The Rib From Which I Remake the World

by Ed Kurtz

  “You won’t take her, too,” Jojo said, and he lifted Barker Davis up in the air before hurling him at the nearest tree. Davis smashed into the sturdy trunk with his back, which snapped like a toothpick. The man dropped then to the ground, entirely motionless and twisted impossibly.

  Leaves crunched close by and Jojo started at it. Theodora had fallen to her knees, trembling all over, her face a sagging mask of despair.

  “Jojo . . .”

  “Pardon the mess,” he said, his broad, furry chest heaving.

  “Is he—?”

  “Dead? No way. Not him.”

  “Then . . . now what?”

  He stretched his back, arching his neck to take in the night sky. He said, “We go back.”

  “Back? Back where?”

  “To town. Home.”

  “We have no home! Don’t you remember the chasm? There’s nothing, Jojo! Nothing!”

  “There’s us,” he said calmly as he walked over to her and extended his hand. “There’s still us.”

  Theodora took his hand and Jojo lifted her up to her feet. She fell against him, buried her face in the hair of his chest and shoulder, and she sobbed.

  “He’ll come back, won’t he?”

  “He’ll come back,” Jojo agreed.

  She reared back, wiped her eyes and face along her sleeve and then locked eyes with him.

  “He won’t let us be happy,” she said. “He won’t. He won’t allow it.”

  “I’m not asking his permission.”

  “All this, it was to do it all over again, don’t you see? He’s going to make it worse, for god’s sakes!”

  “And he’ll make the same mistake he made the first time, Theodora. He’ll forget about things like love and the huge, stupid determination of people like me. I’ll go through this a thousand times for you, damn it. A million. Because you’re all I got. And all I want.”

  “Oh,” she muttered, because it was all she could say. She wanted nothing more in the world than to kiss him, but his face was dripping with blood and bits of skin. His blood and his skin. It made her shudder.

  “I’ll shave, of course.”

  “Jojo.”

  “How about George this time around?”

  “George.”

  “It’s my name.”

  “I know.”

  “Just George.”

  “I like it.”

  Neither of them could have realized they’d gone the wrong way until they emerged at the ledge overlooking the great, yawning chasm again. Jojo—now just George—went cautiously to the edge and stood there in silence for several long minutes, breathing deeply of the thick, misty air that rolled up from the vast emptiness before him. A hollow sound, a sort of moaning wind, filled the void. After a time, Theodora went to him.

  “It won’t do any good to stare at it,” she said. “We should go back the other way.”

  “Goes on forever, I guess.”

  “I guess it does.”

  “Do you suppose we’re in hell?”

  “Not with you. You wouldn’t be in my hell.”

  He smiled, but it was a tense smile.

  “She’s right, you know,” came a weak voice behind them. They both jerked around to see who had spoken. A man was shambling along the ledge, coming toward them from the east. He was small and thin, his clothes shabby, his face dirty and unshaved. His eyes were rimmed with red and his hands shook. When he was no more than a couple of yards away from them, he stopped. “You’ll go mad looking down into that. I’ve been looking at it for weeks, and look at me.”

  “Who . . .” Theodora whispered.

  “A trick,” George said.

  “No, not me,” said the man. “You want tricks, try one of those—”

  He pointed a trembling finger at the tree line. Theodora followed the finger to the trees with her eyes and yelped. George looked, too. A thin, obsidian-skinned devil was prancing amongst the trees there, flicking its grey tongue and waggling its arms theatrically.

  “You won’t see them for a while once you’ve started over,” the man said sullenly. “You’ll think they’ve gone away, that you’re safe again. But you won’t be. Nothing you can do will satisfy them—satisfy him. And he’ll start tearing it all down again.” His voice cracked and he placed a hand over his eyes. “It’s worse every time.”

  “My God,” Theodora said, keeping the devil in her line of sight until, at last, it vanished. “You—you’re the one who called me, aren’t you. It was you who warned me about Barker Davis.”

  The man nodded.

  “Fat lot of good it did, huh?”

  George narrowed his eyes, said, “How many times . . . ?”

  “Too many,” said the man. “Too many. I won’t do it again. I won’t watch everyone go mad again, everybody die. I won’t stand by and watch it all burn.”

  “Then help us. Help us make it right for once.”

  The man snorted and shook his head.

  “Sorry,” he said with a quivering grin. “But hey, best of luck. To both of you.”

  And with that he launched himself at the edge and leapt into the gaping expanse. Theodora cried out, and both she and George hurried to the edge in time to see the rumpled, tired little man get swallowed by the mist.

  She screamed after him, and her voice echoed out infinitely. George swallowed hard and gazed at the swirling mist, wondering what the man would find down there, if anything at all. There would come a time, he knew now, when he would think of doing the same. He, too, would one day find himself standing where he now stood, comparing the dark carnival of Litchfield to the unknowable emptiness that surrounded it. Which would win out?

  He narrowed his eyes and studied Theodora’s tear-streaked face, which was getting brighter and shining in the gathering dawn. She also stared with wide eyes at the edge of the world and all the impossible oblivion beyond it, stretching on and on and on forever. She also considered the jump, the quick end. The escape.

  Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut and turned away. And when she opened them again to look up at George Walker’s dirty, shaggy, wolf-man face, she smiled sadly.

  George smiled back at her.

  She didn’t look a damn thing like Irene Dunne.

  Acknowledgements

  Infinite gratitude is owed to Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi for taking a chance on this novel, not to mention for bestowing upon it a far better title than originally it suffered (with great shame and mortification). Many warm thanks to Samantha Beiko for editing the manuscript, and to Erik Mohr for the gorgeous cover art. I am indescribably honoured to join the ChiZine family, and obliged to you all for making Rib a better book. Thank you.

  About the Author

  Ed Kurtz is the author of Nausea, A Wind of Knives, and Angel of the Abyss, among other novels and novellas. His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies like Thuglit, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, Shotgun Honey, and Psychos: Serial Killers, Depraved Madmen, and the Criminally Insane, and he was selected to appear in The Best American Mystery Stories 2014. Kurtz lives in Minnesota where he is at work on his next project. Visit Ed online at edkurtzbooks.com.