One day, he verbally admired the strange little bracelets (made of, what, shells? Stones?) strung around her wrists and ankles. She explained with a few words and concise movements that she’d made them herself—she sold them to others on the outside; it was her job. She was industrious—you could be out there. It was fascinating to him.
That night, he stayed awake as she slept. He watched her from his chair, a slice of her back visible from neck to knees behind the box. Her shirt—one of his own, actually; her ragged T-shirt now sat in a pile of his laundry waiting to be washed in the Centre—had ridden up, exposing the side of her bare waist, which was pale, freckled, and slightly fleshy now that she had begun and not ceased to eat. Fidgeting in his seat, he could not stop staring at it. The wound beneath his bandage began to itch, as if to warn him. He averted his eyes from her. Then he could not help it—he sprang up.
He approached the Centre. He set the adjustment and, three different times, made love to it—two times more than was his usual nightly practice. At the end of the last event, he lingered with his arm around it, thinking of it now as “Ciece,” the friendliest and fondest of the nicknames, before going to sleep. He realized it was the first time, except to eat, he had used the Centre in days.
“Help?”
He spoke easily to her in his own language now, having realized that his tone of voice, facial expressions, and hand gestures would get his meaning across. He was holding up the crude bracelet he himself had made, responding to her—sometimes impatient—prompts on how to do it and using coins, buttons, paper clips, and parts of food containers for this purpose. After his request for aid, she was politely encouraging, but then opened her hand and wiggled her fingers to indicate that he should hand it over. Given that he hadn’t had any of her materials—unknown to him and from the outside—he thought he’d done pretty well; however, after she in a few seconds rearranged and improved the sway of the objects on their string (a rubber band from a bag of Centre s’mores), he realized how much he had to learn.
When he had passed the jewellery to her, she had conscientiously as ever avoided touching him, which given their close proximity sitting on the floor had required almost balletic skill that she was willing to employ if it meant not burning him. His appreciation of this was unspoken, yet he secretly inhaled her natural perfume, equal parts skin, sweat and—was it smoke? He felt like the blindfolded chef on that Centre cooking show.
Other things remained unsaid as well. Both knew, for instance, that this “braceleting” art or craft, call it what you want, had long since superseded his doing his actual job (which involved receiving, processing, and then resending facts and figures, things which now seemed so boring he couldn’t begin to figure out the words and gestures to explain it). A red square blinked on the Centre’s adjustment for his job, signalling a next to final notice of his absences, something which had only happened once before when he came down with a flu he had gotten from a tiny hole in one window he later plugged with an epoxy. The eventual consequences: docked pay then withheld groceries, and then—well, either he would return to work or he was dead, and in that case, there would be a slow and complete shut-down of the Centre. Unspoken, too: there would not be food enough for two forever and she was strong enough to go now, whenever she wished.
That night, as she slept, he sat awake in his chair, the work warning the only light in the apartment. When his eyes adjusted, he could see again her torso, revealed by the box, her shirt hiked even higher than usual. The signal spotlighted her elegant spine—the bones that led to her brain, her Centre—as if it was a path on the floor of a darkened room in a museum, a way to get out. He swivelled and stared at the triple-thick window, at the slightly shaky, shimmering grey sky that was all he’d ever seen of the atmosphere outside. He knew the glass could only be broken open, unless there was some other odd other way to escape—the air duct or whatever—that he had never learned.
He was willing to make the leap, and leap was what it might be: she would know he didn’t know a thing. If he survived, his life outside would be a reversal of fortune, a shift in his status, a come-down; while that scared him, it intrigued him, too, or so he thought.
He rose. For a second, instinctively, he steered toward her then he took a turn. He stood before the Centre, frozen in its light, then shifting uneasily as if it could see him and judge him (like someone he saw in a story on the Centre who thought a painted portrait on a wall had accusing eyes), though he knew that it did not.
He did not know how to shut it down, for he had never wanted to. The front was smooth. He came close and strained to see a few knobs at the back, the whole area dusty from lack of use. He reached his good hand, could only get it in a little before his forearm, crushed against the wall by the Centre, forbade him going farther. His fingertips managed to turn the first knob, but that did nothing. He touched the second—he’d never get as far as the third—and with an effort spun it twice. To his surprise, this dimmed the light of the Centre’s screen. With a grunt, he plunged in again and twisted it a final time. The light went off entirely, but the Centre’s familiar hum was audible: no matter what he did, it was and always would be on.
He snapped on an overhead light, which startled her. She sat up, blinking, her young face looked weirdly wrinkled by her being so rudely awakened. She appeared beyond beautiful to him: a faun, a newborn, or an angel, whatever image there was for the most hopeful and least cloying creature, he did not care. In a second, he was beside her and beginning to explain.
He flicked one of his best made bracelets, which she had endearingly attached to her wrist. He indicated the idea of them working together. He pointed at the window, at her, at him, and said “We,” a word he knew now would make sense. Before he could finish his final and most foolish gesture—to cross his heart—before he could say the word that was so basic and yet so hard to express and understand, she was way ahead of him and had agreed—her shrug said so—to anything he wanted.
Her smell was more powerful now: impossible to describe, except that it was hers alone and could only ever from now on be imitated by others. Her lips parted—not in a smile; he had seen many of those—a way to say something new, to convey a want that was at once welcome and treacherous. He saw the fast rise and fall of her small breasts beneath his own washed shirt, the beauty, even the existence of which he had tried to avoid acknowledging.
And suddenly he had placed his hands under the shirt and onto her sides, her waist, the area he had seen so often at night. He didn’t stop; she could not, either, even though the fire burned him, even though he shrieked so loudly it startled neighbours in the building he didn’t know he had. Dusky smoke filled the place like fire on a grill from which the grease was never cleaned.
In the morning, he sensed something different in his home, the opposite of the first inkling he had had it seemed so long ago. He had an acute perception of solitude, different from the one he’d always known—worse, for absence had been added to it, and loss. Was it more awful than the physical pain he was in now? He didn’t know: as someone wise once said on a Centre talk show, when you’ve got abysmal alternatives, why choose?
To be honest, he couldn’t see whether she had gone or not. He could hardly turn in his chair, and his eyes were nearly covered by bandages (which the night before, diligently, weeping, she had followed directions dispensed by the Centre and helped him to put on). He had to depend upon a feeling for the once again altered “aura” of the place—and of his knowledge of her, of her sense of right and wrong, of how and how much she loved. And, sure enough, the sun eventually set without a sound or sight of her.
He was startled to think of never seeing her again. The idea of mourning was a mystery to him—everything on the Centre had always stayed the same, or only ever been added to (more meat for meals, new shoes, even another job if he wanted one, though he had always stayed with what he had). He didn’t cry, though he wanted to, fearing initiation into a kind o
f grief from which he would not return the same.
He turned his attention to the Centre, the warning work light of which had reached the final level: orange. To his surprise, just as he’d been acknowledging the thing’s consistency, he saw that a new adjustment had been added. Maybe it had been there the whole time; he’d been paying it so little mind. He didn’t rise to reach it, though his feet were his only parts that were unscathed. Out of curiosity, he simply switched to it with the clicker.
And there on the screen he saw her. She looked at him with an excited expression, as if she’d been waiting for him to turn to her. Was it his imagination? He didn’t think so. He believed that she had found her way inside it as she had his home, gone through whatever were the Centre’s equivalents of pipes and air ducts, a process he could not begin to imagine. It was her way to love him without risk, to protect him from herself, to never leave.
He smiled back. Then he couldn’t help himself, he cried—not just because he was so relieved to see her, or so moved by the enormity of her gesture. He cried because he had already begun to—and knew he would forever—miss the irresistible agony of a human touch.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Not long after 9/11, my beloved wife Susan Kim and I rented an apartment north of New York City as a kind of bomb shelter. Soon I was sitting around there, totally and loudly bored out of my skull. Sick of my complaining, Susan said, “Why don’t you just . . . I don’t know . . . write a story or something?” So I’d like to acknowledge her exasperation and impatience as the reasons this book exists. Plus her love, support, and notes.
I’d also like to thank Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi of ChiZine for their innovative sensibilities and excellent taste, Andrew Wilmot for his immensely helpful edits, Erik Mohr for his superb cover, and Andrea Somberg of the Harvey Klinger Agency for her dogged efforts on my behalf. Finally, I’d like to thank my therapist, Catherine Silver. It’s great to get this book published, but I’ll be keeping my appointment next week, as usual.
PUBLICATION HISTORY
“The Family Unit” was originally published in Natural Bridge, No. 22, Fall 2009
“Hole in the Ground” was originally published in Café Irreal, Issue 22, May 2007
“What the Wind Blew In” was originally published in SNReview, Summer 2007
“Stray” was originally published in The Literary Review, August 2008
“The Unexpected Guest” was originally published in Gargoyle, No. 53, 2008
“Long Story Short” was originally published in Foliate Oak, Volume 4, March 2008
“Versatility” was originally published in Hamilton Stone Review, Issue 19, Fall 2009
“Modern Sign” was originally published in The Literateur, Oct 29, 2009
“The Happy Hour” was originally published in Skive Magazine, Issue 13, December 2009
“Alert” was originally published in Sliptongue, March 2008
“Bomb Shelter” was originally published in Brink, May 2008
“Old Tricks” was originally published in Straylight, Volume 2.2, Fall 2008
“The Dead End Job” was originally published in Sliptongue, March 2010
“The Son He Never Had” is original to this collection.
“Home Invasion” was originally published in [Pank], No. 4, September 2009
COPYRIGHT
The Family Unit and Other Fantasies © 2014 by Laurence Klavan
Cover artwork © 2014 by Erik Mohr
Cover design © 2014 by Samantha Beiko
Interior layout © 2014 by Vince Haig
All rights reserved.
Published by ChiZine Publications
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
EPub Edition AUGUST 2014 ISBN: 978-1-77148-204-2
All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS
Toronto, Canada
www.chizinepub.com
[email protected]
Edited by Andrew Wilmot
Proofread by Sam Zucchi
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.
Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laurence Klavan wrote the novels The Cutting Room and The Shooting Script, which were published by Ballantine Books. He won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the novel Mrs. White, co-written under a pseudonym. It was made into the movie White of the Eye. He and Susan Kim wrote the Young Adult novel Wasteland, and its sequel, Wanderers, which were published by Harper Collins. The third installment in the series, Guardians, will be published next year. Their graphic novels, City of Spies and Brain Camp, were published by First Second Books at Macmillan. Brain Camp was a Junior Literary Guild Selection and a Scholastic Book Fair Selection. His short work has been published in such print and online journals as The Alaska Quarterly, Conjunctions, The Literary Review, Gargoyle, Louisville Review, Natural Bridge, Failbetter, Pank, Stickman Review, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Albedo One, and Morpheus Tales, among many others. He received two Drama Desk nominations for the book and lyrics of Bed and Sofa, the musical produced by the Vineyard Theater in New York. It also received two Obie Awards, five other Drama Desk nominations, including Best Musical, and an Outer Critics Circle nomination for Best Musical. It made its London debut at the Finborough Theatre and was nominated for five Offie (Off West End) Awards, including Best Production. His one-act, The Summer Sublet, is included in Best American Short Plays 2000–2001. His theatre work is published by Dramatists Play Service. He lives in New York City.
WE WILL ALL GO DOWN TOGETHER
GEMMA FILES
In the woods outside Overdeere, Ontario, there are trees that speak, a village that doesn’t appear on any map and a hill that opens wide, entrapping unwary travellers. Music drifts up from deep underground, while dreams—and nightmares—take on solid shape, flitting through the darkness. It’s a place most people usually know better than to go, at least locally—until tonight, at least, when five bloodlines mired in ancient strife will finally converge once more.
AVAILABLE AUGUST 2014
978-1-77148-202-8
GIFTS FOR THE ONE WHO COMES AFTER
HELEN MARSHALL
Ghost thumbs. Miniature dogs. One very sad can of tomato soup . . . British Fantasy Award-winner Helen Marshall’s second collection offers a series of twisted surrealities that explore the legacies we pass on to our children. A son seeks to reconnect with his father through a telescope that sees into the past. A young girl discovers what lies on the other side of her mother’s bellybutton. Death’s wife prepares for a very special funeral. In Gifts for the One Who Comes After, Marshall delivers eighteen tales of love and loss that cement her as a powerful voice in dark fantasy and the New Weird. Dazzling, disturbing, and deeply moving.
AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2014
978-1-77148-303-2
FLOATING BOY AND THE GIRL WHO COULDN’T
FLY
P.T. JONES
Things Mary doesn’t want to fall into: the river, high school, her mother’s life.
Things Mary does kind of want to fall into: love, the sky.
This is the story of a girl who sees a boy float away one fine day. This is the story of the girl who reaches up for that boy with her hand and with her heart. This is the story of a girl who takes on the army to save a town, who goes toe-to-toe with a mad scientist, who has to fight a plague to save her family. This is the story of a girl who would give anything to get to babysit her baby brother one more time. If she could just find him.
It’s all up in the air for now, though, and falling fast. . . .
AVAILABLE OCTOBER 2014
978-1-77148-174-8
THE DOOR IN THE MOUNTAIN
CAITLIN SWEET
WE ARE ALL MONSTERS
Lost in time, shrouded in dark myths of blood and magic, The Door in the Mountain leads to the world of ancient Crete: a place where a beautiful, bitter young princess named Ariadne schemes to imprison her godmarked half-brother deep in the heart of a mountain maze, where a boy named Icarus tries, and fails, to fly—and where a slave girl changes the paths of all their lives forever.
AVAILABLE NOW IN CANADA; OCTOBER 2014 IN US
978-1-77148-192-2
DEAD GIRLS DON’T
MAGS STOREY
Liv might be in love with a serial killer. You’d think the fact she can talk to the dead would make it easier to discover who’s really been slicing up her high school bullies. But all the clues have been leading back to Adam—the oh so hot fugitive she’s been hiding in the funeral home. As the bodies pile up, she’ll have to risk matching wits with the ghosts of her freshly dead classmates—some of whom have deadly agendas of their own. Was the cute guy with the wicked grin really framed for murder? Or will Liv just end up the latest bloody victim at Rosewood Academy?
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