by Watts, Peter
He was calm, clearly unaware of the danger he was now in. The wave of anger and pain that had just swept through her brain was unlike anything she had ever felt before, and she suddenly had an overwhelming desire to make them suffer for their part in it.
“I can hear Edmund Bingley screaming.” She leapt to her feet, and seized hold of the old woman, knowing that she was the weaker member of the trio, the most doubtful of their actions and the most likely to talk. “Why would you do this?”
The old woman recoiled, terrified.
“Every medical trial needs a number of test subjects, a large enough base to determine if the results are the same across the spectrum. We have seventy-five vampires here, which we’ve collected over the last twenty years, enough to form a working theory on vampire psychology.”
“And how many of them passed your little tests and earned themselves human rights?” she seethed, already suspecting the answer.
“All of them,” the old woman replied.
It was not the answer she had been expecting.
“And so you imprisoned them all?”
The old woman squirmed trying to break out of her grip.
There had never been any hope of escape from the laboratory.
“You may be human, but you’re still monsters. All of you.” The woman’s fear erupted into anger, finally revealing the hate that Molly had originally sensed behind the glass wall in her cell. “You’re a lost cause.”
She snapped the old woman’s neck, then cast her corpse aside and whirled around to face the psychologist.
He was already running for the door.
He hammered on the metal, screaming.
“Help me! Help me! Open the door! Open the door!”
The door remained closed.
Nobody would open the door, as they could not risk her getting to the cells beyond. If she did, they risked the complex being overrun, the entire staff murdered.
The man behind the glass would press the button and destroy everything with flames long before he allowed that to happen.
A speaker in the corner of the room hissed.
“Let him go, Molly.” It was the voice of Superintendent Carter, stern and official. “Return to your cell, before I decide my best option is to reduce everything in there to ash.”
She could hear the keenness in his voice, his desire to deliver a burning retribution against her evil.
Molly stalked across the lab, grabbed hold of Peterson and pulled him away from the door and threw him to the floor.
He wailed like a terrified child.
She had seen enough of them to know.
His pretence of professional detachment had been ripped away, revealing what she had always known was there; a quivering, frightened animal.
“You will explain to me why you are so certain that we are all monsters.” She stated firmly, letting her fangs extend menacingly, determined to scare the truth out of the man.
Peterson, his hands shaking, slowly reached up and twisted a monitor around to face her. The screen was covered in images of her brain scan.
Her mind, written out in neon blue lines, was pock-marked with areas of darkness.
“When a vampire is first turned, the oxygen starvation during death causes a degree of brain damage. The black areas. It varies from subject to subject, but in all cases there is damage to the prefrontal cortex, rendering the individual with no emotional control, or any sense of empathy for others. You’re quick to anger, unable to control your temper and suffer no guilt at the consequences.”
Molly stared at the image on the screen. Without a reflection, it had been one hundred and fifty years since she had seen any representation of herself, but now she was able to see herself for the first time, laid bare in horrifying, undeniable detail.
Peterson tapped a finger against the screen.
“You also suffered damaged to the Occipital Lobe, which has probably made skills such as reading and writing difficult for you. We noticed you didn’t read the paperwork that you signed.”
For the last one hundred and fifty years she had thought of herself as a vampire, above humanity by every definition; faster, stronger, and far more dangerous. Now the truth looked very different; she was less than human, just being a vampire meant she was damaged in such a profound way, that it determined her very nature and made her do terrible things.
“Surely this makes me sick?” She asked. “Mentally ill?”
Peterson nodded.
“So you lock us away?”
“You’re deemed unfit to stand trial. Placed in psychiatric care. All legal, hence the paperwork.” He swallowed nervously, glancing over at Doctor Langley’s body. “You’re too dangerous to be allowed loose. Look at the things you’ve done.”
Molly nodded.
“It easier for you to fear us and cage us, than it is to make any real effort to help us. It’s easier to lock us away and pretend we just don’t exist, rather than even acknowledge we’re real.”
She lunged forward, clamping her fangs into the man’s neck. He writhed and screamed, just like her mother. As the light faded from his eyes, his face fell slack, taking on an innocence that reminded her of little Jack Bradshaw.
She dropped the corpse and turned to face the dark window in the wall.
A light went on behind the glass.
Superintendent Carter was holding a small back box with a large red button, his thumb poised to bring down the fire.
“I worked the Jack Bradshaw case,” he said simply. “I was there when his mother identified what was left of his body. I had to comfort her when her world fell apart. I had to try and explain why things like this happen.”
“Because we’re monsters,” Molly licked the blood from her lips. “So let me burn!”
The police officer shook his head.
“You’re immortal. We have all of eternity to find a treatment for you, so go back to your cell,” he said, as he put down the box. “I won’t kill you, because I don’t have to, I have a choice. That’s the difference between us. You can’t help what you are.”
He turned off the light.
Molly stared at the dark mirror.
She raged against the unbreakable glass, throwing herself at it, clawing at it, kicking at it, until her energy was spent. Then she collapsed miserably on the floor, amongst the blood, where she wept like a child.
Violet Addison was first published through Big Finish’s ‘Doctor Who: How The Doctor Changed My Life’ writing competition. She has since co-written a number of short stories, including one for the shared-world anthology ‘World’s Collider’ from Nightscape Press. She is currently supposedly making a second attempt at writing her first novel, but is more likely surfing the internet looking for more anthologies to submit to…
David N. Smith has written for a number of British sci-fi franchises, including ‘Doctor Who’, Big Finish’s ‘Bernice Summerfield’ range and Obverse Book’s ‘Faction Paradox’ series. He has also written a handful of TV comedy sketches, plus a number of corporate training videos, but people tend to be less interested in these as they involve considerably fewer vampires, dragons, pirates and aliens. Full details can be found on his website - www.davenevsmith.co.uk
SLAVE ARM
Laird Barron
Begin, again.
Don’t begin with a white room, it’s not, it’s a black room. Hothouse humid, oasis in the subarctic night. A glitter ball strobes, synched with the aurora borealis, the background radiation of the stars. Scandalously clad kids slam dance to a metal band, the bass player wears an executioner’s hood, the lead singer has a beard just like the front man for Clutch. Smokes a cheroot, swills whiskey, and breathes fire. Benny Three-Trees and Jasper Hostettler were flown in from Anchorage and Fairbanks to make sure this party’s got its favors. Blotter, X, Jack Daniels, vodka, tequila, blow, crystal, hash, peyote, smack, Black Bombers, Viagra, California Gold, Matanuska Thunderfuck, nitrous. Window glass quivers like jelly in Dixie cup shooters. It’s t
hree A.M. Fuck the police. Your friends are here. Your enemies are here. Everybody you’ve ever slept with is here. Except Jessica. She’s off wandering the earth, righting wrongs. You’ll never see her again. That leaves Tom, Margie, Rod, Bill, Thurman, Shelley, Frank, Lisa, Becka, Tomra, Justin, Everett, Kurt, Mina, Tabby, Klein, Regan, Merrit, Luther, Jackson, Tashondra, Donte, Violet, Simon, Bart, Darcy, Sarah, Clute, Bowie, Pilar, Carol, Eric, Camilla, Brian, Jason, John, Lori, Miller, Parish, Will, Nick, Berrian, Jody, Chandler, Mary, Erin, Clay, Tobias, Judith, Rich, Nelson, Zane, Warren, Bob, Sam, Philip, Castor, Julie, Newhouse, Cole, Esteban, Amy, Tyree, Vernon, Esther, Glenn, Kate, Kathy, Mark, Mark, Jake, Lucy, Ashley, Kyla, River, Arrow, Marsha, Cory, Stephen, Roger, Glory, Grant, Howard, Flynn, Victor, Bubba, Samantha, Custer, Alabama, Truman, Rupert, June, Ruby, Kirsten, Kevin, Lambert, Robard, Dickie, Ralph, Quinn, Hester, Felix, Dusty, Paul, Byron, Kareem, James, Gunther, Abelard, Queenie, Suri, Rochelle, Theodore, Brunhilde, Molly, Cooper, Wanda, Morris, Michelle, Tammy-Lynn, Starling, Hector, Earl, Kellen, Tiberius, Chance, Dakota, Monson, Spencer, Wayne, Lily, Ramses, Chuck, Portia, Terry, Terri, Trish, Craig, Delaney, Vance, Carmine, Russo, Penny, Ferris, Noah. The last two are a pair again after a few years apart. Sweet. You don’t know the rest, the hangers on, freeloaders, strangers. Moving shadows. The happening is happening at the ancestral home of young rotund Zane Tooms himself, poor rich boy, wannabe Satanist, friend to no one no matter how cool his digs may be, and they are indeed cool. A three-story mansion and an unfinished basement. Basement expands deep into the hillside, ancient bear den, crumbled arches, moldering catacombs, bat roosts, portal to Pluto’s Ballroom. Downhill, a lovely hillside, a copse of spruce trees, boulders, a field where fireweed grows, farther on lies the bay, ink-black under a tilted moon, cracked. Moms and Pops jetted to Acapulco for the weekend and the mice will riot. Upstairs in the master suite, you’ve got your cock halfway into that Ukrainian transfer student, the cheerleader, what’s-her-name, and she’s throwing her blonde head like a mare, impatient. You’re thinking ouch, and man, this is a hell of a fancy bed, are these sheets satin, is the demon-face headboard mahogany, and good God what’s with the creepy Gothic architecture anyway, and who’s that guy walking into the frame? Is it the cheerleader’s boyfriend, what’s-his-name, captain of the varsity squad, ‘cause that would be very bad, you’d want your steel toe boots for an ape with forearms like he’s swinging. No, not the jock. Wait, is that Russo? Definitely looks like Russo who runs the forklift on the fresh floor of the cannery. Different though, filling the doorway, cropped hair, pale complexion, eye shadow thick enough for a Star Trek cameo, original series, features smoothed and stretched plastic masklike, loose dark shirt and too-tight pants tucked into combat boots. Hefts a club, or a mace, a car axle, something out of a medieval manual of slaughter, two and a half feet of steel wrapped in barbed wire, electric tape on the grip, funny the photographic detail your brain records in moments of stress. The girl kisses your neck, she hasn’t seen the freak. It’s all wrong. Uncanny resemblance notwithstanding, this isn’t the Russo you were blazing with on the loading dock just yesterday, not the Russo who’s got a thing for the color grader from Caltech, not the Russo who lost his license drag racing on the Parks Highway and needs a lift everywhere, not the one who’s built for a run at the middleweight title but wouldn’t hurt a fly, the pacifist, conscientious objector, tofu-munching emo rocker. This Russo has taken an ice pick to the brain and become Mr. Flat Affect. He licks his liver lips, and Gene Simmons would shit a brick at the yellow tongue drooped to that pointy chin. Mr. Flat Affect crosses the room in an awkward lunge, the way a toad suddenly decides to jump, and it’s so fast your breath stops. You roll off the opposite half of that acre of satin and the club wallops the cheerleader instead of your naked ass. Prior to this moment you’ve always considered yourself a bit of a tough guy. Lean, mean, scars on your knuckles from a respectable number of barroom brawls, only last fall you socked Tom Gorski in the kisser after one wisecrack too many, dropped him like a bad habit. You’re no punk, no wuss, no pantywaist, had your nose busted plenty, lost some teeth in the bargain. You have also come to the realization you aren’t Chuck Norris either. The bludgeoning thuds are a message from the universe. You’re no shark, you’re a feeder fish, aren’t you? The interloper whacks her a couple of times, lazy and disinterested. There’s blood, a lot of it, all those September hunts when Dad shot the caribou with his .7mm and you slashed the dumb beast’s throat and its life gushed out over your Wellies, this is similar. You make your move and fly for the door. You’re howling. Demon Russo would catch you, because next to him you’re stuck in quicksand, but the club gets snagged in a nest of guts and that second or two is all you need to escape. It’s dark and the house is a maze. You’ve visited twice during daylight when it was just the Tooms family and everybody in polo shirts and golf slacks, sunny dispositions, dinner on the deck with the gob smacking view of Settler’s Bay. This is the nightmare version of that scenario, the Bizarro World iteration. Doors are locked and impenetrable. Music rumbles far below and nobody responds to you screaming bloody murder. An accent lamp floats in a golden bubble way down at the end of the hall and you sprint for it, jagged claws of your shadow outstretched in desperation.
~
Even all these years after the fact, you recall the cheerleader’s expression in a smash close-up. Homegirl doesn’t know she’s dead, keeps blinking at you, confused as she drowns on herself.
~
Your father dies in a tavern parking lot when you are twenty-two. Your mother goes home to Tennessee, sends postcards now and again, the weather’s fine. Little brother joins the Marines, like his old man, earns a Bronze Star, opens a gun store in Texas, shoots a couple of kids who try to rob the joint. The jury decides he’s justified. You sleep with a lot of women with the light on, lose your erection whenever you stop to think. There are nightmares. One that recurs has you as a child in your old bedroom, you stand near the dresser and a poster of Buck Rogers. A skinny hand and arm slither from beneath your bed, followed by your father. Except his face is angular and cold with alien emotion. He moves the herky-jerky way a marionette does. He wants your blood, projects that desire into your thoughts without opening his mouth. You always awaken before he gets you. Hell of it is, you don’t know whether it’s really a dream or a suppressed memory. So, you drink. We won’t speak of wife one.
~
Wife two is Amie. You stole her from Mack the slack, Mack jumped off the bridge into Hurricane Gulch. Oh, Amie, baby, who wouldn’t? Brunette, Libra, whip smart, hot as fire. Most importantly, she doesn’t give a goddamn how screwed up you are, how wild and strange you are, how damaged, or else she cleverly looks past it to the good points. You have several. Got all your hair, make a decent wage in construction, still cut pretty sharp in a suit. Two of three children tolerate your presence, the dog is also fond. The dog is a German Shepherd you named Chip because of a story that science fiction author Bradley Denton wrote when you were a kid. You and Chip go hunting for ptarmigan every fall, the only good thing you can recall sharing with your dad. Last September you load the guns and drive out to the Little Susitna, follow a game trail away from the Parks Highway, three, maybe four miles where the spruce grow tall and close in, a mossy shadow land. Crack yourself a cool beer, propped against a tree, loyal hound at your feet, the sun a pale reflection against the underside of the canopy. Even sweet wife fades into the ether for a while. Chip looses a stream of piss and whines and then you hear, echoing from not too far away in the arboreal deeps, the weirdest birdcall ever. Laughter of a raven mimicking a man mimicking a hyena. Cackles your name, calls to Chip. C’mere, doggy! This lone cry becomes a chorus, converging. Shotgun or not, you and the dog run for your lives. That shrieking laughter pursues you nearly back to the car. You break the speed limit gunning for home, Chip cowers on the floorboard, fangs bared as if some horror rides in the back seat. We’re waiting for you, pal. We know where you live.
~
; Zane Tooms got on the Tony Robbins bandwagon and dropped sixty pounds, tried to make something of himself, didn’t try all that hard. Heartthrob handsome after the sea change, but fat wasn’t truly the root of his problems. Something dark and rotten was going on in that noggin. Capped teeth and a chiseled physique couldn’t mitigate the filth beaming from his eyes. He lived alone in that mansion on the hill after Mr. and Mrs. died. Spent his nights at the Bohemian cocktail lounge hitting on the young lasses, became known as the Rohypnol Romeo, bought himself an indictment with a suggested sentencing range of twenty-five to life if it stuck. Blew town and disappeared to the bottom of the FBI most-wanted list. Sends you a letter the day before Christmas, first contact after a decade of silence, arrives in a grimy, blood-spotted envelope, sum of the message a Mexico City phone number, initials ZT, smudgy fingerprints all over the stationery. You are wary, but intrigued. There’s a twenty-five thousand dollar reward, which you don’t give a shit about, money isn’t a problem for you anymore, you have questions, you have a redaction scribble in the middle of your brain where dreadful memories once clamored for release. You want to talk to fatboy Tooms, want to wring his neck, beg him to put the pieces together. He’s living under an assumed name in a fancy hotel on the outskirts, keeps a whole suite to himself. His transformation impresses, dresses in a linen suit, smokes French cigarettes, seems at ease in his own expat skin, but you recognize him, the real him, instantly. You don’t talk about what he’s done, don’t mention the fact FBI and INTERPOL are on the case, could be staking out the joint at that very moment, recording everything for the blockbuster trial. That’s a foregone conclusion, written in the stars. You’re here for other unfinished business. He pours two glasses of mescal, no lime, no nothing, utters a prayer and downs his, then flashes a revolver and says he asked you here to apologize or to kill you. It depends. Actually, that’s a lie, he’s already made up his mind, he wants to chat first, so drink your drink, old friend, and you do. Once everything’s cozy, you’ve chuckled over the hijinks of days of yore, his finger relaxes from the trigger and you ask what the hell man? What happened way back when in the bear den beneath the house? He smiles sadly, professes ignorance, but his eyes belong to a snake and though you ask again, nicely, he refuses to answer truly. He was a child then, he dicked about with childish things, any real diabolism that resulted is purely coincidental. The room spins as you go belly up. They don’t call the bastard the Rohypnol Romeo for nothing. In the half-dozen beats until the world goes dark you watch a tremor pass through him, crown to toe, and your subconscious wants to make an impossible connection, suggests he’s a finger puppet of some primordial malevolence and it’s show time. The flesh of his face snaps upward, much as a bank robber pulls on a nylon mask, except from the wrong direction. Hello to Mr. Flat Affect, your old friend.