by Anthology
Officer Jones looks at me for a long moment, until a voice calls from the backyard. At once my stomach disappears; the smile on my face feels grotesque.
He tells me to wait while he goes outside. For the first time I see that while my floor is clean, my ceiling is full of webs, whole clouds of them in the corners. I should have left a stepladder out for them—and then I catch myself. There are no such things as dwarves, or little men with knives who eat Sloppy Joes and kill people.
There is only me. There has only ever been me.
“Ma’am, could you come out here?”
I shuffle across the kitchen as if marching towards a gallows. In the backyard the sun is bright, so bright I have to squint to make my way towards the two cops. I had expected them to be standing over the patch of bare dirt but it’s smooth, not a hint of a line anywhere. Instead the two cops are back by the fence.
Near the hole.
Officer Jones waves me forward and points down. “Do you have any relatives, or friends, with small children?”
Between us, among the tufts of crabgrass, are the prints of small, bare feet.
“No,” I whisper. No relatives, no friends. No neighbors, not anymore.
“Any neighborhood children that might have come in your yard? Maybe to get a ball?”
I shake my head. “No,” I say.
“Ah,” he says, but I can’t tell what the ah means. He looks significantly at the other cop. “We’re going to photograph these, and check your fence for fingerprints—we’ll be out here for a little while, okay?”
I nod. I don’t risk a smile.
“Good.” With a look around, he takes a step closer to me. “Look, why don’t you go back to bed and sleep it off,” he says in a low voice. “We can let ourselves out the side gate when we’re done.”
I nod again, a lurching motion, like my head is too heavy for my neck. “Okay,” I mumble.
As I trudge back to my house, still squinting against the glare, another cop, a woman, appears at the side gate. “I’ve read her her rights. Should we wait?”
“Go ahead and take her to the station. We’ve got some kids’ prints back here, might be a witness.”
I look back over my shoulder at Officer Jones. “You mean Theresa?” I ask, incredulous.
But he’s already turned away, studying the fence again.
“She was at her mother’s.” I rush back over to him, seizing his arm. “I saw her leave.”
“Ma’am,” he says firmly, looking down at my hand on his arm. Only when I let go does he continue, “We’re only taking her in for questioning.”
“But she’s the real victim here,” I insist. “He was beating her, everyone knew it.”
With a sigh he drops his head close to mine. “Ma’am, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. Both your neighbors had priors. Drunk and disorderly, creating a disturbance, assault and battery. Both of them.” He pats my arm. “I know it’s hard to think someone so close could be capable of murder. But if it’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years? We hardly know ourselves, much less anyone else.” He angles his head. “Now please. Go back inside and get some rest. We’ll be in touch if we have any further questions.”
But I don’t go back to bed. I go instead to my front door and step tentatively outside.
I have to see her.
Theresa is standing next to the patrol car, gesturing to her house while a cop gently restrains her; the more she gestures the more the police move close to her. Her hair is tangled and wild and even from where I stand I can see how her eyes flash, how her body is tense with fury.
She’s never looked so beautiful.
One of the paramedics props the door of her house open. They work the stretcher through the door, the sheet snug over Paul’s form. I try to imagine what he must look like but I can’t, I can’t conjure him in my mind.
“Who did it?”
I jump out of my skin at her shriek, flinching as her head swivels from one end of the block to the other, her eyes passing over me. “Which one of you killed him?” she cries. “You all hated him! None of you understood, none of you cared!” Her eyes settle on me. “I should have taken a bat to your fucking head.”
“Get her back in the car,” a voice yells from my yard, and for a moment I think Bill? But it’s just Officer Jones.
“They’ll come for you next,” Theresa yells as the cops wrestle her back into the patrol car. “They’ll come for you all, you’ll see! They’ll come for you and they’ll cut you to pieces! To pieces! To—”
A cop slammed the door shut; at once she seemed to slump, as if her strings had been cut.
“Drugs are a bitch, man,” one of the cops said, and the others laughed.
***
Nestled among the pillows on my bed is a strand of fat, creamy pearls, coiled and knotted like a noose. At once I want them, I want to take them and run away, as far away from here as I can get.
I should have taken a bat to your fucking head
We hardly know ourselves, much less anyone else
I stand over the bed, trembling with desire, my hands clenching and unclenching. I want them, I want them, and yet I know the moment I touch them I will seal my own complicity.
A small, high-pitched cough makes me jump; I turn and see a dozen dirty, bearded faces crowding in my closet doorway. The leader steps forward, busily wiping his knife with a torn piece of one of my slips, the dried blood flaking off the blade onto the bright white silk.
He speaks, but I cannot understand what he’s saying, all I hear are chirps; I bend over, cupping my ear, and it feels both ridiculous and utterly right, all the more so when he steps close to me and lays a warm, callused hand on my shoulder. I listen carefully to his high-pitched noises, piecing them together until they form a single word.
Hungry.
Everything else seems to fade, then. The noises outside, my own breath, it all fades into a grey quiet. There are only their dark eyes staring at me, full of hope, full of anticipation.
***
I don’t have much to pack. Half my clothes don’t fit me anymore, either because I’ve lost weight or because they seem to represent that past me, the one I’m leaving behind. In the end, I only needed two suitcases: some clothes, a few books from my correspondence classes, the photos and little mementos I have of my parents. I have nothing else; I want nothing else.
Save, of course, for the money I sewed into the lining of the suitcases, and my one decent jacket.
The interior of the police station had been cool and quiet, all marble and old wood. I carefully wrote out my new address on a plain index card; something about block printing the address, and the little studio it represented, it all seemed too easy. “I don’t have a phone number yet,” I explained to the elderly officer at the desk.
“That’s all right, ma’am,” he said. “Just phone it in when you get hooked up.” He took the card from me and read it over. “Up to the city?”
I nodded.
“Good for you.” He looked around at the empty lobby, sighing deeply. “This town’s gone queer, these last few years. Lotta strange things happening, especially with women.” He waved the card at me. “You’re a smart girl to get out now.”
And in that moment I knew I was free. That fluttering white card, that ridiculous girl, it was the moment in the story when the fairy godmother comes, when the pumpkins become coaches and the rats become horses and that tiny, sunny studio was my castle.
I was free.
“How’s Theresa?” I blurted out.
“Who?” He frowned. “Oh, right. Turns out she had an alibi, she went to the pictures with her mother, fellow who makes the popcorn called them a taxi. Just more reason to move, I say. Kids hopped up on drugs, stabbing a man to death for a few bits of jewelry. Shameful.” He sighed again. “If that’s the world today, I’m not sure I want to live in it.”
Neither do I, buddy. Neither do I.
I snap the latches of my suitcases shut now and butt
on my jacket completely. In the mirror the face I see looks rested, resolute. I have slept hard every night since Paul was killed, a deep dreamless sleep that I fall into the moment I lay down. No more actualizing, no more imagining, for what did it get me? All that time working out the minutiae of each day, only to have it all upended by something I never imagined. Even my platter never reappeared.
From now on I will meet each day open and empty. I open the door and walk, empty and ready, into the world. In one of the suitcases is a reference letter from Bill, and another from my landlord testifying to my diligence in maintaining the house. I am empty, I am ready. The walk to the bus station is long and with every step I can feel the money rustling in my coat, I can feel the cool weight of my new apartment key on the shoestring around my neck.
The church sign reads, Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.
At the bus station I board the bus for the city, keeping my cases close, smiling and nodding at the other passengers. I feel open, I feel empty, I feel at once in the world and somehow above it, looking down on this small upright woman walking towards a seat near the back, and the fifteen woolen caps trailing after her.
The dwarves crowd against my legs, bumping and chirping, cursing and shoving like so many children, yet no one so much as glances down at the aisle. My madness, all mine, as much my possessions as my suitcases and my money and the key around my neck.
They swarm under the seats, sprawling on the dirty floor, some promptly falling asleep. I’ve tried naming them but they don’t like it, they make faces when I address them by something specific; I’m not even sure their leader has stayed the same, I tell him apart as much by his belt as anything. He climbs on the seat beside me now along with two others; casually he digs into the kangaroo pocket of his romper and flicks a half-cut gemstone in the air like a teenager tossing a quarter. It arcs into my lap, hard and blue, and at once I cover it with my hand. That wonderful, cool weight: the weight of money, of security. He winks at me, then starts sucking noisily on his teeth and picking them with his fingernail.
I really have to do something about their clothes.
Just before it’s time to depart a man boards the bus, flustered but smiling. He looks about my age; he wears his decent grey suit well. As he lurches down the aisle I look away, a little embarrassed, until his shadow falls over me.
“I think you dropped this,” he says. In his hand is one of their knives, wedged in its sheath. “Are you an art teacher?”
I stare at him, completely at a loss.
“Or maybe you’re an art student?” He turns the handle towards me, and I see in the dimming light Return to Room 1B written on the handle.
From the seat beside me comes a low growl, but the man doesn’t seem to hear. His ring finger has a worn band of skin, the same as mine.
Another growl, and the whisper of another knife being drawn.
“It’s just a knife.” I take it from him hurriedly. “Thanks,” I add.
He seems about to speak again so I look at the window, watching his reflection in the glass until it moves away. Only now do I truly understand what I have chosen: my very gaze is enough to condemn, my words powerful enough to slay. I will always have to keep my distance.
I shudder, as if from a great wave of loneliness and sorrow, and yet even as my body trembles those feelings have vanished. In their wake I feel replete, in a way I have never known before. I lean back in my seat with a contented sigh; the little men move close to me, pressing against my feet, clambering over my lap to look out at the twilit world. Outside the stars are emerging and I feel something dim and shrouded open within me, and inside a great, terrible energy that is wholly mine. I am open, I am empty, I am legion. The leader takes my hand and it feels right and true. All of us, together. All of us racing forward into the night, towards the dark, rich, unknowable future.
Cameron Johnston
https://twitter.com/CamJohnston
The Economist & The Dragon(Short story)
by Cameron Johnston
Originally published by Buzzymag.com.
The dragon Vermikalathyxak sighed in relief as her claw finally dislodged the splintered human femur that had been embedded between two of her teeth. She spat the bone out to clatter down the congealed mound of human bone and gristle by her side.
A huge belch expanded up her gullet, erupting in a puff of gas from her maw. She ignited it, flame scattering shards of light from the multitude of gemstones embedded in the walls.
She glared down at the dented iron stars and the torn woollen robes scattered across the floor. Clerics always gave her gas. It was all that rich food and wine the gluttons consumed—it made them terribly fatty when compared to the lean peasant meat she was used to. Not only had they given her gas, but now she had a headache due to all that shrill praying she’d had to endure while dragoning them down one by one.
She couldn't help herself. She knew that she should just leave them alone since she was forever vowing to eat healthier, but they were tasty, slow food, requiring little to no effort to catch and peel. Not like knights in full metal plate; those took forever to peel without ruining all that expensive shiny armour. The company of would-be dragon slayers’ armour, weapons and possessions had been carefully stripped from the corpses and sorted out into neat piles on the floor. She had to tear her eyes away from the small mesmerising pile of jewellery off to one side, where it glittering enticingly, reflecting the light from the torches scattered around the cavern.
Scratch, scritch, scratch.
She lifted her head and bared her fangs, tail lashing as she scanned the cavern looking for the source of the strange noise. Nothing moved. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary: rock formations, piles of glistening bones, stacks of loot, and a half dozen uneaten dead humans. After a while she settled down onto her haunches, assuming that perhaps it was just an especially unwise rat.
Scratchscritchscritchscritchscratchscritch—there it was again, but quicker this time. A scuff on stone, then a single gold coin clinked and rolled across the floor. She looked again, looked harder…and found her eyes sliding away from something. A deep rumble within her chest echoed around the cavern. She tried again, and again her eyes seemed to slide over something, as if refusing to see it.
She drew her head back and hissed, the flame sacs at the back of her throat swelling with venom. Her head shot forward, maw gaping. Rapid muscle contractions in the roof of her mouth sparked her fulmenforge into life, igniting the jet of liquid. One corner of the cavern turned into a roaring inferno. Liquid flame dripped down into pools of dragon-fire. Acrid black smoke churned up amongst the stalactites.
A human voice yelped in shock, accompanied by a clatter of wood on rock. Charred and smouldering scroll cases rolled across the floor. She glared over in the direction of the sound. Smoke outlined a human shape.
“Come out or I shall roast you, little thief,” she said, concentrating on him. There was a pause, and then a balding, bespectacled man of medium height and forgettable aspect was suddenly standing there. Her eyes threatened to slide away again, but as long as she focused on him intently he remained visible. His beard was non-existent and he was wore a plain grey tunic and breeches rather than a robe woven through with potent arcane wards. A belt of pouches circled his waist with quills, scrolls, and bizarrely, a small abacus. In one hand, instead of a magic staff, he clutched a sheaf of what appeared to be vellum pages. In his other he held a stick of charcoal between thumb and forefinger, still scribbling away frantically across the vellum—scritch, scratch, scritch.
"What are you doing, thief? I see you now."
He blinked, seeming startled as her eyes followed him, then he glanced at all her loot. "I'm conducting a SWOT analysis—the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threat of your, ah, business enterprise. I'm calculating your net worth and expenses, cataloguing your material assets, and putting the finishing touches on a ten year growth pl
an."
"What kind of wizard are you?" she demanded, opening her maw to reveal fangs larger that the man's head. She tilted her head and studied him. She couldn't see so much as a hint of magic sparkling around his body. He seemed entirely mundane. How very dull, she thought.
He swallowed. "I am, ah…an economist, actually," he said.
There was a long moment of stunned silence.
He cleared his throat. "My apologies. I was assured that invisibility potion would allow me to hide and leave you undisturbed until I was fully prepared to present my proposal."
A barking laugh dripped flame down her chin. "Invisible, yes, but I am not deaf, human.”
"Ahhh, I see!" he said, looking down at his entirely visible body. He frowned and began absently tapping his lip with the charcoal stick, smudging black all over his lips and chin. Then he looked up into her eyes and she watched as realisation dawned. He was entirely visible. "Oh," he said, sweat beading on his forehead. He stayed very, very still.
She settled down onto her belly, staring at him, unblinking, giving him the old 'should I eat you or not' look. "What is an economist doing here of all places?"
He swallowed and wiped the gathering sweat from his forehead. "I'm currently writing a paper on dragonomics. And I've come here to put a mutually beneficial business proposal to you." He waved the pages clutched in his hand at her, all lines, numbers and tiny cramped writing.
She was intrigued. Her sire had always warned her not to play with her food, but then she was at that sort of age—in the mid-teen centuries—where a dragon gets rebellious. A purr of pleasure rumbled in her chest. "Dragonomics? what do you mean by that, little human? I give you three minutes to convince me of your proposal before I eat you up." She shifted to get comfy, folding her wings to her flanks.
He loosed a sigh and relaxed, taking that as a sign he was not in imminent danger of digestion. Suddenly he looked deadly serious. He might have almost looked dangerous, if only it hadn't been like a very serious mouse standing before a giant and incredibly bored feline. The charcoal smudged all over his face didn’t help matters. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth to begin—