***
Silence, pregnant and ominous, crackled over the phone line.
“Who is this?” Sebastian demanded.
A woman’s breathy moan poured out of the earpiece and into the cup of his ear.
Sebastian tore off the headset and slammed it against the keyboard. He jumped out of his seat hard enough to send the office chair into the half-wall behind him.
“Jesus, Sebastian,” groused the man who sat next in line.
For a week, Sebastian had remained barely conscious of him; he’d buried his eyes in the long blonde mane of the college girl seated in front of him.
“Where’s Miss Beckwith?” Sebastian demanded.
The man, a balding older dude with a big gut, narrowed his eyes. “Calm down.”
“Where is she?”
“Last time I checked, I wasn’t her social secretary,” Tubby fired back. “How about you try her office?”
Sebastian righted, realizing every eye in the bullpen was locked upon him. He excused himself. Hands shaking, he shuffled down the long carpeted hallway he knew would play hell with shocks come the dead of winter.
A cheap brass plaque identified the correct door. It read: Miss C. Beckwith
Sebastian reached for the knob and turned, but found it locked. He steadied his right hand by making a fist and pounded.
“Just a minute,” Miss Beckwith’s angry voice filtered through the door.
Tense seconds later, the door whooshed open. Miss Beckwith’s large red face filled the gap, but her angry expression quickly morphed into one of happiness at the sight of her caller.
“Sebastian,” she cooed in a slippery voice. “Come in.”
She opened the door, unleashing a wave of smells. The cloying heaviness of cinnamon pooled at its greatest concentration within the perfectly square box of her office. But also present was the bitter tang of sweat and something more. A woman’s most private scent.
“Well, don’t just stand there, come on in and close the door.”
The concept of obeying her order terrified him. “No,” Sebastian said.
Miss Beckwith fixed her hair. As Sebastian stood at the threshold, his wide eyes drank in the framed photographs of a plump Bassett hound on her desk, set beside a Bassett hound statue and cheap looking fake flowers in a cheap looking vase. He also noticed the feelers of her headset poking out of the mess of her hair. She’d been on the phone.
“It’s you,” he growled. The thick scent of her female sweat lay heavy on his tongue and burned in his throat. “You’re the one who’s been calling me!”
“Me?” she feigned innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m not interested in you, don’t you get that?” he spat, his words striking her face with the power of a backhanded slap, strong enough to remove that arrogant, aroused look, replacing it with one of shock. “Not in you, not in any woman besides her!”
Sebastian’s stomach lurched. He turned away and doubled over, half expecting to vomit, the little food inside him feeling like shards of broken glass. He willed his guts to calm and was only partially conscious he’d dropped to his knees on the carpet, which he knew was even now building up its energy reserves, charging like a battery so it could deliver painful zaps indiscriminately to any who dared navigate its course come winter.
Some unaffected sliver of his scattered senses heard the sharp crack, immediately followed by the sound of a bulky object falling across the floor behind him. Sebastian caught a shadowy flash of movement at the corner of his eye, the kind of phantom that would vanish just as soon as he turned to focus on it directly. He did, and it was gone.
Quite clear, however, was the image that greeting him: Miss Beckwith slumped on the carpet, a gash on her forehead bleeding trickles of crimson. The Bassett hound statue was in two pieces on the floor beside her.
There was one other element worth noting, this one not so concrete. A hint of sweet lilacs had cancelled out the pungent stink of cinnamon and mummies. The confusion and horror Sebastian had been at the mercy of evaporated. Nobody saw him smile or heard him whisper her name as he turned and marched toward the elevator.
“Ms. Juggles,” he said, lisping the words in a girlish falsetto.
***
She was waiting for him in the car. The fashion magazine belonging to the upstairs whore had slipped from her delicate fingers or had been tossed aside during her campaign to deal with the nasty bit of work up on the fifth floor. She was the most divine creature he had ever laid eyes upon.
“You’re the only woman for me,” Sebastian sighed, reaching for her.
This time, she allowed his touch.
“I love you. And I have loved you for so very long, Ms. Juggles.”
“I know,” she said, her voice musical, hypnotic, like that of a mythological Siren, he thought; a creature who lured men to terrible deaths against the rocks in ancient Greek fables. Or the legendary Celtic Banshee. Or the irresistible kiss-song of the succubus. “Do you remember?”
The vision, however brief, forced Sebastian’s back against the car seat. In it, he was an observer to the memory, standing in the shadows, even though he was watching a much younger version of himself. That Sebastian stood half-hidden in a rack of women’s clothes, transfixed by the figure of a true goddess. She was tall, lithe, and supernaturally stunning. She stared back at him with haunting, unblinking eyes. Then, as now in the car in Sebastian’s present, she had given him an erection. And then, as now, he’d grown so stiff it hurt.
Another woman hissed his name.
“Sebastian! I know what you’re doing. You disgusting little man! With a stiffy, and you’re staring at that mannequin’s juggles!”
The woman grabbed him by his arm and, though he was twelve and tall for his age, she was still taller and stronger.
“I’m ashamed of you,” she babbled beneath her breath. “What you’re doing is wrong. Evil. Don’t you see? Evil!”
As his mother spun him toward her, unveiling the guilt of his excitement into the open for all to see, her movements stirred the fragrance of the lilac perfume she wore; a scent that often caused his imagination to wander to places both wonderful and wicked.
Sebastian sucked in a greedy breath and held it until it boiled in his lungs. The air in the car was sweet from lilacs, but the vision of her, the only woman he had ever truly loved, helped to wall up the ugly memory of how they’d met behind new layers of mental brick and mortar.
“I love you, Ms. Juggles,” he said.
They embraced.
***
She gave him a happy ending handjob on the ride away from the city, teasing him, edging him closer to orgasm, only to release him just as he neared climax.
“You bitch,” he chuckled.
At one point, he actually saw the highway’s center line tear beneath the car and thought, She’s excited me so much, I’m weaving from lane to lane. But I don’t care…
And, at first, he didn’t really care when the telltale flash of blue lights strobed in the rearview mirror.
The face staring back from the mirror was not his own. Nor was it hers, not entirely. Sebastian gaped at the image of smudged rose-colored lipstick. He was wearing her hair; black spikes of his own showed through the auburn wig scrunched haphazardly over his head. The reflection belonged to both of them.
“Oh my god,” Sebastian huffed as clarity again swept over him. He turned the wheel sharply to his right and hit the brakes. The car skidded to a stop on the shoulder. The state police cruiser pulled up behind him with its siren blaring.
Sebastian rolled down the window. The storm trooper wasn’t even his height, but talked with that tough-guy, tin-god manner all cops use when they nab you for breaking the law.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?” the Statie demanded, more rhetoric than actual question. “That was some erratic driving, Ma’am. How about you show me a license and registration.”
Sebastian tipped a glance at the policeman and solemnly
nodded. He reached for his wallet, then the glove box where he kept his registration.
Leaning over, he saw the department store mannequin with the vacant gaze and naked skull. It now appeared to be nothing more than cheap, aged plastic. It had given up the ghost.
“You mind telling me what’s going on here, Mister Hearst?”
“Sure,” Sebastian said, peeling off the wig—her wig—and choking down a painful swallow. “She’s back. God help me, she’s come back.”
Gregory L. Norris is a full-time professional writer, with nearly 4,000 individual publication credits to his resume, most in national magazines and fiction anthologies. He is a former writer for Sci Fi, the official magazine of the Sci Fi Channel, and worked as a screenwriter on two episodes of Paramount’s modern classic, Star Trek: Voyager. He is the author of the handbook to all-things-Sunnydale, The Q Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Alyson Books), and, in 2009, saw two of his paranormal romance novels for Ravenous Romance reprinted as special editions by Home Shopping Network for their “Escape With Romance” collection—the first time HSN has offered novels to their customers. Stories of his, both short and long, are forthcoming from Pill Hill Press, Simon & Shuster, Library of the Living Dead, Grand Mal, Raven Electrick, and Cleis Press.
Grist
Zak Jarvis
Vivienne needed to disembowel her specimens before the winds died or the atelier would stink for days. She had two corpses at hand and they were still warm. Though you could never trust what the Mill said, they were definitely young. Both female and about sixteen. With skill and a very sharp blade she separated skin from fascia in long strips.
Outside, time gusted through the city, pushed by a particularly bad storm. Rain sluiced from facades and cascaded over buildings both present and long past. Hundreds of years ago a mortar had leveled the block. She checked her clock and saw she had five minutes before the city’s faint memory shook the building again. Vivienne worked faster.
Her timing long since perfected, she paused just before the explosion. Its bright fury engulfed the atelier, sending the peg-boarded tools rattling and the bare lights swinging. Rats scurried out of the dancing shadows, trying to find stable darkness.
She didn’t know what her client was up to with this deception. Whether a flattering lie or a political machination, Vivienne didn’t like being complicit. She did know, however, that when they put this work on display, her career was over. Before she’d let them take her to the Mill, she’d hook herself up to the bleeder.
She doubted the ghosts had the imagination for any other retaliation.
***
“I’ll pay you no more than fifty for the two of them,” Vivienne said. “Their hide doesn’t match. I’ll have to bleach the darker one.”
“No, no. Viv. These are quality. No scars and so plump; lots of skin. Just look at them. Their stretch marks are so fine they’re like expensive linen,” Carnelia said, gesturing to the girls without looking at them. “They were born in the Mill and lobotomized at puberty. Only two breeding cycles each, I guarantee. Bleaching is no problem for an artisan of your skill. I’ll part with them for no less than eighty.”
The shorter girl stared at her hands. The taller one looked straight ahead and drooled ceaselessly. It left a streak down her naked body and pooled underfoot. They both wore lot numbers on bright red ear-tags.
“Fifty-five,” Vivienne said without looking at what she was bartering for. “It’s a vanity project. If I don’t make her look good she’ll send me to the Mill. Just the clothes for this one are costing me a fortune.”
“Clothes? You’re talking about clothes with these fine girls right here? You get the best discounts in town on clothes. You must go through more than anyone. Everyone knows. You think you’d get such fancy clients otherwise? Seventy-five. It’s already less than I spent on their feed.”
“And everyone knows how you gouge architectural clients. You can easily afford to give them to me for sixty,” Vivienne said.
“Seventy-two and I’ll throw in a boy they sent me by mistake.”
Vivienne considered for a moment. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s little. Young I guess. And,” the merchant stammered, drumming her fingers on the desk, “well, someone at the Mill damaged him. He’s no good for breeding.”
“What? What am I to do with that?”
“It’s free skin!”
Vivienne sighed. “I have no male clients or place to keep product. Sixty-two. Just the girls.”
“Viv, Viv, Viv. Are you trying to hurt me? Do you want to come home with me and see how my husband cries when I tell him I can’t pay for his treatments? I can’t go lower than seventy.”
“Sixty-eight. I shouldn’t even buy from the first vendor on my list. Dimitrios might have some merchandise that fits my specifications.”
“You’ve done it, you cunning harpy. Sixty-eight. Will you at least pay market rates for my husband when he dies? It won’t be long with the money I make from you,” she said, scowling. “Besides, I got you good money for your wife.”
“You should know better.”
“I don’t mean to be so difficult. It’s getting hard to get quality product. Ask Kokudza or Dimitrios. Bad times are coming.”
Vivienne turned to look at the drooling girl. “Coming?”
Carnelia clicked her tongue and dove into the forms for the transaction, leaving Vivienne to examine the office. Nothing moved in fifteen years, everything in its place. Just like the two of them.
While the girls were draped for city travel, Vivienne checked her watch against official time and surveyed for storms, marking up her map with a grease pencil tied to the clock.
Before she stepped out the door, Carnelia called her over with a conspiratorial wave.
“Be careful, old girl. Somebody told me they’d seen a blanker lurking about just before that big raid.”
“Probably saw the vampire mayor of Central, too. The people you talk to are superstitious.”
“It never hurts to be afraid, Viv.”
Vivienne leashed the girls and stepped out onto an empty street. Even ghosts didn’t want to be so close to the Mill.
***
On an unseasonably clear day Vivienne waited for her client. Constellations of dust danced in the path of the sun through Vivienne’s office. She sat at her desk, palms patient against wood. The room—tidy as a politician’s—smelled only faintly of chlorine and meat.
This one came from so high in the government that Vivienne couldn’t hear the name of the district. And she was old, this client. Very old. Vivienne held tight as she waited.
After twenty minutes her jaw hurt. After an hour everything else did too.
The client came in off the wings of a distant storm, flickering across the room several times before fully manifesting a few centimeters above the chair. A light breeze that belonged only to her ruffled her clothes. With no cues of rank Vivienne could only offer the basest of obeisance.
She lay face down beneath her desk.
“Oh please rise,” the client said. “I want you to think of me almost like an equal.”
“I’m honored,” Vivienne said, pausing for the client to offer an honorific that didn’t come. “Your lady.”
“You wouldn’t know me,” the ghost said. “To now I have had secretaries prepare my disincarnations. But you are famous and I have a very special occasion.”
Vivienne climbed back into her chair, knees popping loudly.
“What can I do for you?”
“You can do what you always do Vivienne," she said. “Make a corpse in my image.”
“Do you have pictures I can work from?”
“If you agree to the job, I will take time to sit for you.”
Vivienne put on her best smile.
“I can be ready any time that is convenient for you. It only takes a few moments.”
“Excellent,” the ghost said, doing something like standing up. “Look for me sometime next week.”
Out of habit Vivienne committed the ghost to memory.
***
Carnelia’s office nested just beyond the neon signs and clothes lines of the city’s most desperate living quarter. The bright colors masked the purpose of the Population Center and the men who waited outside it for an empty breeding chamber. While the main street was stable the corner was not. Sometimes it was the modern Vendor Street, but Vivienne and the girls stepped onto the older Peccary Square. Towering buildings blotted out the sun, some present and solid, others smearing the sky like smoke from the distant past.
Other than the men waiting at the Population Center there were no living on the street. The sidewalks teemed with ghosts though, dignitaries and war-planners, the cultural elite, and an uncountable mass of the unmoored waiting—perhaps forever—to be immigrated.
Looking at her watch, Vivienne struck out for her atelier. The streets shifting, she and the girls passed empty shops burned out, re-boarded, then emptied again. A block to their west a storm blew thundering explosions and the screams of atrocities no one would ever prosecute. With four blocks to go they had to take refuge in an alleyway.
With twenty minutes before a clear path opened, she upended a packing crate and sat down to examine the girls. The noise and false-fury of the surrounding wars terrified them. They hugged each other so tight she had to pry them apart to lift the tarps and look at their skin.
As Carnelia had said, they were in very good condition. Much better than most of the poor, scarred things that came from the Mill these days. But in brighter light the tonal difference was even clearer. She wouldn’t have a choice but to bleach.
Vivienne hated using the bleaching vat. The vapors were probably giving her cancer.
***
The old ghost, when she deigned to arrive, quickly changed herself to look like a long-dead cinema heroine. Vivienne pretended not to notice and worked the camera in silence. She hefted the first plate so the client could see.
HELP! WANTED: Tales of On-the-Job Terror Page 6