Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume Three

by Simon Strantzas

  He sat back, panting. He looked at her, and he winked, and he half expected a round of applause.

  Chrissie stubbed out her cigarette on her plate, there was a quick fizz as the lighted end touched the wet blood. She said something to the waiter in French—it must have been French, surely, but the words seemed so hard and clipped. The waiter’s eyes still burned, he hadn’t yet recovered from the excitement of watching Donald eat—now he calmed down, he wrenched his face back into a more professional, more skeletal pose. He nodded, he licked his lips, he wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, he wiped the blood on his suit, he went to fetch their coats.

  It was only after they’d got outside into the dark and the rain that Donald realised they hadn’t paid for the meal. Chrissie told him it had all been taken care of.

  ###

  They didn’t talk much on the way back to the hotel. No, that’s not true—they talked about lots of things, Donald hoped that the weather would be better for tomorrow, and Chrissie translated all the advertisements on the metro—but they didn’t talk about anything important.

  “I’ll use the bathroom first,” said Donald, quite cheerfully really. He locked the door behind him.

  He got undressed, and changed into his pale blue pyjamas. He brushed his teeth, and then brushed them again, hard, very hard. He studied his face in the mirror, and it didn’t look any different than it had before. Then he sat down upon the toilet lid, took his diary from the jacket hanging over the bath, began to draft a letter.

  “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” he wrote. “I’m sorry.” He couldn’t get beyond that ‘sorry’—it was meant to be the floodgate for everything he needed to tell her, so why on the page did it look like an ending? He started when Chrissie knocked upon the door: “Are you going to be much longer?”

  Whilst she undressed Donald got into bed. He’d pretend to be asleep. He might even fall asleep if he were lucky, and then he wouldn’t even have to pretend. He closed his eyes and stared at the blackness in his head. When the bathroom door opened he couldn’t help it, he looked at her. The pink dress was gone, the lipstick, nail varnish, all gone. She was wearing her Disney pyjamas again, and she seemed so sweet, and so young, and so easy to understand. She smiled. He smiled back. He watched Tigger bounce gently in the gap between her breasts.

  She climbed into bed beside him.

  “Well, good night,” she said.

  “Good night,” he agreed.

  She turned out the light.

  He closed his eyes once more, once more pretended he could sleep, that he even knew what sleep was or how it could ever be reached again.

  He wondered if she still might say anything about what had happened in the restaurant, and his body tensed in the expectation of it. But minutes went by, and then he heard her breathing regularly, and he relaxed, he’d got away with it.

  He didn’t even sense her moving closer until he felt her hand around his penis.

  At first he wasn’t even sure that it was her—at first, stupidly, he wondered whether it was one of his own hands creeping between his legs unawares—at first, stupidly, his impulse was to lift up the sheets and check. He didn’t lift the sheets. He lay there, rigid.

  The hand didn’t flex. Now that it had found the penis, its mission seemed accomplished. It held on to its prize firmly, through his pyjama trousers. Not so firmly that it demanded anything from it, firmly enough that it couldn’t escape.

  The slightest extra pressure of the fingers—the very slightest squeeze—and that would have been different, that would have been something Donald would have needed to address. Donald would have to turn on the lights, and sternly remind Chrissie of the boundaries he’d set up for their mutual protection. So he diligently waited for it, waited for that little pressure, for the slightest flex—he lay there focused, intent only upon his penis and her hand and any change of relationship vis a vis the two of them.

  His penis swelled a little, the blood rushed to it in blameless curiosity, and the fist opened out slightly to accommodate it.

  He felt himself breathe faster.

  He turned to look at Chrissie. Tried to make out her face in the dim light. Her eyes were still closed. He thought she was asleep. And then—and then maybe the clouds parted a bit, because the Paris moon stretched across the bed and in the light of it her eyes opened at last, and they looked straight into him and straight through him. The rest of the face was still an impassive mask, utterly cold, utterly without expression, and looking so adult once more. But the eyes, was there a challenge in them? He thought there was.

  He held his breath. He licked his lips. He didn’t say anything.

  Nor did she.

  And then her eyes closed again.

  The grip of her hand didn’t relax, not even now. The blood drained out of his penis. It started to wilt.

  He waited ten minutes, maybe more, not daring to breathe properly, not daring to stir her again. Until he was sure she must be asleep, and then he edged away from her, very gently, and as he pulled his body into the cold outer fringes of the bed he pulled his penis away with him. By now it was just a stump, there was nothing left for the hand to grip on to. He felt the hand clasp and unclasp uselessly for it, then slow, then stop.

  A little later, he carefully got out of bed. He wanted to go back to the bathroom. To brush his teeth, wash his face, finish the note, whatever.

  He felt his way slowly through the darkness, and he was making good progress—and then his foot collided hard with something firm and round, and it hurt, and he couldn’t stop himself, he cried out in surprise if not in pain, and the grapefruit he’d kicked rolled across the carpet and bounced against the wall. Pamplemousse, he thought to himself involuntarily.

  “What are you doing?” Chrissie asked, drowsy, irritated.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come back to bed.”

  “I’ll come back to bed.”

  He got back under the sheets, and didn’t dare move again, and at some point he must have fallen asleep.

  ###

  When they woke the next morning she gave him a kiss, and it seemed perfectly well intentioned and well executed.

  At breakfast he decided not to spread confiture or beurre upon his croissants. “Look,” he told her, “I’m having them plain, just as you suggested! Are you proud of me?” She smiled, and congratulated him, and told him he was being a proper Frenchman. Even the waitress looked pleased, she hardly glared at him at all.

  In the morning they went to look at some church or another, and in the afternoon they went to some museum or another. They found a fountain. Donald said he’d read that if you tossed a coin into a fountain it meant you’d come back to Paris, but he wasn’t sure it was this fountain—and Chrissie laughed, and said he’d got it wrong, that was Rome—and Donald said, why would tossing a coin into a fountain in Paris mean you’d come back to Rome—and Chrissie said he was a silly darling man, and hugged him. And it was all very nearly normal. It was all very nearly loving. And they both tossed coins into the fountain anyway, and Donald knew it meant they were leaving Paris after all, they were going home, it was decided.

  They ate at little bistros, and Chrissie ate only vegetarian food, and Donald ate meat, but the meat seemed to him so dull and so flavourless.

  ###

  They spent three more nights in Paris.

  ###

  The cab to the airport took a particularly circuitous route, but Chrissie didn’t seem to mind, she stared out of the window and pointed out all the parts of Paris they hadn’t done yet, Paris had more to offer after all. And Donald sat, and held her hand, and mused, and realised what he really wanted to say to her in that still unfinished letter.

  The airport was very busy. Everyone was trying to escape Paris. “I’m sorry, sir,” said the woman at check-in, “the flight is very full, I don’t think you and your daughter can sit together.” Donald got very forceful, and said that his daughter was a very bad flyer, and if she wa
sn’t able to sit with him she’d scream the plane down. They got their double seats, and Donald was quite proud of himself.

  As the plane took off, Donald listlessly leafed through the in-flight magazine, and Chrissie looked at some revision notes for her GCSE exams.

  At around ten thousand feet, and somewhere over the English Channel, Donald proposed to her.

  “What?” said Chrissie.

  “You said I wasn’t a bad man. I’m not a bad man, am I?”

  “You’re fine,” said Chrissie.

  “Marry me,” said Donald. “I’ll make you very happy. I’ll give you whatever you like.”

  “Can we live in Paris?”

  “Yes.”

  “Or somewhere else?”

  “Whatever you like.”

  Chrissie thought about it. “All right,” she said.

  “We can’t get married now,” said Donald. “We’ll have to wait until you’re older. But it’s a commitment, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” said Chrissie. “For when we’re both older.”

  “I love you,” said Donald, and Chrissie said she loved him too, and Donald felt relieved, she hadn’t said it in ages.

  After the stewardess announced they were coming in to land, Donald once more interrupted Chrissie’s schoolwork.

  “This is a big mistake,” he said. “We shouldn’t leave France.”

  Chrissie laughed. “Silly! We’re on the plane!”

  He said, “Then we can get straight on to another plane, can’t we, and fly back? We can get our suitcases, and then we’ll buy some tickets for the very next flight to Paris. We don’t even need our suitcases, I can buy you a new suitcase, brand new. Please,” he said, and he squeezed her arm, “Please,” he squeezed hard until at last she put down her work and gave him her full attention. “If we go back to England, I’ll lose you.”

  She looked at him with such innocent eyes. “But we have to go back to England,” she said. “I’ve a friend meeting us at the airport.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to disappoint my friend.”

  Donald had thought there might be policemen waiting for him as soon as he put foot on British soil. There weren’t. Instead, a man holding up a placard for ‘M and Mme MacAllister’. Chrissie squealed when she saw it, and ran straight into his arms, and for a moment that wasn’t what made Donald jealous at all, what made him jealous was that the assumed names they had thought up together, that had been theirs, had been stolen. He wondered how the man had found out what they were.

  “Well, well!” said the man. “And did you have a good holiday?”

  “I did!” said Chrissie. “Paris is as beautiful as ever. Oh, and this is Donald, he’s my friend.”

  “Is he coming with us?”

  “We can give him a lift, can’t we?”

  The man nodded. “As far as he wants to go, as far as he wants to go!” The man was probably older than Donald, but still looked better—he was tall and slim, he was confident, he was wearing the sort of pencil moustache that only pure Englishmen of a certain background can get away with.

  Donald said, “I’m not just her friend. I’m her fiancé.”

  “Indeed?” said the man. “Indeed! Well, I’m sure some sort of congratulations must be in order. The car’s waiting, so come along, Monsieur MacAllister!”

  They set off for the car, Chrissie and the man linking arms, Donald wheeling the little pink suitcase behind.

  When they reached the car, Donald got into the back seat. He assumed Chrissie would join him there. She didn’t.

  “On y va! Now, where oh where shall I take you both?” And the man laughed, as if he’d made the funniest joke in the world, and Chrissie laughed too. The engine roared, the car started, and Chrissie was full of stories of her adventures in Paris, how tall was the Eiffel Tower, how small was the Mona Lisa, how wet the Seine—and it was odd, but none of the stories ever seemed to include Donald, but Donald couldn’t be sure—to hear her he had to lean forward uncomfortably, and to join in the conversation he had to shout. But no one was listening to him, and his head was hurting, so he soon just sat back and was silent. If he stared ahead he could see how animated Chrissie was, and he didn’t want to see that—and he could also see how her friend had stretched out his hand and was brushing the hair off her shoulders and was stroking the nape of her neck. He didn’t want to see that either, not any of that—and so instead he looked out of the windows at the English countryside, and he didn’t recognise any of it, not a bit of it, and he wondered where they were taking him.

  Christopher Slatsky

  LOVELINESS LIKE A SHADOW

  The face had spread across a wider section of the wall.

  Eleanor’s flat possessed an ominous air despite her skepticism towards hauntings, demonic beings, or paranormal nonsense in general. The formation brought to mind the Bélmez Faces, those weird images that appeared on the concrete floor of a house in Spain decades ago. It was unnerving, particularly with all of her sculptures around the flat in various stages of completion. Too many things making eye contact.

  She was reminded of her grandmother’s stories about domovoj, house spirits whose antics ran the gamut from protective to diabolical. Eleanor half expected to catch a glimpse of its white hair and eyes glowing like coals in the middle of the night. But those were old world superstitions.

  Just a water stain. Faulty plumbing. Accumulated moisture. When the head first began oozing through the wall’s paint Eleanor thought her clay sculptures might be responsible. Maybe mold had survived inside a package of Plastilina clay, oily spores drifting to the walls once she’d started kneading, sculpting, manipulating the material. When the handyman found a leaky pipe and repaired it she assumed the real culprit had been found.

  But that didn’t seem to be the case. The flat’s plumbing probably went back to the Victorian era—must be another old pipe buried somewhere deep within.

  This is what you get for packing it all in, jetting off to London to slum in your art studio. Bohemian lifestyle.

  Livin’ the expat dream.

  The stain was more pronounced this morning. A definite chin, full lips, prominent brow, deep splotches of darkness for eyes. A welter of hair.

  One side of the mouth hung lower, a slack-jawed quality that suggested advanced age more than any decreased intellectual capacity. The countenance was gaunt, furrowed cheekbones and a square jaw gave the impression of tight skin over delicate bones.

  It bore a vague similarity to her sculptures’ faces.

  “Seein’ shit in clouds that ain’t there.” Eleanor said. A dismissive attitude did little to lessen her grim mood.

  She’d tried to scrub the mess away when it first appeared, but had only managed to smear gray sludge across the cream colored walls. The face was back by that afternoon. So much for getting her tenancy deposit back.

  Nothing had gone according to plan. Every attempt to better her life had resulted in something of equal or greater importance being ruined. Why should this be any different?

  Nearly a year gone by and Eleanor was still licking her wounds from the divorce. Marriage struck down by “irreconcilable differences” at the ripe old age of 35—she wanted a child, but Joel refused to allow any obstacle to impede his ascension up the corporate ladder. Eleanor certainly didn’t feel that a daughter or son was necessary to fulfill her personally, but she resented Joel’s emphatic rejection of her wants and desires. He’d made the decision, and though she never had any driving maternal instinct to procreate, her being denied a choice in the matter was the final straw.

  So here she was, finally pursuing her own interests and not kowtowing to Joel’s whims. No longer concerned she’d spent years supporting him as he pursued his law degree, while she’d deferred art school to an unspecified future date.

  But she’d do anything just to have him back. Work the two jobs again, pretend what he did during the day was more important than what she’d suffered through. Have s
ex on his schedule. Walk on eggshells around his moods. Toil in silence so he could become a better man.

  She felt guilty for running away from home to pick up the remaining pieces, giving up any pretense of properly mourning the demise of a 15-year relationship. She’d bummed her first cigarettes from him under the bleachers at the Cottage Hollow homecoming game, saw their first R-rated film together after his friends let them in through the theater exit. Got drunk, shoplifted clothes for the first time with him. She’d married her first love.

  It didn’t hurt that Joel was gorgeous, even with that wispy attempt at a beard. They’d married young. Her grandparents had spent far too much on that elaborate Russian Orthodox wedding. The newlyweds had such fun with the vykup nevesty gifts. Eleanor hadn’t laughed that much during all their years together.

  All that joy and pain was festering inside like malignant cells. Metastasized memories. Maybe it was time to fly back to the states, back to her condo in Pasadena. Cut her losses.

  But she was in the U.K. now, and there was no going back. Not until she came to grips with the fact she was alone. There was some liberation in that. She was here to work on her art. That was the only reason she’d left home. The divorce settlement had made the relocation possible. She wasn’t about to give everything up over second guessing herself over a shadow or mold or whatever it was on her wall. She’d come close to throwing in the towel last summer when the unusually muggy weather encouraged the Thames to cough up a particularly nasty insect infestation. Eleanor had no idea why Brits didn’t feel the need to install air conditioning or screen doors in every home.

  After she’d moved, her U.K. friends did their damndest to cheer her up. Touristy wastes of time, clubs, introducing her to various new age concepts they claimed would alleviate her depression: meditating at Stonehenge, self-actualization techniques, even Wicca. She half-heartedly went through the ritualized motions, but found the concept that she could have any influence on the external world to be so much nonsense. Silly posturing gussied up as profound wisdom.