by Graeme Hurry
“So what happened? Are they gone?”
She looked around with a frown. “I don’t know if they’re dead, because I doubt gods of the earth would be killed that easily. But after I defeated them they seemed to melt away, so at the least I think they’re out of my mind. If they are alive, they’ll have to find someone else to play host to them.”
“Did you ever find out why they chose you?”
“No, they never mentioned it. But maybe in that moment I was just vulnerable, and they saw my strength and figured they could use it. What Francis said about my mother being an earth mage might have something to do with it, too… it didn’t work out for them, though.”
Tristan smiled. “No.” He hugged her, a great big hug rather uncomfortable for her wound. “I love you.”
“And I you. I couldn’t have won without you.”
He nodded as if to say no problem and they held each other, indulging in their mutual affection. Clara might not have the powers of the earth anymore, but all the strength they needed was each other’s. She would be hard pressed to imagine feeling luckier.
REMOTE CONTROL
by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt
Jake squealed the tires of his black Corvette as he backed out of his girlfriend’s driveway. Something crunched under his tires. Jake grinned and took a sip of his beer. Probably one of the damn kid’s damn cars. Served him right, messing around his Vette. Jake flipped on his headlights and his windshield wipers. “Let’s drive, baby.”
The Vette was a black streak between the asphalt and the ink-black rain. No one else was on the roads. Jake turned onto the freeway, his back pressing into leather as he accelerated. No rain was going to stop him from having his fun. No rain, no clingy bitch, and no dopey kid neither.
Jake patted the dash of the Vette. It had been one thing when the kid was small. A few toy cars, something bigger at Christmas, and the kid worshipped the ground you walked on. A ninety-nine cent toy car really greased the wheels with Momma too. But lately Jake couldn’t stand the way the kid looked at him with those big eyes. The way he was always mumbling. Children should speak up or not speak at all. His father had smacked that lesson into him, and by God —
Lights flashed in the rearview mirror and a siren wailed. Where had that come from? Jake looked at the beer between his legs and then at his speedometer. He was pushing a hundred. Christ. The siren sounded distant. Maybe he could outrun him. He glanced over his right shoulder.
“That damn kid! He’s been in my car!”
In the Vette’s rear window sat a toy cop car the size of a football. A Christmas present from years ago. No wonder the siren sounded so strange. When had the kid put it in here? He knew not to touch the Vette, but apparently he needed a reminder. Jake hit the brakes and swerved to the right. He chuckled as the toy tumbled onto the floor, the siren cutting off in a wail of distress.
Jake finished his beer and tossed the empty bottle out into the rain. He really was going to leave this time. Making him choose between them and the Vette. Hell, he didn’t even know the kid was his. Sure didn’t act like him, sitting in the corner and putzing around with his toys all day. His mother should make him go out into the fresh air, or at least do some of the chores she was too lazy to do.
Tinny police siren. Jake checked his mirrors on reflex. Nothing. Even the cops wouldn’t be out on a night like this. The stupid toy again. He reached behind the passenger seat. “Son of a—!” Something under the seat had jabbed him. Jake licked away the blood and then unbuckled his seat belt. It was like the damn toy rolled away the closer his fingers got.
The Vette started to shake. Jake cursed and bolted upright in his seat. Rumble Strips. Curve. Jake jerked the wheel to the left and started to hydroplane. His left shoulder slammed into the window and he felt his bowels loosen. The toy siren mocked him as he fought for control of the car. When he regained it, he was in the left lane rather than the right.
The siren wailed louder, pulsing in time with Jake’s throbbing head. He turned to see the toy in the passenger seat now. Must have been a wilder spin than he had thought. At least he could get rid of the thing now. He snatched at it with his right hand while pressing the button for the passenger seat window with his left. He was dripping blood on the black leather seats and still hadn’t found the toy.
There. It had rolled onto the floor. Jake slid toward the stick shift, ducked down so he could pick it up. He swore as the Vette hit rumble strips again. He jerked the wheel hard to the right. The Vette slid out too far. Jake pitched the toy, missed the window, and gripped the wheel with both hands.
The Vette was still hydroplaning. As Jake fought for control, the toy siren grew louder and louder. Stopped, started. Changed pitch, from thunderously low to skull-piercingly high. Jake cursed the toy, cursed his girlfriend, cursed the boy. The siren grew so loud Jake had to cover his ears.
The highway curved again, but Jake didn’t feel the rumble strips. Didn’t see the tree limb that punched through the windshield. All he heard was the siren as his world went red and then black.
*
Ginny dried her tears. No man was worth this. She was just going to have to be tough this time. If not for herself, then for Billy. She knew Jake wasn’t hurting him, but he hadn’t hurt her in the beginning either. No, she’d had enough. Ginny forced a smile on her face and went to check on her son.
Billy was on the floor playing with some of the cars Jake had gotten him. Back in the good days. Ginny’s smile deepened. Over the carpet a cop car chased a black Corvette just like Jake’s. Boys and their toys. Billy made siren noises as the cop chased the Corvette up and down and around curves. Ginny resisted the temptation to pat her son on the head and went to the kitchen to make some tea.
So she did not hear the siren sounds Billy made meld with his soft murmurings. Did not see him drive the toy Corvette into the leg of a chair. Did not see the small plastic windshield crack and turn bright red. She did not see the look on Billy’s face as his father died.
LIZARDS
by Walter Campbell
Steven chucked a chunk of sand into my eyes, and I fell to my knees screaming. He laughed, and his big basketball shoes scrapped the granite just outside the sandpit as he walked away. I asked for help a few times, but nobody came. So I screamed for help. Still nobody.
Keeping my hands on my burning eyes, I pushed myself up to my feet using my elbows, and walked to the nurse’s office.
“William,” she said, annoyed. “What now?”
“Steven threw sand in my eyes.”
“Go wash out in the sink,” she said, stepping to the side of me cautiously. She sat down as far from the sink as she could and watched me. I couldn’t see her since my eyes were filled with sand, but I knew from previous visits that she was disgusted. It wasn’t my fault, though. I couldn’t help it.
I got all the sand out. She nervously handed me a bottle of drops that would ease the redness in my eyes, and I popped them in.
“Now go to class. I’ll see you soon,” she said. She sighed as I left.
I wasn’t in a hurry to get to class. It was only October, but so far sixth grade looked like it would be even worse than fifth grade. Or fourth, third, second, first, or kindergarten for that matter. Preschool wasn’t so great either. I shuffled the whole way there, kicking rocks as I went, but not too hard. In third grade I used to have a friend, and before everyone peer pressured him into not being my friend, he had told me he’d heard from his cousin—who was in seventh grade, so he knew lots of things—that this kid in Pasadena, the town next to ours, had kicked a pebble so hard it had shot right through his teacher’s head and killed him. The kid was juvy now, and rumor had it this once nice, dorky, rock-kicking kid had a shaved head, and tattoos, and got into knife fights all the time. When he got out, he was planning on visiting the family of the teacher he’d killed, and kicking rocks at all of them to finish the job. That was the rumor, at least. So when I kicked rocks, I did it delicately.
I suc
ked in breath before opening the door. Taking a deep breath was what my mom had told me to do whenever I was scared or nervous. I was both those things often, so I’d gotten pretty good at taking deep breaths. Sometimes it helped, usually it didn’t. This time it didn’t.
My teacher shuddered when I walked in. I didn’t see him shudder because I was looking at my shoes, but I knew he had. He always did. I took my seat on the far right side of the classroom next to Tony who punched me in the shoulder once the teacher wasn’t looking.
“Freak,” Tony whispered.
“William?” my teacher asked. “Do you know the answer?” I hadn’t been paying attention. He probably knew that. I looked up at the board, saw a math problem I had no hope of solving, and guessed a random number. It was wrong, so I swore, and he told me I’d need to step outside. It was a dance we did. Mr. Garcia didn’t want me in his class, so at least two or three times a week he’d call on me, I’d get something wrong, I’d swear about it, and he’d have an excuse to make me sit on the benches outside.
A half hour later class let out. A few people called me names as they passed, a few slapped me on the back or shoulder or head, and the rest just steered clear.
History class wasn’t much better, but at least my teacher didn’t make me leave. Although I sort of wish Mrs. Lee had made me leave; it was nice being alone sometimes.
At lunch Brett threw milk at me, and the cafeteria lady wouldn’t spoon pasta onto my plate because she didn’t want to get too close. I sat a few hundred yards away near the trashcans.
English class was a lot like history class: painful but not awful. Then, finally, with all the worst classes, recess, and lunch behind me, I had science, the tolerable part of my day. Science I knew. I had a personal investment in the subject, particularly in biology, and while Mr. Fernandez was just as scared of me as the rest of my teachers and classmates, at least I could answer his questions correctly.
“Who discovered gravity?”
“Newton.”
“What is the symbol for Iron.”
“Fe.”
“What are the two main ways in which snakes kill their prey?”
“By venom or constriction.”
But like all mildly good things, science class ended, and Steven hit me in the ribs afterwards. I shuffled four blocks home with the reason for my interest in science trailing behind me and clinging to me: lizards.
I attracted lizards like magnets attracted metal. Not one or two lizards, but tens of lizards, and on some days, even hundreds of lizards. They followed me, they clung to me, and they hung out all over and around me. They treated me like their blood was getting cold and I was a big hot water bottle. They came and went, but as one left, another replaced him. I lived in Southern California so there was never a shortage of lizards.
It had been that way since I was born. While my mom had been holding me for the very first time, five alligator lizards—slim, long-tailed lizards about a foot in length that looked almost snake-like they were so skinny—had crawled onto the bed, and not at all deterred by her screams, right onto my belly and legs. She had brushed them off, but they’d come right back up. Within a few days, those five lizards had turned into twenty lizards, and within a few more days, when there were twenty-five lizards, my dad had left.
My mom had asked for tests to be done, but what sort of tests could be done for something like that? They had run me through a basic physical, and found nothing. They’d referred me to a herpetologist (reptile scientist) at UCLA. He had run some tests on me, spent a lot of time with me, and tested a few of the lizards that hung out on me. He found nothing. Every year since I’d gone in for a checkup with both the doctors and the herpetologist, and every year they’d been equally stumped.
At school I was a freak, in stores or restaurants I was a disturbance and a health hazard, and although I knew that my mom loved me, at home I wasn’t quite at home. She’d gotten over her fear of lizards long ago, but that didn’t mean she liked them, and that didn’t mean she thought it was any less weird.
I hated my lizards. I loved animals, I really did, but my lizards were different. My mom had given me a long lecture explaining how they couldn’t help it just as much as I couldn’t help it. No one was at fault. To blame them for my dad leaving and for my mom’s wariness was foolish. She was right, but I still hated them. They were by far my least favorite animals.
When I got home, I went right to my room as my mom required. I shut my door tightly, putting a towel beneath it, so none of the lizards could escape into the rest of the house. I opened the windows. If I left the windows open, the lizards were les likely to defecate inside. I lay back on my bed, pulled The Origin of Species out of my backpack, and read. I’d become very good at ignoring the lizards who crawled on my books while I read. Waiting for them to move or brushing them aside was routine. Some people were slow readers, and some had poor reading comprehension, and I had lizards on my books. No big deal.
Three chapters later, my mom called me for dinner. When I got to the kitchen, I sat on my side of the clear plastic partition meant to keep lizards from crawling onto my mom’s food, and I proceeded to lie to her about how my day was. I told her about all my friends, how well I’d done on tests, and how I loved the lunch she packed me (I never ate the lunch she packed because by lunchtime the lizards had already excreted all over it).
To sleep at night without having to worry about waking up with a lizard in my mouth, I plugged in eight heat rocks and placed them all around my bed. This would keep most of the lizards off me and on the rocks, but every night at least one or two remained.
I ate my cereal quickly the next morning. I ate all meals quickly. If I didn’t, lizards would crawl on them before I finished, and I’d have to toss the food. Lizards have a high potential to carry salmonella, and while I was probably immune at that point, but it wasn’t worth the risk.
I had only just stepped onto the schoolyard when a girl screamed and ran away. My school was big, and it seemed everyday a new person discovered me and my lizards, and inevitability?
I passed through the playground quickly on my way to art class, but around the tetherball courts I was slowed down when Robert threw his soda on me because I “got to close with my gross pets.” A few lizards hissed at him when we were hit with soda, but he just laughed at them.
While I was cleaning up in the bathroom, a frequent thought revisited me: I wished I lived somewhere else. In Southern California the three main lizards were the southern alligator lizards (Elgaria multicarinata) that I mentioned before, and sagebrush lizards (Sceloporus graciosus) and western fence lizards (Sceloporus occidentalis), which were almost identical. The sagebrushes and western fences were only about three inches long not counting their tail. The alligator lizards could be over a foot long, but they were still so small that it didn’t matter much.
There were other lizards, obviously, but they were far less common. The desert night lizard (Xantusia vigilis), sierra night lizard (Xantusia sierrae), western side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana elegans), yellow-backed spiny lizard (Sceloporus uniformis), Skilton’s skink (Plestiodon skiltonianus), great basin collared lizard (Crotaphytus bicinctores), coastal whiptail (Aspidoscelis tigris stejnegeri), California whiptail (Aspidoscelis tigris munda), desert banded gecko (Coleonyx variegatus variegatus), San Diego banded gecko (Coleonyx variegatus abbotti), and the long-nosed leopard lizard (Gambelia wislizenii) all made occasional appearances, but even still, they were all small and innocuous as well.
Why couldn’t I have lived a county or two further east so that banded Gila monsters (Heloderma suspectum cinctum), the world’s only venomous lizards, could crawl behind me? If I’d lived near the Nile River in Africa, I could be followed by the nine-foot long Nile monitor (Varanus niloticus), and if I were lucky enough to have been born on a small Indonesian island, I could have been escorted across campus by the gigantic Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), a lizard that could not only grow to ten feet long, but also had spit
so bogged down with bacteria that it functioned as a sort of poison. I could just see Robert chucking that soda on me, and me yelling “Komodo!” A gigantic lizard would stomp out from behind the handball court. The lizard would charge Robert, who would piss himself before running away, but the lizard would be able to catch him because while they looked slow, they were really quite fast. I’d have, of course, trained him never to actually hurt anyone, but to run just close enough that they thought he would.
I’d actually seen something sort of like this when someone’s escaped green iguana (Iguana iguana) followed me for a day. When Steven had come over to administer my usual kick in the shins, the iguana had hissed and whipped his tail. Watching Steven scream his way to the nurse’s office had been the greatest moment of my life. Unfortunately, the iguana’s owner had found him the following night, and since then I’d been stuck with the usual three-inch lizards.
While I was basking in my reverie, the door to the bathroom slammed closed. Leaving dragon dreams behind, I ran to it, but before I got there, I heard it being locked from the outside.
“Hello!” I yelled when I reached the door. I tried pulling it, but that obviously didn’t work. “Hello!” I yelled again, banging my fists against the door. I heard no one. The bell had rung a minute before the door had slammed, so no one was in the hallway. I looked down at the bottom of the door. It had been hooked to the wall in two places and both hooks looked sturdy. They wouldn’t have slipped off easily. To unlatch the door, someone had stepped all the way inside. They’d seen me in here.
I ran to the other end of the bathroom, and scrambled up a stall wall until I was standing on it with my hands against the wall. I walked my hands and feet over, the stall wobbling below.
“Lizards, if you get in my way now, I’ll never forgive you,” I said as the image of me brushing a lizard out of the way, losing my balance, and falling to the hard, piss-painted floor below crawled inside my head. At the very end of the stall I could just reach the edge of the open window above me. I grabbed it. I could definitely get to the window with a good pull from my arms and push from my legs. How I would jump outside without breaking a leg on the concrete below, I hadn’t yet figured out, but I could deal with that later. I shoved up, and in a second my head was sticking out the window. It was a moment that should been filled with immense relief. Instead, it was filled with immense dread. Steven was holding a beehive just below the window.