by Laird Barron
Mr. Flat Affect emerges from the corner where the coats are piled. Sways in place, devilish gaze locked on me. He’s a meat suit and whatever powers him came from the deep earth. I whimper.
“Don’t be afraid,” Julie Five says. “You made the cut. We wouldn’t dream of harming a hair on your frosty little head. You’re our final girl. I always hoped you would be.” She takes my hand, leads me upstairs, and seats me in the parlor at a plain wooden table. The moon glows hard in the upper corner of a bay window. Its light seems to recede, shrinking to a dot as I watch. She removes a black moleskin notebook from her purse, opens it before me, and clicks the action on a ballpoint pen, places it beside the notebook. “Your memoir. It will be important someday, after everyone has forgotten how all this started. There’s a fire safe in the den.”
Two more Mr. Flat Affects have noiselessly appeared at her flanks. One in white, the other black. Their expressions are identically monstrous. She links arms with them and they glide into the shadows. “Good luck,” she says from somewhere. Her voice echoes as if bouncing around a canyon. “Enjoy yourself.”
I do as she says and write down what I know. I stash the notebook in the fire safe. Sun devours moon and the second decade of the twenty-first century absorbs the 1990s. The Tooms mansion decays around me. The table becomes stone and the stuffed moose head wilts unto a living death. I’m once again thirty-something and utterly fabulous despite the bags under my eyes, the tremor in my hand, and the caked-on gore.
Steely J, Julie Five, and Zane Tooms are long gone. The others remain as remains — Vadim, Morton, Candice, Clint, and Leo. Bloated, purple-black, in a pile near the hearth. Candice’s shoe has fallen off.
Had the poison been in the ring or the liquor? The ring is how I bet. My crazy-person epistle isn’t going to do me any favors in a court of law. Story like mine is a one-way trip to the booby hatch. What will happen to me when the authorities make the scene? The question gets an answer when the pair of troopers roll up to investigate after the anonymous call. They are none too reassured by my appearance and wild story. Two seconds after they nearly trip over the pile of corpses, I’m staring down the barrels of automatic pistols.
My finger bleeds from a wound that will never close. I make a fist without a thought as I mumble apologies for being here in this house of horrors, wrong place, wrong time — oh, so most def the wrong time. I needn’t bother. The tearing pain in my hand lends an edge to my voice. My breath steams, a dark cone, and both troopers shudder in unison. Their guns clatter on the floor. Color drains from those well-fed faces, skin snaps tight and their eyes, their mouths, shiver and stretch. The transformation requires mere seconds. Their peculiar, click-clicking thoughts scratch and buzz inside my own psychic killing jar. They are mine, like it or not.
I do like it, though. A bunch.
Mist covers the world below this lonely hilltop. It’s bitter cold and I’m barely dressed, yet it doesn’t touch me. Nothing can. I am Bela Lugosi’s most famous character reborn and reinterpreted. The Tooms estate is my mansion on the moor, my gothic castle. Time has slipped and I wonder if Tony is still out there in Malibu, waiting to meet me and fall in love. Do I care? Must I?
Who originally said some men want to watch the world burn? Whomever, he meant assholes like Zane and Julie. They chose me, corrupted me, and invested in me some profane force. Its trickle charge impresses my brain with visions of debauched revelry, of global massacre, fire, and slavery. Do my minor part to spread mayhem and terror and a few years down the road I can be on the ground floor of a magnificent dystopian clique. I can be a lord of darkness with minions and everything.
What shall I do with such incalculable power?
“Fix me a cosmopolitan,” I say to the ex-trooper, ex-human, on my right. He does and it’s passable.
There are numerous doors inside the Tooms mansion, to say nothing of the crack that splinters through bedrock and who knows where from there. I could wreak havoc in the name of diabolical progress. Or I could flap my arms and fly to Hollywood, whisper in the right ears and watch a sea change transform the industry. Or I could return to my senior year and seize Stu Whitaker by more than the hip, tell Father dearest to get bent with a martini in one hand and a smoldering joint in the other.
Decisions, decisions, you know?
Ears Prick Up
1.
My kind is swift to chase, swift to battle. My imperfect memory is long with longing for the fight. Gray and arthritic in the twilight of retirement from valorous service to the Empire, my hackles still bunch at the clink of metal on metal. My yawn is an expression of doom sublimated. I dream of chasing elk across the plains of my ancient ancestors. I dream of blizzards and ice fields that merge with the bitter stars. In my dreams, I always die.
2.
I traveled far from home in my youth. Dad and I slugged it out with a whole platoon of black hats one night as we strolled across the tundra of the Utter North. Military commandos hired to assassinate us; every man and dog marked with the mark of a secret gang, scents masked in case of failure. Poor, stupid fools. Probably sent by General Aniochles who figured Dad was gunning for his job. Bet my bottom chew toy the sonofabitch made the call. He gave Dad dagger eyes whenever they chatted at court. Bastard smelled guilty to me and that’s what I knew. Well, I knew right.
I wasn’t a pup then. I wasn’t approaching my warranty date, either. My eyes glowed red with atomic radiation. My fangs gleamed in a grin that would have made a T. Rex flinch, appropriately enough, because they named me, my whole series, after the terrible king extinct these many eons, but unforgotten. Dad papered the walls of my kennel with color photos of dinos and wolves and exploding missiles to give me the right idea about how I should behave when he cried, “Sic ‘em, Rex!”
Dad let slip the leash and I sicced, oh boy. Happiest of growls is the snarl of a locked jaw.
Bullets cracked all around us, and fire flashed all around us, while I lunged to and fro, hip deep in blood and mud the way dearly departed Kennel Master Callys and his best dog, Shotsum-Loathsum, taught me at the war academy. Shotsum-Loathsum was one of a kind, the failed Cerberus series, and they never again made his equal. He had two heads (a third just wasn’t feasible), one more vicious than the other! Might’ve been the meanest mutt to ever prowl the yard. Gave me this beauty scar on my muzzle, and I thank him.
I belched hellfire and howled sonic death. With each snap I sheared an armored arm here, a leg there. Those days were my destroying angel days. I could tear the tread from a tank and whip you with it. Fear pumped acid through my blood and accelerated my reactions. Fear tasted like raw meat, made me drool. Fear made me greater than my design which had attempted to render me fearless. That’s why they canceled my line too. Hard to control a thinking dog.
I leaped in front of Dad as somebody opened up on him with an antipersonnel gun and got shot a whole bunch for my troubles. The impact knocked me flat and splintered a stand of trees into kindling.
They shouldn’t have done. Dad cursed his worst. He powered the prototype off-market rockets on his exoskeleton and gave back an eye for an eye, lighted a mushroom cloud where we struggled. Could have spotted us from orbit. In the end we killed the bastards and collapsed upon that slagged hunk of arctic plain, half done in ourselves. I groaned, fur shredded, titanium plates pierced and leaking the good stuff almost too fast for my personal cloud of nanobots to plug the works. Go little nanobots! My tongue lolled and I whimpered.
Dad patted my head. “Live it up, Rex. Once all the bad guys are dead, they’ll retire us to the Happy Hunting Grounds.”
Vexes me to this day that I don’t know about the Happy Grounds. The pertinent entry seems to have been purged from my data banks.
3.
Revisit this twenty or so years down the line. I’m a grizzled veteran. The powers that be have phased out the Rex Series. Dad must truly be sentimental because he keeps me around despite an abundance of options. My joints ache, my servos grind louder. I hop
e nobody notices.
The train sprawls in the long grass, a ravel of silver below this bare hill. A stutter of pops and flashes and the tyrant is dead. I should be down there, jaws agape, eyes flashing fire, my howl obliterating the courage of the enemy. Instead I crouch at my master’s heel and growl in malice. Younger men and younger dogs do the dirty work.
Dad has killed the Emperor with a word. Long live the Emperor.
Dad’s men approach, green mud on their faces, and report that this is so. They are good soldiers. He picked them carefully as a farmer picks the best fruit from his orchard. They present him with a basket containing the tyrant’s head — a basket of white birch in the ancient samurai custom. There are no longer samurai, but we do not forget.
Dad’s men report that the tyrant’s wife is also dead, the young, beautiful one who refused to part from him when the palace fell and his people lighted great fires and shouted for his blood. Dad’s men report how they have killed the tyrant’s children, even the one who hid cleverly below the floorboards. They are good men, thorough men. He is pleased. I see it in the relaxing of his shoulders, smell it in his scent. I smell sadness too — he and the Emperor were pack, once.
Our new Emperor Trajan is jubilant. He commends our valor when Dad calls on the red phone to explain the garden has been weeded. The new Emperor asks Dad to fetch the tyrant’s banner to Prime. Trajan will spread it before the door of his toilet. There will be celebrations; we are invited. I will receive a medal of valor and a juicy ox bone. I have a cabinet of medals. I am the most decorated canine soldier in the history of the Empire.
Even as they speak on the red phone it rains, and through the rain I watch the tyrant’s banner curl with flames. No matter. Dad knows of a three-fingered tailor in New Naples who will make us another.
4.
Mom is happy when we finally return to our home by the white cliffs. She feeds Dad grapes from the vineyard and cheese from the goat. She bathes him from a ceremonial basin. They retire behind a bamboo screen to mate.
In the morning I water the big tree near the main gate and rest there for a while. The ocean is off to my left, dull beneath the cliffs and patterned with hungry birds. The tree is to my right, like me, a piece of old metal — scarred and stained, white-puckered grooves radiating from the axis of its foundation. Such low, dark trees dot the ragged coast, but I am informed they do not spring native from this dirt. I wonder if they remember their birth-grounds by some impulse caught in the plexus of heartwood and cambial glue. When the winds rush off the water my tree seems to nod at the sky. It murmurs.
Marcello arrives in his glider when the sun grows fat. My tail wags with a crazy mind of its own. Marcello is black as pitch and always smells of violence, which I adore. His eyes are rivets in a cold bulk. Of all loyal hounds in Dad’s stable, he is dominant. Oh, I could rend him, if growl came to snap, for I am Rex, greatest of my kind. What a battle that would be!
My brains are superior to most canines. Nonetheless, the primitive beast within me isn’t much for long-term planning. His stratagems are Dad’s long knives. Marcy (Dad calls him that when it’s just the boys) is a ruthless man. This is his chief virtue, in my humble opinion — current events call for ruthlessness. It is the time of dog-eat-dog.
They recline near the scarred tree and discuss the situation in Prime. The ocean is smooth today and Prime is an invisible place where people from books compete for favors. These folk caper at court — clowns, buffoons, trained seals in bright clothes.
Dad too competed once. Oh yes.
The old Emperor loved him well. The previous ministers were less charmed by Dad’s heroics in the war against the barbarians. General Aniochles, Dad’s bitterest rival, had openly warned the old Emperor about the dangers of war heroes with the keys to the Legion. Aniochles was a foreigner—some speculate that barbarian water tainted his veins, and so the old Emperor chose to turn a deaf ear. Later, Aniochles got torn apart by the mob which stormed the palace during the glorious revolution. I wish we had found his body so I could have pissed upon it.
Marcello says that Prime is a safer place now. The partisans of the old Emperor have been rooted out and shriven. More importantly, the partisans of the old General have been dealt their rewards. During the plans for the Grand Transition, Dad had feared a Legion divided. To be sure, isolated centurions chafe in their barracks, yet this is nothing to dread. They need a head as a coin needs its head. Dad will more than suffice.
Marcello is confident all wounds will heal in short order, all petty complaints will be placed aside. He and Dad drink wine and congratulate themselves on a job well done. I lie at their feet and scheme to the best of my doggy ability. Unlike them, I am nervous of complacency. The new regime requires something to cement its unity. War dogs are not welcome in the parlor when the clamor of battle has subsided. Perhaps the conquered barbarians will test their chains and give us cause to rebuke them. If not the rebellious woodfolk, there is always a tribe rattling its shields. I think then of the pallid dwellers of Europa II, their vacuous demeanors and squirming mouths. We have not fired our rockets at the moon for too long. Dad should spread this message to those who command the Emperor’s ear. Nothing serves to bury present troubles so well as fresh blood.
Marcello asks when Dad means to return to the Capital. Dad says that he shall return when the Emperor summons him. Until then he will enjoy the restful ministrations of his lovely wife, and pray red-handed Mars permits a soldier’s ease. Marcello laughs and glides away on a trade wind.
Dad and I watch him go. A crow regards us from the branches.
5.
Twenty-two months since we discrowned the tyrant and installed his noble cousin Trajan. Dad is anxious that none of the new Emperor’s promises have come to fruition. My master is a soldier’s soldier and he plays the role. Part of that role is keeping one’s mouth shut in public while complaining to one’s dog in private.
Dad’s duties as Consulate General carry him abroad. He has observed firsthand a growing discontent among the Legion ranks and the populace we protect.
We visit Prime at the wane of each moon and find her streets equally restless. Dad reports the news from fortresses along the rim of the empire. The Emperor’s day to day security is overseen by Artificer Lyth and Commander Marcello. It is Lyth who frequently greets us in the Emperor’s name. He is spindly and terrible. I do not enjoy the Grand Artificer’s horrifying aspect, or the stench of malignance that seeps from the joints of his armor. Much occurs beyond the view of our esteemed leaders. The denizens of Europa II test our borders with increasing temerity. The jungles of Pash rustle with the activity of barbarian scouts. There are bombings. The Legion awaits word from Prime. No word is given. Dad hearkens whispers of discontent and his lips thin into a grim line I’ve seen too often of late.
Emperor Trajan is a wise ruler; he vows to restore Prime to her former majesty. He vows to repeal the heaviest taxes, to rekindle our aggression toward the barbarians and their allies. He vows to return the teeth of our empire. Yet his days are full of courtly doings unrelated to these pledges. His tastes are…curious. He craves exotic entertainment at court. The silken charms of Far Western nymphs consume his attention. He is enthralled by the ecstatic powders of the southern realms. Captive barbarian princes twist in wicker cages above slow steam, and their misery quirks his lips with amusement.
When Dad is finally granted a personal audience, he speaks to his eminence of concerns regarding the Legion and of our far-flung provinces. The Emperor nods his blond head and promises to address the Senate. His glassy eye does not shift from the pale forms wilting in their prisons. Our time is always short — Artificer Lyth hovers near, a monstrous cleg in red and black. He swoops to bleed the Emperor — the woodland savages carry many plagues, many plagues, indeed! — and for this, privacy is essential.
Dad takes leave, questions unresolved. I give the Artificer a baleful glare in passing.
Dad customarily sups with Marcello and dour Iade
and commends them to protect our Emperor from harm. His lieutenants assure Dad that the Capital is proof versus the machinations of evildoers. In the end we fly from Prime, Dad smelling of uneasy thoughts. He should be pleased, except that he is too much like me in that regard. His instincts are powerful and they whisper to him of danger. He groans in his sleep, reliving battles, or anticipating new ones.
Consulate General is an exalted post. A wealthy post. With Trajan upon the throne, it proves fantastically more so. Trajan lives in dread of assassins. The Legion wants for nothing. Our home is splendorous. Our servants are many. Dad’s lands stretch from deep into fertile plains and shaded hills down the coast. The trees are heavy with fruit; cattle mill in green tracts. Horses stream across wide grasses. He no longer rides them; his back hurts too much for the saddle. It pleases him to watch them gallop beneath puffed clouds as I nip at their heels.
Adjoining our home is a massive structure, low-beamed and windowless. A storehouse for Dad’s greatest prizes. He owns several vehicles — skimmers, racers, bi-spindle gliders, and a light war chariot. This last trifle is prohibited for non-military use. I too am government property. General Aniochles had often raised this point to the Emperor — when not rending the enemies of the Empire, my place was a barracks kennel, not serving as a lap dog to a commander. Yes, well fuck him too. Rank hath its privileges. I’m a bit long in the tooth. Snoozing on the plantation appeals to me more than I would’ve guessed back in the days I chewed iron and pissed fire.