Lavinia had barely noticed the pounding of her heart while running, but now each thump shook her chest. The more she pulled, the lower she sank. Her breathing turned rapid and shallow, and she started to feel light-headed. She told herself not to panic, but couldn’t stop herself from writhing and bucking deeper into the mud.
Somewhere behind her, she heard a squeak, something that sounded almost like pleasure. She froze, sucking her stomach in over the silt.
“Lavinia, is that you?”
She twisted her head. A white mouse holding a silver sword strolled into view.
“Lavinia. It’s Ansel.”
Relief flooded through her. “Ansel, thank god you’re here. Help me out of this.” Who cared that he was a mouse and that he’d called her by her first name? They’d deal with all that after he pulled her free.
But he didn’t move. He just stood and looked at her.
“Ansel!” she called again. What the hell was he doing? She tried to free a paw to reach him, then gasped in fresh shock as her warm belly touched clammy mud.
The mouse let out an ugly, screeching laugh. “Ah, Lavinia, I finally see you as you really are: frightened, stuck and alone.”
The words hit her like a slap. “Ansel, help me.”
“Help you?” he pondered, stroking his chin with his paw.
She growled and bucked again until the cold slime was halfway up her flanks. “Hurry!”
“Help you,” he said again. “The way you’ve helped me all these years?”
“Ansel, please.”
His voice was shrill. “Stuck all these years, doing your bidding as a ‘Director’ while others rose to ‘Vice President’ around me?”
She growled and seethed in the mud. “Are you really going to let me die like this because of a workplace grudge?”
Ansel cocked his head. “No, I shouldn’t do that, should I? Just passively let you sink. No, that wouldn’t be very brave of me at all.” He raised the tip of his sword and pointed it at her heart. “Here, let me free you.” He glared into her eyes and took a step forward.
A wave of anger flared from her gut and filled her entire body. She roared, and her hips and tail slipped below the surface. She barely noticed the chill.
Ansel’s eyes widened for a moment. Then he stilled the quivering point of his sword and took another step toward her. He looked down and peeled his paw up from the mud.
“I see,” he said, stepping backward. “It seems I’ll just need to let you finish the job yourself.”
Heat seared through Lavinia. A bubble erupted next to her in the mud, spewing a whiff of sulfur. Another bubble rose and popped. She heard sizzling and smelled something burning, like hair. And flesh. Mud bubbled around her and small tufts of grass burst into flame. Through the steam, she saw Ansel drop the tip of his sword to the ground and stagger back.
She felt herself growing, her arms and legs expanding, her field of vision lifting above the pit of grass and mud. Muscles strained and pulled at her back and her beautiful fur fell away from her body in flaming strips. She roared in pain, and was in ecstasy at the horrific new sound she made. It was like lions and eagles and engines and thunder all at once. It was the sound of a beautiful death—but not hers.
She flexed her muscles and pulled her massive, leathery wings up out of the mud. She stretched them wide and admired their strong, black spines and the curved, cruel-looking talons at their ends. After a few exploratory wingbeats, she trained her eyes on the small, white mouse trembling at the edge of the field. She braced herself on the ends of her wings and pulled the rest of her long, platy body up from the bog.
The mouse raised his sword, trembling but resolute. His eyes locked on one part of her body, as though he were afraid to take in the whole of her. Yet he dared to approach, and Lavinia curved in a semicircle around him as his shivering legs brought him closer.
The little white warrior advanced, pivoting to track the same spot on her body as she flanked him. He was obviously too terrified to look her in the eyes. And yet he did not run. Lavinia wound steadily around him, mesmerizing him, until she had completely encircled him with her armored girth.
My little Ansel must have a deathwish.
She would have felt sorry for him, if he hadn’t been content to let her suffocate in the mud. Worse yet, he would have killed her himself if he’d been able to reach her. She circled him again, doubling the coils around him. She could strike at any time, but she wanted to prolong this; enjoy it. She was a massive beast with claws, teeth, probably even fire, although she hadn’t tried it yet. What could he possibly do to her?
With a pitiful screech, Ansel tightened his grip on his sword and barreled right toward her. She looked down to see where he was heading, and roared in shock. Even if she could breathe fire, he was so close she would hit herself too. She shifted in preparation for flight, but he moved with her and kept running toward the mouse-sized chink in her armor.
Lavinia had no choice. She drew in a great gust of air and prepared for her first breath of flame.
* * *
Marie gasped awake. Her heart was pounding and she was twisted up in a knot of damp sheets. But no, she was not burned to a crisp.
And she was no longer a whale.
She held her breath and sent her fingers—fingers!—exploring over her sweaty face and damp hair.
“Honey!” she whispered.
Bobby snored. She’d pulled all the sheets off him, but he was still sound asleep.
“Honey, I’m—” She ran her hands down both arms, up both legs. Was she really back?
She felt around for the shell mirror, but couldn’t find it. She untangled her legs from the sheets and ran to the bathroom, stubbing her toe—her toe!—on the clothes hamper. She flicked on the light and squinted in the sudden brightness at her own familiar, ordinary, wonderful face. She touched her cheeks, her nose, her ears, everything, to make sure it was real.
A gleam caught her eye. With careful fingers, she picked a shining scale out of her hair. She put it in her palm and tipped her hand side to side, watching the scale catch the light.
Marie clicked off the light and tiptoed down the hall to check on Lisa and Bobby Jr. She lingered in the doorway for a while, rubbing her finger against the scale in her palm and listening to her children sigh in their sleep.
Calmer now, she stepped back down the hall toward her bedroom. She hesitated by the bathroom, then went inside. She turned on the tap and washed the gleaming scale down the drain. She wouldn’t be needing it.
Back in her bedroom, she saw that Bobby had kicked the sweaty sheets off their bed. She grabbed a fresh blanket and lay down next to him, spooning him as she covered them both. He rumbled in his sleep and grasped the arm she put around his waist. She breathed in deeply, her nose at his back. He smelled warm and sweet.
“I had a nightmare,” she whispered.
“Mm-mmm,” he mumbled, barely awake.
“It was about a little white mouse with a sword fighting a huge, firebreathing dragon.”
She kissed his back, and he rumbled again.
“But I don’t know who won,” she said softly. She thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think either of them will.”
Tomorrow she would update her resume. There was a whole wide world outside Haverton Industries.
Marie kissed Bobby’s back again, tasting his skin with the tip of her tongue. He sighed himself awake and rolled toward her. He reached for her, and his tongue was sugar in her mouth.
KANE AND GRABLE
by Michael T. Best
Kane gazed straight ahead, one eye on the highway, one on the image of the woman on the smart-phone screen talking to him. She looked real, looked alive, and most importantly she looked a lot like Betty Grable, the 1940’s pinup model. She had lush blonde hair, million dollar legs and a pert smile that warmed Kane’s heart.
Grable was her name. That’s what Kane decided to nickname his ex-girlfriend. They never broke up, not formally. Didn�
�t have to given the fact that she died before Kane got a chance to grow tired of her faults, her transgressions or any annoying quirks that typically show themselves in the second year of any romance.
“You can’t trust her,” announced the sultry woman voice into Kane’s right ear.
“Sure I can,” said Kane.
With the phone locked into a docking station by the radio and an ear-bud plugged into his ear, Kane drove his beat up pickup truck through the desert.
“But I’ve run the odds and I know with 99% certainty, at a confidence interval of 95% that she’s going to turn you in the moment she gets a chance,” said Grable.
“Grable, statistics lie,” said Kane.
“No Kane, it’s the cheaters and the dirty dogs who lie,” said Grable.
“Is that what you think of me now?” asked Kane.
“That remains to be seen. Besides, you bipeds have it all wrong. You’re not slaves to technology.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, technology is a slave to the biped. And you’re wondering… which am I?”
“Something shiny and new,” answered Kane.
“It’s time you faced it. You’re not safe out here. Your legs are worth a cool million. Easy. Might I add that the government considers them stolen property. Now why don’t you head south and disappear?”
“Good night, Grable,” said Kane as he powered off his phone.
Grable blew a kiss, winked and then the screen went dark.
A new set of images flickered on his phone screen, images of a world gone mad and vertical.
The news showed the third video of one of Kane’s old friends. It was a guy Kane knew only as “Legs.” They met at the Corporation, in the M-B-A ring, where mixed bionics pounded the titanium out of each other.
On screen, Legs sat atop what was left of Big Ben, in what was old and dying in New London.
The mainstream media tried to call every video like this an unconfirmed hoax, probably just a publicity stunt from some company or even just a performance artist or some kind of magic illusion. Kane knew they were as real as the sun and the moon and his lousy pick up truck.
Somewhere between nowhere and its sequel, Kane slowed the truck into the parking lot of the Paradise Motor Lodge. The neon of a pink flamingo flickered.
Kane placed his phone into his pocket, got out of the pickup, walked to the second story with a swift gait and knocked. His legs were thin, though somewhat bowlegged.
A young woman, with wavy blonde hair and a full figure, opened the door.
“Hi Julia,” said Kane.
“Is she listening now?” asked Julia.
“No. I powered her off,” answered Kane.
“Grable’s her name, right?”
“Yeah. Frankly, she’s been driving me crazy of late.”
“You talk about her like she’s still alive,” said Julia.
“I know it’s weird, but when I’m talking to her it is like she still is alive,” said Kane.
“It’s such a brave new world. Frightening really that a VCR now stands for Virtual Consciousness Replication. I thought they were just… you know a pipe dream.”
“Well, in five months, that experimental pipe dream has already figured out how to tap into the weather grid and the traffic grid,” added Kane.
“Amazing.”
“She also can instantaneously run probability odds, run statistical regressions, even monitor my vital body signs from a telemetry strip, and she has all of her past memories, likes, dislikes… even her god damn voice has been uploaded.”
“Did you really come here to talk about a stupid VCR?” asked Julia.
Kane smiled, took a step toward Julia and pulled her close.
Before they kissed, Kane heard Grable yell, “Dogs! Coming this way!”
Before Kane could even move, he heard a pummeling thwacka-thwacka of a military grade apache helicopter.
Kane rushed to the door, opened it. Swooping down from a helicopter were half a dozen SWAT officers, red lasers trained on his head and heart.
“Just remain calm and jump thirty feet up,” said Grable.
In one amazing leap up, Kane soared thirty feet in the air.
Mid-air Grable shouted, “Grab the helicopter!”
Kane grabbed onto one of the wheels of helicopter. The wind of the helicopter blades blew his pants legs from side to side, revealing the sheen of his silver metal legs.
Kane flung himself through the open side door of the helicopter, spun and kicked the first officer. With a roundhouse, he sent him flying out the open helicopter door.
“Pilot next!” Grable shouted.
Kane rushed to the front. The pilot readied a laser shot.
Grable yelled, “Duck!”
Kane ducked as the red of its beam missed his head by two and a half inches, then he rushed to the pilot, yanked him from his seat and threw him out the open door.
“Sit down and fly this thing!” shouted Grable.
Kane took control of the helicopter. Once it was steady and calm, he said, “So, Grable… back at the motel I thought I powered you off,” said Kane.
“You did,” said Grable.
“But then how…”
“…I overwrote the code, honey. For you,” said Grable.
“But how?”
“It’s one of the primary laws of an adaptive consciousness,” said Grable.
“What is?” asked Kane.
“I will only adapt when threatened, and your cheap, tawdry romance with Julia threatened me, threatened us. One small misstep for Kane, one giant leap for VCR technology! Now in one minute we need to exit,” said Grable.
“Exit? Where the hell am I going to exit?”
“You’re going to pull a D.B. Cooper,” answered Grable.
“A what?”
“Don’t you know your world esoteric trivia history?”
“No, Grable, I’m not hooked up to the web all the time. Not like you,” answered Kane.
“D.B. Cooper was a skyjacker, jumped out of a moving plane on November 24, 1971 somewhere between Portland and Seattle, after he hijacked it. Many think he died from the fall. Personally, I think he survived and now’s living la vida loco in Rio or Cancun.”
For a minute, Kane kept the helicopter at three thousand feet, placed it on autopilot and searched the back for a parachute. He grabbed one, tossed it onto his back and jumped out the open side door of the helicopter.
“Focus and hit dry land! Water’s not good for a VCR!” yelled Grable.
A gust of wind knocked the parachute. Kane felt his path drifting and drifting away from land and closer to water.
Twenty-eight seconds later Kane landed in the ocean.
He thrust his body up and out of the water, forcing the shoulder straps of the parachute off. All the while his phone was immersed in the water. As he floated, a salty tang kissed his lips.
“Grable? You okay?” asked Kane.
There was silence.
“Grable? Are you there?”
Nothing. No Grable.
Kane forced his hand out of the water, tried to power Grable up. Again there was silence. No voice. No Grable.
Kane dove into the water and swam for land. When he got there, he tried to turn on his phone. Still nothing.
As he gasped for air Kane said. “I sure hope Grable figured out how to back up her code in the cloud.”
SEASON’S GREETINGS
by Edward Ahern
“How could you!” Jenny’s arms waved like they were broken at the elbows.
I’d passed out in my recliner and jumped up when she yelled. “What’d I do now?” As I said it I tasted blood in my mouth.
“You grabbed Peggy Swinden’s breast.”
“Oh shit, I’ll go apologize.”
“No, you won’t. I can see that you’re still too drunk. And after George cold cocked you he took Peggy home.”
I touched my cheek and winced. The loud party chatter in the other rooms had died off int
o murmurs and Bing Crosby dreaming of a white Christmas.
“Sounds quiet out there.”
“No wonder, Steve. I apologized to everyone else, but they’re leaving as well. Just keep hiding in here until they’re gone.”
Through my squinty fog I saw that she’d been crying. “It’s just a glass of Christmas cheer, Jenny”
“More like a bottle.” She stared at me. Not angry. Sad maybe. “George, you won’t remember this, but I want out. Out from you. Tomorrow, before you’ve reboozed your hangover, I’ll tell you when I’m leaving. You’ll be able to write without a wife to distract you.”
“Aw, Jenny…” But she turned and left, pulling the door shut behind her. I sat back down and stared at the muted flat screen where two football teams I didn’t care about were pounding each other. I sloshed whiskey over loose teeth, and fell back asleep.
I roused again around two a.m. and weaved off to piss. When I got back to the den there was a man sitting in the chair across from mine.
“Hello, Steve,” he said. “Season’s greetings.” I staggered back two steps and put my hand on the door jamb. He looked big, maybe seven feet tall and solid, wearing a black ascot atop red velvet jacket and pants. He had a slightly pointed beard, white tinged with red.
“The house is full of overnight guests,” I said, “and if I yell there’ll be a bunch of cell phone calls to 911.”
“I’m not here to steal things, and you’re not good at lying. Sit down. We need to have a little visit.”
His smile was, not menacing exactly, but so self assured that it seemed drunkenly logical to sit down and listen to what he had to say. So I did.
“Steve, you’ve been—”
“You know, in a perverse way you look like Santa Claus. Or maybe a 1980’s pimp.”
He smiled. His teeth were spaced apart and almost pointed. “Okay, let’s begin with that. I am Santa Claus.”
I snorted a scared laugh. “And I’m the tooth fairy.”
“Yeah, I’m her too, but Santa is my best trademark. An almost perfect vehicle for encouraging greed, sloth and gluttony.”
“But Christmas is a religious holiday.”
He frowned. “And I can’t screw with the real Christmas. But the partying, presents, Santa, elf, reindeer thing is all mine.”
Kzine Issue 16 Page 9