Twisted Beyond Recognition Box Set

by Nicky Drayden

  * * * * *

  The sun woke Stellar the next morning, scorching his skin. He rolled over, dirt caked in his hair, nearly crushing the green sprout growing from where he'd spilled his wine. Wait. He rubbed his eyes, sat up, and looked again. He'd seen thousands of peach tree saplings in his time, but there was something slightly odd about this one. Maybe it was the way it held its supple branches as if it were a model posing in the nude – motionless out of desire and not necessity. It made Stellar's arm hairs prickle.

  Still, his chest swelled with accomplishment. Stellar raced up and down the rows of his peach grove, eager to tell the world of this miracle. But alas, he had no one to tell. No friends. No family. No wife. He wondered what good joy was when there was no one for him to share it with.

  Stellar clasped his hands together, looking up into the cloudless sky. In all this time, he'd never forgotten the richness of her laugh and the kindness of her touch from when they'd tended this land together. It'd been eight years, long enough to mourn by anyone's standards. The words came from his lips in a whisper only she could hear. "Forgive me."

  * * * * *

  Two and a half years passed before that salesman reared his head again, striding up onto Stellar's porch with expensive leather boots and a sideways grin. "You had a chance to think about it?" he asked.

  "You were right," said Stellar. "Pit peaches are a thing of the past."

  The salesman nodded. "I knew you'd come around."

  "Yep." Stellar stood up from his rocker, dusting his hands together as he looked out over the expanse of his forty acres. "That's why I converted my whole crop to pitless two seasons ago."

  The salesman's eyes went wide then narrowed with suspicion. "I don't believe you."

  "Come see for yourself."

  Stellar led the salesman out into the orchard and pulled a ripe peach from a tree. He sliced into it, revealing moist flesh through and through.

  "Impossible!" said the salesman, his face ashen.

  "You want to taste it?"

  Marcus Stellar took pleasure in watching the confusion on this weasel's face as he bit into the peach, even sweeter than the originals. A good peach farmer kept his secrets close to his heart. Not even ten feet away sat an outdoor speaker disguised as a rock, insignificant to prying eyes. And once a week, Stellar spiked the irrigation system with a nice bottle of Merlot. The trees never did anything in his presence, and he respected their privacy too much to spy. But sometimes late at night and in between dreams, he heard the faint rustling of leaves and rhythmic creaking of wood. A little wine and sensual tunes never failed to set the mood, no matter what the species.

  "Grafting?" the salesman asked, desperation seeded in his voice. "You got it to work?"

  "Nope. Never lasted more than a week or two." Stellar stroked his chin. His trees weren't the type to kiss and tell, and neither was he. "All I have to say is nature always finds a way."

  Missy Mae Stellar came out of the house, waddling down the porch stairs, a glass of peach flavored iced tea in each hand and her pregnant belly leading the rest of her. "You boys thirsty?" she asked.

  Modern science had been kind to old Stellar in more ways than one. He'd finally gotten to do a little pollinating of his own.

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  LOW-CARB CHEESECAKE

  BY NICKY DRAYDEN

  First Published by Drabblecast, 2008

  Microscopic explosions danced across my taste buds. I closed my eyes to savor the delectable flavors. This couldn't be right. There was no way this cheesecake could be low-carb as the menu had advertised. I flagged my waiter over, shoving a last innocent forkful into my mouth before I faced the truth and ensuing pounds.

  "Yes, ma'am? Is the cheesecake to your liking?"

  "Very much so," I said, patting my cloth napkin at my mouth. "In fact, I think you must have accidentally given me the regular version instead."

  "I'm afraid that is impossible," he said, carefully annunciating as if his words were as delicate as lace. "This is our signature cheesecake. The only one we serve."

  The joyous expression that crossed my face must have been a startling one, since the waiter suddenly looked overcome with worry.

  "Are you all right, ma'am?"

  "Yes, fine." I glanced around the restaurant, noting how thin everyone seemed to be, and how they were blissfully shoveling bite after bite of cobblers, cakes, and pies down their throats. Perhaps I should've dared to have more than the mixed greens salad for dinner, but it wasn't too late to indulge. I looked up bashfully at the waiter and said, "Could I get another slice, please?"

  "Of course. I'll have that right out to you. And will that be all?"

  "Just one thing," I said, nodding towards the cheesecake. "How do you do it?"

  "I'm not allowed to say, miss. It's a family recipe."

  "Oh, I see," I said, stroking my purse with an exaggerated motion, trying to imply there'd be a big tip involved if he spilled it.

  He shot a series of nervous looks around the place, then pulled a rag from his apron. As he pretended to wipe a mess up from the table, he leaned in close to me and said, "Pixie dust."

  "Pixie dust!" I said, and he immediately shushed me.

  "It's sweeter than sugar with a fourth of the calories. The owners brought the recipe with them from the old country." He eyed my purse, the polish in his voice replaced with that of street sensibilities. "I hope you know I could lose my job for telling you this."

  "I hear the going rate for tips on secret recipes is at two hundred percent these days."

  The waiter looked satisfied with my offer. After all, what was forty bucks compared to a lifetime free from dieting and exercise? I took another forkful, closely examining my dessert. I could see the sparkles glistening under the artificial light of the restaurant. Perhaps I could take a trip to the old country to find pixies of my own. I imagined myself in my kitchen, my new tiny companions flapping their delicate wings as they hovered above my mixing bowl. Then we'd all laugh as they cast plumes of their magic sweetness into my favorite recipes.

  I saw the waiter coming with my second piece, so I popped the last morsel into my mouth, but as I chewed, I crunched down onto something hard. I discretely spat the offending bit into my napkin, then looked at it in horror.

  "Waiter, what is this?" I asked, holding up the napkin for him to see. Clearly it was a tiny glass slipper, no bigger than the nail on my pinky finger.

  "Oh," he said. "Sorry about that. The blades on the blender must need sharpening."

  "You mean..." I swallowed back the lump in my throat and ignored the sloshing in the pit of my stomach. "Are you telling me that I just ate a pixie?"

  "Not a whole one. Just a couple of them – five seconds on chop, fifteen on puree – is enough to make three cheesecakes, easily." There it was, that concern on his face again, this time more grave. "Are you all right, ma'am? Can I get you a glass of milk?"

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  WIZARD FIGHT ON SIXTH STREET

  BY NICKY DRAYDEN

  First Published by Kaleidotrope, 2009

  Two wizards approach in the night

  Eyes ablaze.

  Dos Equis on their breath

  Neon lights set the stage.

  Wands drawn,

  Widened stances,

  A battle over turf.

  Pimps and hookers cross the road

  To give them ample berth.

  Words are slurred in a cryptic tongue,

  Mystic energies depart.

  Twin bolts ignite virgin sky

  Like molten works of art.

  Spectators stop,

  Beats slow,

  Bouncers crane to see the fight.

  Heaven's seams burst to bits

  Spilling silver streaks of light.

  Screams tread in the moistened air.

  Waning moon eclipsed.

  Mackerel rains down by the ton

  Conjured from
drunken lisps.

  Fins flap,

  A futile gesture.

  Sterling tides begin to swell.

  Proving yet again why wizards

  Should never drink and spell.

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  JACK AND THE STEAMSTALK

  BY NICKY DRAYDEN

  My boy Jack and me are down in the Everglen pulling wings off of fairies when he says to me, he says, "Hey, Gannon, wanna see something real special?" Of course I say yeah, because last time Jack had something real special to show me, it was an enormous curly brown pube hair – thick as a fire hose and nearly as long once we'd stretched it out. It'd fallen from the sky and belonged to that giant living way up in the clouds, right above where the Everglen is.

  Yeah, we're not supposed to be here. The Everglen is "off limits," like my mama always tells me in that squeaky voice of hers. But I can't stand staring at concrete all day without a tree in sight, back in the city where the fairies have all got pissy attitudes and street smarts up to here, so it's no use trying to sneak up on them so we can pluck 'em.

  So anyways, Jack leads us down deep into the Everglen, over the tangled knots of tree roots and through dense brush, further in than I've ever been. Everything smells fresh as toilet cleaner out here, all piney and junk. Thorny vines nick at our pant legs, and innocent-looking mud puddles lie in wait for our slightest misstep. Jack does a good job guiding us around the danger, but as soon as I start feeling comfortable, a giant crescent slices through the canopy and trenches itself into the ground, right between me and Jack.

  It's like the moon's fallen from the sky, white and translucent. I press my hand up against the crescent and feel the ridges. I can barely make Jack out on the other side, doing the exact same thing.

  "Toenail clipping, right foot, big toe," Jack says in that way that makes him sound like an expert on all things giant.

  I join Jack in a hurry. A second earlier or later, one of us would have gotten pruned for sure. "Maybe we should go back," I say. Not that I'm scared or anything, mind you, but I promised Kaz I'd stop by her place to help her tidy up. And by tidy up, I mean waxing her unibrow, which trust me, is a two person job. But she's the prettiest troll in the eighth grade, which maybe ain't saying much, but she's my girl either way.

  "It won't take long," Jack says back. "Promise." And then he starts running, and I follow behind, keeping one eye on the path ahead and another towards the treetops in case anything else tries to split me in two. It gets darker, light barely breaks through, and the noises of fairies and birds and insects become less like songs and more like shrieks and howls and cusses.

  And then I see it, a graveyard of gears and broken panes of glass half-buried in the moist ground. The vines are already trying to swallow them, shatter the gears into a million pieces, then turn them into dirt. In a day or two, you'd never even know they'd been here at all.

  Pixies are real particular about their surroundings. They don't like foreign objects littering up their woods, or foreign people for that matter. But you never see them, other than maybe a glimmer caught from the corner of your eye if you're lucky. Jack says he doesn't trust them because they're cowardly and lazy and make the forest do their dirty work for them, but I know that's not true. My MumMum's a pixie, and she’s probably the most adventuresome person I know, and she liked foreign people enough to marry my Elven grandfather.

  "So is this real special, or what?" Jack asks, stroking one of the gears. "It's a pocket watch. Or rather it was."

  "It's something," I say. "Why do you suppose the giant tossed it?"

  Jack shrugs. "Maybe it was broken. Anyway, it's ours now."

  I laugh. Maybe Jack didn't notice, but most of those gears are bigger than us. No way we're moving that thing anywhere. Jack turns and stares me down with a bent brow and tells me that he's got this great idea on how to build another of his robominations and that it'll make us some serious cash. Sounds good, right? But last time Jack had a great idea, one of us ended up getting six stitches, the other got his stomach pumped, and neither one of us could look at a vacuum cleaner or a dish soap bottle for a good, long while without getting all queasy.

  So I listen, doing my best not to roll my eyes. It's what friends do, right? Entertain each other's delusions? He asks if I'll help, practically begs me, and I tell him, "Whatever, as long as we split the profits fifty-fifty," and he says, "Sure, but you'll have to pay Kaz out of your half." Then I realize it's not me he needs. It's my girl's biceps. Yeah, she could heft a gear on each shoulder without chipping her nail polish.

  Don't drool. She's all mine.

  * * * * *

  "You know, you could at least pretend to help," Kaz says, lugging fifty feet of rubber tarp under her arm, three ten-gallon water jugs strapped to her back like a pack mule. Yeah right, me and my wispy arms, with the upper body strength of a wet paper bag. She frowns, even more menacing than usual with the bristle from her unibrow showing, but who has time to wax when we're on the verge of being millionaires? Not that Jack lets us in on the purpose of his secret robomination. He just sits out in the middle of the forest, making us fetch scrap from all over the city while he constructs his latest monstrosity. Usually Jack means well, and he kicks ass at turning old junk into spectacular inventions. But sometimes Jack gets his mind set on something and there's no talking him down until halfway through the ambulance ride to the E.R.

  It's all changed, the Everglen, even from a couple hours ago, which means the pixies are angry with Jack's plan. Can't say I blame them. The whole city used to be forest, way before the developers came and paved everything over, putting up condos and coffee shops on every corner. That was way before my time, back when MumMum was about my age.

  I try to remember them silly ancestral songs she taught me when I was just a whelp. She'd purr the ancient lyrics while fluttering her wings so fast they trilled like a soprano with a helium habit. I hum the tune, a few words coming back to me here and there, and I hope it's enough to calm these pixies. The pathway thins a smidgeon, vines pulling back like anxious serpents, but then Kaz yells, "What are you humming?" and I grit my teeth and shake my head and ignore the awkward tug between my shoulder blades.

  "Damn pixies," Kaz growls as a vine swirls up and around her ankle. She kicks it off and trudges down to where Jack's building his robomination. Kaz doesn't know I'm one-forth pixie. That's not exactly the kind of thing you go around telling just anyone. Not even Jack knows, and we've been best buds since we were dirtying up diapers. Oh, I've wanted to tell him a thousand times, but I've seen that look in his eyes when we pluck fairies – not just boyhood mischievousness, but jealousy and hatred and all those things you want to pretend aren't in your best friend's heart.

  Kaz throws the tarp down at Jack's feet, then crosses her arms over her expansive chest. "Jack, if you don't tell me why you've got me dumpster diving for this crap," Kaz snarls, "I swear I'm going to pound you into the dirt with this fist."

  Jack snickers, unsure if she's joking or not. She's not.

  "You'd better tell us," I say to Jack. "You know you're my boy, but if I've gotta pick sides, Kaz wins hands down."

  "Fine. I'm nearly done anyway," he says, dragging the tarp towards the skeleton of the robomination – gears, piping, wire, and a vast pile of other scrap put together with an enormous spool-like thing towards the bottom, and something that resembles a giant hair crimper sticking out from the top. Jack nods at Kaz to dump the last of the water into a fifty-gallon drum, then he takes after the tarp with a pair of shears, snipping it just so until it fits snuggly around the spool. "This machine is going to take us to the heavens!"

  I frown. "Not literally, right? It's just that after what happened with your last robomination ..."

  "Invention!" Jack shrieks. He hates my word for his freaky little projects. "I could have gotten it to work if I'd had the proper resources. That's why it's so important that this one succeed. I'll be so rich, I'll never have to build with sc
rap again! Just think of the possibilities!"

  "Do I have to?" I groan.

  "Look. The plan is simple. We've already ticked off those shifty pixies, so it'll only be a matter of time before they sic the vines after the steamstalk–"

  "The what?" Kaz asks.

  "The steamstalk. This invention. Pay attention," Jack says.

  Kaz slits her eyes.

  I put my hand on her arm to calm her. Her gray-green skin is thick, but soft as the finest leather. Get her riled up though, and she'll turn to stone on your ass, which maybe comes in handy dealing with bullies and door-to-door salesman, but I sorta like having my best friend all in one piece. "You mentioned riches," I say to Jack to get this conversation back on target. "How's that going to make us cash?"

  "Well, what's the one thing you know about giants?" Jack asks.

  "Um ... they're really big?"

  "Right! Everything's big up there, which means big treasure! Just a couple of gold coins would set us for life!"

  "You mean you want us to sneak up to the giant and steal his treasure?" I try to keep the terror out of my voice. "Isn't that, like, illegal?"

  "The giant won't miss it. He's got tons of treasure, right? It'd be like swiping a few bucks from your ma's purse."

  "Only my ma's not as tall as a mountain range and wouldn't eat me if I got caught."

  Jack looks flustered for a moment, then shakes his head as if my logic obviously isn't good enough. "Gold, Gannon! And we won't get caught. We can't get caught. We'll be no bigger than fairies to him."

  The same fairies we were pulling wings off of a day ago? Perfect. But I keep my lips pressed together, and keep entertaining his delusion. After all, there's no way this robomination is going to do anything, besides maybe explode.

  "Did you hear that? Gold!" says Kaz, her dark eyes sparking like struck flint. She sweeps me up tight in her arms, swinging me side to side like a doll baby. "Oh, Gannie, let's just take a quick peek up there. You're not scared, are you?"