UnCommon Bodies: A Collection of Oddities, Survivors, and Other Impossibilities (UnCommon Anthologies Book 1)

by Michael Harris Cohen

  "Because you don't deserve this. You didn't ask for this." He knelt beside her, heedless of the blood soaking into his clothes. "You were born to be something special, Syren. You aren't like them. You aren't a freak."

  She laughed and blood slipped from her lips. She licked it away. "Yes, I am. Clearly you don't know me as well as you think you do."

  He used a clean thumb to wipe the blood from her mouth. "Yes, I do. I'm like you, in a way."

  Syren's eyebrows puckered with disbelief. "Yeah, okay." She coughed and more blood came out.

  "It's true." He reached up and removed his own mask.

  She couldn't hold back the gasp. Suddenly, the purr in his voice made perfect sense.

  He was a cat. Sort of. His body appeared human, but his facial features were very much that of a cat, minus the actual fur. He even had little whiskers on his cheeks, right by his nose.

  "See? I understand your plight. For years, I've battled Opal over his abuse of our kind. Davinia, Jakob, Nilla, you. None of us should be used as you are. You're not freaks. You're people. Humans."

  Syren laughed again, only this time it hurt so much it almost made her stop. "I'm not human. I'm a fish."

  "No, my dear. You're still human. You're just part of a different race than most. Our species, our unique class of beings, we've always existed. We've been here since the beginning, just like they were. But humans tend to shun things they don't understand. It scares them to not understand something and magic is one of those things most humans simply do not get. It's beyond them, beyond their ability to comprehend and experience. And so they label us as freaks, deformities, abominations. But we're not. We're beautiful. We're mystical. We're magical."

  Syren leaned back into his arms. She kind of liked the way he talked about her, about them. Like they were actually important. Like they were worth more than a few bucks to gawk at. But it didn't matter anymore. Her legs tingled. They were starting to change. Too early. Before the sun. She was converting back to her true form. She was dying.

  She raised her eyes to his. "It doesn't matter anymore," she said, and she truly believed it. None of it mattered. She was done. The world would continue on without her. She would be blissfully unaware of any of it.

  "No. I refuse to believe that." Before she could stop him, he ripped off her pants and underwear.

  She slapped at his hands weakly. "Get away from me," she hissed.

  "You can't change with your clothes on. The fabric would be trapped in your body. It could kill you."

  She resented the fact that she was naked in front of this stranger, but he was right. The cloth between her legs would be sealed inside her skin and prevent muscles and veins from forming together as they should. She would be crippled at the very least.

  He picked her up even as her legs began to fuse together. He carried her, blood dripping a trail behind them, out to the pool and set her along the side with her feet dangling into the water. He raised a hand and waved at someone in the shadows.

  The woman who Syren knew only as Master Opal's meek servant witch separated herself from the blackness. Her onyx-black skin gleamed in the moonlight. "Nilla?"

  She tipped her head to the younger woman. "Yes, it's me." She knelt beside Syren and pressed a hand to the wound. "You weren't actually supposed to kill her, Tennyson."

  The cat-man shrank back in shame. "I didn't mean to. She moved too quickly."

  "Sure. Blame the girl." To Syren, she said, "Hold still, dear. This will hurt."

  Hurt it did. The pain that raced through Syren's body was almost too much to bear, but mingling with the pain was a magic more powerful than anything she had ever experienced before. It made her vibrate down to the very core of her being. She could actually feel the cells in her body moving, healing, fusing together. She knew Nilla could tend minor hurts, but this was something altogether different. This was beyond magic. It was a miracle.

  "There. It's going to ache for awhile, but if you take it easy, it should stay closed. Don't change forms for a few days. Let your body heal. "

  Syren took a tentative breath. It hurt, but she found the pain fading to manageable depths. She enjoyed the feeling for a moment before looking at Nilla. "If you're here..." She didn't finish the question. She didn't really know what it was she wanted to ask.

  "The show is done," Nilla said. "It was time for Opal's reign to be over."

  Syren's brow puckered. "I don't know what that means."

  "It means you're welcome to stay here," Tennyson said. "I have numerous pools, and there is a room in the basement that would suit you quite well, if you prefer it."

  "What if I choose to go back?"

  Tennyson glanced at Nilla. "You can't," the woman said. She reached into her pocket and removed her phone. She tapped a few buttons and turned the screen to Syren.

  The tent blazed.

  Her tank exploded as the water boiled over, drenching Jakob in a flood. It would have killed him if he hadn't already been dead. The camera moved. Someone or something was obviously in there, recording. There, by the platform Davinia used, lay another body. A body Syren would never have mistaken. Master Opal. His eyes were wide. His mouth open in a scream. His stomach exploded out in a mass of gore and horror.

  When the video reached its end, Syren looked up at Nilla. "You were there?"

  The other woman shook her head. "No. I'm a healer, not a killer. Some of Tennyson's crew took care of the others and got me out."

  Syren nodded and sat in silence for a couple minutes. It was a lot to digest and her brain still buzzed from the magic and blood loss affecting her body. She blinked rapidly as she attempted to comprehend what had happened in a mere few hours. The life she had known was gone, completely gone. Tennyson and Nilla offered a new one, but would it be better? She had no idea.

  "Davinia?" she asked.

  Nilla responded. "She chose to go her own way." She gave a wry smile. "She's going to try her luck in Hollywood."

  Syren's lips twitched. Hollywood would be perfect for Davinia. "And I can stay here?"

  Tennyson nodded. "Yes. For as long as you wish."

  Syren nodded. It was a lot to think about. She needed time. Her feet turned to fins and she slipped into the pool just as the sun came up.

  About the Author

  Samantha Warren is a speculative fiction author who spends her days immersed in dragons, spaceships, and vampires. She milks cows for fun and collects zombie gnomes and colorful socks.

  In Her Image

  by Vasil Tuchkov

  Summary: An English PHD student arrives at the scenic but haunting countryside of Matera, Italy, looking for answers. His translator introduces him to a crippled local painter who claims to have depicted the impossible. As the three men converse near the ancient settlement's caverns, a mystery unravels.

  "Nine-thousand years old. His family tree goes back. Says his ancestors lived in this same cave, in Sasso Caveoso. Over there. He still lives there, too. Right on the edge of town...How to say..."–here the translator struggles, then lights up–"Not the edge of town but the edge of the world!"

  Both translator and painter point in the same direction; heads turn, tan arms stretch behind their backs.

  The Englishman traces their trajectory. His eyes follow the uneven path of buildings and terraces that climb up and down the hillside, each on top of the other, as the roofs of some serve as streets for the levels above. They all lead to caves, carved deep into the rock, millennia ago. The sky is lead; so low, it hangs over the town like it means to crush it.

  Nestled on the edge of a ravine, the settlement would look somewhat ominous, were it not for the sound of life, the bright painted wood of the churches and the hotels, the cacti and shrubbery grown on the scalp of the rock.

  The river below takes his eyes and carries them to the far side of town–no lights aglow, only murky sockets of prehistoric caves, barely visible in the distance and the waning afternoon. Sassi di Matera is still unacquainted with the full concept of
tourism.

  He'd only spotted two English-speaking groups since his arrival this morning. They wandered around, getting lost in this remote maze of Escher structures and paths, with their cameras, breathless sighs, and numb legs. As he would be, if he were not here after something else.

  He turns back to the table. They are both waiting on him. The translator he'd picked up in the next village, or got picked up by.

  And the painter.

  "Tell him this is the most extraordinary place I've ever visited."

  A series of nods and translator turns to painter. Word tennis in a language he does not understand past his travel dictionary; it sounds like they're arguing. But then the painter looks up at him and breaks a huge smile. The mouth reveals gunpowder teeth; among the bombed ruins, a single gold incisor shines like a sacred tower. The lips close and kill the flicker. The brush mustache settles in place. His face is back to stone, carved like the caves of his village.

  "I've lived my life here. I paid little attention as a boy, looking at the valley and the caves as if they were drawers in my room. But with the years, I learned to appreciate it. The background. To see more things in it every day. Restless detail."–The translator delivers the painter's words in English.

  Of the three, the Englishman is youngest but fatigue gives him weariness beyond age. Dark circles weigh heavy on his eyes; his skin once chalk, now a painful tone of pink, scaling, touched by a hundred days of Italian summer. Black hair falls on his face thin like a willow. A man in travel clothes, the head of a wet dog on his shoulders.

  "Tell him I agree to his terms but on one condition. I get to record the conversation."

  Both locals examine him as he places the tape recorder on the table and presses "play".

  The painter slaps the table and bursts, metallic and sour, a smoker's laughter. He waves a hand like it's nothing. There's something wrong with it.

  "17th of July. Sassi Di Matera, Basilicata. I find myself on the terrace of a local pub–Ristorante Francesca, nested high on the cascades of Sasso Barisano, across from the old town Sasso Caveoso–the prehistoric cavemen settlement, one of the oldest known in Europe. Topic: of myth and fable. My search has led me here, following the last trail I stumbled upon in the Vatican. Talking to a local painter regarding the..."–he mumbles low into the recorder when the painter interrupts him.

  "Journalista?"–the painter mouths to the translator, a mere device to him, as he's locked eyes on the Englishman.

  "Student. Anthropology. Tell him I'm writing a PHD on truths and fallacies in modern myth. ...Research,"–he says before the translator has a chance to respond.

  More Italian, more nodding. All three of them now nod heads like dummy dogs on a car's dashboard. Synchrony, at last.

  "Ah, Studente."–the painter concludes; his hair is long and white as factory smoke, combed back with wax or just unwashed.

  He says something more and the translator announces: "He cannot continue without more wine. Says he can't tell a story on an empty stomach and a dry throat. Says he can't remember a thing like this."

  The foreigner nods. First to the translator, then to the painter. Hails the waiter and orders a bottle to accompany the glasses present, and the wooden platter with cheeses, Prosciutto, Bresaola and whatever the rest of the smoked meat is called.

  When drinks are spilt, the painter gives him again one of his broad black-and-gold smiles. Then he's back to serious, even grim. His eyes over the glass as he drinks, once blue perhaps, now pale and colorless as stale milk. No motion inside. Sad eyes. Beautiful eyes.

  A man of sixty or seventy, he wears a white and blue striped linen shirt, and nothing beneath it. A sailor's outfit almost, framed by bracelets of wood and bone, and a necklace crafted from ceramics and minor gems, settled in a laurel of chest hair.

  "You want to know about her? Ah," the translator delivers the message but he catches the painter's intonation and knows it is no question but a statement; he watches him closely, compensates for the linguistic hiatus with body language.

  The painter's left hand is crippled; a withered spasmodic turnip, it shivers every now and then, like freshly dead. But there's nothing fresh about it, only the nails keep growing. It floats the air as he speaks. More than the other one, really. It doesn't seem to bother him.

  "The elusive one. The ghost bride of history. The shadow time traveler," the painter continues, stuffing salami into his mouth and spitting; dried paint of all color on his fingers. He drinks with the same hand, the other one is for conversation emphasis solely. And he waves it like a flag of flesh.

  In the midsummer afternoon, all three of them sweat bullets but only the Englishman seems to notice, wiping his forehead with a napkin every now and then.

  "I hear you've seen her. First hand... Wait... Without that last part..." but it's too late, the translator is at it already, a verbatim robot; the painter's expression registers no change, so it is left unclear whether the bad humor carries over.

  "I've seen her, all right. This much is true," the translator delivers.

  "What is her real name?"

  "Only one knows. She wears many names..."

  "Can you describe her for me?"

  Here the painter stops chewing, just stares. His face is a sandstone formation: wrinkles, bones, and spider veins. His eyes are about to melt. Then he grins again, wide as ever. Conclusion, he has two modes: dead serious and dead smiley.

  "Impossible," he pronounces with an arc of food debris; the translator fills in the rest. "You cannot describe her. No one can. You cannot photograph, film or paint her."

  "Yes, yes, I've heard the stories." The Englishman rolls eyes. "From here to Dublin. Stories of glitch cameras exploding in the hands of their owners, of overexposed photos, broken pencils, lost minds...But I need a description. Tell him it took me seven months to find him, to get here and ask these questions. Tell him I drifted through Italy, France, Warsaw, Ireland, and Hungary for many days and nights. Sometimes waiting weeks, months, for the next clue in this mystery. My stipend is almost done. Tell him I'm not leaving without a description. Anything will do. Eyewitnesses are reluctant to even try, except the obvious charlatans and loonies. First she's a Scandinavian blonde, then a Hispanic brunette, some say she had skin like milk and flames in her hair, others say she was a Nubian Queen, with flesh dark as chocolate and peacock feathers for eyes. I was told you had proof, Amico. At this point I'm ready to take a lie from you too...Feed me something. Anything..."

  The painter listens, then drowns his bite in wine, and refills his glass. The other two are still, in silent expectation; the Englishman can't help but notice the translator's interest in the story, growing beyond the politics of translation.

  The recorder keeps rolling.

  "Then I cannot help you," the translator says in a newly developed narrative tone, as if almost imitating the painter's voice, and both men give him an odd look. "I don't do lies. And I cannot describe her for you. Description kills action."

  "Fabulous! Why am I even wasting my time here! Lovely. Dead end." He turns to the translator, ready to get up from the table.

  As he reaches for his coat on the back of the seat, suddenly the translator speaks to the painter, so fast the Englishman cannot catch a word. The painter responds with a word or two. His tone irritated.

  At last, translator turns to him: "Forget this guy! He's crazy. I can help you find your wife, sir. Or fiancé. Prostitute? Looking for woman, no?" He holds onto his arm but the Englishman pulls it free; tall and scrawny, the translator sweats and adjusts his spectacles again and again, as if looking for the perfect angle. He licks his dry lips and makes the cracks glisten.

  "Look..." the foreigner starts but the painter's voice cuts his word short.

  He is asked to repeat.

  The translator deciphers: "He says he cannot describe her. But he has the closest thing to a description of her in the world. Not description... How to say... Picture-description..."

  "A depiction...?" t
he Englishman offers.

  "Depiction! Yes! He has a depiction."

  "I thought it's impossible. Thought she was beyond depicting. No picture, no scripture, only word of mouth." The Englishman sits back slowly, his leg half-way on the exit.

  The painter extracts a sketchpad from an inner shirt pocket. Tattered leather, rubber-band strapped. Among the mash of postcards and sunsets, his finger selects a gray folded triangle; pushes it forward, stays on it.

  "It is. But once in a lifetime, an extraordinary man can achieve the impossible."

  "And, I take it, you are such a man. Extraordinary."

  The painter is now rolling tobacco in rice paper; he uses only one hand but in a matter of seconds fumes crawl in his mouth.

  "Or very lucky." He smiles huge again, lips apart, the cigarette bitten by his gold tooth, through a veil of smoke.

  "Can I see it?

  "He says you can see... But it will cost you another bottle." The translator winks at the Englishman, as if sharing an inner joke.

  "Bollocks... He's not even done with this one... Ah, forget it. And don't translate! I wonder how many bottles he's won himself over the years with the depiction trick–probably his greatest work."

  Both men wait on the Englishman, or perhaps just the translator, as the painter seems busy smoking and looking serious.

  "Tell him...I agree."

  "Why?" the translator drops but the Englishman's ears are deaf to his opinion.

  Painter and translator quarrel again, so loud this time, every other table in the restaurant sets their eyes on them. For a moment, anyway. The place is too noisy and the view too sharp to steal attention for longer.

  Finally, the translator faces the Englishman and sighs: "This man. He is crazy. We can find better...He wants me to leave. Says he'll only show it to you but not to me."

  The Englishman frowns.