The Long List Anthology Volume 3

by Aliette de Bodard

  Silence. She jerks her chin upward, a command to resume. Her hair has been gathered into a knot above her head, exposing the long stem of her throat. Similar to the foreman’s, it’s ridged with lesions, puckered like mouths.

  “I know he—” I hesitate. Up till now, delicacy hasn’t really been a part of my job description. I feel like a bull in an antique store. “He left more than a psychological mark. He—”

  Sasha thins her mouth into a gash and crosses her arms over her chest. Somewhere, a door slams open, disgorging hip-hop and drunken shouting, a pack of teenagers with long, lean faces and hungry looks. I glance sidelong and watch until they’re swallowed by the elevator.

  “Look, sister. I’m not good with words. That’s not my forte, you know what I’m saying? My point . . . my point is he did something to you, and I can help fix some of that. You just need to trust me.”

  Her lips ruck into a frown. “I—”

  “Please.”

  I don’t know if it’s my voice, or the way I stare at her with my heart held up bleeding, or even if it’s just a lapse in her anger. But she relents and takes my hand.

  Like I’d said to her, I’m not one for a fine touch. I’m a man. I barrel through life, guns blazing, asking questions rarely. For her, though, I’ll dig through my guts for the right approach. I close my grip over hers and reach in.

  Sasha sighs, the tiniest exhalation of relief.

  The thing inside her isn’t as settled as the life festering in the foreman, a viscous intruder loosely conjoined with her lungs, her liver. Whatever the case, whether accident of heritage or stupid luck, it isn’t hard to excise. Using nerves will-sharpened into scalpels, I flense it from membrane and organ, carefully pare it from nucleotide and sinusoid, cell by cell, atom by atom. Through it all, Sasha stands and shivers like a leaf in the gale.

  When I’m done, we break contact, her infection migrated to a squirming in my throat.

  “What was that?”

  I withdraw my mitt and try not to cough out the phlegm of my labor, cramming both hands into my pockets. “What I promised to do.”

  Sasha parts her mouth and then closes it again, a nod replacing whatever question she had aborted. “Thank you.”

  “It’s the least I could do.” I nod, my voice watery from my efforts. “Nothing wrong with having a heart. No need to pretend machismo.” She laughs, more freely than I’ve heard, fingers pressed to the space between her clavicles.

  I wait, half expecting her to ask for more, to erase the memories of her encounter with McKinsey. To my slight surprise, she doesn’t, only turns to fix a warm eye on the children in the apartment. When she speaks again, it’s with a fresh, unvarnished joy.

  “Thank you.”

  I nod again, gruff-like. Dames don’t generally give me this kind of treatment. Terror or predatory interest, those are the usual suspects. But this happiness? New.

  I could get used to it.

  “You’re welcome.”

  In the movies, this would be where the hero and the dame chew face. Sasha is no happy lady, and I don’t remember the last time this body had dreamed of bare skin. So, before she can speak again, I walk away, a new poison in my system, the sounds of the council estate bouncing around me.

  I light the cigarette.

  “Hope you like smoke, chump.”

  • • • •

  It screams when I spit it into the sink. In the harsh fluorescent glare, it resembles a living bezoar, hair and tissue material and gobbets of dusky phlegm. There are no limbs, no discernible features. Yet somehow it continues to wail and howl, the sound muffled by succulent layers of stolen fat and skin.

  I nudge it with the end of a toothbrush. It twists in place, pseudopodia forming to attach to the plastic, but the weight of its body prevents it from actual motion.

  “Ugly thing, ain’t ya? Just like your dad.”

  I contemplate the squirming mass for a minute before I start mashing it into the drain, one flailing tumor at a time. Its agonized ululations sound strangely like a new beginning, like the birth of heroism.

  : INTERLUDE

  I don’t do it, of course. The skirt’s problems are her own. I have too many of my own dilemmas, and a bounty on a stepdad to reap. Nice as it is, good karma don’t pay the bills.

  4: I WOULDN’T BE IN YOUR SHOES

  “Hey, short round.”

  The kid barrels from the gate and out of a cloud of similarly dressed peers. The schoolyard is a riot of parents and cars, school buses and teachers, a scattering of older siblings, and a few vagrants like me. One dame shoots me a frigid look as I exhale plumes of smoke, drifting serene over the heads of the children. I ignore her.

  “My stepdad isn’t dead yet,” the kid snarls. His school uniform is rumpled, mud-limned; the tie sits undone like a hangman’s noose snipped off mid-use. “Why isn’t he dead yet?”

  “Calm down. I’m working on it.”

  “No!” The kid stomps his foot and then practically flies from the pavement, like he burnt his sole against the asphalt.

  The temper tantrum seems to have surprised the kid. He scowls at the ground for a minute before he turns his eyes up at me, David in the shadow of his Goliath. There is no fear. The kid crosses his arms over his xylophone chest, squares his stance like a tired boxer. The fact I’ve got about three and a half feet on him doesn’t seem to worry him at all.

  “Every minute—” He sucks in a breath, cheeks denting. “Every minute you waste, it’s going to cost me. You’re going to get my brother hurt. You—”

  And here, his bravado snaps. Tears prick at his eyes, a treacherous wetness that he wipes aside with the back of his hand.

  “He’s going to hurt James and it’s all your fault.”

  The words fly like kicks, hard and loose, ugly swings with no artistry at all, just raw emotion. I keep standing here, head cocked. One of the most effective tricks in a gumshoe’s playbook is the act of silence. Wait. Let the other guy pull the trigger first. It costs you nothing, and it gets you everything.

  “You finished?” I ask, after the kid subsides into a panting quiet.

  He glares.

  I stoop to my knees, suck down one last breath of carcinogenic fumes, and flick my cigarette stub into the bushes. Smoke fizzes out of my nostrils and through my teeth as I clamp my paws on his shoulders. He stiffens, twitches. I can feel him strain against the impulse to run.

  “First things first. I don’t like being insulted, kid. When I take a job, I see it through to the end. But I do it my way, you get me? Second, I’d advise you remember that you never paid for a deadline, just a death. Big thing in business. Always set your deadlines. So, you’ve got no sway here.”

  The crowd eels around us, parents and children, teachers and older sisters, whispering vague concern but little else. The world’s too full of trouble to adopt those that don’t belong to you.

  “Putting all that aside, I’m going to square with you. This is bigger than you think it is. I need a bit more time—”

  “We don’t have time,” he whispers raggedly.

  “What do you mean, kid?”

  “He—” He breathes in his courage, a long and shuddering gulp. “He’s going to hurt James bad.”

  “Who’s James?”

  “My little brother.” The kid curls his voice around the proclamation like he’s trying to hold it safe, trying to shelter it from whatever nightmare gave him those old-man eyes.

  “Okay. I—”

  “I’ve got money.” He springs into motion, scrabbling at his pockets. The kid pulls out a few grubby notes, some gum, a half-melted truffle, a single pound coin that gleams bright like a mother’s hope. Without hesitating, he crams the offerings into my face. “You can have all of it.”

  “Kid.” I nudge his hand away. “It’s not enough.”

  “Please.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I—” I pause. I what, exactly? I didn’t know yet. That might-have-been with Sasha nagged at me like a splin
ter.

  “Please.”

  “Fine. Wouldn’t be right to have a client die on my watch.”

  The kid doesn’t flinch from the implication, brightens even, a fact that makes me glad I’d said what I said. I’m beginning to get an idea about what’s going on, and the knowledge doesn’t make me happy. I roll to my feet, easy-like, and extend a hand to the kid. He stares at it for a long second, like he’s reading my fortune, before he takes hold.

  “Come on, let’s get you home.”

  His grip spasms tighter. “No, we’re going to get my brother.”

  • • • •

  The kid keeps yapping as we stroll through South Norwood, an inventory of classroom drama, personal projects, and batteries. Everything but the man he wants dead. I have slightly better luck getting him to talk about his brother (four years old, likes plush sharks and pepperoni, gets too much attention) and his biological dad (works too much, sees him too little). His mom and stepdad? Nada.

  We pick up his brother about two miles from his school, a sweet-faced boy with dirty-blond hair and a thing for hugs. He doesn’t hesitate when I stretch out my arms to collect him, crashing into me like a Russian gangster’s scarred-over fist. The boy, James, shrieks his joy when I scoop him into the air.

  “So, what’s yours?”

  The kid looks up, expectant, his hand still caged in mine.

  “Your name?” I prompt.

  “Abel.”

  “Abel,” I repeat, weighing the word on my tongue. “Abel. Good to meet you, Abel.”

  He replies with a curt nod.

  We keep walking, him, his brother, and me, a dysfunctional crew if you ever saw one. Slowly, the road begins to lose its suburban charm, the park giving way to squalor and shops, all hunkered together like they’re afraid of the morning frost. The pavement cracks, grows pockmarked with wadded food wrappers and empty beer bottles. Bars spring up along the windows like a crop of rusty ribs. A hard neighborhood. Not the worst I’d seen, but definitely no tourist town.

  “Right here.” Abel points down a turning.

  I oblige, James still wedged against my chest, his head drooping. And—

  saltwater and silt and dead, drowned things, the too-sweet stink of meat rotting in clean muscle, old blood, cold dirt—

  “Abel?” A new voice.

  I blink.

  My vision adjusts. There’s a man in front of us, stocky, belligerent, face too wide, brow too simian. He hits me with an appraising stare.

  “So you’re the stepdad.”

  I feel the kid’s hand tighten around my palm.

  salt, slithering decay, the contractions of a leviathan’s ventricles, like the chanting of monks in the deep.

  “Who you?”

  “A friend.”

  “Friend’s not good enough, mate.” He rakes his gaze over my tall frame, his mouth pursing. “I need more information than that.”

  I don’t quite manage to conceal the grin, or the surge of irritation. Ignoring everything else, McKinsey’s as abrasive as I’d imagined he would be. Even if he were perfectly human, I’d still have disliked him.

  “A friend”—I punctuate the word with a growl—“who has spoken to your fiancée about certain important things. A friend who is concerned about the way you’re raising these children and—”

  “You from the authorities then?” He pronounces the word as “au’hori’es,” with a sharp emphasis on the bit concerning those hardworking damsels of the evening.

  “In a fashion.”

  He looks me over again with those porcine eyes, no doubt tabulating his chances in a fight. “Look more like a pervert to me.”

  “Funny you’d be the one to say that.”

  He goes on the offensive immediately, flexes his shoulders wide, takes a step forward, chin tipped up in challenge. The smell is overwhelming. It crawls through my nose, my pores, my mouth, putrid and wet, like fish forgotten in the sun.

  “What’d you say, muppet?”

  “What do you think I said?”

  Against my chest, James stirs, fingers digging into my coat. He doesn’t turn around. I cock a grin at the ass, and try not to think of blood nearly congealed, spilling droplet by droplet onto the limestone floor, singing counterpoint to a hymn I used to know like the beating of my pulse.

  The man changes tack. “Just what do you think you’re doing to my boys?”

  “Taking them home.”

  “Your home?” Under his jawline, eyelids palpitate like gills.

  Gela Vt’ yah fhma’a

  “I’ve got to hand it to you, bub.” I slide James back down to the ground and push the kids behind me. They cluster behind my legs, one for each limb. I straighten, and the man leans back. “I don’t know many guys who’d immediately project themselves on strangers.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” That lizard stare again, dumb and animal and vicious.

  I bare my teeth. Under skin and sinew, something rouses itself, unknotting joint by joint by joint. Shlock. Shlock. Shlock. Under the surface, bones reknit and sharpen, become bladed with purpose. I shift my stance, trying to make room for new edges being nursed under the epidermis. “What do you think I mean?”

  He doesn’t answer. Instead, he drops to a crouch and reaches out big, work-coarsened hands.

  “Abel, James. Come here.”

  “No,” Abel growls.

  “Abel.”

  “I don’t want to go with you!”

  “Come on, Abel. You don’t want to make your mummy worried, now, do you?”

  “Mummy” proves to be the magic word. Both kids seize up, Abel practically digging his nails through my trousers. James emerges first, face ruddy with guilt. He stands limp as he lets the man gather him up like a lump of washing. Abel holds out for a few seconds longer, but he gives in at the end, making a strangled noise before he stomps forward, hands bunched into fists. I don’t stop them. There’s no bull in the world that’d stand with this pound-shop gumshoe if I got in between parent and kids. Not right now, at least. Not without evidence.

  The man grins, victorious, smug as a cat with a mouthful of canary. Without a word, he turns to leave, a paw rested on Abel’s mess of curls. The kid shoots me a fierce, wordless glare before he slouches down the walkway, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the cold and the susurrus of flesh reassembling, a hiss like the crash of the surf.

  • • • •

  The hardest part about being a P.I. is the stakeouts. Hours of motionless scrutiny broken up by mouthfuls of bilgewater coffee and stale fried dough, a stillness that eats at the mind until it gibbers for stimuli or sleep, whichever comes first.

  Luckily for me, I don’t really need either.

  I tap my cigarette against the outside of the car, raining ash on the road. Something about the encounter with the stepdad felt off. To be fair, the whole case was a nightmare, but there was something about that meeting in particular, something about the interaction that kept itching at the back of my skull. I’d spent the entire night mapping it out, trying to exhume the logic in my own unease, but I couldn’t work it out.

  I’d briefly considered the possibility that the kid was setting me up. But those eyes wouldn’t lie. He hated his stepfather, hated him like Hitler hated the face in the mirror. That much was clear. He wouldn’t be working with the mook. There was no way.

  So, what then?

  I chew on the inside of my cheek. I can’t abide mysteries. Give me something to punch any day of the week, something clean. An alcoholic lout who can’t keep his mitts to himself, a cheating wife. Simple, human troubles, you know what I’m saying? I’d take those any time, any hour. This shit, though?

  I flick my eyes to the glove compartment. Not for the first time, I consider giving the kid a refund. I’d gotten into the detective business to escape the deepwater blues, from the songs that squirm in your veins like worms. Sure, I’d go for an easy job, sometimes, ice a monster that had gotten too big for his bed. But this?


  I take another drag from my cigarette. A few hours after lunchtime, the bird emerges, a tote on each elbow, blond hair squeezed into a scraggly bun. She doesn’t wear any makeup, which should be a surprise, given the bruises flowering along her jaw. But I’m not surprised. Her face is haggard, worn through. This isn’t the first time he’s laid into her like this.

  I slip out of the car as she minces down the pavement, kitten heels clicking on the stone, and keep my distance until she makes the left toward their neighborhood Tesco. Then, I close in, quiet.

  “Hey, toots.”

  She gives a startled, strangled scream. Jumps back about a foot, nearly colliding with a lamppost. “Are you following me?”

  “No, I just happened to be in the area for some bubble and squeak.”

  “What—”

  “We need to talk.”

  She retreats another step, eyes going round. I can see she’s thinking about calling for help, terror melting on her tongue like ice. But we both know that no one’s going to stop. Not for her.

  “No.” Her voice shakes.

  “You keep saying no like you have a choice here. You don’t.” I glide forward, palms out, trying to look harmless while still making a point.

  It doesn’t work. The broad shudders and shrinks away, a little further, shrinking into herself. An old man hustles past us, but as expected, he doesn’t step in. And why should he? Domestic altercations are a dime a dozen. The doll notices too, and I watch her throat work as she swallows, the skin gray and rough.

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Too bad.” I glance down at my wrist, tap my watch. “We’re going to talk. And since it’s just about time for tea, we’ll do it over something to eat.”

  • • • •

  The café the bird picks isn’t so much a place for light bites as it is a diner, complete with plastic furniture and a bored-looking waitress in a frilly apron. The miasma of burnt bacon clings tightly to the air.

  “Wot can I get you?” she demands, in between chomping on an unlit cigarette.

  “Full English for me and some filter coffee,” I say.