Borderlands 2

by Unknown

  Suddenly, for some not quite explicable reason, Karen wondered if he ever fished. She laughed out loud in spite of herself—now she remembered. The magazine story the night before. She found herself thinking that football types usually did not go in for sports like fishing, sports performed best when one was alone. She wondered, though, if …

  “Karen, are you all right?”

  She wondered why she was even interested in just another office rumor, just like the gossip that made the rounds whenever there was a hiring or firing. “I’m sorry, Sherri, I guess I’m just tired. I must have gotten to bed too late last night.”

  “I’ll bet you were up late. You’re blushing, Karen.” Sherri giggled, then continued. “Anyhow, his name is supposed to be Jeffrey Parnham and… “

  “Come on, Sherri. I need some coffee—and maybe a Danish. Or do you think that maybe the cocoa machine’s been fixed yet?”

  Still she did wonder. Sherri had gone on to other topics until it was time to return to their desks, but there was something about the sound of the name, Jeffrey Pamham. She mouthed the syllables under her breath and they rolled on her tongue. Jeffrey—Jeff—Parnham.

  And Sherri had said that he was a hunk.

  But then the boss came in with extra typing and she had to take her lunch at her desk before she was able to get out from under it. By mid-afternoon, however, the pace had slowed somewhat. She thought again about Jeffrey Parnham. She had an idea.

  Beatrice, in personnel, still owed her a favor.

  She looked around, feeling slightly silly, then reached for her phone and dialed the extension. She whispered her questions, so no one but Beatrice would hear, and discovered not only that Parnham was an outgoing man whose hobbies suggested a love for the city, but also that he was, as yet, unmarried.

  And still she wondered—why did she, all of a sudden, regret that second Danish she had decided to have with her cocoa that morning?

  What would Romance Unlimited say?

  What the current issue suggested, she learned that evening after she got back to her apartment, was that she should try to stick to coffee and sugar-free sweetener, whether the office cocoa machine was working or not. It also suggested she lay off the Danish, and not even think about beverages after dinner at home. She swallowed hard. She leafed through the pages in the hope that she might come across something to restore her courage.

  She looked at the pictures. The small print underneath, she noticed, always said “posed by professional model.” And yet she knew better. These were people just like she was—ordinary, back-home type people, except that maybe they weighed a few pounds less.

  Except that, maybe, they did not eat Danish—or even drink cocoa with marshmallow pieces.

  She went to bed hungry, her mouth dry with thirst. She had trouble sleeping. At mid-morning break time at work the next day, she stuck to black coffee without even artificial enhancement. And yet, she kept thinking, the men and women who posed for the pictures in Romance Unlimited were still just people, the same as she was.

  And then she saw Jeffrey. The boss came down with the new man in tow and even introduced him to Karen.

  And he was a real hunk.

  When quitting time came, Karen took a taxi back to her apartment. The bus was too slow. She felt weak, shaky, sick to her stomach. She knew she was suffering withdrawal symptoms from cocoa and sugar. Romance Unlimited had to provide an alternative way.

  After all, models or not, some of the people in the pictures had to drink cocoa. She knew it was true—when she had been introduced to Jeffrey she had not known what to Say. She blurted the question without even thinking.

  “Do you drink cocoa?”

  He looked surprised, but then he nodded.

  “Swiss Miss ‘Extra Rich—with marshmallow pieces already included?”

  “Sometimes,” he said, but then the boss had dragged him away to introduce him to somebody else.

  His voice had been mellow, like dark, sweet chocolate. And he drank cocoa.

  And Jeffrey Parnham was more than a hunk. He could have stepped out of one of the pictures in Romance Unlimited.

  Even the cover.

  She grabbed the magazine and desperately flipped through its pages. Only a few pounds, she thought—from the cocoa. It was not as though she was actually fat. But Jeffrey drank cocoa. There had to be something. A different method.

  She flipped to the advertisements in back and saw the twin headline:

  EAT AND DRINK ANYTHING YOU WANT AND POUNDS DISAPPEAR!

  IT’S EASY WITH PATENTED “WATE-OFF” JELLY!

  She read the small print, tore out the coupon, and wrote a check. The stuff was expensive, but if it worked half as well as the advertisement promised, it should be well worth it. In her excitement, she even forgot her bedtime cocoa, rushing after dinner, instead, to stand in front of the full-length mirror next to her closet. She took her clothes off, inspecting her body—her stomach, her thighs—her … um … chest was fine—and she dreamed that night of the slimness she would find when she looked in the mirror again, after she had successfully finished the “Wate-Off” treatment.

  She mailed the coupon on her way to work the next morning, and then continued her normal routine. The days went by slowly, as they always did. One of the typists was having a baby, and then the cocoa machine broke again, but by the time it was fixed this time, Karen had begun to decide she really could get along with just coffee.

  And then, when another week had passed, another typist was sick with the flu. Winter would be coming soon—the work piled up faster and she began to have lunch at her desk on a regular basis. And then, the next Friday, only an hour or two before quitting, Jeffrey appeared. He carried some papers.

  “Ms. MacIver?” he asked.

  “I …” Karen was speechless. She felt herself blushing.

  “I… uh … know it’s an imposition on Friday”—he dropped the papers onto her desk—”but this is a rush job and my regular secretary is swamped already. If you would, you could just leave it in your ‘out’ basket when you’re finished.”

  Karen nodded. She realized she was glad she was sitting, so Jeffrey could not see what she looked like from the waist down. She tried to say something—something pleasant to let him know that she would be happy to do his typing—but the best that she could come up with was a vacantly contented stare. And by the time she had accomplished even that much, Jeffrey was already out in the hallway.

  But he had spoken to her—a second time—with his voice that sounded as deep and rich as cocoa. Even if it was only business. She picked up the papers and typed the presentation copies that he needed without even noticing when it was five. When she finished the work, she put it in the basket as he had asked her to do, and did not realize, until she was waiting at her stop for a late bus home, that she had been singing under her breath.

  When she got to her apartment, she picked up the mail. The first thing she saw was the latest issue of Romance Unlimited: cover story. “Independence, or Just Plain Shyness? How I Learned that the Men I Worked With Could Sometimes Be Just As Timid as Me,” Fat chance, she thought, as she sorted further—she winced when she realized the phrase she had used. Then she saw the slip that told her that she had a package waiting at the apartment custodian’s office.

  That night she skipped her cocoa again and stood nude in front of her full-length mirror. Like so many things in Romance Unlimited, what she found when she unwrapped the package was not exactly what she had been led to believe it would be. For one thing, the “Wate-Off” was not a “jelly”—not precisely—but more like a lumpy, sour-smelling cream. Nevertheless, she read the directions and smeared a liberal portion on, as the small print put it: “the afflicted part or parts” of her body.

  Ads, she thought, as she turned the light out and crawled into bed, should contain a disclaimer the same as Romance Unlimited’s pictures. “Composed by professional copywriters.” The same with directions—she felt rather foolish, but, as they inst
ructed, she lay on her back and pulled the covers up to her chin. She felt a pleasantly warm sensation come over her stomach and upper thighs and she nodded off quickly.

  When she woke up, she did not feel as rested as she usually did in the morning. Still, in a different way, she felt good. She rushed to the mirror—because she had not wanted the Wate-Off to stain her pajamas, she had slept nude—and, while her skin appeared somewhat puckered, what she saw did look a little bit slimmer.

  And yet, when she turned back and looked at her bed, she found once again that what one read in Romance Unlimited was not always exactly what it at first seemed to be. Whatever weight she might have lost had not, as the ad promised, quite “disappeared.”

  She looked at the sheets, catching her breath. She reached to touch one of the hundreds of deathly white, ball-like particles spread on the bed where she had been lying. She drew her hand back—quickly. What she had touched was soft and slimy.

  She looked at herself again in the mirror, and burst out laughing. She had not lost much—perhaps just a few ounces—but obviously anything lost so quickly would not simply float away into the air. She thought of the warmth she remembered feeling the night before. Somehow, in some way, she must have sweated the stuff off her body.

  She crumpled the sheets up to throw away, then looked in the mirror again while she dressed and decided that, for one morning anyway, she might skip breakfast. The little particles left in her bed had looked, in an uncomfortable way, just a bit too familiar.

  It was not until she was on the bus to work that she remembered what marshmallow pieces looked like in cocoa.

  She threw two more sets of sheets away before it occurred to her that she could just spread newspapers out to catch whatever melted off her while she was sleeping. She assumed that was what happened—that the fat, or whatever it was, just melted off and formed into balls—but it was not as if it really mattered. What did matter was that “Wate-Off” worked.

  The weeks went by and, little by little, she started to reach the slimness she wanted. She also noticed, as time went on, that Jeffrey came down to her desk more often. This latter, of course, could have something to do with the fact that she was an accurate typist—one of the best, as even the other girls sometimes told her. But one time he caught her, filing some papers, her figure in full view.

  The thing is, he smiled.

  She remembered that smile—it warmed her way home, like steaming hot chocolate, despite the increasing cold of the weather. And then the December issue of Romance Unlimited came, with its feature article, “How l Survived the Holiday Season Despite the Decline of Workplace Sexism.” She made an effort to stop being shy and to smile hack the next time.

  And then the Christmas season arrived, and with it the year-end office party. And Jeffrey cornered her next to the bar.

  “Ms. MacIver,” he said. “Uh ... may I call you Karen?” She saw he was blushing, although, of course, she realized it could have something to do with the fact that he appeared to have already had several cocktails.

  “Uh … uh … Mr. Parnham?” She tried to say more. She could not speak. She nodded quickly. She made sure she smiled.

  “Uh, Karen, the thing I wanted to ask is—I’ve seen your work and you’re very good. And some of the other junior executives have invited me on a ski trip the week after New Year’s, but, as it happens, uh, it’ll be couples. But, uh, the thing is I don’t have a date yet …

  She felt her smile freeze.

  “Uh … I mean … separate dormitories, of course.” She saw him turn beet red—it was not the cocktails. “I … uh … why don’t I ask again Monday? Monday morning at work. Okay?”

  She nodded blankly, her mind taking in only half of what he said. Jeffrey—Jeff—had invited her skiing. And that meant ski pants. Tight. Form fitting …

  “Uh … Monday, then. Okay?”

  She nodded again. A decision on Monday.

  She tried to keep smiling as he turned and left her. She tried to look as if nothing had happened when she asked her office friend, Sherri, to help find her coat so she could go home.

  Saturday morning she looked at her figure in the mirror. Almost, she thought. Just an ounce or two more. But in just the right places.

  Saturday afternoon she went shopping and bought herself three pairs of bright green ski pants. She had another night—Sunday, she knew, she would need to spend making her final decision on whether to accept Jeffrey’s offer. When she came back, she found the new issue of Romance Unlimited in her mailbox.

  She opened the magazine—shuddered when she read the title of the first story. “How I Realized I’d Found the Right Time to Hook My Man and Reel Him to Me.” She closed it quickly, trying to avoid thinking about an earlier story—one about fishing—how long ago? She tried her best to avoid remembering the time when her brother, that horrible summer when she had been little

  She cooked her dinner and afterward, for a special treat, she fixed herself a cup of Swiss Miss. She did not drink it as much as before, and she never had the kind with marshmallows, partly because the virtues of “Wate-Off” included helping suppress the desire.

  Or rather, perhaps—the thought suddenly struck her—because it replaced one desire with another

  She put down her cocoa, almost spilling it. She had never had thoughts even half that explicit before. She went to her bedroom, spread the newspapers over her bed, and took her clothes off in front of the mirror. She reached for the Wate-Off and opened the lid.

  The jar, she realized, was almost empty, but that was fine. One way or the other, this should be the last time she would need it. She concentrated on the inner parts of her thighs--a hit on her hips, curving in toward the center—her stomach was okay. She felt the warmth starting to make her tingle as she climbed slowly into her bed, pulled up the covers, and switched off the light.

  She went to sleep quickly, but this time she dreamed.

  She dreamed that the tingling warmth was increasing, kneading her flesh, as if a man’s fingers were stroking her body. She dreamed of a man’s hands—Jeffrey’s—Jeff’s hands moving over the hips, caressing her thighs, then slowly working their way up and inward.

  She felt the heat become more intense.

  She felt that she could no longer stand it.

  She woke in the darkness—the heat, the tingling, the kneading were still there. She reached for the lamp and kicked off her covers.

  And started to scream.

  She remembered her brother—the worms in her bed. The lower part of her body was covered with maggot-like worms, eating, gorging themselves in the lamp’s glow. She watched as the first one, then another exploded, filled beyond fullness, into white, marshmallow-cocoa-sized pieces, even as new ones hatched out of the jelly. Her screams grew louder.

  But then, as she brushed them off in her panic, she remembered the feeling she had had in her dream, of hands on her body. It was not unpleasant.

  She thought of the article she had not yet read, about hooks and reels, and her mind became calm. She thought about why Romance Unlimited had always been her favorite magazine, whether or not the things found in it were always exactly what they at first seemed.

  She looked at her body, surrounded by whiteness.

  She turned the light back off, then gritted her teeth and reached with both hands into the mass of still squirming maggots. She reapplied them, working by feel, over her thighs and the curve of her hips and, when she was finished, she pulled up the covers.

  She would inspect herself in the mirror when morning came. She would try on her ski pants, even if she knew already that they would fit her precisely the way that they were designed to. She would think about shyness in men.

  She would think about bait.

  And Monday, on the bus to her office, she would be sure she had read every word that Romance Unlimited had to say on the subject of fishing.

  SLIPPING

  David B. Silva

  I’ve been a big fan of David Silva’s w
riting from the very first story I ever read by him. “The Calling,” his story in Borderlands 1, was the lead-off story in that volume because I subscribe- to the old notion that an anthology has to start off, as strong as possible. Apparently a lot of people agreed with me. “The Calling” has been selected for reprint in several “Year’s Best” anthologies, and at this writing has garnered HWA’s Bram Stoker Award. A tough act to follow, but Silva sent me the following story for the book you hold in your hands, and friends, I gotta tell you. I was stunned. “Slipping” is what superior writing is all about: plot, characterization, style, and that rare ability to make us feel.

  Okay, okay, enough from me. Sit back and be impressed.

  1.

  “It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. You spend all day and half the night editing the final version of an ad, then you go home, crash for a few hours, and start all over again the next morning. Every once in a while I have to remind myself what day it is and where I live. And there’s always the danger, I suppose, that if you’re not careful, you might drift a little too far from the reality loop. It s happened to some of the best of them.”

  —Raymond Hewitt

  2.

  For a moment, before he became fully aware of his surroundings. Raymond Hewitt, age thirty-two, didn’t know where he was. He had been sitting in the La -Z-Boy in the living room of his apartment, watching Nightline, and nibbling at a leftover chicken burrito from last night’s dinner. But now, he realized suddenly, he was standing in his bathroom. The light was on above the mirror. He stared at himself, dressed only in his pajama bottoms, the toothbrush in his hand. There was a thin line of toothpaste sitting on the bristles, and his mouth was dry. He hadn’t started to brush yet. But

  But what am I doing in here?