Twisted Beyond Recognition Box Set

by Nicky Drayden

  "Steve, come here. Let me show you something."

  I shuffle towards the back of the room where Dr. Arbuckle is waiting for me with a patient smile. She's got one of her cat-catching contraptions set up, but this one's different. Bigger. Sturdier.

  "Listen carefully, Steve. Are you listening?"

  "Rarrrgg!" I say. I'm undead, not stupid. But then she smiles again, and that makes it all better.

  "Good. I've finished the time machine, and now I've got to set things right. I'll be going away, okay? I know I told you you'd be coming with me, but I'm afraid that's impossible."

  "Rarrrgg!" I yell. She'd promised. She promised she'd keep me fed and I'd keep her company! I don't want to be left here alone.

  "It's not that I don't trust you, but we just can't risk another outbreak. Oh, Stevie, I know this is hard for you to understand." She sighs and places her gloved hand on my good shoulder. "If I succeed, then none of this will ever happen. You'll go on living whatever life you had before you were infected."

  Well, this is just great. The last woman on Earth is giving me the "it's not you, it's me" runaround. I feel something itching the corner of my eye, then a warm bead of sludge trickles down my cheek. The hell, I'm crying!

  "But in case I fail, I've refitted all the traps so you can bait and retrieve them yourself. See this pedal?" She presses her foot down on a metal plate and the cage door wrenches open. She drops a tuna can in a slot at the top. A barbed spike activates, punches a hole in the can, then eases it down onto the trigger plate.

  "And that's all there is to it," she says, a trace of remorse in her voice. She walks back towards the time machine and slings the duffle bag over her shoulder. "Well, Steve. Wish me luck."

  "Rarrrgg!" I say, and really mean it.

  She presses a button on the panel and the machine begins gyrating. I shuffle towards her, fast as I can, nearly tripping over my own feet. There's so much I want to tell her, and I can't help wondering if things were different, if my skin wasn't the color of week-old fish, if my body parts didn't slough off whenever they pleased, if I didn't feast on the brains of dead tabbies... could she love me?

  "I know, Stevie. I know. If there were another way, I--" She gets all choked up. I must look really pathetic. She steps towards me, arms outstretched, and hugs me. I squeeze back, my blue-black tears smudging across her cheek.

  It's then that I sink my teeth into her neck. Softly. Tenderly. She yelps, but doesn't fight. There is another way. She knows it. I know it. But it's one of those truly awful things no one wants to talk about until the deed is dead and done. I hold her tightly in my arm and watch the life drain from her face. Then I wait. As long as it takes. Hunger's raging, but I tamp it down deep with every scrap of soul I got left in me.

  Finally, she starts to twitch, and her eyes flutter open. She takes a timid first step, then does something with the rigid muscles of her face that just might be a smile. I take her cold, stiff hand in mine. As we shuffle together over the threshold of the whirring time machine, she says those three little words I've yearned so long to hear: "Rarrrgg!"

  ###

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  TIME'S JEWEL

  BY NICKY DRAYDEN

  First Published by Fusion Fragment, 2011

  My clients always insist on doing it in the reactor room. The pulsing of electrostatic forces is similar to making love on the beach in broad daylight, waves breaking over our intertwined bodies. More sensual, perhaps. And then there’s the added thrill of knowing their fiancées are waiting for them not even a hundred meters away.

  They don’t wait long, though. Ninety seconds on average, not nearly enough time to raise suspicions that I’ve had my way with their future husbands, once, twice, and sometimes again if their consciences don’t start catching up. That’s what I love most about the Pequat Reactor -- it nurtures inhibition and postpones regret, like a double shot of Everclear on the subatomic level.

  Nearly every one of my clients fits a particular type. Rich, that goes without saying. Workaholics. Sexually repressed. Mommy issues. They want to be good husbands, but don’t know how. They yearn to be liberated, but the ruthless structure of corporate life’s got them by the balls. That’s where my services as cruise director come in -- bending time and packaging freedom into little bite-sized chunks.

  “And that, Mr. Thomas, concludes the tour of Time’s Jewel,” I say as we enter the ship’s waiting room. Antwerp Thomas stumbles in behind me on rubbery legs. I give him a subtle glare and he straightens up before the lovely and well-kept Nadia Bishop notices.

  “Well, dear, how was it?” Nadia says half-interested, not even ten pages into her Elle magazine. To her, we’d only been gone a couple minutes. She’d opted out of the behind-the-scenes portion of the boat tour and never would guess that beneath the frilly wallpaper and stark white wainscoting existed a maze of circuitry embedded into meter-thick alloy walls, anchoring the waiting room to Real Time.

  “Absolutely amazing,” Antwerp says, his voice cracking. I can tell he wants to look at me, but he keeps his eyes focused on Nadia like I told him. The other telltale signs of recent infidelity can be written off as side effects from the reactor.

  I shake Antwerp’s hand, then Nadia’s. “So your honeymoon is all set. I've got the Assayer Suite reserved for you, fourteen days Ship Time -- two days Real Time. Room service, turn down service. Stocked mini-bar. Full gourmet menu. On-call masseuse.”

  “Two weeks, and you won’t even miss a day of work, dear.” Nadia squeezes Antwerp’s hand. She’s smiling, so giddy that she doesn’t notice him slipping. He’s staring at me. Hard. Regret’s catching up to him. I bet he’s wondering if he’ll be able to stomach consummating his marriage in the same bed he and I shared. We’ll see. Too late for him to back out now. The fifteen thousand dollar non-refundable deposit’s already dented his bank account.

  * * * * *

  I’ve never believed in love. That’s what happens when your perfect world implodes at the age of five. My mother became a serial monogamist shortly after she and my father split. She had her “friends” that stayed over. After a month or two they’d become my “uncles,” and a few even lasted long enough for me to call them daddy.

  When Rissa, my older sister, turned sixteen, she moved out and took me with her. She’d always been my anchor, shielding me from the worst of Mother’s reckless decisions. We lived with Paul, my sister’s boyfriend. He was twenty-four, smoked a lot of dope, and lived in a rat-infested hole of an apartment, but other than that, was a pretty decent guy. Ma pitched a fit and threatened to call the cops on him if we didn’t come home. But then she met a biker named Raven with greasy sideburns and a thick southern drawl. Ma decided she liked riding him more than she liked being a mother, which was fine by me.

  I’d put that mess behind me as much as any person can. A thousand miles and a decade for me, only six years Real Time. I take every shift on Time’s Jewel I can get, thirty weekends a year. So technically, that means I’m now Rissa’s older sister. A fact not lost when I see her walk into my office for an after-hours appointment.

  I feel my jaw hanging loose, and I shut it. Paul’s with her, a clean shaven version of the guy I remembered.

  “Well, aren’t you going to say anything, Maddie?” As Rissa opens her arms to me, I catch the gleam of an engagement ring. Nothing impressive, but respectable enough. As kids, we’d pinky swore we would never get married. But things change. People change.

  Paul rushes over and lifts me into the air as if I were still that wispy little girl who’d made a home for herself on his black vinyl couch. “Hey, squirt. Long time no see.” He puts me down and tousles my hair. I grimace, but allow it. Anyone else who’d try something like that would lose a finger.

  “Surprised to see us?” asks Rissa. She kisses me on the cheek, then takes a seat in front of my desk. Paul stands behind her, rubbing her shoulders.

  “You could say that.”

  “Why don’t you ever call?
We miss you.” Rissa didn’t say it, but “we” included Ma. Somehow, Rissa had found it in her heart to forgive our mother for the hell she put us through. Good for her.

  “Been busy working," I say. "Time flies ...”

  Paul nearly chokes on his laughter. “I’ll bet.” He snatches one of the cruise brochures on my desk and leafs through it. “I'd say time is the one thing you have plenty of.”

  Soft jab. Verbal poke in the eye. That’s how me and Paul used to show our affection, and baited, I fall right back into it. “Yeah, well I’d’ve bet a thousand bucks you woulda knocked Rissa up by now.”

  Silence snags the air. Paul’s smile tumbles off his face. I remember they were trying for a baby three years back. Five years? My memories have become a slippery slope. Nothing firm to grab on to.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur.

  “We want to adopt,” Paul says, taking the seat next to Rissa and putting his hand on her thigh. “So we’re getting married at the courthouse next week. We’ve got a long road ahead, but we’re hopeful. Rissa’s got a steady job with the State. Construction’s dried up in Pittsburg, so I’m taking a six month gig in Louisville. We’ve only got these three days to enjoy each other, and we want to make them count.”

  Rissa nods, casting her eyes down slightly in an attempt to hide her tears. “We were hoping you could help us stretch them. We’ve got some money saved.”

  Blood stagnates in my veins. Rissa means life savings, I’m sure, and I doubt it’ll total enough to take a regular cruise, much less one through the turbulent seas of time.

  “We’re booked twelve months in advance,” I say. “And even the wait list is a mile long. You know I would if I could ...”

  Rissa wrings her hands and glances at Paul then me. “It’s okay. We knew we were asking a lot.”

  I bite my lip and hope the shame in my heart hasn’t made it to my face. I owe both of them more than I could ever repay. There’s got to be something I can do. Anything.

  “They test run the reactor tonight. I can get you five, maybe six days,” the words spurt out, uncontrolled. Reluctantly, I pull a keycard from my desk drawer and pray I haven’t made an empty promise. I lock eyes with Rissa. We have the exact same eyes, we’ve been told. Eyes that witnessed the same horrors. Same love. “Take the Galilean Suite,” I say handing my sister the key to the Jewel’s most luxurious stateroom. I only wish there were more I could give her.

  * * * * *

  “Six days? Not possible. Maybe two,” Art Castellanos, the ship’s senior engineer, tells me for the third time. He crosses his arms over his chest as if my proposition is an insult to his moral fiber.

  “Two days isn’t enough,” I say, trying to look intimidating, though Art stands a full foot taller. “That’s hardly any time at all!”

  Art and I play this game a couple times a month. He’s a by-the-books kind of man, which is what you want when your business depends on warping space-time without destroying the planet. But sometimes I need my own private getaway, and Art helps me with that. I’ve probably logged another six months of non-sanctioned launches aboard Time’s Jewel. Being cruise director does come with that benefit, and so far no one’s questioned why Art’s had three raises this year alone.

  “Come on. It’s not like I’m asking you to push the reactor past its limits.”

  “Theoretical limits,” Art reminds me. “There are protocols for a reason.”

  “Well, if you don’t think you can do it ...” I purse my lips and look pensive, like I’m considering how to word my ad for a new temporal engineer in the Chronicle’s Classifieds. Art uncrosses his arms, then re-crosses them. I’ve got him off balance, doubting himself.

  “If anyone can do it, I can,” he says.

  I throw out some tempting salary figures and Art and I come to an agreement.

  “Six days?” Art strokes the hairs on his chin. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  * * * * *

  I lead Paul to the suite, holding the door open as he hefts his and Rissa’s luggage inside. Nearly two-thousand square feet lay sprawled out before him, furniture and accessories coordinated to a palette stolen from the last splash of color before sunset. Sheer curtains hang on floor-to-ceiling windows like a seductive veil leading out to the terrace. The view of the Galveston Bay leaves something to be desired, but when Time’s Jewel sets sail, the Gulf’s waters unfurl in a decelerated ripple. Peering out over the majesty of those roiling grey-green waves, anything becomes possible.

  Paul tries to look unimpressed. He dumps the bags at his feet, then announces to no one in particular, “A little cozy, but this’ll do.”

  “The Prince of Wales once stayed here,” I say, propping my hands on my hips. “He had nothing but compliments, so I’m sure you’ll find it adequate, your highness.”

  He smirks, then skirts the room, running his finger along the ornate armoire angled in the corner. “This antique?”

  I nod. “Cuban Mahogany. Early nineteen century. And before you ask, yes, that’s a real Picasso.”

  I check my watch. Half past seven. Still thirty minutes ‘til show time. I’m anxious for Rissa to see the room. She’d run off to the corner store for some last-minute necessities -- mini powdered donuts, trashy romance novels, floss, sunscreen -- before I could tell her about the ship’s duty-free shop. I laugh as reality strikes me.

  “What?” Paul asks, foraging through the welcome basket on the coffee table, then falling back into the crush velvet sectional, a fistful of foil-wrapped dark chocolates in one hand and an amenities brochure in the other.

  “Sunscreen. I just realized it’s going to be nightfall your entire trip. The artificial lights and biolume sky will cycle, but no real sun on the decks. Not that you two lovebirds will make it out of the room.”

  I catch myself looking at my watch again. Nervous habit. The words I want to ask him are bottlenecked in my throat. “Paul?”

  His smile fades. Maybe the quiver in my voice betrayed me, but he knows what I’ll say next and spares me further discomfort. “Three miscarriages. Early second trimester. I think it’s killed a little piece of her each time.”

  I take a seat next to him. I have no words that could soothe his pain, so I just lean my head on his shoulder.

  “Rissa’s better now, I think. She’s got this adoption thing to keep her mind busy ...”

  “But?”

  “You know as well as I do we’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell. I’d probably still be in prison now if your mom had cared a little more about you guys. And those old drug charges keep creeping back up anytime things start going good.”

  “You and Rissa turned out all right. Considering.”

  He glares at me.

  “So my sis was jail bait. But nine years and you’re still madly in love. That’s better than most people can claim.”

  “When’d you turn into such an optimist?”

  From his tone, I can’t tell if this is another jab, or if he’s serious. I check my watch again. “She’d better hurry.”

  “Rissa won’t be late. She’s never late.”

  The floor hums underfoot as the reactor goes into the pre-test phase. “I’ve got some paperwork to get done,” I say as the bulkheads begin to moan. I make my way to the door, steadying myself for the lurches to follow. “I’ll call to check on you before I bunker up.”

  “Wait. You’re staying Real Time?” There’s fear in Paul’s voice. Bending space-time has become so familiar, I sometimes forget the enormity of it all.

  “Don’t worry. Everything you need to know is in the welcome basket. There’s no crew during the test, but the kitchen’s open, so take whatever you like.”

  “Honestly, we were hoping to spend some time with you.”

  “Me, tagalong on your honeymoon? I still can’t get the images of you guys sucking face in the back of movie theaters out of my mind.”

  “Seriously, Maddie. After what Rissa’s been through, we’ve both learned how precious family is. We lo
ve you. We miss you.”

  I recoil, shove my hands into my pockets, and stare at my shoes. “I--”

  “I know ... you would if you could, right?”

  Right. I suppress these inklings of emotion and steer the conversation elsewhere. “Remember, there’s no lifeguard on duty, so tell my sis not to get too happy with the margaritas by the poolside.”

  Paul sighs in resignation. “Fat chance.”

  I brace myself in the doorway, and the lurches come like clockwork. If Paul hadn’t teased me so much during my adolescence, I might have warned him. He stumbles, grabbing the back of a wingchair for balance. “That’s normal,” I say as I step into the hallway. “I’ll see you guys in a few hours.”

  Paul manages a smile. “See you in six days.”

  * * * * *

  I barely make it around the corner when a sharp grinding noise rattles the chandeliers in the hallway. Lights flicker, and for a long moment, they leave me at the mercy of pale orange running board lights. I brace myself against the wall in near darkness and wait for the tremors to stop.

  They don’t. They only fade enough for me to regain my footing and seek out the nearest call station. There’s one twenty meters away, a beacon of soothing blue light, cut-out emergency figures, and block lettering.

  I dial the extension to the control room, three decks below. “Art? What’s going on down there?”

  I wait for a response that never comes. I try once more with more urgency in my voice, twice more, a dozen times with the same result. Art’s too obsessive to leave his station unattended, and too professional to pull a passive-aggressive prank, even if I did indirectly threaten his job. I check my watch again, still twenty minutes until the test launch.

  I’m left with no choice but to pull the emergency override. I remove the tiny hammer from its holster, then ready my aim at the glass encasement. The sharp steel tip hovers an inch from impact, but if I interrupt the test, Time’s Jewel won’t be able to launch this weekend, and the thought of thirty-five angry bridezillas breathing down my neck is paralyzing.