by Jerry
Wilde stood rooted to the spot, gazing in fear and rapture at the floating thing. He was too good a policeman to simply dismiss the sight outright, but his mind worked double-time to find some comfortable explanation that could make sense of the combination of place, time, and creature. It was tempting to think that the creature’s presence might be some terrible coincidence—that it had happened along and eaten the house’s occupant moments before Wilde’s arrival—but the most impossible answer was also the simplest: The floating mass of tentacles and iridescence must be Mr. Salad Monday.
As he stood and watched the creature devour its meal of decaying broadsheets, Wilde’s first realization was followed by another. It was all to do with paper. The heaps and piles of paper scattered throughout the house were not simply pieces of a decaying archive. They were both food and entertainment. There was little doubt that Salad Monday the tatter enjoyed the challenge of typewritten argument, but it seemed that Salad Monday the monster also enjoyed the pages upon which the arguments were delivered.
In spite of himself, Wilde coughed. One cluster of lights rolled through the curious mass to fix its gaze upon the intruder. These stared at Wilde for a moment, twitching monstrously as they tried to bring him into focus. Then another set joined them, then another. Soon it seemed that all of the dreadful eyes had migrated to one section of the body and were staring at the solitary figure below. The dangling tendrils ceased their typing, and the room fell silent. Wilde licked his lips and realized that he could not seem to raise his pistol. He stared at the creature’s eyes and saw in them what might have been hunger or malice or fear.
Then, without a moment’s warning, Salad Monday’s tendrils quivered and tucked themselves up beneath the folds of its floating body. The mass of color rippled violently, and suddenly it was gone, vanishing upward into the dark rafters. As Wilde stared, he thought he could see hints of movement pass through the blackness above the lamps and toward the far end of the attic.
A moment later the door burst open behind Wilde, and Kendrick rushed in with his revolvers raised. “You’re right, Wilde!” he cried. “Cellar’s emp—” Kendrick paused for a moment as he saw the array of now-vacant typewriters. “Bastards!” he cried. “Don’t worry, Wilde, we’ll find the buggers. They can’t have gone far.” And with that, Kendrick bolted across the room and into a back hallway, ignoring completely the floor’s lack of footprints or signs of human passage.
“Kendrick, wait!” Wilde shouted. His words fell on disinterested ears. Kendrick’s blood was up, and he was too hot on the chase to bother with details such as who he was chasing or where they had gone.
Kendrick searched around in the mouldering dimness of the attic for a few minutes, overturning piles of paper and kicking at bits of rubbish that lay long abandoned upon the floor. Finding no students or terrorists hiding in the shadows, he flung open an exterior door on the other side of the attic and dashed outside.
“They’ve gone for the rooftops, Wilde!” he shouted. “C’mon, we’ll catch them in no time!”
Wilde watched in silence as Kendrick dashed off on his mad chase. Shaking his head, he began to walk toward the outside door, thinking that he ought to catch Kendrick up before the other inspector ran too far afield.
A strange rush above his head drove Wilde to glance upward, and he caught a glimpse of luminescence pass along the spine of the ceiling. Turning, he saw the strange lines and colors of Salad Monday hovering above the circle of typewriters. The creature had given the illusion of departure, then sought to backtrack toward the stairs.
“Cunning devil . . .” Wilde murmured.
Salad Monday’s tentacles extended downward in clusters and began to wrap around a couple of the typewriters. Wilde watched in confusion, uncertain what was being done. The typewriters were slowly raised into the air, held beneath Salad Monday’s quivering multi-colored mass with the care of a mother cradling a child.
Not sure what to do, Wilde extended a hand and called out to the floating shape. “Stop!”
Salad Monday shook in surprise, and its bright eyes darted through its body and clustered on the side that faced Wilde. The creature began to edge back toward the staircase, behaving less like a ravening monster and more like a frightened animal.
“Stop!” Wilde repeated, slowly advancing to match Salad Monday’s pace. “Can you understand me?”
Salad Monday shivered slightly, but there was some sense of comprehension in the brightness of its eyes.
“I’m from the Legion of Peace,” Wilde continued, keeping his voice level. “Do you understand?” He motioned to himself. “Police.” He took a few more careful steps forward. “I know who you are. You’re Mr. Salad Monday, aren’t you?”
Wilde had hoped this pronouncement would help to set Salad Monday at ease, by acknowledging the creature as something with an identity rather than some unthinking monster. Instead, as the name was uttered, Salad Monday drew itself up, eyes shining with the same terror that it had shown when Wilde first arrived. With barely a moment’s hesitation, Salad Monday rippled like a sheet in the wind and dove down the stairs with tremendous speed.
“Oh, Hell!” Wilde swore, dashing after the receding shape.
He scrambled down the dusty stairs to the third floor, head turning this way and that as he tried to keep sight of Salad Monday. He caught a glimpse of the creature on the way to the second floor, but it was a fleeting one. Continuing downward, Wilde’s feet struck a smooth patch on one of the steps and he lost his balance. His head struck the wooden boards with a painful smack, and he lay in a daze for a moment.
Shaking his head, Wilde pulled himself to his feet and rushed down into the front hall, determined to make up for lost time, but at the bottom of the stairs, he was met with silence. Cursing softly, Wilde rushed through the deserted rooms of the crumbling house and the alleys outside, searching in desperation for the creature that he had come to find. He was met with desolation. Mr. Salad Monday had vanished, seemingly into the very woodwork itself.
Wilde finally returned to the Chief Inspector’s office at the end of the day, still in a daze. He and Kendrick had searched every inch of the house—first on their own, and later with a squad of Legion soldiers from the local precinct house—but it had been of no use. They had confiscated the remaining typewriters, along with boxes of replacement keys and ribbon. There had been a limited attempt to catalogue the piles of broadsheets and books, but that had quickly been abandoned as an act of futility.
Wilde found Cerys behind her desk, glaring at a mass of paperwork that seemed to have grown rather than diminished since Wilde’s departure. Wilde entered and softly closed the door. Cerys was busy selecting a cigarette from a battered tin case, and she did not look up as she motioned for Wilde to join her. The air was already thick with smoke and fragrances of half a dozen different blends; it went without saying that the ashtray was overflowing.
“Lavender?” Wilde asked, noting the smell of the smoking herbs. He set a bundle of fresh evening broadsheets down on the chair next to him. He had bought them before dinner, but in his agitation he had been unable to read them.
“I’m celebrating my funeral early,” Cerys replied. “What’s the word on Salad Monday? Is he a terrorist?”
“Chief, you won’t believe what happened.”
Cerys—who had her nose buried in a bundle of forms—looked up at him and took on one of her very particular expressions. “Max, stop. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
“Chief?”
Cerys took out her pocket fire and lit a fresh cigarette, releasing a cloud of lavender-scented smoke. “I know that look on your face, and it tells me I sure as taxes don’t want to know what just happened to you. All I want . . . no, all I need to know is whether Salad Monday is going to be a problem. Is he a terrorist?”
“Um . . . no.”
Cerys flicked her pocket fire on and off as she continued her questioning. “Is he working for Slater?”
“No.”
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br /> “Is he a threat to the city?”
“Well, I don’t think so. But, Chief, he’s not even—”
Cerys pointed a handful of papers at Wilde in a most menacing fashion. “Max, I’ve done this job long enough to know that when someone comes to me and says ‘Chief, you’ll never believe what I saw,’ they’re either lying or telling the truth. Either way, I don’t want to know unnecessary details that will one day drive me to drink.”
“You already drink.”
“I’m just getting into the swing of it,” Cerys replied. Then she gave him a sympathetic look. “Max, I’ve seen my share of unbelievable things in this blasted city. Take my advice: don’t think about it too hard. It’ll hurt less that way.”
Wilde slowly unrolled one of the broadsheets and tried to relax. “It’s that easy, is it?”
“Drinking helps.”
“Mmm.”
Wilde was doubtful about his ability to put such an experience out of his mind, so he turned to the best source of distraction he could think of. The pointless arguments and self-important tirades of the tit-tat broadsheets began to soothe his shaken nerves, and soon Wilde was on his way to easing the strain of his recent discovery. Then he turned to a second printed page. His eye caught a name that was new, but unmistakably familiar.
“Ahh!” he cried, leaping from his chair.
Cerys looked up from her paperwork again, flicking her pocket fire on and off in nervous habit. “What?”
Wilde thrust the broadsheet toward Cerys and pointed at a small section of print located just beneath the main articles. It read very clearly: “Though circumstance demands brevity, let me say simply that Mr. Jervais Mutton is, as ever, a dunce hardly worthy of consideration. Anyone doubting this fact should turn to his latest comment regarding the need for a citizen militia to protect us against the danger of unwed mothers. Additionally, while the police provide a useful service to society, their violation of the homes of private citizens does not do their reputations credit. Discuss. Yours sincerely, Mr. Herring Tuesday.”
“It’s him!” Wilde cried. “It has to be him! He can’t have written this more than an hour after I found him . . . it . . . him . . . It’s still out there!” Wilde tried desperately to convey to his superior the gravity of the situation. The result was less than profound. “Tentacles, Chief!”
Cerys was very familiar with the look on Wilde’s face. She had seen it on her own reflection in the mirror more times than she could count. It was the look of someone who had witnessed the unthinkable and was trying desperately to make sense of it.
“That’s it, Max, early night for you. Go tell Marguerite you’re taking her to the cinema.”
“But—” Wilde protested, pointing to the broadsheet.
“Out!” Cerys glanced at her chronometer, then rummaged around for an amusements circular on her desk. “If you two can catch an omnibus in the next ten minutes, you’ll be at the Palace in time for the newsreel and cartoon. And look at that . . . tonight they’ve got another adventure of Minnie the Mouser. Won’t that be fun?”
“Chief—” Wilde tried again.
Cerys glanced at her chronometer again. “Nine minutes.”
Wilde sighed. “OK, Chief, OK.”
“There’s a good fellow.” Cerys pushed the young man toward the door. “Go have fun. Oh, and Max . . .”
“Yes, Chief?”
Cerys gave Wilde’s shoulders a purposeful squeeze. “If you get her into trouble, I’ll kill you.”
“Oh, come on, Chief, it’s me!”
“That’s the idea.”
When Wilde had gone, Cerys returned to her desk. She stared for a long while at the mountains of paperwork, her eyes slowly and consistently drifting back to the stack of broadsheets Wilde had left. Then, with a sudden rush of purpose—or perhaps procrastination—she snatched up a pen and began to compose a letter. She addressed it to the printing house responsible for the comment by “Mr. Tuesday” and then began writing, in the most grandiose language she could imagine. “To Messrs. Monday and Tuesday, with assorted foodstuffs. Dear sirs, our humblest apologies for intrusions, etc. Necessities of the work, etc. In future, please refrain from frightening respectable policemen in pursuit of their duty, etc. Humbly, etc., the lady on the Broad Street omnibus, Mrs.”
Chuckling to herself, Cerys set the note aside, intending to dispatch it when she left for the night. There was no telling whether it would ever been seen by Salad Monday, but at least the thought of it amused her.
A nagging thought tugged at the fringes of her imagination, and for a moment Cerys found herself contemplating the implications of what Wilde might have seen.
Tentacles.
Clearing her throat to dismiss such thoughts, Cerys lit another lavender cigarette and spent a few moments staring into the flame of her pocket fire. Then, with a familiar sigh, she turned back to the mountain of paperwork on her desk. She was tempted to set fire to the whole lot, and she smiled wistfully at the thought. She was still smiling, with visions of bureaucratic conflagrations in her head, as she turned to the next case file in her unending pile of assignments.
2010
YOUR LIFE SENTENCE
C.C. Finlay
You sit in the bathroom, pants puddled at your ankles, and stare at the vase of orchids on the marble counter: the blossoms curl like purple teardrops.
Brandon, your husband, raps on the door. “Hey! Did you fall in?”
“Out in a second,” you answer. For added verisimilitude you rattle the toilet paper roll.
“Well, call me if you need a lifeguard.”
You hate the joke. “Sure thing,” you answer with saccharine cheer.
You live in a world that requires the bravado of false cheer. For the past several days you’ve suffered from the too-familiar cramps, but you’ve been in denial, bLarning the iffy paella valenciana at the restaurant two nights ago. No more. Only the deep breathing techniques you learned in Lamaze class the first time you were pregnant ease your panic.
“Honey!” Brandon pounds at the door. “We don’t want to be late.”
No, you don’t: the weekly doctor visits are a condition of your parole, after the second pregnancy. Even you think that’s only fair.
“Almost done,” you answer. A shudder runs down your spine, like a finger dragged across a keyboard badly out of tune. You rise and pull your pants up. The bowl flushes automatically, but you refuse to look back. You tuck in your blouse, yank open the door.
Brandon stands there with a shoe in one hand and a big dumb grin on his square face. “Know what week it is?”
“No,” you lie. He leans over for a kiss and you dodge him.
“Week nine,” he says, laughing as if it’s a game. “We’ll have the doctor fill out the Certificate of Conception, then call your parole officer. Then if we have to check you into the hospital for the next thirty weeks—”
“Thirty weeks in the hospital—that’s almost like prison.” You grab your keys and purse from the dresser.
“We’ve just got to stick to the plan,” he says earnestly.
Brandon has a plan, an answer, for everything. It’s why you married him, and you liked that about him for a long time, even after you realized most of his answers don’t work for you. “I think I left my ring in the bathroom,” you say, because you left it in the bathroom. “Can you get it for me?”
“Sure!”
As soon as he turns away, you go to the garage. You’re already driving down the street when he dashes out the front door. He hops after you on one foot, still holding the shoe, shrinking in the rearview mirror as you speed out of the cul-de-sac.
Your name is Nicole Palmer, and this is the world you wanted, one where every unborn child is safe, protected by the law from the moment he or she is conceived. You practice what you believe. Through three pregnancies, you didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and didn’t touch coffee or chocolate or anything else with caffeine or any other possible miscarrigens. And as of this morning
, you’ve had three miscarriages.
You’ve reported every conception. You turned yourself in after the first two . . . accidents. You’re a good person and you do everything right. That’s why the courts gave you suspended sentences on manslaughter charges and released you to the custody of your husband. And none of it makes any difference. Under California law, you’re now a three-time felon facing a mandatory life sentence.
Your cell phone rings.
You throw it out the window and watch it shatter on the road. You pound the steering wheel and scream. It’s not fair! You’ve accepted that you’ll go to prison, but it’s not fair. It’s not fair that all your babies died. It has to be somebody’s fault—the courts, your neighbors, your own mother, they all say it has to be somebody’s fault. You just don’t understand why it’s your fault. You don’t know what you did wrong.
“Oh, Barbara,” you whisper. Your mother’s name, the name you picked for the baby girl you just left behind. The word tightens like a noose around your throat.
All you’ve ever wanted is to be a mother.
You jerk the wheel toward an exit, shifting lanes without checking your blind spots.
#
Long before you reach the Arizona border checkpoint you expect to be stopped, but when you get there the bored troopers wave you through. Peace makes everyone relax. You speed to the outskirts of Kingman, where your older sister Stevie lives. Except for your mother’s funeral, you haven’t seen Stevie in eight years.
Stevie is a cop. She’ll talk you into turning yourself in.
The convenience-store phonecard trembles in your hand when you call Stevie for directions to the trailer park. When you get there, “trailer park” proves to be an euphemism for “rows of shipping containers in the desert outside town,” the cheapest temporary housing. The rooftops are covered with contact-paper photovoltaic cells and solar water heaters; the yards are filled with composting toilets and old junk. You turn at the sign Stevie told you to look for—Police Estates—although someone has painted slashes through the first E and the second S of Estates. Stevie’s place is neater than most. Only two cars out front, a jeep and something sporty, neither one on blocks.