by Anthology
Ruhan says, “I love you, Kata. I know that’s crazy. But I do. You never once asked me why I was sentenced to this ship. You always made me feel like I was a real person. An innocent man. A free man.”
My throat tightens. If I had tears, I would cry. “You’ve been a good friend, Ruhan.”
I hear scratchy, disjointed sounds of screaming, but it’s not Ruhan, it’s someone else.
“Oh shit,” Ruhan says. “CJ’s killing CM. I knew it. He’s coming after me next. Jesus!”
Inside me, desperation wells up, one part born of an urgent need to rescue Ruhan, and another born of a craving to feed. I can’t deal with it. I cry out and slam my fists against the door.
Ruhan says, “If I open the door, if I go in there with you, will you kill me, Kata?”
I’m shocked once again, not by his question but by this news. “You can open the door?”
“I found the code. It wasn’t easy. Years of searching. I thought maybe, someday…”
I want to answer his question with a no, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to control myself. “Ruhan, I don’t know what I’ll do. The wasp, he—”
Ruhan is yelling now, and suddenly the door slides open. Warm air rushes in, with terrible smells—the odor of blood and shit, of fear. Ruhan stares at me, wide eyed, and the color drains from his face. “Oh God,” he says, “You are an alien.”
I realize with a jolt of astonishment how shocking my appearance must be. Until this very moment I never understood, but now I do—now that I see myself as Ruhan sees me for the first time. I’ve been remade—the alien has recreated me in his image, so slowly and so minutely that I simply accepted the changes without question. But more than adapting my body to carry his seed, I’m now perfectly adapted for life on this new planet, the alien’s home world. He never had any intention of letting me die. He’ll keep me with him, and I’ll live in his world, as though I belong there.
I smile ruefully and say, “I’m not. I’m still me. Am I so awful?”
He shakes his head, breathing hard. “I’d rather die by your hand.”
I’m not sure why he says that, and I don’t believe him.
From the corridor behind Ruhan, I hear someone yelling. I know it must be CJ. Here’s my chance. I rush toward Ruhan, who screams when I grab him, but I merely fling him aside and make my way out the door. I’m filled with anger and a need for vengeance. But I’m also hungry. CJ will get what he deserves.
I sprint down the corridor and turn a corner, almost slamming into him. CJ stumbles back at the sight of me, his eyes wide and full of fear. He’s splattered with blood. It drips off his gray beard and runs down his arms. The iron bar he’s gripping falls to the floor with an echoing clatter, and he runs, but I catch him with little effort.
“Don’t kill me, please!” he pleads, but I must. I throw him to the floor, rip out his throat and pry him open like a clam with a strength I’d forgotten I possessed. Hungrily I feed, finding everything I need by instinct. When I’m finished I get up and look for Ruhan.
I find him cowering in a corner of my room. He knows there’s no use hiding from me. I must be a sight now, blue, naked, and smeared with blood. For the first time that I can remember, I feel self-conscious. I don’t want him to see me this way. And I don’t want him to be afraid of me. “Do you still love me, Ruhan?” I ask, almost as a joke, a feeble attempt to break through his terror.
He’s shaking; breathing in short, shallow puffs. As I approach him, the crotch of his trousers grows dark with a wet stain. “I don’t want to die,” he says.
“I didn’t think so.” I grab him by the wrist and pull him up. “Where’s the escape pod?”
“Two levels down.”
“Take me there.”
We hurry down metal steps and along dingy corridors until we reach a small storage bay. Ruhan points to a door. “There.”
“Get in,” I tell him.
He stares at me, trembling, unbelieving. “No, Kata, I can’t do this.” He thinks I’m giving up my chance of escape for him. He doesn’t understand the real reason I’m putting him in the pod.
“You have to, Ruhan.”
He shakes his head firmly. “I won’t make it.”
He’s made it this far. I haven’t killed him yet. Perhaps the wasp has done this for me. I don’t know. But I’m sure it’s a short reprieve. Already I feel the beginnings of need blooming in my gut. “You might,” I tell him. “But if you stay here with me, you most definitely won’t make it.”
Ruhan’s eyes grow wide, and then soften. “What about you, Kata?” he asks. “Do you want to die so badly?”
“Yes. But I won’t.” I know what my destiny will be. The ship may crash. But I’ll live because the wasp will keep me alive, just as he has for 900 years. I’ll emerge unscathed.
Ruhan looks at my swollen belly, then at my face. I see a new strength in his eyes. He relaxes, smiles. Then, without hesitation, he pulls me into his arms and holds me tightly. It’s the first prolonged human touch I’ve felt in hundreds of years. I cry; my body shakes with deep sobs, but no tears. Ruhan takes my face in his hands and searches my eyes. “You aren’t alien, osita,” he says. “I was wrong. Just like you said, you’re still you.” He wipes the blood from my lips and kisses me. Then he turns and keys in the code to the escape pod.
I watch as he climbs in. The door closes and seals shut with a hiss.
“See you on the surface,” I tell him, even though I know he doesn’t hear me.
Rafaela F. Ferraz
https://twitter.com/RafaelaWrites
The Lady of the House of Mirrors(Novelette)
by Rafaela F. Ferraz
Originally published by Lethe Press
The order was simple, and it arrived written in golden ink over pale pink, thick paper with a vague scent of roses. Rosie smiled at the coincidence, that a local legend should use perfume that referenced her own name in a professional card, but roses were common—unlike the job she was being commissioned for, she thought.
She folded the note into a small square, perfect to fit in her breast pocket, and slid into the shoulder strap of her tool bag. Slumped over a work table, Theo, her copper-headed assistant, sanded the last imperfections out of a piece of clay where he, too, had seen a doll head. He could watch the shop for a couple of hours, but as a reminder, she still gave him a soft pat on the shoulder before crossing the threshold of their discreet and picturesque door—Varadys Automata, Dolls For Dreamers—and stepping into a winter so harsh it’d taken her twelve years to get used to. Her eyes took a second to adjust to the silvery winter air, but a cab trip later, she was back inside—though the colors no longer matched the earth tones of doll parts, and instead the powdered shades of make-up and expensive perfume.
“Miss V, I presume?”
The voice belonged to a butler, an old man with dark, delicate hands that reached out to take her coat. She shed it without a second thought, and followed the man’s crooked back through halls of mirrors into a large, flaky ballroom. The blinds were only partially pulled, letting in blades of late afternoon light, and the fireplace was lit on the furthest corner of the room. On either side, an armchair, and on one of them, a delicate hand on an armrest.
The woman looked towards the door and her hair unraveled from behind her ear.
“You can leave, Carter. Thank you.” The hand curled into a wave. “Come closer, Miss. Please don’t be shy.”
Rosie had never been shy. Not as a child, even less as an adult. Strangers posed no threat when you’d grown up surrounded by the crème de la crème of the underground. She walked up to the fireplace, crude work boots echoing against the floorboards until she stepped on the carpet. The woman was young, and the fire brought out the determination in her dark complexion and soft gray eyes, lined with precise needles of black kohl. Her face was made-up, an invention, a mask of power that didn’t slip even when she had to look up from her disadvantageous sitting position, and meet Rosie’s stare. She controlled the room with an aura
so strong it made Rosie’s heart wither and wilt.
“Please sit. We have a lot to discuss.”
Her only choice was the second armchair, and so she sat with eyes fixed on the fire ahead. If she moved she would surely pop a shirt button, or worse, disturb the languor that furnished the room. Words flew in the streets, and if one walked with ears perked high enough, they’d be able to catch them—the lady of the house of mirrors, was how they called her current customer. A poor thing, delicate and faint, a butterfly in her cocoon, with skin so sensitive to the sun that mere exposure would make her pass out, or inflame her skin until the tender, bulbous tumors rendered her unrecognizable, or dead, even—depending on whose words one took for granted on the matter.
“May I offer you a drink, Miss…?” Her voice was low, in that way of people who were sure even their whispers rose to the skies. “…excuse me, is it Varadys? Like the old man?”
“No, ma’am, I…” Rosie’s voice, though, was low in that way of people whose lips often failed to communicate the words so carefully aligned in their minds. “…I have taken up his business, but we are not related. You may call me Rose. And thank you for the offer, but I’d rather not…drink.” She didn’t add that while she wasn’t against voluntary intoxication, she didn’t trust anyone enough to let them fill her glass.
“Very well.” She took a careful sip from whatever glittering liquid filled the glass by her side, and reset it on the circle of condensation it had left on the surface of the table. Her nails, dark red, were filed to elegant points. “Miss Rose, then. May I ask why you’ve taken up his business if you are not related? You’re not from here, clearly.” She held out her fingers, gesturing towards Rosie’s self-conscious head.”
“I moved here when I was young. My family knew Mr. Varadys, and when the time came for them to take on a complicated job opportunity, they left me here to hone my…” She struggled to find a good way to word it, a small lie with which she could speak the truth. “…craft skills.”
The lady let out a small smile, as if the revelation pleased her.
“We have both been left aside by our families, then.”
“There were attempts to recover me afterwards, but by then I’d convinced myself I belonged here.” Here, where the underground has taken over the surface and no one seems to notice.
The lady held her chin on her dainty fingers and murderous nails, welltended lips pursing in thought.
“Wise decision. I wouldn’t have met you otherwise.”
That small line delivered the final blow, and Rosie found herself growing uncomfortable.
“If I may be bold, ma’am…why have you called me here?”
“Your old employer was the best in the business, and you take after him. The truth is, Miss, I need something done.” Silence dragged on, while the lady appeared to rethink her words. “Someone, in fact. I want a companion piece, a machine that acts and looks human in every way…to keep me company, you understand, since nobody else seems up to the task.”
She didn’t doubt it. What she doubted, though, was her own ability to build such a thing. She knew herself incapable—even if there was little she had to consider on a rational level, no matter the assignment. Most mechanisms simply made themselves known to her, and in a trance, she built them to the image seared into her brain. Injecting life, a ghost into the machine wasn’t hard—it was life force, and like everything else in a world of labeled packages and weighted parcels, it could be harnessed and collected, distilled from blood and sweat, cooked from skin cells and forgotten hairs. There was method to what others saw only as madness—but she had no interest in showing it to them.
The lady had kept on talking. Rosie hadn’t noticed.
“…and I would want it to be polite and courteous, and to obey my every whim.”
“Why don’t you just hire someone?” It was an uncomfortable question, but Rosie had grown to accept that people would sell just about anything: their time, the skin off their backs, the arch of their spines when pleasure hit.
“I don’t believe in that sort of exchange, Miss Rose. It’s not a fair trade, money for emotions, or in this case, the lack thereof. All people have emotions, even if they try their hardest to contain them, and I’m not keen on having to consider a second sentient being under this roof.” She brought her glass up, as if proposing a toast. “I’m a princess in a tower, Miss, prepared to deal with no emotions but my own.”
And yet, Rosie’s assistant had caught plenty of words on the street about her nighttime visitors.
“I have stated my wishes, Miss, and I know you are the person to accomplish them. Your fame precedes you, as they say. Your skills…. The dolls you’ve made for the children of the rich and powerful. Dolls that move in the night. Dolls that crawl and walk and brawl…. Dolls that think, even?”
Rosie would rather not speak of the dolls. She’d kept the pieces of her first, built by Varadys before she’d met him, stacked inside a safe in a corner of the shop, and Theo’s horrified eyes had been enough to prove that he, too, could hear the rattling.
“What kind of…look are you interested in?”
“Something that looks, and acts, real will suffice. Gender or appearance details are irrelevant.”
“And…anatomical details?”
The lady gave her a sly smile over the rim of her glass.
“Do you think I need a sexual aid, Miss?”
She didn’t reply. She’d realized, early in life, that there was no point trying to understand people’s inner desires from the curl of their pulse, or the whiteness of the teeth they bared in a casual smile.
The order was simple, then. A companion piece. A robot. A mechanical person that wouldn’t stand out in a decayed palace where the ink was gold and the letters smelled of roses.
***
She sat at the drawing board the following afternoon, behind the counter of the shop she owned, even though she’d never bothered to remove the name of her mentor from the sign. Varadys Automata, that was what it said, and she was just Miss V, to most people. Petite, head a mess of golden thread, hands elegant but calloused—like a thief’s. Monsieur Varadys had been dead for five years, and she kept his ashes in a metal urn, sculpted to the approximate shape of his skull while he’d been alive to approve it. She’d placed him above the fireplace, as a reminder—you might be alone now, Rosie, but I’ve left you big shoes to fill.
In her drawing pad, lines at the end of her pencil took the shape of what she assumed must be a good-looking person. She started with the hardest option, a boy’s face. Boys were difficult. She could lay out the whole span of the universe, examine it with a loupe of the highest quality, and return without finding more than one to her liking. She’d loved a boy, once. To think of it, herself a precocious eight-year old, and he a dreamer selling himself for wings. Ten more years, and she would have built him a pair, sturdy enough to escape. His features found their way into the blank paper and she didn’t fight them. Dark skin, wavy hair, blue-green eyes. He wore an eyepatch, and his body was covered in scars.
At noon, the door struck the chime hanging from above, and Theo walked in with winter on his back. Elegant glasses and a penchant for cravats that went a little too tight around his throat—she’d never asked, he’d never told—she supposed he was good-looking too, if only a little less authentic, if only a little more conscious of his own appeal. Theo was her second assistant in five years, since she’d taken over the shop. The first one had been a girl, but Rosie had found herself falling for her pronounced Cupid’s bow and the way her fingers moved when she adjusted the legs of the tin dolls on the shelves. There was something about femininity that drew her in. Something about the way some women sprayed their perfumes and applied their powders, wrapping themselves in protective layers of scent and color, refusing the crude touch of the same air that enveloped common mortals. The women in her childhood had been that way too—tall and proud, self-assured, knuckles white over the reins that drew people, and only the
right people into their lives, puppets on a string, choreographed to perfection by the hands that had once rocked her to sleep.
“Myers paid ahead, two dolls to be delivered next month at the townhouse…” Theo flipped through his notes as he delved further into the shop, reaching ahead of his own steps to open the hidden counter door, the final boundary that protected the half of the shop where she didn’t have to worry about presenting herself, too, as a doll ready to be sold. “…got a couple more orders, but nothing you’ll have to attend to in person.” He closed his notebook with a blunt sweep of his right hand, and removed his glasses to let them hang by a gold chain at his neck. “But now you must tell me. The lady. What did she want?”
She recounted the small meeting, and he nodded along, attentive, drinking her every word, peeking over her shoulder to analyze her half-conscious sketch with a slight frown. He recognized the subject, of course. Max, with his eye patch and his scars. As a rule, Rosie didn’t keep secrets.
“What are you thinking, then? We can’t build a robot that looks like a human. There’s no way we can recreate the skin, the texture…”
“Yes, that’s why we won’t.” She pushed her boot against the desk and slid backwards on the wheeled chair, stopping by the fireplace across the room. Theo sidestepped to abandon the collision course, but there was a smile on his face and she understood she had to do everything in her power to keep him by her side. He’d play along, no matter what it was. He was curious and driven and excitable. And young. “We’ll use human parts. Real human parts. I want the best, so make sure you find someone worthy.”
Theo’s eyes were half-amused, half-cautious slits.
“Someone…dead, of course?”
“Freshly so, if possible.” She stood to her full—but tiny—height and made her way to the stairs, hoping that sleep would prove beneficial to her creativity. “It won’t be of any use if it starts decomposing, so see if you can find someone whom…whom will tell you about incoming dead.”