“If you had played straight with me,” Vorchek continued, “all would be well with you. You thought to conceal the find-- very naughty-- and you committed the unspeakable blunder of touching the idol, imbued with the essence of Hoachipectulli, who lusts for sacrifices. You made contact...
“This afternoon I returned to that location, collected the artifacts-- gloves, Mr. Jones, and a lead-lined satchel as an extra precaution-- and secreted them in my tent. The idol is safe, ready for removal to my laboratory and extremely careful analysis. I choose wisdom, sir, but I am not a coward. I shall risk myself, but only after the saying of the words. I believe the protective spell will shield me.”
Theresa, distracted by his droning discourse, allowed her attention to wander to his face. I whipped out my Luger. “Am I still your prisoner? Drop it, lady. Now what do you say, Vorchek?”
“Little more than I have done.” The girl was about to burst, but he calmed her with a pat on the shoulder. “I make no claim on you, Mr. Jones. You are free to go. Go where you will, do as you will. It makes no difference now. The ancient forces have claimed you.”
“And the idol?”
“Do you still desire it? I told you where it can be found.”
His girlfriend sneered, “Take it and good riddance. I don’t want it around anyway.”
I laughed. For that split second I clutched once more at victory. Then I heard another laugh, a pandemonium of mirth and cruelty. Terrible, glistening teeth snapped at my soul. That eye swelled to become the universe, pitilessly scrutinizing me from all angles.
“Give me the key,” I commanded, phlegm gargling in my throat. Vorchek eyed me inquisitively, then nodded to his companion. She understood in a moment. From somewhere she produced a bunch on a chain, slipped one off, flipped it to me. I caught it in my fist. In another minute, I was driving out of there in the Jeep on the rocky road to Laupo. They didn’t lift a finger to stop me; nor did I take anything with me. Vorchek had his prize, may it blast his soul. I knew it was nothing to me.
I made it as far as Laupo before I cracked, and that other reality consumed me. The bar is closed, the street dark and empty. Only the stars break through from the norm, quavering pinpoints in the black miasma welling up from the putrid hell that the crazy feathered priests feared, increasingly obscured by the hulking mass of its chief denizen, he whom they feared and deigned to adore. I see the thing, shambling close, feel it now, the snaky tentacles fondling, groping, drawing me in. That eye! Those fangs, sawing and chewing! I shriek a maniacal laugh. I knew I’d picked a tough racket, but this? I’m aware, completely aware as it does what it will with me. Is this life eternal? Please, please, what price oblivion? Hoachipectulli, name your price...
THE END.
VOID by D. A. D'Amico
"It won't let us use the void."
The thin woman peeked from an inch gap in the door, a few dyed blonde strands escaping a hasty attempt to put up her hair. The bruise on her right eye had been poorly hidden by makeup two shades too dark for her pale skin. She glanced at Ranveer Chopra as if he'd come to murder her and the pudgy boy clinging to the folds of her lavender jogging suit.
He'd thought about it, fantasized as he trudged his gear through the service corridors of the immense city tower of Thetford on his third call to this address in as many days. The passageways always smelled of kiwi and Butyric acid, vinegary and sickly sweet. The odor made his nose run.
"I understand, mam." Ranveer nodded, straightening the badge on his lapel that authorized him to repair the void interfaces.
Her gaze followed his fingers, but she made no attempt to open the door. Ranveer tried to see beyond her. There'd been a man the last two times. Angry, loud, always grumbling and pacing, he'd hovered like a mother hen over the woman. Without him, she seemed different.
"Mam, may I enter?" He forced a smile, trying to exude patience and professionalism, but in the back of his mind he was thinking about the eleven other service calls on his list. "It's a bit difficult to reach the device from out here."
He chuckled. She stared. She'd been subdued but inquisitive on his first visit, a chatterbox of questions about the void.
"For Wesley," she'd said, holding the fat little boy in front of her. "He's so interested."
The boy had rubbed his watery blue eyes and yawned as she went on and on, quizzing Ranveer on field strength and load access.
"Mam..."
"Yes?" She blinked, and it was if she noticed him for the first time.
"The void, mam. May I see it?" This was going to be a really bad day, and he'd barely started.
She touched her bruised eye, stalling for some reason. The boy probably jammed something into the void again. The unit's intake field measured less than ten inches. It wouldn't accept things any larger unless they passed through special disposal scanners, but some electromagnetic devices could disrupt the stability.
The boy had already done it once, just the day before. He'd somehow managed to keep the void open by anchoring a toy to a long strand of smart ribbon. Why the child's parents had allowed the boy to play with a household superconductor Ranveer couldn't say, but it had caused havoc with the void.
"Mam, tower management takes full responsibility for all void service. There's never a charge to zone tenants. Now, may I inspect the unit? Please."
Ranveer tried to keep the sigh from his voice, but he had little patience for repeat offenders who seemed to be making up excuses.
The woman let go of the door. It slid open with a mewing sound as she and the boy backed away. Ranveer noticed a cast on the boy's right hand. That's new, he thought as he grabbed his pack and shuffled into the suite. Only their eyes moved to follow him.
"I know the way." He just wanted to get through the day.
Void repair had seemed glamorous at first, a chance to see how the wealthy lived. Ranveer had a wife and five children at home. They all used public facilities for disposal. Only the people of the upper levels could afford voids of their own.
The woman followed closely behind, as if afraid he'd get away. The boy never let go of his mother's leg.
"How will you do it?" She attempted a nervous smile. It looked more like someone had stepped on her toe. "How do you plan on fixing the void? For Wesley, he wants to know."
She pushed the boy out in front of her like a sacrificial lamb. Wesley wiped a sleeve across his nose with his cast hand, sniffling as he tried to climb back behind his mother.
They hadn't seemed like bad people. They'd been pleasant enough on Ranveer's first visit, except for the man. A real bully, that one. He'd lorded over his family, orchestrating their every move with dictatorial relish. The man's absence was the only good thing that'd happened today.
"First I have to see what's holding it up." Ranveer stepped into the small chamber. It contained the usual accessories, a water closet, recycling containers, and the void.
They hadn't tried to dress it up like most families. There were no decals, no flashy paint jobs or lace-edged curtains, just a bland white wall etched with a series of charcoal grey rings within the grid. The intake ledge protruded from the wall at an angle, looking like a small altar awaiting sacrifice.
Ranveer waved a hand over the ledge, but nothing happened. He dropped a test container onto the square protrusion with the same lack of results. Something was definitely wrong with the opening.
"The void mechanism exists outside of conventional reality, accessed in the same manner as the inflow." Ranveer retrieved a sheet of smartpaper from a tube in his kit, affixing it to the wall within a gap in the grid. "I'm going to force it open, so you might want to step back a bit."
The woman had crept closer as Ranveer worked, staring over his shoulder, the boy a sniveling lump at her back.
"Will you be able to see inside?"
"Oh, no. The void pushes in one direction only. Whatever you put on the ledge gets sucked irrevocably through into the n-verse."
"Can it ever come back?" The boy's voice squeak
ed.
Ranveer swiped the smartpaper, and a diagram of the void controls appeared. "The n-verse is a plane of existence much like our own. It sits beneath our universe, similar, but undetectable without the void technology. We dispose of our waste there, but nobody's ever figured out how to get anything back once it's shunted."
"Funny thing." Ranveer programmed the override to expand the field. The void coalesced, a swirling vortex of amethyst fireflies that ballooned across the wall. "Most people don't know that there's a ledge on the other side, similar to the inflow protrusion. Sometimes things can get stuck there."
The boy started to cry.
Ranveer turned, frowning. "What's wrong...?"
The woman pushed. Ranveer stumbled, arms flailing as he fell into the field.
"I'm sorry... It's for Wesley, to keep him safe." The woman's voice came from far away, a squeak as the sound shifted out of Ranveer's reality.
He screamed as the stench hit him like a lead hammer. He fell to his knees, his heart pounding, his body going numb. The world had transformed. Geysers of filth sprouted from flaring orifices, open mouths vomiting the most horrific sputum as voids all over Earth fed into this reality. Rivers of gelatinous ooze flowed through mountains of rubble. Blocks of compressed garbage sat like dull icebergs against a sky the color of a fresh bruise. Ghastly twisted things frolicked nearby. They feasted on the gangrenous carcasses of indescribable creatures, squawking and fighting over juicy bits.
It was a scene straight out of Dante's Hell.
Ranveer cried as a hand grasped his ankle, and he tottered against the thin ledge.
"Help me." The man's face appeared melted, skin sagging in clumps to one side, but Ranveer recognized him as the boy Wesley's father.
Ranveer spun, pushing towards the opening, but the void had already collapsed.
THE END
FOOD ALLERGY by Daniel J. Kirk
It was a stupid looking house. It stood on level ground, but was cocked at an angle not quite parallel to the street. The bricks were of varying shades of burnt pink, gray, and even tan. In some places the bricks matched too well, as if a wrecking ball had knocked out a section and the handyman who repaired the wall didn’t bother using the same shade of bricks that surrounded it. The right shutters were missing on all but one of the six front windows. On the second floor there was one window with the right shutter—but it was missing the one on the left. These absent shutters had not been blown off in a storm. They stood against the side of the house, tall grass at their bottoms implying they had sat there at least for the present summer if not longer. The rest of the grass had been cut rather recently, but there was no additional care taken to the landscaping. The gravel driveway had streaks of grass here and there and no one had trimmed around the mailbox post.
Despite this apparent dilapidation, the house was a sturdy and occupied.
“This is where we’re eating tonight?” little Gray asked his mother, Wendy. She didn’t respond. Her eyes were dubious as she pulled into the driveway and parked the car. She tried to double check the house number with the piece of paper she wrote her direction on, but there was no number next to the front door—nor had there been one on the mailbox. Only the resident’s name was on the mailbox and that was good enough confirmation. After all, Wendy didn’t think there was an abundance of people with the moniker, Abelflesh.
“Mom, I asked you a question.”
“Yes,” she said. “This is where your dinner is.”
“Really?”
“Damn it, Gray. What do you want?”
“You said it was a restaurant.”
“I said we had to go out to eat.”
“Well how do you know I won’t be allergic to what they are making?”
“Because I spoke with him. He understands your dietary restrictions,” Wendy said. She unbuckled her seat belt and picked up the brown paper bag. She did all of this too quickly. Her vision blurred and she braced herself on the steering wheel.
“Are you alright mom?”
“Fine. Come on. You need to eat.”
“Mom. I’m not hungry.”
“I could…” Wendy didn’t tell her son that she had turned up the radio on their drive to drown out the sound of his rumbling stomach. She knew he was used to feeling hungry. The nine-year-old boy was a stick figure. His neck could barely support the weight of his head and every time he moved, Wendy was scared his little arms would snap like a twig. She grinded her teeth as he flung open his car door and slid out. There was no sound when he hit the ground, not until he shuffled his feet and opened Wendy’s door.
She wrenched herself out of the car, her weight almost knocking her poor son over. She was never going to fit back into the jeans she wore in high school, let along the ones she wore a year ago. All the food she had bought, she had to eat. She couldn’t let it go to waste just because Gray couldn’t eat it.
And now, she thought, that extra weight would come in handy.
Mr. Abelflesh stood at the front door. He was older than he had sounded on the phone, lean from age. He had no hair on his head. Not even eyebrows, which made it all that much harder to maintain eye contact. But he extended his hand and shook with a mechanical warmth, as if he’d perfected the handshake, but forgot what it meant.
“Was traffic bad?” he asked.
Gray stared at him, and so Mr. Abelflesh returned the look down his nose.
“No.”
“No trouble finding the place?”
“Uh, no,” Wendy said.
“Splendid. I’ll take that.” Mr. Abelflesh took the brown bag from Wendy’s hand. “You kept it at room temperature as asked.”
Wendy nodded. Though she put it on ice when she initially got it, it had plenty of time to warm up on their drive, she thought.
“Splendid. It cooks evenly at room temperature. I assume he doesn’t prefer his meat rare?” Mr. Abelflesh cocked an absent eyebrow.
Wendy shook her head. She wanted the meat cooked all the way through. She didn’t know what Gray wanted, but she knew what he couldn’t have, and the fear of germs furthered her resolve.
“Splendid. Come inside, the table is set, I wasn’t sure if there was a Mister, so I set out an extra plate. It is no matter though.”
“Just him,” Wendy said.
“Huh?”
“Just my son is eating,” Wendy said.
“Oh.” Mr. Abelflesh appeared offended and then curious. “Well, I have made string beans, though I wasn’t sure if the young boy would be able to eat them or not.”
“No. He’s allergic to them.”
“I’m allergic to everything,” Gray said.
“Not for much longer, young…”
“Gray, his name is Gray,” Wendy said.
Inside the house was aged by its brown and orange décor. The sofas in the living room had a smell to them that was not truly offensive, but certainly not God’s intended odor. A rug beneath their feet was just as old and worn and likely had its own smell upon closer inspection. The rest of the house was slightly musty if from anything the lack of central air conditioning, which Wendy diagnosed after seeing window units in just about every room they passed through until they reached the kitchen. And then there was a ceiling fan overhead.
Mr. Abelflesh offered Wendy and Gray the choice of the sets around the table. Then he smiled and asked, “What would you all like to drink? I have water, distilled and purified, wine, sweet tea, and I can drive out and get soda pop if the boy prefers.
“If you could boil the water and then chill it in the refrigerator, just to be sure,” Wendy said. “I don’t mean to be a bother but…”
“I understand. Believe me. Gray is not the first child who I have helped. It is no bother at all.”
“Thank you,” Wendy said.
Mr. Abelflesh gave a smile and then took the brown bag with him into the kitchen.
Wendy sat with Gray as the kitchen came to life with clanging pans and utensils. She cringed as she heard the brown
paper bag tear. It was almost simultaneous that she felt a pain in her side. She gently placed her hand against her ribs. It felt damp. She rejected any further notion and placed her hand on the table, beside the neatly laid out napkin and silverware.
“I’m sleepy,” Gray said.
“That’s because you need to eat.”
“I told you, I’m not hungry. I’m just tired.” Gray was always tired from the lack of nutrition. The doctors had prescribed vitamins but then they found out he was allergic to some of those as well.
“It won’t be long,” Mr. Abelflesh called from the kitchen. “The key is thinly sliced and a hot, hot pan.”
The pan sizzled on cue. Sizzled like applause.
Gray’s stomach rumbled, knowing what the young boy did not—it could be—would be—satiated.
“I sense some hesitation on your part,” Mr. Abelflesh said. “That’s to be expected. But you have to imagine it’s like eating chicken or steak. Why, I had an aversion to pigs and cows. Absolutely disgusted by them. They’re so dirty. But I delighted in beef and pork. But the more I lived on the farm the more I couldn’t bring myself to put that meat in my mouth. I just knew it was within those disgusting beasts that rolled in the mud, sat in their own cowpies.”
The pain seared in Wendy’s side. She groaned.
Mr. Abelflesh came around the corner, wearing an apron and holding a spatula. “What was that?” He asked.
“I never thought much about that. The pigs in the mud.” Wendy winced.
“People are the same way,” he said. “Once you get over what you know of people, why they’re quite tasty in their own right, and we are quite selective. We prefer those who practice good hygiene. And for your boy, just remember he fed off you in the womb. Then mother’s milk and all.”
Wendy tumbled off her chair. She clutched her side and her moan shook from her lips.
“Mom!”
“Stand back boy, give her room.”
Mr. Abelflesh knelt beside her. He saw the blood staining her hands through her blouse.
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