by Watts, Peter
At first I just zoned out there after he was gone, staring at the pattern of the skirt tacked onto the bottom of my couch, pretending it was the curtain of a show I was waiting for. Pretending a tiny actor was about to prance out, ask how I’d liked the show, how I was liking this joke.
I made my way to the bedroom, rang my dad’s phone.
No answer.
I shut my eyes, threw the phone into the wall.
Gigi. Gretchen, really, but really Gigi, since she was little.
I’d always felt like I was out here throwing my life one way so she could go the other. Like I was sacrificing myself so she wouldn’t have to. Like this was the only way to save her, the only way to be a decent big brother.
It’s stupid, I know. But I’m not smart.
My dad could have told you that.
Still, sometimes.
~
What I’ve done now, all day, it’s scrawl a rough X over each eye. And then over every free inch of space I’ve got left on my body, I’ve traced out scales, like I’m going to shade them in with color later. On my left side, kind of where I always imagined my heart to be, four of those scales have names on them. Like tombstones.
Mom, Dad, Gigi. Me.
This is the kind of art that would get me space at any parlor in town. The kind of imagery bleeding into meaning that makes real tattoo artists wince.
But that’s all over now, I guess.
It’s almost dark again.
Soon the chainsaw sound will be dying in the air, the helmet on my couch. A monster kicked back in my easy chair, his right hand between my legs, keeping me honest.
One last job, right?
But it’s also my first.
To prepare, and also because I can’t help it anymore, I feel my way down to the bathroom, lick what I can off the tile walls of the shower, scraping the rest in with my fingers. Pushing it deep inside.
What’s left of Dell’s ex is black and dried, but that taste underneath, it’s to die for. To kill for. Milk could never be like this, not in a thousand years. Cows got nothing on people.
I wore gloves when I was working on him, yeah, so I wouldn’t catch anything that was catching.
But then I used the same needle on myself, and I went deeper than I had to for just the ink to set.
His blood spiked up and down me. All through me, hungry.
For two hours, between one and three, the sun right above the house instead of slashing in through the window, I’m pretty sure I was clinically dead.
And I kind of still am.
Will he be able to smell it on me right away, through the flannel shirt I’ve put on to cover my new ink, to cover the bluebonnet on my chest that’s now my chest cracking open to reveal the real me, crawling out tooth and claw, or will we wait to do this thing until I’ve driven the needles through his naked eye into what the centuries have left of his brain?
It doesn’t matter.
Either way I win.
There always was a dragon curled up inside me, Dad.
Tonight it’s going to stand up.
Stephen Graham Jones is the author of sixteen books so far—twelve novels and four collections. Mostly horror. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
ACCOMMODATION
Michael R. Collings
She watches the raven slice through the pewter sky, its arced wings a distorted cruciform. It circles once, again, then again, before settling in the top branches of a live oak, branches gnarled black silhouettes against the brightness.
She blinks, both from the brightness and from the unshed tears that constantly threaten to burst.
The raven seems to glare at her, malevolent and ominous, then takes wing, circles again, and disappears into the glare.
She stands for a moment, her back braced against an iron railing. She wants to go somewhere, anywhere, even back to the one-room apartment that would by now be stifling, sucking her breath like a stealthy cat at midnight.
The heat bears down.
She moves silently into the shadows of the oak, sitting on an ancient bench splintered and raw with use. Through the rusted diamonds of the fence, she watches the bearers in the pocket park, one of many that now dot the face of the city, boring holes in the textures of concrete and steel, spreading like acne scars.
They seem happy. Healthy and tan…glowing and alive, dressed in kaleidoscopic waves of color—crimson, turquoise, gold, emerald, every hue except the sultry black of night. She can faintly smell the hot stickiness of tanning oils, the even fainter acrid hints of liquid-tan staining willing flesh. For a moment her head spins with overwhelming flashes of color, with waves of loss and lingering flickers of pain that she feels every time she comes here, against her better reason, unwillingly drawn, hypnotically pinioned like some display specimen.
The guards don’t notice her. She has been here too often in the past weeks to draw attention, sitting silently and unmoving in the shadows, enduring her own private torture but never threatening the cluster of women weaving in intricate patterns around the shallow pond at the heart of the park. They stay close to each other. She sits alone as always, a darker shadow in the potent darkness beneath the oak. The guards stand at each corner of the fence, two more flanking the gate. Just like all of the other parks.
She watches.
~
She had been watching when she first met Lucien, although then it had been the flurry of frenetic movement on the tiny dance floor that had riveted her attention. She had been alone, but not lonely, not like now. She sat at a scarred table barely large enough for one drink, and someone had jostled her arm, almost enough to spill her wine.
“Sorry.” The voice was rich and velvety, strong enough to carry over the raucous music but not strident.
“No matter.”
He started around the table, heading toward the dance floor, then hesitated, turned, and smiled.
“Do you mind?” He gestured toward the single chair on the other side of the table.
She waved her hand: go ahead if you wish.
He sat. Then they talked, desultorily at first, exchanging platitudes and the triteness of social graces. Only after half an hour did she realize that he didn’t seem interested in the dancing any more, in any of the crowd of bodies—clothing swirling with color beneath the perpetual noonlight of the club, faces dark with carefully cultured tans—and was concentrating instead on her face, her voice, the movement of her hands.
They talked.
Gradually she became aware of the shadows deepening in one corner of the club. She glanced over, startled at the midnight dark, even more so at glints of red eyes glowing from the depths. She could barely see movement, the slippery sliding of shadow on shadow. There were perhaps three or four, perhaps more. More would come later, she knew. She felt drawn to them.
Lucien must have intuited her response to the darkness. He placed one hand on hers, tightening his fingers around hers in an intimate expression of closeness that belied their recent meeting. She pulled her eyes away from the corner and met his.
From somewhere above them, through hidden speakers, a voice crackled: “Lights down in ten minutes. Ten minutes.”
The ambient music stuttered to a halt as the surrounding chatter died away. Wordlessly couples picked up their scattered belongings—purses, shawls, jackets thrown carelessly over the backs of chairs—and made their way to the open double doors that led outside. It was nearly twilight.
“We should be going,” Lucien said in a near-whisper. “Can I walk you home?”
She nodded, her eyes drawn again to the darkened corner. There was more movement there now, a fluttering like rapid heartbeats barely visible.
She stood. Lucien took her arm as they left the club and started down the street. Buildings loomed on both sides, grey and forbidding, only a few lights showing yet. Soon heavy drapes would slide across the few unpainted windows, leaving everything to the night.
It only took a few moments before they stood outside her apartmen
t building.
“Do you want to come up?” She felt awkward asking.
“If it’s all right with you.”
She nodded and keyed the lock to the foyer.
Later, after they had made love for the first time, Lucien left, disappearing into the darkness in spite of her pleas that he remain.
“It’s perfectly safe now, you know,” he reminded her.
“I know. It’s just that….”
He silenced her with a kiss.
~
She stands. After a moment she moves out from under the shadows of the gnarled oak and follows the fence as it skirts the pocket park. Most of the bearers are leaving, since the afternoon sun is dropping fast. It will be twilight soon, then dark. They will all be indoors long before that.
She walks slowly but determinedly along the street, turning left, then right, then left again almost by rote. She knows the way. She has been there often enough since that first time. She will have a few minutes…never enough for her, but all that the fading sunlight will allow.
She stands well back from the fence. As with the parks, the guards here know her, have seen her often enough standing silently near the edge of the grass, never moving, never offering any hint of trouble. They will not bother her.
There is, of course, nothing to see. Just the small pannier-like structures, pristine from their daily cleaning. Even the ground surrounding them has been hosed down, the dark slate tiles seeming to reflect the lowering clouds as evening approaches.
It is almost time.
As usual, she begins to move closer.
It is nearly twilight. The guards have become faceless outlines in their sky-blue uniforms; as twilight progresses, even that bit of color leaches away into grey.
Finally, as she knows it will, the inevitable happens.
One of the guards approaches her, one hand outstretched, the other hovering near his holster, even though both of them know that he will not have any use for his weapon.
Without words, he grasps her elbow.
She knows this one—oh, not by name, of course, but this close she recognizes him and knows by the angles of his face what day of the week it is. Otherwise she cares little for calendars or for the passage of time.
He pulls her gently toward the front of the building. She does not resist. The other guards on the shift follow, silent as ghosts, grey as ghosts in the dimness.
Behind them, the night shift seems to appear from nowhere. Their uniforms are black, the same blackness that spills from the surrounding shadows onto the fenced-in area…the same blackness that fills her heart.
~
She knew the next day that she was pregnant. Lucien came by two days later, well within the legally required period, and together they went to the Accommodation Planning Office for testing.
She didn’t need the simple battery of pokings and proddings, blood-samplings and heart-listenings and lung-testings and urine-samplings. She already knew in her heart what they would find, so she sat quietly when the administrator called the two of them back into her office not two hours later and asked them to sit down.
“Now, as you know…,” the administrator began.
“I already know,” she said. She looked neither to her left, where Lucien sat as still as stone, nor straight ahead, where the administrator’s eyes struggled to meet her own. Instead, she looked down at her fingers, long, graceful fingers with the nails carefully manicured and polished to a bright, coppery gleam that perfectly matched her skin tone. “I’m a bearer, right.”
The administrator looked momentarily confused, then blinked several times and nodded.
“I was expecting it,” she said, still refusing to look at Lucien. “I could feel it…in my bones, in the tissues of my body.”
“But that’s imp—” The administrator broke off, then, as if thinking better of what she had begun to say, collected herself and continued in a cold, analytical voice, detailing what each test meant and how each related to the other.
Through it all, Lucien remained unmoving. She thought once of reaching out and touching his hand but decided not to; she wasn’t even certain that he was fully aware of where he was. He seemed distanced, abstracted.
When the Planning Officers came for her, Lucien waited discreetly for her to stand before he stood and, without a word, exited the office.
She would never see him again.
~
Her apartment is, as she knows it will be, hot. Stifling, choking, as if the air has taken on additional substance with the coming of night.
She flicks the light switch on.
Nothing has altered while she has been absent. Her single-width bed stretches along one wall, beneath the window that once might have opened out onto a vista of trees but has long since been covered with a thick layer of black paint to prevent any light from escaping. Since the Accommodation, accidents have been rare but no one cares to take unnecessary risks. The temptation of a lighted window after dark might be too great.
Otherwise, she has only a small bookcase, a dresser with two drawers—sufficient for her limited wardrobe—a sink, a table that serves her as both table and desk, and a hard-backed chair. The place looks monkish, as it should, since she has decided that she no longer wants…needs…things. Her stipend as a Bearer is sufficient to buy food and pay for her few requirements during the transition period. Afterward, she will find a job.
Or not.
She sits at the desk and stares at an oddly shaped blot on the wall. Perhaps rain has seeped in over the years. Perhaps there was a flaw in the paint. Or not. She really doesn’t care. The blot is merely an object on which to focus her eyes while her mind and her heart move off into their own realms.
After a long while, she moves to the bed, reclines on it, and closes her eyes.
Perhaps sleep will come tonight.
Or not.
~
Life in the Bearers’ Ward was pleasant. There was no true happiness, but neither was there any sorrow. It was pleasant.
She and the others ate the proper food, received the proper medications—she half-suspected that at least some of the pills were responsible for her always feeling the same way, the same level of emotions, the same level of involvement with her own life and the lives of the other Bearers.
They slept for the proper number of hours on beds that were pleasant, neither too soft nor too hard; and they woke at the same time each morning. They exercised together, neither too much nor too little.
Everything was regulated and controlled, even their afternoon outings into the parks. There were enough of them scattered through the city that the women didn’t have to visit the same one every day, so they did not feel as if their lives were being unduly stifled. Even the guards rotated frequently, although since the guards never spoke to the Bearers, that made little difference.
The only thing that differed in their lives was the size of their bellies as the hours grew into days, the days into weeks, the weeks into months.
But that one change was gradual and, after a while, none of them spoke of it.
Life was pleasant.
Even giving the Gift was pleasant enough.
She went to sleep one night at precisely the same time as she had gone to sleep every other night since entering the ward, immediately after taking her allotted number of pills and drinking a glass of cool water. It was neither too warm nor too cold.
She slept, as always, without dreaming.
When she awoke, it was later than usual. Light streamed through an unfamiliar window in an unfamiliar room. Her bed was raised at the head, and someone was holding a glass of cool water—neither too warm nor too cold—at her lips.
She looked down at her flat self and knew.
But even that was pleasant.
A week later, with the address of her new apartment in one hand and her first stipend check fluttering from the other, she left the Ward to begin her transition.
~
She is at the club again
, although she knows that she will not see Lucien. She sits at the same table, nursing the single drink that has kept her going for the past hour. She has timed it carefully.
Even though a month has passed, the wine still tastes somehow too strong, too rich, too much of the fruit of the earth. The taste lingers in her mouth. It is too full-bodied. It is not pleasant.
But she continues to sip, just enough each time to keep the waiters from noticing an empty glass and bothering her, however subtly, into ordering a second.
She does not want more wine.
The dancers continue to gyrate, some to the overly-loud music, some to their own private internal rhythms. For all she can tell, they are the same dancers—clothing swirling with color beneath the perpetual noonlight of the club, faces dark with carefully cultured tans.
It is growing late.
She glances beneath her lashes toward the corners, already husked in shadow. The red eyes have begun to appear. They look hungry to her in ways that make her flesh quiver, whether with fear or with anticipation she cannot tell. She cannot yet differentiate their bodies from the deepest shadows but she knows that they are there, waiting their turn, waiting for the….
From somewhere above them, through hidden speakers, a voice crackles: “Lights down in ten minutes. Ten minutes.”
The raucous music grinds to a halt, replaced by something slower, more mysterious, hypnotic almost in its subtlety. There are more eyes now. Usually she would have left by now but tonight she waits. And still more eyes.
From somewhere above them, through hidden speakers, the voice crackles: “Lights down in five minutes. Five minutes. Final warning.”
The shadows in the corners begin to drift outward, toward the tables. The red eyes—now clearly visible in faces as pale as moonlight—drift closer as well.