It Happens Every Day

by Derek A. Murphy

  Though she was loathe to leave her shelter, she pushed the stones away from the entrance and crawled out. Now that she had shoes and a hat, she felt more normal than she had for quite a while. The only other thing that would make her feel even better would be to find Brian.

  With the sun visible, her spirits picked up even more and she began walking along the shoreline again, humming an old song to herself. Since there seemed to be a kind of sky to look at, dark though it was, her eyes went to it, mindful of the owls, and found nothing there. As she walked, she could make out a very faint shadow following along with her and smiled; so long as she had a shadow, things couldn’t be so very bad, could they?

  * * *

  The mist and fog were so thick that even if he’d had a light, Brian couldn’t have been able to see more than three feet ahead of himself. The thought of a light tempted him to use the Staff, but he didn’t want to use it so close to the building and draw unfriendly attention to himself. If he could find a way in, and it was relatively tight, he would use the Staff to warm the place. If.

  He was walking steadily along at a slow pace, but nonetheless bumped into something hard. His heart came into his throat as his fingers quested over the upright surface and he almost shouted for joy as they found carved impressions on the stone. Moving to the right, hands moving ahead of him, he found the corner and turned it. Twenty short paces further on, he stumbled on a series of steps and took them, rising nearly a foot with each one. Whoever the building had been built for must have been taller than normal humans; with bigger feet, too. The steps were broader than normal, causing him to take two short steps on each one. His questing foot found no more steps and he moved on, keeping a hand on the wall beside him. Abruptly, his hand dipped inward and he knew he had found a window or door. Feeling downward, he found that the stone casement reached the pediment of the porch and he moved inward, finding a clammy darkness that was no better lighted than the misty reaches outside.

  Realizing there was no better way to learn what the building held; he lifted the Staff and activated it, shielding his eyes against the brightness of the light. There were benches around the walls, at a height that was a bit too much for comfortable sitting, and one window opened on either side of the single-roomed building. A complicated set of shutters hung loosely on the inside of the windows and moving to them, he found a catch on each that allowed him to shut them, preventing the light from betraying his presence on either side. Then he turned back to the door and saw that a heavy wooden door hung by one hinge as though it had been broken inward long ago. Grasping it, he wrestled it into position and sighed as it settled into place. He looked in vain for some way to secure it, but found nothing with which to hold it in position.

  Sighing, he turned away and moved to one of the benches, settling onto it and finding that it was cushioned with some kind of moss. The clamminess of the mist entering the building had moistened it, but he discovered that the light and heat of the globe of light, compressed in this space, was quickly drying it. As it dried, he found it to be springy and comfortable. Crossing his legs to sit tailor-fashion, he settled into eating one of the apple-like fruits and wondered what kind of people had used this place.

  It was no bigger than the average room in a house back home and didn’t seem to have any other openings leading to any other rooms, an attic or a basement. Glancing up, he reflected that with only beams and the roof itself showing above him, an attic was definitely out of the question. The roof seemed to be in good shape, too. Nothing dripped from it in the constant mist and fog and the only water damage present was under the windows and on the floor in front of the door; if it could be termed damage at all. The entirety of the construction was stone; the same kind of stone that was present everywhere in this place. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to dress the stones to build this place, as well as the other places, the ruins of which he had found almost everywhere.

  When he had finished eating, the fullness of his stomach coupled with the warmth from the globe of light conspired to make him drowsy. He pushed the pack to one end of the stone bench and stretched out, yawning as he stretched. A good night’s sleep would do him good. If anyone tried to enter, he would hear the ruckus as they tried to move the heavy door, and the shutters were locked in place.

  Chapter Seven

  The sound of fists beating on the door woke him and he sprang up, Staff in hand, ready to defend himself. The fists were barely making any noise at all, and as he moved to the door, placing a hand on it, only slight vibrations came through the heavy wood. On an impulse, he grasped the door and heaved it a bare six inches to one side, the Staff in his hand and threatening the intruder. If they meant him harm, they would have to move the door the rest of the way themselves.

  Instead of a threatening presence, what he took to be a child, barely four feet tall, squeezed through the small space and cowered against a wall, big eyes taking in his size and threatening posture as it huddled into itself. Seeing that the figure was no more than a girl, he heaved the door back into place and cast about for something to wedge it shut with. He found a bit of stone; vaguely wedge-shaped and pounded it into place at one side with the heel of his shoe.

  When he turned from doing that, he saw that the girl was staring around her at the lighted interior and, finding it warm inside, was removing the fur jacket she wore. When she shrugged out of it, he thought that she was deformed at first, but finally decided that the huge breasts pushing against the woolen top she wore under the jacket were real. Understanding that the girl was no girl, but a woman, he began to wonder what forces had acted to give her such a grotesquely, statuesque figure, for her arms and legs were so thin as to hint at malnourishment. All of her dark hair was pleated into a series of small pigtails close to her head except for a fringe above her eyes. Her skin was curiously bronzed; how she managed to stay dark with no sunshine in this place, he didn’t know, and supposed it was her natural coloring.

  Her large, dark, roaming eyes found the Staff in his hand and rounded till they seemed in keeping with her breasts. She gabbled something at him then that he couldn’t understand and reached forward to tentatively touch the end of the Staff. As her fingertips came into contact with the wood, she jerked them back, then touched it again, finally taking hold of it, tugging as though she wanted the thing. Brian gently pulled it away from her with some difficulty, noting that despite the thinness of her arms, she was stronger than she looked.

  She pouted at being refused possession of the Staff and scowled at him, pushing herself up from the floor and turning this way and that in a sort of stylized dance. After some minutes, she stopped moving and stood staring at him with a perplexed expression on her face before huddling back on the floor. Her hands went to her stomach, clutching at it as she gabbled something else at him. From that, he assumed she was hungry and bent to retrieve one of the fruits from the pack. Seeing it, she went into an import of ecstasy, clamping her hands together in a thankful, reverent manner before snatching the fruit from his hand and attacking it as though she hadn’t eaten in weeks. Judging from her arms and legs, he guessed that food had been hard to come by for a long while, so he let her have a second fruit and watched her eat it as quickly as the other. He refused her a third one and instead returned to his bench to lie down, if not to sleep. Brian wasn’t too sure about the wisdom of sleeping in the same room with someone he had just met.

  The woman continued to huddle on the floor and gabble soft sounds to herself then for a while and the almost white-noise quality of it lulled him into a doze from which he awoke when he felt a slight weight straddle his hips. As his eyes flew open, he saw that the woman had divested herself of her woolen clothing and managed to open his slacks without him being aware of it. She had coaxed his member to an erection and was about to settle onto it when he woke, pushing her gently away from him.

  Her instant response was to bare her teeth in a snarl and throw herself on him, pummeling his chest with her small fists. Brian found
the situation ludicrous in the extreme while simultaneously admitting to himself that bared, her breasts were the most shapely, despite their monstrous size, that he had ever seen. They had a waxy appearance and didn’t jiggle as she moved, and he supposed that her people had evolved differently in some way. Despite himself, he found that he was able to smile through her negligible attack and was surprised that he was still aroused during it. That bothered him a great deal and frowning, he pushed her roughly away and stood, rearranging his clothing. The entire episode had taken no more than a few minutes and the woman’s cries were becoming shrill, echoing inside the building, grating on his nerves.

  He said, "Stop that!", and was rewarded by the woman cowering back onto the floor, crossing her arms in front of herself in some kind of ritual submission posture with downcast eyes and trembling lips. Brian noted that her lips were full and as shapely as her breasts and he wondered that he hadn’t noticed that she was actually quite beautiful. It was the size of her breasts that detracted from her appearance; he had never understood before that a single body part could completely distort someone’s appearance simply by being outsized. He guessed that there really was such a thing as too much of a good thing.

  As he settled back down onto the bench with a scowl, the woman turned dejectedly and walked back to the corner where she had left her clothes and squatted to retrieve them. From behind, without the distraction of her breasts, she was shapely, if slim, and he shook his head. It would do no good for him to begin overlooking faults that were outside her ability to change; beside, she was just too small. He would have had the impression of making love to a child and his mind recoiled from that. But for some reason, she wanted sex, and he didn’t. He decided that he would just have to keep that in mind. Her culture may see nothing wrong with indiscriminate sex with strangers, but he didn’t want to complicate his life with it just now. He had the problem of finding Petra and getting her back to his world; that was enough for him to worry about without taking a strange woman as a leman.

  As she shrugged into a long, shapeless top, he saw that a three-inch gash near the top of one shoulder on her back was crusted over with blood and as the top settled into place; he noted a corresponding rent in the rough cloth. He quickly moved from the bench to stop her movements and as his hand touched her, she stopped, looking over her shoulder at him first in surprise, then with a welcoming smile as she started to turn toward him and slide the top back up her body. He stopped her with a firm grasp on the material.

  Gently patting the skin next to the gash on her back, he asked, "How did you get this?"

  With knitted brows, she said something sibilant in return and a sudden tear came into one eye, followed by others from both eyes. That opened the floodgates and she continued to yammer on at him, gesturing toward the door with one hand while still trying to pull up the top with the other. When it became clear to her that he wouldn’t let her turn to face him, she pulled away from him, removing the top and bending at the waist, offering her naked buttocks to him.

  He turned away with a curse of disgust and went to the door, prying the wedge from it before grasping the door to move it to the side enough to squeeze through. If he couldn’t sleep because of the woman, he might as well make some time in trying to find Petra.

  The woman ran at him as he bent to retrieve the pack and Staff, and leapt onto his back, over-balancing him. He fell to the floor, kneeling and tried to reach her with one hand to pull her off him. His fingers clutched at something slick and heavy that offered some purchase and he wrenched at it, surprised that it came free with a slight sucking sound. As he brought what he clutched around in front of him, he saw that it was one of the woman’s breasts and he dropped it, horrified that he had injured her so badly. The woman wailed as she slid from his back, cowering away from him. Turning, he saw that she had clutched one hand to her chest where the missing breast had been and he was surprised to see that there was no blood. No evidence of violence at all; simply the fact of the missing breast.

  He looked back at the breast he held and turned it in his hand, grunting as he saw that it was made of some kind of light leather and filled with moss, not unlike that which grew on the stone benches in this building. Some kind of adhesive rimmed the edge of the leather. The woman continued to wail and, glancing back at her, he saw her angrily peel the other artificial breast from her body and fling it away. In the bare second her chest was bared before she clutched her hands back to it, he saw that though her real breasts were small, they were every bit as shapely as the prosthetics she had worn. She huddled into herself, her face in her hands as she knelt, effectively concealing her body from view.

  Brian asked, "What happened to you?"

  She looked up at him with a hopeful look, tinged with tears, and whispered something for a few seconds before she became frustrated at his failure to understand her words and pantomimed an overhand stabbing motion. Rising with her hands still over her breasts, she moved to the door, and holding one arm over her breasts, pointed with the other hand toward one side of the building. He found her attitude toward nudity strangely skewed; she concealed her breasts at all times, but neglected to cover her lower body in any way. That she had not covered her upper body when she wore the prosthetics was suddenly understandable; the prosthetics were considered clothing. She believed that so long as her breasts were covered with something, she wasn’t nude; it was as simple as that. He supposed that in her culture, the breasts held some kind of special place in their psyches. Wryly, he thought, "Not so very unlike our own."

  He admitted to himself that with the removal of her prosthetic breasts, he found her much more attractive, but there still remained the problem of her size. He decided to view the entire episode from a strictly moral view; Petra was still out there somewhere and he wasn’t about to complicate his life with a relationship with this woman.

  Bending, he picked up her clothes and handed them to her, gesturing for her to dress. When she moved to retrieve her prosthetics, he growled a negative at her and saw her startled look change again to tears. Once she was dressed, she removed what appeared to be a leather leash from a crude pocket in her now shapeless smock and looped it around her neck, fastening it securely. She approached him with downcast eyes and proffered the end of the leash.

  He let it slip from his hand when he understood that she considered herself his property, and saw her tears come again in an even heavier flow. Finally relenting, he took the end of the leash and, shouldering the pack, tramped to the door. Once outside, he looked questioningly at her and she gestured toward the same side of the building she had indicated before. Walking that way, he was surprised that with her short legs, she was able to keep up with him as he walked through the mist.

  * * *

  Brian stumbled over an outthrust hand when they reached the camp and the woman knelt beside the body. Turning it, she revealed to him that it was the body of a short, muscular man. He was horrified to see her loosen the trousers on the body and grope inside them for a few seconds. Her hand came away with a pair of prosthetic members, one longer and thicker than the other. She dropped them beside the body and moved on into the mist, unmindful that he had dropped the end of her leash as he continued to study the body.

  Its head was smashed on one side and there were terrible gashes in its chest. It was apparent that this was the work of men and that they were armed. He lifted his eyes and just barely made out her slight form moving in the mist. Walking to her, he found that she had knelt again and held several prosthetic breasts. She dropped them and wildly glanced around the camp. There were bedrolls here and there and several more dead men scattered about them. Counting the number of bedrolls and the bodies, he deduced that since most of the bodies were male, most of the women had been taken. The significance of the discarded, prosthetic breasts indicated that their removal was an insult to their owners. A leather bucket stood with a congealing mass of bloody stuff in it that the woman sniffed at before tossing to one side with a look
of disgust. From her expression, it was plain to him that it was some kind of food and that it had been purposely fouled.

  She moved on into the mist and he followed until she stopped beside the only body of a woman that they had so far found. Kneeling, she wailed in a low voice and clutched at one of its arms. From the resemblance between the two and the obvious age of the body, he knew that this must be her mother. There was a terrible gash in its neck and blood had run down onto the prosthetic breasts. The woman grasped the body and heaved it onto her shoulder. She needed his assistance to rise, and when he released her arm; she turned to one side and walked into the mist. Following her, he was surprised to find that a lake was concealed in the mist. The woman waded into it nearly to her neck and released the body

  With a push, she sent it floating on into the mist and turned back to the shore. She bent till her head was under the water and abruptly straightened with the water streaming from her. He understood that this was her way of clearing her eyes of the tears that had been streaming from them. As she walked back to shore, he was struck by her erect posture and supposed that she was rejecting this calamity that had befallen her.

  Returning to the camp, he helped her move the bodies of the men, another old woman and a child with a crippled arm, to the lake. Back in the camp, he walked with her to a space some distance from it and saw that a dozen or so huge opossums had been slaughtered there. A few bits of odd, leather gear were scattered here and there, and he gathered that there should have been much more. A strange tent, smashed and torn, lay in the middle of the camp and he examined it closely, finding that its frame was made of some kind of light bone, sewn into the tent so that it was only necessary to pop a few ends of the frame into place in order to erect it. It was made so cleverly that he believed that it could have been erected in a matter of seconds, and taken down as quickly.