by Steven Welch
“I thought I did.”
“No. Not yet. You have a place, right, a treasure place where all the things you’ve saved are hidden away from bad people and time? You need to take my flowers to your treasure place and make them safe forever.”
Elise stared at Anna for nearly a minute and the only sound was their breathing and the lapping of small waves against the docks nearby.
“Yes,” she finally said, “I have a place. Not sure how you knew that, but I have a place. Are you sure? These flowers are yours now. You would never see them again. Unless you come with me. Is that what you want?”
“No. Make my flowers safe.”
And with that Anna turned and ran off into the evening. Elise watched her go then rolled the canvas tight and placed it one more into her backpack.
“You want any hooch?” The bartender and owner of Khoury’s was Yasser from Egypt and he asked as he passed by carrying a tin cup to the sink at the end of the bar.
“Weird girl. What the hell was that all about? And I don’t want any hooch. I like being able to see,” said Elise.
Yasser laughed.
“My stuff hurts nobody. You got me confused with some other guy. My stuff is pure.”
“Yeah. Some other guy.”
Yasser shrugged his shoulders.
“I get the corn from Malik. You got no problem with Malik. I get the water from the well. You know the well. Good well. I get the yeast from, okay, that’s my secret, right? So how can there be a problem? See? No problem. Pure.”
“Busting your balls,” Elise said.
“You bust ‘em, okay. Hey, you ever know another place to get hooch? This ain’t the best bar in the world?”
“It’s the only bar in the world. Only one I know of, anyway.”
“See? Pure stuff.”
Yasser walked back to Elise and set a tin cup down in front of her.
“Just in case you want to take a risk. On the house. For the show tonight. Real good. We missed you last week. Where you been, Elise?”
“Flowers in the desert, man, just looking for some flowers in the desert,” said Elise.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Never. We never find what we’re looking for, right? We just get what we need. Or something like that. Whatever. That was some weird little girl. Let’s drink.”
“Weird girl, yes. Eyes like death. Glad she’s gone.”
Yasser raised his hand for a high five. Elise slapped his palm lightly and smiled.
“Glad she’s gone,” he repeated then wandered away into the back room behind the bar.
The hooch burned her nose. She didn’t like the smell, but she liked the taste. She was about to take a sip when she felt the air and light change. Someone sat down next to her. Elise was the only one at the bar and there were other chairs but this person sat right next to her. He smelled of juniper smoke and a long desert ride but she’d become accustomed to such smells. Elise had used the smoke of the juniper to take a smoke bath on her desert trips just like this man probably did, a trick she’d learned from training with her friends back in Paris.
“I haven’t had a drink in a long time.” The man’s voice was calm, and he had no accent she recognized. Not local. She didn’t know his face.
Elise lifted the tin cup and downed the shot of moonshine. It burned and almost made her gag but she didn’t know this man and she wasn’t about to just give him some of Yasser’s hooch.
“Oh. Did you want that?” She didn’t smile when she said it.
“Guess not. No.”
He wore a black jacket and old jeans and his long black hair was straight. He had a thin goatee. Young, maybe my age or a couple of years older, Elise thought. Scar on his cheek.
The young man offered his hand to Elise. She stared at it for a moment but there’s no telling whether she would have accepted the offer of a handshake because a scream interrupted the moment.
A loud wet thud. A series of pock pock noises and wet slaps.
The Octo-Thing popped out of Elise’s backpack, raised a single tentacle, and rang his little bell.
Commotion from the pool deck. Elise was on her feet and running toward the sound. Sometimes there were fights at Khoury’s when the drinking was good.
This wasn’t a fight. Screams. Something broke. Damn.
She rounded the turn out of the bar and almost ran into the thing.
Elise dropped and rolled back and away.
Shit.
How the hell did this Terra-Squid make it into town? Watchmen must be asleep. Shit. It was a young one, no bigger than Elise, but its thrashing tentacles were lined with clawed suction cups that could latch on to you and pull you to its beak before you could blink. Its skin flashed from red to black then green and back to red. One of the long arms had hold of Amir’s leg and Amir had hold of a heavy pool deck table but he was still being dragged.
Elise heard the clack of the creature’s beak.
No time.
She drew and fired her Glock and the bullet passed cleanly through the tall, upright mantle. Bad shot. These things were like their counterparts from Earth. No bones, just a thin pen to hold the mantle straight. Rubbery flesh. They were squids like Earth’s. They just preferred dry land. And eating people.
Amir was doing the screaming.
Old Bobby was whacking the creature with a metal pole to little effect.
Yasser came running with a heavy kitchen knife but Elise knew he would play hell cutting off the tentacle that held Amir. There were nine other active arms flailing about and they were dangerous. They made little pock pock noises as the suction cups grabbed and released the pool deck tile.
Elise took a deep breath and fired as she exhaled. Twice. Three shots.
The terra-squid recoiled as a bullet passed through one of its large yellow eyes but it only redoubled its effort to pull Amir to its beak.
No good, she thought, it was flailing too much to get a clean shot between the eyes. Even then she would need to be perfect to hit the nerve center there and kill the thing.
She glanced at her old vest draped across the bar chair. The long switchblade in the left vest pocket would have been useful.
Amir screamed again and the deck table that he was clinging to made a heavy grinding sound. Not much time.
The creature made a squealing shriek from its funnel.
The stranger with the unusual green eyes and long black hair watched calmly from his seat. Some good he was doing, Elise thought.
Something tapped her leg. The Octo-Thing was at her feet and he held up the switchblade with one of his strange little tentacles. He was a clever and resourceful creature.
“Thanks.”
Elise took the knife and bolted behind the terra-squid, side-stepping and tap-dancing flailing tentacles as she went. She flipped open the blade. It shined in reflected moonlight.
The Terra-Squid squealed again as Elise jumped onto its mantle from behind and wrapped her legs around it. A tentacle whipped up and had her by the thigh and there was a flash of pain from dozens of little suction cup teeth but the beast was too late.
She reached around and plunged the switchblade into the central nervous system of the thing, right between and below the eyes.
The squid exhaled with a moist fart noise and collapsed into a rubbery puddle of black, then red, then green, then white flesh.
Elise stepped away. Her leg tingled, but the punctures weren’t bad. Just needed to be dressed.
Amir was still screaming. Elise kicked him lightly in the ribs. He looked up at her with wide eyes.
“Clean this thing before it goes bad. They go bad fast. Save the biggest steak for me,” she said.
Elise smiled and winked at Amir.
“You’re welcome.”
He nodded, and she nodded back. A tall Orcanum wearing purple parachute pants and carrying an axe made of polished metal and a cricket bat ran onto the pool deck.
“Too late, Denzel. I got it,” said Eli
se.
The Orcanum, the one she had nicknamed Denzel, made a disappointed clicking sound.
Elise returned to her seat. The Octo-Thing scuttled behind her then clambered up and over the zinc bar and disappeared, intent on doing whatever an octopus-thing did with his free time late at night. Jack and Amir went about the sticky business of cleaning the dead terra-squid.
She grabbed the bottle of moonshine and poured it over the suction cup wounds on her leg then splashed some on her bloody hand for good measure.
“If that doesn’t kill the germs nothing will,” she said, her voice strained with pain, and sat the bottle back down on the bar.
Elise and the stranger with the green eyes sat quietly for a long moment. When he spoke his voice was barely above a whisper but pleasant enough.
“So, this is Aqaba?”
“Yes,” said Elise. “Your first time here?”
“I’ve traveled but I’ve never seen a town with more people. I was told Aqaba was the place to go. I was told correctly,” he said.
Yasser appeared behind the bar with a tentacle in one hand and another bottle of liquor in the other. He placed the bottle down in front of Elise. It was the real stuff. A dark brown bottle with a faded old sticker. Macallan 12.
“Thank you,” he said. She saluted him with a smirk and tipped whiskey into her tin cup. He went back to chopping the beast into manageable pieces.
Elise offered the bottle to the young man with the green eyes. He waved it off.
“No thanks,” he said, “Just kidding before. The stuff doesn’t agree with me.”
“Your loss. This is real, not that nasty stuff they brew up behind the old boathouse. Who knows, might be the last bottle in the world,” said Elise as she took a sip.
“All yours. I’m Taariq Tanaka. From out west. Amman. Population, few. Not like this.”
Elise gave him a skeptical side glance.
“Do you know a little girl named Anna?”
Taariq froze. How?
“No,” he said, then smiled, “I don’t think so. Why?”
Elise shrugged.
“Is she from Amman?” he asked.
“Weird. You didn’t come here with a little girl?
Taariq smiled wider but worked two trains of thought at once. On one track, keep up the lie. On the second track, how could he be so dumb? He could have said he was from anywhere. Stupid.
“No. Amman is big but kind of empty. I guess there could be some little girl running around, but I’ve never seen one there. Just a few guys living down by the Qasr al Abad. So, you met a girl from Amman?”
“Yeah. Like I said. Weird. Doesn’t matter. You’re a long way from home.”
“Well, you’re not local either from the look of things.”
“True. Most people here are from somewhere else,” she said. Another sip of the whiskey. “Oh wow. That’s fantastic.”
Yasser was there, and the bottle was in his beefy hand again. He whistled as he walked away.
“One cup of the good stuff for saving me from a baby. You save me from a mama squid you get the bottle,” he said as he left.
“Your logic sucks, Yasser.”
They sat quietly for a few moments listening to the chopping sounds from the pool deck. Denzel argued with Amir about the best way to cook a terra-squid. Amir was in favor of a slow roast buried in the sand while Denzel was vehement in his opinion that this was a creature from his world not Amir’s and that the flesh was at its most tender when stewed in a mixture of seawater and its own phosphorescent ink.
“How many people live here?” asked Taariq.
Elise shrugged. “You trying to figure out if you have enough men to take over the place?”
“I have a squad of ten just outside of the town. If you tell me the population of Aqaba is more than three times that, we go on our way. If you tell me you have fewer than three dozen people living here, we take everything. Even the moonshine. Oh, and that little girl is a stone-cold killer and she’d slit your throat in a heartbeat.”
Elise smiled.
“We have three dozen. Five of them are Orcanum warriors who don’t take any shit. Three are former Jordanian military and they don’t take any shit either. One is Sonja the cat lady and she’s straight up psycho. Carries a blade tucked under either boob. I guess Aqaba survives.”
“It’s your lucky night, sure,” said Taariq, “and besides, based on how you handled that mess out there we might have our hands full anyway. Too much trouble.”
“Absolutely there would be trouble.”
Tanaka smiled and his teeth were white and clean. He offered his hand.
“So, again, my name is Taariq Tanaka and I’m out here on my own. Now you guys can rob me if you want but I’m not carrying much of value.”
Elise took his hand.
“Elise. Welcome to Aqaba. Thanks for the help.”
“Didn’t look like you needed it.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“Look, if things had gone bad I would have pitched in. Sorry about that.”
“No worries. Not sure how the damned thing got into town though. They usually just march down the center of the street, big as you please, so they’re easy to round up. And this was a young one. Yasser has a point. Mother must be around here somewhere. We’ve got that to look forward to, which is nice.”
Tanaka looked back at Denzel and Amir cleaning the squid.
“Is it good to eat? Seems like it would be tough.”
“Not too bad. It can be chewy. The big ones have a weird taste. First time I saw one was in Paris and I was so scared I thought I would piss myself. This guy I knew killed it with sound waves. Popped it like a zit. Good times.”
“Paris? France?”
Elise stared off into the distance for a moment, then closed her eyes.
“Paris France. Yes. A few years ago. Like I said, good times.” She opened her eyes and took another sip of the moonshine.
“Well, my horse died yesterday so that’s done. Good horse too. Shame,” said Taariq.
“Not many horses left. You’re living large.”
Taariq was silent for a moment.
“So are you. Aqaba is the biggest place I’ve seen. Most people. Usually just a few folks in shacks.”
“Yeah. This is a nice little town, as nice as I’ve found,” she said, “there’s a place where you can sleep over by the old Aqua-marina Hotel and you can buy goods from Yasser here at the bar. Lots of fish so the eating is fine. They get well water that’s cold and clean. There are watchtowers hidden on rooftops and in the minarets in case you get weird, so fair warning. And every few nights we have a party with live music here on the pool deck where the locals can get their freak on. You just missed it so stick around if you want and if you play an instrument you can join in. I’m going to bed but maybe I’ll see you around. Cheers.”
And with that Elise left Taariq sitting alone at the bar while Denzel the Orcanum and Amir argued over the carcass of the squid and the sun rose over the massive hulk of the tanker that rested on its rusted metal side in the calm waters of the gulf.
THE LOUVRE
The heart of Paris was on the Isle de La Cite and from there she spiraled out like the shell of a nautilus, neighborhood after neighborhood, each haunted by the ghosts of the ancient and the newly dead.
There once was a tower built by a man named Eiffel that graced the Paris skyline but it was consumed by ants and was now just a jumble of debris.
Yes, ants. That’s another story.
This had been known as The City of Light, but now there were only fires built for cooking, safety, and comfort. These flames dotted the darkness here and there, few and far between.
There weren’t many people left in Paris.
Paris once boasted some of the most romantic and extraordinary architecture on the face of the planet. Now her scars ran deep and long. If you could fly above the city, you would see the burned black trenches nearly a kilometer wide that criss-crossed north,
south, east, and west. You would see these swaths of flattened and desecrated land and perhaps you might think a giant used his till to begin the makings of a garden, then had lost interest and now there was just the sterile dirt, the tumbled rocks, the shattered trees.
There was still beauty there, though, and so if you truly could get high enough into the sky above the rubble, perhaps in a golden balloon or on the back of a giant flying jellyfish, you would see things so wonderful that they would stab at your heart. Some of old Paris remained. An arched marble tribute, damaged but standing, at the intersection of countless streets. A park of ancient trees and wild, overgrown flowers. The winding mystery of an old cemetery on a hill. A red windmill, burned but still there. The great Pantheon. The Isle de La Cite herself, a tiny island untouched by The Turn, and at the heart of this oasis was Our Lady, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, still guarded by gargoyles and dreams.
There was also a glass pyramid. The survival of a glass pyramid was a wonder as was the survival of the vast stone structure that surrounded it. It was almost as if the brutal giant who had leveled the city had stopped at the foot of the museum known as the Louvre and been turned away, by boredom or fear or violence.
What a museum this place had been and what treasures it still held.
Once tourists fought for a spot, a vantage point, a moment’s peace in the maelstrom where they could stare at the Mona Lisa for a second or two, take a photo, and move on. Usually they would comment about how small it was, or why is it such a big deal, or “that wasn’t worth it, let’s go to the cafe and get a sandwich.”
Now, a Glowing Lion Fish sprawled on the broken tile at the foot of the masterpiece and licked itself. The beast stank of rotten meat. It was big as a horse and radiated a soft blue. The scales of the animal were alive with a parasitic film of bioluminescent fleas. The glow introduced a peculiar azure light to the works of artists long dead.
There was no longer a tourist stink in the hall. There was only the stench of dead meat and a musty background hint of aging canvas and wood. The only light other than the glow of the Lion Fish was the soft ambient that spilled in from the other halls and that light came from the morning sun over Paris. The sounds were the tick tack of sharp claws on tile and the rasp of tongue on scaled skin.