by Jack Ketchum
Wish my family didn't live on the other side of the country. Sure, they're probably all dead or mutants, but it would still be nice to see them, if only for a brief visit.
Time for more antiseptic. Joy.
Almost out of it.
***
I've got to admit, I didn't expect to end up in a cage. Dead, maybe. Mutated, sure. Caged? Nope.
Thing is, there's something much worse out there than the mutants. Namely, a band of paranoid survivors, led by this insane gentleman named Sunshine, who are trying to rule this new world. I saw three of them walking down the sidewalk and I thought, hey, potential source of shoulder medicine! Having learned from my previous mistake, I took a deep breath, composed myself, and politely stepped into their path and introduced myself.
I remember a big wooden club swinging at my head, but the other details of the encounter are blurry.
Woke up with my hands and feet duct-taped together in a school gymnasium. About twenty other people were there playing cards and smoking cigarettes and just hanging out. The walls were lined with cots. I seemed to be the only prisoner.
Sunshine stood over me, his wild hair and facial scars a weird contrast to his serene expression. He ran his finger over my lips and asked "Are you one of them?"
"Do I look like one of them?"
Helpful hint: Sunshine and his band of followers are not admirers of sarcasm. When I woke up again, I was in a wooden cage in a classroom, and the rest of my body hurt even more than my shoulder. The posters on the walls indicated that it was a history teacher's classroom, which added an extra dimension of terror to my nightmare.
A little kid, maybe twelve, was crouched outside of my cage. "Got any aspirin?" I asked him.
He shook his head.
"Any chance you'll let me out?"
He shook his head again.
"Could you go get a grown-up so I can talk to them?"
He grinned. "I'm a grown-up now. I even get first pick."
"Of what?"
"Of what I eat."
I had the very unnerving sensation that this conversation was going to move in a cannibalism-themed direction, but I tried to play stupid to give myself a couple more moments of mental health. "What do you mean?"
"You're food. We're going to eat you for dinner tonight."
"I see." My mental health status dropped a few notches.
"Gotta cut off the bad parts first, though," he said, pointing to my arm.
***
My natural optimism faltered a bit after they duct taped me to the desk. I tried to let a smile be my umbrella, but it wasn't working. Though I explained to them all the ways in which their actions were poor ethical decisions, I wasn't being particularly coherent and my message didn't really get across.
Sunshine held a lighter flame underneath a knife that didn't look anywhere near sharp enough to do an efficient job.
I wept.
He began the unpleasant process. It took me a long time to pass out. With a better knife, I probably could've done the job myself. Live and learn.
***
The tile floor under my cage is spotted with blood. Though they cauterized the stump, it's still leaking a little.
I wonder what they did with my arm?
Apparently I get one more day to live before I become brunch. They're still finishing off their last batch of meat. The little kid—Toby—loves to sit outside my cage, licking his lips and rubbing his belly in an exaggerated manner.
I'm almost delirious from lack of sleep. Toby threw stuff at me all night. He'd get real close to the cage, and I kept trying to thrust my good arm through the wooden bars and grab him, but he always kept himself just out of reach.
Well, not always. I did get his collar once. He shrieked for help, and a couple of Sunshine's nutcase crew came in, pulled him free, and then beat the crap out of me.
Tenderizing me.
So this is how it ends. Tormented by a little brat, missing an arm, and about to become dinner.
I had a pretty good life before the plague.
The apocalypse sucks.
No...I'm not going to let these bastards take away my happy disposition. Screw 'em. I'll get out of this, somehow. Optimism. Optimism is the key. Nobody ever got anywhere with a can't-do attitude.
They can take away my freedom. They can take away my arm. They can take away my life. But they won't take away my smile until they eat my lips.
I try to smile. My lips are swollen from the beating and it hurts too much, so I abandon the idea.
***
I hear footsteps in the darkness.
They're coming for me.
***
Sunshine is a charismatic leader, with devoted followers who will obey his every command, even if it means marching to their death. However, the guy isn't very good at keeping everybody in the loop regarding crucial pieces of information.
Such as, my severed arm was for disposal. Not for adding to the soup.
A lot of people got really foamy-mouthed that night, and they started to prey on each other. They grabbed Toby and pulled him in half, right in front of me. I wanted to applaud, but...well, you know...
A couple of them tried to get into the cage. It took a while, but they finally broke the lock. I scooted past them and fled out of the classroom and down the hallway, where there was carnage galore.
It was disgusting, but it was a good kind of disgusting, y'know?
I saw what I think was Sunshine in a few chunks on the gymnasium floor. Not completely certain—he wasn't easy to recognize. The chin looked familiar, though.
I found a gun next to a body that was missing a few feet of intestine. Fully loaded. It was empty by the time I got out of the school, but I made it to the exit unscathed.
I ran home, went to sleep, and woke up feeling refreshed. Though I'm not suggesting that my stump wasn't sore, it was definitely a more pleasant feeling than being devoured. One arm was still one more arm than I would've had if that rotten little brat had gotten his way.
After a few days of relaxation, the swelling went down, and I could smile again.
***
I'm wiser now. When you think about it, this whole thing was a learning experience. I'm no longer that innocent guy breaking pots. I'm not saying I wouldn't rather have my arm back, but all things considered, I think this was good for me.
Again, people need to quit their bellyaching. The apocalypse ain't so bad.
—Monica J. O'Rourke
Monica J. O'Rourke has published more than one hundred short stories in magazines such as Postscripts, Nasty Piece of Work, Fangoria, Nemonymous, and Brutarian, and anthologies including The Mammoth Book of the Kama Sutra, These Guns for Hire, and Darkness Rising. She is the co-author of Poisoning Eros I and II with Wrath James White, Suffer the Flesh, and the collection Experiments in Human Nature. She works as a freelance editor, proofreader, and book coach. Her website is an ongoing and seemingly endless work in progress, so find her on www.facebook.com/MonicaJORourke in the meantime.
—The Gift
By Monica J. O'Rourke
The sky was lonely somehow, and beneath its bondi blueness the old man sat, absorbing the vitamin D and loneliness and believing himself one with nature. The sky held a promise of hope, a commune with God through the vast greatness and splendor that was the universe, the clouds and winged creatures and wind, the very sky itself. Somehow he was in touch, he knew. Somehow he could visualize God's greatness through the crest of impossibly tall trees.
But the visit was fleeting, the understanding of what was being proffered equally elusive. Nothing lasted these days: not the retention of understanding, not the thought itself. But he enjoyed each moment as they happened and wondered how long they would last, and later would wonder where they had gone. But in the moment, he greedily soaked them up and reveled in them.
"Let's go, Dad." Kelly's son cleaned the fast food containers off the picnic table and dropped them in the trash.
"Already?"
"Jesus, Dad," he called over his shoulder. "Why're you just sitting there? Let's go."
***
Kelly shared a room with another old man named Bob, and Bob's family never came to visit, never took him for car rides out to the country or bought him vanilla ice cream cones with sprinkles or took him to ballgames at Yankee Stadium. Jennie used to do these things all the time, he thought. Maybe. He seemed to recall doing these things, seemed to recall movies and ballgames and a wife who was once alive, and he was sure he'd loved her very much. Maybe. Bob didn't have anything like that in his life. Bob spent his days rocking in a chair that wasn't a rocking chair, drooling into a bib that was usually just the front of his polo shirt. The old man would spend a stupid amount of time watching Bob do much of nothing, but it helped pass the time. And Bob always lost when they played gin rummy or backgammon.
"Joseph drove me out to the country yesterday," the old man told Bob. Bob, as usual, didn't respond.
"That was last month, Mr. West," the nurse sponge-bathing Bob told him.
"Yes, of course," the old man replied and wondered what the nurse was talking about.
That night the old man dreamt about the countryside, about the blades of grass tickling his toes when he ran across the field hand-in-hand with Jennie. He dreamt the sky was beckoning, billowing clouds forming fingers, like the fingers of God, pointing down from the heavens, though he later wondered whether he'd left the TV on. But during the dream he waited for a message. Later he figured the message had been in code, and he worked tirelessly trying to decipher it. While awake. While asleep.
God visited him again in his dreams and explained the message. But the following morning he couldn't remember what God had said. Something about the woods, something about…he sighed. He couldn't remember.
"God talked to me," he told Bob, who responded by blowing a spit bubble.
The old man wandered through the garden, a garden comprised mostly of white-painted rocks and badly pulled weeds, an overgrowth of brambles amid clumps of daisies and daffodils struggling for breath. Not enough staff he was told when he asked why someone couldn't maintain it better. They offered him the job but laughed at him before he could accept.
God was silent during the day, the old man discovered, though he seemed awfully chatty at night. The old man hoped that wandering through what might pass as nature—in this pitiful section of stone and gravel in this sad somewhere-part of the Bronx he called home—might make him more receptive to God's message. God seems like a nature freak, the old man thought, imagining an ancient man in flowing white robes, ZZ Top beard, and Birkenstocks, throwing back granola by the fistful.
But the old man realized, when the voice came again, that it didn't belong to God. It belonged to the sky.
"Why are you talking to me?" the old man asked. "Where's God?"
God loves you, the sky replied, but he doesn't have time for your crap. The sky whispered in the old man's ear the secrets of the universe but made him promise not to tell. The secrets are a gift, the sky told him, but they're your gift.
The old man considered that a pretty lousy gift, though he had no one to share it with anyway. His son, Joseph, had been here yesterday and yesterday and yesterday and it was always yesterday and never tomorrow. And Bob still wasn't much of a conversationalist, so why bother?
Then the sky whispered to the old man again, and the old man nodded. The sky was wise. The sky was ancient and ethereal and knew things. The old man believed the sky would lead him, though he couldn't imagine where. He once knew but couldn't bring the thought up. So close to grasping it so often, but its ephemeral quality was like mist slipping through his mind. Like trying to grasp quicksilver, though he wondered why anyone would try. Quicksilver was toxic.
Hold my hand, the sky said, and follow me into eternity, and the old man thought the sky had lost its mind.
"You have no hand!" he cried and was shushed by a chorus of nurses and physical therapists.
"Other clients are trying to rest, Mr. West."
"You have no hand," the old man whispered. "How can I grab your hand when you don't have one?" The old man drew his fingers down his chin and pondered his own question.
Metaphor, my friend, the sky responded.
The old man didn't understand what the sky meant. But he thought about it and tried to understand. A little while later he forgot what the sky had said, and this was upsetting for a moment until he forgot he'd forgotten.
When he asked a nurse where Jennie was, why she hadn't come to visit in a long time, he was told Jennie had died. He began to cry. "Why didn't I go to her funeral?" he asked and was told she had died five years earlier.
And the next day they had the same conversation, and the day after that until the old man could barely remember he'd been married.
Eternity, the sky said, is eternal. And it's another gift, but not for everyone.
"Who gets the gift then?"
Whoever wants it.
"I want it!"
Do you?
"Yes!"
Why?
"I want to live forever!"
Then you don't understand the gift.
"You," the old man said after grinding his teeth, "are very stupid."
The sky was silent after that for a long time, days or weeks or months, the old man was unsure. But the sky remained silent after that conversation, and the old man was upset and felt lonely again.
"Why won't you talk to me?" the old man howled, baying at the descending slip of moon while standing in the center of his weed garden.
You haven't asked me anything, the sky said.
"Oh." The old man shrugged. "When can I have my gift?"
That much you remember. The wind laughed softly. You already have it, my friend.
The old man huffed and shuffled out of the garden, back toward the building. There was no gift. The sky was trying to trick him, confuse him. The sky offered empty promises, and the old man was sick of it all. He wondered if he'd missed dinner and wondered if he'd missed his medication. Then he wondered if he even took medication.
Take my hand, the sky said, and the wind reached down to help, breathed against the old man in an effort to move him along. The trees danced and bowed in the wind, dipping their branches forward to help him along. The rocks wanted to help as well but they were rather useless.
"I don't understand. What do you want from me?" Tears rolled down the old man's cheeks, but he didn't wipe them away. He had forgotten how to cry and didn't know what to do with the wetness.
"I can't remember her face," he sobbed and then tried to recall her name. "Why can't I remember?"
The sky caressed the old man's cheek. You've given me something wonderful, the sky said. You've shared your grief with me. Your loneliness. You have given me a gift that will last an eternity. I will be forever grateful.
And with that the sky was gone, replaced by a starless night, and even the moon refused to return.
The old man felt dejected and climbed the steps to the building's entrance. But no matter how many times he tried the knob or rang the bell, he remained on the wrong side of the door. He wrapped his arms around his shivering body.
This way, the grass cried, tiny shrill voices like parakeets. Thisway-thisway-thisway.
The old man was reluctant to listen to the orders of blades of grass. But he had listened to the sky, so why not?
He followed their voices until they grew silent, and he found himself deep within the black woods, shrouded by mossy trees and dense underbrush. A fallen log provided the short respite he needed. His left hip cursed him and attempted to strangle his sciatic nerve.
The sky pulled him to his feet and pushed him gently into a field. The old man's protesting hip and joints grew silent. He walked steadily ahead without signs of a limp or ho
bble.
My gift to you, my friend.
Jennie ran to him and leapt into the old man's arms, arms strong and pain free, arms that could hold her tightly and without fear of end. They ran hand in hand and disappeared into a copse of shaded oaks. The old man felt good, felt energized and free, as if the secrets of the universe had been revealed to him.
And he could remember.
—Taylor Grant
Taylor Grant is a professional screenwriter, filmmaker, author, actor and award-winning copywriter. He has written for both animated and live action TV series, as well as acclaimed music videos for some of the biggest music acts in the world.
Grant has written horror, action and sci-fi feature scripts for studios such as Imagine Entertainment, Universal Studios, and Lions Gate Entertainment. Most recently, he wrote and directed a psychological thriller entitled The Muse, currently on the film festival circuit. More of Grant's fiction can be found in the horror anthology Box of Delights from Aeon Press, featuring stories by award-winning authors such as Steve Rasnic Tem, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Mike Resnick, the literary anthology Stories from a Holiday Heart, the May 2012 issue of Terror Tales from Rainfall Books, and the April 2012 release of A Feast of Frights from The Horror Zine, featuring legendary horror authors such as Graham Masterson, Joe R. Lansdale, Simon Clark, and Ed Gorman.
Grant's next feature film, a thriller set in the Arizona desert, is currently in active development and he is also hard at work on his first collection of short stories, which he plans to publish in 2013.
You can find out more about Taylor Grant and contact him at www.taylorgrant.com
—The Silent Ones
By Taylor Grant
The phenomenon was like a cancerous growth: imperceptible at first, yet silently spreading with lethal intensity. The first sign of something amiss was a noticeable lack of mail being delivered over the course of several months. One day it simply occurred to me that my mailbox was empty more often than not. Even local ads and flyers had stopped. I checked with the post office several times but they always had my correct name and address on file. Although each time I spoke with them it seemed to take them a little longer to find it.