The Best of Talebones

by edited by Patrick Swenson

  The Angels came shortly after the on-slaught of the Fear. For those first few horrifying apocalyptic days the Fear had homo sapiens all to themselves. No one has ever seen the Fear, and fear unseen (and any decently chilling campfire story can prove this) is worse than anything one can clap eyes on, no matter how monstrous, how terrifying, how fateful. We only feel the Fear. They crawl through our minds; they inhabit our nervous systems; they haunt the frail cogs of our souls.

  They came at once, to every person breathing on the planet, and laid waste.

  The invasion was a massacre. The Fear (coming from inner-outer-parallel-diabolical-where-when-what-why space) caused heart attacks, strokes, seizures, suicides, led people fleeing hallucinogenic terrors into accidents that caused explosions, fires, break-downs, tragedies, and uncounted deaths.

  Primal fright ruled. The planet stopped functioning. Nations quavered. Races cowered, universally. The species would’ve been driven into extinction in a matter of weeks.

  I lived long enough to see the Angels come, appointing themselves to individuals, taking up the role of guardians, protectors, keepers. They aren’t like the Fear; we see them, and they are beautiful and mystical and divine, and they hold the Fear at bay and keep us from harming ourselves, most times successfully, sometimes not, and without them we would all cease to be.

  The Fear came twenty-two years ago. I’ve lived half my life in sheer mortal terror, kept from the abyss only by my personal Angel.

  There are Nazis in the road. I slam the brakes and watch, quivering, heart shuddering, as they load manacled members of mongrel races into a boxcar that straddles the three lanes. The stormtroopers crack whips of white fire and sing commercial jingles. A coffee-skinned prepubescent wrapped in barbed wire is being raped by a colonel. They saw a hand off a Gypsy woman and force her to eat it.

  And they see me, sitting up in the cab of my big sewage truck, and I know I’m not up to their cropped-blond-haired radiant-blue-eyed perfect-toothed standards; I’m an inferior breed; and I’ll join these others in the Final Solution. Urine dampens the crotch of my jeans.

  My Angel takes my hand, and divine warmth fights the Fear, words encouraging, “Calm, Mr. Cada, calm. There’s nothing there. You’re safe. I’ll keep you safe . . . .”

  I stop crying. My Angel helps me change into the spare bluejeans tucked behind my seat and mops up the waste water pooled beneath me. No other traffic passes us as we idle in the middle of the street. I put the truck in gear, and we go onward.

  I was afraid of the bogeyman as a child. He peeked out of dresser drawers at night. He laid under the bed and waited for my fingers to poke out from under the covers. He languished in the dusty bowl of the overhead light fixture and glinted his incisors at me after my mother snapped off the light and went downstairs.

  I got a bad case of acrophobia (and a bonus dose of claustrophobia) after an airplane flight in my early teens, pitching and yawing through a howling downpour — that seemed to me as malevolent as the twister in The Wizard of Oz — as we touched down bumpily in Los Angeles, heading for Disneyland.

  I’ve mentioned my wisdom teeth, age 17.

  I had a penetrating fright in my early twenties, smoking pot and finding out as the unanticipated soul-bending effects started that somebody had laced the joint with LSD. Never did drugs again and shivered at the mere mention of them.

  Then the Fear invaded, and all those puny meaningless dilettante-like phobias came to absolutely nothing.

  There’s a figure atop an overpass as we close on the sewage disposal plant, the chemicals and liquid wastes and shit sloshing in the bay of my truck. The figure becomes male as we near, and I lean forward over the steering wheel and crane my neck; and up on that overpass the man in the tan suit spins in hysterical circles and claws at his hair. Where is his Angel?

  The crumbling concrete overpass is overhead, then behind and gone; and the last I see of the man is a glimpse in my sideview mirror as he scrabbles up the chainlink safety fence that keeps unwary passersby from tumbling from the high arch onto the unforgiving bed of the street below.

  *

  There’s no war anymore. There’s no currency. People — those who can — do jobs because the work must be done in order to maintain some semblance of civilized living. Somebody’s got to operate the power plants, grow crops, drive trucks. No one does it for money now, since money doesn’t exist. There’re no nations, no presidents, no armies, no borders, no prejudices. There’s no room for any of it. We’re all far too busy being afraid.

  A part of the city is smoking in the distance, off the left shoulder of the roadway. Looks like a serious fire. I can only assume the blaze is being fought, by trembling firemen whose hoses are held steady by their Angels’ warm ivory hands. The Angels cannot do everything for us and are not with us every instant of the day. Mine leaves me to sleep in my restraints in my apartment for which I no longer pay rent. Perhaps my Angel goes off somewhere to sleep when I do; perhaps they just retreat from us periodically, to recuperate, to take a breather from keeping us out of harm’s way. We must be children to them — squealing, whimpering, petrified of things that are not there. But they must know of the Fear, for the Angels appeared only days after that initial invasion.

  Maybe the Angels and the Fear are warring factions — supra-armies of benevolent mysticism and malignant invisibility. Maybe we, the tortured, are pawns in their war. I honestly don’t care . . . as long as my Angel stays with me. My Angel has comforted, consoled and nurtured me for twenty-two years.

  We close on the sewage plant gates.

  Laborious poorly maintained automated machinery sees to the unloading of my fetid cargo. I go get a cup of coffee from a vending machine, and my Angel tags along. The late morning sky is tainted with the smoke of the fire we passed. A whole block must be going up.

  I feel vaguely nauseous. The Fear can strike anytime. Hours can pass; once a full day — sunup to nightfall — went by without any appearance in my mind of phantasmagorical seemingly living nightmares; but this only served to keep me insanely edgy, waiting for the shoe to drop. There’s no peace. There’s only minute to minute survival ticking by on a clock of fatal terror.

  What did we do to deserve this? Why did the Fear come for us? Why were we made to sacrifice everything, to relinquish our rights as sentient creatures and become only the tortured?

  Does any of it matter?

  I’ve lived another minute as I punch the vending machine button (coins no longer required) and blow steam off the top of the Styrofoam cup and take my first sip.

  My Angel taps my shoulder.

  “Mr. Cada, are you afraid?”

  I turn. Surely my Angel is merely checking up on me, offering bolstering reassurance. And yes, I am afraid; I’m always afraid. I nod.

  “After twenty-two of these years, Mr. Cada, you’re still afraid. You’ve found no courage, no inner peace, no serenity, no backbone. You’re a pathetically shivering little puppy. Well, Mr. Cada, your time’s run out.”

  And my coffee drops to the gravel floor of the sewage disposal plant yard and slops over my boot. And I part my lips to speak. And I say nothing — because I’m alone by the vending machine. My Angel is gone.

  They all departed. A whole district of this city burned that day. Others cities are burning, surely. No one is feeding the wretches strapped into their beds in Chicago, Tallahassee, Vancouver. We’re all alone now.

  The Angels got sick of us — of our miserable childish mewlings and sobbings and tremblings, twenty-two years’ worth. I can’t particularly blame them.

  Maybe they were in cahoots with the Fear all along. Maybe they are the Fear. Maybe the whole thing’s just a galactic experiment in fright. Maybe it’s Satan’s minions trick-or-treating at our door.

  I know I’m among the luckier of the tortured. I’m still alive. Red dragons chase me down Carson Avenue. Spiders blacken the windows of my apartment where I shudder and try to scratch out a few minutes of sleep. Doorknobs turn to put
rid grasping hands when I touch them. The Fear have us all to themselves once again, to finish what they started.

  I try to be an Angel, to care for those fellow tortured who fall around me, to console, to soothe, to keep that killing terror off just a moment longer. But my pitiful human sympathies are worthless, and men and women die in my arms again and again. We won’t last a week.

  There is Fear now and nothing but.

  Tom Piccirilli lived in New York when I first met him at World Horror in Niagara Falls. (I know Tom remembers cold pizza on the radiator and guard duty at the beer keg in the hospitality suite.) Now he lives with his wife, writer Michelle Scalise, in Colorado. He has quite the novel career going, and he writes full time. Early on, he contributed a nice review of the magazine, and then he sent “Caucasus” for the third issue. The story explored a dark, horrific version of a popular myth, with modern New York and Mount Olympus as backdrop. Dan Smith, another Figment artist who made the journey to Talebones, did the cover art.

  CAUCASUS

  TOM PICCIRILLI

  I’d been down from the rock Caucasus for two thousand years when Heracles came through the pool and found me in the moonlit gutter, drinking rum, covered with cats. His skin was burned red and raw from wearing his wife’s poisoned robe. Veins along his mighty arms stood out black and twisted. Ichor dripped from his wilted laurel wreath, and blood ran over his teeth and stained his beard.

  “You owe me a debt,” he said.

  I gazed at him steadily, took another pull from the Bacardi 151 rum, and snuggled down into the garbage. I had a buck fifty-five in nickels and dimes and found the human world tolerable. I grinned. Heracles didn’t. Out of breath and fighting off the incredible pain of millennia, his nostrils flared like the Cretan bull’s.

  “Not anymore,” I said. “I paid all my accounts.”

  “Hardly, Prometheus.”

  The moment lengthened, his eyes trickling venom; it was clear he hadn’t expected an argument, which goes to show how much he’d forgotten about me. He never expected contention from anyone over the matter, and always stood stunned when battles erupted or innocents died because of his stubbornness. It was the reason why he’d been forced to perform so many more trials even after his initial twelve labors, and why he failed all which demanded more than muscle. Pyres of olive-skinned children flared on the mount for centuries because of him, sacrifices to his nobility and testimony to his father’s madness.

  I chuckled. There seemed to be little else to do. “Yes, hardly.”

  High-beams from passing patrol cars threw bizarre shadows over the fire escapes above. Radios blared latino music from the tenement windows across the alley, a nice Salsa beat. The kittens mewled in time to the rhythm, curling, leaping garbage can lids. With a wide sweep of his arms, Heracles lashed out at the cats and threw them into the street, where taxis actually swerved to avoid them.

  The demi-god I’d once thought my savior — who had released me from my punishment on the rock Caucasus, where the vultures languorously chewed out my liver each day and it regrew by night — hunkered his massive bulk beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder in a familial gesture. He looked awful. The wars had taken their toll on him, and it was obvious the betrayal by his father, Jupiter, had torn out his heart. I felt sorry even though I could not afford sorrow; in any event, I wouldn’t help him.

  Heracles’s hand was heavy, the poison having turned his fingertips black. Rum didn’t help anymore. I finished the bottle and threw it against the wall, the sound of breaking glass appealing to me. Someone above yelled, “Ola!” and applauded. On the rock there’d been nothing but silence when there wasn’t the screech of vultures or the echo of my screams. I craved the din of Manhattan.

  “Listen,” I said. “I gave all that up. You did too, for a while, if you’ll remember. Now you’re wearing the cloak your wife killed you with, and there’s blood in your eye. That’s not the kind of existence I’m going back to.”

  “A better one you’ve found,” he replied, staring at the rags I wore. He had a peculiar manner of injecting sarcasm beneath the thick thrum of his voice, but he didn’t have the knack for making me feel shame. No one did, not even Jupiter.

  “Believe it.”

  “You are no longer bound.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “I’m in New York, the city that never sleeps. The great and rotten apple, a mount of a different kind. There are other ways of destroying your liver here. I much prefer them to having vultures eating mine day after day for centuries.” I curled up against the cardboard and newspapers, the cans in my plastic bag chiming. “Say hello to your father for me. Good-bye.”

  “I need you,” Heracles said softly. It was the nearest thing to a whine I’d ever heard from him, perhaps the closest he’d ever come to crying in front of anyone besides his wife Deianira. Minutes passed. Pale teenagers ran down the block laughing, dressed as leather-deathers, black, everything so black, pierced eyebrows and cheeks on full view. Car alarms went off a half dozen at a time.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Heracles shifted his bulk and let out a sound more like an old woman’s sigh than a herculean growl. My skin crawled. “It is time for a sacrifice. I need to build a pyre.”

  His wife Deianira had betrayed him too, bathing his robe in the venomous blood of a centaur, until he’d rushed screaming into his own funeral fires. Why would he come back? How could it be that he still wanted more? “Haven’t you built enough of them? Including your own?”

  That caught him low, like a deadly bolt from his father. He swallowed thickly and whispered, “Please.”

  “Go to Hades.”

  “I’ve already been there.”

  “Then go try Brooklyn.”

  A man could push him far, and a god a little farther still; one could order him to clean a stable like a peasant, and another could trick him into bearing the vault of the sky; but Heracles deserved a modicum of respect, so he thought, and in a vicious moment lost patience with me. I could see it happening, his face going crimson, though it didn’t really matter: his eyes narrowed, driving out drops of poison.

  He reached and lifted me up with one massive arm, holding me in the air like a lyre he couldn’t play, waving me around before roaring and smashing my face with his colossal fists. It took a while for him to spend his rage; his hands were tireless battering rams. A group of crack addicts formed at the mouth of the alley and watched dispassionately, smoking, mumbling, and giggling. When Heracles finished and my skull was crushed, he dragged me through a pile of cat vomit and hissed, “None of us remembers how to make a fire, Prometheus.” He locked me under his arm and together we passed back into the pool.

  Thanks to his father, I heal fast. The instant we came through to Olympus, the vultures began swarming the area. My stomach knotted, and I couldn’t quite control my ragged breathing. They screeched and dipped and waved from out of the east, hungry.

  “Damn you,” I said, “for doing this to me.” Heracles led me forward to Athena’s gardens, where as many flowers died now as flourished.

  “Take off those foul clothes,” he ordered.

  “No. If you can wear that robe, I can wear my rags.”

  Most of the pantheon waited for us in the ruins of the mount, seated or sleeping on the shards of marble benches and altars, as though dreaming for divine intervention. Some of them enjoyed their Roman nomenclature, others retained the Greek; now both ancient, legendary lands had fallen and more or less been forgotten, along with the rest of us. The silence was broken only be Heracles’s pounding footsteps upon the shattered steps, and the obligatory, distant cries of my voracious enemies in the sky.

  Laughter in the alcove; I didn’t know who could still laugh after the wars, but apparently someone remained able. It sounded like Mercury, but as we walked through the ruins I spotted him curled in fetal position around his caduceus, lying beside Venus, who gnawed a chicken bone. The wings on Mercury’s ankles were shriveled, and several of his toes had bee
n amputated.

  The sights grew worse, as I knew they would: Theseus was obviously mad, and happy to be so, staring into the eyes of the beheaded Minotaur he held in his lap. Meleager, too, had saved the head of his nemesis, the Calydonian Boar, and wore it like a mask, sniffing and oinking in the weeds. Demeter and her daughter Proserpina shivered in the shadow of Pluto, who ate and spit pomegranate seeds at them.

  It didn’t end, by Eros; there were more, so many more. Neptune, god of oceans, lay slithering on his wet belly, his trident stabbed through his back, quivering, the hollow shaft sucking air whenever he took a gill-driven breath. His lips were caked and cracked, yet he smiled. The madness of loss and defeat and human ingratitude had infected them all.

  Dozens of others ranged around the mount, on the hills, in the sky-lit chambers, half-buried in the gardens. But ugliest of all in his stupor, most insane of all, perhaps, besides Jupiter himself, was Amphitryon: once powerful King of Thebes and husband to Heracles’s mother, Alcmena, he never regained his mind or soul after Jupiter stole his shape in order to lay with Alcmena. Like myself, he was neither god nor man, but had been beloved and destroyed by both. He was, in effect, Heracles’s step-father, though Heracles refused to ever speak to him.

  Two sea nymph daughters reared and rushed from the alcove, giggling and slippery, their breasts bared and blue, followed by the fair Apollo. Heracles’s eyes blazed, but he made no motion forward. No one else seemed to hear, or to care if they did. Laughter was not infectious on the mount.

  Of the old order, only Apollo looked the same, bearing no wounds, vain sun god without a taste for flame. Frolicking with the nymphs, all their golden hair wet and shining in the sunlight, he appeared happy, even joyous. He spotted Heracles and came towards us, carefully stepping over Medea, who wept against the corpses of Jason’s children, the ones she’d slain herself in lieu of the Argonauts. So much death among the deathless.