Mayhem

by Michael MolisanI

  At first, Margaret’s father wept, begging them to let his daughter go. But that was abandoned when match struck gasoline. They didn’t cry for Margaret’s freedom anymore, they begged god for a fast death.

  For the same reason that those eight men had wanted to smash her parents’ home and burn them alive, they also had wanted a pet child to amuse themselves.

  These were the nightmares that Margaret kept locked up, tucked away. Maggi knew.

  So, will her granddaughter.

  Margaret and Amihan clawed at each other, embracing so close that the blacksmith grease sizzling on the first layer of Margaret’s armor coated Amy. Margaret could smell the clotted copper around Amihan’s neck, as well as the diseased infection that was slowly killing her. Fire kissed them both, blistering Amy’s finger tips.

  Amy was panting and wailing a guttural cry that any who heard would most likely rather forget. She wasn’t giving up, she was striking at the smaller witch who was now on top of her, landing hits with knuckle and fist. Margaret paid them no heed, no notice. She was leaning over Amihan, jamming her left hand into the girl’s mouth, jerking her jaw open and clawing at her tongue. Black oil ran down Margaret’s face and eyes, a cascade over her lips, thick and reflective, filling Amy’s throat. She began to choke, all her strength focused on dislodging Margaret’s hand, to no effect.

  She was trying to scream, but it was only a gurgle. A dying horse in deep mud, braying for any mercy. Minutes ticked by in the physical world, but Amihan was shackled and locked to Margaret’s mind. In that place, time ceased to exist.

  “This,” Margaret laughed, “is the Collapse!”

  The two existed as a concept. A view of the world through shifting and disjointed memories, weightless and free. Around them another city burned, a city of the old world. Spires and steeples doused in molten smoke, painting the sky in shades foreign to modern eyes. Margaret could feel Amy’s wonder at such a glorious monstrosity. The air was acrid, tangible. A kind of putty that could be touched, manipulated. The heat, the raw fury of such an inferno.

  Total chaos was unleashed in all directions. Men were looting buildings while gangs beat young and old in the streets. With the Veil gone, all this anguish was escorted by the old ones, ghosts and devils, hobgoblins and demons who’d come to settle in this world.

  They called us criminals, Margaret remembered, loud enough for Amihan to hear in her mind, Criminals who had so much, when they had so little. They burnt my parents. And the little girl? She ought to be taught a lesson.

  “Mayy,” Maybe Amihan spoke, out loud, “don’t do this Mayy. I want to go home!”

  It wasn’t little Margaret the eight men dragged away that night, it was Amy.

  Dragged by a dog collar so tight she could barely breathe, Amihan experienced every sight and smell of the Collapse, through Margaret’s eyes.

  Amihan knew what it was like to be raped with a broom handle until she bled, and Margaret whispered in her mind.

  Didn’t you always wonder why I can’t have children?

  Amihan felt the big fist that slammed into her stomach and cracked her ribs when she refused to kneel. She smelled his unwashed, ripe genitals when it was stuffed into her mouth.

  Didn’t you always wonder why I refuse to kneel, not even for your father?

  Amihan experienced every gang rape that Margaret had, including the one so violent that her right clavicle was broken. No matter how hard she screamed, they wouldn’t stop. Her suffering only provoked them to greater forms of deprivation and violence.

  Didn’t you ever wonder why my right shoulder sloped? Not a problem anymore, my right arm is gone. Thanks to you.

  In the real world, Margaret stood up.

  Her burnt linens and linothorax were a matte black in contrast of the reflective and luminous charcoal that bled from every pore in her body. Margaret’s face was cast like some kind of death mask, no real features, a clay model that had been molded by a sculpture. With her remaining arm, Margaret reached up and swept the sleek, umber butter off her face.

  “Badger!” She shouted, using her ordinary voice, “Bring me your sidearm!”

  She didn’t want Erin’s pistol for this. The Corporal was still young and simple in the ways of war. Margaret had done things with Badger that would turn hardened shock troops pale.

  That’s not even counting what we’ve done in the field.

  “You’se hurt Lady? Feeling alright?” Badger’s honey and gravel voice suckled at the back of Margaret’s neck as she watched Plague Dog quiver and jerk. Her brain was still functioning, but she was in shock. Disconnected from her limbs, she whimpered like a child.

  “No, please, no.”

  She was speaking to memories of those eight men who’d tortured Margaret. Condemned in those months, the little girl would live shackled and bound, a toy praying that her pleading would be heard. It amused Lady Mayhem that Amy believed that she would be given different answers than Margaret had once known.

  “Look at me,” Margaret turned around, teeth coated in jet, “Right as fucking rain.”

  Badger nodded, his scruffy chin grinding at metal gorget. He reached down to his ribs, released a big 1911 .45 ACP, cocked the hammer, then spun it on his index finger to hand it over, grip first. It was corroded along the trigger guard, but mostly oiled and clean.

  Margaret accepted the pistol with her one hand, then stepped off Amihan Lopez.

  “In all the dirty taverns, where they mix vomit and beer, I want you to tell this story. You tell them. Antecedent, Owens, Maul. You tell all of them the same.” Margaret’s hand shook for a second, then she willed it steady with her voice and resolve.

  Amihan’s lips were moving, she was saying something else. Her face was covered in lurid charcoal and drying crimson.

  “You’se gonna execute that Lopez, or what?” Badger snarled.

  Blood from the prone woman’s neck wound pooled on the ground with liquid midnight. Margaret leveled the pistol at Amihan’s chest and spoke quietly.

  “I’ll tell your father that you fought to the end.”

  Just for a second Margaret could hear words on Amihan’s lips. It raised gooseflesh across her body, and turned the humid pressure of her skin, ice cold.

  “...I give you my love, my worship.”

  Amy wasn’t speaking to Margaret.

  Margaret pulled the trigger, twice, on Badger’s heavy .45 ACP. Two rounds discharged, directly into the chest of Amihan Lopez.

  1:08pm March 19th, 39 Veilfall

  Stockton, California

  Just south of the Crosstown aqueduct, a block beyond the water servicing plant, was a five-story post-Collapse structure that housed logistics offices for the city. It was built in the style of old Victorian stonework, support pillars erected around several sets of wide and ornate wooden doors, carved with scenes of Stockton’s fall and rise as a city.

  Gambler fireteam, along with Badger and Erin Abid, escorted Margaret; who looked like a rabid animal drowning in a tar pit. She was caked in burnt linen and smudged with matte powder. Only her eyes gleamed ivory under flaking lashes. They walked, first up obsidian steps and onto the interior concourse which led to central office logistics. Two of the Gamblers dragged Amy Lopez’s body with narrow chains and wooden handles. Her skull thumped rhythmically up each stair flight, rising and falling, until finally it grew soft and pudgelent. Blood painted across an enameled silver floor, her dead eyes unseen behind layers of black varnish that had leaked off Margaret’s face.

  The building was empty of pencil necks and bean counters, the engineers who maintained Crosstown, sewers, the power grid, and defensive walls. In their wake, former Owens royal guards stood watch, void of uniforms, dressed in whatever workwear saw them through new vocations and trades. A few were still kitted in plate or fatigues, those who’d become Antecedent bounty hunters or mercenary rangers since House Owen was dissolved. Margaret couldn’t recognize any of them if she’d tried, but hard eyes and muted glares told her they remem
bered seeing her two years ago. Their minds whispered quiet anger, mixed with a healthy dose of fear.

  Each floor had a narrow stairwell, not quite wide enough for two people to walk abreast. The inner rails were lacquered in dark beryl, across from opposing walls that had been painted in one of the most complex and detailed murals Margaret had ever seen. It was an endless canvas that wrapped up all five floors, depicting a serpentine map of pre-Antecedent House Owens. Flecks of gold or silver paint marked freeholds and baronies. Large portraits illustrated a dozen or more key members of House Owens’ early days, and among them Margaret recognized a younger version of the Maul warlord she’d met in Fish Rock.

  The magnificently painted stairwell led to the roof, out of two horizontal double doors, and directly facing Eric Owens and his mother. Eric stood tall in a cotton shirt the color of egg shells, with polished steel buttons reflecting golden sunlight. Next to him sat Aurora Owens in a thickly hewn chair of polished, red, oak. Hand carved in scenes of noble creatures holding her aloft. Margaret imagined what she would have looked like twenty years ago, when Maggi first stood at Aurora’s court.

  “Kneel before your queen. Heart of House Owens, Lady Aurora the first, protector of Stockton, Santa Rosa, San Jose, and San Francisco.”

  Corporal Erin Abid looked down at her diminutive mentor, face stained in soot and blood. When Margaret did not fall to one knee, she looked away, watching the Heart and her son. On her other side, Badger also refused to kneel, he simply spat chew tobacco, his face turned up in a defiant glare of loathing and disdain, something he couldn’t control under such savage scars. If he wouldn’t kneel, neither would the other Gamblers.

  “Mm,” Margaret made a simpering sound, then replied, “Probably not, Lord Owens.”

  Lady Owens raised her right hand, skinny and frail with age, her palm polished and smooth, fingers adorned in silver and gold rings, “It’s fine, Eric. Lady Mayhem is not required to kneel. She is, however, required to swear an oath to me. Do we still have that accord, Lady Mayhem?”

  A cool breeze drew up Aurora’s white and gray hair, it twisted and twined around her simple crown of silver, measured to drop down on her forehead. It was new, and still bore smithing marks near curved edges.

  “We do, Heart Owens,” Margaret pulled herself up, as stiff and tall as she could stand, shadowed by her soldiers and escorts. She took a step to the side and gestured to the grisly remains of her brother’s daughter. Her own niece crumpled up on the tar roof, “I bring you tribute to prove my loyalty to House Owens. This was the daughter of Emperor Lopez. Plague Dog, Amihan, 9th Battalion Commander of the Antecedent 1st Army.”

  For Margaret, the flowery prose of aristocracy did not come naturally. She’d stood in front of a hundred lords and ladies, captains of city states and kingdoms across North America. She talked to all of them the way gods had talked to her, casting off her tangible lusts and desires, imagining herself as mast on a tall ship, looking down on all she surveyed.

  “I believe it was this witch who took your arm, Lady Mayhem,” Aurora Owens answered, lowering her palm and tapping soft metal rings against the oak of her chair.

  “It was,” Margaret nodded once.

  Even in her repose, Aurora Owens reminded Margaret of her mother. Though Maggi Lopez would never have sat at such gracious attention, nor would she have accorded herself this kind of opulence. Maggi was a brawler and Margaret supposed she was too.

  “Tell me how this gift is an offering to the Heart of House Owens, and not yourself?”

  The air smelled of burning wood and mortar. It could have been South Stockton, still ablaze, or it could have been Aurora herself. Margaret didn’t know, but she found it soothing.

  “I’d have killed Amihan Lopez for myself, but this betrayal now binds us. My brother will seek my head when this is done, and I will march with the armies of Stockton to confront him. If I bring you his head, will you find that less selfish?”

  Aurora Owens chuckled to herself, the deep lines that frosted her mouth and lips creased as she did so. With her right hand she gestured Margaret forward, “Come here, Lady Mayhem.”

  Each step Margaret took was like swimming in thick mud. The linen and armor wrap had shrunk around her body, under Amihan’s flame. Grease and charcoal leaked down her legs, creating inky footprints, glistening on the tar roof.

  “You glowed such a deep red, that day in my palace. The day we met,” Aurora’s smile was as predatory as any Maggi had once offered, “Now, you drip pitch like a smudge pot. Do you know what happens to the brightest stars in morning light?”

  Margaret’s upper lip raised, showing a sooty half sneer.

  “They fade, forgotten until the next night.”

  Nodding, Aurora’s smile remained. She leaned in, hushing her tone, “Exactly. But pitch stains. It leaves a message, it lasts. Do you want to last, Margaret?”

  I never thought much about it, Margaret hadn’t expected that question.

  The old woman wasn’t spinning webs of magic, but she was building shackles with her words, leading and guiding the younger woman where she wished, for the result she desired. Margaret realized that this is what Lady Owens had done since their first meeting, and she ignored the question in favor of her own.

  “You knew that I would turn on my brother one day. Didn’t you?”

  Aurora Owens shifted in her high-backed chair and lifted left hand to jaw, relaxing as she did so. “Of course. When your mother and I last spoke, I could see a future in her eyes that I did not understand. I knew a day would come that her son would force my House to kneel for him. I also knew a girl, aglow in red, would have trouble kneeling for anyone.”

  In the afternoon sun, Margaret wanted to be free of her oily bounds. She wanted to feel the breeze that played in Aurora’s hair tickle her own neck. The cinders she was chewing on were not Stockton, they were a rich tapestry of flavor as she looked down on a witch who once rivaled even her mother. Their energies were mingling, and whether she wished to permit it or not, Aurora Owens was reading visions in Margaret’s eyes. Just as she had once done for Maggi Lopez.

  “I know what my son offered you,” Lady Owens' eyes reflected more than just an atramentous witch, “and I am proud of him for holding this House, the House that I built, above all. I expect you to do the same. I’m not Maggi. I’m not going to adopt you or sing you little songs when you sleep. I’m not even going to love you, but I am going to give you your birthright.”

  Margaret didn’t have to ask what she meant. Part of her already knew the answer. She was a clever woman, and while it was easy to imagine that the men who murdered her parents did so out of animal madness, swept up in Collapse chaos, it had never quite made sense. Those men had hated Margaret’s home, her accommodations, every bit as much as they hated her mother and father. The memories she’d condemned Amy to before death remained an open wound. The odor of hate and resentment strong at the edges of her mind, gnawing like earwigs.

  The little girl ought to be taught a lesson.

  “I don’t know who your parents were, Margaret. But, in your eyes I see reflections of great power. A husband and wife who stood tall in politics, industry. Wealthy and connected. If the Collapse had never come, you’d have attended private schools and had your choice of the finest universities. You would have worn pencil skirts, and silk blouses of cerulean, designed by men in Paris and Rome. With the razor-sharp mind you command, you could have been President one day. We would have never met. Your mother was a chola thug and I sold cheap furniture for a Persian. You’re not one of us Margaret, and you never were.”

  Margaret didn’t understand those words, ‘pencil skirts’ and ‘Persian,’ but as Lady Owens spoke, she composed swatches of her own memories. Grainy and dim, a thousand tiny boxes of red, blue and yellow, creating complex and beautiful photographs, moving frame by frame. They were crisp visions of a dead past, filled with metal sky-birds, and small radios in every hand. The streets filled with a thousand, a million, cars a
nd trucks.

  There was a place there for an alternative Margaret. She looked like herself, lines cutting her face a little deeper, standing taller, without misshapen shoulders or eyes that didn’t fit her face. Her auburn hair was fashioned in wide curls, and her skin didn’t fade into a crosshatch of Tilapia.

  The smile and twinkle in her eye were the same; however. Playful, dangerous.

  It wasn’t as sophisticated as the nightmares Margaret had subjected her niece to, but it was an endless parade of wonder.

  “Would you have hated me?” Margaret asked.

  “Of course not,” Aurora snapped back, louder, “My House never strapped bombs to children or enslaved the hungry and wretched. I never wanted to punish anyone for who or what they were. I only wanted to build something for myself, for my children.”

  “Why are we sharing all of this?” Margaret shook her head, aware that Aurora Owens was guiding them to a destination of her own design.

  “Because this isn’t over. If House Owens is to survive, I’ll need the nightmare mirror loyal to me, and me alone.” Lady Owens laughed, stuttering and wet, “In the dark, when you wonder why Aurora Owens is a worthy mistress, I want you to remember that I alone saw your value, your birthright, and offered it up to you on a golden platter.”

  Margaret found no seduction in Aurora’s visions. It was easy to dismiss a future that never could be. A place and time that defied her comprehension; a future that didn’t include Alexander Lopez, or the great shadow cast by his mother.

  It was just as easy to imagine a world, as delicate and sweet as spun sugar, where a girl with no surname could rise as the most powerful landlady in House Owens.

  Pitch stains, it leaves a message, it lasts. And, I want to last, thought Margaret.