by Shock Totem
Gil’s words come back to Annie—drink a whole glass, and you step into their world. With half a glass burning in her belly, is she straddling worlds, wandering in some realm made half of memory and half of dream?
Did Ellie flee into their past? If so, why wouldn’t she choose a happy memory? Or has Annie become a ghost, revisiting her sins, her missed opportunities?
“Annie, do you love me?”
The words sound again. The first time Ellie asked the question, almost a year ago, Annie never answered her. Now, in this state of memory-ghost-dream, the silence burns her. Now, it is too late.
At the time, Annie told herself there were already too many ghosts under her skin and she couldn’t say goodbye again. But Ellie hadn’t said goodbye. She’d simply left, and Annie had no one but herself to blame.
Annie reaches out to lay her hand on the curve of Ellie’s hip, to touch her lips to the sickle-shaped scar on Ellie’s shoulder. Her fingers go right through Ellie’s skin to the rumpled bed sheets. The world shifts again, jerking Annie out of the past, and into the present. Ellie stands in front of her. Annie sees the apartment wall, clear through Ellie’s translucent flesh.
A hard light shines in Ellie’s eyes. “Still no answer?”
Ellie smirks and lifts her arms to show long, jagged, black scars running vertically from each wrist.
“Jesus, Ellie!” Annie jerks back; the leather armchair creaks.
“They’re a metaphor, jackass. I didn’t off myself.” The voice is Ellie’s, but the tone—the bitterness—is Annie’s. Annie’s words, Ellie’s mouth.
Annie wonders, is she hallucinating? Did she ever go to Gil’s? Is there such a thing as Ghost Rum? Or is her mind throwing up her ghosts and giving them a cruel streak, making them push her away the way she pushed Ellie away?
Annie swallows. It would be easy to believe she’s talking to herself, alone in the dim light, with the sticky scent of rum on her breath. And if that is true, she could close her eyes again, turn away, refuse to listen—just as she had when Ellie was still here.
Instead, she says, “Where are you?”
Annie’s voice catches, scratches against a throat seared raw by the rum.
“I’m looking for my son.” Ellie meets Annie’s gaze; the words knock Annie flat, all but literally.
“What?” The world drops out from beneath her. This can’t be real. If Ellie had a son, Annie would know. Wouldn’t she?
Ellie points at the bottle. “Drink up, sweetheart, and find out.”
—
Annie is twenty-one, lying beside Jillian, who is the most beautiful woman Annie has ever seen. Annie has never felt desire like this before. Even with the sweat still cooling between them, she is all want, all need. The urge to possess is complete and overwhelming. For a mad instant, Annie wishes Jillian was a ghost so she could hold her inside her skin.
Because outside her skin, Annie is terrified. She still can’t believe that Jillian would choose her. In Annie’s mind, there is no scenario where Jillian’s desire equals her own. No one, besides her ghosts, has ever needed Annie before. And even her ghosts all leave her in the end.
Jillian rolls onto her side and offers Annie a contented, sleepy smile. Her hair is burnt wood, but as soft as silk. Her eyes are an impossible grass green, like the brightest meadow there ever was. Jillian is a gazelle, sleek, long-limbed, full of grace. Beside her, Annie is clumsy, thick, stupid.
“Hey,” Jillian says. “What are you thinking?”
The sudden impulse to flee is too strong; it overwhelms Annie’s desire. She is all want, all need, but now it is a need to hurt before she can be hurt, leave before she can be left.
“I have to go.” Annie climbs out of bed so quickly she almost trips. The sheets tangle around her legs, trying to hold her back as if to save her from her own folly.
“What? Why?” Jillian sits up. The sheet slides down to her waist, revealing perfect breasts and the flattened curve of her stomach.
Annie avoids Jillian’s eyes, gathering her clothes. “I have somewhere to be.”
Every part of Annie aches. She is nothing but scars; she is nothing but hardened ridges of flesh, unseen but felt. They are all that remains in the wake of every ghost who has passed through her skin. They form a kind of armor, which hardens further as Annie pulls on her clothes under Jillian’s pained and watchful gaze.
“But I thought...” Jillian begins, confusion clear in her voice.
“I have to go.” Annie’s voice is too loud in the small, messy space of Jillian’s apartment.
At the door, Annie glances back. Since Dal, Annie has been in love so many times. She has fallen in love with every ghost that slipped beneath her skin. She can’t bear to have her heart broken again. Looking at Jillian, she understands—haunting has nothing to do with death. The living can be perfect ghosts, too...
—
Annie’s head pounds. She can’t remember if it is today, or tomorrow, or yesterday. Maybe it is years ago and she’s still standing in front of her closet door listening to a dead boy cry, or pretending to sleep while Dal burns overhead, or running away while Jillian watches with hurt eyes.
All she knows is that Ellie is out there somewhere, and she has to find her.
The rum is bitter this time—burnt sugar, white roots growing in black earth, and the worms winding between them; she tastes them all. Annie swallows a second glass immediately after the first, ignoring the fire gnawing through her belly to her bones. The room hangs on a different axis. She is on the ceiling looking at the opposite wall as if it is the floor. She falls, landing on her hands and knees. Hard, wooden floorboards—even cushioned by a worn rug—send a jolt of pain through her body.
Annie looks up; she doesn’t recognize the room. A child-sized bed rests against a wall painted blue and decorated with stick-on planets and stars. Ellie sits on the bed, her legs dangling, dressed in blue jeans and a heavy sweater. She tucks a lock of blonde hair behind her ear, and smiles in a way that breaks Annie’s heart.
“You came.”
Annie wishes she could say, of course, but the lie sticks in her already raw throat. Instead, she says, “Yeah, I came.”
She stands, and touches the dresser beside the bed—white and topped with a lamp shaped like a rocket ship.
“I thought he would grow up to be an astronaut.” Ellie smooths invisible creases in the bedspread.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” The words snag; Annie almost chokes on the terrible sound of accusation. Only habit makes her lash out, even though she knows she has no right. Fight or flight—ever since Jillian, or maybe Dal, or maybe the nameless dead boy—that has been Annie’s way.
“You wouldn’t let me, remember?” Ellie lips quirk, showing no bitterness. There is only weariness, only pain. “You didn’t want to know anything about my past, and you wouldn’t tell me about yours, either.”
It takes all of her will, but Annie sits on the bed, watching Ellie for flight-signs of her own. “I’m listening now.”
Hope flickers in Ellie’s eyes, warring with hesitation. Annie winces, but keeps meeting Ellie’s gaze.
Mommy locked me in the closet. The medicine didn’t make me better, it made me throw up until there was blood. I never told her I loved her.
Annie’s ghosts crowd beneath her skin. Once Annie took their pain, she had nothing left to offer them, nothing to make them stay. What if, once Ellie unburdens her pain, she leaves, too? Annie reaches for Ellie’s hand, interweaving Ellie’s fingers with her own. “Tell me everything.”
“I did a bad thing, Annie. I killed my son.”
Annie sucks in a breath, shocked by the rawness of Ellie’s words. She could pull back, but instead, she tightens her grip, afraid to try, but just as afraid not to.
“I was driving the car when he died. I walked away with barely a scratch. All I have is this scar.”
Ellie tugs the neck of her sweater aside, displaying the crescent-moon scar on her shoulder that Annie knows
so well. She’s kissed it a thousand times, and never once did she ask how it came to be there.
“Maybe it was an accident. I don’t know.” Ellie’s fingers twitch; Annie can feel her bones through her skin.
“I barely knew Danny’s father—that was my son’s name, Danny. We were drunk and stupid and things just sort of happened. When I found out I was pregnant...I didn’t want him, Annie. I didn’t want my son. But I was too scared to...to do anything. When Danny was born, I wanted to love him. I tried, but sometimes I wonder...” Ellie’s voice breaks; she wipes her sleeve roughly across her face.
“What if it wasn’t an accident? What if I jerked the wheel? I wanted to love him, Annie, but sometimes I hated him, too. He was beautiful, but he was a brat, selfish, the way children are. He was sweet one moment, and terrible the next.”
Ellie’s eyes shine, blue rimmed with blood-shot red, begging for understanding. Her entire life, Annie has wanted someone to love, someone to hold onto. She can’t understand throwing something like that away...except, she can. Her entire life, Annie has been afraid, and she understands Ellie perfectly—broken-hearted, but still running away.
And because she is who she is, Annie does not put her arms around Ellie, no matter how badly she wants to. Fear isn’t that easily exorcised. Annie says, “So, what do we do now?”
“We.” Against all reason, Ellie smiles.
“What?” Annie stares at her.
“You said we.”
Annie sucks in a breath. Ellie’s hand is still in hers, real and solid. It takes Annie a moment to realize it, but neither of them are running, at least not right now.
“Yeah, I did.” Annie lets out the held breath.
“So what happens now?” Ellie echoes Annie’s words.
“I think I need another drink.” Annie’s smile is shaky, but it is real.
“Are you sure?” Ellie’s blue eyes widen.
“I’m sure,” Annie says. She’s anything but. At the same time, she’s never been surer of anything in her life; this is a chance she needs to take.
Annie leans forward and kisses Ellie’s cheek, squeezes her hand, and whispers in her ear. “I’ll be right back. Wait for me?”
Ellie says nothing, but the pressure of her fingers tells Annie everything she needs to know.
—
Annie is forty-three and she awakens to find a ghost on the other side of the bed. Instead of Ellie, there is a shape made of absence. Annie fits her hand into the hollow in Ellie’s pillow.
There are haunted places, and there are haunted people. Annie is possessed by every ghost she’s ever touched. Her bones have been soaked in good wine and turned red with it. She bleeds memory. She loved the little boy in her closet because he needed her. She loved Jillian and Dal. Their names are written in the folds of her heart.
Annie could roll over. She could turn her back on the empty space in Ellie’s pillow, and she would be turning her back on Jillian again, turning her back on Dal’s bunk, pulling the covers over her head and refusing to listen to the little boy in her closet. Instead, Annie gets out of bed. She gets dressed and goes downstairs. She walks through the crisp Fall air to Gil’s, and she takes a seat at the bar...
Annie is forty-three and she brings the Ghost Rum to her lips. She tastes dust and burnt sugar and black earth. She swallows until her throat burns. The world fills with light.
She blinks, and Ellie is there inside the light, waiting. Annie stretches out her hand. There is a word on her lips, an answer she should have given Ellie long ago. Annie is forty-three, and she’ll never be alone again.
—//—
A.C. Wise was born and raised in Montreal and currently lives in the Philadelphia area. Her work has appeared in publications such as ChiZine, Clarkesworld, and Strange Horizons, among others. She is the co-editor of the online 'zine, The Journal of Unlikely Entomology.
For more information, visit www.acwise.com. You can also find her on twitter as acwisewrites.
HOWLING THROUGH THE KEYHOLE
The stories behind the stories
“Beneath the Weeping Willow”
The inspiration for “Beneath the Weeping Willow,” like a lot of my work, rose from the ashes of a dream and a Bible tale (David and Goliath). The young boy in the story is the lowliest yet battles the greatest darkness, which, to me, is failing to understand anything while feeling too much of everything. Only he doesn’t grow bitter the way most of us do when swimming in confusion—he’s about making amends, being loyal, and clinging to hope even as things rip apart around him. He’s about empathy, even if he has no idea what the word means.
Some people never stand, never find their identity, never do more than go through the motions. They slink through life pulling poses. But this boy isn’t like that. He’s genuine. He wrestles giants.
—Lee Thompson
“Full Dental”
Ideas for stories tend to insinuate themselves on me, unbidden, usually when I’m just trying to mind my own business.
Take the idea for “Full Dental,” for instance. I was working in Afghanistan—not the best place in the world to lose your focus, really—when suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, an image of one of Ridley Scott’s Aliens dressed in a Dilbert shirt-and-tie combo elbowed its way into my psyche, and my stupid brain seized on it immediately, “Oh, hey, let me concentrate on that for a while to the total exclusion of my aggressively unfriendly surroundings.”
The majority of these ideas go nowhere, though. Mostly because I’m too lazy to write them down. To be fair, a lot of them aren’t really concepts you could build a whole tale around. Here’s a random example: A superhero whose combination blessing and curse is that he can shoot powerful lasers but only out of his taint. Now, that idea might sound intriguing (which you totally think it is) but where would you go with it as an actual story?
The Stupendous Adventures of Captain Laser Taint and Grudle Boy is where you’d go with that. Please note that I said you because I completely lack the talent, drive, or interest.
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make here, for those of you nodding off in the cheap seats, is that most of my ideas are crap. This particular one, however, stuck with me, annoyingly, to the point where getting it out of my head meant either 1) home lobotomy or 2) committing to writing it down.
Even after I decided against the potentially risky amateur brain surgery, I still had no idea how to turn the random thought, an alien creature in workaday business attire, into a story. So I didn’t aim for an actual story so much as attempting a Monty Pythonesque sketch wherein two people have a mundane conversation while very awful and disturbing things are happening around them.
I started by writing the dialogue between the two main characters who turned out to be a fed-up cubicle rat and his oblivious, uber-PC boss. Pretty soon, the story took on a life of its own (writing, for me, often seems akin to remembering something that hasn’t happened yet) and “Full Dental” was the result.
Actually, that’s not completely true. What I had, after a few hours, was the start and middle of the story. It seems that, no matter what I’m writing, I always have trouble with wrapping it up in a satisfying manner.
—Tom Bordonaro
“Web of Gold”
This story was inspired by my years spent as an office temp in downtown Chicago. Being an office temp felt like I had drifted into some half-lit world between life and death, and the parade of permanent office workers I interacted with often treated me as if I were an insect that had somehow flown into their building and would soon either fly away or die. They were jealous of my freedom, but also contemptuous of my rootlessness, my invisibility and the meaninglessness of my work (always tasks that could be learned quickly, but were too tediously mind-numbing to be given to “real” employees).
I had a boss one week who seemed genuinely surprised that I could be left alone to alphabetize a stack of folders. Another week I was brought in and paid merely to take folders out of one outbox and p
lace them in an inbox a few doors down the hall. I began to feel a strange sense of amorality and distance. I felt akin only to the whir of elevators, the whoosh of air conditioning, the soft static of dull carpeting and the dead sound within cubicle walls. These were my only constants during those long, empty days and I gathered such inanimate spirits close to my heart and clung to them not unlike a child, abandoned in the forest and taken in by wolves. I soon forgot how to speak and instead learned to howl and hunt.
—Rennie Sparks
“Weird Tales”
The inspiration for “Weird Tales” came from one of my favorite books, a meaty hardback volume titled H. P. Lovecraft: The Fiction. Lovecraft is one of my favorite writers, and I really liked the idea of some of his characters just sitting around in a bar swapping their nasty stories.
Choosing the characters and stories was the most difficult part; I deliberately avoided any direct references to Cthulhu or any of the other traditional Mythos creeps as I developed the story, because I thought that sort of thing would be all too expected in what is essentially a tribute to Lovecraft. Once I knew which stories I wanted to make reference to, “Weird Tales” pretty much wrote itself. I hope you enjoyed it.
—David Busboom
“Playlist at the End”
I rarely do online fiction. In fact, I rarely submit blindly to anywhere. There's not any reason, really. I just don't do it anymore. But I saw Shock Totem and it looked cool. Then I read the bios of Ken and the rogues gallery and knew that if I was in the same town with them that we'd be hanging out. They were my kind of people. So I sat down and wrote “Playlist at the End” for them, with the goal that if they didn't take it, I'd add it to my first short-story collection, Multiplex Fandango.