Mayhem

by Michael MolisanI

  After some struggle and kneeling, Margaret groped with her left hand for a table, pulling herself upward, to her feet. Standing for long minutes she studied forks and spoons, still arranged with care, nicks glistening on polished silver. When Margaret leaned forward, pressing herself to the table, a thick flag of bloody mucous unfurled from her lips, draping across flatware, painting them in red so deep that it could have been black.

  Why is it so fucking cold in here? Why didn’t I bring a coat?

  Margaret's mouth fell open and she inhaled hard, aching at temple and jaw. One of her eyes was swollen shut, and skin across her face sang a graceless cry of pain, flushing her cheeks. Frustrated, she stumbled and kicked a chair back so that she could sit. Her mind had begun to wind around questions, and her eyes drifted across the deserted hanger.

  Woolen jackets of blue had turned dark with drying claret. Skulls broken open, and contents stretching like tanned leather. These men were dead or dying. She could hear the rattle of their breathing, but she couldn’t feel them. The hanger was quiet, as if her senses had been blinded in a great flash.

  My niece set me on fire. It was a phlegmatic thought, Margaret couldn’t rally her wits around the notion, it felt as though someone else had burned. Not her.

  Those were her officers on the ground. Their disgorged organs crusting in a chilly night breeze. She’d known many of them for years, and of course fucked more than a few. They had places in her heart, each was a miniature altar she’d erected in their memory. Moments of their lives, their loves, and even their fears. They each had names, and eyes that no longer twitched or pulled at her bust or legs. They weren’t ghosts, as such, it was simply that their absence played like a rat in her stomach.

  Margaret’s right hand rested in her lap. She tipped her head down and watched it shudder, leaves on an autumn breeze. Soot painted her chest in ethereal wisps, curling up, beautiful from the raw, incarnadine, meat of her breast. Skin had curled away, exposing layers of muscle and fat like a tawdry hooker lifting her panties for a wayward Johnny. The skin was covered in melted molle web, corset liquified, running together with flesh.

  How could I sketch that? Those patterns, from the fire.

  Slowly, with a detached sense of curiosity, Margaret surveyed the damage at her ribs and right shoulder. Yellow pools of pus and ragged skin were braided by blisters. Singed bone had turned black, and fat boiled away, drying as thick lumps where tendons had once been.

  “They’re going to cut my arm off,” Margaret spoke to her shoulder, pausing briefly as she waited for a reply that never came. “What am I going to do with one arm?”

  I’m right handed.

  The pain she’d suffered under flame was unfathomable affliction, but now, as bad as those wounds looked, they didn’t hurt.

  “Is this how they felt, mom?” Margaret looked away from her shoulder, across the hanger, talking to only herself, “All those people you burned.”

  Standing, Margaret realized her skirt had rolled up, around her hips. With care she tugged down on the fabric, pressing it over her undergarments again.

  How ridiculous must that have looked?

  Margaret decided to make her way to the hanger doors. She needed to shuffle across gore dispatched tarmac, aware that some officers still squirmed, writhed, and waited for death. There was nothing she could offer them. Her tendrils, the aspects of her mind that allowed her such deep connections, felt as mussed and uneven as her skirt had been. She couldn’t feel. They were a whisper just outside of hearing.

  At the hanger doors, her good hand pressing up to dusty aluminum, Margaret looked to a sky devoid of stars and wonder.

  Ramona, gods be fucked, what have you done?

  12:22am February 28th, 39 Veilfall

  Stormair, California

  It was a long press of minutes before Margaret realized someone was calling her name. She’d begun to walk, one foot in front of the other, toward Stockton’s southern gate. Where else could she go? Perhaps she could walk home. Janet would help her, and she could lay down.

  “Margaret!”

  Who calls me that?

  Margaret stopped, listening to the wind move around her. It stung the burns on her face, and upended her skirt, again. She’d forgotten to care about that. She could hear horseshoes beating tarmac, a metallic echo crawling across her skin. A sound that had always set her on edge, no matter how much she liked horses or riding.

  It occurred to Margaret that she wasn’t armed. Hand to sternum, directly below her breasts, she found nothing. She’d remembered the pistol in her boudoir. She’d second guessed herself. Because of a beautiful Hetairai.

  Why would I do something so stupid?

  The horses separated as they approached, one moving to her left arm where she clutched her corset, the other facing her directly.

  The first rider dismounted, oil lantern held up, dress uniform illuminated in flickering peach. She tried to reach out, seep into the rider’s mind, wield some sort of control. It was a lecherous invasion, clumsy awkwardness, a virgin boy falling into the window of his quarry, bumbling and lost in thoughts of what could be.

  Townsend. The rider’s mind was a familiar one. Though she wasn’t afraid, or even under duress of pain, she began to weep. The tears came and she gasped, with a low whimpering that seemed to start at her sternum.

  “Gods be fucked,” Townsend’s voice was a broken window at slumber, a single act of audible shock. Even under lamp light, he lost color, his jaw dropped open. Margaret could see revulsion in his eyes, and this time feel his discomfort, his need to look away.

  “Hello, Lieutenant General.” Margaret said, pretending she was stout and healthy, bare shoulders quaking under sobs.

  “Lady Mayhem,” the second rider, still mounted, stuttered, “are you okay?”

  Townsend looked up to his adjunct in shadow, face turning concrete, “Did I fucking train you to ask stupid fucking questions?”

  “Sir! No, sir!” The other man replied, stammer erased.

  “Pull the best combat doc in Stormair,” Townsend bellowed orders, “Bring them to the hanger, and assist anyone who may be alive, then wait for me to return. You tracking, Captain?”

  Margaret had never heard this tone in Townsend’s voice. He wasn’t flirting or jesting about Owens nobility, he was deploying a shout from deep in his chest.

  “Sir! Yes, sir!” With Townsend’s dismissal, the Captain pulled on reigns. His horse, a gray and black beast, whinnied and reared back before leaping into a turn and crashing forward, full gallop.

  I don’t know if I can trust him, Margaret thought sadly as Townsend turned to face her again. His temples throbbed with pumping veins.

  “We’re alone, Lieutenant General. Do I get a kiss, or a bullet?”

  Maybe both?

  Townsend’s broad chest heaved a sigh and his brows pressed down, “I’ve already dug my grave tonight, Margaret. I won’t shoot two witches.”

  Margaret couldn’t drop her jaw, the burns across her cheek had puckered the skin, “You shot Amy? You shot Amihan Lopez? Heir apparent to the Antecedent Empire?”

  Townsend didn’t reply.

  “Fuck me!” Margaret tried to shout, but her lower lip split, delivering cutting pain where Amy’s thumb had burned, “Amy names me a traitor, and you shoot her.”

  “She was going to kill you,” Townsend didn’t speak to Margaret with soft affections, his face was a mess of anger and discipline, and what thoughts ran through his mind remained Margaret’s mystery to solve. “I know what I did, and I have no regrets. I watched you in rags, weak as a kitten, tending to my men after Saint Louis. The 3rd Army remembers.”

  Faint in the head, blind in the mind, Margaret stepped forward and ran her left hand up Townsend’s chest, gripping his uniform tight, “Did you kill her?”

  In reply Townsend shrugged, “I have no idea. I clipped her in the neck. She was bleeding. There was fighting in Stormair, but most of the 9th Battalion members surrendered. She likel
y fled into Stockton.”

  There’s still some hope then, we don’t have to kill each other.

  Her tears abated, Margaret felt her lips move, and thought her voice had drifted between them. Uncertain if she’d spoken her thoughts aloud, she replied, “Who am I kidding? Even if she and I make peace, she’ll demand your head for drawing on a Lopez.”

  Angry, Margaret was tired of looking at Townsend, watching his moustache twist, alert to what his unyielding face was holding back. Standing up straight again, Margaret placed the fingers of her left hand in her mouth and bit into gloves. She jerked at the delicate fabrics around her thumb, a wild coyote ripping apart a rabbit who’d run just a little too slow.

  Her hand naked, free, she grabbed Townsend’s face, thumb under his lips, fingertips roughly stroking his upper jaw, flesh greasy with old sweat.

  The fighting will start tomorrow. 9th Battalion will turn on us. Margaret must be hidden.

  A weight of anxiety lifted, she could hear him, his thoughts, and Townsend knew it.

  Margaret’s shoulders slouched low. The right one had always been misshapen, and now peeled like the skin of a pig left to cook on a spit. She wondered if his adamant focus on holding an expression of martial rage was the way he coped with stress, just as Margaret needed to listen to the moving parts around her.

  “Tell me what it means. When your mind sounds like an engine?”

  Townsend didn’t look surprised, he only felt it, as if she’d played a game with a stranger who’d actually guessed the number imagined, “It's easier in combat, when it's quiet. Like right now. I look at the world like I would look through a rifle scope. It's a little easier.”

  Margaret couldn’t manage a smile, not with burns fighting every muscle movement, “You’re looking through me, commander. Maybe I’m your rifle scope.”

  You are, Margaret heard him.

  “Amy will also be down with a doc, so we won’t need a witch tomorrow. It’ll be a good old fashion door-to-door. Shake the rust off, that’s all. If you eat dirt, all of this was for nothing.” Sadness drizzled down Margaret’s fingers, off Townsend’s skull and into her bones. It spilled across her skin, cooling burns.

  “Hush, hush,” Margaret said, almost as if cooing a baby asleep, “3rd Army sticks together. I won’t let the bitch come for you. They can bury us together, traitors.”

  “They’ll dump our bodies in a ditch, actually.”

  For some reason, this made Margaret laugh. The action was involuntary, and it caused an eruption of pain across her right cheek and jaw, raw flesh illuminated in agony. It was then that Townsend’s face shifted, ever so slightly, as he examined her, eyes darting over every detail. He seemed to be examining her quality, a farmer checking teeth and hooves of livestock. Margaret found herself hurt, until he leaned forward, crouching down, to press his lips and bushy moustache into her left eye.

  My lips are burned, she realized, he was searching for where he could kiss me.

  He held the kiss there, for seconds, just as he might have on her lips. When he brought himself to full height, his face was stone once more, “I’m going to hide you where no one will look. As the night grows old, I’ll return with a combat doc to perform surgery. You’re as wounded as I ever saw a man who died, and I can’t allow that.”

  Margaret, exhausted to her bones, had no desire to argue, and no desire to doubt Townsend’s plan. This was his chance to take care of her and there was no sense in fighting. He would be right, or he would be wrong. Only time would tell.

  For now, Margaret just wanted off her feet and out of the cold.

  3:18am February 28th, 39 Veilfall

  Stockton, California

  Although Aurora Owens had never been friends with Townsend, the two were familiar. He had been altruistic in his appeal to Aurora’s sense of mercy when he established the need to hide Margaret and had gone so far as to beg.

  The ride to Stockton had been exhausting and painful. Back against Townsend’s chest, one hand wrapped at her stomach, the rhythmic jostle of a hard gallop was excruciating. By the time he helped Margaret inside Aurora’s apartment, she struggled to stand. Where her corset melted into blackened flesh, the skin itself was ripping, flaying Margaret. Fading between the conscious world and a dimly lit agony, she was aware that Townsend dismissed himself, promising he’d return by morning with a combat doc. In moments of clarity, Margaret could see Aurora, a mind of wooden sticks, sharpened, jabbing at her temples and forehead.

  “I offered your mother solace, once. I suppose it would be fitting that I offer the daughter safe harbor as well.”

  The words sounded like a threat, and even her wealth of kind regards as she departed for bed seemed like a menacing hum, the sound of something gnawing at her mind from behind stiff and sound walls.

  Only her servant, her friend, Cyrus remained.

  He sat next to Margaret, where she laid on a chaise lounge, upholstered in velvet and carved from cherrywood, enamel dark and smooth when her hands or calves brushed it. The room, as before, carried a corporeal weight of lemongrass and pine smoke, thick, and almost claustrophobic.

  “You need aloe. You need a lot more than this,” Cyrus said, smearing grease across her shriveled, red, flesh. His fingers moved in circular patterns, above her right breast, crisscrossed by narrow ridges of dried blood. Flesh had begun to separate from muscle tissue. “Petroleum jelly will only do so much.”

  Margaret’s eyes scrunched shut as she inhaled sharply. The ramifications of her injuries were no longer a grim curiosity, they’d become a much more vivid affliction.

  “I’ll take what I can get, doc.”

  “Captain,” Cyrus answered, “and I’m not a doc, I was Eleven-Charlie.”

  Margaret opened her eyes, blowing several breaths out and looking at the man who was easily a decade older than Aurora Owens. His hair was white, and thin on top. His left eye was blue, but the right was milky-gray. He smelled like aftershave and rubbing alcohol.

  “I don’t know that designation, Eleven-Charlie.”

  Cyrus shrugged, “It’s not an Owens designation.”

  “Federal?” Margaret winced as Cyrus applied another mirthless slather of jelly across her chest, this one curving into her armpit.

  “Mhmm,” Cyrus grunted in affirmation, “I was Mortars, back in the old days. When no one lit things on fire with their minds.”

  The pain subsided and Margaret worked on her breathing, pausing to exhale, “Tell me, Mortarman, how did you end up a house-servant for Aurora Owens?”

  Cyrus laughed, pausing to meet Margaret’s eyes, red and irritated, “Eleven-Charlie, please. ‘Mortarman’ is Marine Corp. And, I’m not her house-servant.”

  “Okay, okay,” Margaret panted for a moment, then regained some of her calm.

  “I’m going to put this on your shoulder. I’m not sure how much good it’ll do. Dollars to donuts, that arm comes off,” Cyrus pointed at exposed bone. In plentiful candlelight, the wound looked so much worse.

  Dollars to donuts?

  “I’m as wounded as any man who died,” Margaret reminded herself of Townsend’s words, then laid her head back, silently, ignoring the shoulder.

  Cyrus replied after a moment, greasy fingers groping about bone and crusted tissue, “I’m Aurora’s friend. Been her friend for close to two decades. Since the day The Beast woke. After her husband, Lord Cuttersark, died, I was her social accompaniment.”

  Margaret found Cyrus’s tone to be surprisingly open, and his emotions obvious. She blinked once, astounded, and felt a familiar weight on his wrinkled skin.

  “I didn’t notice before. I didn’t pay attention. You love her.”

  Cyrus nodded, running his fingers along Margaret’s ruined arm. She feels nothing, “I do, and after a fashion, she loves me back.”

  “But, it's not the same,” Margaret finished his thought. Aurora loved him as a companion; Cyrus loved her far more extravagantly.

  Cyrus nodded again, smirking, “Hole in one, we
used to say.”

  Hole in one? Is that a euphemism? Margaret didn’t understand, but pressed on, somewhat more comfortable now, “I’m sorry Captain.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Lady,” Cyrus winced, focusing on her arm, eyes painting a portrait of dismay that rattled Margaret, “I’m happy here with her, and she’s happy with me. I’ve done my best to live the last forty-odd years right, make my amends for what we did to the Bay Area, back in the Collapse.”

  Voice stuttering with disquiet, Margaret asked, “What did you do to the Bay Area? The Bay Area Reach?”

  Cyrus stopped spreading jelly and fell quiet. Like Townsend, his face betrayed nothing more than a gaze that looked far past Margaret’s arm. She could have pressed harder, dug into his mind, but she chose to allow an old man his secrets. For a moment though, Margaret thought perhaps she heard something in the distance.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  “Love,” Cyrus looked away, and picked up a white towel to wipe his hands, “is the closest I can ever know of your magic. Aurora has told me, over the years, what it's like to not just see the world. I envy her sometimes, but I have my own kind of magic. She’s always beautiful to me, no matter how old, or sick, she gets. She makes the world stop and dance, and I’m happy to dance with that world for her.”

  Gods be fucked, that’s beautiful, Margaret thought, licking at the edges of her mouth as Cyrus dug between his fingers with the towel.

  “That man who delivered you, your knight in shining armor? He loves you.”

  Knight in shining armor? Why would you want armor to shine? That’s sniper-bait.

  “Townsend?” Margaret asked.

  “It's a hard thing to love a witch, Lady.” Cyrus ignored the question and leaned forward, clasping his hands. It seemed to Margaret that he was no longer speaking for her, but rather himself. “You warp gravity around you, and either weigh a thousand pounds, or nothing. Light as a feather. Do you know what the skin of a witch feels like? For someone like me?”