by Faith Hunter
“What the hell is going on here?” I ask.
The words go unvoiced. I’m not in control of that particular function. Death has moved in. My hands raise in front of me and flop back and forth, seen for the first time. They clench into fists and then extend out again. I take several hops on my toes, then stand.
The crows take flight. They must have sensed this change, this transference. They’re gathering. They’re staring at me. At Death.
“Rabbettttty,” my mouth says, sounding like I’m three sheets to the wind. My feet are stamping the ground now, as if I’m cold. I’m not cold. I’m terrified. “Rahh…Rab…Red…Ready.”
This last with conviction. With more purpose and sinister mojo than I think I’ve ever put into any word when I controlled that voice. Ready for what? I want to ask, but then the word wasn’t for me, was it?
It was for the crows.
And the crows react.
They swarm on my body. A black cloud of noise and feather, of those beady little eyes. They’re clawing at my skin, my clothing. Sinking their little spiky talons into my flesh.
I can see it, I want to feel it, but I can’t, so I wait. I watch. I listen.
We’re airborne, heading for the gray sky.
* * *
I wake to gray, but it’s no sky. It’s a ceiling and there are humming fluorescent lights in uniform vertical lines.
I’m back. The real world. But Death is still with me. I’ve brought him here. He was supposed to ferry me to the afterlife but instead the opposite has happened.
My body starts to flop about. Skin against cool metal. Then my fingers are up and clawing at the edges of a table.
The wide-eyed face of a woman in her later years appears above me. She wears the uniform of cleaning staff.
She whispers something in a language I don’t know and makes a rapid hand gesture—forehead to sternum, shoulder to shoulder.
Bad move, I think.
Death ignores it. He sits my body up and looks around. A morgue, of course. Stainless steel tables with bodies on some. Tags attached to toes.
No other living souls, though. Just the cleaning lady, and me trapped in my mental cage. Death looks back at her and she faints. Dead weight, dropping to the floor.
She’ll forget this, I think. Chalk it up to a dream, until she realizes she’s being asked a thousand questions about why there’s a missing body. They’ll ask this because Death has me up and walking now. A lumber, really. I’m a fucking zombie. This makes me laugh mentally and, to my surprise, my body laughs, too. Death gets the joke. Revels in it.
“Why are we here?” I ask, mentally. “What do you intend to do?”
“I must see this for myself,” he says, using my mouth. The answer is aloud.
I find myself guiding Death through the streets, like an annoying suit trying to tell his cabbie the fastest route in a city well known. It’s very late at night, a huge plus as hardly anyone is about to wonder at the naked man with the toe tag flopping in the wind with each step.
Part of me wants to guide Death to the police, but then I wonder, what’s the point? I can’t actually use my own mouth. I couldn’t explain if I wanted to. And as of yet I have no idea what powers this immortal being can wield here in the realm of the real. Perhaps that woman in the morgue hadn’t fainted at all. So I silence this part of me that wants to sabotage Death’s wishes here. The rules are not exactly clear to me, but I suspect limiting how many people encounter Death is probably the wise move.
Best to take him to what he wants to see. I’m rather curious myself, if I’m honest.
Our route takes us toward the old bridge, and on a whim I guide Death down the path that leads to that quiet place you loved so much. It occurs to me then that you probably don’t love it anymore. It will be a cursed place to you now.
I sort of hope to see flowers and some kind of improvised memorial blanketing the cobblestones where I met my end. But perhaps not enough time has passed. It could even be the same evening, because all Death and I find is some yellow police tape cordoning off the area.
We step under it and approach the spot. I’m hesitant to look suddenly, but I’m not in control of this so I’m forced to approach at Death’s rather confident pace. I can’t control what my eyes look at either, so I see the crimson staining the old stone pathway. My blood, soaked into those old rocks.
Anguish grips me, but I cannot look away. I cannot leave. You’d think Death would be long cured of a morbid fascination for this kind of thing but noooo, he’s downright fascinated. Poring over the whole place, bit by bit.
I tell myself not to let it bother me. I’m not truly dead. I’m still around, elsewhere, in the machine that now houses me.
“Murder,” Death rasps through my throat.
My hand points. There’s a little flag on the ground, a white one with a number. Several others, on the edge of my vision.
Murder.
Not crows.
Murder as in the crime of killing.
The killing of me.
And then I’m wondering if all that blood is just mine, or if the killer got you, too. Perhaps you met Death, too, only…only you hadn’t become a digi yet, had you, Emily. We’d flipped a coin for that and I went first. Even now you may be on the river, your lovely face lit by that dim lantern, a skeletal shadow in black robes behind you.
Who could have done it? We’d made our share of enemies in recent months. Nutjobs came out of the woodwork when we announced. And that doctor in Malaysia who claimed we’d stolen his process. He certainly has motive.
We’re on the move again. With urgency. Up the path, down two streets and through an alley. Across a park, where an early morning jogger shrieks at the sight of me. I want to explain, to plead for information, but Death says, “Crazy night!” and in those two words the perfect cover story is laid out. The jogger somehow manages an embarrassed laugh and continues on their run.
My flat. Police tape across it. Death ducks under it and tries the keypad at the door. It bleats, a red light flashes. My door code has already been removed. Before I can even think it, Death mines my head and finds your code, Emily. That still works, and we’re in.
Death enters my living room and there it is on the coffee table: the glasses without lenses, opaque and sleek gray. He sits my body down beside it and pulls on the thin device, powers it up. Darkness for a second, then a floating prompt appears before me.
I hesitate. Not because I wish to keep my password from the grim reaper, but because I’m suddenly irrationally afraid to talk to myself. It goes against the rules we agreed on. Death doesn’t care. He mines my brain and finds the information he needs. Username, password, and of course he already has access to my fingerprint.
I want to swallow, I can feel the cold confused terror building in me and Death seems to understand this because I do gulp it back.
We’re in.
But my fear was in vain. We cannot talk to the digital me.
Because there is no me in there. There’s nothing at all.
“Entity capture deleted,” with a time and date, the logs say. Just minutes ago.
What the fu—
There’s a crash and door behind me slams open. Death turns my head enough to see two detectives, guns and badges in view, shouting. “Emily Jones! On the ground! Hands behind your fucking head!” Death does not obey. I’m not sure I would have if I’d been in control. I’m too confused. Why are they shouting your name?
Of course. We used your code to open the door.
Pounding footsteps across the carpet, beams of flashlights blinding as the two officers rush in. En route the lead cop roars, “Emily Jones you are under arrest for the murder of Jacob Crydon and the deletion of a digitized sentience! Do not—”
“It’s not her, it’s not her!” the other is shouting. “It’s…holy fuck it’s—”
And then Death reaches out and taps the closer one in the center of his forehead. There’s a change in those eyes and I feel everythi
ng drain from me. Death, departing. Moving to a new body.
I’m dying again, more or less.
One last thought rolls through my head as I drop lifeless to the floor.
It was you. You did this.
And then I’m back with the crows.
Only this time, I’m alone, and I don’t know what happens next, Emily.
We wanted to make Death irrelevant. What we did instead was unleash him upon the world.
And Emily…he’s looking for you.
THE DANCE
Julie Pitzel
The torch at the door served as a beacon in the dying twilight. Or was it a warning?
Two dozen paces lay between the village and the feast hall, a squat hut carved from dull stones. Pitted and scored by desert winds, the hall melted into the low crag at its back. I stood watching, waiting. Dread washed over me. Dread, coupled with a dangerous eagerness.
Once the last rays of sun vanished and stars pierced the sky, I pushed aside the camelhair rug over the doorway and slipped inside. Fetid air, reeking of sweat and roasted meat, greeted me. Smoke from the torches hung under the low ceiling, making the room dimmer and closer than I liked.
A dozen Elders lounged against saddles or reclined on carpets and goatshair cushions, their fine linens and silks muted in the haze. Three gray and stooped village women carried platters of lamb, trays of grapes and figs, and jugs of wine. A musician playing a reed-pipe stood in the corner to the right of the door. The low light shadowed his features and briefly transformed his face into a jeering skull. The sight stopped my heart. Then a torch flared, revealing his lips, short beard, and the keen attention in his eyes. I dismissed the vision. Death sat too heavy on my mind.
One of the elderly servers, and the piper, were the only ones to notice my entrance. That would soon change. I unwrapped my scarf and hung it with my robe on an empty peg.
My costume chafed, exposing my belly beneath fringe the color of midnight. It had been Esme’s, worn with pride until the material became fragile from too many washings. I resisted the urge to tug on the bra, filled out with small sacks of seed and grain to enhance my breasts. The skirt, cinched in at the hips, still threatened to slide off and land in an inky puddle. Esme had always teased that she got the body and I got the brains. It wasn’t true. I’d studied the wise arts—healing the wounded and tending the sick—while my sister had learned to dance. She’d been both smart and beautiful, the heart of our family. I filled that role less successfully than I filled her dance costume.
We’d lost her barely a week ago. The sorrow was still so fresh my chest ached from swallowing the tears. But this was not the time to mourn. The Elders demanded entertainment. We’d been brought to this village because of Esme’s talent, and now that she was dead—raped, beaten, and buried in the dunes—the task fell to me.
I walked to the empty corner of the room, opposite the musician. He stopped playing as I passed, and the rattling of my beads and light chains drew the crowd’s attention. The servants abandoned their platters and jugs and scurried out the door, heads down and eyes averted.
The men paid no attention to the old women. These pillars of society with crumbs in their beards, wine stains on their fine robes, and greasy hands reaching for another piece of meat? They grabbed for me. Leered. And found me lacking.
“Not as pretty as the other.”
“She has boy hips.”
They discussed me as if debating the merits of a camel at market. There were more comments, darker, uglier words that I ignored.
The piper trilled an introduction to Esme’s song and I froze, not sure if I could do this. I knew the steps. I’d practiced the forms. But I feared I wouldn’t do her justice.
Grumbling started among the watchers. I glanced toward the door, briefly considering an escape. I had no choice. Surrounded by the leaders of this small village, I would not be allowed to leave until I’d performed. But I couldn’t leave even if I had the choice.
I thought of Esme’s battered body and shuddered. Shifting sands and luck had revealed her to me. Which of these men had killed her? Which carved out pieces of her flesh, sliced lines in her face, and hit her hard enough to dislodge teeth and jaw? I wanted answers, but they would be hard won and I wouldn’t get them by running.
I looked to the piper. Another trick of light hid all but his gleaming smile and transformed his pipe into a blade, wicked and sharp.
Then the illusion dropped. He held his instrument up and canted his head in question. I nodded for him to start again and centered myself with a deep breath. Then I began to dance.
Not my sister’s dance or any they’d seen before. My dance. I turned and twisted, feeling the connection with the packed earth beneath my feet. With each step, I sprinkled strands of Esme’s hair. Calling her with her essence and with the dance.
Shouts and gasps rose from the crowd when she appeared, thin as smoke.
I continued the spell, pulling her further into this world, giving her solid form. Esme, who’d never stopped moving when music filled the air, stood still as stone. Her bright new costume, stained and ripped. She looked out at those men and smiled. I saw it briefly as I turned. She’d never worn that smile in life. The broken jaw and mutilations made it ghastly. The madness in her eyes made it so much worse.
Could I continue? I didn’t want this to be my last memory of her.
Another twirl, my skirt fluttering like raven wings, and another woman formed ghostlike next to my sister. She wore green, with gruesome holes where her breasts belonged. I stumbled, shocked. Who was she? The spell needed hair, blood, or bone to link to a spirit and give them shape. The only way she could appear was if her blood had spilled here and soaked into the dirt beneath my feet.
A third woman appeared as I repeated the spell, followed swiftly by three more. Six women, including Esme, stood in my circle scowling at the men. Six women in a rainbow of dance costumes, who shared a certain beauty, a similarity of feature and form. And they all bore the wounds they’d died from. How much blood saturated this cold earth?
Esme’s blood! She died here! The realization stole my breath. Her death and the death of these other women…Gods and Goddesses! They’d been part of the entertainment. How long had this been happening? Rage filled me, the heat of it rushing through my veins. Is that what these men planned for me? New energy, fueled by fury, spurred my steps.
“What trickery is this?” a man shouted.
And I changed the pattern of my dance in answer, unleashing Esme and her sisters-in-death—their forms now as solid as mine.
Esme stepped up to the fattest, ugliest gray-beard and dragged him from his couch by the hair. He punched her but she didn’t cringe or waver beneath the blows. When she had him on his feet, she cradled his head, hands against his temples and squeezed. He wailed, screaming until his head caved in with a liquid crack.
Men scrambled to escape, but the woman with missing breasts blocked the door.
“We killed you,” a man in the lead shouted and slashed at her with a short dagger. The blade carved another awful scar into her abdomen. No blood oozed from the dead gray flesh. “You’re dead,” he screeched, then gaped at the closing wound.
She took his knife, plunged it into his groin, and ripped it up his body until it became lodged in his ribs. I looked away as she tore out his entrails. It did me no good. Every turn revealed more blood and gore.
I had hoped Esme would point out the guilty and a magistrate would mete out justice. But the magistrate was here, meeting a different justice at the hands of the silent women. My stomach churned and I fought the rising bile. What had I let loose? Were innocent men being butchered? No. They had participated in rape and murder, even if only as avid spectators.
My dance gave power to these women that they hadn’t had in their last hours. I couldn’t stop dancing. I couldn’t stop watching the slaughter. And I couldn’t tune out the men’s tortured howls mixed with the snap of bone and the moist sounds of rending flesh.
<
br /> The chaos ended when the last Elder expelled his final, gurgled breath. The piper no longer played. I expected to find him cowering in his corner. Instead, Death watched from the shadows. He bowed.
And I understood. My studies had touched on darker magics. I hadn’t used them, but they can’t be avoided. Books and diaries filled with experiments and observations contained a blend of light and dark, helpful and destructive. I found the spells I’d used today in a slim journal picked up at a bazaar only a month ago.
Luck hadn’t led me to my sister’s body. Death had presented her to me as an invitation. This had become his house, binding him as surely as it bound these ghosts. Spirits of the women, tortured and killed for the pleasure of men who operated above the law.
I slowed my movements and changed the pattern once more, this time releasing the women from any earthly hold. As I completed my ritual, they became whole again. The visible scars disappeared and the madness left their eyes. They regained their stolen beauty. Each bowed her thanks to me before fading, finally finding their way to peace. Helping them, giving them this freedom, brought me a modicum of peace as well.
Esme remained. The sight of her, whole and unmarred, made me ache. This would be the last time I’d see her smile. I wanted to hold her, keep her with me. Run with her into the desert until we both turned to brittle bone.
Esme knew me too well. She shook her head and wiped a tear from my face. Her touch was warm, not the cold withered flesh I expected. Then she kissed my cheek and faded, leaving me alone.
The dance finished and the ghosts freed, I started shaking. The shivering began in my shoulders and moved through me. It made my hands tremble and weakened my knees. Charnel smells had my gorge rising and I forced myself to take shallow breaths until my stomach and limbs were once again in my control.
I weaved around the worst of the carnage, my feet leaden from exhaustion. The Reaper waited near the door. Thanking him didn’t seem appropriate. I met his gaze, or what would have been his gaze had eyes still rested in his sockets. Staring into those bleak, dark cavities, souls stared back at me. Hundreds. Thousands. The longer I looked the more I saw: anger, pain, despair—