He never came back.
* * * * *
Johnny’s ear and sinus canals are lined with dyssynchronous cilia, said the specialists.
What does that mean?
It means most of the hair in his airways doesn’t do its job of repelling environmental toxins, chemicals, germs. It makes Johnny prone to getting infections of all sorts, and no medicines will fix this. Part of Kartagener syndrome.
They used strange names, but, really, words were useless attempts at control. Control, Sara knew, was impossible in such a situation. She was stunned. Her baby. Her only son . . .
How could they miss this? She screamed at the rapid succession of specialists that followed and explained to her all the things wrong with Johnny. In this day and age, how could they miss this when he was born?
They all shook their helpless heads. This sort of thing happened sometimes. Did the boy’s father perhaps—
No! The boy’s father was perfectly healthy when he fucked me and abandoned me. His cock was long and graceful, and it worked. It gave me Johnny, didn’t it?
Their silent faces confirmed what the internet research had already told her: Johnny would never have a child. Johnny’s seed would be barren.
Mrs. . . . Mrs. . . .
Ms. Tilling.
Of course, Ms. Tilling. Even more concerning than impotence is Johnny’s heart. It’s on the wrong side of his chest.
What?
This sort of problem comes up with other situs inversus issues, which of course means Johnny’s bowels and bladder and other organs might also . . .
Their words were drifting; they came from some place far away. Sara couldn’t understand anything beyond His heart is on the wrong side of his chest.
Dextrocardia.
Johnny had dextrocardia. Sometimes mutant lizards had dextrocardia along with limb anomalies. Their hearts ended up on the right side of the chest during the embryologic stages.
Usually such creatures didn’t last very long.
The last of her will broken, Sara broke down and sobbed. Johnny, her Johnny, was very sick. That was what they were saying. Johnny would not get better.
Johnny was as good as dead.
She could see his death in their eyes, in the perfect blankness of their expressions. Unable to meet their wretched gaze, Sara took her son home.
Within three months, Johnny began to lose his hearing.
* * * * *
When Sara opened the door, a werewolf was standing there.
A seven-foot-tall, hulking creature with forearms the size of spades, one wrist splashed with a Girls will be Girls tattoo and a pink Nine West bag slung over her shoulder. She—it—stepped back when Sara emerged from the doorway.
Sara didn’t recognize it. She blocked the door with her body. “Yes?”
“Hi, my name is Genevieve.” The werewolf nervously ran a violet fingernail the size of a butter knife down the guardrail. The screech made Sara grit her teeth. “Umm . . . Toby, my son, told me Johnny hasn’t been coming to school?”
“Yes.” Sara’s grip tightened on the doorknob. “What do you guys care?”
“Toby does. Johnny and he are pretty good friends. Didn’t you know?”
Sara didn’t know. She guessed Johnny had deemed it wise not to tell her. Her sentiment on the matter was quite clear. “What do you want?”
The werewolf pulled back its snout; the pink of its nostrils reminded Sara of gutted snakes. The creature—Sara refused to call it Genevieve—sniffed. “I’m sorry for bothering you, but . . . okay, look—” it withdrew a card from that awful, glitzy-pink bag, “here’s a card for a specialist.”
“What?”
The creature met Sara’s eyes with its own rheumy ones. “We all heard of Johnny’s ailment.”
A migraine began to pulse at the base of Sara’s neck. “Don’t talk about my son,” she said softly. “He will be fine.”
“Sure.” The werewolf tapped its claws on the handbag, its animal face a grotesque horror mask. “Sure.” Gently, it tucked the card between the bars of the guardrail and turned to go.
“Hi,” Johnny said.
He stood in the doorway with the miniature oxygen tank nudging his ankles. The nasal cannula snaked into his nostrils caked with blood from the rush of dry air.
Johnny smiled at the stranger. “Hi, Mrs. G.”
“Hi, Love,” the werewolf said, and Sara saw, to her horror, that a blood drop was welling up in the corner of its left eye. It bulged and broke surface and tracked down the werewolf’s cheek. “How you holding up, buddy?”
“Pretty good. How’s Toby? He still carrying that dumb Dracula action figure around?”
Genevieve smiled with sharp teeth. “Sure.” Both its eyes were webbed with blood by now. It glanced at Sara and raised a hand. “Well, you take care now, little man. And take care of your mom too.”
“Yup. Tell Toby hi.”
The werewolf left, its paws clattering on the pavement all the way to the corner of the street. Sara turned to Johnny, to rebuke him, but his eyes stopped her. Old eyes, clouded with something that rained inward.
“Honey—” She didn’t know what to say. His lips were trembling.
Johnny never cried, he never broke down; she was the one who did it for both of them.
“Baby, you okay?” She stepped close to him, tried to pull him to her, but he ducked and whirled.
Sara watched her son run inside the house, his oxygen tank bouncing after him like a dead puppy.
Listlessly, she turned and plucked the werewolf’s card from the cold metallic grip of the guardrail.
* * * * *
The man who opened the door was not a man.
“Yes?” it said, and the horns in its neck bristled.
Sara wanted to turn away in disgust.
“Mr. Coldman,” she managed to say.
“Is not seeing anyone these days.” Behind the thick, telescoped lenses, the creature’s eyes were yellow. Little black grains swirled inside them.
Filled with contempt. For me.
“Tell him I have something he needs.” She tossed her head back defiantly. The darkness past the demon’s feet heaved. Something crackled, and the tall demon tensed.
“If you so wish,” it murmured. She knew it was not talking to her. Its sickly eyes found hers. “Flesh is flesh.”
With that nonsensical statement, it turned and ducked into the darkness.
Sara followed.
The thing curled up in the hospital bed, surrounded by a filter mesh, was huge and ponderous. Its raw-red abdomen was bloated, the navel popped out. Its swollen, mottled tail lifted and fell with an audible thunk!
When Sara gasped, the dying demon stirred.
“Hello.” Its voice was old and whispery. It made her think of winter wind soughing through gnarled branches. It made the hair on the back of her neck prickle.
“Hello,” she said. There was a dead alligator in a corner, and the fly cloud above it buzzed angrily. “You must be—”
“Coldman. Agares Coldman.” Its lips were covered with sores. When it turned on its side, the fluid shifted in its belly, blanching the flesh to a dusky gray. “You know who I am.”
It wasn’t a question. She nodded anyway.
“Why are you here?”
A raven the size of a tomcat flapped its wings behind the filter mesh by the demon’s head. The stench of its wings was a mix of death and rot, and these times. These damn, useless, miserable Anno Apocalypsi times. Sara hated herself for doing this. For being here. All her life she’d hated them. All her life she’d despised their presence, their irreverent encroachment upon humanity.
“Encroachment?” the demon said. Sara started and fell back a step. His jaundiced eyes were fixed on hers. “Our presence. This encroachment upon your life. Are you for fucking real?”
It could read minds. She stared at it, her heart hammering.
“Your life. Your sweet, wonderful life,” it murmured. “Do you know who I really am?
”
Her fingers fought each other. “Yes.”
“No, you don’t.” When the demon’s lips parted, the raven cawed and pecked at its teeth. The bird withdrew its beak and Sara saw a thick white worm struggling in it. The raven jerked its head up, and the worm disappeared.
Bile rose in Sara’s throat. She swallowed it back down.
“You dumb, useless, meat-creatures,” said the demon in its gurgling voice. “You fucked up and now you blame us. The hole that you ripped in the cosmic curtain with your quantum fuckery—we didn’t do it. You did.”
The room’s temperature dropped. The flies rose and swarmed toward the bed. They hovered around the filter like airborne shadows.
“You brought us here. You metamorphosed us. You bound us with your physical laws. We’re all mortal and dying because of you.” Its eyes were filled with contempt. “And then you have the audacity to blame it on us.”
“I never said—” began Sara.
“Silence, you wretch, you meat-bag. You father-fucked piece of shit!”
Sara recoiled. The raven screeched, a sound like a saw cutting through metal, and the fly swarm exploded against the ceiling, buzzing and thumping across the surface.
“Ooh, I know all about you. I can lick your brain,” the creature said. Glee and something like longing crept into its voice. It tried to raise itself up, but failed and slumped back. A sore popped on its leg and splashed pinkish liquid against the filter. “Your dysfunctional human family—”
Sara clenched her fists. “Stop. I get it. I get the message.”
“Daddy left you because he wanted to fuck you.”
“Please,” she whispered, feeling her vision throb with her pulse. Nauseous horror bubbled inside her. “Please don’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ever said anything. I—”
“Mommy screwed with your head,” it crooned, “because she was terrified, and what’s a little fear shared between mommy and her princess?” It groaned and then giggled, the incongruous sounds grating across Sara’s mind. “And your son—”
“Don’t talk about him. Don’t you dare—”
“Will be dead soon. Rot flesh. Meat suit to be hung in a deep, dark grave.”
“Nooo!” Sara screamed. All the pent-up anger—the frustration and rage and those nights she’d spent waking up every five minutes, running to Johnny’s room, pressing her tremulous palm against his chest to see if his betraying, awful heart was still beating, even if on the wrong side—surged through her. The terrified hope that his traitorous body would give him enough time for her to find a cure.
The demon laughed.
She lunged at the filter mesh around him, trying to tear it down, but the raven was in her face suddenly, beating its frantic wings, and the fly swarm was in her eyes, in her pores, her mouth, her nostrils, and the world was a hissing, buzzing, shifting black curtain through which movement was impossible.
Sara sobbed and fell to her knees. “Stop. Please. I’m sorry. Agares. Mr. Coldman . . . .”
The curtain peeled away from her, and the raven cawed and slid off. It fluttered its wings and perched on the creature’s belly, its ebony eyes fixed on her, unblinking.
“Mr. Coldman, huh?” The demon hawked and gurgled spit in its mouth and spat it sideways into an aluminum basin crawling with maggots. “Not a filthy creature anymore? Where’s your gumption, girl? Where’s the hatred?”
“I’m sorry,” she said between sobs and lowered her head. “Oh, Johnny, I’m so sorry.”
Silence. Sara’s vision rippled with moisture. The world was dark in front of her, a filmy layer of filth made from death and disease and inevitable choices. Such a world, such a terrible, terrible world, where not even your thoughts were safe anymore.
When the demon spoke, his voice was soft. “Oh, shove your sorries where the fucking sun don’t shine. You came here to make a deal. So say it.”
“My soul,” she said and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. “I will sell my soul for my son’s life.”
“Do I look like I deal in souls? I work with tangible things. Your soul’s as useless to me as an angel’s fart.” He coughed and wiped his lips. “Demon magic is limited in this place. The rip in the curtain tore down our space-time too. It’s your fucking physics. Won’t let me do much.” He lay a taloned hand on his belly and tapped it thoughtfully. “Although, I suppose there is something you could give me . . . .” His eyes glowed, and the tapping of his spoon-shaped talons sped up.
“What? What?” She got up and stared at him. “Anything. Anything for my son’s life.”
He cocked a fungoid claw at his face. “I’m dying here. Heart failure. Can you imagine?” He laughed. The sound throbbed in her head. “A demon who needs a heart. Angels wept.” His eyes fixed on hers. “And you have a healthy full-of-anguish heart. I can see it beat life inside your eyes.”
She swept the mess of hair back from her eyes. It was wet with tears. “What are you talking about?”
“I will buy your heart in exchange for your son’s life.”
She looked at him, shocked and uneasy. “My heart?”
“I need your damn human heart, as much as it pains me to admit it.” He leaned on his hands and forced himself so he could squat on the bed. He was smaller and older than she had first thought. White strands of hair spilled from behind his ear and nuzzled the sores on his cheeks. “Question is: Are you willing to give it up?”
He was as stricken with age as anyone she knew. Everyone said they aged, but she’d never truly believed it until today. The realization made something stir and turn inside her mind. These creatures got diseases and died too.
They needed too.
“Anything for my son,” she said quietly. Her voice was warbled in her head. “But how do I know you will keep your promise? You said your magic was useless here.”
“Yes, but not in the dimension where my kind was created.” The demon winced and leaned forward. “In the darkness of human dreams lies the opening to the wonderland where I was made. Think of it as Hell. The act of transferring a human heart into a demon’s body should create an unnatural bridge, which will gouge open that hole. Beyond that hole is my Other.”
“Your Other?”
“The Other me. The Hell-me, if you will. My doppelganger.” He licked his dry lips. “The source of demon magic.”
“And I shall die once you have my heart.” Her hands twisted inside each other. “How does it work?”
“A transplant of course. How else?”
“A transplant? An organ transplant.”
“An organ transplant.”
“Jesus Christ.” Her eyes widened.
The demon winced and melodramatically clapped its hands over its ears.
“No surgeon will do it,” she said.
“Yes, they will.” The demon sighed. “Of course, they will. I may be a dying, spatially transplanted demon, but I still have that kind of pull.” He winked at her. “In fact I’ll do you one better. I’ll have my doctor friends give you a new heart. Freshly grown, genetically.”
She bit her lips. “If you could do that, why not get one for yourself?”
“Again, it’s a matter of physics and physiognomy. Demon DNA doesn’t work well with human machinery and chemicals. The process was tried and turned out an utter failure.”
“What if your body rejects my heart?” She knew a few things after speaking to specialists about the process, but Johnny wasn’t a transplant candidate. “Human medicines might not work.”
“Who said anything about human medicine?”
She fell silent. The raven—that had been until now quietly hopping back and forth on the bed—rose and landed atop the dead alligator. It began to nibble at the gator’s eyes.
The demon’s eyes never left hers. “My doctors will get you a fresh heart, but understand that it will die too. They don’t know why, but genetically grown hearts fail after a few years.”
She smiled bitterly. “Dead after a few years. That’ll b
e me.” She closed her own eyes and rubbed them. Red spots danced in the black behind her eyelids.
“Better than none for your son. Don’t you agree?”
Wearily she said, “Your word. That my son will be cured.”
“My word. Once that bridge between the worlds is formed, the doppleganger’s magic will work. It will fix your son.” His eyes were clear and frosty, but they didn’t lie. “My word.”
Sara nodded. She was tired and weak and sleepy. The world was a wreck, but who cared? Her son, her Johnny, was all that mattered.
* * * * *
In the Year of the Apocalypse ‘97, Sara Tilling gave her heart to a demon.
So there they lay side by side on the twin operating room tables, his sulfurous eyes emitting an oxidative mist from the Propofol the doctors administered. Sara lay there and watched his skin change color rapidly as the drugs hit the inhuman receptors in his tissues, triggering biochemical reactions unprecedented in the annals of medicine.
Xenotransplant is the term, Sara thought. Inter-species transplant.
It made her close her eyes and giggle even before they shot her full of anesthetic.
In her ether dream, she was a microbe drifting through the darkness of herself. Surrounded by a living capsule lined with arms like rockets, she blasted through alien corridors that quivered gelatinously at her passage.
Johnny. She was looking for Johnny.
Instead she found the demon’s magic.
The doppleganger was a tall, gangly man with reptilian eyes. The skin above his spotless black suit was pebbled in pink and palomino unlike the hellish-red all the outdated demonology books described, and, when the light in the grotto changed, a third eye flickered in the center of his forehead.
Parietal eye, Sara’s herpetology-filled brain whispered. A light-sensitive parietal eye.
The better to pin you with, my dear.
“Hello,” she said to the demon-double, and the capsule around her bubbled and melted away.
“Hi.” His slitted pupils expanded. Something dark passed behind them. Sara perched on a rock outcropping in the middle of the pulsating grotto. The demon in black sat on his haunches and stared at her. She noticed how his ankles became mottled and turned dusky when he crouched.
Widowmakers: A Benefit Anthology of Dark Fiction Page 15