The Place Where

by Rodion Pretis

  In this book, we have collected twenty-six such stories written by twenty-four authors, among whom are both recognized veterans and those who are published for the first time. The frank humor of some of them will meet you with a sardonic clap on the head - on, get it! - while others weave their narrative more subtly, using a thread of black irony. Although most Vitpank authors also work in the genres of NF and fantasy, not all the stories in this book are fantasy or NF. Actually, the action of some of them takes place right here and now, but their characters, ideas and attitude towards the world are so bold that they cannot be labeled “modern” or “mainstream”.

  However, if you think about it, all the stories in this collection can still be denoted by the abbreviation "SF": this is Sardonic Fiction, sardonic literature.

  Claude Lalumiere and Marty Halpern, January 2003

  Allen M. Steele

  Hunter and groom

  “That's the trick,” says Jimmy Ray, “so as not to look into their eyes.”

  At this moment, the truck falls into a pothole and bounces on worn shock absorbers, junk dumped there slides along the dashboard: shotgun cartridges, empty cans of chewing tobacco, a pack of penalty tickets for incorrect parking, accumulated already from last May. A small plastic teddy bear, suspended under a mirror, starts to swing back and forth; Jimmy Ray reaches out and stops him, then glances back to make sure nothing is loose in the back. Satisfied, he takes a sip of Mountain Dew from a can that he holds between his knees.

  “That's why I don't take small fry with me,” he continues. “You see, this is a little too much for them.” At least my boyfriend is still young for this ... maybe next season, when he gets his gun for Christmas ... Here a couple of years ago I tried to take my nephew. Brock, of course, is a good kid, and ... wait a minute ...

  Jimmy Ray sharply turns the steering wheel to the left to avoid a new pothole. A can of Redskin falls from the dashboard into my lap.

  - Give me her here.

  I give him the can; he throws back the lid with his thumb, makes a short snuff and puts the can in the pocket of his hunting vest.

  - So, as I said, Brock shot a pair of deer without any snot; but then I took him here, and as soon as he looked at them once - and that's all. I just couldn't shoot, even though you cut it! Fifteen years old guy, but here you go - wept like a child. - He shakes his head in frustration. - So no children; and in general, I would not let anyone else shoot. No offense, but if you can't look into their eyes, then you shouldn't even start the whole thing, right, I say?

  The forest is a solid wall on both sides of the dirt road; foliage flies from red maples, tall pine trees drop cones on the litter. We slow down in front of a small bridge; the brook running below is covered with morning fog; its clear water streams along smooth granite boulders. Jimmy Ray sucks out the remnants of Mountain Dew and throws an empty can out the window.

  “My God, what a morning!” He exclaims, glancing up through the sunroof. - Only in such a day and live! - He winks at me. “If you're not a game, of course.”

  After driving another quarter mile along the road, he turns to the side of the road.

  “Well, here we are.” - Jimmy Ray pushes the car door (it opens with a rattle), sniffling, releases his voluminous belly from behind the wheel and crawls out. It takes him a few more minutes to pull out the rifle fixed at the rear window - this is the Savage caliber. 30-.06 [2] with a manual shutter and an optical sight. Then he slowly walks around the back of the truck. Stickers of NRA [3] and various country groups are stuck on the awning window; Jimmy opens the board and drags out a pair of bright orange hunting vests and a Budweiser pack.

  “On, you can carry it,” he hands me a beer. Then he reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out a laminated hunting license on an aluminum chain; taking off his dirty cap for a minute and opening a round bald patch among thick black hair, he hangs the card around his neck, leaving it to dangle on his chest. Again, taking out a jar of chewing tobacco from his pocket, he opens the lid, pulls out a thick bundle and puts it in his mouth, between his left cheek and teeth. Then he throws the can into the back of the truck and slams the board with a bang.

  - X-okay! - says Jimmy; the words are slurred because of the gum in his mouth. - P-went to hunt!

  After walking about fifty feet through the forest, we exit onto a narrow path leading east towards the hill a couple of miles from here.

  “I have a shack there,” he says quietly. “We may stumble upon any of them before, but that's nothing.” Everything is as simple as that, you just need to understand how this is done. The main thing in this business is the right bait.

  We go further along the trail. The nearest accommodation is far from here, but Jimmy Ray is sure that we will certainly find games here.

  - People are fed up with the fact that they are constantly turning under their feet, so that they bring them here and let them out into the forest. - Jimmy turns his head and giggles into the undergrowth with a brown tobacco stream. - People think that they will somehow live: on the berries there, on the roots, on something else. Or maybe, on the contrary, they hope that they will take it and die when the frost hit. But these creatures can adapt to anything, wherever you put them, and even multiply like mad.

  Another jet.

  - That is, before you blink an eye, they will devour everything they can find, which means that there is little left for the rest of the beasts. And having finished this, they crawl out of the woods and begin to trample crops, rummage among people in things ... What they find, they will devour it. Little eats.

  He shakes his head.

  “I don't know what people find so sweet in them?” If you want to have a little animal, get a dog or cat. Yes, even a fish, or a lizard, damn it, if you like them! And with these games, something is just not right. I think so, if God really wanted the animals to talk, he would ... - Jimmy Ray thinks for a moment, breaking the depths of his intellect. “Well, I don't know ... He would give them a dictionary, perhaps ...”

  Jimmy Ray does not really care about not stepping on the dry leaves that showered on the trail, although they crunch loudly under the soles of his boots. You would think that he almost wants the games to know about his approach.

  “I spoke here once with an environmentalist from the state commission for nature protection,” he continues a little later. - So he said that games are what are called “weed species” ... that is, if they are transferred to another environment, they simply capture everything there. Just like these kudzu, or tiger mussels, or these fish ... well, you know, the snakeheads are the ones that can move on land ... who escaped to freedom in Maryland several years ago. These games are the same. The only difference is that they were made with the help of this ... bio ... how is it?

  - Bioengineering.

  - Exactly. Bioengineering ... so now they are smarter than just bears. - He turns to me a grinning face. - Do you remember this cartoon? "I'm smarter than just a bear!" I just squeaked from him when ...

  Suddenly he freezes in place and falls silent. I don't know what exactly he saw or heard, but I stop too. Jimmy Ray looks around the forest, peering into the sun-streaked shadows. At first I don't hear anything. Then, after a moment, in the lower branches of a maple a couple of dozen yards from us a rustle is heard, and a thin squeaky voice comes to me:

  - Let's go play ... let's go play ...

  “Of course, of course,” Jimmy Ray mutters. “I'll play with you guys right now!” - He strokes the rifle barrel with an absent look, as if it were his mistress, then turns to me with a grin. - Let's go to. They already know that we are here. Let's not make them wait.

  After a few hundred yards, the trail ends in a small meadow - a lawn surrounded on all sides by a forest. The morning sun plays in dew drops on autumn wildflowers, so the whole scene looks like a picture from a children's book of fairy tales. In the middle of the lawn, exactly where it should be, is a small wooden table with four tiny chairs on each side. Furniture from a kindergarten, simi
lar to the one that can be found in Toys “R” Hughes - only the paint has peeled off a bit, and old blood stains have been eaten into the boards.

  “He brought this stuff here a couple of years ago,” Jimmy Ray explains, moving through the tall grass toward the table. - Of course, I rearrange them from time to time and sometimes clean, but it works damn great. - He smiles. “I read about it in Field and Stream.” But I came up with this thing myself. Don't give me the beer?

  I hand him the packaging. He tears off the tops from the cardboards and carefully places them on the table.

  “The book says that you need honey,” he says in a whisper, “and honey is expensive.” Beer works no worse - and maybe even better. They still smell sugar, and alcohol also gives them to the brain. But this is my little secret, so don't tell anyone, hear?

  Leaving the bait in place, we retire to a small shack set by him on the edge of the meadow. In size, it is no larger than the toilet, a narrow slot replaces the window. The only adornment is a moldless poster with a naked girl, taped to the wall. Jimmy Ray loads the rifle, inserting four rounds into the magazine and the fifth into the chamber, and puts another five rounds on a small shelf attached under the window.

  “Now not for long,” he says quietly, resting the rifle's bed on the windowsill and aiming the telescopic sight on the table. - He, the first, saw us, and now tells the news to his friends. A little more and they will be here.

  We wait in silence for almost an hour; Jimmy Ray occasionally turns his head to spit in the corner of the shack, but basically does not take his eyes off the table. It's getting warm in the hut, and I'm starting to nod when Jimmy, tapping on my hand, nods toward the window.

  At first I do not see anything. Then the tall grass on the other side of the clearing begins to move, as if someone is walking through it. There is a soft click when Jimmy Ray removes the rifle from the fuse - but except for this, he sits quite quietly, patiently waiting until his victim appears.

  After a few moments, a small figure climbs into the highchair, then she jumps onto the table. This is an adult game - almost three feet tall, with a black, velvet-soft skin. His large brown eyes cautiously wander around the neighborhood, then he, on his short hind legs, shuffles through the table to the nearest cardboard with beer. Leaning over, he takes the cardboard in his hands to the game, brings a flat muzzle to it, sniffs it. His mouth breaks into a smile.

  - Honey! He squeals enthusiastically. - Guys, honey!

  Jimmy Ray, seizing the moment, winks at me. Games are called honey whatever they like. Either they see no difference, or, more likely, their primitive vocal cords are simply unable to utter more than a few simple words that they themselves hardly understand - just like a lane bird can ask for a cracker without knowing accuracy of what it is.

  Now new games are being shown from the tall grass - a whole brood of live toy teddy bears. Having arisen as a result of a radical restructuring of the DNA structure of ursus americanus, an American black bear, the game never grows bigger than a teddy bear. They are bred for understanding and obedience, they are harmless, like domestic cats, and friendly, like hounds. The games have always been excellent companions for the child - apart from the cases when adults bought them for other purposes. And now all the forests are full of them.

  - Honey! Guys honey! - The games climb the chairs, grab the cartons of beer, pinching them between the soft pads of their forepaws, and topple the beer into their small mouths. Model toy picnic of little teddy bears. They are very happy - until Jimmy Ray presses the trigger.

  The first bullet hits the largest of the games directly in the chest: a clean shot that kills before the victim has time to understand that he is dead. The game in the next chair does not even have time to react, and its back is already completely demolished. The echo of the first two shots still sounds among the trees, when the rest of the games, squealing with horror, begin to jump off the table. Jimmy Ray's third and fourth shots go to one side, but the fifth manages to hurt a small game, which has delayed a little longer than necessary. He screams, rolling head over heels from his chair; the rest by this time are already running to the forest, leaving the dead and wounded to their fate.

  - A curse! - Jimmy Ray hastily thrusts four more rounds into the rifle and shoots on the tall grass through which the games run away. “That's nimble bastards, huh?”

  He spits out the chewing gum and reloads the rifle again, then opens the door of the hut and slowly walks across the lawn to the table. Ignoring the two dead games, he approaches the one that was injured. Igrum is trying to crawl away; a large red spot spreads on one side of his chest. At the sight of Jimmy Ray, he falls on his back and lifts all four paws into the air, as if asking for mercy.

  “I ... I ... I will love you!” “He must have once spoken these words to some six-year-old girl before her father decided that keeping the creature in the house was too troublesome and didn't take him to the forest. ”

  - I love you too. Pooh! - With these words, Jimmy Ray points the barrel of a rifle between his eyes and pulls the trigger.

  We spend another half hour trying to track down the remaining members of the pack, but the games are nowhere to be seen. And soon Jimmy Ray notices that birds of prey are circling over the lawn. He returns to the picnic table and examines the prey. Two males and a female. Jimmy is disappointed that he couldn't shoot more - but at least he remains within the limits of the season.

  He ties them by the legs to the branch, and together we drag the three dead games back to the truck. Unloading two of the three corpses in the back, Jimmy Rey indiscriminately whistles the old song “Lynard Skynard”; he ties the body of the largest of the games to the hood - for no particular purpose, just to have something to brag about when he looks at the bar, wanting to miss a glass on his way home.

  He is pleased with himself. He got three skins that the furrier could sell, some fresh meat for his dogs, and another head for the collection in his den. Not so bad if you think about it. He climbs into the truck, shoves a new portion of Redskin over his cheek, and pops a disc into the player.

  “Do you know what's the funniest thing?” He asks me when we move. “The unicorn hunting season opens next month!” This will be fun!

  He squeezes the pedal to failure, and we are carried away, with a dead toy teddy bear tied to the hood and pouring from the speakers of Home Sweet Alabama [4]. In such a day, only live.

  Ernest hogan

  Coyote goes to hollywood

  Blackout The image gradually appears (my memories always begin as I grew up in front of the TV).

  Night I'm going to the red-eyed "Greyhound" from Phoenix to Hollywood (as you see, I also remember in the present tense, just like in a script or in an old radio play). Lamps are off; the only lighting here is the stars, which makes the bus look like a spaceship plowing some kind of interstellar abyss.

  The seat next to me is not occupied, so I spread to it and am already starting to doze off - but then the bus stops in some godforsaken town in the middle of an empty place, and a hefty Indian appears in the doorway. He walks past a family of farmer-farmers who are traveling from Kentucky himself, bypassing a black woman with a baby in her lap, several Mexicans (or perhaps some emigrants from Central America; they are all in cowboy hats), two Indian women, a mother and daughter (each has a scorpion tattoo on its right arm) - and comes to the last of the free seats. The very one on which my legs rest, jacket and album.

  I pretend to be fast asleep.

  “May I sit here?” He asks in a low, stoned voice.

  I make a moan and remove the legs, jacket and album from the seat, making room for him.

  Close-up - the cover of my album: cartoon portrait of an anthropomorphic coyote in sunglasses, with a cigarette smoking in his teeth and tongue hanging from his mouth; on top, in large letters scattered in different directions, the inscription: “COYOT - COMICS”; everything is drawn by a shining magic marker.

  - What is it? He asks. His voice sounds as if voiced by Me
l Blank; he points his finger at the album.

  “My album,” I reply, beginning to nod intensively. I'm not in the mood to listen to the history of someone else's life and / or everyday philosophy, even if I have nowhere to go and I'm sitting here, helpless, a few light years from Phoenix and from Hollywood.

  He squints his eyes.

  - Comics about Coyote? What can a white guy like you know about Coyote?

  But this is something new. I am a Mexican Irishman with black curly hair. I was often called a nigga, but this is the first time in my life that I have been called white.

  - For my girl I am black, for you white ... There is some kind of problem here!

  - I asked about Coyote. What do you know about him?

  - This is the Great Spirit - a trickster of Native Americans [5]. The distant predecessor of Bugs Bunny, Duffy Duck, Woody Woodpecker and all the other talking smart little animals. I wandered around the South-West a little bit here - I was looking for inspiration, I was twisting love with one cute blonde girl from Phoenix ... Well, now I have run out of coins, and I have to go back to civilization to try to earn money and draw something - this is not necessary okay.