The Best of Talebones

by edited by Patrick Swenson

  Ethan flushed. “That’s not fair. I do miss you.”

  Susan looked at him for another moment. “I miss you too.” One tear escaped from her left eye, gently rolling down her cheek. Ethan took a step toward her. Susan held up her hand to ward him off and took a step backward.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I can’t compete with your fantasy of her, you know that.” Her face hardened. “No matter what, I can never be her.”

  Ethan replayed that day in his mind. He held out his right hand, reaching toward her. “I’m sorry.”

  She took a deep breath, more tears leaked down her face. “Me too,” she said and turned away.

  The cold wind blew through his hair as he watched her back recede.

  He trudged homeward, hands thrust deep into his pockets, thinking of how the conversation had gone. What could he have done differently? What was he missing? He had told her he missed her, but was there something more? The cold wind lashed the tears from his face.

  The itching started in his fingertips then, startling him. He turned around slowly, making a complete circle. The man across the street spoke into his cell phone, the conversation a bouquet of yellow and pink floating above his head. He pulled his hands from his pockets and looked at them. The music had been dead to him for so long. He cringed as his fingertips began to itch more painfully. He ran all the way back to his house and burst into his room before he remembered he’d sold the guitar. He tore his desk apart looking for the pawn ticket as the itching worsened. He fumbled his checkbook, then ripped it apart, flinging the ticket into the air. He snatched the ticket off the floor, grabbed his worthless checkbook, and his little remaining cash. As he pulled the door open, he paused. There on the table sat a pile of envelopes, including several checks for his portion of the rent and utilities. His roommate would have to understand. He thrust the checks into his back pocket and slammed the door behind him.

  The bus ride to Pike Place took forever. The itching turned into a heavy-gauge file working along base of his neck, the noise of the other passengers the sound of grinding glass. He rode with his knees up to his chest, whimpering so that the other passengers gave him a two-seat buffer zone. The bus driver glanced at him from time to time in the mirror. Ethan just grinned at him through the pain.

  Staggering up Second from Benaroya Hall, Ethan caught people looking at him and moving around him in a great wide wake. Some children cringed behind their mothers, pointing at him. He ground his teeth and shambled forward through the building slurry of sound.

  The large neon sign in front of the Guns & Sundries pawnshop rang out in garish pink and green echoes. The colors danced in Ethan’s head, making the world sway. He trailed one hand against the wall, moving forward despite the reeling.

  He leaned against the front window, faced mashed against the glass, searching for the guitar.

  His world began to skip like a bad vinyl album. He found himself standing in the doorway, then at the counter, then back out on the street, the sad headshake of the pawn shop owner vivid in his mind, the news that his guitar had been sold the week before crashing through his psyche.

  A hurrying shopper knocked him down at First Street. An elderly woman who smelled of lilacs helped him back on his feet. He mumbled an apology to her as he stumbled away, her questions a slurred soundtrack running at half-speed.

  He found himself at the Market; the crowd moved with celerity, as if time flowed around him at varying speeds. One minute he gingerly walked between people who seemed to be turned to stone, the next he found the world whirring by him, the buzz of humanity echoing the rasping of the grinder that ate away his mind.

  There, under The Clock, he found his guitar. A middle-aged woman all in tie-dye and bangles sat with his guitar in her lap. Recognition shocked him. Skook—the busker who’d asked to buy the guitar in the spring. He watched for an agonizing minute as Dylan tunes danced out into the crowd.

  Ethan staggered to her, falling to his knees.

  “Please, God,” he said between sobs. He held out the pawn ticket. “That’s my guitar, I need it.” The woman faltered into silence. She looked at Ethan, horror creeping into her eyes. “Please?”

  A crowd began to form around them. The woman held the guitar to her chest as Ethan lay on the ground sobbing. He couldn’t think, couldn’t hear. His world narrowed to the rasping of the file, the erosion of his soul.

  He looked up as someone plucked the pawn ticket from his hand. Alejandro lifted him to his feet.

  “He’s in pretty bad shape,” Rasta said appearing beside Ethan. Alejandro settled Ethan down against a support column.

  Alejandro thrust several grapes into Ethan’s hands. “Coma èstos,” he said.

  Rasta helped Ethan, guiding his hand.

  The sweet juice flooded Ethan’s mouth. The painful buzzing in his body did not lessen, but seemed to recede a step, giving him a lucid moment.

  Rasta leaned in to Alejandro and said something.

  “I know her,” Rasta said. “Let me talk to her.” He walked over to the woman, exchanged a few words and quickly returned.

  Rasta squatted next to Ethan, a sour looked on his face. “She says five hundred bucks.”

  “I don’t have the money,” Ethan said. “If she could just let me use it, just this once. I’ll get the money somehow, and buy it from her.”

  Rasta glanced up at Alejandro, nodded and stood. “She’s ripping you off, man.”

  “Here, wait.” Ethan pulled out his checkbook and wrote out a blank check for $500. In the memo field he wrote for guitar, and signed his name with shaking hands. “Give this to her,” he said, holding out the check. “Just ask her not to cash it for a week or so.”

  Rasta and Skook argued for a bit.

  Ethan shivered as Rasta walked back with the guitar and case. “Here you are, dude.”

  “She relented?” Ethan asked as he reached for the guitar.

  “Not happily,” Rasta said. “I told her if it isn’t good, I’d get the guitar back. But, she remembers you from your busking days.”

  Alejandro and Rasta stepped back, pushing the crowd further as Ethan took the guitar. He ran his hand over the velvet lining of the case, then along the body of the guitar. He shook as he picked the guitar up by the neck and settled it into his lap. The crowd hushed as he placed his fingers on the frets. The woman who owned his guitar leaned in toward him and handed him a pick. Ethan smiled at her.

  The itching began to flood him; the music burst forth, his mind exploded with the orgasmic release of the song.

  There, in the middle of the confused and milling crowd, Ethan accepted what he already knew, what he should have said to Susan.

  He poured his soul into the music that flowed over the crowd and out into the weeping city.

  He sang of Susan’s smile, of her warmth and her laughter. He sang her music and her tears. Then the music changed and he sang his loss and his blindness to the truth. Finally the song shifted to the one true thing that had eluded him.

  Ethan sang his love for her, heart and soul. The music suffused him, burning away the fantasy he had played at, and replacing it with the conviction of his deep and yearning need for her.

  He sang until the crowds thinned and the sun sank — until the buzzing of the streetlights overpowered the last remaining voices.

  Deep into the evening, after his fingers bled and his voice cracked, Susan acknowledged his plea. The joyous sound of her cello came to him across the sleepy city, rich and sweet. His song changed, blending with hers, complimenting her melody with his counter-melody. Eventually, he lay the guitar aside, his physical stamina having been pushed over its limit. The itching had subsided and his stomach ached from lack of food. He stood and stretched, listening to her call to him.

  He emptied the guitar case onto the ground, the bills and coins making a sizable pile at his feet and gently placed the guitar back into the velvet. There in the midst of the fives and twenties lay his pawn ticket, folded in half wit
h the pawn shop receipt and the hastily scrawled IOU.

  The bills he straightened out of habit and stored in the compartment with his extra strings. He finished packing his guitar, strapped it to his back and began the long walk home following the sweet strains of her music into the night.

  Mary Robinette Kowal is one of the brightest stars on the SF scene these days. She won the John W. Campbell award a few years back, and she’s now had a novel published by Tor, and has won a Hugo Award for short fiction. Mary started this story on a train, thinking about how on a train one is neither here nor there, but caught in transition. She read “Death Comes But Twice” from #35 at a Talebones Live! reading, and her natural reading abilities shone through. I knew how the story ended, but I still had the chills.

  DEATH COMES BUT TWICE

  MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL

  My dearest Lily,

  Forgive me. I would be with you now, rather than closeted in my study, but I do not wish you or our children to witness my demise. I love you. I tell you now, so that you will know that my last thought was of you.

  I have placed my affairs in order — do not fear, my love, you will be well provided for — all that is required of my remaining time is to explain the events which have led to my death. Though the scene will seem so similar to my elder brother’s death, I would not wish you to think I had taken my own life in the manner in which Edmund took his.

  When Dr V— came to see me some weeks ago, he brought with him the bottle of strychnine that now sits empty upon my desk. He was in high spirits, because his latest alchemical experiment had been a success, and brought the strychnine in order to demonstrate the efficacy of his elixir.

  In truth, his very presence could be considered proof, since he had been dead earlier that morning, but, as I had not witnessed his revival, he wished me to see the results first hand. At his request, I summoned the chambermaid, while he prepared a syringe of strychnine. I thought he would ask her to procure a hen or some such thing for use in his demonstration, however, when she arrived, Dr V— plunged the syringe into her arm with no warning.

  I leapt from my chair, but before I could do more than cross the room, the strychnine took effect with results that horrified me. Even though I had complete confidence in Dr V—’s elixir, I could not restrain a cry of dismay as the chambermaid’s head tilted back in a sudden convulsion. Her lips tightened, giving her the appearance of laughter, and she dropped to her knees, clawing at her throat. Her back arched, pitching her over so that she lay with only her head and heels touching the carpet.

  We waited some ten minutes to be certain of the chambermaid’s demise, before Dr V— felt confident in proceeding. With a second syringe, he then dosed her with the elixir that his years of experiments had created.

  As we waited for it to begin its work, he told me somewhat of his own journey into death. He had asked his assistant to bleed him, quite literally, dry. He had chosen this route because he wished to experience the moment of transition between life and death and hypothesised that a slower death might accomplish this.

  I marvelled that he had been willing to trust another with his own life, for the elixir is only effective at reviving the dead, not at preventing death. Without his assistant, Dr V— would have been unable to revive himself. Indeed, I was surprised that he had been willing to undertake death at all.

  He scoffed at me. “I could hardly restrain myself, so great was my interest in what lay on the other side of the veil.” His face took on a rapt look. “You will marvel, sir, I promise you that.”

  Then, at our feet, the chambermaid convulsed. It was as if the strychnine were exiting her system in reverse. First the rictus of her lips relaxed, then the bright flush faded from her cheeks. Her back unbowed, and her eyes rolled in their sockets.

  She held her hand to her breast, and her eyes started from her head, staring around the room. Dr V— helped her rise, although he acted as if nothing more untoward than a swoon had occurred.

  I asked if she were well.

  She nodded and dropped a curtsey, almost on the point of fleeing from the room. Dr V— stopped her with a raised hand and asked whether she had dreamed anything in her swoon.

  If possible, her eyes grew wider. “Lord, sir, but didn’t I have the strangest dream? There’s a light what I was going toward, and angels all around me. And me mum . . . I saw her waiting for me, I thought.”

  I tell you, my heart stopped at her words. What could she be describing but the path to Heaven? The chance to see that with my own eyes and yet to return to you and the children seemed as if it were a gift from God himself. I dismissed the chambermaid in a daze (Here, I must pause my narrative to ask that you settle a sum of fifty pounds upon her family) and I turned to Dr V—.

  “You must tell me of your other trials.”

  As always, he took delight in my interest in the scientific pursuits. “My assistant took the journey yesterday, by way of a shot to the heart. Prior to that, our trials on convicts included strangling, drowning, and beheading. By Jove! That reanimation was a sight to see.” His eyes narrowed, as he marvelled at the memory. “When the elixir took effect, his head slid across the table to rejoin his body. I have every confidence that it will be effective on natural death as well.”

  “And did the convicts see heaven?”

  “Indeed, they did not.” He smiled. “But I hope that by giving them a clear view of what waits for them, they had the opportunity to repent before their scheduled executions.”

  “What a gift this is.” I went to him, my hands clasped in supplication. “And would you allow me to experience this as well?”

  “My dear fellow, that is precisely why I have come. After your years of patronage, how could I not offer you this chance?”

  I considered the empty bottle of strychnine on the table. I think the memory of Edmund made me turn toward the duelling pistols on the mantle. I have wondered what his final hour was like, and what led him to take his own life. Though I could never hope to understand his reasons, I could, thanks to Dr V— , experience my brother’s last moment. I explained my wish to Dr V— and received his assurance that it was entirely safe.

  How absurd that sounds, to describe firing a loaded pistol at one’s temple as safe! And yet it was with great excitement that I loaded the pistol. At Dr V—’s suggestion, I removed my coat, waistcoat, cravat and shirt lest they be stained with my blood. Then, after barring the door to my study, I lifted the pistol.

  To my surprise, Dr V— stopped me by taking the pistol from my hand. He bowed. “Forgive me. I nearly did you a disservice by avowing to the safety of this endeavour. Suicide is a mortal sin; I would not wish you to visit the depths of Hell.”

  The noble man waved away my grateful thanks and placed the pistol against my temple himself. I have the barest memory of an explosion of sound, and then —

  Then my dear, quite simply, I was dead. I hung, incorporeal, in an unearthly glow surrounded by souls drifting to what must have surely been the gates of Heaven. I cannot do justice to the sensation of serenity in that place, but it is the only thing I have to offer you as comfort.

  I moved toward the light, anxious to see as much as I could before being pulled back to my body, but before I could move perceptibly closer in that vast space, I felt a tugging.

  The glow faded from my sight, to be replaced by a searing pain in my temple. And then that faded as well, and I opened my eyes.

  Dr V— leaned over me, his face split in a grin of delight. I could hear fists hammering at the door of the study and raised voices demanding entrance.

  Chuckling, Dr V— said, “I apologize for reviving you so precipitously but I fear the gunshot has aroused some excitement in your staff. You had best let in your butler. He seems to think you are dead.”

  I laughed. For had I not been dead? And yet I returned as though I were Lazarus. I stumbled to my feet and staggered to the door. For the first moments, my body felt heavy and uncomfortable, as if I were a child wearing my fath
er’s greatcoat. I am certain that Jarvis thought I had lost my mind, as I appeared half-dressed at the door so soon after the sound of a gunshot. My hair was dishevelled, and my manner must have seemed as though I were drunk.

  I placated Jarvis with reassurances, feeling some guilt as I remembered that it had been he who found my brother.

  When I had sent Jarvis away, Dr V— showed me the splintered panel where the shot had lodged after passing through my head. The sight astounded me and I shook his hand, full of hearty congratulations.

  He shook his head. “My work is not over yet. The elixir only works within the first hour of death. I am uncertain if it is because of some flaw in the formula, or if a soul cannot return once it has passed the gates of Heaven.”

  Dr V— joined us for dinner, and you must remember our glee. The only thought in my head was of how to tell you. I wanted to offer you the same gift as I had received. I thank God that I did not.

  At the time, you could not have understood the full import of what transpired next. I hope this account will inspire you to forgive my ill-humour over the past fortnight. The messenger, who arrived during our dinner, carried the news of the death of Dr V—’s assistant. Imagine my horror when Dr V— shared the contents of that message with me, for his assistant had died of a gunshot to the heart twenty-four hours after his first death had occurred. Dr V— raced to his assistant’s side with the elixir, but the formula had no effect on this second death. He had arrived too late.

  Although I found it incredible, it seemed that his assistant had so longed for Heaven that he chose to return to it. It did not seem as fantastic a denial that evening as it seems when I set the words down on this page. At the time, my corporeal form chafed against my soul, and each noise or odour was a reminder that I had seen the glory of Heaven and left it behind. My own form seemed loathsome.

  The next morning, shortly before breakfast, Dr V— sent a warning. The wound from his bleeding reopened; he was barely able to staunch and cauterise the flow. This reopening occurred twenty-four hours after he had his assistant open his veins.