by Неизвестный
Suddenly, there was a great rumbling. Large doors swung open at the end of the room, in front of the line, and the brightest light in the world shone through them. Cadence didn’t know what to make of the light. It was like nothing she had ever seen before and she suspected that without the dark glass between her and the light, she would go blind. The men ordered them to march forward, into the light.
The women all linked their minds together, especially those at the front. Together they realized that they were going outside. Cadence felt a panic well up inside her. Why were the men sending them outside? Did they want them to die? According to the master, there was only death outside. The air was poison to them, and everything living out there would try to kill them.
Cadence didn’t like the fear she felt in the other women. She pulled into herself, but the silence was lonely, and even more frightening. Expanding outward again, she searched for someone who was calm; anyone whose emotions she could adopt as her own.
There, a calm, lonely thought. Just as Cadence was about to step out through the doors, she found an isolated, serene thought, like an island in a storm. Whoever it was didn’t fear the outdoors like the others. As Cadence stepped out onto the dirt, she suddenly realized where the calm thoughts were coming from: she was in the mind of a man!
Quickly withdrawing into herself again, her whole body stiffened as she waited for death. Touching the mind of a man was the most forbidden of acts. To do so, was to die.
Following Melody, who was ahead of her in line, Cadence was surprised to find she wasn’t dead yet. Not only was she outdoors, but she had touched the mind of a man. Looking at the trees all around her, she thought that maybe she understood why the man had done nothing. Maybe he already knew that she was a dead woman.
Melody’s mind brushed hers, looking to connect. Cadence kept her out for now. If she was already dead, and they didn’t care if she touched the mind of a man, could she do it again? As gingerly as she could, she brushed the mind of the man closest to her. He didn’t react. Cadence brushed it again. His mind was completely open, which was a bit of a surprise. Taking the risk, Cadence dove in.
The man’s mind was strange. It felt colder and slower than the minds of the other women. Why he wasn’t pushing her out, she didn’t know. As she followed his thought threads, it dawned on her that the man didn’t even know she was there. He had no idea that Cadence was in his mind! How could that be? How could the man not know that she was connected to him? Still, it was the only logical explanation.
Thinking that maybe it was just the one man who was crippled, she risked branching to the other men. There were a lot of men, all of them wearing black suits like the women, and carrying black, rectangular objects in their hands. They weren’t wearing the same headgear as the woman, and some weren’t wearing any headgear at all. The men must be immune to the poison. They were better than women after all; the master had told them.
Briefly touching each man’s mind, Cadence saw that all of them were relatively the same. All of them had that cold and slow feel. None of them reacted to her presence. All of their minds were open, and not one tried to push her out. She located a mind that was warmer than the others. His mind was racing with thoughts, many of which Cadence couldn’t follow or understand. She picked up on words like war, and politics. The images she found in her head were frightening. There was a lot of blood and fire, and the emotions he had attached to the images were strange. She felt in him a lot of anger and hate, things with which Cadence had very little experience.
Melody brushed her mind again, more insistent this time. After untangling herself from the strange minds of the men, Cadence let Melody in.
I brushed the mind of a man! she was thinking in a panic.
It’s okay. So did I. Do not be scared. Cadence attached her mind to those of every woman who was open to it. They were all thinking about the forest around them. Cadence had been too distracted to use her senses, and so first took a moment to drink in their experiences. Although the leaves blowing in the wind were fascinating, it was the animals that attracted the most thoughts. A few birds had been spotted, and one squirrel, but none of these animals tried to kill them. In fact, the squirrel who had been on the path ahead of them fled upon seeing their column.
Cadence silenced them all when she mentioned that she had touched the minds of the men.
So did I, Melody added.
Same here, added Bluegrass, and the strange thing is, I don’t think they noticed.
Suddenly all the women were pushing outward, connecting to the minds of men. As one, they came to understand.
Although they didn’t understand everything, the women’s mental network was able to put together large pieces of what was happening. There was going to be a battle, and the women were going to be part of it. The men were to protect them, but the women were to enter the minds of the men’s enemies, and place images there that would incapacitate them. This was what the women had been bred to do. A general feeling of shock ran through the women as they realized that men were not better than they were. They learned that there were other women, outside of their group, who were equal to the men. Most importantly, they learned the word freak. Apparently they were freaks of nature who shouldn’t be able to do what they did. Several of the men were frightened of them for this reason. A few wished the women were dead.
As they marched through the trees, the women continued to share their thoughts and feelings on the matter. One thought from the mind of their oldest, Song, came through more powerfully than the rest.
War is the ugliest thing we have ever seen. We should not allow it to continue in this beautiful world. This was followed by images of Song’s plan. They could abolish war.
As one, the women acted. Sending images into the minds of the men—an idea they had gotten from them—the women watched their near instantaneous reactions. Some of the men started firing their guns—which was what those rectangles turned out to be—at things that didn’t exist. In their fright, a few men shot each other. Others realized what must be happening and tried to fight back, but they couldn’t shoot what they couldn’t see.
Cadence was allowing a man to see her colour, which so amazed him, he became frozen on the spot. Bluegrass had a man firing at imaginary enemies off to his left. Melody was making a man think he was being chased by a very large spider.
Suddenly, a very real wolf came running out of the woods, leapt on a man who was fighting against their mental assault, and then tore his throat out. The youngest of the women, Jazz, who was really still just a girl, had found its mind and managed to take it over. None of the women knew they could connect with animals, let alone take control. Once Jazz had shown them the way, Cadence helped three other women control a flock of birds who began diving at the eyes of the men.
Song was by far the strongest of all the women. She managed to control the mind of a man, forcing him to raise his gun to his own head and pull the trigger. Knowing that this was the quickest and easiest way to dispose of the men, while causing as little pain as possible to the women who were in their minds, the rest of the women began merging their thoughts and attacking as one. The remaining men all killed themselves. One didn’t even use a weapon on himself; so many women struck at once, that they were able to simply turn his life off like a light.
The entire ordeal lasted less than five minutes.
The women thought together as one, the men are dead. They continued walking down the path, hands on shoulders, not knowing what else to do for the moment. None of them felt remorse about what had occurred. They had decided it was the best course of action, and so they had followed it.
As they walked, a few women volunteered to experiment with their headgear. Jazz took the biggest risk, removing her mouth and nosepiece. She didn’t die. The air was not poison as the master had told them. Jazz let all the women experience the scents and tastes of the air through her. It was an overload, and Jazz quickly refitted her mask.
Another woman remo
ved her ear covers, flooding them all with the sounds of the forest. The cacophony of noise was indescribable. The ear covers were returned.
When Bluegrass removed her eyewear, she was nearly blinded, as Cadence had feared, but during that brief moment, she had seen such detail as never before. After the glass was covering her eyes again, it took several minutes for her sight to return to normal.
Cadence and a few other women removed their gloves from the hands not on the shoulders of the women ahead of them. They ran their fingers over everything within reach. The textures were like nothing Cadence had ever imagined. Some objects were hard, some were soft. Leaves were similar to her own skin, while bark was sharp and coarse.
Soon their fingers hurt, so they put the gloves back on.
We will find the master, Song told them all. Her plan was simple: once the master was found, and they had learned all they needed to know, they would travel wherever there was war and end it. Given the speed with which they had disposed of the men, ending wars should be easy.
Cadence located the mind of a bird and watched through its eyes as it flew. She decided that being outside was rather nice. Even though she couldn’t control it as completely, it was better than the void.
The women were happy as they searched for the nearest population where the hunt of the master would begin, completely ignoring the blood on their boots.
Kristal Stittle was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, where she still lives with her cat. She writes prolifically during her free time, whether it be novels, scripts, or short stories. She also paints and illustrates regularly.
ABOUT BILLIE SUE MOSIMAN
Billie Sue Mosiman, the editor of FRIGHT MARE, is a novelist and story writer who has been published since 1983. She co-edited anthologies with Martin Greenberg and David Drake. She writes suspense, horror, and speculative fiction in the fantasy and science fiction arenas. Her latest book is THE GREY MATTER from Post Mortem Press and a yearly collection of her short stories, SINISTER-TALES OF DREAD 2015. She lives in Texas near a large lake and loves to go camping and traveling.