Decision Point (ARC)
Page 12
than me, reminding me that the disease targets without regard for
age or sex. I recognize one of them—a pretty girl with a wild
mane of reddish-brown hair, large breasts, and wide hips—as the
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woman who approached me before. I think she smiles a little, her
head high and her nose flaring as she scents the air.
I lift my camera very slowly and peer through the viewfinder.
I focus on the gathering, carefully framing the composition.
When I press the shutter the click resounds in the silent forest
and sends them scattering.
A rock hits a tree beside me, just missing my head. I duck,
sheltering the camera with my body. I dodge behind the tree,
trying to see who is attacking me and from where, and another
rock glances off my right ankle. I stumble to my knees and feel
a sharp stone cut into my leg.
“No!” a voice grunts. A male voice. I crawl out and see my
father crouching in the clearing, his back to me. I gasp, stunned
that I’ve found him this easily. Or has he found me?
This is the nearest I’ve been to him since he left. An older
woman hovers beside him, one arm cast across his shoulders. I
approach slowly and he turns and grunts when he catches sight
of me. He stands, hunching his shoulders, then backs up towards
me. I freeze as he leans close and sniffs. I haven’t bathed in two
days, because everything I’ve studied indicates that regressives
rely heavily on smell for recognition, along with body language.
He touches my face, rubs long-nailed fingers against my sparse
beard, and I try not to flinch away. He places his hand on the
camera around my neck before turning back to the group.
“Me,” he grunts loudly, his arms extended with the palms
facing out. He sweeps a hand behind him in my direction. “Me.”
*
“Dad,” I whisper, the word catching in my throat. He looks
around and sniffs again. His eyes shine at me, identical to the
eyes that I am used to seeing in the mirror.
“Me,” he says.
Because I was so young, I can’t tell which memories of my
father really happened and which I have constructed over the
years from stories, half-forgotten dreams, and my own
imagination. I remember him lurking with his camera around the
house. I remember him laughing with my mother, curling up with
her on the couch. I imagine him in his darkroom, bent over the
counter studying a photograph with a dissatisfied frown. We
played catch as fathers and sons do, or maybe I just wish that we
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had. I only remember these moments as snatches of images—
photographs developed in my mind, never committed to film and
faded with time.
I have been living with my father on the reservation, in the
cave he shares with three women: the older one I saw him with
before, another who fusses over me like a concerned mother, and
the attractive young redhead. He sleeps with the first two,
without caring that I’m around, but the youngest has taken an
obvious interest in me, and my father doesn’t touch her.
One day I caught the girl looking at me the way my mother
looked at my father in that photo. I hesitated, trying to decide
whether to photograph her or kiss her, but the moment was lost
and she stalked off. I am tempted to give into more primal urges,
which feel more and more natural the longer I stay here. No one
here will judge me, but I’ll know better.
I have a full beard now and my hair is growing out, but it’s
only a matter of time before someone notices that my RFID
signature doesn’t belong here, if anyone’s even paying attention.
I wonder how long my mother will wait for me to come
home, whether she will come looking for me—for us. I left a
copy of the results of my blood test with a note telling her where
I planned to go. I didn’t think she would understand my need to
come here, especially when I barely understand it myself.
I had to experience this even though I won’t get Hollander’s.
I won’t go through the same transformations that took my father;
of course that’s a relief—I don’t want to forget who I am—but
I’m discovering that I could survive here. This life is as good as
any other, maybe better. Life here is peaceful; the people seem
happy the way they are. I want my mother to see that, too.
In the dirt at the back of the cave I discovered crude drawings
my father made—just stick figures—of three people that could
be a man, woman, and child. Since then I’ve been trying to re-
teach him to use a camera. We’ve been taking pictures together
again.
As I live among the regressives I study them, learn about our
past and what might be our future. I hope my photos and
experiences will show everyone a forgotten part of themselves. I
want to honor those who were forced into this existence whether
by divine will, evolutionary checks and balances, or simply luck.
Maybe they aren’t victims after all, maybe they’ve just been
chosen.
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I use my thesis to rationalize my decision to stay a little
longer, but the truth is I’m finally getting to know my dad.
E.C. Myers was assembled in the U.S. from Korean and German
parts and raised by a single mother and the public library in
Yonkers, New York. He is the author of numerous short stories
and four young adult books: the Andre Norton Award–winning
Fair Coin , Quantum Coin , The Silence of Six , and Against All
Silence . E.C. lives with his wife, son, and three doofy pets in
Pennsylvania. You can find traces of him all over the internet,
but especially at http://ecmyers.net and on Twitter: @ecmyers.
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For Sun, life as a gargoyle is a challenge, but at least he’s not a
Stoner or a grotesque … the city streets can be a tough place to
grow up no matter who you are in Alethea Kontis’ latest tale.
L I K E T H I E F I N T H E L I G H T
By Alethea Kontis
The Stoners were up to their old tricks again.
Sun downshifted the street sweeper and pulled up on the
brake. He untangled his gangly limbs from the gears and stepped
down, cracking his head on the doorway again. Stupid low
ceiling. Stupid giant head.
Pierre never had this problem; his head just dented the
doorway. But Sun was not a gargoyle, so there would be a tiara
of bruises around Sun’s bulbous, bald pate until he remembered
how to get out of his own way. Nor did Sun have Pierre’s water-
summoning power, so he had to fill the sweeper’s giant tanks in
the Shadow Street Reservoir before making rounds on the days
when Pierre was too weary to sweep. Those days were every day
now.
The Stoners weren’t gargoyles either, just a gang of
grotesques who liked to perpetuate the lie because gargoyles had
a far more romantic reputation. But their bodies were also made
of stone, and they also froze into statues in the daylight—as the
asshole currently blocking his sweeper demonstrated—but they
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had no magic over water or anything else. The only talent the
Stoners had was “taking donations” from passersby. It wasn’t
technically stealing if the person gave them all their worldly
goods out of the kindness of their own heart … or from the fear
of having said heart ripped out through their chest cavity by stone
claws.
Sun paused before stepping all the way down to the street and
leaned back into the cab. He was careful not to wake Fuzz, curled
up and dozing in the passenger’s seat like a long tailed black rat
who wore his skull on the outside. The aye-aye was nocturnal,
like ninety-nine percent of the population of Shadow Street. But
Fuzz insisted on tagging along, Sun’s life was easier if he didn’t
argue.
Sun’s long white fingers silently flicked the button on the
glove box and he took out the can of safety orange spray paint
Pierre saved to mark road hazards for the night shift. Fuzz let out
a soft whuffle of a snore. The can smelled like gasoline. There
wasn’t much on that ancient wreck of a sweeper that didn’t smell
like gasoline. Pierre had managed to keep the sweeper running,
but one good rain would wash it into the shadows, sprockets and
widgets and all.
Shaking the can was like parading a brass band down the
street. The ball bearings careening back and forth inside the can
echoed off the walls of the buildings on the empty street loud
enough to wake the dead … somewhere else. No dead here worth
his salt would bother to rise before twilight. Nothing walked this
street at noon except the loners, the shadows, and the street
sweepers. Sun was all three.
The harsh light of day was unforgiving to the bricks and
mortar of Shadow Street. There were no streetlights and gas
lamps to take the years away, no neon to gussy up the years of
cracks and scars. Daylight made all the buildings equal: from the
gothic marble and limestone library to the concrete and glass of
that new vampire club. At the Witching Hour, blood was love
and sex and life. At noon, it was just another brown stain on the
pavement.
Everything was tall and gray and unsightly in the brightness,
just like him. It was the only place and time Sun ever felt like he
belonged, the king of the world, quiet and looming here in the
ugly truth.
Sun stopped shaking the can, and the high-pitched gunfire
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stopped repeating off the sun-bleached moldy walls. Hatch
looked a little worse for the wear himself, now that Sun was
brave enough to get a nice, close look at him. After sunset he
wouldn’t want to be closer than a block away from any of the
Stoners, but here and now he could examine to his heart’s
content.
Hatch was covered in pockmarks, small divots in the rock
made from time, wear, and general stupidity. One of his horns
was missing the tip, giving him a lopsided look. Hatch was a
wingless grotesque, with a face like a bull and the body of a lion.
His feet were splayed and his arms were spread wide—he’d tried
to make as large a barrier of himself as possible, and he’d
succeeded. Sun would have to back the sweeper up and swing it
wide to miss him, after he cleaned this section of the street by
hand. Sun wished he could back up and run Hatch over with the
sweeper itself, but he knew it would 1.) irreparably damage the
sweeper and 2.) wake Fuzz up. Sun was far more scared of the
latter.
Sun wrapped his long fingers around the ring in Hatch’s nose
and rapped against his bull chin. “Anybody home?” Sun giggled
to himself, and then quit when he realized how pathetic it
sounded. He cleared his throat and started again.
“Looking rough, man. Know what you need? A makeover.
Here, let me help you.” Sun shook the can a few more times for
good measure, and then painted Hatch a nice, full head of safety
orange hair.
“Remember, ladies. Do not neglect those eyebrows.” Sun
took it upon himself to attend to them on Hatch’s behalf. “I do
declare. You look at least two hundred years younger.” Sun
kissed Hatch on the cheek and stepped back to survey his
handiwork.
That’s when he noticed the shadow.
Everyone knows: the brighter the sunlight, the darker the
shadow. What everyone doesn’t know is what hides in those
shadows, invisibly waiting to reach out and feed on your soul.
Sun knew this because he was one of them. He could see them
with his poison green eyes.
Normally shadow thieves were blind, led by way of
temperature and feeding by soulsmell, but Sun was not normal.
His mother had not been a shadow. He wasn’t sure what she’d
been, exactly, but she’d given him some green eyes and a
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horrible skin condition to remember her by. His father had given
him a lanky build, a big bulbous head, and the ability to pop in
and out of shadow without having to suck souls. But while his
father and mother may have created him, Pierre was the one who
had given him a home and a life and a purpose. Pierre was the
only parent Sun gave a crap about.
But Pierre was sick and old and getting sicker and older. In
the far too near future, Sun would lose him. He didn’t want to
think about it. And yet, lately it was all he could think about.
Stupid thoughts. Stupid head.
A snarl and a growl at his feet snapped Sun out of his
melancholy. Fuzz gnashed his scary front teeth and swiped his
bony black fingers at the shadow beside them. It took a moment
for Sun’s brain to register that the shadow thief had slipped into
Sun’s own shadow and was feeding upon Sun’s soul. With some
effort—thanks in no small part to Fuzz’s distraction—Sun
jumped back away from Hatch’s dark shadow and the blind,
hungry thief trapped inside it.
Sun couldn’t suck souls, but Fuzz could. He was the reason
the aye-aye as a species had such a bad reputation in the first
place. Fuzz might have been ten times smaller than Sun, but he
was a hell of a lot more intimidating.
“Yeah, yeah. So you’re a big shot,” said Sun. “Rub it in.”
Fuzz responded by displaying one of his disproportionately
distended middle fingers. With a yawn, he deftly crawled back
up into the sweeper.
Sun laughed, grabbed his broom, and went back to work.
*
“When I pass on, Sun, ze sweeper, she is for you, no?” It had
been a long time since Pierre had left his tiny little colony on the
coast of South Americ
a, but he’d never lost the accent.
“No,” said Sun. He washed his hands in the basin and opened
the shutters to let the twilight in. Fresh air would do Pierre a
world of good.
“How can you no love ze daylight sweeper? She is a good
sweeper.”
“She is a fine sweeper,” Sun agreed. “I just meant no, you
will not ‘pass on’ anytime soon. Stop talking like that.”
“We cannot stop ze sun from rising or ze moon from setting,”
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said Pierre. “We do not live forever, mon soleil, not even these
old stones. Not talking about it cannot make it so.”
“Tell that to the rest of Shadow Street,” Sun muttered under
his breath.
Either Pierre did not hear him, or he just ignored the snarky
comment. It was hard to tell sometimes. “I would like to work in
ze garden today,” Pierre mused.
Of course he would. Sun wondered sometimes why he ever
bothered showering, since he seemed destined to be covered in
dirt of some kind. Not that the dirt was the issue. The garden was
to be Pierre’s final resting place. Sun didn’t love the idea of
landscaping a graveyard.
But as Sun didn’t want to appear ungrateful, he said none of
this. He simply went to Pierre’s side, removed the tray of
untouched soup, and helped his giant stony carcass out of bed
like the dutiful foster child he was.
It just didn’t make any sense. If ninety-five percent of the
population on Shadow Street was immortal, why did Pierre have
to die? What made gargoyles so different from all the other
monstrous peoples of the world?
As soon as the question was swimming around in that giant
head of his, Sun knew exactly who would have the answer. “Oh,
crap,” he said aloud.
“Am I too heavy?” asked Pierre. He was leaning more of his
weight onto Sun than usual, but Sun had grown stronger because
of it.
“No heavier than my head, fat man,” said Sun. It was a long-
standing joke between them. “The ‘crap’ was just me suddenly
regretting something.”
Pierre’s knowing chortle degraded into a raspy cough. Sun
hoped none of that water had managed to find a way into his