by Kage Baker
He knew he couldn’t bear it if he killed her. If she killed him, well, it wouldn’t matter.
The door opened and he looked up and saw her there, inside The Nineteen, almost naked. Her hands were all muffled, tied together and smothered in big thick home-made boxing gloves, and her mouth was gagged, she’d gagged it herself, to try to keep her from biting him.
The color drained from the room. The Eeeee was building up in the back of his throat; was trying to get out of her too. He could see her struggling to keep it back. But the other thing, the distance from the AggFac, that they’d worked on, built up through the fence, that was there too. He was able to look at her, like a man close to the sheet of flames in a forest fire—feeling the heat painfully but not quite so close he was burned yet.
She waited there for a moment, looking at his ropes. Then she started toward him. He tried to hold onto the memory of her touch, through the fence, the desire he felt for her, but the AggFac rose up. He writhed against the ropes.
She rushed him, her face reddening with AggFac, leaped on him, straddled him . . .
It was funny how the two feelings were there, right close, so distinct. Kill. Love. Almost intertwined. But not combined. Like, alternating. I just kept trying to drag my mind back to the love feeling. I looked in her eyes, saw her doing the same thing. Whole moments of close, intimate sanity, each one of those moments—impossible to explain how precious they were. Impossible.
The AggFac was still there but somehow, for a few moments, they were in a kind of blessed state of between-ness. She was there, so close, her breath on his cheek, the feeling of her closeness like a hot meal after a week of hunger.
Something in him, something that went to sleep during the Aggression Factor, quivered awake and brought color back to the room. Their eyes locked . . . hers cleared. She stopped shaking.
She stopped pounding at him . . . and slipped him into her, pumped her hips, working the gag out of her mouth, chewing the gloves off her hands so she could touch him.
There was intimacy; after so much privation, there was rapid mutual orgasm. Then he drew away from her, instinctively, as he came, and the AggFac returned, and he started thrashing against the ropes, trying to kill her, and her own Aggression broke free in response, and she started clawing at his eyes, snapping at his throat. She bit hard, she tore, his blood began to flow . . .
Some of his rope gave way. Enough.
He seized her by the throat and—just to get her hands from his eyes—threw her off him, to the floor. He tore loose as she scrambled to her feet, turned snarling to face him. He reached out with one hand, scooped up the chair, threw it at her—it felt light as cardboard to him in that moment. It struck her on the side of the head and she fell backwards, crying out. He still had ropes around his ankles and jerked them loose, looking for another weapon to kill her with. Stunned, confused, she crawled to the door . . .
She turned and stared dazedly at him. He hunkered, ready to spring at her. Panting, they stared at one another. She was within Nineteen. He wanted to kill her. But a second passed and he didn’t spring. Neither did she. The between-ness was in her eyes. But it wouldn’t last, not now.
“Run!” he managed, huskily.
But she hesitated . . .
And then the moment passed.
February 2, 2024.
I’ve met someone else. Her name is Elise. Pretty soon I’m going to tell her about the fence and the process. I’m going to try again. I have to try again.
There was that one second, when I was free, and didn’t attack. Seeing the humanness in her eyes, too, for a moment. It gave me hope. That one second could telescope out to a lifetime of forbearance.
Some day I’ll get control of it, and then I can be honest with Elise. And show her Brenda’s grave.
John Shirley is a prolific writer who has published over thirty novels and ten short-fiction collections. His most recent novel is Everything is Broken; his seminal cyberpunk A Song Called Youth trilogy of Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra, and Eclipse Corona was re-released as an omnibus in 2012. Shirley’s collections include the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Award-winning Black Butterflies and, most recently, In Extremis: The Most Extreme Stories of John Shirley. He also writes for screen (The Crow) and television. As a musician Shirley has fronted his own bands and written lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult and others.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Paul Tremblay for some great suggestions and, as always, to the editors who first published these stories.
“Pump Six” by Paolo Bacigalupi © 2008 Paolo Bacigalupi. First publication: Pump Six and Other Stories (Night Shade Books).
“The Books” by Kage Baker © 2010 Kage Baker. First publication: The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF, ed. Mike Ashley (Robinson).
“Chislehurst Messiah” by Lauren Beukes © 2011 Lauren Beukes. First publication: Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse, eds. Anne C. Perry & Jared (Jurassic London).
“The Disappeared” by Blake Butler © 2008 Blake Butler. First publication: New Ohio Review, Issue 3, Spring 2008.
“Beat Me Daddy (Eight to the Bar)” by Cory Doctorow © 2002 CorDoc-Co, Ltd. First publication: Black Gate, Summer 2002.
“The Adjudicator” by Brian Evenson © 2009 Brian Evenson. First publication: Fugue State (Coffee House Press).
“A Story, With Beans” by Steven Gould © 2009 Steven Gould. First publication: Analog, May 2009.
“The Fifth Star in the Southern Cross” by Margo Lanagan © 2008 Margo Lanagan. First publication: Dreaming Again, ed. Jack Dann (HarperCollins Publications).
“Horses” by Livia Llewellyn © 2009 Livia Llewellyn. First publication: Postscripts #18.
“True North” by M. J. Locke © 2011 M. J. Locke. First publication: Welcome to the Greenhouse, ed. Gordon Van Gelder (OR Books).
“After the Apocalypse” by Maureen F. McHugh © 2011 Maureen F. McHugh. First publication: After the Apocalypse (Small Beer Press).
“The Cecilia Paradox” by John Mantooth © 2012 John Mantooth. First publication: Shoebox Train Wreck (ChiZine Publications).
“Never, Never, Three Times Never” by Simon Morden © 2002, 2012 Simon Morden. First publication: Thy Kingdom Come (Lone Wolf Publications).
“Tumaki” by Nnedi Okorafor © 2010 Nnedi Okorafor. First publication: Without a Map by Mary Anne Mohanraj and Nnedi Okorafor (Aqueduct Press).
“Ragnarok” by Paul Park © 2011 Paul Park. First publication: Tor.com, April 17, 2011.
“The Egg Man” by Mary Rosenblum © 2008 Mary Rosenblum. First publication: Asimov’s, February 2008.
“Isolation Point, California” by John Shirley © 2007 John Shirley. First publication: Living Shadows: Stories New and Preowned (Prime Books).
“Goddess of Mercy” by Bruce Sterling © 2012 Bruce Sterling. First publication: The Future Is Japanese, eds. Nick Mamatas & Masumi Washington (Haikasoru).
“We Will Never Live in the Castle” by Paul Tremblay © 2011 Paul Tremblay. First publication: In the Mean Time (ChiZine Publications).
“Amaryllis” by Carrie Vaughn © 2010 Carrie Vaughn, LLC. First publication: Lightspeed, June 2010.