Mother's Revenge

by Abuttu, Querus

  George was sure there had to exist a big enough distraction out there; it was just a matter of finding it. They could have had a second attempt at happiness if only they had searched hard enough . . .

  Really?

  All this horror outside, doesn’t it tell you different?

  A fine wet sugar started seeping inside the room through the crack under the barricaded door. A window shattered; the blankets he had used to cover it hadn’t managed to muffle the sound. The snow was finding its way inside Jonathan’s room.

  If George were examining the symptoms of this scene professionally, what would be the prognosis? Knowing all that he knew, witnessing all that he had witnessed this morning, how much would he give himself? Five minutes? Ten? Thirty, if he tried to stamp out the advancing snow?

  Whatever he did, the result would be the same.

  An hour from now there would be no trace of him left. It would be as if he had never existed. Remember Martha’s remains, remember Clark’s. Remember Jonathan’s.

  Even your blood would dilute to nothingness.

  Lessen the pain, George, any delay will only make it worse.

  He wondered what he could say to it to apologize. Were there words powerful enough to describe his grief?

  And there was grief. Not only in Martha.

  The thing that had bothered him so much about his wife’s obsessive mourning was that it had been on par with his own. These last thirty years had been nothing but a failed quest for redemption. All the luxurious havens of this blue world were nothing but cauterizers they selfishly used to prevent the infection of their loss from spreading. But no beaches were sandy enough, no jungles were wild enough, no life was exciting enough.

  It was all for nothing.

  It was all for no one.

  He’d just say he is sorry, and hope for the best.

  The old man removed the barricades from the door and stood with bare feet on the snow that had gotten under the door. His toes were already being eaten, his nervous system screaming at his indifference.

  He wondered how much more could it hurt (don’t let it, George, own the pain like it’s an itch) before finally opening the door.

  A wall of snow collapsed inside the room like an avalanche. The dance that followed was clumsy and overpowering. Before he could he could say anything, the snow was already on his face, in his ears, in his eyes, in his mouth. Millions of tiny razors hungry for his flesh.

  There was so much pain he could’ve fed a world war with it. Tiny teeth munched at his meat so eagerly he didn’t have the strength to regret his decision.

  Not that there was anything to regret.

  Minutes ago he had been just another man fattened on his own sins. Now, here, buried under hungry oblivion, he finally found a promise of deliverance for the unrealized delivery.

  Soon he would be stripped down of everything that was George Reed and left only with whiteness that could easily pass for a clean soul.

  Between reading books, watching films, and writing short stories, Goran Sedlar also co-hosts a weekly podcast in which he and his friends warn listeners of upcoming bad movies. Places he’s been published include Kzine magazine, the Book of the Macabre anthology, and Futura magazine. He was born in Zagreb, Croatia, where he still lives and shares his territory with two cats and a crazy cat lady.

  Miracle Material

  by

  Abra Staffin-Wiebe

  The landfill is safe. I think. Even Tupperware frightens me now. The sight of a discarded teddy bear moves me to tears. I wonder if Meredith’s teddy bear still lies abandoned on her bed, held under siege by the ever-glowing blue stars that decorate her bedroom.

  I tell myself that Meredith is safe and happy. We came from the sea, the scientists said. When there were scientists. What could be more natural than for us to return to the sea? I tell myself that she is safe and happy within the bosom of the sea.

  I know I lie.

  Wherever Meredith may be, however she feels, she is not my little girl anymore. And it is all my fault.

  Well, not all of it. Once we brought the bluflex up from the Mariana Trench, the end was inevitable. But the loss of our children . . . that was my fault.

  It was a deep and lovely blue. It glowed. It sparkled and shimmered. It resisted all extremes of temperature and stress, but it could be molded into any shape when submerged in seawater with an electrical current running through it. It was even nontoxic.

  When I brought the bluflex doll home to Meredith, I was happy that she loved it so much. She took it to school for her “What My Parents Do” presentation. I was delighted when she told me that all the other third-graders were jealous of it.

  I saw the marketing possibilities.

  My employers, Oak Leaf Products International, already had bluflex in production for use in building material, shoes, jewelry, food containers, and electronics components. It was the miracle material, an organic compound that needed nothing more than time and seawater to reproduce under the same environmental conditions as existed in the Mariana Trench. We had a lock on the national market, but we knew that our competitors overseas were racing as frantically as we were to find new ways to exploit bluflex’s amazing properties.

  Because it was my suggestion, I was put in charge of the toy division. I used the extra money to buy a house by the sea. That summer I was glad I had done so.

  A hundred people died in the city during the heat wave. Sales of air conditioners made with bluflex insulation soared.

  I worked ten-hour days, but I was always glad to be home again. Meredith was usually heading to bed when I got home, so I didn’t get to talk to her much, but she said she loved living by the sea. She seemed content. She had the entire collection of bluflex toys, and she loved them all. Everybody loved bluflex.

  The demand for bluflex was so high that our R&D division focused its efforts entirely on finding a way to speed up bluflex’s natural reproduction in a lab environment. It wasn’t cost-effective to mount another expedition to the Mariana Trench, and the population that we had wasn’t reproducing nearly fast enough to keep up with the demand.

  The week they succeeded, Oak Leaf Products held a party for all employees and their families. I noticed that every child wore bluflex clothing or carried a bluflex toy. I only smiled, a drink in my hand, when parents told me that their children refused to go anywhere without their bluflex.

  God help me, I only smiled.

  Meredith loved her bluflex snorkeling mask and flippers. She spent more and more time in the sea. Even though it was fall, the worldwide heat wave had not abated. Everyone either stayed inside their air-conditioned homes or went swimming.

  From our house, I watched Meredith swim with her friends. I had never seen so many children without parental supervision at the beach, but they all seemed to be happy and healthy. And they all wore bluflex snorkel masks and fins.

  I remember when the icecaps started melting rapidly. It was December, and it was ninety degrees in the shade. Oak Leaf Products donated a hundred bluflex air-conditioners to the homeless shelters, but there were still so many deaths that the city council mandated immediate cremation.

  There were rumors of plague, but sales of bluflex products remained high.

  I was in the basement with the plumber when Meredith told me she would be gone overnight for a farewell party for a few of her friends. Our basement was flooded. I had noticed puddles growing in the basement a couple of months ago, but now the water was knee-high. It smelled like the sea, and I could’ve sworn I saw movement in the water.

  I asked Meredith if her friends’ parents would be chaperoning.

  She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “We won’t be alone. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

  In the darkness of the basement, the bluflex bracelets she wore shimmered brilliantly. Their reflection in the water made the basement alive with small gleaming lights.

  After Meredith left, I gave the plumber some excuse and retreated to the sanctity
of the kitchen.

  Heat waves shimmered above the beach outside. They distorted the light of the setting sun until ripples of red, gold, purple, and blue ran across the sand. The children on the beach looked as though they were swimming in a teeming sea of color.

  The plumber told me that there was nothing he could do. I offered him a drink, and he took me up on the offer. When he set his toolbox on the table, I noticed the bluflex logo printed on the side, and I smiled. Over a cold beer, he told me that the water table was rising.

  “You should consider selling before it gets worse,” he said. “A lot of other people are.”

  “I can’t,” I told him. “My daughter loves the sea too much.”

  He finished his beer and left without saying anything else. I stayed sitting at the kitchen table, in the dark, drinking and watching the beach. Even though all the windows were closed, I could smell the sea.

  There was a bonfire on the beach. At first, I thought the small lights around it were sparks cast by the fire, but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw the truth.

  They were children.

  Children wreathed in glowing, sparkling bluflex. I watched them dance, watched the pulsing beat of the light. The colors seemed to respond to each other. They never did that in the laboratory tests. I told myself that I was only thinking that because I was drunk, but I kept watching until just before sunrise.

  The sparkles gradually clustered together, stopping near the edge of the water. Three dancing lights kept moving out until I could barely see them. I half-thought I was imagining them, until they flashed brightly enough to leave an afterimage on my retinas. Then the mass of sparkles on the beach flared in return, and I was blinded. When I could see again, the sparks of light on the beach were dissipating.

  The sea was dark.

  I stayed sitting in the kitchen until I heard the front door open and close. Soft footsteps padded down the hallway. I got up and turned on the light in the kitchen. The footsteps paused.

  Meredith stood in the darkened hallway.

  “Meredith,” I started to say and then stopped.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I’m selling the house.”

  After a moment, she continued toward her bedroom. I could see the bluflex bracelets she wore sparkling to each other long after I lost her form in the darkness of the house.

  I returned to the brightly lit kitchen, threw out the empty beer bottles, and then went to bed.

  The next morning, I put a for-sale sign in front of our house. Despite the flooding in the basement, I had an offer within the week.

  “The heat isn’t good for the wife,” the man who made the offer told me. “They say it feels cooler by the sea. And Junior just loves to go to the beach.”

  Although the air was oppressively hot, goose bumps raised the hair on my arms. Junior stood next to the kitchen windows, watching the beach. He didn’t respond to his father’s assertion, but the bluflex yo-yo that spun from his fingers glinted.

  Meredith was not happy.

  She didn’t try to change my mind, but she was subdued for several days. She fondled her bluflex bracelets constantly, as if she needed their reassurance.

  I did not try to keep her from her friends on the beach, despite what I had seen. I suppose I was trying to hide the truth from myself, trying to convince myself that I’d misinterpreted what I’d seen through the haze of alcohol.

  They were only children, after all. It was natural for children to enjoy the sea. And it was good for Meredith to have so many friends. The number of children who visited the beach tripled during the months it took us to prepare for our move.

  Also, I didn’t need to feel guilty about drinking in front of her when she wasn’t there.

  Our new home was twenty miles further inland. Inside, with the windows closed and the air conditioner humming, it was impossible to smell the sea. I found that a great relief. Meredith quickly made new friends. She was gone playing with them for most of the day while I was at work. She would show up for dinner, her skin glowing a healthy brown against the blue of her bracelets, armbands, and necklaces. After dinner, she would leave again.

  I never met her friends, but all the children ran wild during that long, hot Indian summer. A teacher died from heatstroke in January, and the schools were closed temporarily. Most school buildings were old and could not be fully air-conditioned. It didn’t seem to bother the children, but a number of teachers became ill. Once the heat wave had subsided, the government promised, schools would be reopened. Scientists were working on the problem. They thought electromagnetic radiation might be among the causes.

  The heat wave is finally over, but there are no schools.

  One day at work, I came across a lab technician crying at her desk. She told me that her son had run away. He hadn’t come home last night, but she didn’t notice until breakfast. He spent so much time at the beach, she had just assumed . . . but all his bluflex toys were gone, so she knew he wasn’t coming back. She forced a smile and asked me how Meredith was doing.

  I realized I didn’t know.

  That night at dinner, I asked Meredith if she would like to see the place where we tested and molded bluflex. I was gambling that she’d be interested. Once I had her attention, we could talk. We would spend more time together. Grow closer. I hadn’t been paying enough attention to her since I’d become absorbed in developing and marketing bluflex toys. We hadn’t done anything together just for fun in almost a year. I had neglected her, and she had become a stranger to me.

  I took her in on the weekend. I could show her around, get a chance to talk to her, really talk to her, and at the same time, I could check on some tests that I’d left running on Friday.

  I had set up a special lab room in a sealed environment, solely re-analyzing any compounds that bluflex might exude. The correlation between the toys I had suggested and the strange behavior of the children who owned them was too strong to ignore. The tests I was running were not only for the standard toxins. We had tested for those before. I was looking for mild hallucinogens, mood-altering chemicals, organics . . . anything. Anything other than the standard diatomic and carbon dioxide. Anything that would explain what was happening to our children. Anything that would give me an enemy I could fight.

  The children were not the only things I should have feared for, but they were all I could see.

  I showed Meredith around the building and explained what the testing and manufacturing processes were. The sparkle in her eyes and the glints in her bracelets both brightened.

  I didn’t explain the special lab. I didn’t want my own daughter thinking I was a crackpot.

  I left her in the hallway outside the lab, telling her I’d only be a moment, and went into the adjoining room to check the results of the gas chromatography tests. They were all normal. From the time the tests had been set up, there had not been one suspicious molecule in the air of that room. Not one.

  I was studying the charts when I caught a movement in my peripheral vision: a door opening. I looked up, through the one-way glass that stood between the lab and the instruments I was using, and saw my daughter.

  She hesitated just inside the door but then began to explore the room. I shook my head and studied the gas chromatography. Her presence would not mess up the results. There were no results.

  I turned back to the stream of information presently coming in from the room. And stared.

  The readings were far from normal. They were so far from normal that my first thought was that they must be wrong. There were high levels of organic chemicals I didn’t recognize, a few psycho-actives that I did, and insanely high concentrations of carbon dioxide. Meredith! I bolted out of the chair, ready to run to the lab and drag her out. I expected to see her gasping for air.

  She was leaning over one of the vats of bluflex. She reached out her hand to brace herself against the side of the vat, and a brilliant light filled the room. When my vision cleared, Meredith was standing beside the
vat. The bracelets on her wrist showed only subdued sparkles. Meredith’s expression shifted to normal surprise so quickly that I hardly caught a glimpse of her previous expression, but a glimpse was enough. There had been worry and suspicion there . . . and an anger as deep as the sea.

  I bundled her home as quickly as I could. I tucked her into bed, careful not to touch any of her bluflex ornaments. I kissed her on the forehead and left her to her dreams.

  Her hair smelled like the sea.

  When I recovered the data from the gas chromatography tests on Monday, I was stunned. Everything was completely normal until Meredith entered the room. The abnormal readings lasted for only a short while. The last abnormal reading was the one I had been staring at the instant before the flare of light. After that, the readings had returned to normal levels. There was no transition period, no time for the molecules to disperse. They were simply gone. I couldn’t shake the conviction that the results showed a sentient, hostile reaction. The bluflex in the lab had somehow known that it was under observation. The bluflex that Meredith wore hadn’t—until it was warned.

  I took my findings to the president of Oak Leaf Products. I explained that we had to recall all bluflex products from the market immediately. Ten minutes later, I carried out the contents of my desk in a cardboard box.

  On the drive home, I turned on the radio to hear experts discussing the continuing heat wave and the projected disappearance of the polar ice caps.

  When I got home, Meredith was out. I packed our essentials into the car, being especially careful to leave behind anything containing bluflex. That ruled out a lot. For the first time, I appreciated the endless meetings about new bluflex products that I had been forced to sit through.

  I drank some courage and waited for Meredith to come home. I knew I would regret what I was about to do, but I had no other choice.

  When I heard Meredith’s footsteps in the hall, I got up with dread in my heart. She was surprised when I bent to give her a hug hello. Had it been that long since I hugged her simply to show my love and welcome her home?