Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A tale of Atomic Love
Page 1
Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu
A Tale of Atomic Love
Mercedes M. Yardley
Copyright © 2013 Mercedes M. Yardley
Cover Artwork by George C. Cotronis | www.ravenkult.com
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the authors except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Worldwide Rights
Created in the United States of America
Published by Ragnarok Publications | www.ragnarokpub.com
Editor In Chief: Tim Marquitz | Creative Director: J.M. Martin
Table of Contents
Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author
FOREWORD
Absolute Bloom
It began with a promise of violence...
My head.
Her shovel.
I launched a new horror-fiction magazine called Shock Totem in 2008. One of the first stories accepted for our debut issue was “Murder for Beginners,” by one Mercedes M. Yardley. I remember it distinctly because I first voted NO on it, not convinced it was the right kind of story for us, which caused a small uprising among my other co-conspirators over at Shock Totem HQ. After much discussion—or questioning of my sanity—and a few re-reads, I changed my mind.
I sent an acceptance e-mail, which read in part: “In fear of being beaten with a shovel, we have decided to accept your story...” She was gracious in her reply—and threatening, insisting that we made the right choice and we must continue to do so lest we end up like the hapless fool in “Murder for Beginners.” In a word: dead.
And thus, a wonderful relationship was born.
In the years since, I have had the pleasure to watch Mercedes’s writing and career blossom. Shortly after the publication of Shock Totem #1, she came on as one of our editors, where she remains today. Her story in that debut issue impressed John “Yer Pal” Skipp so much that he invited her to contribute a tale to Werewolves and Shapeshifters, a concrete slab of an anthology featuring some of greatest and most popular writers past and present—H.P. Lovecraft, Joe R. Landsdale, George R.R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Charlaine Harris, to name a few. Stories in Skipp’s Demons and Psychos followed, as did many more in other publications and anthologies, such as Tales of Jack the Ripper, edited by Ross E. Lockhart.
When Mercedes began talking about pitching a collection of her short fiction to other publishers, I hit the brakes. Calls of nepotism be damned; I wasn’t allowing some other publisher the privilege. Not a chance in hell. And so in September of 2012, we released Beautiful Sorrows, a collection of twenty-seven brilliant tales showcasing Mercedes’s unique brand of whimsical horror. We published a limited edition hardcover version, which sold out in less than a week. After reading it, F. Paul Wilson called her “a female Joe Hill.” She’s also been compared to Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman, and Kelly Link. And it’s deserved.
But this was just the beginning for the one they call Miss Murder...
Enter Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Mercedes’s debut novella, which you now hold in your hands. It is a story full of murder and mayhem, tragedy and loss. It is the ultimate journey to find peace, deliverance from pain and misery. It is a much darker beast than we’ve come to expect from her, much more ferocious. Its teeth are bigger, sharper; its claws are longer. But there is love to be found, poetry, there is heart.
And that it is one of the greatest things about Mercedes’s writing. Strength. Heart. And lots of it.
To say that she is a strong woman is to say the universe is big. The word simply cannot bear the weight of which it is describing. Tragedy has knocked Mercedes flat more times since I’ve known her than most of us will face in a lifetime. But she refuses to stay down. Surely there is a darkness in her soul, but it doesn’t rule her. She rules it. With pomp and flair and the righteous stomping of stiletto heels. She is a flower in absolute bloom. Her colors shine in the darkness, her thorns are long and deadly, and her roots run deep into the soul of everything she writes.
Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu are tragedies intertwined—powerful, explosive, determined, beautiful.
They are Mercedes M. Yardley.
K. Allen Wood
9-7-13
Chapter One
She was lovely, this woman who wandered the graveyard. All hair and eyes. Without shoes, in a light cotton dress that covered her rounded belly, she smiled and laughed as she touched the flowers that garnished the dead.
She saw a particularly beautiful headstone, a grave marker that was dark and gray and finely chiseled.
“Montessa,” she read, and something about the name, the strength of it, the delicacy, stopped her feet. She stood, and waited, and more than that, she felt.
“That will be your name, darling,” she told the child in her womb. The newly named Montessa skipped and spun and twirled. Or perhaps she sucked her thumb in silence. Her mama couldn’t really tell these days, now that she was so ill. But she was carrying a little girl, she was sure of it, and she loved this child fiercely.
“Your life will be charmed,” she said, and continued on her way, navigating between the headstones and weeping angels as well as she could. “I believe wonderful things happen to little girls named Montessa. You’re special.”
Sweet thoughts. Sweet desires. But horribly, horribly unfounded. Misery and despair follows little girls named Montessa. Especially little girls who are forced to go through their lives with a dead mommy, and even more so when that mommy was the only one who loved them.
But she was right about one thing. Montessa was indeed special.
~
Montessa’s shift ended at 3 a.m. She took a shower, soaping the oils and glitter and makeup off her body. She wrapped herself in a towel and used another to dry her hair. She pulled out her phone, punched in some numbers.
“Renan?”
“What?”
He sounded dangerous tonight. Forcibly light-hearted, which meant he was out with the boys and drunk enough that he’d be mean when he came home.
“I’m off.”
“What’s that gotta do with me?”
“Just wondered if you were gonna pick me up, that’s all.”
“Not tonight, Monty. I’m doing something.”
She heard giggling in the background. So not just the boys, then. She waited for her heart to sink and break, but nothing happened. Perhaps it had been ground to dust long ago. This was a relief.
“All right. I’ll see you at home.”
“Don’t wait up.”
“Do I ever? Goodnight.”
“Hey, baby,” he said. He was smiling into the phone, and she could visualize the beauty of it. Now her heart sank. Now it broke. “Who loves you?”
“You do.”
“That’s my girl. Be careful. Looks like there’s a storm coming in.”
“I’m always careful. Have fun,
Renan.”
Without the makeup, she wasn’t Ruby anymore. She was just herself, plain ole Montessa Tovar. She seemed years younger when the faux confidence and sensuality was washed away. She put her six inch stilettos in her purse, along with her dancing costume. It didn’t take much room.
Jeans and a t-shirt. Sneakers. She left out the back door, the doorman giving her a brotherly grin and a pat on the shoulder. She smiled back, her first genuine one of the day, and stepped onto the shoulder of the highway. It was four miles home, fairly straight through the Northern Nevada desert. She put her earbuds into her ears, turned on her music. Not because she particularly wanted to listen to anything, but because she didn’t want to hear Renan’s voice assuring her this was what it was like to be loved. It always hurt.
~
Lu watched her go. He always watched her go. Sitting back in the trees, his back pressed against a trunk, he watched her walk on feet probably sore from hours of dancing.
The boyfriend seldom came anymore, and that was just fine with Lu. The guy seemed mean, hulking, treating the brunette like property, like meat, while his own eyes roved over the hips and breasts of the other dancers.
And he let the girl walk home alone for the last three nights. Stupid. You never knew what was going to happen to a pretty little girl alone in the dark.
Lu knew. It had happened several times. Several times several.
He settled back against the trees. He took a cigarette and slipped it into his mouth, slid his hands back into his pockets. The unlit cigarette suddenly began to glow, burn. Lu’s eyes did the same as he watched the woman round the corner and disappear from sight. He waited a few more minutes, and then walked over to his semi, which was parked behind the strip club. He climbed inside, laid his head back against his seat, and made a decision.
He pulled out, turning onto the road. It only took a few minutes to pass the frail girl with the dancer’s body. A few minutes more and he parked his semi on the soft shoulder of a curve and waited.
~
Montessa tended to think too much. At home, she constantly thought about Renan’s moods. Where his blows would strike. If he was in the mood to joke, or to ask for money, or if he would go and get high in the back room. At work she thought about escape, about leaping off the platform and running for the door. She’d go out the back before the bouncer could catch her, kicking off her stilettos and pelting barefoot down the street. Into the trees somewhere, living like a beast. A wild animal of wonder. She’d walk through the forest until she came out the other side, into a land of marvels.
When she walked home at night, she purposely tried not to think. She listened to her breathing, to her heartbeat, to her tender feet hitting the pavement. She felt her arms swing, her ribs move as she breathed in and out. Her body, her muscles. That was it. That was all. It was the only escape she had.
She saw a semi up ahead, gray and sleek. Normally she would have wondered where it was headed, who was inside, how it would feel to walk up and ask for a ride. It didn’t matter where the driver was going. In fact, she’d rather not know until it was time to wake up and stretch at her final destination. Wouldn’t that be lovely? Wouldn’t that be grand?
But tonight wasn’t that night. Something was…off. She put her eyes forward, pushing her wild hair out of her face, and tried to pay attention to the music. Something new that one of the girls at work had ripped for her. It was too poppy and too light, and Montessa hated it more than she thought she could ever hate anything. Still, it was a distraction. Only three and a half more miles to go. She blinked the burn out of her eyes, then. Dashed at them with her wrist, then reminded herself that she never cried.
She passed the semi, her steps faltering a little before she righted herself. A little too tired, but she could push through. After all, she was her mama’s daughter, and there was something special about her. A girl like her could never give up, but just needed to keep going.
If she had been paying attention, she would have noticed a shadow sliding behind her. If she had taken her earbuds out, she would have heard the surreptitious sound of sneakers on pavement, heard shallow breaths. Noticed the glint of something sinisterly sharp in the moonlight, the smell of evil deeds being considered.
None of this. None. She focused on putting one bruised foot in front of the other, on getting home so she could collapse into her bed that would smell of Renan’s sweat. On getting something to eat, if there was anything in the house. On drinking two big glasses of cold water if there wasn’t.
She focused on getting home…no, to the place she lived. Because it wasn’t a home. It wasn’t a nest. It was somewhere she paid rent and left her clothes and closed her eyes and slid under the water in the bathtub. There was no such thing as home.
She was thinking too much. She cursed inwardly and bit her tongue, concentrating on the steady bop, bop, bop of the music she endured.
A hood slid over her head. A hand clamped over her mouth. She felt a sharp dig into her neck, heard something spoken over the sound of her music, but couldn’t make it out.
Montessa tried to scream, kicking and fighting, but the palm over her hooded face pressed harder, and the steely sharpness pierced her skin. The trickle of blood that ran down her neck shocked her. The pain of the knife was so sharp, so sweet, so sudden and cold that she sucked in a breath as well as she could, stiffening reactively. Her legs wouldn’t work anymore, but stuck out like the tiny wooden legs of dolls. The hand came off her mouth and wrapped itself around her ribcage, pinning her arms to her sides.
The voice again, in her ear.
“Move and I’ll kill you right here.”
The blade pressed into her throat again, that same shock, the sheer surprise of being cut, of her skin being rent, of her blood, which was so precious, being let loose and wasted in such a careless way.
She was dragged. Backward, she thought. Away from the road. Away from help. Away from the path that would lead her back to Renan.
Oh, thank goodness, she caught herself thinking, and it was a surprise. Then there was a great, ringing pain in her head, and she was relieved of thinking for a while.
Chapter Two
Montessa woke up and moaned. Renan’s blows had been nearly unbearable this time. She blinked, but the room was still dark.
“Decided to wake up?”
The voice was soft. Surprisingly so. The words were spoken intimately, like a lover, but she didn’t recognize the voice, except to say that it was strangely beautiful and foreign.
The hood was yanked off her head, and Montessa squinted in the dim light that came from a small lamp. Even that light was too much.
“I’m going to throw up,” she said, and a shadow suddenly swooped close, held a large plastic bowl in front of her face. She retched, not once, but twice, and realized the stranger was holding her hair back from her face.
“Thank you,” she said quietly when she was done. The bowl was emptied. The stranger mopped at her face with a damp baby wipe. She closed her eyes to keep out the light.
“I don’t like filth. Don’t mistake this for tenderness.”
That soft voice again.
She nearly laughed. Her lips turned up despite herself.
“I won’t.”
Silence. The stranger perched beside her. She opened her eyes and stared at her feet. She had lost one of her shoes in the struggle. She felt a vague sense of defeat, but decided mourning wouldn’t do her any good. When had it ever?
“You think this is funny?”
He didn’t sound angry, just curious.
She swallowed hard. Assessed. Her skull nearly split in half from the headache, but her mind was fairly clear. She was tied to a metal folding chair, bound at wrists and ankles, waist and shoulders. She couldn’t get out if she tried. She glanced at the red stain on her shirt, blood from her throat, and she knew she wasn’t going to try. Not now, anyway.
Her hair hung in her face, and she tossed it out of her eyes. Her skull screamed. She
grimaced.
“It isn’t funny. It’s…apt.”
She felt him eying her. Felt the anxiety crawling under his skin like flames. Fire. Smoke. Steam.
“You don’t act like most of the girls I take.”
She wasn’t like most girls. She was going to say it, but the room swam and her stomach churned.
“Bowl,” she said instead, and vomited, hard, so hard that she choked and heaved and coughed. When she was finished, he wiped her face again. Held the tissue while she blew her nose. Gave her a glass of water and let her spit it out into the bowl.
“Thank you.”
“It’s weird that you keep thanking me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s even stranger that you’re apologizing.”
She blinked up at him then, trying to make out features, but all she saw was the glow of a cigarette in the half-light. It moved and danced in a strange way, split into two and three. Fireflies. A swarm. She heard it in her head.
“Hey. Are you gonna puke again?”
She couldn’t answer. The swarm of fireflies turned into something else. Flames. A city. On fire.
She whimpered, tried to pull away.
“Hey.”
The bowl was in front of her, her hair pulled back, but she couldn’t take her eyes off of the burning glow of his cigarette, of the flames running down the mountainside, of the open mouths of screaming people trapped inside buildings.
The stranger touched her and she jerked back, away from his hands.
“Too hot,” she said, but the words came out jumbled, slurred, and the fire ran across her body, charring her tender skin, and then for the second time in as many hours, she fell unconscious.
~
Lu looked at the girl for a long time. She hadn’t seemed afraid of him, or of being tied up. There had been an easy acceptance of her situation that he wanted to ask her about. That he would ask her about. It was almost like she had seen into the core of him, seen what he was. Not The Man Who Had Taken Her, but the force of nature that was Lu.