The Urban Fantasy Anthology

by Peter S. Beagle

  Not me, though it was a near thing. I mean, when somebody went on about how Billy’s whole head was gnawed down to the skull and they didn’t even know who he was except from the bus pass in his wallet, I got a little urpy. It’s amazing the things people will dream up.

  But when I thought about what I had actually done to Billy, I had to smile. And it felt totally wonderful to walk through the halls without having anybody yelling, “Hey, Boobs!”

  There are people who just plain do not deserve to live. And the same goes for Fat Joey, if he doesn’t quit crowding me in science lab, trying to get a feel.

  One funny thing, though, I don’t get periods at all any more. I get a little crampy, and my breasts get sore, and I break out more than usual—and then instead of bleeding, I change.

  Which is fine with me, though I take a lot more care now about how I hunt on my wolf nights. I stay away from Baker’s Park. The suburbs go on for miles and miles, and there are lots of places I can hunt and still get home by morning. A running wolf can cover a lot of ground.

  And I make sure I make my kills where I can eat in private, so no cop car can catch me unawares, which could easily have happened that night when I killed Billy, I was so deep into the eating thing that first time. I look around a lot more now when I’m on a kill, I keep watch.

  Good thing it’s only once a month this happens, and only a couple of nights. “The Full Moon Killer” has the whole state up in arms and terrified as it is. Eventually I guess I’ll have to go somewhere else, which I’m not looking forward to at all. If I can just last until I can have a car of my own, life will get a lot easier.

  Meantime, some wolf nights I don’t even feel like hunting. Mostly I’m not as hungry as I was those first times. I think I must have been storing up my appetite for a long time. Sometimes now I just prowl around, and I run, boy do I run. If I am hungry, sometimes I eat garbage instead of killing somebody. It’s no fun, but you do get a taste for it. I don’t mind garbage as long as once in a while I can have the real thing fresh-killed, nice and wet. People can be awfully nasty, but they sure taste sweet.

  I do pick and choose, though. I look for people sneaking around in the middle of the night, like Billy waiting in the park that time. I figure they’ve got to be out looking for trouble at that hour, so whose fault is it if they find it? I have done a lot more for the burglary problem around Baker’s Park than a hundred dumb “watchdogs,” believe me.

  Gerry-Anne is not only talking to me again, she has invited me to go on a double-date with her. Some guy she met at a party invited her, and he has a friend. They’re both from Fawcett Junior High across town, which will be a nice change. I was nervous, but finally I said yes. We’re going to the movies next weekend. My first real date! I am still pretty nervous, to tell the truth.

  For New Year’s, I have made two solemn vows.

  One is that on this date I will not worry about my chest, I will not be self-conscious, even if the guy stares.

  The other is, I’ll never eat another dog.

  Farewell, My Zombie

  Francesca Lia Block

  They call a male P.I. a private Dick. So what would they call me? Not a C word or a V word, that would be much too offensive. There are plenty of Dicks but no Vaginas walking around. That just wouldn’t be right, now would it? Maybe my title would be Jane. Private Jane. Dick and Jane. Makes you wonder why Jane hasn’t been used as a nickname for female genitalia before. Better than a lot of them. Men have a nicer selection.

  It was one of those warm L.A. autumn days when you felt guilty if you were at the beach while other people were working or freezing their asses off somewhere, and even more guilty if you were sitting in an office letting your life slip away. That’s what I was doing. Sitting in my office with my black-booted feet up on the table (even though it was too hot for boots), staring at the window, wondering why I wasn’t at the beach. But I knew why. The beach made me think of Max. I tried to distract myself by poking around some paranormal activity websites on the Mac. There was an extended family in the Midwest who ghost hunted together. They had a disclaimer on their site that they could turn down any job that felt too dangerous. The woman kept spelling the word “were” like “where” and “You’re” like “your.” That happened so much online I wondered if someone had officially changed it and not told me.

  That was when I got the call.

  “Merritt,” I said.

  “Jane Merritt?” the caller asked.

  “Speaking.”

  “Sorry, I…I need some help.”

  “That’s what we’re here for. You’ll just need to come in and fill out some forms.”

  There was a silence on the line and for a second I thought the call had dropped.

  “Hello?”

  “Uh, yeah. Thanks. Sorry.”

  “So when would you like to come in? Everything perfectly confidential, of course.”

  “Thanks. Sorry. It’s about my father.”

  “I see. Yes.”

  “He’s a monster.”

  I waited for the giggling on the other end. She was obviously very young. I got calls like this all the time. Curious teens with too much time on their hands.

  No giggling.

  “I mean really,” she said. “A real monster.”

  Then she hung up.

  No one else called that day. Business had been slow. I left the office early and stopped at the West L.A. Trader Joe’s for a few groceries. Bagels, cream cheese, apples, celery, the cheapest Pinot Noir I could find and a tub of cat cookies, plus a can of food for David. I wanted to buy myself flowers because that’s what all the women’s magazines tell you to do when you haven’t been fucked in too long, but I decided not to waste the money. There was a big bouquet of fourteen white roses with a pink cast. They looked pretty good but I knew they’d blow up in a few days in this weather, petals loosening from their cluster and drifting to the floor. Besides, roses were another thing that reminded me of Max.

  I went home and watched CNN while David and I ate dinner. Bad news as usual. The economy, disasters, war. Not to mention global warming and assorted acts of violence. It was like a horror movie, really. I drank the whole bottle of wine. Then I took a bath and went to bed. I had really weird dreams about letting Max go by himself on a train at night and then realizing what I had done and not being able to get anyone to understand why I was so upset when he didn’t come home. Dreams are cruel; they won’t let you forget.

  Coco Hart came to see me about a week later. She was a beautiful girl in a private school uniform skirt and blouse and a ratty sweatshirt that was too hot for the weather. Her long hair up in a ponytail and makeup so lightly and carefully applied that only the most discerning eyes would notice it there. She looked perfectly well-adjusted but her fingernails were bitten down so far that it hurt to look at them.

  “I called you,” she said after she’d introduced herself. Her eyes darted around the room trying to find clues. I don’t have any in this tiny, dingy office. Not even a photo of Max. I had to hide it in a drawer.

  “About your father?”

  She nodded.

  “Is he hurting you?”

  “No,” she said. “Sorry. It’s not that.”

  “You can tell me. I’m here to help.”

  “Thank you. You were the only woman I could find. Well except that one who tries to entrap the guys by wearing wigs in their favorite color.”

  People always mention her when they come to see me. I’m nothing like that Amazon. Just cause we are both Janes.

  “So why not her?”

  “I heard that interview with you.”

  There’s only been one. It was in conjunction with the new X-Files movie. The local news compared me to Fox Mulder because of my interest in the paranormal. I expected business to boom after that but it didn’t. In L.A. you have to look like a movie star with big tits or be a guy to make it big in this business. I’m neither.

  In the interview I talked a little about s
ome weird, dark stuff, the kind of thing teenagers and X-Files fans eat up. But most teens aren’t going around hiring a P.I. and the X-Files fans would rather watch David Duchovny reruns. Like the famous female P.I. who wears the wigs, he has a lot more sex appeal than I do.

  Coco put her hand to her mouth as if she were about to chew on what was left of her nails, then thought better of it and folded her hands tightly in her plaid-skirted lap. She looked out at the sunny fall day. The leaves on the tree outside my window looked like they were on fire. I didn’t know what kind of tree it was. I wondered why Coco was here and not at some mall with her friends or something.

  She took some crumpled bills out of her sweatshirt pocket and put them on the table.

  “That’s all I have,” she said. “But I’ll get more.”

  “And you want me to do what exactly?”

  “Oh. Uh. Sorry.” She hesitated. “Do you believe in zombies?” she said, finally.

  Fuck.

  Sorry, but I am not going to pretend to you that I am normal. I am not normal in any way. Yes I shop at Trader Joe’s and watch CNN, get my hair cut on a regular basis, shower and use deodorant. I wear my dark hair scraped back in a tight bun like I did on the force, and dress in flat-front black trousers and white stretch button-down shirts from the Limited and black heels or flats or boots from Macy’s.

  When I got out of the hospital they let me live in the trailer in the backyard of what used to be my home. I can see my old house through the trailer window. It is a long, low structure painted avocado green. My ex and I were always planning on repainting it but we never got around to that. Then Kimmy came and picked the green. It looks nasty, even monstrous in certain lights. I planted the roses in the garden but I’ve stopped trying to take care of them. Once Kimmy came out while I was watering and weeding. I said, “Sorry,” and scuttled back into my trailer. The roses remind me.

  At night I stay up watching the windows of my old bedroom until the lights go out.

  I went into this work because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought it would help me forget to get up every day and go to my little office on Washington. It helps me forget that I was ever Max’s mom but it makes me remember the hospital and the doctor’s face, as I sit here waiting for someone who really needs me to come in.

  I mostly just follow cheating husbands and wives. Once I followed a woman who was engaged to two men at the same time. The guy that hired me was so upset he started crying in my office. Then he wanted me to dress up like her and fuck him. That was the most eventful case I’d handled so far. But the thing that happened with Max made me open to the possibility of stuff that wasn’t so easy to understand.

  Coco told me that her father had been behaving very strangely. She’d seen him eating flesh in big, gross, salivating bites and it didn’t look like cow, pig, goat, lamb, chicken or turkey. Let’s just say that. And he never spoke anymore. After his stroke he shambled around the house with these heavy steps just staring at the floor. He grumbled and grimaced and that was all. His skin was a weird shade of greenish white and once when he was asleep she’d felt for a pulse and there wasn’t one there. He smelled bad, too.

  I said, “Sorry, but I have to ask you something. What makes you think he’s one of the undead though? I mean, how do you think this could have happened?”

  Coco’s father was a car salesman in Van Nuys. He’d done pretty well for himself selling SUVs until people stopped being able to afford gas at almost five dollars a gallon. The stress was too much for him. While waiting for the electric car to return he’d had a stroke and almost died. Well, according to Coco there was no almost involved.

  “When he came back from the hospital,” Coco said. “He just wasn’t the same.”

  “What was he like before?” I asked.

  “Well, kind of like now. Except I recognized the meat he ate and he had better skin tone and a pulse. And…sorry, but… he didn’t smell so bad.”

  I tried not to say, “Ouch. Harsh.” I was trying to behave with some decorum.

  “You sound very angry at your father,” I said, recalling a psych class I’d taken in junior college.

  “Sorry. My father is all right. Well, he was. Before he turned into a monster. I mean, he’s a Republican. He voted for George W. And he’s against women’s right to choose. He still supports the war. But he’d never lay a hand on me, you know. But I’m worried about what he’s doing to other people. Where he like, gets his dinner and that kind of thing.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?” I asked.”

  “Um, I think you know why. Sorry…”

  “So you came to me.”

  “Well,” she said, “Not everyone’s kid gets stolen by zombies. I mean, I saw it on YouTube.”

  Okay, sorry, it’s true. The thing I’m known for is about Max and the Zombies.

  I wasn’t really interviewed by the local news. I made a video for YouTube and posted it, talking about what happened. That’s how Coco had found me. Not the guy whose fiancée was cheating on him; he got my name out of the phone book.

  See, people think my kid got sick and died but I know better. No one wants to talk about it because they’re afraid everyone will think they are crazy. Or maybe because they’re afraid of even worse consequences.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked Coco.

  “Would you please pretend you’re a customer and check him out?” she asked. “They have really good deals on Escalades now,” she added.

  “I ride a bike.”

  I borrowed Daniel’s car and went to the car dealership where Coco’s dad worked. They hired him back part time after the stroke. It was night and the cars glowed surreally in the fluorescent lights. The air smelled obscenely of flowers and motor oil.

  Mr. Hart lumbered out toward me, tucking his shirt into his pants. He had a large belly and stiff legs and arms. His skin did have an unhealthy sheen to it.

  “How can I help you, young lady?” he groaned. A foul, sulfur smell emitted itself from his body. “We have some great deals on SUVs tonight. What are you driving?”

  “A bike,” I said.

  He looked at me dully. “Thinking of upgrading then?”

  “You don’t sell any electric cars?” I asked.

  “No. Why? You do a lot of driving?”

  “Not so much. I’m concerned about the environment.”

  “Global warming? Sweetheart, that’s a myth they created to scare you, believe me. No such thing. God knows what He’s doing.”

  I smoothed back my hair. It was unnaturally hot for an October evening. There was something hellish about that kind of heat this time of year. I thought of the ice floes melting at the North Pole and the polar bears dying. I was sweating uncomfortably and I was afraid I might be staining my white blouse. I used deodorant but I had stopped wearing antiperspirant because of the link between aluminum and Alzheimer’s. Not that I cared. Alzheimer’s might actually be all right. You stagger around in a state of detachment and forgetting.

  There are certain things I can’t forget, no matter how hard I try. No matter how many photographs I hide or how much zombie research I do, they pop into my mind when I least expect them.

  Max used to ask me, “Mommy, when is the Earth going to explode? When is the sun going to burn us up?” Once he said, “Mommy, will you hold me from the time the Earth was made until it ends?”

  “Yes, honey,” I said. “I will hold you forever.”

  He curled up into my arms, his delicately-boned, dusty-brown feet tucked up on my lap. His eyes were big and brown with eyelashes that all the nurses in the hospital said they wanted.

  “It’s not fair,” they cooed.

  Of course, it was more than fair. The other stuff was what wasn’t fair.

  “How about a Prius?” I asked Mr. Hart.

  “How about a Hummer? Owned by a little old lady from Pasadena. Almost no mileage.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. “Sorry,” I said. And left.

&n
bsp; There is a proliferation of zombies around lately, let me tell you.

  My ex Daniel’s girlfriend Kimmy is not behaving at all normally, even for a stressed-out, middle-aged, hyperactive kickboxing instructor dame. She drones on and on about herself and is unable to ask anyone questions about how they are doing. She wears the same rapacious grin frozen on her face at all times, even when she is angry. She talks loudly and proudly at all social gatherings about how she had tumors in her uterus and can no longer have any more children. (I know Daniel finds this perversely comforting; no chance of any more children means no chance of any more tragedies for him.) She never lets anyone see her eat, not even Daniel. (He told me this; I think even he is worried.) While she cooks his dinner she tells him she caught a bite at the gym and that she doesn’t digest food well after four p.m. She walks with jerky movements and snaps her gum spastically and calls everyone dude. Do you see?

  In addition there is that presidential candidate and his running mate. I believe they have been bitten. Look at their glassy eyes. Listen to their hollow voices—hers more shrill, but hollow still. Read about their policies to destroy nature and take away women’s rights, gay rights. I can just imagine them hunting people out of helicopters and gnawing on someone’s thighbone with gristle between their teeth.

  I remember that doctor at the hospital where Max was. He strolled out into the waiting room and tried to take my hand but I wouldn’t let him touch me. His skin was greenish white under the fluorescence and his legs and arms were stiff.

  When I saw him I knew. I thought it was going to be like on TV where they say, “I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t want to hear those words from him. So I said them first.

  “I’m sorry!” I screamed. I fell to my knees. “I’m so so sorry.”