Mother's Revenge

by Querus Abuttu

  “So choose,” Tethys spoke. “Use the ichor within you to create the bacteria that will heal the water completely, or use it to become immortal and live forever in a world beyond your imagination. Choose your paltry humans … or join me in the Deep.”

  Marissa’s breath caught, but suddenly the weight of the world returned upon her. The prospect of a new lover, the new world of discoveries in a biome totally unfamiliar to her beckoned her, encouraged her to enter a world of endless opportunities and learning.

  Yet as her heart raced for new adventure, her vision cleared once more. She contemplated the devastation and the rotting corpses around her. The wails of parents and children, and the smell the fish and flesh beginning to rot in the heat of the midday sun, plagued her. This was the effect of leaving the land unhealed. The suffering from the sludge and tsunami was the result of the wrath of a goddess who must be appeased.

  “Tethys, I wish to join you,” she said carefully. “But not yet. Let me heal my people. Let me give them hope, as you have given it to me.”

  With a wry smile, the goddess nodded. “May it be so, little human. Be well, Marissa.”

  “Be well, Tethys.”

  With a final kiss, Tethys returned to the sea and disappeared into the waves.

  KarissaMae Masters writes tales of fantasy inspired by Greek myths. Born in the Sunshine State, she enjoys traveling the world in search for her next inspiration. When she isn’t traveling, she likes to snuggle on the couch with her two cats, Diamond and Boo. Her latest novel, Afterglow of Dawn, was published in 2016 by Torquere Press.

  Snickerdoodle Bunkum

  by

  J.C. Raye

  Snickerdoodle Bunkum had come to be much the same way as any Codswallop might, in a medley of miscellany and human discard. The pieces of him, painstakingly selected at his mother’s hand, were swirled into life by her pleading and lonely invocations to the sea, and the shifting will of the Cape May winds. For as all rubbish creatures well know, on the last day of any October, and only on southernmost sands, when the sea heaps up white with foam, and the waves break into vapor over the jutting craggles of jetty rock, a sticky wrapper and a rotten gull feather, a clench of hair tangled with the carcasses of a thousand tiny biting flies, the broken end of a plastic spoon and a flayed frond of seaweed, might very well become a thing to love.

  And so it was with Snickerdoodle, and all Codswallop kind which came before him, when the sea finally decided to not only spit back the spoils of the humans and reject the waste wantonly plunked into her gullet, but to bestow upon this refuse the gift of life, for some larger purpose as yet to them unknown.

  Codswallop children—Tosh, as they were lovingly called by their elders—were in constant peril in their first few years of life. Those were the curious days, before maturity and fear set in. A time before complacency, and before the horrible realization that their rubbish lives served little purpose except to grow in number and ingeniously hide from the humans that walked on legs and were unlovingly called Wegs.

  The Tosh, so terribly soon after their nativity, quickly discovered that hurts did not pain them, and that their parents could easily replace their broken or torn parts from the generous and daily leavings of litter returned by the sea. With no need for food, water, air, or sleep, and with their speedily expert skills in managing any space, crevice, branch, or board, Tosh set on a path of rash adventure that could often mean their untimely doom. More than a quarter of Tosh did not survive their first year. Some were carried off by orange-beaks or canine hairies. Some were impaled on the end of a trash spike and thrust into a murky bag of screaming friends to be seen no more. And many were swept too far away to recover by the seemingly innocent yet iron grasp of a stormy gale. Codswallops usually weighed no more than a pickleball, so their aptitude in reading the skies for signs of squall was imperative.

  Snickerdoodle, in his second year, was no less a burden for his own mother, Drivel, from the moment she decided it was time to unwrap his Band-Aid arms from round her ragged egg carton shoulders and set him down free, onto his red coffee stirrer and blue barrette limbs. As any Tosh, he loved to climb and scramble, hop and swim, catch seawater in his plastic cap crown, and crinkle his chip bag body in a thousand ways, quite enjoying the serenade it provided. Crease. Wrinkle. Ruffle. Crunch. His mother scrutinized these noisy exertions with no little worry, bemoaning her impatience to craft a child.

  Her husband had rushed her. He said they were behind, and by now should have had two or three Tosh as others of their kind did. Him and his comparisons. His lofty allocutions of purpose and consequence. As if the reason for children had a higher purpose beyond love. Why had she listened to him and not simply waited for the appearance of some eelgrass or plastic wear with which to cobble together her son’s torso, as opposed to making him a dinner bell for the orange-beaks?

  Perhaps a few more trips to the sea, a week’s waiting at the most, and she could have provided her son a less acoustic, more clandestine life. But then, of course, she might have missed October altogether and would then need to wait an entire year to try again. Another year. A forlorn and solitary existence, now that her husband was mostly off with the others, travelling great distances to take the yearly count. No. Trouble and tribulation though Snickerdoodle might be, she was right in the making of him and loved him with a fire-woven Codswallop fervor that no Weg mother could ever hope to feel or even understand.

  Snickerdoodle lived with his mother and father in a place called The Nine Sticks, quietly nestled into the marshiest part of the inlet at Linger Point. Mostly though, he had only his mother for company, as his father had been away from home almost six months now. “Preparing for his silly war,” Drivel would say, and stare off into the distance, inland. It seemed to him that whenever she mentioned his father, her carton body would sag and wheeze, just a bit, and her twist-tie arms would fold together tightly.

  Unlike the other places his parents had taken him on rare occasion to meet Codswallop kinfolk, such as Preserve or Lighthouse or Meadows, Nine Sticks was exactly as its name implied. Nine wooden sticks, dense, round, and tall, half underwater, driven deep into the thick sand, and half towering to the sky. Strangely hard and smooth, the sticks were far too wide for Snickerdoodle to climb by wrapping his Band-Aid limbs round them fully, but enjoyably large enough to easily tuck his whole body behind in endless afternoons of playing the underwater hiding game with his mother. Drivel, however, whether upside-down, right-side up, or sideways, could never fully hide all her body parts (carton, watchband walking limbs, lipstick cap head) behind a Stick, and Snickerdoodle found delicious joy in prolonging the hunt by pretending he could not find her at all.

  Except for a splintered and decaying dock, half-drowning in the squelchy bay, there were no structures near their home. Beach heather and ninebark thickly cascaded over the dunes, which were a major highway for all Codswallop travel at the Cape. Mother said The Sticks were made of something called “piling,” and that, years before she was made, it was a place where Wegs would tie up their boats and step off onto a dock so as not to get wet. Snickerdoodle could not imagine why a Weg would fear the water in this way, but knew better than to press her on the subject. Mother would always become impatient when he asked even the smallest of questions about the Wegs. He’d wait and ask his father, who was only too happy to impart the juicy, forbidden details of the creatures, with very little prodding, to his mother’s dismay.

  Occasionally, orange-beaks came to rest atop The Sticks, but not often, for as his mother explained, the winged creatures mostly stayed in groups and followed each to places where Wegs left food behind. This was another peculiarity. Food. Snickerdoodle could not seem to comprehend what food was, and why all other creatures but Codswallops sought it, fought for it, or left it behind. A year ago, he had found a piece of it just lying on the sand. It was long and yellow, and sculpted into the shape of a twig. The pokes of his coffee stirrer limb made deep impressions in the soft outer skin of it. His
mother screamed when she saw him, and hurried him away to hide under the water until well past daylight. She would not tell him why they could no longer play that day.

  On some late evenings when tides were tranquil, and the sounds of inland places became still, Snickerdoodle and Drivel judiciously marched under the water and emerged on the long beach. Once on land, they stayed just inside the final stretch of beach heather for cover. For hours, she’d keep him busy and nearby, enticing him with various treasure hunts of sorts, saying things like, “We’ll each gather what might be good findings for a future sister and then share our gems!”

  Drivel knew he loved proposals such as this, which made him feel useful and needed. He would immediately and energetically begin digging up cigarette stubs, pop-tops, and pieces of colored brown and green glass. After a good long while, they amassed quite a collection of potential sister thingamajigs, which now included an empty thread spool, a brown shoelace, a pencil top, and one white silk flower petal. They also had a small pile of glass bits, which Drivel kept separate from the other items, expertly bundling them into short stacks, tied with lashes of burnt grass.

  Once, after Snickerdoodle tired of the game and before Drivel could protest, he scrambled up into a high bough of a bayberry and grandly dove downward into a thick cluster of its leaves. A very surprised winged seed-eater exploded from the bush. It powerfully grabbed at one of Snickerdoodle’s Band-Aids in self-defense, and tore it from his body entirely. Snickerdoodle immediately lost his balance and tumbled to the rocky sand, while Drivel lunged at the seed-eater and repeatedly whapped it with her carton, until it dropped the appendage, screeched painfully, took wing, and headed far down the beach.

  “You see there,” his mother said, her face sadly following the creature as it turned west and flew inland to the towns, “if that thing had decided to carry you off rather than simply peck at you, I would have very well lost you forever.”

  Drivel used her cap head to swiftly iron out the severed Band-Aid, and broke off a small piece of her own twist-tie to help refasten the limb to her son’s torso. “You must stay near. You must be careful. Never be seen by animals or by humans.” She dipped one of her arms into a slit gap of bayberry root and pulled out a bead of dark brown goo, which she generously slathered on Snickerdoodle’s new joint.

  “Oh, but Mother, I know very well you would make yourself wings from Popsicle paper and fly to rescue me!” Snickerdoodle teased, testing his healed limb by slapping it against a peach-colored pebble. Drivel could only sigh, and make preparations to drag some of their treasures home. At times like these, she questioned her choice to keep Snickerdoodle isolated from other Tosh. He knew so very little about the world they lived in. Perhaps playing with the others, learning from their example, might be more of a boon than she had first divined.

  One November day, about an hour before sunset, and well after the orange-beaks had departed from the beaches, Drivel announced to her son that they were travelling to visit his friend Pocky, whose family lived far away in an area frequented by Wegs, called Congress. They would depart in a week, and they would practice their travelling every day before that.

  Up until then, Snickerdoodle had only known the direction of Pocky’s home. He’d climb atop a bush and peer out over the salted marshland for a brief glimpse of the massive yellow Weg structure in the distance, away from the waves, easily stretching the length of twenty docks along one side. This feat was always followed by his mother crossly yanking him down, and making him promise to not repeat such a wholly unsafe action ever again, to which he did promise in earnest.

  Snickerdoodle only ever saw Pocky when his family came to visit The Nine Sticks, and he would often overhear Pocky’s mother, Debri, quietly scolding his own mother about it when they thought he was distracted. Mother held firm to her convictions whenever this happened, saying the excursion was too dangerous without her husband along, and she was not yet willing to take the risk.

  For though Codswallops never tired, and could walk and run just as they pleased, whenever traveling in the open they were forced to wait for a manageable wind, and then merely tumble to and fro to their desired destination. This was the way they had learned to conceal themselves from Wegs, by simply acting as they looked. Acting like trash. Tumbling took much longer, of course. And should a wind maliciously cease, then so unfortunately did the journey, leaving the rubbish creature defenseless and exposed to an open sky of things with beaks and claws, or possibly the curious, destructive clutches of unsupervised Weg children, as they waited patiently for another gust to help them along.

  For a whole week, Drivel made Snickerdoodle practice his tumbles over and again. Catching the breeze, lurching in a certain way so as not to look forced, and then falling flat as could be when the wind died down. She taught him how to sail, roll, and spin through the air, as well as how to plunge, and even skate along the sand. And, as if the whole world were put on pause the day they finally left for Congress, their journey was resplendent with favorable winds and miraculously without incident or intruders. They reached Pocky’s home in less than thirty minutes.

  Pocky had a mother, father, and three sisters. This was rare bounty for a Codswallop family, and it gave them some prestige amongst the others. Pocky himself had been fashioned by his father using a considerable amount of actual Weg hair (also a kind of honor), woven through irregular shards of driftwood, which the child would boast about unremittingly.

  “My father says someday I will take the lead when we march on the Wegs. For I am a symbol of his purpose.”

  Pocky was Snickerdoodle’s closest friend, and understandably so, as the only other Tosh that Snickerdoodle had ever actually met. And, never wanting to irritate his only friend, Snickerdoodle would agree with whatever Pocky said, and acquiesce to every suggestion Pocky made, silly or no, whether it was digging up broken shell bits to make him a crown, having to hunt for him all afternoon in the heather, or dressing in a gull feather and pretending to be an orange-beak he’d slaughter in conquest.

  But all day, this day, Pocky had been trying his hardest to convince Snickerdoodle to sneak away with him and see the Cobblestone Road in a place called Washington. Certainly it was not the first time Pocky suggested they leave the safety of their mothers, the scrubs, and the white chairs of Congress, and travel to this mystical place where rocks, the color of sunset, were all the same. But now he seemed more serious than ever before. There was something in his tone that frightened Snickerdoodle. It was a tone that seemed to threaten the end of friendship should he not comply.

  “Don’t be a newborn,” Pocky said. “You are well past two years of life and need to see the world! How else will you be a help to your father when the war comes?”

  “But how far is it?” Snickerdoodle asked, shuffling some broken shell bits with his red stirrer limb.

  “Not far,” Pocky said, “I told you I have been there four times. I know my way.” Reaching up with his purple broccoli-band limbs, Pocky grabbed onto a branch of heather, lifted his hairy, driftwood body from the sand, and vigorously swung back and forth, stewing in disappointment. “We’ll be there and back before your mother calls for you to travel home, silly.”

  By the time Snickerdoodle and Pocky had crossed the mountainous sand yard beyond the white chairs at Congress, dodging a few Wegs and a hairless canine that was thankfully lashed by rope to a railing, the wind had picked up considerably. Not more than once that hour did they find themselves pitched in the wrong direction, or into each other for that matter, and grasping at any immediate clumps of undergrowth for momentary anchorage. Snickerdoodle heard the sea winds growling low in the distance, and felt a few tiny droplets of water bounce off his plastic cap and roll down his back. When he finally looked back toward the shadowy beach, white splashes of light in a black sky illuminated a murderously churning ocean. A terrible storm was making its way inland.

  The both of them whirled through streets teeming with Wegs. Bouncing off curbs, flattening against w
alls, and billowing under benches as the merciless gale intensified. It was terrifying for Snickerdoodle. Surely by now his mother would have noticed the change in weather, and protectively called for him to come to her. She would be steeped in worry. He knew he should turn back. But now Snickerdoodle could only desperately hurry after Pocky, no longer because he cared to see the sights of Washington, but because he knew that should he lose his friend, he would never find his way home.

  But when then they finally arrived, the Cobblestone Street was certainly the most beautiful place Snickerdoodle had ever beheld in his very short life. It now seemed well worth the trip and disobeying his mother just this one time. A flickering dance of shadow and color, glitter and wind. It was just as his friend had promised, and more. Crusty orange-brown stones, shaped all the same, coated the ground for as far as he could see and shimmered like buttery glass in the mix of dark azure sky, drizzling rain, and bright lights that shone down from all the mysterious structures. Pocky had called these stores, but Snickerdoodle scarcely knew what he meant, and only nodded, mesmerized by how the Wegs lived.

  Each store had an opening made of wood and glass with a large jewel-cut stone in the center. The Wegs would tug upon this stone with some effort, and each yank was followed by the sound of divine twinkles, surely meant to advertise their arrival. A string of nimble illuminations, much like the comforting stars, which dappled the sky at The Nine Sticks, were delicately wrapped in the branches of tall flappy green trees lining the walkway on either side of the cobblestones. Each tree did not grow from the ground, but was stuffed into a box of dirt, lined with gray dock wood.

  But the most amazing of all the sights appeared in the very center of the cobblestones. A strange green pool of water was raised into the air and dribbled in arcs around its base to a lower pool, filled with flat brown circles. The circles had pictures carved into them. Snickerdoodle wanted very much to see the pictures, but the water was in motion, thus making it difficult to see down into the lower pool clearly. Without knowing he was doing so, Snickerdoodle drew nearer to the dribbling water and stepped right into the path of a Weg.