by Scott Savino
“Thanks.”
For a moment, I thought about faking a yawn, telling her it was nice to have her over and that I’d drop her at home, that I’d call soon and then wouldn’t. But she trailed her hand up and down my thigh and smiled with her poppy pink lips and I decided I’d spent been too many nights in an empty nest and this didn’t have to be another.
oOo
The unfamiliar presence of another body in my bed woke me around midnight. My body never adjusted to not being alone until someone sharing my space became routine, and that almost never happened.
Moving quietly so as not to wake her, I went to the bathroom and found there were new teeth in my mouth. I ran my tongue along the bottoms, the faint taste of bacon lingering from her meal. I traced their shape, chomped down a few times.
I felt sick to my stomach.
In the morning, I reached out a hand that wasn’t mine to trace Marilyn’s back. She arched like a cat and yawned before turning over to face me. There were two fleshy stretches of pinched skin where her eyes used to be. I covered my mouth with my hand to stifle the sound of horror threatening to escape. She began to smile, her cheeks like fresh peaches, her mouth empty of teeth, and I could feel my heart holding its breath, waiting for the moment she realized it wasn’t dark because she hadn’t opened her eyes.
“Rest,” I whispered, leaning down and closing my own eyes, which must have been newly brown—the color of violin resin—to kiss her forehead with both regret and repulsion.
“But—” She trailed off and I could see her face muscles scrunch, working to move something that wouldn’t respond. She reached out her one working hand, not seeming to realize there was only a stump at the end of the other arm, and felt the blankness of her face with slow fingers.
I swore the house rattled with her scream. I often had nightmares that my wallpaper retained them, waiting to unleash them all at once so I’d drown.
“My eyes.” Hearing the muffled state of her voice, she groped inside her mouth and I could see her breathing get heavier as she encountered soft gums. She struggled to speak and I let her until I heard a word that sounded like “hospital.”
“There’s nothing they can do. I’m sorry, Marilyn.”
That was true, not a sadistic lie to protect myself.
It didn’t always go this fast. Sometimes it was weeks without any sign at all, giving me a false sense of security until I shared a bathtub with someone who searched for the birth mark on her calf only to find it on mine.
But Marilyn was a quick flame.
I took her in my arms and she resisted, but I held on tight to force a sense of calm. Her sobbing turned to hiccups, then to sudden, mute silence. She rested her head on my shoulder and I could feel her hair starting to fall out.
Tears welled up and trailed down my face. I wiped my mouth and found pink lipstick residue on the back of my hand. She hadn’t washed it all off last night. I set Marilyn on my bed and left the room so I wouldn’t have to watch her become limbs and then bone and then nothing at all, not even the sleep sand in the corner of her eyes.
Sometimes it happened while I slept and I couldn’t say goodbye.
I liked to imagine they ended up on an island somewhere, with birds colored like magician handkerchiefs, and sand warm enough to nap on. Sometimes I even wished I could be there with them all, lounging in the sunlight in a yellow bathing suit and skin that wasn’t borrowed, tossing my windswept head to look at the collection of girls I had adored so fiercely.
I went downstairs to stand against the wall. My body kept a token from each mistake, even as it changed. But always, I was just below Jonah, age twelve.
It was a relief that never lost power.
I moved my hand around to hear the cracking joint sound. I wore her wrists now and wondered if they could make eggs.
Mouth of the Whale
AVRA MARGARITI
A PUTRID SMELL. FISH BONES licked clean sticking out of the salt-encrusted snow like little daggers. The beef jerky remains of the poor souls who took refuge here before us. There are weirder places to celebrate Christmas than inside the cavernous remains of a whale.
Cross says if we squint our eyes just right—”No, not like that. Tighter. Now tilt your head a little,”—our torches look like fairy lights. “See how they twinkle against the fluted walls of the beast’s oral cavity?”
For some reason I expect to see a uvula, but I guess whales don’t have them. I point it out to Cross, tell him I’d been hoping to see one because the idea reminds me of a punching bag. Cross claims he used to be a professional boxer, though I doubt it. His frame’s small, and I bet he was puny even before starvation made ghosts of us all.
Cross and I hang a hook from the whale’s empty esophagus and Amy drapes long strings of seaweed over it like tinsel. They’re so green they look black against the foggy metal.
Amy finishes tying kelp into a bow and steps back to admire her handiwork. “It can be our mistletoe,” she says, and Cross winks at her.
I’m a little jealous, I admit it. He shouldn’t want to kiss her under the beast’s giant palate. My body has fewer barnacles than hers, anyway. He won’t cut his fingers against me.
“Brain, what do you think,” Cross asks.
He calls me Brain instead of Brian. Has done so ever since I told him I’d been trying to get my teaching license before the world went to shit.
“It looks good,” I reluctantly agree.
Cross smiles. “I’ll sing us a song.”
“We shouldn’t make any noise,” Amy reminds him, but he pays her no mind.
“I doubt they’ll get us just ‘cause of some noise. Besides, there’s nothing but ice for miles. We’ll hear their claws scratching before they reach us.”
We believe him. Because he’s confident and magnetic, and because he’s kept us alive this far.
Cross opens his mouth, but produces no notes of carol. His singing is part drowning-man gurgling, part ethereal keening. All beautiful. It echoes. For a moment, I fear that the beast has somehow come to life, but no. It’s been a long time since it was anything but a foul-smelling carcass. Even before those things—the smaller, more cunning beasts of the land—were out there, the whale had been long dead, already frozen stiff and solid.
Amy stokes the fire. “I was a water baby,” she says when Cross is done. “Born in bathwater. Been swimming my whole life, but I’ve never been this cold.”
She wants someone to warm her, but Cross doesn’t get the message. He’s too caught up in his idea of reviving a holiday in a world with little use of it. I sigh inwardly and plop down next to her. We huddle together on the same bleached-white log and she rests her forehead against my shoulder in appreciation.
Cross joins us, never one to pass up affection once it’s on the table.
“What do people do on Christmas anyway,” I ask.
He shoots me a boyish grin. His straggly hair looks like a halo. “I kind of forgot.”
Amy climbs to her feet and rolls her eyes at us, but directs her incredulity toward the whale’s ridged flesh shot through with bluish-black arteries, its grand spine like the underside of a stairway to—where? Definitely not heaven. No one believes in that place anymore.
“Let me tell you a story,” she says in that patronizing way of hers, and laughter rumbles through the emptiness of our bellies.
Amy prances around the fire like the burlesque dancer she once was as I boil water, using a soggy stick to stir the measly chunks of fish Cross throws into our pot. Her shadow is a curved needle against the cavernous walls. She talks about her Aunt Liv and how she once tried to poison Amy’s girlfriend with stale fruit cake during Christmas dinner.
Right now I wouldn’t even mind if Cross kissed her under the dangling seaweed. I’m about to say so, but he leans toward me and seals his mouth over mine, instead.
Drawing back, he licks his lips, salt and hunger transferred from my mouth to his.
“Again?” Cross asks with a lopsided
smirk.
Again and again and again.
With her story done, Amy is all smiles and flourishes as she serves the watery soup. We talk and laugh some more and try to recall old party games. We touch one another on the elbow and knee and glacier-cold nose.
I’ve never had Christmas before. I have no way of telling if what we do is in the spirit at all, but this cowardly world has given me something to call Christmas nonetheless, and it is wonderful. I’m warm and content, and full for once.
Outside, the wind howls with a menace as those things join in, with their powerful lungs and jaws that unhinge all the way. I don’t fret, though. In here, tonight, we’ve created something holy. Not even the existence of monsters can mar this newfound feeling.
Cross sings again and our voices mingle with his in a haunting melody, and from somewhere in the distance I think I hear the sound of nails skidding along the ice.
About the Authors
Collectively, the authors selected for this anthology represent a diverse mix of the LGBTQIA+ community. They are men and women, enbies and allies. They identify across the spectrum as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, demi-sexual, panromantic, polyamorous, monogamous, and so much more. They are people of mixed races and backgrounds who all share the same goal: to tell amazing horror stories featuring the positive representation of characters like themselves—like all of us—in ways that do not demand our identities be used to justify our inclusion.
For more information about each author, as well as where you can find more of their work, please check out:
http://authors.blackrainbowhorror.com
Acknowledgements
We want to thank everyone who contributed to helping us make Black Rainbow a reality.
This anthology was created to shine a light in the dark places inside us all while also reminding our readers that no matter what your truth is: you are valid and you matter.
Our goal was to select stories that were gender and identity affirming. Stories about people like us—people with non-heteronormative and/or non-cisgender identities, and people who are terminally under-represented—living their normal lives until something horrifying happens to them along the way. We wanted those stories to be shared.
And we were not alone in that desire.
So, we present to you, in no particular order whatsoever, everyone who contributed to the creation of this anthology.
Without you, we could not have done this!
Erin Michele ◆ Miranda Hernandez ◆ Chris G. ◆ WildClaw Theatre ◆ Presents Deathscribe ◆ Eve Moran ◆ Guthrie Taylor ◆ Ominous Rainbow RegiCaldart ◆ L. Whitaker ◆ Lois Matelan ◆ Clay East ◆ Arya Dalsgaard ◆ Kenneth Skaldebø ◆ Amy Freeland ◆ Dmikalova ◆ Spirit Healer Mage ◆ Adrian J. Johnson ◆ Melissa McGee ◆ Sir Soothing Voice ◆ Adam Davies ◆William Sack ◆ Rikki Dennis ◆ A. Warner ◆ Jessica F. Holt ◆ Kirsti S. ◆ August Quinn ◆ Hannah Searle ◆ Olivia Montoya ◆ Amanda Jo Hobson ◆Christina Berry ◆ Felix Cattison ◆ Kyle Harrison ◆ Sinister Sweetheart ◆ Danielle Di Pasqua ◆ C. Blanchard ◆ Alla Hoffman ◆ R. Soares ◆ The McVay Family ◆ Keefer ◆ Rhiannon Raphael ◆ Rebecca Bowyer ◆ Katie Kraeski ◆ Erin B. Lillis ◆ J ◆ ChentHigson ◆ J. Cox ◆ Dany Morin Miguel Angel Torres Ontiveros ◆ NicKaitaloipa ◆ Mark Edward Salva ◆ Johnny Hempseed ◆ Kirsty Syder ◆ Jim Parkin ◆ Andrea Kirk ◆ Chloe Arnall ◆ Niki&Benj ◆ GötzWeinreich ◆ Tasha Turner ◆ R. R. Smith ◆ Marla Krauss ◆ Nyxx Stone ◆ Anaxphone ◆ Paul & Laura Trinies ◆ Josef B. Wilke ◆ Morgan Catherine ◆ Anders Cahill ◆ David Mallory ◆ Eliot Waddingham ◆ T.S. Morgan ◆ John Bowen ◆ Morgan Pryce ◆Beatrix Sterling ◆ Elizabeth Kirkman ◆ M.V. Ho ◆ SyntiaTreeman ◆ Katelyn Guerin ◆ Sam R. ◆ K. Banning Kellum ◆ Rowan ◆ Steve Pattee ◆ J.D. Hobbes ◆ Kelly Childress ◆ Lady T. ◆ Hollie Satterfield ◆ Korey & Rebecca Keehbauch ◆ SiaQuan ◆ Danni EverAfter ◆ Heather ◆ Erin Leary ◆ Charles Eves ◆ Annichka Armstrong ◆ Mariah Griffin ◆ Steff King ◆ Rob E. Nichols ◆ Kellye Martin ◆ Rookie Mage Games ◆Rataplani ◆ Lindsay Moore ◆ Lily “Blanche” Zen ◆ Tracy Grahan ◆ Emma Johnson-Rivard ◆ David Farrow ◆ Chris J. ◆ Jakiette ◆ Ally ◆ Krista Neubert ◆ Elena Shuck ◆ J.D. Buffington ◆ Miles Nielsen ◆ Joshua Smith ◆ Frances Rowat ◆ Abygail & Lexi ◆ Meghan Thomas ◆ Caelum Lenchner ◆ Brian D. Miller ◆ Dakota Miller ◆ S.F. Barkley ◆ Jess Draws ◆ Callum Roper ◆ Rachel Gray ◆ Kyle Johnson ◆ H. Baxter ◆ Kaeleigh Post ◆ Rebecca Crawford ◆ Baron Mind ◆ Rebecca Levine ◆ JayWhipOnRye ◆ Ernesto Pavan ◆ BeccaFutrell ◆ Chris Cooper ◆ Lukas V.F. Novak ◆ Catalin Rain ◆ Cassie Harris ◆ Abbie Foust ◆ Jake Williams ◆ Nick Carlson ◆ Curtis Sarkin ◆ Amber Frey ◆ Blair Daniels ◆ Toxic Bag Productions ◆ Emily Flynn-Jones ◆ Grace Iverson ◆ Joseph Jones
Thank you to every single one of the 144 backers who have made this project possible! There aren’t enough words to express the gratitude that we have for each and every one of you.