Slave Stories

by Bahr, Laura Lee

  Time had eroded planks nailed over the remains of broken windows. Derringer dislodged the edge of one with his boot, enough for him to force it open the rest of the way.

  They entered the mall’s ground level. Above them, sunlight rained down through the gallery’s domes. Below, an accidental lake had spawned throughout the whole of the lower level, the result of untold years of rain spilling through shattered panes. The stagnant soup crawled with thousands of fish—giant Koi, escapees from a pet store or fountain, Derringer assumed. The fish had bred and prospered, according to the numbers moving around in the filthy water beneath the safety railing and long dead escalators.

  “Kid, how’s this?”

  Milo wiped at his nose. The back of his hand came away wet, red. Milo nodded. Saying nothing, he moved over to the remains of a bench and sat cross-legged on the filthy floor.

  “Finally,” said Thorndyke.

  The barest trace of a smile lit the bearded woman’s face. And, for a moment, Derringer considered the possibilities: them, somewhere far away, someplace better. Maybe she’d quit the juice, and all that body hair would vanish. Until then, well…he’d fucked hairier.

  A sound echoed up from the fishpond, what sounded like a karate chop on the water. Derringer pegged it as a fish—a big one—slapping its tail. The echo ricocheted around the cavernous space before going up, up, past the smoke-stained walls and out through the shattered glass of the domes.

  “Do you see it, the door?” asked Thorndyke.

  Milo nodded. As Derringer focused on the boy, he saw Milo’s greasy hair rise up in an electrical storm corona. Color flashed through the kid’s eyes, a preternatural red like that of the bleeding ground and the runoff polluting the river. The goose bumps under Derringer’s flesh worsened. The air pulsed. Angry wasps warred inside his blood.

  Air puffed, stirring the stagnancy around their position. Derringer’s heart galloped.

  The sound emanating up from the accidental pond intensified. The chaos of thousands of fins and flippers smacking at water fought against the rising din of what struck Derringer’s ears like a scream. Maybe the shriek was human. Or it could have belonged to the Umlaut, that piece of a rotting god being torn out of the pits. Derringer turned his head and covered his ears. The sound passed through his fingers, twice as painful. An oblong pattern of light spindles formed around Milo.

  “You did it,” Thorndyke exclaimed.

  Milo nodded, jumped up from the floor, and raced into the light. Thorndyke turned to follow. Right before she made contact, Derringer caught the malevolent smirk on the little fucker’s face, and an invisible fist punched him in the balls.

  “Thorndyke, no!” Derringer called above the scream.

  Too late, she was partway through when the opened door slammed shut again. The half or so of the bearded woman that hadn’t followed the first part of Thorndyke through spilled across the dirty floor, squirting out its blood. The remains of her destroyed face stared up at Derringer, its lone eyeball and section of mouth registering surprise. A question seemed to form on what remained of Thorndyke’s bluing lips—How could he do this to me?

  The scream cut out completely. Derringer staggered away. Only the rail stopped him from plunging down into the cesspool. Below him, the water stilled. Through wide eyes, he swept the accidental pond, which had been teeming with thousands of fish only a minute earlier. Now, he didn’t see a single one.

  Derringer hurried along the second level and back to the shattered window. The fucker had betrayed them both. He only hoped a worse place awaited the fucker on the other side of the door he’d opened courtesy of hitching his little red wagon to the Umlaut.

  He eased through the plank and back out into what remained of the miserable day. An early dusk had taken hold beneath the cathedral of twisted trees. Derringer’s flesh crawled. Whatever Milo, that rotten brat, had done to open the doorway to Wherever was sure to have landed on somebody’s radar.

  Derringer reached for the mini-nova and drew the pistol from its holster. Then he heard the sound, which his ears translated into the beating of wings. Shadows darted at the periphery of his vision. A bird swooped down from the sky, toward him. A big one. With his luck, two-headed, thought Derringer.

  He glanced up, saw that the winged thing wasn’t a bird, and fired.

  The Map is not the Territory

  —Andrew Coulthard

  When Jill awoke he was in the alley amidst the filth and smoke. Steam and sulphurous vapours were rising in trails through cracks in the ground.

  It was hot.

  “Ersatz,” he mumbled, because his mind told him so.

  He’d been lost for a long time. When you got lost the way Jill had you could never be sure where you’d find yourself on waking. He cleared his throat and spat, glancing about at his surroundings. His vision was as hazy as the acrid air, but he could see that the dead people were still there, so maybe he hadn’t really changed locations during his sleep.

  He sneaked a look upwards, something he did every day first thing. But there was no sky today either. Just smog. Risky business, looking up, but he kept on doing it. He supposed that made him a bit of a gambler.

  Somewhere off to his right lightning crackled. A wave of thunder pulsed through the turgid air right on its heels. Close. Then something occurred to him—he couldn’t ever remember seeing lightning on the left, only to the right.

  Was that some kind of a clue?

  A chunk of plaster thumped onto his shoulder and bounced off onto the debris-strewn ground. The cracks covering the walls and paving stones were that little bit wider today. He sighed. The city was falling down. On the other hand it’d been going on for years, and everybody knew you didn’t get hurt as long as you didn’t look up.

  Jill shambled off along the alley and at once the queasy blend of paranoia and anxiety broke out like a bad case of the shakes. Breathing was hard for a time as his body came to terms with it—just a typical morning in Ersatz.

  He had no idea what would happen today, probably wouldn’t remember it tomorrow anyway, but one thing he never forgot was that he was on a mission to find the mapmaker. And when he found him he was gonna get unlost.

  Someone had once asked him how he stayed sane in a place like the Ersatz Lost Quarter. She hadn’t been lost herself, their paths just happening to cross somewhere. He still remembered her angular face and long limbs and that trans-abdominal piercing she’d showed him with such pride. Attractive girl.

  She’d been sitting on a folding deckchair in some godforsaken square when he came stumbling by. He recalled her wearing grubby blue shorts and a plain T-shirt, and she’d been smoking something strong. Her T-shirt was knotted under her breasts leaving her belly bare to show off the piercing. Not something you saw every day in this part of town.

  “How do you keep it together without any reference points, constants or other means of attaining the illusion of stability?” she’d asked in a weird, lilting drawl that he couldn’t place.

  After thinking about her question he decided not to trust her and asked a question of his own.

  “Could you show me the way to get unlost, ma’am?”

  “Well, really, I asked first,” she frowned.

  “Madam…Miss. I just wanna find my way again. How do you get out of this part of town?”

  “Why, you need a map, Mister,” she replied in disgust. “I thought just about everybody knew that.”

  After that she’d got to her feet, unknotted her T-shirt and pulled it down over her belly. The smog swirled as she walked into it and disappeared.

  How did he stay sane? The answer was that Jill carried his reference points inside him. Whenever he needed a fix he just had to find somewhere that looked like it might be safe and close his eyes:

  The dappled street stretched away, bushes and trees swaying slowly in the summer breeze. One tree in particular drew his gaze—a scattering of sun-kissed emerald against a backdrop of viridian and shadow.

  Beams of eveni
ng light gilded her hair. She caught sight of him, waved and began walking his way. She was smiling.

  And then there was that place, right about his solar plexus. That’s where the light started. If he focused on it long enough it spread and before long it was everywhere. And then came the flash. But he shouldn’t be doing it now.

  Too late.

  Jill used to be able to get through a whole day before he’d fall to temptation. Lately his days had been getting shorter and shorter.

  The light was spreading.

  Flash.

  Rush.

  Mmmmmmm—oh baby, that’s right. I know you’re good for me. Easing my pain…all my pain.

  No pain.

  Jill awoke in some sort of room: walls streaked with mildew; floor scattered with fallen plaster and refuse. There was a window in one wall through which shafts of grey light angled from outside. The ceiling was shadow. A child’s doll was lying nearby. It was naked, both arms and one eye missing. Its plastic lips curled into a smile when it saw him.

  He searched his mind but was unable to recall how he got there.

  He had to find the mapmaker, though.

  The doll cackled as he left.

  <~~O~~>

  Garaldine Spinnioza finished his coffee and folded the morning paper. The woman sitting opposite him looked up. She had a rather fanciful array of piercings.

  “Are we done?” she asked.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Who is he, anyway?” she continued, changing tack.

  Spinnioza glanced at her, taking in the long limbs and angular face. He began smoothing his thick, black mustachio.

  “He’s one of the reasons we can live the way we do, Stacy,” he rumbled.

  “You mean free?”

  Spinnioza let out a throaty laugh. “We ain’t free. Ain’t nobody’s free, Stacy. We’re all slaves one way or another and you know that as well as I do.”

  “Not like him,” she objected, a defiant cast to her features.

  “No, not like him; he’s really all the way down there. But what he don’t know is he’s working for us, providing us with the means to our largess.”

  “He thinks he’s lost. That’s what he told me anyways.”

  “He is lost.”

  “Well he’s looking for you. And one of these days I daresay he’ll find your tower. Should be easy enough, goddamn lightning’s always coming down on it.”

  Spinnioza was quiet for a moment, struggling to contain his anger. The lightning was a problem he didn’t like to be reminded of, especially not by the likes of Stacy. One day it was going to bring the tower down and where would they be then?

  He contemplated killing her, his eyes straying to his grandmother’s terbutje hanging over the mantelpiece. But then he caught her watching him, a dangerous look in her narrow eyes. Maybe she’d just read his mind?

  Stacy could be quick as a viper. Vindictive too. She’d been taken care of before, but it never went more than a week before she was back again. Same couldn’t be said about the men who messed with her. He dropped the idea.

  “He won’t find my tower,” he said walking to the window and gazing down to where Jill and countless others like him were working the mines.

  “He might. He wants a map. Knows you’re the man to make him one,” Stacy persisted.

  “Oh but he’s got a map already. That’s why he’s lost,” Spinnioza said with a grin.

  Lightning crackled outside, bathing them both in blue-white light, and thunder shook the building.

  When Spinnioza’s vision returned to normal it was to find a network of fine cracks in the whitewashed walls. He sighed and shook his head. His tower was crumbling.

  “You make bad maps then, Garaldine?” Stacy inquired, actually appearing interested for once.

  “No, mine are the best.”

  “Then how come he’s lost?”

  “Because that’s what he’s meant to be. He doesn’t even know he has a map, see. And that map, well, it tells him just exactly what I want it to.”

  “Which is?”

  “The wrong thing. Without that map, he could just go and walk right out of here. But he keeps using the map, a map he don’t even know he has. And what he sees is what the map tells him, not what’s actually there.”

  “Oh,” Stacy replied quietly, lost in thought.

  “Yeah. Because the map ain’t the territory, Stacy,” Spinnioza told her, stabbing the air with his finger for emphasis.

  “Do I got a map, Garaldine?” she asked.

  “I guess we all do, Stacy. We’re all slaves one way or another after all,” Garaldine confessed.

  “Aha,” she said getting to her feet. “Well I gotta go.”

  “Don’t believe I’ve said we’re done,” Garaldine countered his voice deeper than usual.

  “Nope, you didn’t, but I’m sick of waiting.” She took her bag and left by the door that led to the rooftop battlements. Garaldine shook his head. Stacy might be many things, but bright wasn’t one of them.

  A few moments later she was back, red-faced. “I never learn,” she murmured and took the other door to the outer staircase leading to the streets.

  Outside the clouds were rumbling and a tangible electric tension was building in the air. Smog swirled below and above storm clouds thickened. Before descending into the smog Stacy took one last backward glance and nodded in satisfaction. Her bag was hanging from the lightning conductor on top of Garaldine’s tower. She smiled: Dumb son of a bitch had underestimated her just as surely as he overestimated his own prowess.

  <~~O~~>

  Jill was sliding and bouncing through blackness. Everything hurt. He searched for his inner anchors but for the first time in forever they weren’t there. He tried again. And again. No emerald leaves, no pain-relieving light.

  He was lost.

  Voices ricocheted about like bullets in the dark.

  “I’m telling you there’s been a change, something fundamental,” a woman was saying.

  “Haven’t noticed,” a man countered.

  “No, I doubt you have. But there used to be one creator…I didn’t like the SOB, tricky capricious, bastard by all accounts,” the woman continued.

  “Never figured you as one of them religious types,” the man said.

  “Well I ain’t. But I ain’t no atheist either. Like I said, there used to be one creator. Now though…”

  “More than one?” the man asked, surprised.

  “Dozens! They’re all out there behind the scenes, doing their thing and changing the way things rock and roll.”

  “Maybe that’ll turn out good,” the man suggested.

  “You serious?” the woman countered, her voice rising. “The first creator was bad enough. Who knows what badass tricks these others’ll get up to. I knew a guy once. Writer. Went by the name of Hogg. The things the creator did to him…phew.”

  “Oh yeah?” The man sounded subdued.

  “I’m telling you, our days are numbered. Gimme a swab. That’s it. Good. Now sew him up.”

  <~~O~~>

  Jill kept trying to remember. The lightning had been to his right, but that wasn’t unusual. Something else had happened, though. Had the light been more intense? And he’d seen something in the smog. Flames. Smoke. A stone tower coming apart. Then nothing.

  He asked the doctor if he was lost, but she gave him a pitying look and shook her head. “You ain’t lost. You’re here.”

  The inside of the ambulance smelled of rotting offal and the driver’s face was so scarred you couldn’t see his eyes. They dropped Jill off back where they said they’d found him. Middle of nowhere, by a tumbled down mass of rubble and dust. There was a smell in the air like rotting eggs and cordite and a row of fresh graves lined the dusty road.

  “This isn’t Ersatz,” he complained.

  “Never has been. But it’s where we found you,” the driver growled. “There’s a town somewhere hereabouts, though. Goes by the name of Moosejaw.” He drove off.

/>   Jill took out the map they’d removed from his brain. Ersatz Lost Quarter, it read. The rest was blank.

  “Moosejaw,” he whispered, more lost than ever.

  Never Break the Chain

  —Kris Saknussemm

  Watching Waco’s body parts regenerate was starting to get me. Sure, we’d been partners once, and I’d known him since we grew up in Mudhead. But damn it, Ersatz prices are not like Shell County, and in the kind of Dropbox I can afford, there isn’t a lot of room for squishy regrowth. I know a lot of people who would be flat out sickened.

  The day he rocked into the city, I’d told him—I made it very clear—he had two weeks to shack with me until he found a gig. He was a certified Pounder for hell’s sake. We’d once been one of the twickest Chicken Scratch teams in all of Shell Fringe. There had to be something he could do. He nodded. We shook hands. He flopped down his spider silk roll.

  But he didn’t go out to hustle. Didn’t even try. Nope. I thought he’d come metro, hungry for work. Turns out, he’d just come hungry, and pretty soon had torn through my seaweed and sucked down all the Vita-Ade.

  I could’ve dealt with that short-term if he’d genuinely been on the make for moola, but instead he went straight to the fetish markets, looking for some mink. Typical Mudheader, now I realize. That’s pretty much what had happened to me when I arrived. It’s why I’m a pig man now, our lovely local nickname for those who work at the waste treatment plant, which is both fortunately and very unfortunately rather near the container park where my Dropbox is.

  He had a bit of fun in Slinkytown, but it wasn’t long before those alchemists lured him in. There’s nothing worse than a crazy ass, bottom-feeding throatsucker of a drug dealer who calls himself a “scientist.” The prosthetic limbed one, who has the handle Dr. Lobster, turned him on to Starfish, one of the nanogenic tissue rejuvenators that the rat fighters use, so they can cut each other’s arms and even heads off in the Midway free-for-fall bouts. Meat Brains.