InterGalactic Medicine Show Awards Anthology, Vol. I
Page 21
Lawson helped her stand. He tossed a dark cloak about her and covered her hair with its hood.
The inn they went to almost pushed her sanity over the edge from sensory overload. The room was filled with people of all shapes and sizes. There were smells from the food, the ale, the dogs in front of the fire, the fire itself. Men and women talked and shouted and joked and laughed. A scrawny youth crawled up beside the dogs at one point and sang for his supper. She was mesmerized. These were so different from the songs of the water, the flash of fish in the currents, the mating of whales in the deep. Some were slow and soft; some were fast and loud. And when the rest of the room joined in, she clapped her hands in merriment.
Throughout the night the crew dropped in one by one to report and consult with Lawson. There were nods and low whispers. She watched as papers were signed and money changed hands. Thus Bloody Lawson conquered Windy Port, without ever leaving his seat. When the festivities ended he paid for his meal, tipped heavily, and left, dragging her behind him.
Molly’s homecoming was a grand event. Lawson covered every flat surface in his new house with sweets and cakes and flowers. He hired a seamstress to take Molly’s measurements for a whole new wardrobe, the only seamstress he could find that didn’t seem overly preoccupied with the Prince’s upcoming wedding. Paper-wrapped packages of all sizes littered the largest of the tables. A doll and a red rose waited on the chair for his princess.
The Siren sat on a stool in the corner, cut off from the sun and the earth, the water and wind. She waned as she watched the miniature cherub-faced human run through the door to embrace her father. Her mop of dark brown curls disappeared in her father’s coat as she hugged him, right before he picked her up and twirled her around the room. There was something about this strange apparition, this child, and she could not decide what it was.
Molly giggled as she snuggled her doll. She reached out to the rose.
“Be careful,” her father warned her.
“Yes, Papa,” she said smartly. “I will watch for the pricklies and the thornies.” She buried her nose in the crimson petals and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, Molly saw the Siren there in the shadows.
The child set her doll down carefully on the table. “Who is she, Papa?” Molly whispered.
“She’s . . .” he started, twisting the ruby ring on his finger. “I saved her,” he said finally.
“She’s so pretty,” Molly said. The child came around the table and held the flower out to her. “She’s just like the flower.”
“Yes,” he said. “Just like a rose. She’s got pricklies and thornies too, Molly. You have to be careful around her.”
Molly took another step forward, still offering the flower. The Siren took it and grinned, being careful not to show any teeth. Before her father could stop her, Molly launched herself into the Siren’s arms.
The child’s skin was softer than the woman’s at the pier. Her hair smelled of sweetness and . . . something . . . indescribable. Irresistible. She took another deep breath. There was life within this little bundle, so much life she vibrated with it.
Lawson wrenched his daughter away. He took her by the arms and held her tightly. He sank down to his knees, so that he could address Molly eye to eye.
“Don’t you ever go near her again,” he said sternly.
“But Papa, she’s so sad,” Molly cried.
“She’s dangerous,” he admonished. “Just be a good girl and do as your papa says.”
Molly bowed her head. “Yes, Papa.”
“We’ll even call her Rose, okay? So you don’t forget.” Lawson chucked her under the chin. “Now, what are you going name your dolly?”
Molly’s eyes brightened again and she rushed back to the table for her doll.
The Siren sunk her nose into the flower and inhaled, its fragrance mingled with leftover sweetness. She watched the child open the rest of her gifts.
That night as he escorted her to her room, he said to her, “You touch my daughter, I’ll kill you.” Then he shut the door and turned seven keys in seven locks.
Each day after that was much the same. He would not let her leave the house, for fear that she would be recognized, and he be discovered as the lawless man he used to be. The third time Lawson caught her staring out the windows, he forbade her that too. Each night he would take her to her room and give her the same warning about his daughter before turning the seven keys of her prison.
She would sit on her bed and stare into the darkness, wondering what she had done wrong. Had she not given him the riches he desired? Had she not paved the way for him to return home to be with his daughter? She had made him happy—why should she suffer as a result? How would she ever find her lover now?
She edged closer to the window and watched the moon move across the sky. Somewhere not far, the reflection of that same light was skipping across the waves. Somehow, she would escape from this prison. Someday, seven locks would not hold her.
Every few nights he would bring her someone, long after Molly was asleep. He would wake before the dawn and take the body away. She learned all she could from these poor souls, but it was never enough. They were whores or cheats or liars, people whose absence in some way benefited Lawson and whose minds were such a jumble of unreliable information she could never discern anything that could help her.
She waited. She waited while he scolded her every night. She waited as he shoved each of the seven bolts home. She waited as he fed her, sparingly, barely enough to survive. She waited for him to get comfortable, to slip, to let something get by him.
Like the snitch.
Lawson bent over and the unconscious man fell from over his shoulder and onto the bed before her. “Small, but he’s all you’ll get, understand?”
She opened her mouth, throat contracting. “Yeth,” she managed to say.
“Good. ‘Cause if you touch my daughter, I’ll kill you.” He shut the door. She counted slowly to seven before pulling the man into her lap and feasting.
Her heart pounded with a foreign pulse.
He was there.
Her lover.
He was everywhere inside this man’s head. He sat at the head of a table, talking sternly to a group of older men dressed in black. He sat in a large chair at the end of a hallway. He rode a horse down the path through the garden and along the beach. He rode in a carriage beside a beautiful, golden-haired maiden and people threw flowers in the street before them. This was the golden-haired maiden who had saved him from a shipwreck, he told them. After months of searching, he had found her in a small fishing village on the coast. He owed her his life, and he loved her with all his heart.
He was the prince.
And in a week, he was going to marry the wrong woman.
Lawson did not come the next day to let her out of her cell. Nor did he come the next. The third day, the snitch’s body began to smell. The fourth day, she tried to feed off it again and gagged. There had not been much in him to begin with, and whatever was left in him now was gelled and rancid. The fifth day, she began to shake. She pounded on the door and the walls and the window until the skin of her fists shed. The sixth day, she began to scream. It came out of her as a long, keening wail. It echoed her hunger, her desperation, her emptiness. Her voice gave out as the sun rose on the seventh day, his wedding day.
She spent the hours curled up against the door, hoping to hear something. Any sign of movement at all would have been welcome. She played with the ends of her faded hair, teasing them in and out between her toes. The shadows moved, lengthened, and eventually, the sun’s light died. Her hopes died right along with it. She placed her palm flat on the door beside her head.
It was warm.
She closed her eyes and could feel the energy radiating from the other side. She could hear small, shallow breaths. She could taste sweetness on the air.
Molly.
She knocked two times on the door.
“Rose?” the tiny voice called hesitantly.
She knocked two times again.
“Daddy’s sick and he had to go away.” Skirts rustled against the floorboards. “I’m lonely. Are you lonely?”
Two knocks.
“Do you want to play with my dolly?”
She spread her fingers against the door. “Yeth,” she croaked.
The warmth faded, and there were sounds of a heavy chair being dragged across the floor. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven keys were all slowly turned in their locks. The chair was pushed aside, and the door opened.
The lonely child flew into her arms, the momentum pushing the Siren back onto the bed in her weakened state. She cradled the frightened child, felt the porcelain head of her dolly poking into her side. She soaked up the child’s energy, willing it into her empty body. She bent her head and breathed in the sweetness of her. She nuzzled her nose in the softness.
She shouldn’t. She knew she shouldn’t, but he had caused her so much pain. She was so hungry. She had nothing left to lose.
Molly screamed and fought, but every bit of her gave the Siren the strength to hold the child down, to fill the abyss inside her with this soul of pure innocence. It was so beautiful. The sensations did not wait until she was finished. They exploded into her mind every second. There was fear, yes, absolute fear, but then came sadness and betrayal. There was happiness and laugher, anger and tears. Most importantly, she finally realized the whys. She knew why a person felt joy and why they felt pain. She learned the elation of seeing something for the very first time, and the despair in losing it.
Loss. She knew now what she had been dealing out all this time. There was no way she could have ever understanding the impact of ending a life without understanding what it was like to begin one. The weight of all the souls she had consumed pressed heavily upon her. She learned consequences. She realized that the things she did affected people other than the person she was killing. She understood that all the pain she had felt before was nothing to the pain those people would feel for the rest of their lives. She felt regret, and love.
Love.
It spread through her. Unconditional love tickled her down to the red tips of her fingers and toes. Love was trust. Love was faith. Love was believing in the impossible. The rainbow of Molly’s soul filled her with love until the last drop. She held the child’s limp body in her arms . . . and she laughed.
She laughed and laughed, her voice echoing through the dark, vacant house. She laughed until she cried, tears flowing unchecked down her cheeks for the first time. She cried for Molly, for all of them. She cried for all the things she had done. She cried for herself, for the love she had lost, for nothing.
Or was it nothing?
She had to hurry. She had to leave this place and never come back. She had to find her lover, find some way to tell him the truth. She gently laid Molly’s body out on the bed and curled her arm around her dolly. She smoothed back the dark curls and kissed her forehead. She covered herself in the black cloak and fled into the night.
She was glad again to be in the air and running over the earth, despite what little support the strange elements gave her. She followed her heart and the dim memories of the snitch all the way to the castle gates.
She strode up to the guards there and threw her hood back. Those that knew of her let her pass. Those that didn’t know of her learned. They died quickly.
The myriad halls and stairs and rooms made the castle a giant labyrinth, but she knew where she was going. Up and up and up . . . to the balcony suites of the Prince’s bedchamber. She did not stop until she was at the foot of his bed, staring down at his sleeping body. She wanted to shake him awake, wanted to explain everything to him, wanted to scream her love for him to the rafters.
But she couldn’t.
If he awoke now, he would know what she had become. He would see the evil inside of her, the stain of it in her hair and on her skin. She had saved his life, true, but how many others had she taken on her path back to him? With love came regret. She knew what she had to do. She knew that the only thing she had to offer him now was her absence.
If she could just touch him one more time . . . she reached out a hand to him. He would wake and see her. He would know that there was sky blue beneath the black of her eyes. He would know that there was gold beneath the red of her hair. He would know because he loved her. All she had to do was touch him.
No.
It would not stop at a touch. She could never be with him, truly be with him, because eventually she would devour him just as she had devoured Molly. His soul was not bright enough for her to survive alone outside it, nor was it strong enough to sustain him once she had consumed it. If she stayed beside him, it would mean his death.
She was a monster.
She forced her hand back to herself and placed it over her heart. She hoped that it spoke enough in the silence for him to hear it, to feel how much she loved him. If it had been water and not air between them, she knew he would have felt it.
A tear fell from her cheek to his.
He stirred and opened his eyes.
She gave herself one moment, one tiny, blessed moment of looking into his soul before she turned and ran.
She tripped down the stairs and cut her feet on the stones. The cloak caught on something and she unfastened it. She was sure that soon they would come for her. They would hunt her like the beast she was. She tasted the tears that streamed down her face and knew there was only one refuge. She ran to it.
The cold beach sand kissed her feet like a prayer. The salty spray mixed with her tears, chasing them away. The first tiny wave reached up and licked her toes. Waves rumbled in a cadence she had almost forgotten how to translate.
Come, they pulled.
Home, they crashed.
She took small steps forward. The sand slipped out from beneath her if she stayed too long. The force of the waves pushed her backwards in opposition to the call she felt.
Come, they pulled.
She stumbled, and the tide ripped her sideways along the beach. Gasping, she managed to regain her footing and continue walking out to sea. The current grabbed at her clothes, and she tore them off. The tips of her hair mingled with the foam. Flotsam swirled around her waist.
Home, they crashed.
She walked until a riptide took her and dragged her out to sea.
My link to her was severed at that point. But I didn’t have to live inside her anymore to know where she was headed.
She would grab the first sharp object she found—maybe a crab’s claw or a clam’s shell—and tear into herself so that the water could flow through her again. The first gash might have been straight, but the rest would be ragged and flawed. She would make her way to the Deep, her body drawn to the never-ending call of the soul of the world. She would make a home there among the bloodworms and the warm vents and the other predators.
She would take her love and regret with her. She would heal in the balm of the ocean, away from the complexities of mortal life. She would tell herself that if the day came, if the words were spoken and the magic came to her, she would turn them away. She would be brave and righteous. She would not let evil back into the world. The suffering would end with her. She would stew in the self-affliction until it became a dim memory, tucked away in the recesses of her mind like sight and sound, air and fire. Time would fade her lover’s face, his name into nothing, and then time itself would melt into darkness. She would ebb and flow and never die.
But when that day did come, as it would, ages and ages from now, she would choose the light. She would choose the escape. She would let the evil out one last time just to feel it all again, to live, even if it meant stealing someone else’s destiny.
As I had.
Strong arms wrapped around me, brushing my satin bedclothes against the small jagged scars on either side of my torso. I leaned back against him, feeling his heartbeat through his chest.
“I just had the strangest dream,” he said. I felt his deep voi
ce rumble through the skin of my back. “You came to me while I lay in bed, only your hair was red and your skin was different. You stared at me like you wanted to say something, and then you ran. You looked so . . . sad.”
He turned me around to face him. “The day you saved me was the happiest day of my life. And this day should be the happiest day of yours. Don’t be sad.”
I smiled and shook my head.
“Good.” He kissed me then, long and slow and deep. He hugged me tightly before pulling away. “Come back to bed?”
“Yeth,” I whispered, the words still foreign to my tongue. He kissed me again and left me. I looked out over the moonlit water once more and said my goodbyes before following him, my prince, my soulmate, my stolen love.
Love.
It was the reason I lived.
Mean-Spirited
* * *
by Edmund R. Schubert
As I picked up my pistol one last time, I found my attention wandering away from the weapon itself and to the withered hand that held it. It looked like a mummy’s hand, collapsing from the inside after too many millennia buried in the desert sands. What a grotesque hand (not that the rest of me was any better).
My entire body was so close to death, why not finish the job?
Yes, at seventy-eight years old, I could easily come up with plenty of reasons to kill myself, some of them even logical, valid reasons. Blowing my brains all over Trish’s favorite Monet for pure spite probably wasn’t one of the better ones, but it was good enough.
I had considered blowing my brains out on the Jackson Pollock in the main hall, but given the nature of Pollock’s work, I wasn’t sure Trish would even notice. She neither knew nor cared anything about art; she collected it simply because that’s what obscenely rich people do. However, a spray of blood-red blood over the renowned Frenchman’s white water lilies—that would not only get her attention, it would really piss her off. Oh, how it would piss her off.