Fantasy For Good: A Charitable Anthology

by George R. R. Martin

  The snow was stained a fluorescent crimson where the deer’s belly had been torn out.

  My face and chest were sticky and red with the stuff. My throat was scabbed and scarred, and it stung; by the next full moon it would be whole once more.

  The sun was a long way away, small and yellow, but the sky was blue and cloudless, and there was no breeze. I could hear the roar of the sea some distance away.

  I was cold and naked and bloody and alone; ah well, I thought: it happens to all of us, in the beginning. I just get it once a month.

  I was painfully exhausted, but I would hold out until I found a deserted barn, or a cave; and then I was going to sleep for a couple of weeks.

  A hawk flew low over the snow toward me, with something dangling from its talons. It hovered above me for a heartbeat, then dropped a small grey squid in the snow at my feet, and flew upward. The flaccid thing lay there, still and silent and tentacled in the bloody snow.

  I took it as an omen, but whether good or bad I couldn’t say and I didn’t really care anymore; I turned my back to the sea, and on the shadowy town of Innsmouth, and began to make my way toward the city.

  MARINA J. LOSTETTER’s original short fiction has appeared in venues such as Lightspeed, InterGalactic Medicine Show and Baen.com. In 2012, her story, Master Belladino’s Mask, won second place in the Writers of the Future contest. Her tie-in work for the Star Citizen and the Sargasso Legacy universes can be found in the Spectrum Dispatch and Galaxy's Edge Magazine respectively. Originally from Oregon, Marina now lives in Arkansas with her husband, Alex. She tweets as @MarinaLostetter, and her official website can be found at www.lostetter.net

  Lenora of the Low

  Marina J. Lostetter

  Tonight Lenora would destroy a reaper.

  But first she had to put in her eyes.

  The two globes sat nestled in a viscous solution at the bottom of a Mason jar she’d perched on the edge of her bathroom sink. She drew them out slowly, testing their elasticity with her fingers. They smelled strange–not quite rotten, but not quite fresh.

  As she popped them in, a siren blared in the street next to her hotel. Lenora tilted her head, straining to hear the commotion with her single ear. Hopefully the streets of Paris won’t be filled with dirty German boches this evening, she thought. That would be her luck; they’d suddenly decided to enforce curfew when her plans were ready to culminate.

  The eyes bulged uncomfortably, and she had to blink repeatedly before the filthy room came into focus. A roach made its way leisurely across the porcelain basin and into a pile of dark sludge. Lenora’s years in the reaper’s menagerie, when she was bodiless, had stricken most memories of human sanitation from her consciousness. And now, undead, with rotten bones and shriveled bowels, why should the decay of a building bother her?

  Lenora turned to the claw-footed bathtub and pulled the cracked curtain from around its edge. Beyond lay her flesh-garden.

  Like insects pinned to a collector’s cardstock, sections of skin lay mounted on fragments of wood in a saline bath. Small wires slithered into the tub and provided mild shocks every few moments. The flesh crawled with the energy, flexing and shivering at the stimulation.

  Each stolen piece of living tissue equated another day on Earth for a Low One such as she. Another day beyond the reach of the reaper’s clawing spirit.

  Exiting the bathroom, she began preparations for her last harvest. With giddy, fidgeting fingers, she pulled her tobacco pouch and pipe from their hiding place between the bedsprings and lit up.

  Thin smoke curled around her like a halo. Avoiding her grotesque reflection in the vanity mirror, she pulled a small chain with a rose charm from a drawer and secured it around her neck. It was a reminder that this night didn’t belong to her alone. She would get her revenge and become a savior all in one glorious swoop.

  Ready to leave—eager to—she grabbed her rucksack, threw on her large coat, and wrapped her face with a moth-eaten scarf.

  On her way down the stairs, the night manager stopped her to gather the rent. He never made a comment about her swollen face or her mismatched features–she wasn’t even sure he’d noticed. She always paid on time and kept quiet, which meant the employees had no reason to disturb her room. The francs she handed over now were stolen, like everything else she owned. Right down to her skin, everything had belonged to someone else.

  She stopped on the landing to double check she had all of her things. The gun, the knife, the Mason jar, they were all there.

  In her years before the menagerie, she never would have pictured herself at home with a pistol and a pipe. She’d always been a girly girl through and through; just dresses and posies, please and thank you.

  The gutter smelled of piss, so she kept to the center of the street as best she could. The ‘lights out at eleven’ rule meant she could travel unnoticed through most of the city.

  She stopped at every side street, listening, looking for the choicest victim. Someone alone, someone lost, someone weak and vulnerable.

  She’d taken so many parts since the first one, she felt indifferent about the process now. The first time she’d stolen flesh there hadn’t been a question of right or wrong in her mind, just an insatiable panic. She’d needed a piece. If she hadn’t found one by the end of the night, her reaper, Angeu, would have reclaimed her soul. When the sun came, he would have wound his deathly-cold ethereal hands around her neck and yanked her back into Limbo.

  A gruff cough rumbled out of a darkened side-street. She stopped, one hand in her pocket, the other on her pipe, and peered in. Maybe this was it. She picked out a slumping figure huddled against one wall.

  Realizing her tobacco had gone cold, she struck a match and relit it before approaching. The amber glow highlighted the ridges of her skull, and she knew it emphasized the mismatch of skin to bone.

  The man coughed again. She made no secret of her advance, but pulled the pistol slowly from her pouch, keeping it hidden amongst the folds of her coat.

  “Salut, levez-vous.” With a clipped greeting, she demanded he stand. Though her real heart lay still, its ghost pounded against her brittle ribs. “Let me see you,” she directed, as though she were a German enforcer.

  He took several steps towards her without a word, and she continued forwards until they were an arm’s breadth apart. This close, she could smell him, and he had the most hideously familiar aroma. He stank of death. Stealing from him would do her no good. Those already standing on La Grande Faucheuse’s stoop had nothing to offer.

  “As you were,” she said, ready to continue the hunt.

  “I know what you are,” he said, slurring his words.

  Squinting, she looked him in the eyes; they were covered with cataracts.

  “You’re one of the Low Ones,” he said with certainty.

  She hissed, and the shriveled remains of her stomach jumped. How could he know? How could he tell?

  His lips pulled back in a cracked smile, revealing teeth like chipped, yellow china.

  “I’m no such creature,” she denied.

  “No? You are a Low One, a dead given one more day. What task did you promise to complete for your reaper—your faucheuse—that convinced him to let you out? What did you trade?”

  She kept quiet, disgust at the memory writhing across her face. She recalled the cold of Angeu’s being, something more eternal than a soul, colliding with hers, overpowering hers. It poked holes in her purity with little needles of lust and obsession.

  The old man appeared to take her silence as a confirmation. “Give him something that precious did you? And what living tissue did he gather for you?” He pointed at her crotch. “A warm moule so you could enjoy it, perhaps?”

  Appalled, she turned and hurried away. His cackling calls followed after. “He’ll come for you! You cannot stay. He’ll come at sunrise, just as he came for my Christine!”

  Out of the alley, away from the jeering man, she rounded the corner and braced herself against the wrought-
iron railing of a stoop. She’d escaped its catalyst, but not the memory. It sprang back into her mind and yanked like a fishhook through her consciousness.

  She had known all along that Angeu desired her. He thought of her as his pet, a plaything. He blatantly coveted the shape and depth of her soul, and knowing this she’d formed a plan to escape his zoo. She offered herself to him, giving in to the abomination that was his unnatural craving, and demanded a day in return. In order to walk once again, her dead body needed a twinge of life, a piece of living flesh.

  Angeu had not stolen genitalia for her, as the drunk suggested. He’d stolen an ear from a small girl, and had lovingly sewn it onto Lenora’s entombed body, so that she could hear the sweet nothings he would whisper to her during their intimate exchange.

  The next day, the one she’d been allotted on Earth, she’d risen with no sense other than shallow hearing, and no task other than her own.

  And, clever Lenora, she had begun her harvesting. If one piece of stolen skin meant she had a day, what might a second piece give her?

  All the time she’d been on Earth Angeu could not reach her, could not find a way to kill her because she was still more dead than alive.

  But tonight he would get his chance. She was about to tip the scale into more living than dead. He would come, she counted on it. And still, the thought of meeting him again made her ill. If she had any acid left in her bowels she would have thrown up at the thought.

  She caught a whiff of the wind, and suddenly Angeu was pushed to the back of her mind. There was a heavenly aroma, sweet, and pure. So heady, it made her dizzy. That was it, her victim. The soul smelled worthy of a menagerie.

  She followed the scent like a bloodhound, fixated. Her dusty blood shifted like sand in her veins.

  Lenora tracked the smell to a woman who had hurried past just moments before, walking with a briskness that revealed her fright. She clutched the fine folds of her champagne colored dress in tight fists, keeping the hem high above her ankles. She must have gotten separated from her male accompaniment, and was rushing to find a place she deemed safe.

  Trailing her, Lenora felt something of her old self. The gentleness that once inhabited her spirit, before Angeu had tainted her. This woman, with her finger waves, close-fitting silk dress, high heels, and innocent scent reminded Lenora of herself. Her spirit had known no trouble, no hardship. She was the perfect prize for any reaper.

  And that was why Lenora had to have her. Had to ruin her.

  Reaching into her rucksack, Lenora pulled out a few more francs. She smoothed them out as best she could, and, using the sweetest voice she could muster, called after the woman.

  “Miss, you dropped your money. Miss?”

  The woman stopped and turned, revealing her naiveté.

  Lenora caught up, and as the woman held out her hand to examine the francs, the start of merci on her lips, Lenora revealed the pistol. The woman yelped, but did not run. Her outstretched arm began to shake, and the rest of her body followed. Lenora marched her onto a thin side street.

  “Please,” the woman pleaded, “Take my purse, my broach. Let me go.”

  The alley walls closed in on the pair, like devilish accomplices to Lenora’s dark deed. In the narrow spaces between buildings her confidence always increased; the city was on her side.

  Once she was sure they were out of view of the main street, Lenora sprang. She shoved the woman to the ground, thrusting the rucksack against her victim’s face in order to muffle any cries. Lenora seamlessly drew the knife from the bag. With one quick swipe, she removed the woman’s left ear from her head and let it fall to the dirty ground.

  The pain and the panic sent an extra shock of adrenaline through the woman, and she forced Lenora off. Holding the bloodied side of her head, she ran.

  “I’m not doing this for me, I’m sorry,” Lenora called. I can’t let him do to my sister what he did to me. She raised the pistol. Her numb fingertip settled against the trigger, and without hesitation, she pulled. A deafening pop bounced between the stone walls.

  The slug pierced the woman’s back, and she jerked. One last whimper escaped her lips before she toppled to the ground. A bloom of red pooled beneath her shimmering silk dress.

  Lenora retrieved the fallen ear, emotionless. She’d long ago become desensitized to the gore, and even the violence didn’t nauseate her anymore. Deep down, she wished she wasn’t so detached. She wanted so badly to stay amongst the living, but she behaved fully as the traveling dead.

  She put the ear in the Mason jar. It sank to the bottom of the briny solution.

  That was it, the final piece she needed to be completely sheathed in living tissue.

  She hurried away from the body and back to the hotel. The manager didn’t stop her on the way up the stairs, despite the smear of blood on her sleeve.

  Throwing off her coat and scarf once she was through the door, she retrieved the jar and a needle and thread from the dresser, then entered the bathroom.

  The air hummed with electricity. She examined the flesh garden, making absolutely certain every piece was alive and ready to be grafted.

  She’d saved the very best parts for the garden. Everything that belonged to a pair had a perfectly matched mate. Instead of harvesting a full face like the one she wore, she’d been careful to find just the right nose, more petite than the one protruding from her features, and just the right lips, fuller than her own. Every piece of skin was smooth, young, and perfect.

  She looked to the jar that contained the bloodied ear, then to the needle and thread. Here was the crux her plan relied on. Fully encased in living flesh, she was sure it was enough for Angeu to surface and claim her. All she had to do was attach the ear, and she would mimic life enough to be killed once more.

  She shivered. Their bestial encounter had forged a connection between them. Every night she’d felt Angeu dogging her steps, and had sensed echoes of his thoughts. She knew instinctually the capacity and limitations of his power. It was as though she walked on a mirror, with Angeu as her reflection in Limbo. The soles of their feet seemed to be sewn together, just like the bits of her body. He longed for her constantly, came as close to the physical world as he was able. She had not felt him draw fully away the entire time she’d been on Earth, which meant he had neglected his reaping. And though he was with her at every turn, she knew he watched only her form, not her actions.

  His single-mindedness would be his undoing.

  Before sewing on the ear, she pulled all of the specimens out of the garden and wrapped them carefully in scraps of cloth. Using her bed sheet, she bundled them together. Once the ear was in place, she would have to act quickly. She had no way of knowing how long she had before Angeu would catch up with her.

  Bracing herself for a race against time, she pulled out the ear, dried it off, and placed it against her head. Noise came rushing into her brain immediately, but she ignored it and ran the needle through the top part of the ear and the bottom part of the scalp. She hurried, her hand shaking as she sewed. Eager to be finished, she didn’t care that she’d attached the appendage crookedly.

  Done, she bit off the end of the thread and stuffed the remainder of the spool in the bed sheet. The needle she pinned to the front of her blouse. Taking up the sheet-sack, she threw it over her shoulder like St. Nick’s toy bag before making her way out of the building.

  She flew down the streets of Paris, towards Père Lachaise Cemetery. If Angeu followed her onto graveyard dirt her trap would be sprung.

  Haussmann architecture, with black roofs sloping at forty-five degrees over close-set, rectangular windows, lined her path as she ran. The buildings’ tan façades made the windows and doorways look like empty eyes and gaping mouths. These faces observed her, vacant and undiscerning, like funeral masks.

  Her course was direct, down main streets. Every now and again she passed small groups of pedestrians chatting amongst themselves. No one noticed the small, oddly formed woman rushing across the cobbles
of the thoroughfares. The sounds, smells, and sights of Paris blurred as she focused on her goal. She had to get to graveyard ground before Angeu appeared–only there would she be safe.

  Nearly at her destination, she felt him rise. He was on the same street, not far behind. His presence loomed. An oppressive weight swooped over her, and she struggled forward. The feeling increased when she reached the cemetery, nearly at a crescendo, and felt like hundreds of angry violins screeching in her brain.

  She made it to the cemetery entrance without being caught. The rounded tops of the entrance archway were stained yellow and brown with age, forewarning visitors of the decay that lay beyond. With a renewed urgency, she pushed her way between the stone double-doors. They were cold and heavy, draining both heat and strength from her limbs.

  Now, safely inside, she had to find the grave.

  But, would Angeu follow?

  “Lenora,” she heard him call. His voice burned her ears like acid.

  Tombs, monuments, mausoleums, and headstones jutted from the ground on all sides. The white and gray marble seemed to suck up all light and heat around it, forbidding the hallmarks of life from vying for attention amongst the emblems of death. Flowers, laid on various plots during the daylight hours, had already wilted and their color had gone.

  “Lenora.”

  She could not pinpoint his location. She did her best to ignore his advance, hurrying for the familiar grave. “You made a mistake, Lenora. You’re too alive now. And if you’re alive that means you can be reaped.”

  It also means I can stay alive, she thought.

  “I’m coming for you, Lenora.”

  She had been right. His obsession blinded him. He wanted her, and that robbed him of his focus. Angeu didn’t see the danger Père Lachaise Cemetery presented.

  Dark and ghostly shapes rose out of the gloom as she passed, setting her on edge. Any of them could be Angeu. He was only playing now. Frightening her for his own pleasure.

  “That was a very nasty trick you played on me,” he said. His voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. “I know I’m to blame. I gave you idle hands.”