“Self defence.”
“From who?”
“Whoever killed Beta.”
“This ain’t gonna stop him. Did you see what he did to Beta? Stomped his head flat.”
“It’s better than nothing.”
Alpha takes the spear and inspects it.
“Alright,” she says.
Omega nods.
She goes and sits next to him and he shuffles away from her but she reaches out and takes his hands and looks at him. Then she draws close and closes her eyes and puckers her lips. She feels his hair on her face and it is rough and oily she she can smell him too, a dense blend of unwashed flesh and unwashed clothes. Then suddenly he shoves her and she falls backwards against the shabby walls and hits her head with a creaking thud. When she opens her eyes, he is standing at the far end of the shack, braced against the wall.
“I’m so sorry.”
“What the fuck? What, I’m not good enough for you?”
“No, it’s not– ”
“You got thousands of women, throwing themselves at you, have you?”
“I’m not – I’m sorry.”
“Then what the hell good are you?”
She wants to say more, to ridicule him, to cut him as hard and deep as she can, but he starts to weep and slowly collapses against the wall. Alpha watches him for a bit, a quivering bulk in the dark, and gets up.
“Don’t touch me,’ he says. “Don’t come near me.”
“Why?”
But he does not answer, and after a while Alpha picks out a can and gashes it open with the Swiss army knife and empties its contents in the pot. They eat, her watching him, him staring into the flames, eyes brimming, and silent.
* * *
He is still there when she wakes up, huddled in a corner, snoring gently. She cannot see his face and realizes that she does not want to. So she gets up and sneaks over to her stash and takes a couple of drab plastic bags, once bright pink, now the colour of fresh meat, and heads out into the mist.
At first she thinks perhaps she will go to Beta’s, for there will be more stuff in there, stuff she can use – some furniture or a box or some cardboard. Halfway there, she changes her mind, and turns and heads back to hers. She finds the way-sticks to Gamma’s, and heads off in that direction.
It has been a long time since she has been to Gamma’s. She tries to remember the last occasion she had been inside but she cannot be sure if she is remembering or imagining. And then other things come to mind unbidden and from she knows not where. The dusty insides of a cave. Fine ashy grey dust and bones, maybe, or else bright white rocks. That’s it. Bright rocks. She stops in her tracks and realizes that there will be no welcome for her at Gamma’s; and even if she is let in, there will be nothing but mockery. And yet, and yet; Alpha wants company, and any company will do.
She keeps walking. After a while she hears footsteps and gasping and stops again. She has nothing with her but the bags and curses herself for not bringing the spear. The footsteps are getting closer, so close she can tell that they are coming from the direction of the Gamma’s house. Now the sound of gargling and a thud. The string tied between the sticks shakes violently, and pulls the sticks over to the side. Alpha’s heart is racing and she sweats in the cold.
Then she sees it—a figure, on the floor. Legs kicking feebly. Its hands wrapped around its own neck. The stink of blood in the air, and other things, revolting things, acid-strong in her nostrils. She knows who this figure is even before she is close enough to see her contorted face and the blood gushing between her fingers in cataracts of red, bright against its filthy skin. She draws near and Gamma sees her and reaches for her with hook-fingered hands.
“Help,” says the old woman. “Help.”
Or at least, that is what Alpha thinks she says, for Gamma’s neck has been slit, from side to side, and that is where the blood is from, and she can emit no more than a gurgling whisper. Alpha does not want to go any closer; she does not want to be within reach of those dying hands and yet the old woman will not stop reaching for her. Alpha takes a step back.
“Bitch,” says Gamma.
“Who did this?”
Gamma rolls over onto her face, curls up like a dying bug, and says something but Alpha cannot tell what it is. But then the old woman fiddles with something, in her clothes, and throws it at Alpha. A smooth chunk of metal, sticky with blood with a little blade sticking out one end and brushed-steel cross, embossed.
Omega’s Swiss army knife.
“Oh God,” says Alpha.
She does not know what to do so she sits down and watches Gamma die. It takes a long time for her old body to give up, for that final long sigh to escape from her, rattling and reluctant. Alpha sits until the light begins to fail. Then she wipes the knife on her sleeve, and heads back to her place.
Omega is not there when she arrives, but no sooner has she gone in and retrieved the spear than he appears at her door, clutching an apple in one hand and small plastic cup in the other, fluorescent green and caked in mud. He holds them out to her and starts to say something and then stops when he sees her face and the way she is holding the spear pointed right at his throat. She jabs at him, close enough to send him a step back and out of the hut.
“Get out,” she hisses. “Murderer.”
“What?”
“Out!”
She drives him back into the mist and he drops the cup and she kicks it away and then slowly his expression changes and he sinks to his knees and buries his face in his hands.
“Already?” he says.
“Yes, already! How long did you think it would take an old woman to die, after you slit her throat?”
“I didn’t. Alpha.”
“Liar!” She pulls out the Swiss army knife, gummed up with clotted blood. “This is yours, ain’t it? Ain’t it?”
“Listen.” Omega stands up, and Alpha takes a step back, as if she has only just realized how big he is. He holds up his hands, palms-out. The grime like rivers in the creases. “Please, you have to listen to me.”
“What for? Fuck off! Murderer!”
“You’re in great danger, Alpha, please, you have to listen to me– ”
“No shit I’m in great danger! I’ve been sleeping in the same hut as a murderer for the last, ten, however long you’ve been here!”
“I’m not the murderer! It’s Delta.”
“So how the fuck did he get your knife then, huh? He snuck in in the middle of the night and took it off you?”
“He doesn’t have to. Look, this isn’t what you think. He can–”
“Go! Who the hell are you anyway? Huh? You just walk in out of the fog one day like you know me–”
“I do know you.”
“No you don’t!”
She is close now, so close that if she thrust hard enough she could hit him, but he does not step back. He just stands there, crying too, shaking his head.
“Listen. Listen. It doesn’t make any sense. Think about it. I was at home when you left, right– ”
“Go. Away.”
“Just listen!”
“No!”
“Goddamnit, you stupid woman, listen to me, listen to me or you’ll die just like– ” She stabs him, hard, right in the eye. For one brief second, he feels the weight of the blade, ragged and hot, scorching into his head. And then he dies.
* * *
Sometimes, Delta is a goat. Sometimes, a black dog, drooling fire. Sometimes it is a man in a suit, but the suit is never the same. Once or twice, it has even come as the wind, billowing like black smoke through the mist, incorporeal yet coherent, a swirling malice unhindered by form.
This time, it is a woman – young and pretty, corpse-pale skin and huge eyes. A withered rose in her hair. Her clothing ancient and tattered, a thick tissue of velvet and lace, hanging off her in strips and slabs. Like she were a snake with its skin only half shed. She smells of fruit and fermentation. Black lips and black nails and riven with night-blue veins.<
br />
She stands over Omega’s body for a while. Sometimes she licks her lips and sometimes she shivers, as if suddenly cold, but nothing moves around her, not the wind, not the mist. Eventually she crouches, and pokes Omega with an overlong finger. The blood that smears his face begins to ripple and crawl and slither back into the gash on his face. The skin around the wound begins to wriggle and reach across the wound like cilia. His body spasms and with a groan, Omega sits up. Then he sees he, and begins to cry.
“Stop it,’ says Delta, and licks her lips. “Now tell me, what did you do wrong?”
“I tried to tell her.”
“Tried to tell her what?”
She tilts her head to one side and her neck distends weirdly and presently she comes to rest with her ear flat against her shoulder.
“What did you try to tell her?” she asks again.
“You know what.”
“Tell me again.”
“Why? You didn’t even give me a week, this time. Not even a week.”
“Yes, I was a little hasty. I was growing bored, you see. You were boring me. But this time—oh my. Did you see the way she stabbed you? Fierce. Was she like that in real life?”
“You know what she was like!”
Delta pouts. “Oh, you’re no fun. What is the point of suffering if those who suffer do not know they are suffering? Your Alpha, she doesn’t know she’s suffering-”
“Yes she does. She’s terrified. She thinks I’m a murderer.”
“She’s an automaton. A function of this system.”
“She’s real.”
“Define real.”
“She feels.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I can see it! Because I know her!”
“But that’s not her. You know that. That’s not the real her.”
“She’s real.”
Delta sighs, and squats down, and rests her blue-veined chin on her left knee. “And yet, when you live, how many animals did you kill? Was their suffering not real?”
“Just get it over with. I don’t know why you insist on these… debriefing sessions.” “I’m just curious to know what you’ve learned.”
“Why should I learn anything? We’ve been doing this forever. We’ll be doing this forever. What difference does it make if I learn anything?”
“And yet, every now and then, you do something different. Something like today. You know it won’t work. And yet you try. Why?”
“You know why.”
‘I want to hear you say it.”
“Why?”
“Because saying it makes you suffer, and that is what I am here for. Say it, or this time I will use needles. Or a rusty blade. And I will make her last a long time.”
She watches him for a long while but he does not say anything. Then she licks her lips, and reaches into the mist, and pulls out a chainsaw. Huge and crusted with glossy black gore and stinking of fuel. Delta stands up and rests her head against the blade and sighs.
“Fine. Run. Unless you want to hear.”
Delta runs; he runs as hard and as far as he can through that formlessness, through the mist. Yet even then he cannot escape the distant growl of the machine and the faint echoes of the screaming. He keeps running, until finally he is so exhausted he just falls over and lies on the floor sobbing.
Then, footsteps. Out of the mist comes Alpha, eyes wide, a makeshift spear in her hands. She stops a couple of feet away from him and points it at his face.
“Who’re you?” she asks.
_______________________________________________________________
TALES FROM THE STONE LOTUS
by Subodhana Wijeyeratne
Illustrated by Sara Gothard
A boy living in a labyrinth wonders what lies beyond its black walls. The gossamer-winged inhabitants of an alien world dream of being remembered for all time. A little boy abandoned by his parents must make his way to a river he is not even sure exists. These, and other stories, feature in this collection of ten literary science fiction and fantasy shorts set in worlds both distant, and nearby.
A TALK WITH TOM
by Nathan Driscoll
Jordan envied the deep-sea fishermen of his imagination, the chummers especially, the guys who parked themselves on the portside edge of the large, pointed vessels and scooped chum one-handed with the other hand holding a scarf over their faces. They sure had the life, and those whose stomachs were seasoned enough to handle the odor could congregate and talk sports or play go fish or just bullshit like sea-necks did, all while waiting for the monsters lurking out in the depths to come hand themselves over. They gambled, stroked their thick beards, and eventually left their open water powwows with trophies and epic stories to tell their families, and better yet, they never had to meet Tom or venture within a thousand miles of…
“Beekering Woods”
The old, wooden slab of a sign lit up in the darkness once the target of Jordan’s flashlight, showing off its cracks and worn, yellow lettering. The maker of the sign remained a mystery, likely someone Tom had taken, maybe one of his first. And, likely a self-indulged someone surnamed Beekering, since the title was found on no map. Titles were meant for jagged peaks and vast, bottomless lakes, not a collection of lifeless trees and mossy overgrowth ten miles from the nearest anything except for the cabin. Jordan swiveled his flashlight to get a final view of the square, brown cabin sitting a bit higher up than he was across the meadow. A poor excuse for a getaway for an equally poor group of college kids. It must have been full of young, vibrant wood once, much like the sign must have, but it had since suffered a similar fate of degradation. Jordan pictured going back inside and cracking a few beers and a few old jokes with Pete and Stryker until the growing stench crept up his face. The daydreams had to stop. He had to push forward into the trees, or else the smell of the bucket would prove too strong and overtake him.
Jordan’s bucket of homemade chum would’ve slipped out of his hands yards ago if he hadn’t continued to re-grip the slick handle. He’d filled it too full, and the white exterior was turning a vanilla-strawberry color as streams of blood crept down its sides. There were tiny points of pressure on his shoes from additional splats going airborne, bits of liver and tongue that hadn’t spent enough time in the blender. A chunk flew into a stray curl sticking out of the black bun behind his head and then grazed the scruff on his cheek, depositing cold muck when the curl bounced with his step. This compounded the nasty smell, so Jordan tilted his chin upward as he walked. Bits of moonlight made an illuminated checkerboard in the canopy of dead branches. The nice view was enough to send him into a crooked stump and throw a splash of chum onto his calves and the knees of his denim shorts. “Oh God.” He cringed, as the cold blood began to saturate his ankle-high socks and sting his skin. It was eyes-straight-ahead from then on, smell or not.
The nightly trips to visit Tom had slight variations, given inclement weather, the occasional flock of birds, chum spills, but there were also staples of each night, steady as the mossy boulders lining the trail that he was set to encounter. One, the creaks of the trees, low and rusty as if they were groaning for their lost lives. Wind would slither between them, yet even when the air was still, on they would wail.
“Oh, to be young again,” the trees said to each other in Jordan’s head. “Back when our forest was alive and not housing a demon.”
The second staple was destined to one day be taken by the wind, though it had lined Jordan’s path on each trip to date. He marched past the torn up white shirt hanging off the branch over ten feet out of reach, the buttons from collar to bottom, the tears on the shoulders, and the name tag with three, bold, neon-green letters.
T-O-M.
The shirt of a former victim no doubt, and a nice, benign name for a monster, Jordan had thought.
The dread, the third staple Jordan was now feeling, never took a night off. It peaked when he could no longer see the trail. The grounded timber became too thick for a steady walk
, forcing him to maneuver his body and his bucket, as Beekering Woods swallowed him whole. The journey slowed significantly while he navigated the maze before running into the fourth staple—the smell. Not as strong or as putrid as the chum, but just as remarkable. The scent abounded, akin to the blue and orange chemicals found under a kitchen sink. He clutched the bucket with both arms, turned, and began backpedaling through a group of bushes until he no longer felt the pressure of twigs on his spine.
And then, finally, the triangular mountain of downed, rotten trees that jutted up above the forest floor twenty feet, with a hole sloppily carved deep in its center to form a sort of organic cave. A beam of moonlight from the exposed sky descended upon the structure and the surrounding ring of bare forest, though it didn’t penetrate beyond the cave’s mouth. Not even Jordan’s flashlight could reach the end of the fifth and final staple, Tom’s den.
White-knuckled around the handle, Jordan tiptoed forward and dropped the bucket a few paces from the opening. The chemically smell wafted out so thick that he could nearly chew on it. He stepped back, took a few deep breaths, and flicked off the flashlight. He didn’t need it anymore.
“Tom.” There was no movement, and no noise aside from the groans of the trees. “Tom, I’m here.” Jordan kept his voice low and confident, a contrast to what was underneath. Tom could smell fear better than any chum. “Supper time.” The passing seconds birthed more inner fear and false bravado, even to the point where Jordan stamped a foot on the dirt. “Where are you?”
“Back, Mista Hall.” The gurgling, hissing voice sounded like it was coming from inside the cave. There was no humanity in it, more like a voice one would hear out of an evil serpent in a fantastical movie. Easily recognized, and never, ever forgotten. “Baaaaack.” The way some syllables would tend to draw out made the voice all the more haunting.
Jordan took three hesitant steps away from the bucket and gulped in a dry throat.
“One more, Mista Hallllll.”
Jordan obliged.
A cloaked figure, far blacker than the moonlit night, erupted high into the air from behind the cave, not inside of it, landing next to the bucket with a thud, as Jordan leapt back another two full paces. The bucket was no longer visible, nor was any monstrous flesh. Both hid under the cloak that was pulsating with heavy breath.
Kzine Issue 20 Page 9