Escape Velocity: The Anthology

by Unknown

  Doc sat against the cave wall, which was surprisingly smooth, and held his head while he tried to remember the name of the thing he’d seen below, even the name of the monkey-looking thing. While he tried to think of a word for what could be hiding in the dark and could rustle, light slanted in.

  By the time Doc was feeling up to looking around, he saw that the walls, which were smooth and regular like the bridge, were covered in markings and loose leaves. Doc tore one of them off and it fell apart in his hands, but not before it reminded him of something. Whatever it was, it made him feel like he could enter the cave. Doc went farther in with a feeling of security, ignoring the sounds from within of falling rocks and clanging metal. From one chamber to another, by clambering over fallen stone and patternless metal, even in one case something like the cart, Doc wandered the labyrinth, unsure what he was looking for. He had repeated to himself that he was looking for food, and the mantra had finally worked. He found some round hard pebbles in one flat space built into the wall. When he put them to his mouth they could be eaten, although they tasted like dust. He held them in his mouth to soften then ground them slowly, feeling for the first time how hard it was to chew, perhaps because so many of his teeth were missing.

  It was getting dark when Doc came to what he thought was the source of the pipe water. A large metal door blocked the passageway and other passages led off into the gloom. He lapped at some of the water before he was ready to turn away and it was only then that he noticed, by a chance glint of metal, a place to put a key, just like on the cart. He reached into his sleeve for the key, a movement which made his head hurt. His hand had volunteered the movement by reaching out first, so Doc was not surprised when his fingers clumsily turned the key and something inside the door moved.

  He stepped back at the sound, and because his hand was fastened to the door by his wristband, it stretched and then pulled the door open, letting go a flood of water that spilled over Doc’s ankles.

  It was much darker in this inner chamber, and large boulders peered from the gloom. There was the sound of pouring water, dripping and trickling, squeals and chittering. Doc stepped over the threshold into the splash over his shoes, which squeaked now that they were wet, until he came to one of the boulders and climbed upon it. It proved to be hollow, and by creeping along its unnaturally straight edge, Doc could go from shelf to shelf, from ledge to ledge, in this vast meaningless place, peering all the while into the murky depths of each container.

  The water in most was clear, and he checked on their contents as if he were following some ritual. The water seemed to well from below the chambers, spilling over the edges and adding to the flood on the floor, but some boulders had indefinable shapes in them, and Doc looked at one for a long time, his arms crooked and holding him away from the water’s surface, trying to determine the thing’s contours. One such globular shape seemed to move suddenly, and Doc flailed backwards, fearing all the while to fall into another hole whose water had not been examined.

  Doc let his arms and legs lead him towards a closed section at the rear of the chamber. When he was close enough to see the open door he was uneasy, far more so than when Mickey leapt with a rock. This feeling of dread was the same as when he looked at the flat thing outside, picking its way along the edge of the cliff smelling his trail, or when the leaf crumbled in his hands, leaving his hands whitish and dusty. Doc pulled his arms and legs back, but they were stubborn, and the struggle, nearly silent in the background rushing water and crashing of the cave roof, took a long time to resolve. Doc finally gave up. Although he knew advancing was a bad idea, he foisted the responsibility onto limbs he could no longer control. He was dragged inside this last chamber, strangely capsuled within the larger one, and walked into a flat shape in the middle of the floor. He was held there while his eyes became acclimatized to the light. When he could finally see, in front of him sat a tiny person.

  His mouth was too dry to allow a scream, and before he could stop them his hands took up the tiny person, who was not Bob, or Mickey, and lifted the person. It was still, and surprisingly flat, and when Doc got a closer look he realized it was a drawing, like when Bob, just for fun, would scratch on the dirt with a stick, plotting where Mickey would pop out next. The drawing was uncomfortable to look at, and Doc soon realized why. As he turned it in the light to see more easily, the drawing changed. It changed into three things, depending which way he turned it. At its bottom were some lines and smaller drawings, but they were meaningless, and Doc found his attention coming back to the three images.

  When the drawing was towards the light, it was a thin monkey, looking disconcertingly straight towards the viewer. Turned away from the light, a person appeared, with a white coat and pasty face and blurred hands. One of its hands was fingering its coat and Doc could make out a bracelet on its wrist. The middle image, half in light and half away, was the most disturbing. It was a monkey man, Doc decided, trying to grapple with the image. It was wrinkled like the monkey outside, and hairy like the monkey on the first drawing, but it had the busy hands of the man, and his pale face. Doc first thought the middle face was laughing, and he felt like backing away, but then he realized, the face was stretched into some other expression. Caught between the monkey and the man, the face had something of both in it, and, Doc realized, was not laughing at all.

  He dropped the person as though he’d been burned, and calling out first for Bob and then for Doc, he went stumbling through the huge echoing chamber, ignoring the splashing water. He followed the remaining light for the door, which slammed behind him. The passageways were a maze and his path was further hindered by piles of curved sticks left periodically littering the floor. At times he stumbled against metal things like carts, upturned, or perhaps differently shaped, their flat panels reminding him unpleasantly of the thing sniffing his trail outside.

  Doc collapsed, exhausted in the entrance, even the sun gasped out its last rays into his hole in the cliff. He couldn’t protect himself from whatever was making the noise in the cave, from the skinny monkey below picking through the dry gravel for sustenance, the thin thing sniffing the rocks.

  The sun was back when Doc woke to multiple rooms like memories through which he merely passed. He expected the chambers to be lit and full of people, dressed like the man in the drawing. Their white coat barely hid their impatience as they strode through the echoing white chambers, checking on the containers, just as Doc had yesterday.

  The light and gnashing of the metal doors was painful, the constant mumble of the people, as they brushed past him, nodding to him as though they knew him. Doc had a headache and drank the water flowing out of the cave to ease it, but it followed him down the sandy cliff, winked at him from the key he’d just noticed dangling from his wrist, and made him slip and fall.

  Sensing movement in the distance, it was only with difficulty that Doc could peer around the edges of his headache and see something trotting along the edge of the cliff. He watched it closely while digging his feet into the sand, his wet shoes dark and slippery looking, his coat getting increasingly stained with the dirt although you could tell it had been white at one time. When the thing turned towards him, Doc felt a sickening dread, for it looked as though it were flat. It was bigger depending on which way it turned, he realized, and that made him sick with fear. He lurched to his feet to escape, and went towards the edge of the bridge, its stable regularity only broken in a few spots—four, he counted—but otherwise stable and secure. There he waited, without knowing why, until a cart left the far end of the bridge, and got closer and he recognized the driver. He looks like a Bob, he thought, and I think he’s coming to get me.

  Symbiosis

  Jonathan Pinnock

  So you want to know what really happened to Shane? All right, I’ll tell you. Just keep it to yourself for the time being, OK? There are still people who might not quite see it my way, if you know what I mean. Even if it was his entire fault. If the stupid tosser hadn’t have made such a fuss abou
t me putting on a couple of pounds, all this wouldn’t have happened, would it? Git.

  Anyway, we was ‘round at his place watching one of those medical programmes on Five. Help Me, I’m a Fat Bastard, or something like that. Honestly, you should have seen some of them. Talk about gross. But there was this one woman who had this surgery, like, and by the end of the programme she was as thin as a rake. Really! And you know what Shane did after the programme was over? He grabbed hold of my stomach and said, “Well, you could do with a bit of that, couldn’t you?”

  I know, I should have slapped him. Well I did, actually. But afterwards I started thinking about it, and I thought, why not? Looked pretty painless to me, and apparently you can get it on the NHS. So I went to the doctor and got an appointment to see a specialist. But first I had to see a dietician. Yeah, I know.

  Well, she was a cow. Told me I had to lose some weight before they would even operate on me, and that afterwards, I’d have a stomach the size of an eggcup. An eggcup! I ask you! Stupid bitch. How does she think I’m going to eat a nice plate of fish and chips with a stomach that size? So that was that. No surgery for me, thank you very much.

  But then I saw the specialist doctor bloke and he told me about a new thing that they’re doing. Apparently they used to do it in Victorian times – or was it the Romans? I dunno. Anyway, what they do is put this tapeworm inside you – yeah, I know, like, ew! – but it’s a nice, friendly tapeworm that eats all the rubbish for you, so as you don’t get fat. Half of Hollywood’s at it, apparently. Yeah, really. Says so in Heat. So if it’s good enough for that lot, it’s good enough for me. And it only stays in as long as you want it to. So once you’ve reached your target weight, out it comes.

  I just knew you was going to ask that. Well, if you must know, the nurse puts on a rubber glove, puts a hand up me unmentionables, and whips it out. OK? Well, you did ask.

  Anyway, turns out they’ve got a vacancy for a fitting a week later, so I sign on the dotted line. Yes, really. You just don’t know how desperate I was. You really don’t. And you got to admit, I look good, don’t I? So stop making faces. It’s only a worm.

  So a week later I go along to the fitting. No big deal, just the nurse and me. And the worm. In a jar. Tiny thing. So I says to them what good’s that little fella going to do? Well, it turns out that it grows inside me until it fills the whole of my insides. And then the nurse asks me if I’ve got a name for it. She says it helps people to feel more at ease with it if it’s got a name. So I decide to call mine Trevor. Ha! You remember him, too? Yeah, well, he was definitely a worm, wasn’t he? Well, a few minutes later, Trevor’s inside me and that’s that. No fuss. No bother. And you know what? I felt slimmer already. All thanks to Trevor.

  No, I couldn’t really feel him inside me – well, not at first. But he soon started growing, and then I began to get this really weird feeling – like butterflies – whenever I hadn’t eaten for a while. I thought it was just me feeling hungry at first, but then I realised that it was Trevor. He was getting hungry. So I started having to eat two more meals a day, just to keep him happy. I was losing weight, but the little bastard was eating me out of house and home.

  Well, obviously, I went back to the doctor. Course he tries to give me the brush-off, doesn’t he? First of all, he says it’s just a normal reaction to a change in me metabolics, or something. Then he tries to say, well, it’s an experimental procedure so what do I expect? But you know what I’m like, I don’t put up with that, and I insist on him taking a proper look. Well, after he’s done that, he turns a funny colour, and makes me an appointment with the specialist straight away.

  So the next day, I’m with the specialist and the nurse and they’re both looking at me kind of odd, like. And they explain that they’re going to have to take Trevor away from me, ‘cos he’s being bad. Turns out that every now and then they get a worm that doesn’t behave properly. Yes, I know, it would have been nice if they’d told me that to start with. So I tell them that, and then they show me a piece of paper that I don’t remember signing that says that all sorts of things that can go wrong, including worms with a bad attitude.

  Anyway, Trevor’s got to go. So I’m up on the couch, face down with me bum in the air, trousers round me ankles, whilst they take it in turns to try and fish him out. And he’s not coming quietly. First of all, the nurse screams that she’s been bitten, so the specialist tells her not to be stupid. Then he pushes her aside, fiddles around for a couple of seconds, then yelps and runs out of the room, swearing like a trooper. So she takes over again. Meanwhile, I can feel all sorts going on inside me, and then I get this excruciating pain in my guts, and I have to shout out to tell her to stop.

  The nurse has got this grim look on her face, and she mutters to me that that thing’s got teeth. And it’s true, her rubber glove’s in shreds and she’s got bite marks on her finger. So she leaves the room as well and I’m on my own. Well, I hang around for a while, but it’s obvious that no one’s coming back. So I put me clothes back on, and I set off home.

  Halfway there, Trevor gets hungry, so I pull over for a sandwich. But as I’m walking into Greggs, I get this awful pain again. I step out, and it stops. I go back in again, and it starts up again. So I try another sandwich bar up the street, and the same thing happens. Marks and Sparks salad bar – same again. Turns out the only place I can go in is McDonalds, and the only thing I can order without collapsing on the floor is a supersize Big Mac and fries, with a bleeding monster coke on the side.

  I know it sounds funny to you, but you try living with an outsized tapeworm with an appetite for burgers. And it’s not just the food. I’ve had to stop watching X Factor ’cos Trevor don’t like Simon Cowell. How do I know? Listen, you don’t know pain like it. You really don’t.

  So what am I going to do? Well, the specialist says they can’t do nothing, for health and safety reasons. No, not my health and safety. Theirs, you idiot. So for the moment, I’m stuck with Trevor, for better or worse. But I do look good, don’t I? Even if all those burgers are playing havoc with me skin. Haven’t managed to get into this dress for years.

  Oh, you want to know what happened with Shane? Well, in his case it wasn’t so much that Trevor didn’t like him particularly, it was more a case of outright jealousy. That’s what I think went wrong anyway. What happened – you’ve guessed it, haven’t you? – well, let’s just say that Shane is less of a man than he used to be. Last I remember seeing of him was when the ambulance men took him away.

  Sorry? Am I what? Well, the stupid sod had it coming to him, didn’t he? And you know what? I’m beginning to see Trevor’s point of view. I think he just wants me for himself, that’s all. And that’s nice for a girl to know, isn’t it? You want to know that there’s somebody for you. Yes, I know he’s a worm. Listen, have you got a problem? He can be quite tender sometimes, can Trevor. Every other night, he’ll pop his little head out, and I’ll stroke him and – no, listen!

  Well if that’s the way you want it, fair enough. I was all set for lunch. Trevor fancied pasta today for a change. But your loss, not his. See ya.

  It’s Easier to Pretend in the Dark

  David Tallerman

  Jefferson half awoke.

  The bed was comfortably warm, and that seemed strange. Why should it be strange to be comfortable, to be warm? It didn't matter. This was how things ought to be. That was important.

  He rolled over, flopped an arm over the body beside him, felt her ease closer. He manoeuvred until their shapes ran together, his front to her back, she leaning into him just slightly.

  What day is today?

  He pushed the thought aside. Pursuing it would wake him altogether. They were perfectly close. What right had any doubt to intrude?

  His hand fell on the undulation of her stomach. “Henrietta,” he murmured. He eased his palm up. Her skin was impossibly smooth. His outstretched thumb glanced off the lowest curve of her breast, and she moaned softly. When had they last been this close? It had
been so long that it seemed unreal.

  With that realisation the illusion broke. But by then it was already far too late.

  “You’re not her.”

  “I know, but...”

  “You’re not my wife.”

  He stared at her. She was even starting to look like Henrietta. That expression, the wounded glint in her eyes, that was something she’d imitated. Then there was the dress, of course. It joined with the faint vanilla scent of perfume, image and odour tangling like a signature. “You shouldn’t be wearing that. If she saw you...”

  “But...”

  “It’s no use.” He was speaking mainly to himself. It was already such an awful situation, already beyond the pale. Jefferson had spent a large part of the morning hiding in his den, from it and from her. Then coming in to find her like this; it was as if he were saying these things to Henrietta, and the thought of saying anything like this to her made his stomach and his scrotum clench. “Jane, you can’t behave like her. You can’t wear her clothes. Don’t you understand?”

  “But...”

  “No.”

  Why can't you just agree?

  Then everything could go back to normal, as normal as it could be. It was impossible. It was beyond her. All she could manage was to look as if she’d cry at any moment: her dark eyes wide, her chin bobbing, and one hand hovering around her heart as if it was about to crack. All of that was Henrietta’s too – yet each affected mannerism seemed real now, full of meaning. Just like Henrietta, she didn’t cry. Unlike Henrietta, she didn’t argue either.

  He had to get it out now. If he didn't, he never would. Because there were other things he wanted her to say, things equally or more impossible. “I have to send you away.”