The Book of Apex: Volume 2 of Apex Magazine

by Jason Sizemore

  He found Reeda in the kitchen chopping apples and liver for dinner.

  “What’s that thing?” she asked. She scraped the peels and end bits into the compacter.

  He sat at the table and stretched his feet. “On the runabout? I don’t know,” he said. “Some kind of Mirfac probe. Tomorrow I need to check how much it damaged the skimmer.” A yellow notepad lay on the table. It showed a floor plan, the windows and doors carefully marked, the rooms labeled. One featured French windows opening to a rock garden. It was marked “Sally’s Room. “

  “Did you deal with the laundry?” he asked.

  She banged her knife and plate in the sink.

  “I’m going to call Rass,” Davis said, getting up. “I’ll get it out of the runabout in the morning. Best not to touch it.”

  The winds bit viciously. Flecks whisked off the lake, and pellets of foam stung Davis’ suit. It was miserable work sorting the skimmer out. One wheel had knifed under and been dragged across the hard mud. He had to take it apart and straighten its hub to get it to roll clean.

  Rass had been mystified on the phone the night before. “It’s not enough their flyers are scanning the lake,” his friend had said. “Now Mirfac’s dropping probes to screw up our gear.”

  Davis had avoided mentioning the visions. They felt like a violation. Wearing gloves had made no difference when he had wrestled the probe from the back of the runabout that morning. A gallery of faces had cascaded before him—Rass, Reeda, his parents and brother, Tam from college, Sally’s big hazel eyes—and then somehow, in a single voice, they asked, “You are Davis?”

  “No!” He had been surprised by the hollow in his gut, as if he were about to cry. He repeated it in his mind: “No, no, no, no!”

  It had seemed lighter. But that wasn’t right. It was still obscenely dense, but when he fought to lift it, it had lightened just enough to get over the basket’s lip. It dropped and stuck solidly in the ground. He had left it there in the corner by the back steps.

  Davis tested the skimmer’s wheel, returned his tools to the cold-house, parked the runabout there, and walked back to the hover against the growing wind. The lake was pushing up the flats. A thin, orange tentacle reached into the groove scratched by the skimmer. He winched the skimmer onto the hover’s deck, fired up the fans, and drove it up to the cold-house where he closed it down for the season.

  When he pulled up at the house in the runabout, Reeda was at the back door, staring at the probe.

  “You should leave that alone,” he said, unzipping his hood.

  Reeda turned and smiled. “It knows me,” she said. She kneeled down and rested her hand on the black convex shape.

  He moved fast. “Reeda! Don’t!” He grabbed her arm and pulled her away. “It’s not safe.”

  “Davis, this can’t be from Mirfac. It’s something else.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I don’t want you touching it.”

  “It showed me Sally.”

  “No, Reeda. It’s not real. I saw all sorts of things too.”

  “You don’t understand. It’s communicating,” she said.

  “It plays with your mind.”

  “It… it let me talk to her. It said I can visit her.”

  Davis held her by the shoulders. “Stop it! Stop it! Sally’s gone!”

  He saw her eyes measuring his cruelty.

  “Come inside,” he said. He slid his hands down to her wrists. “I’m going to call Rass to help get rid of it.”

  “No,” she said. She shook her hands free.

  “It’s not right to obsess. It doesn’t help. It hurts me to watch you suffer—”

  Her whole physical self burst. “Why don’t you suffer!” She slammed his chest. “It makes me hate you. You don’t cry. It’s not fair. You don’t cry.”

  “Reeda…” He hated this. They were going to fight. He was going to yell. “Reeda, Reeda!” He breathed. “I cried, you know I cried. You were there. I cried—”

  “I’m suffering! I’m doing it all!” Her voice broke.

  It shocked him—how the anguish inside her was endless. “I am not doing this,” he said. “I am not!” He pulled her hands off his chest and went up the steps.

  In the morning, Davis woke to the alarm clock’s intermit-tent trill. He recalled rolling over and finding Reeda’s side of the bed cold. She had come in some time after dark, and he had called out to remind her to seal the doors.

  He pulled a T-shirt over his shoulders and walked to the kitchen in his shorts. “Reeda?” he asked.

  The room was empty. The kitchen had an outside door that faced the lake. It hung open a crack, and a track of mud led across the floor to the sitting room. “For God’s sake,” he said.

  The baby’s room was closed. “How long have you been up, hon?” he asked through the door. “Reeda?” He knocked.

  He heard her voice and leaned forward, turning his ear. She was crying. No, it was more coherent than that. Talking.

  “Reeda!” he called again. This pushed his patience. He wanted to pound the door open and start yelling.

  At the tea maker, he found his pouch from last night and held his mug under the spout. Then he pulled some dishtowels from a bottom drawer. The house was silent except for the wind outside.

  Davis got on his knees and started mopping the muddy tracks, working his way from the sitting room to the kitchen door. She needs help, he thought. She needs… he didn’t know. He had held her before; he had comforted her once. Those days seemed so far away.

  Maybe Rass was right, maybe she needed a doctor. It was so unreasonable—everybody wants to help Reeda because she’s not coping, and what help does he get? He gets to crawl on the kitchen floor mopping up dirt. That’s what he gets.

  He reached the door and pushed the towels up against the metal seal. A foot-wide dent flattened the strips into which fit the door’s high-density seal.

  “Shit!” He stood and looked back through the kitchen. Reeda had rolled the black object around the house from the back steps to the kitchen door, which was level with the outside. She had pushed it across the threshold, through the kitchen and sitting room, and into the baby’s room. He pulled the door shut and turned the seal. It wouldn’t go.

  He headed back to the baby’s room. It must have taken her all night to get the probe in there. “Reeda!” He banged on the bedroom door. There was no answer. “Come on, Reeda.” He shook the handle. She had locked it.

  Davis stood outside in the growing storm. The lake was an angry orange froth, the horizon lost in swirling clouds of gas. The air tasted of burnt plastic. He hadn’t bothered to suit up. Time was short.

  The kitchen door was off, and he was pulling apart its outside seal, bolt by bolt. He had left Rass a message to come and help and then found a door section in the pile of prefab sheets behind the house. The wind had caught the flat aluminum, pulling his shoulder. He was going to cannibalize it to replace the kitchen door.

  He attacked the next bolt, putting his whole weight on the wrench. It didn’t move. He picked up the crowbar and swung his anger at the wrench handle. The bolt jerked loose.

  His eyes burned and the wind stung the back of his neck. It would leave scars. He pulled on the wrench, and the nut came loose enough to finish with his fingers. He would have to put on his suit if he wanted to continue.

  A pale orange foam was spreading into the house, coating the kitchen floor and pebbling the furniture. Where the froth had melted, rivulets gouged veins in the floor.

  Wooziness unsteadied him. He looked at the untouched door section behind him, its ring of sharp clean nuts still in place. There was no way he was going to get this door in place before the storm suffocated them both.

  He stepped through the wound in the side of his house and hurried to the closed bedroom. The air in the house was heavy, still. Fumes sank past the back of his throat.

  “Reeda,” he called, but didn’t wait for a response. Holding his elbows, he launched his shoulder against the door. And again
. The hollow plastic buckled.

  Reeda was on her knees. Her shoulders slumped over the slim mattress of the crib. Resting in her curled arms was the black object. Panic choked him. He linked his hands across her chest and pulled her off, dragging her into the sitting room. He fell, sitting behind her.

  He breathed. “Reeda, we have to get out. The house isn’t safe.”

  She looked over her shoulder. “Davis? Your face!”

  He stood, grabbing her wrist, and pulled her up. “Come on.”

  She looked back to the shape on the crib. Her weight shifted forward, and he pulled her around.

  “Let me go,” she said. “It knows Sally.”

  “Sally is dead. She died as a baby.”

  Her eyes snapped into focus. “No, no. It knows her older. She’s talking. She drew a picture of a house and a bunny. She told me she wants a bunny.”

  “Stop!” Davis yelled. “She was a baby. She died in the crib. You got up to feed her. You got up and she was dead!”

  “I know! I know!” She turned calm. “Davis, listen. Don’t you want it to be true? It makes things from our memory. It’s why it came. It told me it can bring her back. It can take us to her. We can live with her.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  “You’re not listening. You don’t know. You closed your-self to it.”

  “Of course I did! Listen to yourself.”

  She looked back at the crib. “Why don’t you want her back? She’s our baby.”

  He followed her look. The black shape tilted itself upright.

  Davis didn’t wait. He dragged Reeda through the kitchen. She stumbled against a chair, and then they were outside.

  The wind tore at them. He held his collar over his mouth; his chin burned where it touched. Reeda put her sleeve to her face, burying her nose in the crook of her elbow. His eyes watered. The air was orange. At the limit of visibility, gusts curled over the crest down at the flats. The storm would have pushed the lake right up to the cold-house, but even there, in the teeth of the fury, it was their best refuge. Sealed tight.

  They passed the prefab door and Davis found the tracks that led out to the cold-house.

  He fell to one knee and retched violently. His throat and lungs hurt. She crouched beside him.

  “Shallow breaths,” he said.

  “We won’t make it,” she said.

  “We have to. We’re almost… We’re halfway there.”

  He lifted her to her feet, struggling. He stepped forward, but she stayed. “It can help us,she said. “I believe it. We can live with Sally.”

  Davis looked back. Near the house, the storm warped around the squat black cone, which hovered a foot above the ground. The shape moved through the gale like an equal force of nature.

  Reeda saw it too. “See. It can take us away.”

  “No!” He grabbed her shoulders and turned her into the wind. Her hands went immediately to her face. “Reeda, I need you! You have to get to the cold-house.”

  She looked at him. He turned her again. “Go!” he said.

  Davis turned back. The whine and scrape of the wind filled his ears. The thing moved toward him, the shape of the storm changing around it. He let the wind throw him forward. His hair was slick and burned his neck and forehead.

  The dark solid slowed as he neared it.

  He felt it touch his mind. “You are Davis,” it said. The voice cut out the storm. Reeda’s face flashed, just as he had seen it a moment before. Livid and raw, her earlobes half eaten away.

  “Leave her alone!” he yelled, and opened his eyes. He didn’t realize he had closed them. It floated inches before his thighs.

  It tilted as if to go around. He threw himself onto it. It filled his gut; his shoulders fitted around it. He wrapped his arms under, holding desperately. His face, his hands—he could feel nothing but the dizzying vibrations.

  “Leave her,” he said.

  Like a burst dam, he remembered it all. Taking Sally into his arms in the hospital. The sweet sour smell of her skin, the wispy hair on her pink scalp. Reeda’s tears of joy. He could still feel Sally’s weight in his arms, and his heart ached. “Take me,” he cried.

  A convulsion grabbed. Every sensation froze. Something flowed in his mind, in his head, dripping, winding like a worm, a coursing voltage.

  “Reeda,” he gasped. “Go!”

  A shock of cold. Like a drain suddenly pulled, everything rushed out. Himself.

  My wife, Reeda, will tell you I’m a complainer. She thinks I’m stuck in my ways and can’t accept anything new, but my host looks after me, and, honest truth, I don’t complain. I’ve been here… I don’t know how long. The house is nice. I like this bright room with the bay window and the rock garden outside. Sally’s crib is here.

  There’s always a meal if I’m hungry. Tonight it was Ree-da’s black stew with apples. We take a stroll in the garden after dinner. They ask me to remember. The more I remember, the happier I can be. Some days she’s pregnant, sometimes her hair is short. She’s young tonight, wearing her uniform—number fourteen.

  Reeda was good, you know. She kept playing at college. She didn’t go on a scholarship, but she made the team. She was proud of it, you could tell, the way she always perked up when somebody asked her. I tell her I wish—I was going to say, I wished I could have seen her play, but I did, just like in the photo. No, that’s not right, if it was in the photo, I never saw…

  There are things I don’t understand. Everything flickers if I turn my head too quickly. Why don’t I ever see Sally? I hear her voice in the next room, but she’s never there. Some-times I think I died, but then, there’s Reeda, just the way I remember.

  The other thing I don’t understand. I miss her. I miss her so much.

  SCHRÖDINGER’S PUSSY

  Terra LeMay

  I am you, and you are me. We haven’t met, but we will, in some months. Then again in a year. More frequently after that for a stretch, though it doesn’t last. Or perhaps we never meet. Or just that single time, which was (will be) both meteoric and ephemeral.

  Except I remember that weekend and you don’t.

  I remember them all. All the moments. Even the ones you forgot, and those which never happened. They are all here, in this one place in my mind (in your mind).

  Our time together was (will be) catharsis for you, but I will fall in love, like a spaniel. The world cracked open the day we met (or another day, in another place), and we became one. We have always been (will always be) one. We stand in two places at once, two times, two dimensions. We are separate. But I am in your head, in my head.

  We grew up on either end of the same street. We both had grapevines growing in our yards. (Have you heard?) Yours in front by the mailbox, ours hidden like a naughty secret next to the fence out back. We only had three blocks between us, go figure, but the road stretched all the way from Antioch to San Juan, spanning a continent, spanning the ocean, spanning a million, million miles. Or only a millimeter.

  It took too long for us to find each other. (Sometimes we never do. Sometimes it is too soon.) Once we had, we were inseparable. Except when we fought. Or never meet.

  You always walked the difference between our houses, even though the hill between us was almost too steep to climb. I rode horseback (or drove a car) even though going to you is always downhill. Maybe it wasn’t laziness. Maybe it was precognitive thought—(Photons in two places at once, two times, two different dimensions, two heads, two minds, two hearts. Twins, inseparable even apart.)—the truth already, so subtle, so soon, so obvious.

  Maybe it’s only common sense, the knowledge that once I’d gone downhill to find you, I’d have to return the way I’d come, and that hill was always too steep to climb.

  Sometimes we met (will meet) in the middle. Halfway up the hill for you, halfway down for me. We’ll sit in the gutter next to the mailbox with the ugly plastic flowers zip-tied to its flag. (I stole one of those flowers, sun-yellowed and cracking, once when you were
gone. Maybe you never noticed, or maybe the flowers were bright and new when you looked at them. Maybe you stole one, too.)

  Did you know, growing up, we went to the same school? I don’t think you ever saw me. I watched you in the hallways. We passed each other every day at 11:25 and again in the break between Chorus and Ancient Greek Sexuality. I sat in the back of the class, three seats behind you. Sometimes, if I strained my eyes hard enough, I could just make out what you were writing on your lapscreen.

  It usually wasn’t notes for class. Sometimes it was porn. Sometimes it was poetry. Or a suicide note.

  Once, I came to class stoned on a cocktail of weed and microdots and Corona Extra (with a twist of lime). No one seemed to notice, but you gave me a cock-eyed glance as I shuffled past your desk. I let myself trail fingertips across your papers, and you didn’t think I saw you blush. Paper feels like velvet when you’re stoned.

  One day you will ask me to tell you what it’s like to find your future (faith/destiny) in tarot cards or chemicals or the variations of oscillation in ceiling fans. Jesus loves you as much as your light fixture.

  Of course, back then neither of us knew what I was seeing (would see/never saw). Neither of us understood. Those were daydreams or flights of fancy. (Nightmares.) Maybe. When everything happens at once, when everything could happen, when everything will happen, everything becomes equal. Potentials are realized. Negated. Equated.

  I don’t like to think on it too much. Better to dwell on the happy moments, for they are infinitely equal to the unhappy ones. Infinitely better. (Infinitely worse.)

  The first time I kissed you, we were in front of our old house. The house at the bottom of the hill. (Uphill in both directions back then. Now. Tomorrow.) I remember tonguing over your braces and worrying that we might get stuck together.

  We only kissed. I didn’t want to share my bed with you. (Or my head with you.)

  Much later (or on some other visit), you made a pallet on the floor beside me and spent the night. I dreamed I caused the apocalypse, gave birth to the antichrist, or learned to split photons with my mind (Option D: All of the above?), and you held me while I told you what I’d seen in those dreams. You said you never dreamed. I tried to open your eyes, but you couldn’t put yourself in my place. I wish I could make you understand.