“I don’t understand,” Allyson said. “What does showing me this girl achieve? How is she a temptation?”
The earth shuddered. The walls of their small world crumbled about them, covering their skin with loose earth. Allyson spat out soil. At the top of the steps, the Pastor pushed her out of the crypt and locked himself inside. Allyson fell. The spool of thread rolled from her hands. Yellow-Anne grabbed it, delighted to find a new toy. Within two shudders, the children sat on a pew sewing loose skin together - crude stitches attaching arms to shoulders and wrists to forearms.
Allyson remembered how Yellow-Anne had stitched her dolls’ hands together so they’d never part. Allyson had wanted to stitch her fingers to Darren when he’d become engaged to Melanie Waters.
“I died,” Bill said, holding his fingers to his face and examining the torn, mottled skin. “I died.” As if the fact surprised him.
Allyson wandered to the cliff edge, wondering if life had more purpose over at the last remaining skyscraper or in the earth’s bowels. She wondered how their small community continued to stand. Perhaps it rested on the Devil’s shoulders.
She hoped Darren’s girl had broken at First Fall.
Below them, the ants built crude homes from fallen trees, broken rocks and litter. They wore makeshift masks to protect their dead lungs from dust that couldn’t kill them further. At times, they looked at her watching them and crossed themselves. Allyson replied in copy.
Remaining at the edge, toes curled over crumbling rock, Allyson realised the world hadn’t shuddered and she hadn’t moved in some time. Although, as they now calculated time in shudders, she figured she’d been standing there for no time at all. Her muscles had adopted rigor mortis. For a moment (or perhaps a year), Allyson thought she’d become a gargoyle perched on the edge of the world. The sun poked through thinning dust clouds, bringing with it a palette of long-forgotten blues. Bill set the church bell ringing. The ants huddled together. Allyson turned away from them.
The children gathered about the crypt door, pretending rotten pieces of wood were animals. A fallen hollowed-out tree was to be their ark should it ever rain anything but dust again. The crypt door creaked open. Black veins pulsing beneath his mottled skin, Pastor Baest booted the children aside.
“I wonder if perhaps it’s safer down there,” Allyson said.
She looked at Yellow-Anne.
He ignored her. His tongue wiped across his lips and his hands rubbed his belly.
Fresh clouds announced the end of Sunday. In the distance, the last skyscraper fell. Its dust cloud rushed towards them, carrying with it glass fragments determined to blind those that could still see. Allyson pressed her hand to her face. She wondered how the ground dead fared. She waited for the earth to still before daring to look into the cavern.
‘Cavern’ seemed an inappropriate word, now that they stood on the last remaining peak with the survivors spread across the basin; busy little re-building ants.
Pastor Baest joined her at the edge, his cape flapping behind him like rotting wings. “We should steal them from Hell.”
“I'm not certain this isn’t Hell,” she said.
He pulled her away from the edge and pressed his lips to hers in an iron-tasting kiss. He bit the remains of her lip, tearing away skin.
Staring at the open crypt door, the children gathered their things together and clutched their insides to their chests. Allyson pulled away from the Pastor’s clammy grip and ran for the crypt. Their town was Hell, and the real world, or as close to it, continued below. They had to escape the pastor. Before the children could follow her inside the crypt, the pastor flew by them, as if he were a bat’s wing and they the dust beneath him. He slammed the door and locked it, trapping Allyson alone. If this was banishment, it was okay with her.
Pressing her hand to the soil wall, Allyson made her way down the steps. Her right arm dangled loose, having been dislodged from her shoulder. The bottom steps were sticky with gore, the gate into the other world open.
Spots of blood formed a winding path across rubble. Shallow breaths filled the otherwise silent air. Allyson’s and the children’s lungs hadn’t required breath since the first quake, though sometimes she caught Pastor Baest attempting to breathe. She found the source of the sound slumped against the remains of a terraced house. A girl, her breaths growing frantic as Allyson approached. The wound in the girl’s leg festered green and her head lolled to the side. Despite these symptoms, Allyson knew the girl was alive.
Melanie? No, a lookalike.
“Are you recovered?” Allyson asked.
The girl attempted to lift her arm. It flopped to her side, fingers trailing in the dirt. Raindrops, the first in at least eight Sundays, splashed between them. The girl tipped her head back and opened her cracked lips.
“I must bring the children to see you,” Allyson said, daring to touch the girl’s smooth skin.
The girl shook her head.
“No, you’re right. Pastor won’t allow them to come to you, so I shall take you to them.”
The earth shuddered, marking time’s passage. Rubble hurtled from the skies. Allyson wrapped her good arm around the girl, shielding her from the brunt of the storm. Small missiles slammed into Allyson’s back. When the world had ceased its violence, Allyson lifted the girl and found her no weight. All skin and bones and, despite the life pulsing in her chest, weighing less than Yellow-Anne. The girl groaned but offered no fight.
At the top of the steps, the crypt door stood ajar. Pastor Baest perched on the gravestone. “See,” he said to the children. “I told you, Allyson wouldn’t leave our church.”
Allyson dropped the girl onto the grass. The girl groaned. Bill fell to his knees, palms pressed to his grey cheeks.
“The thing,” Bill said. “The thing we are become. May God have mercy on our souls.”
Allyson looked at the blue skies. Sunday again. She wondered why they hadn’t gathered in church for Pastor’s sermon, and then she noticed… The church had gone--fallen into below world. The children gathered about the living girl, pressing their hands to her fever and poking her wound.
“Are they all like this down there?” Yellow-Anne asked, brushing hair off her face and exposing her cheekbone. She chewed her words. “Soft and pretty and tasting sweet.”
Allyson didn’t ask if Yellow-Anne thought the girl looked like Melanie. They both had enough festering wounds.
Forming a broken necklace, the children held hands and allowed Yellow-Anne to lead them into the crypt and down the steps. They had a new leader now--Yellow-Anne, a broken girl for a broken world. They did not look to Allyson.
“May God forgive your rotting souls,” Bill cried. Running toward where the church had stood, he fell off their world.
Pastor Baest turned the key in the crypt door before Allyson could follow down the steps. If she’d intended to. Bill’s words resonated, “This thing we are become.” She didn’t fully understand what he’d meant. When the air had cleared of Bill’s final screams, Allyson sat at the cliff’s edge and waited for the children to emerge below. As she watched them pick their way across rubble, hope rose in her chest. It felt almost like breath.
“The girl is dead,” Pastor Baest said, pressing his hands to the foundling’s forehead. “Will you join me in…”
“No more prayers, Pastor.”
“…finishing my meal?”
Screams rose from the cavern. The people in the camp nearest their cliff scattered.
“Do you think they’ll cure the children?” Allyson asked, ignoring the meat dangling from Pastor’s lips.
Perhaps Anne would grow to look like her brother again.
“I believe the contrary,” he said. “The children are the cure and we shall rebuild our church.”
Thunder echoed across their short land. Allyson pressed her hand to her stomach. She would not listen to her hunger.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Despite the solitary nature of writing, a book is seldo
m compiled by a single person, less so in the case of an anthology.
We have a lot of people to thank. A lot.
Firstly, we’d like to thank our long-time fans, the folks who’ve been around and supported us through three separate incarnations across six years. We have published a great many stories in that time, over one hundred, and to list them all would be silly, but my thanks go out to all the authors who trusted us with their work, the artists who gave us illustrations of a calibre we could never have normally afforded, the novelists, actors and Hollywood directors who offered us their time and let us interview them for a publication they had never heard of, and the writers who refused payment on stories because they wanted to support the project and see it succeed.
Most of all, I need to thank Vianne, who has to date edited, line-by-line, just under one million words of fiction, without ever having been paid for it. Her dedication to the stories and the writers has been unwavering and I guarantee you we wouldn’t have made it past our first year without her. The other poor sod that’s been slogging away since our inception is Mark
Sykes, who has proofed the very same near-million words. If you find typos and screw-ups, blame me, because I have a tendency to amend text at the last minute, seconds before we go to print. You have no idea how much this irritates Mark, that a single sentence might get away without him having a chance to proof it. As if that weren’t enough, I forced him to become a columnist and deliver “800 to 1000 words about anything”.
I can’t tell you the number of times I have found him trembling and rocking back and forth in front of the keyboard. He’s probably suffered the most out of all of us.
I have to single out a few contributors, as they have been with us since the beginning. These include:
Sarah Lotz and Lauren Beukes, who have never received a penny for any of the work of theirs we’ve published; they have always requested we feed their fees (including Sarah’s prize money for our debut issue short story competition) back into the publication, and who have publicised us at practically every live event, reading or book launch over the last six years, but most of all I want 380
to thank them for being really great friends.
Abi Godsell, for being the youngest author we’ve ever published and, surprisingly, among the most professional.
John Connolly, who gave us what is still one of the most fun interviews I have ever done, and then added a story to it. He was foolish enough to become a friend and I promptly abused him for a four-part column, the third part of which we published in our final print issue. (If you’re reading this John, we never did find out how you were bitten just below the testicles.)
Vincent Sammy, Pierre Smit and Hendrik Gericke, whose art not only features in this anthology, but has featured in almost every single issue of the magazine and eBook, and who, respectively, gave us our first three cover illustrations.
Jesca Marisa, who gave us the covers for issues #4, #8 and #15 and illustrated Sarah’s prize-winning story ‘The Perfect Man’ in our first issue.
Genevieve Terblanche, who gave us Swicky™, our very own little Goth toddler comic strip, along with dozens of ‘marginals’ populated throughout the print issues. Andre Jooste, Andrew Mokgatla, Christine King, Eddie Marz, Emil Papp, Emily Tolson, Felicity Purdon, Grant Mills, Heidi Fivaz, Joe Doe, Kara Leibbrandt, Keith V Whalen, Kobus Faber, Manik, Neville Howard, Nicolas Rix, Peter David-Douglas, Shan Fischer, Simon Tamblyn, and Tita 13, all of whom contributed to our distinct look and design.
I have to thank the lovely people who supported our funding campaign to get this book published; the outpouring of support, both verbal and financial, from these people was truly humbling. Thank you all for believing in us and we hope we don’t disappoint: Abi Godsell, Ashley, Bracken MacLeod, Daniel Franklin, Derick Kriel, Domenico Pisanti, Elsabe Lessing, Glen Mehn, Ivor Hartmann, Jared Shurin, Jetse de Vries, Kerry Gordon, Lauren Beukes, Louis Greenberg, Mandisi Nkomo, Matt Imrie, Michael Bailey, Michelle Goldsmith, Nat Harrington, Nick Wood, Nicole Tanquary, Osiame Molefe, Richard Leaver, Robert Greene, Sam Wilson, Sarah Lotz, Steven John Anderton, Sue-Ann Cooper, Tom Hunter, William Mitchell and Yoshio Kobayashi.
Lastly, thanks to the authors whose stories comprise this anthology, AA Garrison, Abi Godsell, Brian Kirk, Cate Gardner, Cedar Sanderson, Damien Filer, Davin Ireland, Domyelle Rhyse, Domenico Pisanti, Glen Damien Campbell, Ivor W Hartman, Jason Kahn, Lynne Jamneck, M. Scott Carter, Michael Bailey, Michael Hodges, Michael John Grist, Paul Marlowe, Scott Brendel, Sheila Crosby, Sylvia Hiven, Tom Jolly, and William Mitchell.
Of course you deserve a ‘thank you’ too, for buying and reading this book. We’re really proud of this sucker and we hope you’ll stick around for our new little adventure.
Joe Vaz
3:19am
22 Aug 2012
Cape Town.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Abi Godsell has been writing SF, horror and urban magic short stories since 2006. She has had several stories published in Something Wicked and in 2011 she won the South African Science Fiction and Fantasy’s South African division of the Nova Short Story Contest for her SF piece “Taal”. She also moonlights as a Civil Engineering student.
She believes that a society that has forgotten how to dream is not a society that will survive very long in the zombie apocalypse.
“The Silver City and The Green Place” was entered into the WITS Deon Hofmeyr Award in 2010 where it received an honourable mention.
Michael Bailey is the author of Palindrome Hannah, a non-linear horror novel and finalist for the Independent Publisher Awards. His follow-up novel, Phoenix Rose, was listed for the National Best Book Awards for horror fiction and was a finalist for the International Book Awards.
Scales and Petals, his short story collection, won the same award for short fiction and Pellucid Lunacy won for anthologies.
His short fiction and poetry can be found in various anthologies and magazines around the world.
His short story “Without Face” previously appeared in Something Wicked Issue 6 and was mentioned in The Best Horror of the Year.
He is currently working on his third novel, Psychotropic Dragon, a new short story collection, Inkblots and Blood Spots, and tossing around ideas for a second themed anthology.
You can visit him online at www.nettirw.com
Michael John Grist is a ruins explorer and science fiction & fantasy author who lives in Tokyo, Japan. His stories can be found in Aoife’s Kiss, Shelter of Daylight, Something Wicked, and in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. He is currently writing an epic fantasy novel called Dawn Rising.
He runs a website on the ruins or ‘haikyo’ of Japan; filled with photographs of abandoned theme parks, military bases, and ghost towns - all great locations for story inspiration.
Paul Marlowe lives in Canada, and since his latest story in Something Wicked contains some religious themes he would like to clear the air by stating that he is not a practising member of Canada’s official religion (Hockey – or, as some heretics in warmer climates erroneously refer to it, ‘Ice Hockey’).
He would also like to assure the reading public that his latest book, Knights of the Sea: A Grim Tale of Murder, Politics, and Spoon Addiction is every bit as silly as it sounds. And speaking of sounds, for a taste of the sort of fare you can expect in Knights of the Sea, listen to “The Resident Member”, a radio play of Marlowe’s short story of the same name, produced by Something Wicked, and available for free download, either on the Something Wicked website, or from Marlowe’s own website at www.PaulMarlowe.com
Ivor W. Hartmann, is a Zimbabwean writer, currently based in Jhb, South Africa. He is the author of “Mr. Goop” (Vivlia, 2010), and was nominated for the UMA Award (2009), and awarded The Golden Baobab Prize (2009). His writing has appeared in African Writing Magazine, Wordsetc, Munyori Literary Journal, Something Wicked, and Sentinel Literary Quartley, among others. He is the editor/publisher of StoryTime, and co-editor/publisher of African Roar.
G
len Damien Campbell was born in London in 1982. He attended Birkbeck University where he studied History of Art.
Aside from writing, his interests include painting and music. For four years he played guitar in a rock band called The Mistakes. Unfortunately, their name proved prophetic.
Brian Kirk is a freelance copywriter and fiction author whose stories have sullied the pages of several otherwise respectable print and online publications.
He lives in Atlanta with his supportive wife and two beautiful baby boys. Follow his journey at briankirkblog.com
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