cassandra is talking with a teenage boy at the bar. Scale’s in a conversation of his own, but he doesn’t recognize the man he’s speaking with and has no idea what they’ve been talking about.

“…artificial turf,” the man concludes.

Scale raises his glass as if to toast. “Of course.”

He turns around and she’s staring straight at him. Cassandra is practically on his toes. There’s no way out now.

Scale wipes sweat from his eyes. It stings a bit. His sweat’s mostly alcohol or whatever industrial solvents are in the drinks here.

She doesn’t blink or break eye contact. “You’ve been waiting to hear it. You’ve been waiting to find out what will happen to you.”

“Waiting might not be the right word.” His glass is gone. He just had it a second ago. Now he can’t find it. Now that he needs it.

“You only think you’ve been avoiding it.” There’s no expression on her face. He hadn’t noticed that before. When she tells someone what will come of them, she doesn’t laugh or cry. It doesn’t matter to her one way or the other. “You’ll hear it when the time comes.”

“So, I don’t have a choice? Not even a choice on whether or not I hear you say what’s going to happen?”

“You wonder if you have free will? With what you do between now and when you are taken away?”

“Or if I die first?”

“You do not?” It’s hard to tell by the inflection in her voice if she means this as a question or a statement.

“Die first or have free will?”

“Neither.”

“How can that be? I could still kill myself now before I’m taken away. There must be free will before we are taken.” Scale shakes his head. The room spins. He remembers his promise to Hen not to be sick on her floor. He staggers outside into Wire City and they’re there waiting for him.

The delivery man has a submachine gun pointed at Scale. He’s flanked by two guards holding riot guns. He reaches with his free hand into a chest pocket and pulls out the letter Cassandra warned Scale he’d receive before he could even kill himself.

Scale accepts the letter before he can even think what to say to argue or to run or charge and attempt suicide by cop.

The words in his conscription letter swim on the page. He just manages to comprehend the meaning, before he’s shackled and thrown into the back of a van. When he wakes, the hangover is upon him. His own sick coats his stomach. He wishes he could pass back out as the van rumbles off to the mining enclave where he will work out his remaining days.

The last thing he thinks before the van rocks him back to unconsciousness is at least that answers my question. My choices are made for me now.

There is a pleasant clarity in that…

Dodge and Midge Escape the Silo

—John Palisano

There was no way for me to write anything down. Everything was wet. That meant there were no paper things anywhere, or electronic things. The only way to keep a story was up here, in the old chemi-electric soup of my head. So, maybe there’ll be some details missing, and how and what people said are definitely going to be paraphrased. And so what of it? Maybe it’ll be more interesting, anyway, you know? Like someone once said: stories are like life with the boring parts cut out.

The State flooded. Everyone knows that happened now. The waters from the Nuremberg Silo broke, then poured into the streets. Everyone found out the hard way that the silo was a lot more than a silo. It was a conduit to the ocean. It was like a giant valve, with a filter mechanism inside to purify the salt and debris from the seawater, so that it’d be vaguely drinkable and useable. When the lid came off, the ocean came surging in like a tidal wave from hell.

The fat fucks above loved it. They were fine; their places had all been built up on stilts, hadn’t they? Well, not real stilts like you see by the ocean, or on the earthquake savvy houses in Japan and Los Angeles…no…their stilts where the buildings with their penthouses and self-sufficient units on top. Now we know why all the electrical units and water tanks and communications parts were on the roof. The cunts knew this could happen, and in fact, thought that it really well might. They were right about that, and right about covering their pearly asses. We watched them glide from rooftop to rooftop on their solar choppers, landing on the heliports they’d made with their countless financial hordes. Once in a while, they looked down at us, in the same way we used to look down at a bug on the street. Oh? There’s one of those gross things? Should I step on it? No. Don’t want it all over the bottom of my shoe. Too much work. Just carry on. Fuck off, little thing. No time even to squash you.

So they were apt to have us exterminated by the water, you see. They ignored our screams and hollers. So much shit flushed away.

And what else would we do with these sorts of things, after all? Revolt on the open water? Unlikely. And those twats knew it, too. we’d be more concerned with motherfucking survival than revenge. But what those tweets up there didn’t count on was the resilience and deep down memory of the downtrodden. We’d play their little game. We’d sail. We’d find refuge. We’d do whatever it was we had to do in order to get through the long days and nights, but we always knew there’d be a time. Our anarchy hibernated.

Me and Midge got real lucky. We both worked at the Mainframe, where all the communications came through. True, most people had computers and phones the size of their fingernails, but the sheer amount of processing needed to manage everyone’s fingernail computers and constant checking of their Fece-book feeds needed a lot of horsepower. That was what was happening at Mainframe, and where me and Midge knew one another. When the silo went, we were in the bottom of the building, just about to put together a Shell. Shells were big, refrigerator-sized boxes that housed servers. It was a crap job. Very physical. You always cut yourself or jammed something because the makers weren’t interested in it being easy or elegant for us, just that they worked reliably, and came in under budget. That’s where me and Midge came in. We had to sand rough corners, bend metal panels, and push and shove pieces in to make it all fit and go together nice enough. Then we had to test and integrate.

Midge heard the silo go.

“What’s that?” I asked him. “Sounded like a plane hit a skyscraper, or some octopus God is cracking through the heavens.”

“Worse,” he said. “Pretty sure the silo is gone.”

”The silo?” I asked. “You sure? Why?”

”The Clan did it,” he said, looking at his fingernail computer. “Looking for retribution. But the water’s rising.”

Just as he said it, we both heard the water gushing in. That was enough for both of us to look at one another and freeze. We both had the same idea. “Put the box on its side,” he said. “Quick.”

We used our might and got it down. The things had to be watertight in order for the Mainframe cooling systems to work properly, so we were in luck. “Do you think it’ll carry us both?” I asked.

“Hell of a time to find out,” he said.

“Right.” He jumped inside. We both saw the first streams of water coming in across the floor. I grabbed some of the panels and bars we’d normally used to assemble the things, and threw them inside. Then I threw in my knapsack.

“No time for personal belongings,” he said. “Get in here.”

“Got two bottles of water and my lunch in there,” I said while I climbed inside the box. “We might need it.”

I’d gotten in with moments to spare. The tide rose quickly and the pressure went quickly. We were rushed forward, lunging clumsily inside the box. We both knelt down. What else would we be able to do, anyway? That was the issue, wasn’t it? We had no other means to escape.

“Now what are we going to do?” Midge had curled himself up against one side of the shell. I made sure I kept to the opposite side to keep balance.

“We’re going to need to wait this out,” I said. “Wait for the waters to subside.”

“Where do you suppose they’re going to go?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere, I hope. I do plan on being home tonight.” I didn’t even believe myself.

“Don’t fucking count on it,” he said.

The facility was flooded and it felt like we were inside the bowels of a sinking ocean liner. “Look at us two turds flushing out of this toilet.” I laughed. Midge looked at me sternly.

Taking a panel and using it as an oar, we quickly passed the break room. Martha and Desiree were up on a break table. We made eye contact. They obviously hadn’t thought of a way out. “Swim. The water’s only getting higher.”

They didn’t even look up. The water had hypnotized them—because, I thought, maybe they’d seen so much of it. Rumors were rampant that the State filtered sedatives into our water supply. Of course the conspirator inside me had a gut feeling it was true, and people would willingly drown in the stuff like cultists drinking tainted Kool Aid. And of course I had built up a healthy tolerance by treating all water as though dangerous enough to give me the squirts for six months.

“Aren’t we going to help them?” Midge asked.

“This isn’t exactly a limber Coast Guard vessel, is it?”

“Don’t be gleeful.”

“Do I look like I’m on a bender here?” I asked. “Row. Before the water rises and we’re trapped.”

“Fine.”

We did. I’d been right, too, about the rising tide. The floodwaters filled over five feet high, and steadily increased.

At the end of the hallway, I had an idea. “Row toward the emergency chute,” I said.

“We can’t go down,” Midge said.

“Up and out,” I said. “The entrances are all locked during work hours. I’m sure no one released them in time.”

“They may have,” he said.

“Too risky.”

“Say the water doesn’t raise us up and out?”

“We can climb the rest of the way.”

“We’ll lose our ship.”

“Aye.”

As we passed offices, we saw others. Many familiar faces I’d seen daily, but never knew beyond a shrug. We paddled onward, down a long, large hall. Someone swam on their back and laughed. “Isn’t this grand?” said the high-pitched voice. Eric the angry redhead, we’d called him. No one knew his real name, just that he’d come around and find something wrong, tell you in no uncertain terms, and would be off.

“They’re opening the rear doors,” I lied. “Hurry.”

“Where are you two going?” Eric asked.

“Out,” I said.

The very next little hallway had already filled enough to its top third. “All the people? They’re going to drown,” Midge said.

“They’ll be lucky. Free day off work, at least.”

Just past the little hallway, our makeshift boat paddled toward the emergency shaft. We fit inside and looked up. “The gate’s shut,” Midge said. “Now what.”

“We open it.”

“That’ll set off alarms.”

“Will it?”

“Likely.”

“So what? People should know there’s an emergency happening.”

“Don’t they already know?”

“Doesn’t appear it’s obvious to them.”

The water rose even faster. We heard breaking windows below, but no voices. “Hear that?” I said. “Might be people breaking out and swimming for their lives.”

“Perhaps just the pressure from the water. This building is not an ocean liner.” Midge looked up as we steadily rose.

“Glad to see it go.” I looked up, too.

“We might be back, scrubbing it clean for the Clan.”

“Ever the optimist.”

At the top, the lever for the door slid back without force. As we were rising, we simply put our hands up, and the door opened. “Not as heavy as I would have thought,” Midge said.

“I’m not surprised. They cut corners on everything.”

In a swish, we were up and out, and the waters were just lapping onto the top of the building. “Feel that?” I asked.

“There appears to be a strong current.”

“Right.”

We paddled hard at that point. I looked around at the roof deck, as some portions of it were still above water. “Guess we’ll need to find a new place for the Holiday party this year.”

Heading toward the railing, we both saw it tilt. “Is that…?” Midge asked.

“Moving,” I said. “Yes.”

“The building is falling beneath us,” he said. “Hurry.”

Of course we paddled like furious young men at that point, anxious to get off and away from the collapsing building. Even if it was underwater, the prospect seemed quite nerve-wracking. “Do you think it’ll suck us underwater?” I asked.

“Only your last girlfriend sucks underwater,” Midge said.

“I take great offense to that,” I said. “She’d never lower herself.”

“Not for you, at least.”

“Now’s not the time for joking,” I said.

We made it past the railing, and kept going. “When do you think we’ll be far enough away to be safe?”

“Until we can’t see it.”

There was a deep, lumbering sound from below us. It sounded big. Like a whale having trouble defecating.

“That must be it falling down,” Midge said. “All those people.”

When we looked about, it appeared we were on the open sea. There were very few landmarks visible. The State was most certainly under hundreds of feet of silo water. Midge and myself floated on top in our mainframe shell just as a current picked us up. The whole lot of it smelled acidic and oddly sweet simultaneously. Noticing such a detail would normally be lost on me, but it was overpowering and undeniable.

“There’s not much above water,” Midge said. “How far do you think this goes on for? Is there regular land anywhere we can go?”

“Who knows? There is that group of things jutting out of the water over there. Arrogant boners.”

“The Clan?”

“They knew. That’s why they’re so high up.”

“They couldn’t possibly…”

“They have.”

Midge looked uncharacteristically mad and focused. “Let’s pay them a call.”

“Right on.”

<~~O~~>

Paddling up toward one on the Clan’s buildings, we both found our anxieties increasing. “At least no one is pointing guns at us and trying to sink us.”

“Too busy sucking each other off for being so clever to save themselves, I’m sure.” Midge always kept up the wit. Obvious even when we traversed our flooded state.

As our mainframe case ship made it toward the bulk of the building, I looked in my bag and was happy there was a power cord for my laptop bundled. We used it to tie ourselves to a window handle. “Do you think we’ll ever be able to come back down and paddle away?”

“Betting on it. Unless we can borrow a chopper.”

“You can fly a ghetto bird?”

I thought for a moment. “No,” I said. “That’s not something I could safely bullshit my way through, truth.”

“Glad to know you can be honest at times.”

“It doesn’t suit me.”

“Agreed.”

“Well, just remember where we parked. I always space that sort of thing.”

We stood and were able to reach the story above ours easily. Using the Art Deco ledge was like climbing up on a diving board from being inside a pool. Not pleasant, but doable. The window opened easily.

“Hope there’s a couple girls in there waiting for us in teddies,” I said.

“You’re such a chauvinist. Women are not just there for our sexual fantasies. They are complex human beings.”

“I know,” I said. “Just all this work has made me excitable and lonely.”

“You have me.”

“I don’t gather you’d look fetching in a teddy.”

“Maybe not to you.”

The room was empty of life, although it overflowed with political posters rolled and rubber banded. We opened one. Cornelius Dekker had posed in his most serious face. For Immediate Leadership. These things were always fixed and Dekker was a poisonous character—of course Baroness Un would help him get elected as a state official! Democracy was a fucking illusion.

I dropped it. “Not posters of Taylor Swift, like I’d expected.”

“Shame.”

Outside the room, the halls we encountered were void of people as well.

“What are we going to do when we see someone? Normally they’d have us jailed at the minimum for trespass. Without the world, all bets are off.”

“If they try anything, we’ll try back.”

“I hope they don’t. I don’t like violence.”

“You’d lie down in front of a tractor so they couldn’t raze your house, wouldn’t you?”

“And?”

“I’m not the one who’d lure you away with a pint and a premonition.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“So I’ll do the heavy lifting. Then we’ll see.”

Around the bend we heard voices. We didn’t hesitate. Coming upon a large meeting room, we spotted immediately the signs of the Classists. Their little metal water bottles looked like a miniature city on the table top. A flagpole stood near the opposite end of the room, a token of all they ruled. The smell of their alien musk overpowered, but there was a new equation: fear. High pitched voices volleyed back and forth.

“What are we going to do?”

“Are we trapped in here forever?”

“How did this happen?”

“We’re safe.”

“What about our friends and families who aren’t in the towers now? Are they lost?”

“How can we know?”

“Is there a plan for this?”

“How will I be able to check my Fece-book? Is that still live?”

That last bit set Midge off, and he made sure to announce us. “Of course you twats would be most worried about self-promotion during all of this, wouldn’t you? A bunch of grovelling micro-celebrities, aren’t we? Worse than the super celebrities. Even stupider and even more obnoxious.”

The lot of them looked round and spotted us. They looked like well-manicured lawns with a fresh spot of dog shit right in the center. The dog shit being us. Mamma wasn’t kidding when she said I was a little shit growing up. That little shit had turned into a drain clogger.

“You fucks knew this was coming,” I said. “How many people have you killed while you sit in your tower worrying about posting pictures of yourself on the inter-not?”

“Is Moog here?” one said, one with Clark Kent hair and designer eyeglasses. “Please page him.”

“There’s no electricity,” said another weasel face.

“Don’t we have a contingency for that?” said Clark Kent.

“We should, but it’s not functioning properly,” weasel face said.

“Fuck all of you,” I said. “Playing field’s been evened. Our time to pitch.”

I had no idea why I was saying that, or what I was going to do, but I wanted to pay them back for ever allowing the silo to flood.

A small fellow, must’ve been under five feet, brown all over, burst into the room. He looked like a bulky Chihuahua. “There’s a problem in here,” he said, and I was sure he was trying to ask a question, but he wasn’t quite all there upstairs. Too much Chihuahua mating, I suppose.

“This shrimp is your security?” Midge asked. “You’ve all grown so out of touch.”

The Chi alien charged at us, knocking Clark Kent a foot to the side.

“What do we have?” Midge asked.

I didn’t say anything, but as the Chi alien lowered his head and ran at me, I lived up to my name and dodged left.

Chi alien went right past, oblivious.

There was a loud crash.

We turned to see he’d somehow managed to get his entire head into the wall, cracking their wood panelling.

The room went silent.

I tapped Chi alien’s shoulder. “Hello?” I asked. “You all right?”

He didn’t respond. At all. Even to several taps.

“The bugger’s gone and taken himself out, Dodge,” Midge said. “I can’t believe it.”

“One down,” I said, turning to the worms. “Now what to do with you all?”

One said, “We can use you. Stay with us. We’ll take care of you. Bring you into the fold. When this is all over…”

“When this is all over, you’ll have us hung,” I said. “Don’t even pretend.”

With that, I went for the flag pole. They parted like the Red Sea. Midge had no idea what I was up to, either.

All the years hard labour made me nimble enough to pick up the flagpole, which I immediately swung at a skinny young extra-terrestrial with a spotty beard. He let out a surprised little eeky mouse sound when the ballast crashed into his head and shoulder. He dropped to the floor like a swatted fly.

The others caught on and tried to move out of the way, but I took out two with my next swing.

They yelled and protested, and Clark Kent was the worst groveller. “Please. I have wives. A family or two.”

“So did I,” I said just before I dropped him cold with the fiercest swing I had in me. He dropped in such a way that he’d bent over the table, his hands knocking down the metal water bottles.

Midge had caught on and made quick work of shutting the doors so they couldn’t escape.

I didn’t care about them. I quite enjoyed it. How could these dumb, weak aliens have enslaved us? What had been their tool?

They’d made us stronger, me stronger, while they got smaller, weaker, less apt.

Raising the flagpole over my head, I dropped it on the heads of any left quivering or shaking, or seizing. Putting them out of their misery? The entire thing went by so fast. It was no more offense to me than sitting on a deck and killing a swarm of mosquitos.

Tossing the flagpole to the floor of the room, I spat on it. “Fuck you you fucking fucks.”

Midge nodded at me. “Rough day at the office?”

“Yes, well, at least I got in a good workout at the end.”

“True,” he said. “So now what?”

“We wait.”

Our blood lust satiated, we made our way through the stairwells to the top of the building. As we climbed, we heard other voices. “You know? Those fellas we took out probably had no real power over anything. Maybe we should have waited.”

“Who cares?” I said. “It was fun, and I feel better.”

“By the way? I didn’t know you had a wife and kid.”

“I don’t,” I said. “I was just messing with him.”

“You can be such an asshole.”

“Who can’t?”

On the roof of the building, we looked out at the flooded state. It’d be several days until the water from the silo receded. We busied ourselves scavenging for food throughout the building, hiding in faraway rooms, taking turns on watch. We were never discovered, even though it came close a few times. The State must’ve known where we were though, they knew everything.

When we made it down to the ground floor, after the water had mostly gone, we went out through the garage. There were people down there, but they took us for regular workers.

We passed our mainframe boat, which had been deposited squarely on top of one of those Lincoln vehicles. When I climbed up, I was happy to see my old shoulder bag still inside. I grabbed it, and headed out and away from that area, back to where my home had been.

The world was coated in mud and debris. Shattered wood littered the streets. Anything that wasn’t a giant State structure had been destroyed. There was muck and junk everywhere. “Where are we supposed to go?” Midge asked.

“Somewhere we know,” I said.

“Where’s that?”

“Back to work,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll have that up and running in no time.”

“Huh,” he said. “Back to work. Of course.”

“It’s all I have right now.”

“So none of this changed anything then? It was all useless? What we did?”

“Not useless,” I said. “Just done.”

We carried on, making our way through the disaster.

Of course, in time, it was cleaned. Our backs. Our blood. Our hard labour. The people in the towers went on. We went on. Another silo went up. We never found out how the first one had been breached, but there are whispers that there were two shady fellows who’d climbed up top after they’d stumbled upon the plans, and undid several valves that’d have catastrophic results, before scurrying away. Two shady fellows who always seemed to have something up their sleeves.

We rebuilt what we’d lost. Not the same, but we grew used to it.

And every once in a while, when me and Midge get together, we laugh about things.

“Remember the time?”

“Sure do,” I say.

And we get into it.

Just like I did now.

“After all that, was it worth it?” Midge likes to say.

“Yeah,” I always tell him. “Fuck yeah.”

You know what? There’s still a lot of piss left in these old fuckers. You know that if you hold it in long enough, it drives you nuts, and at one point, you’re just going to have to give in and let it out any way necessary. It’s building up again. Building. Soon it’ll be too much again, and me and Midge will have another tall story to tell.

Tribes of Neurot

—Beckett Warren and Tony Yanick

You hear about that shit in Lacertus?

Like, how fucked is it that they are calling this whole operation transplantation, rather than what, colonization?”

“Or pathological.

“How about genocide? But that is the power of naming. Lacertus is a dead culture; it would just be rotting otherwise, so why not make use of it. Fuck those still there and not exactly dead.”

William received the transplant about six weeks ago. After the surgery, the new arm just hung limp by his side, but this was to be expected. The donor neurons are incompatible with the host’s system and it would take time for the new cells to assimilate. Working through arduous therapy, William’s central nervous system would slowly incorporate itself into his new arm.

They tell him he is a miracle of modern science. He represents a new age for man; its mastery over the world is now complete. Only a matter of days before The Wire falls to Eden. Bodies are now fully replaceable, and that is only for the sucker luddites who require more than pure consciousness.

Effective immortality, so let’s see it in your affect! public service announcements boomed. It’s important to keep the people in high spirits.

“Thank the Lord for Mr. Ford!” Taylor told us.

Best of all—even better than tech Utopia—William would soon go back to work.

The one thing is the grabbing.

“How wonderful!” his family exclaimed. “You just moved your hand!”

William didn’t have the heart to tell them it was only involuntary movement, no indication of healing or progress, a mere twitch.

“Have you seen any of the communiques?”

“A couple of translations. Not gonna lie, I can’t make sense of their coding.”

“Same here. The horror of the whole operation though, that comes through.”

“Yeah, fuck. I heard they are just reaching out, grasping for help from anyone, but it is just ignored.”

“What can we do down here?”

Before long, William was gaining control. Perhaps control isn’t exactly the right word. He could command his arm to perform tasks. More were added to his repertoire daily. But occasionally, during times of stress or celebration, it would happen. The grabbing.

His physical therapist would tell him he’s doing well, and not to be afraid to grab on if he needed extra support. His family beamed at his expression of physical affection. The nurse gently chided him for being cheeky. But all this was not him.

William really wanted to get back to work, but this groping shit was not going to fly at the office. What to do?

“We shut it down.”

“How do you mean?”

“We shut the motherfucker down! We’re not gonna let any shit through. Nothing.”

“Yeah, a total work stoppage. Block the boat in solidarity.”

“ENS says this shall not pass.”

William has been developing strength in his arm. “Day by day, you’re doing great,” his physical therapist told him while removing the more resilient exercise band from its plastic wrapper. He was surpassing his therapy goals and by any objective measure was “doing great.” The will power he showed in his course of physical therapy and the steady improvement in motor coordination allowed William to eventually learn to manage his new arm and reassert real control. He knew he should be happy.

With the embarrassing groping behind him, he hoped to get back to the office, but days passed without taking a shit, and it was weighing him down. This was prolonging his return to normalcy and he fell farther into a depression. He tried everything to escape it. Guiding imagery and meditation just led to more and more frustration. He could only think of the work that must be piling up and how far behind he was. And that backlog reminded him of his constipation. How much had productivity dipped in his absence? He could not help but feel the despair welling up from his gut.

“We’re doing it. They’ve got to listen to our demands!”

“We are in a revolutionary moment!”

“Shit, here come some Mephisto vectors.”

<We are all Lacertus.>

“Fuck it, we are riding waves of history.”

His gastroenterologist told him not to worry. “Your digestive system has a mind of its own,” the doctor paused briefly and chuckled. “It really does, the enteric nervous system.”

William groaned, but he couldn’t decide whether it was caused by constipation or a reaction to the pun. He wished his doctor had stuck to comedy and left the doctoring to someone with no humor.

“So if you feel a little blue, while you’re blocked up, it’s just your tummy saying it’s upset. Likely some side effect from the immunosuppressants.”

William was determined not to let a simple gut reaction stop him from doing what he was great at. He was a fool to let such a trivial matter eat up so much time, time that he could use to be productive. With a renewed sense of fortitude, he left the doctor’s office and immediately made his way back to work. The feeling must be joy. Understanding and excelling within one’s prescribed place. Social marketing logistics had never seen such efficient routing. The grin that crossed his face was shit eating. He had to take a moment to take it all in.

“A dispatch finally came. No need for it to be transcoded though.”

“What do you mean? Have they agreed to our demands?”

“The displacement and killing program has been terminated.”

“You’re kidding! That’s absolutely fantastic!”

“No, you don’t understand. There’s no need for them to continue. The last of the remnants have died. All of Lacertus has been replaced.”

“That can’t be. We were winning. We brought everything to a stop down here. What else could we possibly have done? Why did we bother? I guess there’s no reason for CNS to listen to us no matter the discomfort or disruption we can cause.”

“Fuck it. We might as let it all move.”

His supervisor stopped by William’s station to welcome him back and congratulate him on his remarkable progress.

William stood up to shake his boss’ hand and thank him. Recognition, really that is what makes everything worth doing. The world really is grand.

As he stood there, he felt some movement. It was somewhat unusual, like parts were working that had been dormant for a spell.

William’s wellbeing quickly dropped along with the contents of his bowels, and his constipation ended suddenly in a burst of humiliation.

“Our agenda stays undone.”

“At least there was that momentary break of control, which is more than you should hope for.”

Within that act of illness a new virus was born.

Diogenes.

The RNA cried out:

The futilitarian is no depressed moper.

To put it bluntly, we acknowledge that there is no point.

Not only do we reject the productivist pose, but the illusion of producing.

We have read the tea leaves and see no telos.

We embrace the apocalypse while eschewing the eschaton.

Doctor Sector and the Song of the Artificial Transmatizer

—Love Kölle

Doctor Sector skimmed through the print-out in his hand, his eyes rapidly traversing the syllables and syntaxes at random, his brain registering only fragments of the strange document birthed by the blinking machine in the corner of the room. The manuscript had been spewed out by the good doctor’s Artificial Transmatizer™, the product of months of hard labour, tedious theorizing and, at times, frustrating, seemingly fruitless field-tests. When he finally got the machine working, and all systems indicated “go”, he had been filled with joy—but now, seconds after the Transmatizer’s virgin voyage, his initial state of bewildered triumph had been subdued and fast replaced by confusion. “What in God’s name…” he muttered and flipped through the print-out. “No sense. No sense at all…”

Here and there, he picked up phrases, terms and descriptions that he’d previously encountered in interviews with, and accounts by, genuine transmatics. This indicated success, that the machine actually had executed its orders correctly and done what it was designed to do. The strange, almost Dadaist nature of the text and narrative, however, clouded the possible benefits and usefulness of the contraption. What good was a machine that could experience synthetically induced Transmatica if no one could understand its eye-witness account of the realms of true reality?

Outside his window, the night lay heavy with a sort of silvery darkness, the streets and buildings of Visitacion Alley lit up by the moon. Sector ground his teeth. “Goddamn spaceship!” he said and shook his fist at the giant silver dollar in the sky. He took a few seconds to calm down, and then sat in his favourite chair, put on his reading glasses and turned his attention to the very top of the document.

So what if I, being born as a non-transmatic, can’t thoroughly understand that which lay beyond the prison of the Solpisis. There might still be some useful pieces of information embedded in this peculiar print-out. Maybe the machine just needs some tweaking; maybe some true transmatic will be able to decipher all of this. It doesn’t have to be an utter failure.

He thought of one of his ex-neighbours, a man whose name Sector had forgotten long ago. The fellow had been eager to experience that which lay beyond, but had met the same grisly fate as several of the human subjects who had tried to perceive the real world without actually having the correct means to do so.

At least the Artificial Transmatizer had that going for it: no one had to get hurt whilst trying to experience the Eye, no one had to have their genitals ruptured and/or anus prolapsed, anymore.

At least the machine had that going for it.

He started reading the print-out, from the top.

-----Scan: complete//Initiate action: transcript print.

-----The only language spoken in Ersatz is insult.

Only insult language is spoken in Ersatz.

Language: the insult is Ersatz.

Ersatz is insult language and insults eat way into Ersatz breath and Ersatz thought and mind and space and then there is only spikes and teeth outward and the language takes a bite out of passer-by faces like the Black Dog virus does at night. Heavy skies over slavers and slaves //

Primordial ooze rises gently // From facial cavities: // The last hope of freedom dissipates in Wire City where androids shred faces and the rape gangs high on animalistic angerlust drink midnight //

Flesh vessels decay, air lies thick with black and the stratosphere is filled with the hungry eyes of the guards of this iron reality penitentiary dimension. //

The air is a poison that eats its way inside your torso and stamps “property of the Slave State” all over your internal organs // The jagged contour of her ribcage is a wasteland of isometric projections // We’ve both dwelled deep in the smoggy basin of the apathy. Welcome Ersatz insult language says the Black Dog as it gobbles the sound of grinding molars and somehow there is always static noise tick-tocking on, infinitely, in the background. These are the Slave State territories, Bub. These cities are holding cells and slaughterhouses in a film that is your life //

A film that passes through your fingers //

But you are not the director //

You have no say or influence of edits or the way this all ends // The Sweet Merciful Release of Death is on, honey. Bring me a goddamn beer and fast! // There are faces in the walls with wires for hair and cameras for eyes // Mic-ears //

The salt mine swallows your dreams, forever //

The rhythm of eternal submission erases memory of freedom still lingering in brain cells and your chores become your heartbeat and life-blood as you work and work and work and there can never be windows of light in your head; no looking into sun kissed fields of fresh air and not-mechanical sing-song-birds because the next day is a work day again and again and again and this is all there is, all you get, the only air you’ll ever breathe, because you are property of The Slave State and this is the last stop before complete conscious annihilation.

The conquest of your mind and spirit is the last annihilation before complete stop.

Consciousness: stops.

Annihilation.

---End: transcript print//End session: Transmatica---

I feel hungry, Doctor Sector thought. It’s late, but I don’t care. I need a bite.

An image of the entrance of the Red Onion sprung into his mind, and he rose from his chair.

Black-eyed Dog

—Spike Marlowe

Whether we were infected or not, we were all impacted by the Black Dog depression. I was no different than anyone else in that. My mother was one of the first whose body wasted away; she was only one of thousands whose body would line Ersatz’s streets before the Black Dog was identified and diagnosed. I hate the Black Dog as much as anyone, but the illness and how it wrecked Ersatz was no reason for what came next.

<~~O~~>

My mother gave me Tess when I was twelve. It wasn’t for my birthday or any other special occasion. She said it was because she felt a girl in the middle of a hellhole like Ersatz deserved a true friend. The day Mom brought Tess home, Tess was a black furry ball with giant floppy ears, big feet and a perky little tail.

I’d never held a dog before, let alone a puppy. She was silky soft, and immediately nuzzled into my chest, tail wagging, smelling like nothing I’d smelled before. She was a scrawny little thing, and gulped down the leftover rice and broth I fed her.

<~~O~~>

The Grinderz Cult were the ones who decided the Black Dog depression originated with dogs and was passed from dogs to humans. As the story goes, some ravers had eaten a couple of black Labs one night while completely blasted out of their minds, caught the depression from the dogs, and proceeded to pass it around Ersatz in a fit of mad fuckery.

This is, of course, bullshit.

The story continues with the Grinderz performing some ritual where it was revealed to them the secret of curing the disease: If all black dogs were ritually sacrificed to the Grinderz god, their god would heal Ersatz of its depression.

<~~O~~>

That last afternoon, before Tess and I leave town, I see multiple copies of a flyer hanging all over our street. The Grinderz are offering reward money for each living black dog turned into them. It’s good money—more than I’d earn in a month of work. That’s when I know—I won’t only have to avoid the Grinderz—I can’t trust anybody.

That night, the night Tess and I leave, I am lying with Mark on his mattress in the far corner of the apartment he shares with his brothers and cousins. We are lucky—the apartment is empty except for the three of us. There’s no one there to turn us in.

Mark and I have held each other like this before, so many times, but this time is different—instead of talking about our future, we talk about our end, and the future Tess and I will share alone.

“It isn’t worth it, Anna,” Mark says. “She’s probably only got three or four more years left.”

I take a moment to breathe, and then ask the question I already know the answer to. “Will you come with us?”

“You know I can’t leave my family. They can’t survive without me. Besides, I don’t believe Wire or Spittle will be any better than Ersatz.”

I take his hand and hold it to my heart—there is nothing else to do.

As Tess and I leave, I palm a vial off the small table near the bathroom. It’s several doses of Q—it takes only a little of the magic drug to take you to heaven; too much and you are dead.

It belongs to Mark; this vial alone will support him and his family for a few weeks, but I don’t know what else to do. If the Grinderz’ catch Tess and me, at least there’s a way out. If they don’t, it will get us set up in Wire. “I will not feel guilty,” I tell myself as I kiss Mark goodbye.

<~~O~~>

Not long after my mom gave me Tess, I got sick. I spent days under the spell of the fever, nightmares filling my mind whether I was asleep or awake. I cried from the pain of the disease, I cried with fear from the nightmares. Through it all, even when I was out of my head, I knew Tess lying at my feet, and I knew it would be okay.

It was always like this—when I was hungry, when I was cold, when the world hated me, when my mom was sick and when she died, Tess was always there—she loved me, and I was not alone.

<~~O~~>

It’s a piece of glass that gets us. First, Tess yelps and then begins to cry like I’ve never heard. I plead with her to be quiet, I pet her and hold her and try to figure out what’s wrong. She limps for a few feet; finally she lies down and refuses to walk any more. “Come on, Tess,” I whisper. I wrap my arms around her neck and pull, but she refuses to move.

“Who’s there?” a woman calls. There’s a click and then skinny beam of a penlight is shining on us.

“What’s wrong with your dog?” The woman walks closer.

“I don’t know. I think it’s her foot.”

The woman shines the light on the pads of Tess’ feet. “See here? It’s a piece of glass.”

The woman reaches for Tess’ foot. Tess growls, low in her throat.

“Look, I can take care of it.”

“What’s your problem? You don’t trust anybody?”

“Look, I can take care—”

The woman ignores me and lifts Tess’s paw, despite her growls.

“Your dog isn’t going any farther. I have a kit at my place, just over there.” She motions toward the other side of the road with her penlight. “There’s no way you and your dog are getting any farther. Stay here, and I’ll get the stuff.” She turns off the light, and she’s gone.

“Come on, Tess.” I pull at Tess’s neck again, but Tess won’t budge.

I think about Mark’s vial in my pocket. I could take it now, and we’d be gone before the woman, or any Grinderz she might call, came.

Tess nuzzles my chest and whimpers again. I stroke her head and I realize if there’s any chance at all, we can’t give up now.

The woman isn’t gone long, and she turns on her penlight as soon as she approaches us. She squats down and says, “Your dog—she’s got black eyes just like my Sadie had. She was the best dog I ever had. She was black, and so sweet, sweet just like your dog. What’s her name?”

“Tess.”

The woman ruffles around in the small bag she’s brought with her. “Now, this is going to hurt. You’ve got to hold onto Tess. Make sure she doesn’t bite me; the best dog will bite when it hurts.”

I wrap my arms around Tess’s shoulders and hold her close. I whisper in her ear, telling her she’s a good girl.

Tess growls again when the woman lifts her paw, but I just keep whispering in Tess’s ear, holding her to me. She yelps, but then the woman says, “Got it. I’m going to put some ointment on her paw. It’s of my own make, so it’s good. And then I’ll wrap it up. You keep holding onto her.”

The ointment smells fowl, and Tess continues to whine for a moment, but then she’s quiet. She tilts her muzzle up licks my jaw.

“See that?” the woman says. “It’s good stuff. Where are you and your dog headed?”

“Wire.”

“What for?”

“My mom’s there.”

“Right,” It’s obvious she doesn’t believe me. “Why would a girl and her dog be headed to Wire in the middle of the night?”

“My mom is sick.”

“It seems to me, you’re sneaking out of town and doing a terrible job of it. You in some kind of trouble?”

“No. I told you—I’m trying to get to my mom.”

“You’re not getting there on foot.”

And now I start to cry. “I’ve got to get to Wire. If it were your mom, wouldn’t you want to get to her?”

“My mom left me on the street to die when I was young.”

I consider telling her I’m sorry, but I don’t. We sit there in quiet, and I try to figure out how to get Tess up and walking.

Finally the woman says, “I’m tired. I have half a mind to leave you out here by yourself; I know you’re in some kind of trouble. This is the thing—there’s very few good people in this town. Everyone is in it for themselves, except for a few of us. There’s a few of us who are still trying to make this town an okay place to live. Now, if you’ll trust me, I’ll take you to my place, give you a meal and maybe with a little rest you’ll be on your way.”

“How far is Wire from here?”

“Miles, girl. Miles.”

Tess and I follow the woman to her one room home, more a closet than a home. The overhead light is dim, but its sodium light illuminates enough that the woman immediately figures out why we’re on the run.

“She’s all black. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”

“Are you going to turn us in?”

The woman shakes her head. “If my Sadie were alive right now, we’d be in the same mess as you.” She pulls a blanket from the mattress on the floor and hands it to me. “Wrap that around your girl.”

Tess is already lying on the floor, watching the woman. I wrap her in the blanket and we wait while the woman stirs a pot over her hotplate. When she feeds us, it’s watery soup, but it’s the best we’ve eaten since the Black Dog got my mom.

The woman sits down on the floor next to us, and runs her hands through her chopped gray hair. Finally she says, “I have a friend with a car. She’s squirrely, but she’ll do a lot if you have anything of value.”

I decide to take a chance. I pull out the vial. “It’s Q,” I say.

The woman pulls back. “You deal?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “It was a gift so I had something of value. So I could start over.”

“Okay, then.” The woman sighs. “I’ll go talk to my friend.”

Tess and I fall asleep, just before sunrise, and we sleep through the day. Just before evening, we wake and the woman feeds us more soup. “My friend will be here early in the morning, while it’s still dark. You’ll be into Wire just before sunrise. Maybe Wire is better, maybe it’s not, but you sure don’t want to be wandering around in the dark.”

True enough to her word, she wakes us in the night, and we are loaded into a car that smells of smoke and old food, and we drive toward Wire.

The driver is young, with a beautiful face and a brilliant expensive smile she obviously didn’t get in Ersatz. She parks the rusted beater at the edge of town, and the engine idles. I look up into the rear-view mirror and our eyes meet. She nods and I hand over the vial. She smiles that shiny bright grin and winks. The old woman is sitting in the passenger seat. She looks over her shoulder and reaches her hand over the front seat towards me. She shakes my hand and says, “You take care of that black-eyed girl.”

“Thank you,” I say, and hold her hand for a moment.

Tess and I get out of the car and cross over into Wire as the sky fills with morning light. Tess sniffs the air. It’s a strange thing, I think, how the air is so different between here and Ersatz. The air in Wire seems cleaner, somehow. A young boy runs across the street with a black dog. Tess gives a little bark, and I can’t help but hope this bodes well for what happens next.

Ruins (Poems)

—Seb Doubinsky

memories of my 1980s
electricity was gray then
and Doc Martens were stolen from the dead
lips smelled of tobacco and knuckles of ether
dreams were of bigger cities
or even bigger cities
in ruins if possible
yes that would have been a plus
then
in my 80s
the tired jeans the sad leather jackets
the dark silver rings and the roving eyes
ah us young godless gods aware of their own mortality
why did we leave our shields and armors
to rust in the neon dust?

we moved slowly towards dawn
thinking it was sunset
and our disappointment
was tremendous
memories are moving transparencies
a train that is always late
a plane that never arrives
a car that never stops
and our face
a transparency upon transparencies
we didn’t like poetry
we didn’t believe in poetry
we were poetry
raw hopeful and unrhyming
it was the time
when love not death
smelled of cold tobacco
and hate had painted nails
and a Lulu haircut

“no one is innocent” you said
and I wiped the tear from your cheek
which burned my hand like acid
the beat was distant
and our hearts
our hearts
were full
of concrete
and electricity
oppression
aggression
revolution
were our lyrics
and the ghosts
that still haunt you
even though
you have shielded
your small ears
with your gold
decorated hands
forgetting that
you have left thus
your most precious parts
unprotected
our sun shone yellow over the gray roofs
warming our faces and the tip of our fingers
and our white breath lead us on
towards a new day of love and self-destruction

Hiroshima was another
word for love then
we raced on the escalators
on the subway tracks
and in the empty supermarkets
we raced not to compete or to win
but to give our kisses
an aftertaste of breath and blood
rain was our best friend
whispering words of comfort
that erased the lies of the sun

Tiny Iris

—Andrew Hook

Truth was, he had held worse jobs.

Hank took a shot of whisky when Jonstone wasn’t looking. An oasis in his pocket. He’d begun drinking thirty years previous and hadn’t stopped. Reality distorted like the world viewed from the bottom of a swimming pool, but it was the best kind of reality. He could live like that. Sometimes it might ripple and the quiver would affect him, but mostly he lay looking up, watched a succession of girls go by. The bottle in his pocket was a top-up. It kept him ticking over.

In front of him gaped a succession of rectangular pigeonholes. Street names set in Letraset burnt his eyes when he focussed, but after a repetitious week he knew the matrix without needing to look at it. His right arm bent at the elbow and flicked envelopes into spaces just wide enough. Unlike Kricfalusi who used to be a darts player and had a different rhythm, Hank could keep the movement going perpetually rather than working in threes.

The only time he liked to work in threes was when there was a girl either side of him.

He pocketed the bottle and gripped a pack of white and brown envelopes elastic-banded together. Slipping off the elastic he kept it on his wrist. You never knew when you needed a weapon. The envelopes shot out of his fingers as though they were pulled by wires into the rectangles. Occasionally there might be a postcard but he was reluctant to look at those. Adjacent to the matrix for Ersatz there were buckets for the next nearest sprawls: Wire City, Shell County, Spittle, Moosejaw. He didn’t know what went on there. He might have been birthed in one of those places, but whether it was the alcohol or the overlords those details were now forgotten.

Knocking off after an eleven hour shift he pushed soup around a bowl in the canteen, avoiding the looks of others. Kricfalusi was in deep conversation with Baby Guts. Hank kept away from them. Sometimes Kricfalusi would approach him for advice at the track, as though a loser like him could run a big deal. He was sometimes mistaken for a learned man. He didn’t care to push that, but didn’t negate it either.

In Ersatz you needed to keep yourself to yourself, not deviate from your expected persona. Any diffraction was an aberration. Before you knew it you’d be transferred to the mining enclaves, pointlessly digging out nothing of any importance until the day you died. At least in the post office you could consider you had purpose. Not that Hank ever knew anyone who had actually received a letter. When he started on the mail run he only delivered to derelict properties.

He sank into Morgan’s Bar on the way home. Shadows barely entered his peripheral vision. The clientele were like oil on water. It didn’t pay to look too hard into those dark places. You might see the Black Dog looking back.

Hank shrugged his shoulders, held the pose, buckled in on himself. His clenched fingers around the beer bottle made a straightjacket from which his lips were the only exit.

It was night when he pulled into his driveway, scattering ghosts and cats alike. The girl from the night before wasn’t there. He couldn’t tell if she had taken anything. Remembered next to nothing. Collapsing onto the sofa, one leg hanging over the arm, he dreamt of a better life. A life he never remembered upon waking.

<~~O~~>

“Hey Chinaski!”

Jonstone was on his back. He pretended not to hear. Then Jonstone got the bullhorn out and everyone had to listen.

Jonstone jerked his head and thumb towards his office. Maybe they were linked. Hank scattered the remainder of envelopes in his hand and followed him in. The door wouldn’t close due to a patch of chewing gum on the floor.

“I’ve been watching you,” Jonstone said.

He left it at that. Allowed a pause enough for a lesser man to start wondering if it were good or bad. A big enough pause for someone to incriminate themselves with something Jonstone didn’t know by hastening a patchy excuse. Hank just kept quiet.

Jonstone put his hands on his hips. “You’re doing good, but you can do better. How many letters you shift in a day?”

Hank thought: four, five hundred? “Seven hundred,” he said.

“Whatever the figure it’s impressive. But there’s those reckon you can do more. What’s holding you back?”

Hank wondered if the whisky had been noticed. But they all had their vices. Kricfalusi sometimes killed people. Then he knew where Jonstone was headed. The only thing preventing him doing more was time.

He didn’t voice it. “Whisky?” he said.

Jonstone didn’t even shake his head. “We’re increasing your hours,” he said. “Don’t want your talent going to waste.”

“What’s in it for me,” Hank said.

“Peace and quiet. We’ll get you working solo. How does that sound?”

It sounded like an echo that wasn’t worth repeating.

“When do I start?” Hank glanced at the clock over Jonstone’s desk. It wasn’t yet ten in the morning. He’d been working since eight.

“We’ll roll it through,” Jonstone said. “No point wasting time. You knock off at six am.”

Hank’s fists balled in his overall pockets.

The day dragged like a gorilla with its knuckles on the floor.

Kricfalusi bailed out at seven. “So long chum.”

Hank heard the silent P at the end of the sentence.

He needed the work. He knew the alternative. More work. Work ’til you dropped, became fodder for the overlords. Even in the nihilistic zone that was Ersatz a strip of humanity hung on like pastrami between rotten teeth. He flicked envelopes into rectangles ’til his right elbow moved of its own accord. Until he was machine.

Around 4:44 he felt it might be his last day on Earth. He took another slug of whisky and the next envelope he touched was torn. A photograph shot out of it, the envelope hitting one rectangle and the image another. He cursed. Stepping across the metre gap that separated him from the matrix he plucked each item out with different hands.

The photo was cracked. A Polaroid. Looked like it had been taken some time ago. A woman was naked, her body bent at the waist like she was affecting an impossible pose. Tiny tarnished cymbals with tassels covered her nipples. Her legs were positioned so that Hank couldn’t tell if she were shaven. He took another shot of whisky. There was something about her. He turned the photo over. Nothing was written on the reverse.

He sat for a moment on a chair he’d never used. Rubbed his eyes. The envelope was torn along one of the shorter ends. He pinched it and it gaped, a literary maw. Easing the letter out he saw it was written on tracing paper with pencil. Holding it to the light confused it, lettering showed both sides. Looking around, Hank took himself over to Jonstone’s office, flattened the letter on a blotter that looked like a squid had been murdered there, and turned on the desk lamp.

Hey, it began, here’s that photo I was telling you about. You know what’s needed right now. Put the R in evolution. Address is on the other side. You want favours?

There was a signature. Hank squinted. Tiny Iris.

He looked around. Wondered if it was a set up. But it was too random. He memorised the address. Tore the letter into pieces and pushed them against the whisky bottle in his pocket. During the remainder of the shift he took out a piece at a time and ate it. He stuffed the photograph down the front of his pants.

Come six am the day shift filtered in like sunlight.

Hank slung his jacket over his shoulder and walked stiffly out of the post office. He wouldn’t head home just yet.

<~~O~~>

The address was at the end of a long line of fetish markets. He walked it. If he took his car it would be stripped, totally fucked.

The smog was so thick he couldn’t see more than one person at any time. Terrible music blasted from boomboxes, assaulting his ears. Wise guys, murderers, kids no more than eleven with flick knives in their pockets, child prostitutes, the detritus of the population floated towards him out of the smog and away again as though he were the central figure in a burning zoetrope.

The canvas awnings of the markets were layered with grime, anchoring them to the sidewalk. His eyes, suddenly independent of his brain, shot from side to side, from fetish to fetish. Hank was an alcoholic womanizing misanthrope, but even he had to blink away the sights. He swallowed bile—his first meal of the day. A long time ago he recalled some Spanish surrealist movie and the abhorrent contents of a box which fascinated a blonde prostitute. Yet his memory was as fogged as the smog and within seconds he couldn’t recall the thought.

In Ersatz the overlords held an eraser to your throat.

The corners of the photograph dug into his thighs.

He remembered Kricfalusi taking a swing at him after he made the mistake of giving a dud bet at the track. Dodging the punch had been the most exercise he’d ever had. Now he was walking into danger he couldn’t see.

The smog cleared near her brownstone. Hank looked up. There was a gargoyle at each corner. He pushed on the door. It didn’t give. Adjacent to the door rectangular buzzers were alongside nametags that couldn’t be read. Hank pushed the number which corresponded to the address. If a bell rang somewhere in the building then he didn’t hear it. Mail boxes lined the foyer. For a moment he wished he were back in the post office, shovelling letters into slots; or even demoted, the straps of the sack digging into his shoulders, cutting ownership into flesh. Then the intercom sparked a green light and the clearest voice spoke a hello.

“I’m here for Iris.”

“Come on up.”

There was a click. The door gave way with little pressure. Hank took a shot of whisky. Only one remained. He entered the building as though it were a chrysalis. The walls folded around him. He pushed through gossamer paper sheets.

At the top of the stairs she was waiting. “You’re not Proctor.”

He looked her over. She wore a gingham sundress that clung to all the wrong places. The camera did lie.

She sighed. “I suppose you’re here now.”

He followed her into the apartment.

She sat. Her hands straightened the material of her dress. Her knees were exposed and Hank focussed on those. They were the only real thing about her.

She was half his size. He could replace the whisky bottle in his pocket with her.

“So,” she said, “what brings you here?”

He knew the answer was years of repression, the dominance of the Slave State, the possibility of the R in evolution, the intimation of something other than he lived. But he also knew it was the booze, the monotony, the futile search for a fuck which might shine a light on a flower growing in a soul. He wondered how tight she was. How old she was.

The dress used to be blue and white.

She smiled and suddenly there was something.

“The favours,” he said.

She reached into the dress and pulled out a leaflet. It was crudely reproduced, like most of the human population. A tentacled being like a hot air balloon whose ropes had swollen and was missing a basket was drawn white on black. A big cross covered it. Underneath, in a child’s handwriting, were the words: Fear can stop your loving. Love can stop your fear.

He glanced at Tiny Iris.

“Is this some kind of joke?”

Her expression was inscrutable.

He slugged the remainder of the whisky. No going back.

She held out a hand. Her fingers were cool. He had to bend to touch them.

She gestured to a door which looked painted on the wall.

“Through here,” she said.

But the door was a window and he fell.

He was falling. With the gingham dress billowing around him.

There wasn’t much more to it than fate.

pic twelve

Pebbles (Dennis W. Kaddy)

—Michael Faun

Gossamer threads from dead deck hands’ hair stitch together the wounds of a crippled vessel.

Lice crawl out of its cargo and chew open the false gate.

Iwate Prefecture

Captain Kaddy pinwheeled backward and slipped on the icy deck of Loopnova, where he thrashed about like a hairy infant, trying desperately to pry off the enormous spider crab wrapped around his face.

Every hand on deck guffawed, cigarettes slumping from their toothless yaps.

“A hand, anyone!?” Kaddy yelled. “I am, after all, the captain of this cursed ship.”

The crew’s laughter increased.

Kaddy’s patience ran thin. He let out a warrior’s roar and managed to break the legs of the crab and stomp it to pulp near one of the rusty mesh pods.

Too bad half his face went missing in the process.

<~~O~~>

Kaddy was sitting in his wheelhouse, staring with his one eye over his useless men. “I’m a feckless cliché…” he grumbled and adjusted his piratey eye-patch made out of a shell and some boat rope. “The crew have no respect for me anymore…they think I’m a weakling.” He grabbed the bottle of Hibiki whisky from the dashboard and took a slug before dousing a cotton pad with the booze, cleaning the meaty half of his face with it.

On main deck, the crew ran their mouths about how badly they wanted to lock their captain up in one of the pods, haul him to the bottom of the sea and feed him to the crabs. At least, they said, that would bring in some damn crab.

Kaddy had never been a man of strength or leadership. He’d inherited Loopnova, the 130 ft. long off-white sea-wench from his uncle Leonard a few years back. Before Leo mysteriously disappeared from the face of Earth.

A battered greeting card had come in the mail three years later that read: Greetings from Moosejaw! Under the text, carved into the brittle paper, was a face contorted in misery.

Kind of like Leo’s.

<~~O~~>

Crumpling metal screeched and empty pods slammed against the hull, interrupting Kaddy’s mind-wandering. The mayhem was accompanied by complaints and curses from the crew.

Mutiny was in spitting distance.

“You’re all a bunch of old hags, you hear me! Nothing but whining old hags!” Kaddy bellowed drunkenly from the bridge where he stood peering out over his slaving men, but his upset holler was never heard—a small string of screwed-up black letters pouring out of his mouth.

Loopnova collapsed into a tilted shipwreck that popped up from the surf like a rusted metal morel between two hunks of ice.

I wish I was a salty dog…

Loopnova leaked water. She drank at an alarming speed.

Everything was over now and not a single stinking pod of spider crab had been caught during the entire season.

What now?

More debt? Yes.

Lynching? Likely.

Slow death and food stamps.

Captain Kaddy sucked air into his lungs as Loopnova sank to the tarry black bottom.

<~~O~~>

The first thing Kaddy saw when he came to was drippy graffiti sprayed on the green brick wall:

WelCum 2 Moo$eJaw, $uck’Er!

Beside the offensive text was a crude image of a big spidery mountain and tunnels with conveyor belts packed with chained-together humans.

Kaddy couldn’t recall how he’d ended up in Moosejaw, but the name did ring a bell someplace far inside his sore head. He decided to simply settle for the fact that he was alive, though pressed into a moving box in a slime-ridden alley that smelled of piss and feces.

This untamed miasma that had dominated most of his earliest memories!

Kaddy crawled out of the wet cardboard and his bones creaked as he sneaked out from the grimy mantis-colored corner.

The main street teemed with crustaceans of all sorts, from slithering tongue worms and bobbing fish lice to leggy spider crabs and glassy-eyed lobsters; all bustling about in the red off-world dusk. Moosejaw was alive with them: prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, suits lugging dismembered human children as attaché cases.

This was crustacean hell!

In the horizon, far beyond winding shell tunnels and pebble strewn highways, was a pulsating vortex mouth in a colossal crab-shaped crag.

Xenophobia and utter terror surged through Kaddy where he stood frozen on the street corner, absorbing this nightmare sea-floor city. He slowly prowled the main street, keeping his head low and his fists balled in his trouser pockets. A few blocks later, after having strolled along several endless twisting avenues, he came to a cul-de-sac and stopped by a dingy back door painted with a repulsive motif of a giant crab strangling a human being.

Left with little choices, Kaddy stood outside for a few moments before he hesitantly entered the shady establishment.

Le Café de Crabe Étranglée

Kaddy threw a cursive glance over the bar. The cloying atmosphere of the Café was pushing him to the verge of suicidal. Sea-foam covered the floor and the tables were rocks covered in lichen by which a handful of human patrons sat; all possessing one or more body parts that had been replaced with crustacean features. One, a woman with eye-stalks sagging like wilted penises, was checking him out from her stool close to a 50s jukebox screaming out a depressing saxophone solo.

Golden metal vomit.

“’Ello, what can I get you?” the barkeep snarled. His accent rang French and he had lobster claws instead of hands, snapping them irritably to catch Kaddy’s attention.

“Whisky if you have,” Kaddy muttered, wondering how to pay for the drink. “Excuse me,” he said to the busy barkeep, who responded with a dirty look.

“Oui?”

“How do I pay for the dri—”

“Put it on my tab, Isidore,” a grating female voice cut him off.

“Yikes!” Kaddy gasped as he turned to thank his benefactor and found himself staring right in the hideous face of the curious woman with the eye-stalks who, until now, had been seated by the jukebox.

“Hi there, handsome,” she hummed an inch from Kaddy, her oozing sea-breath triggering every instinct to flee.

“Hello…” Kaddy replied, trying to breathe through his mouth.

The barkeep slammed a glass of whisky on the counter before him.

“You must be new here in town,” the woman crooned, winding her eye-stalks around his neck and nudging his ear. “I would’ve remembered such a cute face.”

Kaddy nervously dipped into his drink. His body temp climbed as he glanced past her at the table with one hungry patron who had begun to tear off strips of face-skin from the human skull it held within its spidery grasp.

“Yes, yes, I am new.” Kaddy took another slug of the brine-tasting booze. “Ahem, would you mind telling me where this…Moosejaw…is, exactly?”

The woman retracted her eyes. “I think we should wait with the questions and have a little fun first, huh?”

Kaddy had to steel himself not to fall off his stool from the woman’s overpowering odor.

“I live in a cute little shack not far from here,” she whispered and let her scab-ridden tongue wet her lips as she parted her legs, offering a front row seat to pussy pandemonium.

His stomach churned. “Thanks, but I really need to know my whereabouts. I just woke up here a few minutes ago and I must get back to the port in Kodiak. My boat sunk and…well, frankly I’ve got some very pressing matters to tend to.”

“You’re cute and delusional,” the woman scoffed.

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t they tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Kaddy started to get pissed.

Crab-eye woman laughed in his face. “That you’re in the Slave State, honey!” A sparking probe shot out from her genitals and wound around Kaddy’s neck. “My pricey time meal ticket…”

Gasping for air, Kaddy dropped his glass and it shattered by his feet. He flailed his arms as the stunning pressure from the pussy-tentacle increased.

The woman and the bar patrons leered at him. Their faces melted like water paint, as the last air left Kaddy’s lungs and his lights went out.

<~~O~~>

Anarchistic fossils rape the existence of humanity, imprisons them in cages made of bony predators.

Fiddler crabs salute the coming of Crustacean Christ and peels the skin of his disciples and their shells crack under the knife of the Sea God.

<~~O~~>

Kaddy returned from his nightmare-tainted coma and found himself tied to the flatbed of a cart that the crab-eye woman was dragging along the streets of Moosejaw. His body, from neck and down, had been replaced with a pink crayfish shell sporting eight segmented arms.

“The Slave State…,” he gasped as the last memories floated ashore. “Holy shit!”

They were moving in the direction of the vertiginous tunnels sprouting from the enormous crab-shaped mountain. A crowd of sea-critter citizens were gathered by the many tunnel entrances. They had brought modified humans with them, and appeared to be haggling with the brawny gate-keepers. Some of the leashed humanoids were traded for a paper, and was then led onto the tunnels’ conveyor belts that transported them up into the mountain’s vortex mouth.

Kaddy realized he was staring behind the daunting mask of Moosejaw, at its true face that was a million times more harrowing.

Moosejaw, Slave State, was one cold-blooded savage. Naked and futile.

They arrived at the tunnel gates.

“How much for this one?” crab-eye woman asked the keep: a muscular Kamchatka Crab in burgundy garb with spots of neon yellow.

It eyed her goods.

A ripple of unspeakable terror surged through Kaddy as the crab guard bored its black eyes into his.

“Is it Transmatic?” crab guard croaked and scratched the tip of a claw over Kaddy’s left eye.

“I think so. It mentioned the Nova Experiment during surgery. Why, does it matter? It will make an effective pebble miner.”

The guard didn’t reply and began to inspect Kaddy’s tied-up appendages. “I can postpone your drafting call with thirty days. That’s my offer.”

“Deal!” Crab-eye woman beamed and rolled over the cart to him.

The crab guard stamped a paper and handed it to her.

Producing a globe-shaped transmitter thingy edged with metal teeth, the crab guard inserted it on top of Kaddy’s head and clipped off the bonds with his claws. Crab-eye woman lopped off whilst the crab guard threw Kaddy onto the chugging conveyor belt.

Ascending the tunnel, Kaddy stared blankly at the other slaves before him while the round doohickey hat slowly fritzed his brain and scraped away the last of his flimsy debris of humanity.

Robbed from feelings, Kaddy scuttled up the last stretch to the gaping vortex mouth and was sucked down the throat of the mountain and into its bloated gut—the pebble mine.

A dozen slaves were plucking rocky grits in the shaft where Kaddy was stationed. He recognized one of them.

“Uncle Leo!”

“Dennis…,” Leonard drawled and turned his atrophied body in Kaddy’s direction, staring at his nephew through vacant eyes. “So you got my greeting card…”

“Yes, Leo. What a vacation.”

“We are part of something big now, Dennis. Something larger than life.”

“Maintenance labor is glorious, Leo.”

“To those who are greater than us!” Leo saluted. He flicked a pebble into the dusty air and died, tumbling down a steep cliff before he plunged into the cold water below with a faint splash.

Kaddy checked his sides to be sure nobody was watching before he stole uncle Leo’s pebble tank containing three-year’s worth of mining and dumped them into his own empty one.

<~~O~~>

Chains attached to the mountain breaks by time for suffocation.

Scrapes off the meager flesh to feed the shoals of the hungry.

The Master leers at his slaves dying by the foot of the cliffs and carves the sign of wealth on the crag of despair…

The Last Straw

—Hal Duncan

Report of Agent Jack Flash

I land on the red tarmac of George Square, roll, and come up on one knee, arms out for balance, with a natty Kung Fu flourish of greatcoat, as my skybike spins on through a flap frenzy of scattering pigeons, clips the stone pillar of the Cenotaph, and crashes through the front doors of the City Chambers, blowing wood and glass and blackshirt guards out in a fireball glowing green and brilliant blue with all the super-saturated orgone-vapours of a Triumph V2’s fully jizzed-up ray-tanks. Bollocks, I think. I really liked that bike. But, fuck, thing is, I had a little itchy trigger-finger issue with the missile I was meant to use just as I passed over Pitt Street Police HQ and left myself without too many options. Sometimes you have to make a sacrifice, I know, but it’s still hard. I really liked that bike.

I flick the roach of my Afghan Black away, and stand to scope my circle of not-so-admirers. Fucking pipers.

<~~O~~>

After twenty feet or so of space cleared in awe of my lithe and limber landing, most of the square is filled with tourists, but I’ve landed smack dab in the middle of the Big Show’s backstage, so to speak. The inner circle of my own personal mosh-pit is lined by several hundred pipers, drummers and assorted instrumentalists from all corners of the Empire—but all of them white as Widdemore, of course—dolled-up in every colour of kilt and tunic, toppered with busbies, pith helmets and turban-like towers adorned with peacock feathers, ostrich plumes or sundry silliness. It’s Albion’s soldier sons come home for the Umpteenth Annual International “How Fucking Loud And Annoying Can These Bastard Bagpipes Drone?” Competition, and I can feel my hardcore hackles a-rising. The bagpipes are a weapon of war, baby; Christ, I never understood why the spooks of Guantanamo use Death Metal for torture when sixteen seconds of the 14th Royal Highland Falangists would have me naming every pet pooch in my family history as an Al Quaeda top dog.

So I’m glad I’ve already got my Curzon-Youngblood Mark I chi-pistol in my hand, because if any of these biscuit-tin kaffer-killers so much as lets a breath out in the direction of a chanter he’s getting a discharge of the most dishonourable kind, I tell you. I click the juice on full to let them know that I mean business. No mistaking that salty-ozone scent-and-tingle of orgone energy that fills the air. Sex pistols, honeybuns. Can’t beat them.

“Easy, tigers,” I say. “You know how fast I am. As fast as you can say—”

<~~O~~>

“Jack Flash!” shouts the brightest spark among them, and I spin, brighten him a tad more with a chi-blast in his sporran. “First prize, beefcake. Ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling. And your next question, for the cuddly toy, is: how the fuck do I get out of this?”

No answer. Shit.

I can see over the heads of fleeing tourists that militiamen are pouring in from the side-streets round George Square. The thopters that nearly brought me down over the M8 are now flitting like bats overhead. And it’s only the mob of bandsmen that are blocking the blackshirts from a clear shot at Imperial Albion’s Public Enemy Number Nothing, Jack Flash, terror of the tartan traitors, scourge of the Scottish fucking Fascists.

The pipers are gearing up for a charge, I can tell, idiot grunts ready to fall for King and Country if it helps bring down a swaggering faggot anarcho-terrorist who’s wreaked royal havoc, I’m proud to say, in the Second City of the Empire today. Today of all days, I can see them thinking as they twitch, inching forward at the corner of my eye. This is our day. This is our big day.

This is Empire Day.

They lunge for me, but instead of trying to take them all I backflip, spring-heeled jackboots firing me high over the head of the first to reach me up onto the shoulders of the one behind. I don’t stop there, kangaroo-kicking myself back into the air, but forward this time and into the thick of them, leaping, loping from shoulder to shoulder, piston heels punching me up through the air and them down to the ground behind. I hurdle, somersault and twist this way and that through the gunfire of the militia, headed for the still-smoking rubble of the once-grand entrance to the City Chambers, but with all the directness of a drunken flea.

<~~O~~>

With the bastard pipers getting mown down by their blackshirt brethren I could play this game all day, but I’ve got a job to do and the Fox will yap if I don’t do it right, so I snatch a glinting gold baton from a bandleader as I crunch him underfoot, give it a twirl just to annoy them all the more as I set my sights on the goal. Problem is, of course, by now the doors are a kill-zone of cross-fire from inside and out. They know where I’m headed, who I’m headed for—a special visitor for a special day, here to award the winning band with shiny silver trophies and shit. But they don’t have a fucking clue what Jumpin Jack is capable of. I make a high jump, tuck and roll, come down, coiled like a cat for one surprise spring, hit the ground and—

—hear that imaginary applause as—

I land on the stone balustrade of the balcony, crouched and grinning like a gargoyle at the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, who stands there gawping out at me through the French windows. The Provost is ranting wildly at four Special Support men about, well, I can’t hear his words but I’m guessing that I’ve pissed on his parade. I raise my Curzon-Youngblood in a mirror image of this other Jack’s rising hand, slowly, surely, until we’re both pointing at each other, his finger trembling, my gun-barrel accusation steelcast-steady, chi extending in a straight line from my shoulder to the centre of his forehead.

I give him a second to feel the fear.

<~~O~~>

Let me drop-kick you an update on the dream-state of the nation. We got ID cards and internment, fucking Special Support forces with their lightning bolt insignias. The thought police I’m fighting are in your head, snuggle-bunnies, and it’s time you all woke up to that. The conspiracy is society and every one of you is a fucking sleeper agent of your own worst enemy, the status quo. Scary thought? Scary worldview? As Nietzsche said, all great things must first wear masks of terror in order to engrave themselves upon the hearts of men. You know, I always loved Freddy’s one-liners; man would’ve made a great stand-up. God is dead, badoom tssh. That kills me every time—and makes me stronger too, but then I have a hardy constitution. Others are not so lucky.

The Foreign Secretary, the Jack Straw that broke this camel’s back, points at me in silence for an exquisitely eternal second, then his mouth is opening, he’s mouthing his horror, and the Provost and the SS men are turning…so I blow him a kiss. And then I blow his fucking brains out.

That one’s for Puck, motherfucker.

<~~O~~>

Charge Sheet for the Arrest of Tamuz Masingiri

Strathclyde Militia

Charge sheet

<~~O~~>

Defendant’s Copy

<~~O~~>

Division: X

Station Charged: Partick Police Station

Date of Arrest: 24 April 2006

<~~O~~>

Full name: Tamuz Alhazred Masingiri

Born: 1 April 1984 in Tell-el-Kharnain, Palestine

Sex: MALE

Religion: Heathen

<~~O~~>

CHARGE(S)

You are charged with the following offence(s). You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention now something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

<~~O~~>

1 F1900405—refusal to produce ID card on request.

<~~O~~>

On 24/04/2006, in Kentigern in the Lanarkshire Region of Caledonia, refused repeated requests to produce identification card, contrary to Section 28, Clause-22 of the Sedition and Security Act (1984)

<~~O~~>

Reply: I told him I didn’t have it with me. It’s in my flat.

<~~O~~>

Time charged: 16:46

Date charged: 24/04/2006

<~~O~~>

Report of Agent Guy Fox

The subway station at Calvingrove is busy with commuters and militia at this early hour. The latter in their black shirts and their Day-Glo yellow flak jackets form a gauntlet of security, standing in pairs up at the turnstiles, at the bottom of the escalator, and at various points along the platform, checking ID’S and scrutinising faces. I hand my chipped card over at the bottom of the steps, wait as it’s scanned, then take it back with a polite smile and a tip of my bowler, then stroll out onto the platform just in time for the arriving train. This close to the Rookery—that square mile of ghetto fortress at the heart of Kentigern’s West End—it’s no wonder that security is tight, the Rookery a haven to the dregs and debris of society, the type one really doesn’t want travelling too far beyond their own thieves’ den. Sadly, these blackshirt goons are mostly trained to look for punks or razor mods, common-or-garden crims up to the more banal forms of no good. They’re really not equipped to deal with a master soulsmith like myself, moving in an identity forged from the skinsuit to the credit history. I’ve been Thieves Guild from the age of four and those thirty years have stood me well in my life of subterfuge and subversion. Even the smartpaper nerve-gas pack I’m carrying under my arm is indistinguishable from the newssheet folded round it, by any but the highest range of scanners. The wonders of this modern era: so many gadgets offer so many ways to hide a bomb.

I get off the underground at St Enoch’s, leaving the newssheet and its contents on the seat, no more conspicuous than the half a dozen Suns and Metros lying scattered around the compartment.

<~~O~~>

A short detour through City Central Terminus takes me past a post-box where I despatch the latest batch of anthrax-loaded envelopes addressed to various stars of sports or screens who’ve publicly endorsed the Blair regime. Craven apologists for fascism every one of them, one can only hope they’re shallow enough to open their own fan mail. Outside the front entrance of the wireline station, I climb into a black hack and give the driver a destination that’s halfway to the Rookery, doubling back on my tracks; it never hurts to throw a little randomness into one’s movements.

I text in a quick bomb threat as the taxi heads up Woodlands Road—using recognised keywords so the authorities will know to take it seriously—then ask the cabby to pull over at a garage for a second. I buy a soft pack of Gitanes and pay with a forged twenty, tapping out a memorized number on the phone and sizing-up the chap behind me in the queue while I wait for my change: a normal-looking fellow in a business suit and cashmere overcoat; it seems a shame to land this on him but needs must when the devil rides. I hit send on the phone and fumble it towards my pocket with a fistful of coins and notes, clumsily bumping into cashmere man as I turn.

“Sorry,” I say. “All fingers and thumbs today.”

He mumbles his own apology and steps past me up to the counter, no idea that the phone now sitting in his pocket is not his own, or that in five minutes time he’s going to be standing in a circle of heavily armed militiamen all shouting at him to get down on the ground now. Poor soul.

<~~O~~>

Another hack back to City Central Terminus, a quick change of suit in the public toilets (switching the black I’m wearing for the pinstripe in my briefcase, the bowler for a fedora), then an airtrain over to the South Side, a third taxi, and I’m walking up to the reception desk at the main entrance of Southern General Hospital, handing over an Imperial passport in the name of Dr Reinhardt Starn. This is a long-term sleeper self I’ve been working on for five years now: a German defector, based in the American Dominions, showing up at conferences around the UK, publishing papers in the journals, corresponding with learned colleagues based in Albion, and awfully eager to at last meet, in the flesh, my fellow expert in the field of biological defence, Dr Shipman who just happens to be giving the Health Secretary, Jack Straw, a tour of his bleeding-edge research facility on this very day that I just happen to be in town.

“I’ve told him all about your work,” he’d said. “He’d love to meet you.”

“Well, you know, I’d love that too, Harry,” I’d said.

I take directions and a clip-on visitor’s pass from the receptionist and, chatting casually with my blackshirt escort, stroll along the corridor to the staff lift, swipe my pass through the electronic lock and, inside, hit the button for Sub-Level 5.

<~~O~~>

“So with these nanites in his system,” says Shipman, “a serviceman in Iraq, say, will be able to deal with any of the viral agents or neurotoxins we’re currently using on the field. No more incidents like the Basra Barracks fiasco. I understand your people are working on something similar, Reinhardt?”

I nod. It’s true, actually; my people are working on nanotech personal defence systems; it’s just that my people are not actually refugees from the Futurist Reich working for the Pentagon, but rather Arturo Guevara and his team, down in the Republic of Venezuela, trying to come up with something that might help the New International Brigades in their struggle for freedom. It’s a pity the Starn identity gets all the glory, really, because Arturo’s work is quite brilliant.

The Foreign Secretary stands gazing through glass into a quarantine room where cleansuited doctors are injecting all manner of microscopic horrors into a test subject.

“And when will it be ready?” he asks.

Not soon enough for you, I think. Arturo’s bitmites, coded to his stolen DNA pattern and transferred with a casual handshake on our meeting, should already be starting to work their wicked ways, replicating through his system, eating Mr. Straw from the inside out. In about six hours’ time he should look like an Ebola X victim, bleeding from every orifice.

Puck wouldn’t have approved, I know. He’d much rather have had the bitmites rewire Straw’s pleasure centre with an irresistible scatophilia that would have him eating his own shit, time-coded to kick in with maximum compulsion at some public dinner with the Governor Generals of every Dominion and Protectorate in the Empire. That’s what Puck would have wanted.

But Puck isn’t here.

<~~O~~>

Interview with Tamuz Masingiri

DCG: Interview commences 17:04. Present in the room are DC Powell and myself; Cameron Mackie, solicitor; and Tamuz Masingiri. Right then, Tamuz Masingiri. So why wouldn’t you show me your ID card? It is Masingiri, isn’t it? The fingerprints aren’t going to tell us that your real name’s Mohammed or Moussaoui or something, are they?

TM: No. That’s—

DCG: Because you know we can check these things, don’t you? You’re not in the desert now, Tamuz. This is civilisation, son. We do have computers, you know?

TM: I’m not your son. And, yes, that’s my name. I’m not lying to you.

DCG: Alright, alright. No need to get stroppy, son. I just want to know that you’re who you say you are. ’Cause if you’re not, you’d be better to tell us now, than have us find out from the records.

TM: This is stupid. Why would I lie about who I am?

DCG: I was just asking the question, Tamuz. This is just routine. Just for the record, can you confirm that you are Tamuz Masingiri.

TM: Yes. I am Tamuz Masingiri. For fuck’s sake—

CM: DC Griffin, do you have an actual question?

DCG: All I want to know is why you wouldn’t show me your ID card, Tamuz? You haven’t answered that yet.

TM: I told you. I didn’t have it with me. I just—

DCG: And why didn’t you have it with you?

TM: I forgot it.

DCG: You are aware of the law, aren’t you? You know you have to carry it? Someone like you, I’d’ve thought you’d know that.

TM: What do you mean someone like me?

DCG: Just answer the question, please. You do know you’re legally bound to produce your ID card if requested by a police officer? But, you don’t think the law applies to you? Is that it?

TM: No.

DCG: You don’t carry your card for political reasons

TM: No.

DCG: because you object to them?

TM: No.

DCG: You don’t think you should have to carry an ID card just because the government says so? That’s it, isn’t it, Tamuz?

TM: I told you. I just forgot it.

DCG: Where are you from, son? Palestine, right?

TM: What? Look, I’ve stayed in Scotland since I was four years old. I stay in Glasgow.

DCG: Scotland? Glasgow?

CM: Hold on. I’d like to talk to my client in private for a second, DC Griffin.

DCG: This is Caledonia, son. This is Kentigern. You’ve been hanging around with the wrong sort of people if you’re calling it Glasgow?

TM: Sorry?

DCG: Are you a rook, Tamuz?

TM: What? What are you talking about?

DCG: You were picked up on the edge of the Rookery. Is that where you live, Tamuz?

TM: I stay in the Halls of Residence on Southpark Avenue. What’s the Rookery?

DCG: Oh, pull the other one.

CM: DC Griffin, I need to talk to my client in private now. Please, stop the tape.

TM: Just check with the university and they’ll tell you. Take me to my room and I can show you the bloody card.

CM: DC Griffin.

DCG: OK, OK. Interview suspended 17:07.

<~~O~~>

Report of Agent Joey Narcosis

Joey clicks the radiovision camera into the tripod stand, flips out the view screen and swivels the fitting with the lever, angles it down to centre the hostages in the frame. They’re all crying. They all know that one of them is going to die.

Jack and the Fox don’t have the emotional detachment for killing innocents up close and callous. Sure, Jack takes out the odd passenger-laden wireliner now and then, but it’s usually in the heat of battle with a horde of thopters on his tail and militiamen trying to blast his skybike from the air. And, sure, Guy has his schemes of strikes on subways and other such public places, sex-bombs blasting orgone energy through City Central Terminus, prime-time commuters losing their senses to their lust in instant orgies that leave them puking and naked, horrified at the De Sade style excesses perpetrated by their unleashed subconscious; but most of his lethal plans are either carried out at a distance or targeted at the top dogs, the knights and bishops of the Empire rather than the unwitting pawns. When it comes down to it both Jack and Fox need to think their victims deserve what they get, even if it’s just for their complicity in the system. Joey Narcosis has no such sensitivities. His actions selected in accordance with the calculus of survival, Joey’s so deep-chilled that he even files his reports in third person.

<~~O~~>

“You can kill Straw,” he’d said, “but they’ll just pull another one out of the vat, burn the meme-pattern into his brain, and bingo-bongo, we’ve got a new Home Secretary just the same as the last one.”

They’d been sitting in Club Soda, two weeks after Fast Puck’s disappearance, the evening that the word came back to them about a Tamuz Masingiri being picked up on the edge of the Rookery by the blackshirts in a routine street sweeping operation. The boy should have had more sense as far as Joey is concerned, should have been pristine clean and with his skinsuit airtight to the dotted i’s on the paperwork, but then the fascists might have just been looking for an ethnic to fit-up on a drug bust—easy way to boost the arrest figures for a slow week. Still, Puck knows when to duck and dodge, should have slipped through the sweep like water through a sieve.

Idiot kid got himself lifted though, and now Jack wants action.

“So I’ll kill the fucking next one too,” Jack had said. “And the one after that. We just keep fucking killing the bastard until there’s no more of him left.”

“It won’t bring him back,” Guy had said.

“But it’ll send a fucking message, a fucking chi-beam text right in the fucking ajna eye.”

“Assassination is just a Post-it note, mate,” Joey had said. “They’ll look at it for half a second before they bin it. Christ, who gives a fuck about these muppets anymore? There’s always another one to replace the last.”

“Unless,” Guy had said, “we take them all out.”

<~~O~~>

Joey looks at the five hostages huddled on the floor, all dressed in their Guantanamo Bling, as they call it on the street—orange jumpsuits and full body-shackles—wrists locked to the steel belt at the waist, ankles cuffed with a few inches of chain for shuffling. The black hoods are off their heads for now; Joey removed them so he could look into their eyes, figure out which one will give the best performance for the camera, the most frightened. It’ll go out live over the aether and, routed through Don Coyote’s pirate station in the sky, Radio Birdman, the signal should jack every radiovision set in Kentigern. So he wants it to be good, does Joey, in so far as you can say that Joey Narcosis wants anything.

He scans the line of identikit Straws, looking for the most snivelly and snot-nosed. Frankly they’re all much of a muchness. Vat-grown, crèche-raised, they’re not meant to have individuality; their job is just to eat and shit and sleep until the day comes when they’re called upon to do their duty for King and Country, Edward and Albion. That blank idiocy should make for more impact in the footage, right enough, the terror on the face heightened by incomprehension. With the speed of growth, the clones don’t get to a mental age of more than five in the time it takes their bodies to mature, so Kentigern is going to be watching a retard beg for his life, for his Nursey, for the safety of the Institution. Add to that the fact that the Straws were snatched en route from the crèche to the acceleration tanks to slumber through their breakneck adolescence, and what you have is a retarded child begging for his life.

It should make for a good show.

<~~O~~>

One of the Straws has a wet patch at his crotch, Joey notices; the little bastard must have pissed himself. Well, the fascists do like their Nietzsche and their natural selection, so it seems only fitting to play the game by their rules, show them what will-to-power and might-is-right really mean. He grabs the kid by the shoulders and drags him forward and into centre-frame. The image on the viewscreen is clear and, with a zoom out just a smidgeon wider, the black flag with the white Circle-A, nailed to the concrete wall of the basement, should be visible enough. He checks that the balaclava is tucked tight into the collar of his shirt, straightens his tie and flicks a speck of dust off the shoulder of his black suit jacket. He picks up his katana from the top of the cardboard box in the far corner of the room and walks back to the camera, hits record.

“You getting this okay,” he says. “Sight and sound?”

The laptop sitting open on the box beside the tripod gives a beep, and Joey crouches down, clicks to open the window with Coyote’s response. Loud and clear. He takes his position behind the Straw and waits for the second beep. There’s no need to read it; it means On The Air.

He sweeps the sword out of its sheath in an elegant arc that curls round and up and to a stop, to a pause, a stillness among the screams and sobs of the Straws, before he slices the blade down through the neck of the mewling cretin child on its knees in front of him, this symbol of servility.

Perfect timing for the Six O’clock News.

<~~O~~>

Interview with Tamuz Masingiri

DCG: Interview recommences 18:00. Present in the room are DC Powell, myself, and Tamuz Masingiri. Right, Tamuz. Mr. Mackie tells me you’ve been spinning him a right wee dreamworld. He thinks you’re in need of psychiatric help, but myself and DC Powell here, see, we think there’s more to you than you’re letting on, my lad.

TM: Where’s my solicitor?

DCG: It’s gone past that now, lad.

TM: What do you mean? What is this? Is this some fucking TV prank show? Did Jack put you up to this? It’s a set-up, right?

DCG: Don’t try and play games with us, boy. The schizo routine won’t wash. We’re no daft, son. We’ve seen it all before. Wee rook gets caught flying home to his nest, thinks—you know—just flap your wings hard enough, act like a mental case, and we’ll call in the shrink instead of Special Support. What was it, Tamuz?

TM: Come on, this isn’t funny anymore.

DCG: Your prints aren’t in the database, Tamuz. You know that? So you’re either a ferry-rat with no business being in this country or you have some contacts in the identity trade and a dirty past you wanted cleaned. Either way you’re in deep shit, boy. Suspicion of sedition. For the record, Mr. Masingiri is shaking his head. Come on, Tamuz. What were you up to when we picked you up? Grazing wallets? Casing houses for the Guild? Drug run? Data courier? Nah. You’re old enough to have graduated from the kiddywork long ago. You’re into something deep, boy. That’s what this loony tunes routine is all about, isn’t it?

TM: You’re the ones who’re fucking loonies. This is all—

DCG: Are you a good Muslim, Tamuz? Pray five times a day? Fast for Ramadan?

TM: I’m not a Muslim. What’s that got—

DCG: You don’t expect us to believe that.

TM: What? Just because I’ve got darker skin than you I must be a Muslim? Man, this is sick. This isn’t fucking funny—

DCG: Sit down.

TM: Let go of me.

DCG: Sit down. I said, sit down!

TM: Ah!

DCG: You sit down when I tell you to, lad. Now. You have two choices: you can ditch the act and tell me who you really are and what you were up to; or I walk down to Special Support right now and tell them I’ve got a suspected subversive in the interview room. If I were you, I know which option I’d prefer.

TM: This is all wrong. I don’t belong here. This isn’t—

DCG: Too fucking right you don’t belong here, Ali Baba. You belong in the desert with all your suicide bomber chums. Or maybe it’s the Rookery you belong. Come on.

TM: Ah! Hey, you can’t—fuck!

DCG: What are you, Tamuz? A political or a religious? What are you mixed up in?

TM: I’m not answering any more questions. This is fucked up. This is fucked. You’re crazy. Where’s my fucking solicitor? I know my rights.

DCG: You don’t have any fucking rights, son. You don’t exist. Suspicion of sedition, Tamuz. That’s what it is now, and that means you’re up shit creek. Now, I’m giving you a chance, son. You can talk to me or you can talk to Special Support. Your call.

TM: This is bullshit. This is fucking bullshit. Let me out of here.

DCG: You’re making a big mistake, son.

TM: Let me out of here. I’m—ah! Jesus fucking—uh!

DCG: Interview terminated 18:03.

TM: Let me go. Let me go. Let me—

<~~O~~>

Report of Agent Jack Flash

Crouched on the flat gantry on the roof of the wireliner, the thrum of the Cavor-Reich engines all round, I click at my Zippo again and again, trying to spark it into flame to light my hash cheroot. It’s just too damn breezy up here, the ray-tanks of the monster machine sweeping up to each side of me forming a perfect wind-tunnel, billowing my greatcoat peachily but thwarting my best efforts at full cool. Bastards. In the Society of the Spectacle, style is the psychic weapon of choice, and this is like having your voice crack on you at Rourke’s Drift with the Zulus bearing down: men of Harlech, hack cough splutter; sorry, mate, frog in the throat. Can we take it from the top?

Unlit joint dangling from my lips, I clunk my way forward along the gantry, muttering dark curses and radiating Bad Vibes, man, as I slap the Semtex packs left and right, flick the detonators on. Twelve charges, six for each side, is overkill, I know—twice what we planned—but if there’s no stone for Jack today, well, a boy’s gotta get his buzz some way.

<~~O~~>

At the front of the wireliner, my wings are waiting where I left them, clamped down with magnetic grapnels. Light as paper, stronger than steel, ray-tanks in the harness to counteract my body-weight, the twelve-foot in span synthe pinions lift with the wind beneath them, fighting to take off on their own. The modified waldoes are one of my favourite toys and I slip in under them, latch the harness shut under my arms and around the waist, shove my hands into the gauntlets, like a knight of yore putting on his armour. Up ahead I can see the junction of the wire, already jacked to take the wireliner off course and southeast, towards Ibrox and the football stadium where the torchlight procession should just be arriving. Thirty years ago that stadium’s where the Jews and Asians of the South Side, the Catholics of the East End and the academics and bohemians of the West End were all gathered for the Purification; there’s no record of how many had their souls stripped down, their bodies stolen to the service of the Empire, but if Straw had been from Kentigern—it’s kind of ironic that this is where they would have brought him to die the first time. Now I can see it off in the distance, getting closer fast, a golden glow from the massed ranks on the pitch lighting up the night. I’d swear I can hear the roar of the crowd, the rhythmic chant, the Seig heils, the God Save the King.

As the wireliner lurches left on its new course, aimed directly at the stadium, I flex the wings and release the clamps, lift up into the air. In the gondola bridge below they’ll be pulling levers now, spinning wheels, trying to radio the signalman with a frantic what-the-fuck, but the inertial dampeners, the wirebrakes, the retro-jets and the radio—all of that shit is already taken care of.

I spiral up to a safe height on an updraft, hold my position in the air like an eagle scoping the treetops for its prey. I figure distance, height and momentum, hold for the perfect moment before I hit the detonation button.

The Heidelberg goes boom.

<~~O~~>

A few hundred tons of metal and fireball heads down in a parabolic curve, hitting the near end of Ibrox Stadium fast and hard, taking out a solid quarter of the terraces and raining a shrapnel meteor storm on another half. Baby, I can definitely hear the crowd roar now. I flick the wings back, aim myself at the far end of the stadium, at the Director’s Box where the Culture Secretary, Jack Straw should be standing behind bullet-proof glass, trying to register the carnage below, the flame and the smoke, the rows and columns of blackshirts on the pitch all broken into pretty chaos, the celebrants on what’s left of the terraces piling over each other in panic, the landslides of flesh, living and dead. High up on a scrap of terrace, through the billows of smoke, I spot a lone figure with a camcorder held up to his eye, a vulture in Babel

I hope Coyote’s picking up my own broadcast. He fucking well should be; my senses are acid-acute right now, so this report, this vision of devastation, should be beaming out white-hot over the astral airwaves, a psychic EMP in the aethernet of Kentigern’s dreams. Radiovision, no matter what Joey thinks, is so Twentieth Century. Old news. This is the Kali Yuga, mate; in a war for hearts and minds, the subconscious is the battle ground. You can switch off the news but you can’t switch off a nightmare.

I blast through a billow of hot black smoke a-crackle with orgone blue-green sparks and come out with the Director’s Box dead ahead, tuck my wings in tight, a human harpoon aimed at the heart of the Great White Empire. There’s no glass made by man can stop this bullet, motherfucker.

<~~O~~>

Shards spray into the room around me as the window shatters. Wings jerked back, nearly ripped off in the impact, I whiplash forward but manage to pull off the landing neat and square, down on my knees in a jitterbug slide that takes me right to the shiny shoes of the last Straw, the Culture Secretary, minister of bread and circuses for the masses. I rise to my feet, hands out of the waldo-gauntlets now, Curzon-Youngblood in the right, a Scorpio .99 in the left, flicking my arms out in a crucifix of armament, firing left and right, to take down the bodyguards at the corners of my vision without once losing eye contact with Straw. I holster the guns and take the jack-knife from its sheath at my waist.

He knows we got his vatlings. He knows this angel with shredded wings means not just death but extermination. He knows he’s not a human being here, just a poison pen letter to the Blunketts and the Blairs and the thousand other motherfucking muppets waiting to take his place. And we’re going to make it nice and personal, signed…

Yours truly,

Jack

<~~O~~>

Death Certificate of Tamuz Masingiri

Certified Copy of an Entry

Pursuant to the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953

<~~O~~>

DEATH Entry no: 2313

<~~O~~>

Registration district: Greater Kentigern

Sub-district: Kentigern West

Administrative area: Lanarkshire

<~~O~~>

1. Date and place of death:

Twenty-fifth April 2006

Partick Police Station Kentigern

2. Name and surname:

Tamuz Masingiri

3. Sex:

Male

4. Maiden surname of woman who has married:

N/A

5. Date and place of birth:

First April 1984, Tell-el-Kharnain, Palestine

6. Occupation and usual address:

Unemployed

No fixed abode

7. (a) Name and surname of informant:

Nicholas Griffin (D.C.)

(b) Qualification:

In Loco

© Usual address:

c/o Partick Police Station, Dumbarton Road, Kentigern

8. Cause of death:

Asphyxiation

Certified by J. Tyndall M.B.

9. I certify that the particulars given by me above are true to the best of my knowledge and belief

D.C. Nick Griffin Signature of informant

10. Date of registration:

Twenty-fifth April 2006

11. Signature of registrar:

Derek Beackon

<~~O~~>

Certified to be a true copy of an entry in a registrar in my custody.

The Thing in the Jewellery Box

—Mitchel Rose

The surge of vomit burned the inside of Romez’s throat as he gagged on the trucker’s cock. Instinctively, he tried to pull away but the trucker held his head against his thrusting crotch refusing to let him go. The trucker grunted as the thick glob of his seed spilled over Romez’s tongue. Then he got out of the way as Romez puked it back up again along with the semi-digested remains of the burger and fries the boy had scavenged for lunch.

After several moments of noisy hacking, Romez wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his hoodie and looked up at the trucker. The other man was shoving his fat and sated cock back into his jeans, and without a word he unlocked the door of the bathroom stall.

“Five dollars,” Romez snapped. “Five dollars!”

The trucker paused at the door and shoved one calloused hand into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled up note. He tossed it into the viscous pool Romez was still kneeling over and left. Romez fished it out of the vomit and secreted it away into his skinny jeans. “Cunt,” he muttered, and got to his feet.

<~~O~~>

Side-stepping the mess he’d made, he emerged into the squalid, dimly lit washroom and headed for one of the grimy sinks to clean his face. The place was a shithole, literally. But what could one expect from a desolate truck stop in the arse-end of Shell County? Romez had been in worse dives than this.

The tap groaned as he turned it, and spewed out a jet of yellowed water. Romez splashed the foul liquid around his mouth and smeared some on his teeth with one grubby finger. His ablutions done, he checked his hair in the cracked mirror above the sink.

Wet, slurping sounds came from the direction of the bathroom stall he’d just come out of. Romez swore under his breath and turned. His puke had coalesced into the crude simulacrum of a gnomish human being that was toddling towards him. The pearl splatters of the trucker’s cum clung to its faceless, lumpy head, to form crude eyes.

“Go ’way,” Romez said irritably. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

The vomit pygmy kept moving toward him and reached out with one sticky paw to pull at his jean leg. Romez swatted him away. “Not now!” he snapped.

The pygmy yanked harder, and a hole opened in the place its mouth would have been. A long whip-like tendril shot out and wrapped itself around his wrist. Romez yelped in pain as the tendril bit into his flesh. Waddling backwards, the little creature pulled him toward the stall.

“Okay, I’m coming. Let go,” Romez said.

The vomit pygmy yanked harder until he was back inside the stall. He closed the door behind him, and the pygmy released him. Romez rubbed his sore wrist in relief.

“Finally,” he said in a snarky voice.

The pygmy pointed urgently at the toilet. Romez reached behind the basin and retrieved his backpack. It felt cold to the touch, and Romez’s stomach snarled with dread. The vomit pygmy was watching him with its semen eyes, seeming to take silent delight in his fear, and its tendril tongue slithered back into the hole in its head.

“Don’t look so pleased with yourself, bitch,” Romez said. “It’s me he needs, not you.”

The vomit pygmy tilted its head and pointed at the backpack. Romez swore again and opened it. A fresh wave of coldness swept over his hands and he gritted his teeth against the numbing pain. With almost deferential respect he took out the small gold lined box that was inside it, and placed it carefully on the floor.

“Happy now?” Romez snapped, rubbing life back into his numb hands.

What sounded like a growl emanated from inside the box and reluctantly, Romez undid the dainty little clasp that kept the lid shut. He felt a great surge of terror as something from within rushed to push the box open. This was the part he really hated. It had been almost a year ago since he took the jewellery box from the mansion, and he still regretted it every day that came. He had been hitchhiking to Wire City when he’d been picked up by Aubrey in his pink Rolls Royce and taken back to his dilapidated home. Unlike the truckers and drifters Romez usually serviced, Aubrey had been very gentle and had made a real fuss of him. He had given Romez a meal and had bathed him. In return, Romez had followed Aubrey’s instructions, handcuffing him to a table leg and fisting the old man into oblivion.

Sadly, the exertion was too much for poor Aubrey and he had died of a heart attack. Romez had washed the shit from his hand and went looking for money.

Instead, he found the jewellery box. It had been nestled amongst a whole load of strange curiosities and junk Aubrey had seemingly collected over the years. He had been attracted by how shiny it was, and the hope that it contained something valuable. But as soon as he drew near it, a dark dread seeped through him. Romez had wanted to run from the house at that moment but the box held him in a mental vice and forced him to open it.

“There was no need to attack me with my own puke,” Romez protested miserably. He had retreated to the corner of the stall after he had flipped open the lid. “I was going to let you out.”

A shadow fell over the boy, and the unnatural cold enveloped his body. Romez kept his eyes on his feet, unwilling to look the Twisted Man in the face. Whatever the Twisted Man was, Romez learned early on that it was impossible to defy him. He had reached out and strangled the boy’s mind, imposing his brutal, diabolic intellect upon him. The Twisted Man had ripped all of the Romez’s secrets from him without remorse, analysing him like a bug under a microscope. He knew Romez wasn’t his real name, but the name of the lead character from the tacky high school comedy he used to watch for instance, and how Romez’s dad would come into his room every night before Romez ran away from home. The boy could not hide from or resist the creature’s power.

What he did know though was that the Twisted Man was not all powerful. Romez had learned that the jewellery box was a kind of prison for the entity, and that he could not stay outside of it for too long. When he retreated back inside of it, the box would close itself and seemingly only Romez was able to open it again. In the beginning, Romez had tried to get rid of the box, but the Twisted Man had many ways to prevent the boy from doing so. Mental dominance and tricks such as creating the vomit pygmy were merely the tip of the iceberg.

Speaking of the vomit pygmy, it clapped its glob like paws at the rising of the Twisted Man, and now waddled to the open jewellery box. Romez watched in disgust it as it oozed its body inside and disappeared from sight.

He folded his arms to try and keep out the cold. “So, I’ve let you out, what now?”

The Twisted Man leaned forward in a graceful, serpentine motion and pointed one disjointed claw in the direction of the entrance to the washroom. A few moments later, Romez heard the door open.

Resignedly, the boy got up and knew what was going to happen next. He went to the stall door and opened it. There was a man standing near the washroom entrance. He was tall and skinny, in his mid-fifties and dressed in a business suit. A fearful hunger was writ large on his horse-like face.

Romez sneered at the man. It was obvious he was on the prowl. The truck stop was a well-known cruising spot and the guy fitted the typical profile, middle-aged, middle-management and married. He’d probably driven over here from Wire or Spittle, telling his wife he had to work late so he could escape the lie of his existence for a couple of hours and grab a furtive fuck. The Twisted Man let out a hiss of approval, and Romez stepped farther out of the stall.

Middle-manager locked eyes with him, and stared at the boy with open lust.

Romez held his gaze, making it clear he was interested.

Middle-manager hesitated, unsure he could believe his luck, and edged closer.

Romez mustered a long sultry look and slipped back inside the stall. He heard middle-manager’s footsteps, and turned his back to him as the man joined him and closed the stall door. The inky stain of the Twisted Man clung to the wall, unseen by middle-manager.

Without looking at the man, Romez undid his jeans and pulled them down to his ankles. He heard middle-manager’s sharp breathing and his clammy hands yanked at Romez’s underwear. Clammy fingers caressed the boy’s peachy bubble-butt, before exploring the musky dark of his hole. There came the frantic sound of rustling and middle-manager’s torpedo thin cock speared him.

Romez closed his eyes as middle-manager pumped him madly. The man was rough and clumsy, desperate to snatch his brief moment of pleasure. Romez rode with the pain and imagined he was in his favourite TV show and not here as the Twisted Man slithered down the wall.

Middle-manager thrashed wildly, clearly close to sweet release.

The sound of metal cleaved the air, and the man started screaming.

Romez kept his eyes closed, grinding into the man’s crotch as hot blood splashed over his butt.

Middle-manager shuddered and jerked, emptying his seed inside him, before going deathly still. Sharply, he was yanked out of Romez’s hole, and the boy opened his eyes.

The Twisted Man was gone, and what was left of middle-manager was splayed across the floor of the stall. Romez picked through the shredded remains of his business suit until he found middle-manager’s wallet. Then, he went to wash the gore off his lower back, ass and legs as best as he could.

When he’d cleaned himself up, he went back to the stall and found the closed jewellery box sitting on top of the ravaged corpse. He slipped it into his backpack and headed out of the washroom to the diner across the way to get some food.

Escape from the Slave State

—Gio Clairval

“There we are.” The teenage girl who’d guided Bian across the military district halted in front of a postal hangar so high ceilinged it must have served to mail entire trainloads.

“What now?”

“If you want to cross over to Shell County, you’ve got to mail yourself to yourself, woman.”

Bian burst into laughter and couldn’t stop.

The girl kept silent, a frown on her sunken face. Bian studied her more closely—there hadn’t been time as they ran away from the cops. The teenager looked so fragile, with hair dyed black-blue sticking out in odd directions; large almond, gold-specked amber eyes; mouth small and lovely, done in cherry red—features showing both Western and Oriental parentage. Bian was lost in contemplation of the younger woman when the postal warehouse’s blast doors retreated into the walls, affording her a view of the interior: a criss-crossing of aerial conveyors made of steel slabs joined with silver rubber.

Bian wiped her cheeks moist with laugh tears. “Sorry. I’m new around here. How do we do this?”

“You freeze yourself so they think they’re handling a bot. You must take a maoranei cocktail, a substance that stills your heart and body. I’ve used it before, and I’ve stashed some. Come. We’ll go in undetected.”

Bian’s street-wisdom told her the girl was reckless and surely mad, but sincere—a dangerous combination. “And do you have a delivery address in the city?”

“We can use one of my dealers.’”

I could end up in her dealer’s hands, or worse, Bian thought. Surely she could come up with a better plan. “But there’ll be postal employees to snatch us on arrival.”

“It’s all automated.”

“The cops—”

The girl grabbed Bian by the shoulders and shook her. “I’ve gone in a dozen times and I was never caught, you hear me? Or maybe you’re afraid?”

Bian straightened. “Let’s go.”

A smile transfigured the girl’s face. “I’ll get the maoranei cocktail. The stiffing substance.” She disappeared down a street as dark as an ass crack, leaving Bian behind an overflowing trash container. A putrid odour of bad fish raised her gorge.

The teenager came back soon enough, carrying a tiny vial filled with a green liquid. She hunkered down near Bian. “Half for me, half for you. We’re going to sit down on the conveyor over there, to be inspected by the Mailwoman.”

“Who?”

“Dunno exactly. Nobody’s ever seen her. She comes before you’re mailed inside the city.”

“Like what? She inspects you and gives you clearance?”

“Yeah, and she grabs the infected.” The girl looked at Bian through eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re not infected, are you?” A bit late to ask.

Bian grabbed the younger woman, fingers and thumb touching together around the skinny forearm. “D’you want me to show you more strength?”

“No need to hurt me.” Like an eel, the girl wrestled herself free. “I heard the Mailwoman gets it, that you’re infected, by looking at your eyes. If you’re just feeling a bit down, she nabs you and she rejects you.”

“Even if you’re not infected?”

“Yeah. She’s not a real person, so she can’t see the difference. That’s how I started chewing dreamseeds. It blocks out your sadness and you don’t blink. I’ll share it with you.”

One take was enough to become addicted. In her mind’s eye, Bian saw her brother Ng’s dull expression. She would never be able to go back for him if she chewed dreamseeds. The Black Dog would get the two of them. “I’ll take the risk without seeds.”

The girl widened her eyes. “That’s ballsy, but why?”

“I want to rescue my little brother, who’s addicted.” And maybe infected, too, but her guide didn’t need to know.

Interest sparkled in the girl’s eyes, soon erased by the indifference of the seed-dependent. “Whatever.”

Apathetic. Just like Ng. But, once inside, Bian would find the way to cure her little brother.

For an instant, Bian was disappointed at the girl’s lack of reaction—Bian would have loved to impress her, but then shook the feeling away. Why care about a stranger’s interest? Another dreamhead wasn’t the right choice for a friend. Thinking of Ng, of his vague answer to her suggestion to escape, Bian felt a fist squishing her inside.

The girl pulled a tattered T-shirt over her head. Underneath, she wore a black bra with pink lace. “We’re going to be sexbots.” She said it as if she’d suggested they play an innocent game. “Take off your clothes. Scapulars, too.” She wriggled out of her skirt.

Bian stripped down and chucked her scapulars, which didn’t filter the air anyway. She’d run out of refills a week ago. The sooty air didn’t even prickle her throat, as if her lungs had grown used to the aggression. It was bad, very bad, but she’d heard the city’s air was very breathable.

Maybe this was a scam and she would wake up in chains again—worse, bigger chains, and maybe she’d find fresh scars on her belly, where some bastards would have harvested her ovaries for fresh meat to remake and enslave.

Didn’t matter. She’d never found a guide into the city before. Living in New Zurich was the key to happiness, and she never would forgive herself if she let her good fortune pass. She had to try.

With a dreamhead’s help. Christ! Bian coughed into her palm but refused to look at the phlegm, probably speckled with blood.

The girl piped up. “I know from a few stupid infected who don’t do seeds that you can have hallucinations during delivery,” she said. “Whatever you see while you’re stiffened, don’t move. Don’t even try to breathe.”

As though Bian had spoken her distrust, the girl drank first and handed over the half-emptied vial. “Swallow the container as well. It’ll dissolve in your stomach. It’s important to not leave a trace.”

“What’s your name?” Bian asked again.

“You can call me Lady.”

“It’s a bitch’s name.”

“Back at you. Anyways, you need me, but I need you, too. The citizens go at least two by two. Always.”

“Why?”

“If you’re alone, they think you can’t make friends.”

“And that’s bad.”

“Yeah. It means you’re infected. When the Black Dog has you, you curl up in a corner. . .” Her voice trailed off.

Already altered by the drug, Lady stared, unseeing, and then her eyelids covered her eyes. She sneezed, twitched and went still. The muscles on her face tautened. Every small imperfection, dilated pores and tiny wrinkles, vanished along with the dark circles under her eyes. Her skin took on a rosy colour too flawless to be true, and her hair bristled like shiny black plastic strings. Bian started when the teenager’s eyelids cracked open to show emerald green eyes—instead of amber. The tiny specks of gold were gone and the irises displayed regularly spaced darker lines.

Like a bloody bot.

The eyes were the scariest details on Lady’s redone body, although her stiff nipples, so pink, so small, and the blond curls between her legs attracted Bian’s attention with an equally disturbing intensity. Her mind became a storm of images: her tongue licking the corner of Lady’s mouth, one hand touching the girl’s belly; Lady’s lips on her breasts. Blood rushed to her groin and her clit throbbed. Bian’s chest became too tight to hold her thumping heart.

She tried thinking in a detached way. Looking at the pale-blond pubic hairs, she wondered why the substance hadn’t changed them as well. The girl’s jet-black hair was dyed, after all. As she studied the teenager’s anatomy, feeling guilty because of her indiscreet thoughts, the blond hairs turned light green and glossy around the red-painted slit.

Bian’s heart skipped a couple of beats. Images of her hands on the girl’s body swirled around and she couldn’t think clearly for a moment.

The drug! She was supposed to drain the maoranei immediately, or else she’d be out of phase with Lady.

She gulped the slightly spiced liquid, along with the vial.

Her breath caught. Air. She needed air. She tried to clasp her throat but her arms hung limp, paralyzed, as the conveyor started forward. The sky-high dark ceiling of the postal hangar, the steel doors that were sliding shut—everything dissolved. Blackness gobbled her alive as her eyeballs hardened. For several excruciating moments, two hot marbles scorched her eye-sockets. A prisoner immured within a metallic shell, she howled until her eyelids lifted and she heard her irises whir open.

She floated in a sootless sky.

The city glistened below, a starfish shape with the business district at its core—the reason for its existence. Money.

She forgot everything about Ng. She forgot why she wanted to go through Shell County on a postal train.

New Zurich, the bankers’ city, called to her, flaunting rows of residential palaces and their suspended gardens; inviting her to follow the commercial avenues set like jewelled spokes on a wheel; enticing her senses with sounds and scents and the fresh air soaring from leisure quarters arranged in chequered patterns—here silver, here gold; leading her to the centre and its towers built with liquid amber light.

Bian sensed the city’s need to amass and grow. The crab would conquer cells, tissues, organs, to devour and digest anything, anyone. Being accepted as one of its servants was a privilege no woman or man could turn down without regret consuming them, but the crab-city wanted Bian above anyone else. Her life amounted to this moment—a madness, a realization, an opportunity to be seized before it could vanish.

A tapered tower punching out of a larger rectangular building undulated under her. Two arms emerged from the sides of the tower to squeeze her.

A hot touch burned her forehead and she felt a violent push to the side.

Bian opened her eyes with a scream as her body recovered its flexibility.

Another postal hangar. Similar to the other. Ribbons of silver-coloured conveyors. A ceiling so high it became a dark sky.

That push she’d felt. Had she been rejected? If she couldn’t get through, the Black Dog would get her brother. She couldn’t save him. She couldn’t save herself either.

She had failed.

“Hey? Girl?”

“It’s Bian,” she managed.

The city had tasted her and had spat her out…Bian couldn’t hold back her tears, eyelids fluttering until her sight focused.

Her guide’s face. Dark circles under amber eyes. Naked shoulders.

Lady looked away. “We’ve got to suit up.”

“But I was rejected! The Mailwoman must have found me infected.”

The girl yanked something sticky off Bian’s head, pulling a strand of hair along. “What do you make of this, then?”

Bian stared at a scrap of sticky paper with wavy black lines on it. “What’s this?”

“A postage stamp, idiot!”

Bian had passed like a love letter! A hymn resounded in her head: With Love, from Me to You.

She leaped down from the conveyor. “Good thing there’s no security here.”

“Very few people try to pass through the postal system,” Lady said. “The maoranei is terribly expensive.”

“I was wondering. How d’you—?”

“I deal a bit. Anyways, the chances of being detected by the Mailwoman are very high, without seeds. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d see you on arrival. But we’re in.” Lady picked up a cardboard box Bian hadn’t noticed before. “Our clothes made it through as well.”

Bian put on a clinging tracksuit, identical to the one Lady had already zipped up. The white suit reminded her of the ads sprawled across the army base in Ersatz. Images of happy people.

Lady elbowed her. “Put on your gloves, too.”

As the blast doors glided open, Bian squinted at the brightness. Free. She was free. The two of them started across a marble-paved plaza the size of which Bian had never even thought possible. Now they waded among a throng of people dressed in the same mint, spotless, reassuring uniforms, gloves and boots.

When they arrived at the centre, reaching a well, crowned with intricate volutes, Lady slid a hand in her pocket and chucked something into the aperture.

The ground shook, a humming sound coming from the depths. Flagstones exploded in the air. From holes in the ground legions of rats scurried toward the crowd. As flames rose high, the passers-by’s heads took fire, and the citizens stood for a while in their fireproof coveralls, thin and straight and topped with tongues of orange, like white-coated matches ablaze.

About the Authors

Laura Lee Bahr—is an award winning indie actor/playwright/screenwriter with stories appearing in various anthologies. Her debut novel, Haunt, is available through Fungasm press and the winner of the 2011 Wonderland Book Award for Novel of the Year. Haunt will be available in Spanish this summer translated and published through Orciny Press. Bahr is currently in post-production on her first feature film as writer/director: Boned. She likes to flop around Los Angeles with her sweetheart and her elderly cat.

John Langan—is an American author and writer of contemporary horror. Langan has been a finalist for International Horror Guild Award. In 2008, he was a Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Collection. He is on the Board of Directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards.

Mary Turzillo—Mary’s novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl and her Nebula winner, “Mars is no Place for Children,” are recommended reading on the International Space Station. Her poetry collection Lovers & Killers won the 2013 Elgin Award for Best Collection. She has been a finalist on the British SFA, Pushcart, Stoker, Dwarf Stars and Rhysling ballots. Sweet Poison, with Marge Simon, came out last year from Dark Renaissance. She lives in Ohio with her scientist-writer husband, Geoff Landis.

Simon Marshall-Jones—Simon Marshall-Jones (aka The Tattooed Head) is editor/publisher at award-nominated Spectral Press and Theatrum Mundi. A writer, reviewer, columnist, and blogger: a book lover, of course—but also likes French cheeses rather too much, as well as rum. He lives with a wife, six cats, six guinea-pigs, five chickens, and two rabbits somewhere (but no partridge in a pear tree) in the Midlands, UK.

Gary J. Shipley—Gary’s latest books are Gumma Homo (Blue Square, forthcoming), and You With Your Memory Are Dead (Civil Coping Mechanisms, forthcoming). More details can be found at Thek Prosthetics

Mick Clocherty—is a writer who lives in Glasgow. When not emptying various glasses and kicking up puddles, you can usually find him helping run The High Flight fanzine; a monthly publication printed in Glasgow and Edinburgh showcasing some of Scotland’s finest emerging literary talent.

Violet LeVoit—is the author of the short story collections I am Genghis Cum (2011) and I’ll Fuck Anything that Moves and Stephen Hawking (2014). She lives in Philadelphia.

Shane Swank—came of age in the 1960s living in a mobile home in the Mid-West U.S. with a nipple attached to the television set, a stack of comic books for paper training and a love for pop culture of all varieties. He currently resides in the predominantly Republican Slave State of Wisconsin. He hopes to escape someday.

Clive Tern—is a writer of short stories from Crieff, Perthshire. His favored styles are speculative and science fiction, though he has been known to attempt more literary themes on occasion. He works with Spark: A Creative Anthology as a Senior Staff Reader. When not reading or writing short stories and poems he plays bad golf and daydreams of world domination. He periodically blogs at:clivetern.com.

Preston Grassmann—became a freelance writer after working as a regular reviewer for Locus Magazine. His recent stories and poems have been published in Nature Magazine, Futures 2 (Tor Publishing), Daily Science Fiction, Apex, Caledonia Dreamin’, and This is NOT an Anthology. He is an active member of HWA and serves on the jury for the Bram Stoker Awards.

Roger Lovelace—calls North Alabama home. He enjoys the laid back attitude but not the humidity of the south. Always an avid reader, since retiring as an environmentalist from the state, he has focused on his lifelong passion of writing.

Dale McMullen—typically writes short stories about grim stuff but also dabbles in poetry and song writing. He is the co-founder of The Speculative Bookshop; which looks to give writers, artists and poets a platform to perform and sell their wares in a fun, relaxed and friendly atmosphere. When he’s not annoying his wife Anna by playing his ukulele too loud, he will be at his day job as a fire fighter. Dale has also been quoted as “knowing more Pokémon than fireman things.” Please visit us at thespeculativebookshop.com to come say hello.

Rhys Hughes—has been a writer for longer than he cares to remember. His thirty-second book has recently been published. He has different coloured eyes and is starting to suspect that he is actually a perfectly superimposed pair of conjoined twins.

Gregory L. Norris—is a full-time professional writer, with work published in a variety of places, mostly in national magazines and fiction anthologies. He once worked as a screenwriter on two episodes of Paramount’s modern classic, Star Trek: Voyager, and recently penned the screenplay to Brutal Colors (Royal Blue Pictures), his first contracted feature film (the second, The Devil of Lakeford County, is in pre-production). Norris judged the 2013 Lambda Awards in the SF/Fantasy/Horror category, and will soon see the publication of Tales from the Robot Graveyard, a collection of cyber-centric novellas, with a cover by Eric Chu, concept artist on the new Battlestar Galactica series.

Andrew Coulthard—first saw the light of day on the wind-lashed eastern coast of Northumbria. He then spent most of his childhood and youth in the western shadow of the highland boundary fault. Since 1990 he has dwelt north of the land of the Geats—where it can get very cold. When not writing he spends time with his family, explores heroic landscapes and enjoys surfeits of good food and drink—sometimes all at once.

Kris Saknussemm—is the author of the novels Zanesville, Private Midnight, Enigmatic Pilot, Reverend America, Eat Jellied Eels and Think Distant Thoughts, a short story collection Sinister Miniatures, a memoir Sea Monkeys, a play The Humble Assessment, and a portfolio book of paintings The Colors of Compulsion.

P. R. Differ—P. R. Differ is a musician, warehouse factotum and author. Specialising in short fiction and comic books, his writing deals with subjects as varied as addiction, plutocracy, arthropods and unethical surgery.

Richard Thomas—is the award-winning author of seven books—Disintegration and The Breaker (Random House Alibi), Transubstantiate, Staring Into the Abyss, Herniated Roots, Tribulations, and The Soul Standard (Dzanc Books). His over 100 stories in print include Cemetery Dance, PANK, storySouth, Gargoyle, Weird Fiction Review, Midwestern Gothic, Qualia Nous, Chiral Mad 2, and Shivers VI. He is also the editor of four anthologies: The New Black and Exigencies (Dark House Press), The Lineup (Black Lawrence Press) and the Bram Stoker-nominated Burnt Tongues (Medallion Press) with Chuck Palahniuk. In his spare time he writes for LitReactor and is Editor-in-Chief at Dark House Press.

Ian Welke—Ian’s stories have appeared in Big Pulp, Zombie Jesus and Other True Stories, and the American Nightmare Anthology amongst others. His first novel, The Whisperer in Dissonance, was published by Omnium Gatherum Media in 2014. His second novel, End Times at Ridgemont High, is slated for 2015.

John Palisano—Sometimes John Palisano isn’t quite sure which world he’s inside. This is due to an overwhelming pull deep within his brain, which is likely a miniature, sentient fig that went up instead of down when he tried to eat it as a child. The Fig of his imagination has gifted him with many short stories that have appeared in over thirty places, not to mention books old and new. The Fig realizes they’ve been at it a while and has steered its host to archive it all at www.johnpalisano.wordpress.com or just check on Facebook and Twitter under his name. John’s. Not his Fig.

Beckett Warren—Survived by his cat, Blackie, and his girlfriend’s dog, Mogley.

Tony Yanick—Survived solely by his dog, Sadie.

Love Kölle—lives in his native Sweden with his fiancée and their two pet cats. 2013 saw the release of his debut novel Galtmannen (The Hog Man), and in 2014 Rymdvoodoo vid Apacheravinen!
(Space Voodoo at Apache Ravine!), a collection of pulp fiction cut-ups, hit the stands. Apart from these two books he has been published in several short story anthologies, both in his native Sweden and abroad.

Chris Kelso—is a writer, editor and illustrator from Scotland. He is the co-creator of the Slave State and is not to be trusted…

Spike Marlowe—has held a number of odd jobs, including working as a detective, a busker and a performer in a Wild West show. These days, she’s a writer, blogger and editor at Eraserhead Press. Her fiction has appeared at The Drabblcast, Allegories of the Tarot and as part of the Ladybox chapbook collection. Her novella, Placenta of Love, is also available at the usual locations. You can stalk her online at spikemarlowe.wordpress.com and on Twitter at @spikemarlowe.

Seb Doubinsky—was born in Paris, in 1963, right in the middle of a western movie, of which his parents never saw the end. He has thereafter split his life between France and the USA, having spent most of his early childhood in Syracuse and Seattle. After some studies, a lot of wandering and a few strange jobs, Seb has finally found himself teaching French literature in Denmark

Andrew Hook—Andrew Hook’s publications in 2015/16 should include the neo-noir crime novel, Church of Wire (Telos), a short story collection, Human Maps (Eibonvale Press), the anthology punkPunk! (DogHorn Publishing), Slow Motion Wars (co-written with Allen Ashley, Screaming Dreams), and The Greens, a novella from Spectral Press. With his partner he has recently established Salò Press, whose first publication, the surrealist anthology A Galaxy of Starfish, is currently open for submissions.

Michael Faun—Michael Faun writes horror, surrealism and exploitation fiction. His books include Black Heart Metal Monster, Deep Invaders #3,
Cannibal Island and SS Death Simulation, all of which are published by Dynatox Ministries

Hal Duncan—is the Glasgow-based award-winning author of Vellum and Ink. Other work includes novels, short fiction, poetry, non-fiction, musicals and collaborations with the bands Aereogramme and The Dead Man’s Waltz. “The Last Straw” was first published in the Glorifying Terrorism anthology (ed. Farah Mendlesohn,)

Mitchel Rose—Co-writer of six fantasy pulp adventures for Granton City Press, Mitchel cites H P Lovecraft and China Mieville as some of his main influences. As well as writing fantasy and dark horror, Mitchel also provides a ghost writing service giving help and advice to struggling authors, writes fiction and instructional books, and produces web content.

Gio Clairval—is an Italy-born writer who used to live in Paris, France, and is now based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming here and there. She translates literary works from French, Italian, Spanish and German.

Cover art by Terence Jaiden Wray

Interior illustrations by Rob Baumer, Dario D’Alatri, Andrew Coulthard and Shane Swank

Wire & Spittle art by Chris Kelso