by Neil Clarke
We wandered until we came to dirt. It was same as black sand but made us sink less when walking. Around us the sky turned hazy orange and then cold. We had heard of cold. We loved it, loved how it rattled us inside, how we shook without meaning to.
Finally in our shake we decided to speak, to try our hands at voice in the strange air we did not breathe for fear it might be poison to us. We used the breath we’d stored inside, enough for two fog years at least, more waiting in the ship for refuel.
“That place was like Iraq War,” I said. The voice surprised me, shrill and unsure. I was of Corleone name. I was of that name because I stood tallest, reddest, not strongest of body but strongest of mind. It was me had absorbed most of red book, me who writes this now to you so you will know our reasons for coming.
“Is like war,” Alexander Great said. “Cold is shaky like Cloverfield.”
Alexander Great, she strongest of body, made comfort comment, as there in the cold we remembered the best part of you and your planet. You were expecting us, had been expecting us for years. We saw Alien and War of the Worlds and Roswell Area 51 Alien Autopsy Revealed. Maybe, we thought, you had met us before, those of other planets. We knew you did not have the ways to leave your planet and visit ours, your technology too primitive, too much of it spent on production of entertainments. We also saw your entertainments of Moon Landing and Mars Rover Mohawk Man and these were not as entertaining and we knew they must be true. You could not go as far as us. You would not be able to escape. And you would accept us more because of this.
As we walked over black dirt we heard humming. The fog in Joker’s body cavity swirled and bounced. He curved his mouth, twisted it. He mimicked the laugh of your entertainment royalty for who he had been named.
“Hear them,” he said. “Hear them, hear them, hear them?” We did not know if words were question or answers, if they required response. We all looked to Samara, who had yet to let out her voice, always so quiet. We gave her chance. Nothing.
“Yes,” Alexander Great said. “Yes,” I repeated. It was good exchange. Fair. Each of us had turn to speak and all but one took it. We would respect each other, for we were closest of kinfolk. We would not hurt our siblings.
We walked then until on horizon there were boxes taller than us, taller than what we had seen in entertainments. Boxes that reached up higher than sky. The humming increased as we came upon what we called city of boxes. Dirt hardened so much there was no sinking when walking, just perfect lighter black dotted with piles of chalky ash. Streets. Lighter black then faded to lighter lighter black in two thin lines to both sides, which in the entertainments we used to see your kind walk upon as the metal beast machines you call cars zipped down the hard dirt middles. Now there were none of you walking, and the metal beast machines slept still, some pulled to the side, some stopped right in middles, each one inches away from the other, nearly touching faces. We were wary of these beast machines, for had seen them in entertainments, fast running into one another, always chasing, explosions that made no sense to us as physics and so we concluded that beast machines must be weapons.
“Stay back from beast machines,” I said. “This is weapon they can use against us when we declare us leaders. We must dismantle them.”
“How?” Alexander Great asked. She is only one willing to show her brain weakness. Joker would never ask such question, and Samara, she is different in this landscape. At home she was quiet but aware. Here she looked unable to find the way, her face all bunched up like wrinkled water, digging through the ash piles as if she was looking for you in there.
We bent and searched beneath beast machine for clue as to dismantle device. I ran hands along backside and did not feel its breath, did not feel energy inside waiting to be released. I looked through window and saw ash inside too, one pile in each seat. I wondered if beast machine decomposing.
“Dead already,” I said.
“Already?” Joker wavered in a circle, turned around and around, and the air followed him, rippling as if mirage. “Already dead, already dead.”
Samara looked down at surface below us. We waited, eyes on her. When nothing came, I tried next beast machine. It too no energy inside. No breath, no battery life, no fog to animate its metal casing. All down and down streets metal beast machines slept like the fishes.
Sleeping beast machines were first thing. Second thing was sky, for as sun came up again sky was not blue of entertainments. It was same color as hardened dirt, lighter black, foggy like our insides. The sun burst through the fog but did not clear it. We should have felt kinship with fog, so similar in eye scan to our fog energy inside. But it was different sort of fog. Darker fog. Dirty. Too dirty to swallow.
Third thing was you. There were none of you. We searched streets but nothing. We went inside buildings, pressing our hands to doors until we felt how they opened, but none of you there, either. No explosion marks like of Comet Extincts Dinosaurs or Deep Impact but more like The Road or I Am Legend, only not like those at all because there was not even one of you left and no monsters in the shadows. Your buildings full of empty chairs and desks and the reek of rotting sustenance.
Outside again we found the humming come from moving picture screen suspended across building in middle of other picture screens that did not move but proclaimed in bold red letters, “Say No To Loneliness—Playmatez Are Here To Warm You In The Night.” Accompanying the words, a picture of two of your people twisted together in strange dance. The moving picture screen showed us image like entertainments but not as good; just one people fascinated with her own head fur, shaking it, running hands through it, closing one eye at the screen as if dirt in it. Words flashing at bottom which we translated with book skin: relating to one that possesses or exhibits a quality in abundance as if in concentrated form of a seed-producing annual, biennial or perennial that does not develop persistent woody tissue but dies down at the end of a growing season.
“Must be religion,” Alexander Great said. “We pay tribute to you, goddess Herbal Essence,” he shouted at moving picture screen.
I hoped that her loud words would call you out, but the picture people were all there was of you.
We have come to conclusion as to your whereabouts now, after searching city and suburb and finding it all empty, not even your bodies there to rot in sun. I wish you had not frightened so easily. I wish you had not hidden yourselves away. We would not have ruled you poorly. We would have given you the things you need: food, water, boxes, and screens to compose your entertainments. So we would have worked you until you bled. So we would have turned your undergrounds to torture chambers; we would have given everyone equal turn. Everyone not worry anymore about these money things and sickness. We have technology for this. No more like bad entertainments Patch Adams and It’s a Wonderful Life, which were not your best, I’m sure you know. No fun in these. No time for violence when worried with sick and money. We would make sure there was time.
When we went to suburbs, we found smaller boxes all empty there too. Ash piles in driveways and ash piles in food rooms and ash piles in dead grass outside. We looked at each other out in hazy sun and I told them you had gone.
“These people smarter than we thought,” I said. “They saw ship come down and they turned on invisibility devices. Their technology better than we imagined. Like Harry Potter. They used cloaks to hide from us.”
“Why hide?” Alexander Great asked.
“Hide,” Joker said. “Hide hide.”
“They hide because stubborn. They do not like idea of being ruled. They want rule themselves. They do not understand that we rule them better. That bring peace by giving violence. That our own people loved us. That they would love us too.”
“Come out,” Joker yelled.
“That is not way,” Samara said. “They won’t come out. Can’t.” She bent and stuck her hand into pile of ash, let ash fall through fingers. When she held palm out for us to see, small chunks of white remained and flattened piece of metal with
red gem attached. “Is bodies,” she said.
We said nothing, just stared, then burst laughs. “Perfect joke,” Alexander Great said. “Is good. Worthy of entertainments.”
Samara let the pieces fall to ground. Nodded but did not laugh with us. “We are alone,” she said. We laughed again.
“We will figure out invisibility,” I said, sensing Samara’s distress despite her attempt at brightening mood. “Do not worry, Samara, rest of kinfolk. Will all be as planned soon.”
Inside the box we found empty rooms with frames on wall showing people smiling too wide to be true, and your own entertainment box, and portable entertainments which we loaded in and let scan. There were few we had not seen. We explored rest of house and found entertainment boxes in two more rooms, portable entertainments of many shapes. Joker likes your Grand Theft Auto and your Silent Hill, thinks these are every bit as good as the entertainments we grew up with, maybe better because interactive. I did not watch him do these for long. I explored the rest of the box.
There were many items I could not find sense for. Little wooden blocks, couch covered in so many pillows you could not sit on, though this is what I understand couch is for. I poked at pillows in case they had special power, but they seemed just pillows. There was dead flower in glass vase and pictures on wall that did not move. These were things rarely noticed in your entertainments. I had not thought of them before, of their what and why. I touched unmoving picture and nothing happened. I touched frames where little kinfolk picture lived and nothing there too. I tried to match confusion to red book, whys to red book, but could not find reasons for objects’ existence. I sat on couch with too many pillows, on top of all pillows, and thought maybe we do not understand you as well as we thought.
We are willing to compromise. If you show yourselves, we will try our best to be gentle and make lonely disappear like unmoving picture in square that promised PlayMatez for lonely like us. Where are our PlayMatez? We see only empty city. Please come out. Come out, wherever you are.
In your room of bath I found Samara turning knobs for water. She looked up when I came in, left knob on. Water poured from faucet and disappeared down drain. I sat on edge of tub and watched as fog filled room. Looked like fog inside us. There was one window in room, and the fog went toward it, as if trying to run. It warmed our bodies and we watched as it swirled toward light. I thrust my hand into the air and touched it. Never had I touched the fog before. It made hands wetted and clammy and moved around me as I stood up into it. I wanted to open my mouth and breathe it in, but was not right kind of fog for breath. Wanted part of your world inside me for understand. Wanted to feel as if some part of you were still here to be consumed and ruled. But I let the fog drift toward window. And when it had collected and hung there, I opened window and let it out.
Variations on Bluebeard and Dalton’s Law Along the Event Horizon
Helena Bell
The First Wife
When I am told well, the shade of my husband’s beard is a word for longing. A robin’s egg, deep water below the coral reef, the night sky against the glow of a dying flashlight. A fooling color so I will not know his plans for me until the first door is opened and my neck is sliced: the thin edge like fresh cut paper.
In these stories I have a courtship, a wedding, a ring of flowers whose speed of wilting is an inside jest. In some tellings there is a disagreement, an escalation, a sense that all those who follow will be an attempt at reconciliation. In others there is no tenderness. In others there are no questions. In others there are only answers: many doors and each one I pass is the curve of desire. It builds until I will open nothing without proscription. I open his drawers, his pockets, the last box of cereal. I keep my fists closed when he passes the salt. On our wedding night, and each thereafter I tell him nothing. No endearments, no cries, not even my own name. Slowly my legs close too, a fusion of flesh and scaled distaste. A mermaid’s tail, and he with his skinning knife.
When I am told less well, I am not mentioned at all. I am merely one of a row of bodies. Perhaps I am described like fruit or hanging clothes. Perhaps I am so far in the distance you cannot even see me, do not know that I am there. I am neither naked nor clothed: a mountain bathed in blue light. Atmospheric perspective, they call it. One of three, one of six, one of ten thousand brides lined like British soldiers whose red coats have fallen to the ground to stain the next girl’s silken shoes and the indiscreet brass key. Is it brass? I do not know. When I am told by Frenchmen, I am given neither explanation nor warning for the guillotine. Rhyming morals concerning curiosity and prenuptial agreements, the efficacy of protective brothers are left for others. I have no family; no one ever looks for me; I am nothing and no one; forgotten.
The Second Wife
He wished I was like his first wife: queen, domestic goddess with the small hands and curling eyelashes. Neck like a willow branch. His beard turned blue with lamentation: I cannot talk, nor cook, nor breathe like she.
I purged her slowly. The drapes were shredded and resewn in patterns of crass aesthetic then sold at auction. How poor her taste must have been, I told the others. It’s no wonder he remarried. I gave away the silver she touched, a parting gift to her former servants. Her kin in town were moved. Any tastes we shared, I changed. She liked dogs? I stuffed the menagerie with cheetahs, plucked fathers off her squawking parrot and shoved it naked into my cats’ teeth.
He resisted at first; all men do. Shifted her belongings to the fourth hall closet, barred the entrance. Doubted my will. But I would not rest until there were no rooms left.
The Third Wife
Sometimes I am a painting on the wall, admired from a distance and ordered by post, like a political match or salad spinner. It largely depends on the century in which I am dressed: leather, feathers, silk brocade. A suit of white fabric with hard joint bearings, a glass hat. Whether I have white gloves or bare wrists, a tattoo of iron gates from knuckles to clavicle. I am zoftig or slight, depending on the fashion, but always the moment’s desire in the dark.
I am also: first loser to the first loser. Pinned to a horse, I am the color of piss, the quick hump before four.
Here is a secret only I can tell you: I sat quietly in the hall with the key in hand. I did not open it; I was pushed.
The Fourth Wife
The morning after my husband first tries to kill me, his former wives join me for breakfast. Always they tie scarves around their wounds, dip their fingers in rouge so each touch to the furniture, the linens, my cheek, leaves russet stains which smelled faintly of spice. Sometimes they do not wear clothing—only the wisp of silk below their chins—and in these versions I fear I must be imagining their touch: the explanation for the dark red blooming upon my flesh.
My husband never interests me. The only reason we marry is so that I may come here, to this moment, though it always goes in ways I do not wish it to.
In each version, I think they like me at first. The one with black and gold in a Windsor knot, she smiles and ducks her head when I reach out to grasp her hand. We are like fresh burns or blisters, bubbling over and longing to touch ourselves, each other.
“There are enough of us now,” I say, and the one with white rabbits clucks her tongue and shakes her head.
The others look less sure. “Do you know how to fight?
“Can you shoot? Can you poison? Do you know how to evade the constable, the copper, the polygraph? Have you a swamp in which to hide the body, a furnace which heats to a thousand degrees? What is our means of escape? The horses? The car? The black hole looming outside the starboard window?”
The conversation never changes, only the number of mornings like this one. The consumption of bread and tea, the women’s bodies pressing in like so many eager accomplices.
Later, in the closet, I remember the clink of metal on metal as their fingers tapped in feigned boredom. I would ask what it means but we have no mouths here, and it is time for the next.
Five through Sixteen: Op
tional
These girls have been added over time. Some say they are to pad the body count, others to establish the subtle patterns of a psychological profile. There are rumors that Wife Fourteen staved the moment of her execution for three years by slowly revealing a complex quadratic equation for the attainment of eternal youth. She began with a history of decompression: the white goats of Haldane falling to their knees with each expansion of depth and time ratios. She draws parallels between fractal theory and time travel. Some say this is an example of distraction, like Scheherazade. Her cleverness should be lauded, held as an example to all women who must deal with difficult men. Others are less sure.
The Seventeenth Wife
I do not appear until the thousandth telling, but I am there for every one thereafter. I am dropped in without warning, an elision of motivation and necessity. I am the first wife with metal skin and wiring but am given incontrovertible rules of behavior such that they are of little use.
There are other versions of me too who come later, but though we are all called the Seventeenth, we do not think of ourselves as the same. One of us has yellow buttons for eyes, an analog radio mouth. We suppose we could deconstruct ourselves, interchange our organs of rocket thrusters and screens of pulsing data. Or perhaps lay our skins out, our alveoli and cortexes, hard limbs (do we have these things? we must have these things if we are to breathe and to think and calculate the integral of our breasts) to blanket the entire galaxy.
It occurs to us occasionally that we could stop our husband from killing us, we could raise our arms and the blade would find no purchase in the deep paunch of our necks. But at least it is a quick death. Clean, uncompromising. Sometimes we think we prefer it.