by Anthology
He hops oddly on each foot toward me, like some kind of wound-up toy with springs for legs. I wait for his bounce to reach one body length and then swing the metal pen to stab him in the carotid artery.
I’m mid-swing when he alters his step, ducking below my thrust. I can’t block his punch to my groin. Pain explodes from my testicles.
I double over and lose the pen, along with my balance. He follows up with a kick to my solar plexus, sending me skidding into his coat-covered waste basket.
I land on my back, cushioned only by his sports jacket. I try to use my leg as leverage to stand. I manage to get one foot on the floor. I cry out as the pen I’ve dropped is driven through the top of my sneaker.
“Ouch,” he says. “That must hurt.”
I’ve never experienced agony this intense. I’m unable to get up. The waves of crushing pain are radiating upward from my foot. I’m seeing stars.
“Anyway.” He peels me off his jacket and onto the floor. My face strikes broken glass. It cuts into my skin. The pen is sticking out of my sneaker, punched through the tendons in my foot, gnawing at my nerve endings.
Le Vau ties the arms of his jacket together around my throat, lifting me up. I instinctively pull at the hangman’s noose, try to breath.
He slams me onto my side in the middle of his shattered lamp, knocking my skull against the brass base. My head throbs, but the air rushes back into my lungs. I’m left gasping, a dab of blood rolling down my cheek.
He reaches across for something on his desk. I should take advantage of the split second his midriff is exposed above me, but I can’t do anything. My autonomic system is misfiring. He pulls back, standing over me with an object in his left hand. It takes me a second to focus, and when I do, I’m seeing that silly stapler.
I actually laugh. It’s funny, although I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the idea of Mullins reading my cause of death in a report, crying and cracking up at the same time.
Le Vau laughs too. “I know, who would have thought: a stapler!” He hefts it. “It’s made of resin, fabricated by a 3-D printer. I’m guessing part of it will disintegrate when I drive it through your skull. What do you think?”
I keep laughing, not because it’s funny, but because I need to buy time. There’s a moment in any life-and-death situation where you know whether you’re going to make it or end up with a headstone. That’s when you need that FM, that f’ing miracle. It happened to me once, when I was rookie, during a shootout with an armed robber in a convenience store. My duty weapon had jammed, and all the junked-up kid needed to do was take me out with his pistol. Instead, the clerk did what she wasn’t supposed to do: engage the suspect. The pepper spray to the face bought me my second chance. Now I need that same kind of FM. Too bad no one’s around to save my ass.
I feel glass beneath my right hand. A couple of pats, and I find a shard about four knuckles long. I grab a hold of it. I fix my sight on Le Vau’s left thigh, right where his pocket is. If I can just get myself into a sitting position…
“Let me ask you something.” It’s a last-ditch effort to gain a few more precious seconds. I push myself up onto my elbows, knuckles down, shard hidden. I prop my back against the wooden leg of his desk. “If you had the new generation of product available, why didn’t you sell it to Rodriguez? Why give him the old stuff?”
He rotates the stapler with one hand, the other ready to wield it if I flinch wrong. “I think you already know the answer.”
I do, and it sickens me. Le Vau is a sadist, pure and simple. He wants to create an army of flawed super humans to watch them destroy and combust. The new product isn’t any better. It’s the same maker of monsters, except the user will think he’s in control, when in fact, he will end up changing into the very thing Le Vau has become.
He gives the stapler one last twirl and then holds it up. I know he’s faster than me. I know he’s stronger than me. I also know that I’m dead sitting here. If I make it out alive, they’ll probably take my shield away, and that’s okay. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole, and I don’t like what I’ve turned into. But the most important thing is that I don’t want to leave my daughter a legacy of a loser father who threw his life away chasing a drug high just to feel “normal.”
In slow-mo, I watch the grip in Le Vau’s left arm tighten. I can tell he’s going to be dramatic and go for the overhead blow by the way he’s arching back, emboldened by my injury and compromised position no less. It’ll take him a half second longer to execute, but the payoff will be as grandiose as he had hoped.
His thigh is within arm’s reach. I don’t need theatrics for what I have to do.
I pivot the weight to my right hip. With all my strength, I lash out with my glass dagger. I anchor the point three inches in from his hip flexor, sinking deep and dragging down with a ripping motion. He yelps, losing momentum.
With my other hand, I reach for his torn pocket. I snatch the bloodied sheet of plastic tabs from the fabric, tearing away three gel squares in the process. Reflex drives Le Vau backward to recover from my stabbing. I smash the torn sheet against the floor, popping the gels with my fist, slathering my skin with clear liquid and blood. His eyes widen, a notion of fear and recognition on his pain-tortured face.
I feel my skin electrify as I yank the pen from my foot. I’m hit with a major endorphin rush as it falls from my hand. Every synapse and neuron awakens. I’m slowing time more than I ever could with just the strips.
A second goes by, and I’m on my feet. I know there’s pain in my foot, but I reroute the signal, and block it off. I’m thinking faster, multitasking processes normally handled linearly, going deeper than I’ve ever gone.
Instinctively, I’ve got my hands gripped on the lip of the desk, assessing weight, size and mobility. I don’t even think through the shift in power to my lower body. I just do it.
Le Vau swings into action. He knows what I’m about to do.
But I’m faster. I redistribute power to my hands and forearms and flip the wood table up. I anticipate his angle of attack and thrust hard. The desk smashes into his torso. I throw all my momentum into the push, crushing his body into the cinderblock wall. There’s no yield to the masonry’s ruthless surface. The desk breaks apart from the force of the collision, two of the legs prying loose, splinters flying.
Impact complete, I grip the side of the damaged table and toss it. It lands loudly a few feet away, upside down. Le Vau crumples to the ground, blood streaked along the wall from where his head made contact.
I collapse to my knees next to him, winded. He looks at me, head cocked oddly, neck vertebrae damaged. “I can’t feel my hands,” he manages to say, alarm in his voice. Something’s wrong with his mouth too because his speech is slurred. “Go ahead,” he prompts. “Finish it!”
There’s nothing more in the whole world that I want. I conceive eighteen different ways to sever his spinal column. It’s what a Roman gladiator would have considered with a fallen adversary in the arena. I look around the disaster of the office. There’s no emperor to give me the go-ahead. The decision is mine.
“No.” I pat him on the shoulder, my way of saying, “You’re not getting out of this easy, pal.” The reality reflects in his horror-stricken eyes. I imagine he’s scared shitless of going to prison as a cripple after facing an unforgiving jury. I don’t care what he thinks.
I try to rise to my feet, but something’s wrong with my motor functions. It’s like the wires have been disconnected from the battery, leaving my limb muscles unable to contract voluntarily. I push back against the wall with what little strength I have.
Time begins to return to normal. With Le Vau incapacitated, my thoughts shift to home. I want to crawl into bed so badly, to hold Suzie close and confess everything, and ask for forgiveness; to promise her my selfishness is over, and that I will be the father and husband she deserves.
The door bursts inward. Knob and lock smack the vinyl floor. I glimpse a portable battering ram being retracted.
&nb
sp; The first police officer aims his submachine, shouting, “Don’t move!” He’s wearing ballistic armor and goggles. He gives an “all clear” and two more team members enter, followed by a most unexpected sight: Mullins, in jogging pants and a striped polo shirt a couple sizes too small.
Mullins glances at Le Vau, and takes a knee beside me. “Hey partner, what the hell, huh?” He looks me over. “Jesus H. Christ. What have you gotten yourself into?”
It’s a damned good question. I lean my head against the cinderblock. “I know.” I don’t bother asking him how he found me. I’m sure my subconscious mind wanted this. I thumb in Le Vau’s direction, pointing out his scarred knuckle. “Arrest him.”
Mullins registers a sliver of surprise and nods his head slowly. He motions to the element leader. “Read him his Miranda rights, and then get someone with a backboard in here.” The SWAT member goes about his task.
I feel my brain baking under a torrent of neural activity. I’m crashing, and I’m crashing hard. My eyes close for a moment, electrical pulses firing across my retinas.
Mullins snaps his fingers. “Stay with me, buddy. I’ve got EMS on the way.”
I reach out, my arm blurring into three. How fast is my pulse racing? Mullins takes my hand. “Easy there, stud.”
I try to keep from fading. “I’ve done a bad thing.” My throat is suddenly dry. I’m parched and there’s no water to be found. “Real bad, Ed.”
“Yeah, I know. It’ll be fine.” To me, “fine” amounts to rehabilitation, maybe incarceration. I do appreciate Mullins not being a jerk about it. He adds, “You can give me the details over a beer.” He shakes his belly for emphasis, and grins.
We both know it’s a joke. I eek out a smile for him. “Yeah, that’s what you need.”
I’m fighting to stay awake. I want to sleep, to pass out so badly. I can’t help myself.
I slip into the shadows, drift toward the dark.
It fades to white, and I see my wife sleeping next to me, chest rising and falling as I watch her peaceful form. I get up and go to Caitlyn’s room. She claps when I offer to read her a bedtime story. She snuggles next to me as I start on her favorite book, giggling at the way I act out the characters in the pictures. She’s barely awake by the time I finish. I tell her that I love her with all my heart. She says she loves me too. She wants to know if I’m going to be around to read to her tomorrow night. “Of course, sweetie. Daddy’s not going anywhere.”
It’s a nice dream.
Carrie Patel
http://www.electronicinkblog.com/
Here Be Monsters(Short story)
by Carrie Patel
Originally published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies
The flare gun is cold in my hands. I can’t shake the feeling that the little rocket inside is slowly dying.
Each day I watch the horizon, and each night I watch the stars. They can tell you a lot if you know how to read them: where you are in the world, how long you’ve been there.
When the abyssi are coming.
The island I ended up on isn’t much different from the ocean that stranded me. Blue waves roll on one side and grassy dunes on the other.
I built a shelter near the beach from some of the crates that washed ashore with me. It’s amazing how quickly the sun works. The outer portion of the hut is already bleached, and it’s been less than a month. Some of the crates are still filled with musket parts and mercury tablets, the freight we were carrying when the ship sank. Priceless stuff on the Ottoman front, but I’d kill for just a few more boxes of rations instead.
At least thirst won’t kill me. There’s a freshwater spring half a mile inland.
The remaining rations are in a box buried in the corner of my hut. I have seven left—I must have counted a dozen times before I hid them—but it helps not to look at them every day.
Especially when I should be watching the horizon.
You can recognize an abyssus by the shape of the water, but by then it’s too late. There’s a depression on the surface of the sea, as if something is sucking it down. Then the waters part, and whatever was unfortunate enough to get caught in the middle disappears beneath churning waves.
Being on the water when an abyssus arrives is a mercy. Whole vessels are crushed with a swift, natural economy that no manmade war machine can match. It’s much worse to be caught on land. The beast will venture ashore at night in pursuit of fire and prey, but like any creature lured out of its habitat, it becomes desperate and unpredictable.
That’s why I’ve been watching the stars. Just as abyssi suck the water from the ocean, they drain light from the night sky. The stars fade in their path, and by the time one is upon you, the whole sky is velvet black.
The only thing worse than knowing an abyssus is coming is having no idea. The sky has been cloudy for six nights now.
I watched the flat line of the sea again today. My clipper went down some fifty miles from Lisbon, so I’ve seen ships for the last three weeks, too far away to be anything more than ants crawling across the bar of the horizon, and definitely too far to guarantee they’d see my flare in broad daylight. Today was the first day there were none.
With the seventh overcast night upon me, I’m beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be easiest to put the flare gun to my head.
I’m fixated on this thought, and on the feel of the cool brass in my hands, and the sand between my toes, when I hear a shuffling noise. I lean toward the edge of the hut and hold my breath until I’m sure of it. There’s someone coming along the beach toward me.
I peer into the darkness, but it’s useless. Between the breaking waves, though, the shuffling is getting louder. The stranger, whoever it is, is close. My grip tightens around the flare gun.
Finally, I call into the darkness. “Who’s there?”
The voice that returns to me is hoarse and cracked. “A fellow survivor, seeking shelter.” He doesn’t mention food. If it hadn’t been three days since I opened my last ration, I’d be more ashamed of that thought.
He speaks again, and now he’s close enough for me to hear the ragged breaths between his words. “Mind if I join you? It’s your beach, after all.”
If I hadn’t thought of it as my beach, it’s only because I’d thought of the entire island as mine. Still, what can I say? “Of course.”
Suddenly, I want to see this stranger who will be sharing my shelter. I tuck the flare gun into my waistband and pull out my cap lighter. The lid slides away with a clink, and I hear the stranger tense.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“The gift of fire.”
“Don’t be stupid. It’s full dark,” he says between his teeth.
But the unreality of seeing another person makes the peril of abyssi seem silly and distant. As I strike the flame, I say, “Tell me how you ended—”
“No!” A ragged cry rips from his throat, and he pounces on me, swatting the lighter out of my grasp. We tumble onto the sand, and after rolling around together, my hands trying to push him away and his easily circling my wrists, he has me pinned. He is surprisingly heavy, and his nimble bulk makes me feel wasted and powerless.
“You fool!” He speaks in a rasping whisper that sounds painful. “Have you gone mad? Do you want to bring them upon us?”
“Calm down.”
“They’re already close.” Every sailor, and every man, woman, and child at a port town, knows to douse the lights at sundown. Even the Russian War doesn’t reach the coast, and enemy ships pass at sea without incident.
I squirm, hoping he’ll relax his grip and move off me. “How do you know?”
“How do you think I ended up here? They wrecked my ship.”
“What do you mean, ‘they’? You saw more than one?”
“I saw the maelstroms. At least three or four, but I didn’t stop to count.”
His knees weigh on my thighs like stones. I wrench a wrist from his grasp and push against his chest. “That’s impossible,” I say. “Nobody’s ever s
een more than one at a time.”
He slides onto the sand next to me. “Tell that to my shipmates.”
I sigh. There’s no point in arguing about it right now, and having a conversation with a stranger in the dark feels too much like talking to myself. “What do you suggest?”
“Hunker down for the night, get some rest, and keep the lights off.”
I sit up, brushing the sand from my shirt. Something feels wrong. It takes me a moment to register the lightness, but when I do, it stops the breath in my throat.
The flare gun is gone.
I pat the sand around me, feeling nothing but the cool grains between my fingers.
My companion shifts away. “Something wrong?” Unease colors his voice.
“Nothing.” My head is swiveling around the beach even though it’s too dark to see anything. “It’s nothing.”
We feel our way back to the hut. He follows a couple yards behind, giving me space after our scuffle.
But why should he be afraid? He’s the one who attacked me. I should be afraid of him.
Unless he has something that belongs to me.
Ridiculous. I felt his hands on mine almost the whole time we were down. It’s lying somewhere on the beach, and I’ll be able to find it in the morning.
I’ll just have to make sure I’m up first.
***
The surreal thing about total darkness is that the line between sleep and wakefulness is almost invisible. It becomes difficult to tell when your eyes are closed and whether the rushing in your ears is the sound of waves or the static of dreams.
I crack my eyes open, and morning light spills in like a yolk from an eggshell. I’m alone, and I begin to wonder if the stranger from last night was a dream until I look around the hut and realize that the flare gun is still missing.
I stagger out of my shelter and in the direction of last night’s fight. It’s impossible to tell exactly where we were, and it’s hard to distinguish the ripples and crests in the sand from tracks. The crawl back to the hut last night didn’t feel that far, but I don’t see my gun anywhere. Taking deep breaths, I start walking a wide circle around this side of the beach and slowly spiral inward, dragging my feet through the sand. It might have gotten buried in the night.