Fiction Vortex - February 2014 Read online

  When a kingdom gets too many people, it must expand.

  "War," the dragon grates. "We have no use for war." A lancing pain accompanies this exertion, but she is able to ignore it. Pain has succumbed to a constant drowsiness.

  But if dragons live forever—

  "When we choose to go, or one of us is taken, we allow a fertile egg to develop. It was your kind that ruined the balance, your kind that kills indiscriminately." She lets her eyelids droop. "Each day, the longing to leave this body grows stronger." Some days she is only able to focus on the ebb and flow of blood past her eardrums.

  I do not choose to die, the boy says. The dragon winces. Tension blazes between her desire to join the other dragons, and her promise to nurture the boy.

  A scraping sound brings him forward. The world comes into focus. It is morning and the sky beyond the cavern is a radiant blue.

  "'s me, Lord Dragon." The man called Gred enters with a flourish. His whiskers are white now, his clothing new. He tosses a dead chicken. A second chicken follows. The dragon grunts smoke.

  You should be rid of him, the boy says. His greed grows by the year.

  "We require him," the dragon says.

  The man called Gred bumps the sword hilt. Agony shoots down the dragon's spine, a pain so intense her senses recoil. Without her willing it, her head swings around. Gred goes flying. He skids into the cavern wall, and staggers to his feet.

  "My apologies, Lord Dragon." His eyes belie that notion.

  He's testing you.

  "I know," the dragon says. It is only a matter of time. She hopes that the man called Gred will not take her head for his trophy room as men are wont to do.

  "Go!" The boy yells with her voice. Gred scurries out, forgetting his precious loot.

  The dragon's neck quivers. Her head thumps down, bringing a spray of light to the darkness behind her eyes. Are the night flames real? She longs to know.

  ~~~~~

  The man called Gred returns with another man in a flowing red robe. His beard is immaculately trimmed. Lord Samler, the boy growls. Pretender to the throne.

  Gred lifts a metal device that holds a steady flame within it. The brass bulge at its base reminds the dragon of a full belly, something she has not felt for a considerable time.

  "You see?" Gred says. "See how its ribs protrude, the scales gape outward?"

  "Yes, yes." Samler surveys the cavern.

  Breathe. If ever you could summon extra strength, do it now. He's come to finish you.

  The dragon begins the process, though it is difficult. A breath to get things started. Liquid fuel vaporizes. She works her lungs. She cannot bring herself to exhale. Something about this Lord says that he will not be deterred by a showy flame, and she does not have the strength to do more.

  "At last we meet," Samler says. "For thirty years I have awaited this moment."

  The dragon lets her flaming belch die.

  Breathe! The boy tries to initiate the process, but it is too complex. All he manages is a puff of soot.

  Samler brushes at his robe. "You have been quite the cottage industry, dragon. I've cloaked more men in armor by barter of your scales than you might imagine."

  The dragon's thoughts drift to twinkling lights. Soon, she thinks. But that is not fair to the boy.

  "All good things must end," Samler says. "There comes a time for greater commerce." His sword slides from its sheath.

  "Witness, Gred." Samler raises the blade to eye level and sights the dragon's throat along its edge. "I, Lord Samler, am about to single-handedly slay a dragon." He leans forward.

  The sword pierces the dragon's hide. The pains of old and new wounds intermingle.

  Breathe! the boy pleads. You're the last. The last. If he kills you ... there will never be another dragon.

  That jolts her as no pain could. She breathes, feels the tinder inside her go hot.

  Yes, the boy says. Kill Samler before he kills you. The words are like cold water. The dragon clenches in mid-breath.

  "I will not kill," she says. "Never again."

  It's the only way.

  "There may be another." Energy surges into her. She herds the boy's consciousness inward, traps him deep within her mind.

  He struggles. Let me help you. You need me.

  "That may be true," she says, "but you no longer need me." Like a mother forcing its chick from the nest, she presses insistently against him. He has learned to exert his will without a body. Perhaps he can survive on his own. This is his only chance.

  Samler lays his full weight onto the sword. "Spread this tale far and wide," he yells. "I, Samler the Dragon Slayer, shall be king!"

  "I never doubted it," Gred says.

  A last shove, and the sword pierces the dragon's heart. Another flood of pain. She clenches against it, and draws her focus even tighter. The boy shoots from her like a burst of clean blue flame.

  "Gah!" Samler spits.

  Dizziness twists the dragon's senses. She feels her life force ebb. Will the sky be bright, or dark? Her heart flutters.

  "Gred," Samler says. "Take your trinkets and spread word of what you have seen." There is a subtle difference to the voice that rouses the dragon. She forces an eyelid open.

  "Don't you want me to help with the head?"

  "I will claim my own trophy," Samler says.

  Gred slinks away.

  The dragon relaxes. It's the boy. She sees his earnestness in Samler's sweating face.

  "I'm sorry," the boy says. He reaches for the blade.

  "Leave it," the dragon grunts.

  "But I—"

  "The world belongs to man. I have been a dreaming dragon, imagining my place in the sky. There are no flames, only death and darkness."

  "You're wrong," the boy says. "The flames are there, the dragons are real." He loops his arms around the dragon's snout, and lifts, grunting with the effort. She feels heaviness in her chest and belly. Her head settles again.

  "I see them," the boy says. "You've taught me." He leans against her. "When I am king, I'll decree that all men see your flame. And when they have learned to see the sky fires, I'll decree that we name them — for it is man's way of connecting to things, to give them a name."

  The dragon tries to raise her head. It's useless.

  "Someday we will go there," the boy says. "We will travel beyond the moon, and I will order that we prostrate ourselves and beg forgiveness, not only for what we have done to your kind, but for what greed and lust have done to us." He wedges his shoulder into her jaw, but her head is too heavy.

  "I'm sorry," he says. "I wanted you to see."

  "No matter," the dragon manages. Her heart thuds and stops beating. She wants to sleep.

  "It's not too late," the boy says. He rips the robe from Samler's body, then scabbard and pants and shirt. "I'll build a bonfire to light your way." He wedges clothing beside her snout. "There will be no trophies here." Heat erupts across the dragon's face. She has not felt so warm in ages.

  Smells surround her: Death and life, the acrid scent of charred hide. A memory of screaming birds echoes. The world is flame, alive with fire. She sees through it. Tears glisten in the boy's sad eyes.

  "To my kind," he says, "I will be known as Samler, Dragon-slayer. To you, dear dragon, I shall ever remain the boy you saved, Alvin Sharpstone."

  Alvin Sharpstone, the dragon thinks. I will remember. She takes wing. Heat buffets her upward, the vacuum sky draws her upward, higher, higher, until she is free.

  She looks back to the glowing half-circle that marks the cave mouth that was her home. Heart swelling, the dragon sets course for that vast tapestry of light beyond the moon.

  ~~~~~

  ~~~~~

  Stephen V. Ramey lives in beautiful New Castle, Pennsylvania, once the tin plating capitol of the world. His work has appeared in various places, including Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and Liquid Imagination. He edits the annual Triangulation anthology from Parsec Ink, and the speculative twi
tterzine, trapeze. Find him at https://www.stephenvramey.com

  (Back to Table of Contents)

  Take the Standards

  by Kallirroe Agelopoulou; published February 18, 2014

  There were holes in his head where certain memories should lie. Any attempt to recreate events, any attempt to watch the movie in his mind and it became some foreign, art-house existentialist exercise. Without subtitles.

  Spared from the ravaging, only bits and pieces. There was a woman, really young. Her face blurred, but the color of her hair unmistakable. The yellow of the brightest sun. Standing in the middle of a cropped field, the endless blue above shielding her whole body, she was the sun.Somewhere near, a house by a lake. No specific detail about it remained. The water of the lake though, was frozen in some unforgettable moment, its calm surface mirrored till the end of the world. A dead picture, suddenly disturbed. Unraveling in front of his unwavering eyes, an event — like a huge rock fell in the middle of the lake, a hole forcing the waters to recede in its grasp, gushing out again, bigger, darker. Different.

  And then it stopped. Where is that lake? Who is that woman? All details his mind considered too trivial to try to hold on to. It's not important, it said, just forget about all that. You better forget about all that. Or else. His brain, the bully. Nobody knew why this happened to him, but the doctors had all unanimously reached their final diagnosis. Dissociative amnesia. Psychosomatic, which meant there was nothing biologically wrong with him. Psycho-somatic, which meant he was probably just crazy.

  Being locked up in an asylum, however voluntarily, however self-consciously he made that decision, didn't alleviate his worries. The doctors were reassuring, but this step could have been the beginning of a bottomless downward spiral. He was not the right age to start exhibiting signs of schizophrenia, but it was still possible. He knew this because of all the books he'd read. They were still easily retrievable from the recesses of his mind; more alive in him than at any time he might have actually needed them — during exams, tests, grueling finals. Medicine, engineering, biotechnology. He could have walked in any biotech lab the next morning, and he'd get hired on the spot. He'd have the knowledge to make it work. The books were there. As far as he knew, all of them. It was the people and the places and the events that were missing.

  The Event. That's what was missing. If anything triggered this partial memory loss in him, it must have been that moment by the lake. The decisive moment that destroyed him, that lingered on, salting the wound. Was it a drowning he witnessed? An accident? Suicide? He felt incapable of anything like that, but he was not the same person anymore. All he had left were the books and glimpses of an idealized ... something. None of the resentment, the seething hatred, or all the sickness that came along with day-to-day life.

  Still, he would try to get into that mindset.

  ~~~~~

  "This could be my home there, by the lake."

  The doctor stopped him before he put another word in. "It is your home. We've talked about it before, haven't we, Charles?"

  That's not the point. Pay attention. "Of course, of course. It's mine. The house I bought and restored. For my family. I put in weeks of work, I slaved over it for months, and finally it was ready. Ready to be presented. But maybe there were gloomy faces at the unraveling. Maybe not everyone was happy. One frown, one negative remark and I would have been devastated. Disheartened enough to take the plunge."

  "That's a nice theory. A very nice theory indeed, but what's so different from the last one you shared with me, in this very room, just a few days back? The one where, once you build that beautiful house, you found yourself so deep in debt that you decided to leave it all behind. End your life, right there in that lake."

  Charles had no answer to that.

  The doctor threw him a sympathetic look. "All very logical attempts to bind the threads of your remaining memories but — let's not forget — debunked from the get-go. Your wife, she found you disoriented, lying in your room, dry as a stick. Not in the lake, half-drowned. It was months after you and your family moved to the place, and she swears you were all very excited to be there."

  "We were?"

  The doctor made no attempt to hide his agitation. "Surely these facts, these checkpoints in your life that I'm sharing with you, they must be starting to take root inside your mind? You should really try to make them stick, don't bother about the things you don't remember. Instead, let's see what it is that you can relearn. What you need to know to be back with your family as soon as possible. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

  "Of course." Charles meant it, too. Any sort of normalcy would be better than what he had now.

  "Thank God for small miracles. You have no problem creating new memories. Just let the old ones go. We're all here to help you." The doctor started shuffling at his papers again, adding nonchalantly, "You can have visitors again soon, if you feel up to it."

  Visitors. That woman with the scarf and the heavy coat, brown hair cropped short. Cute, friendly. Funny. And that girl, the one with the long blonde hair. Not blonde like the sun, but close enough to make him feel ... comfortable. Like he knew her. Even though she always just stared at him, even though she'd never even touched him. He had done something to her, Charles was sure of that. Nothing else would explain a daughter not touching her father — not when he found himself at his weakest.

  Snapping out of it, he turned to face the doctor again. "No visitors, not yet. I need to be alone for a while."

  The doctor reassured him with a smile. "If that's what you want, fine. Don't worry too much. Take your time, you're doing great."

  Doctor Cohen smiled, but who knew what he wrote down in that notebook of his? 'Antisocial.' 'Irredeemable.' 'Unfit to be released. Ever.'

  Charles knew he wouldn't be able to avoid his family for long.

  ~~~~~

  Back in his room, he lay down. Not to sleep, not exactly. He had been doing exercises. Push-ups for the brain. The doctor said forget; everybody simply wanted him to move on, make a new start, but they just didn't get it. He couldn't move on, not until he found out, made sure he wasn't going crazy. For weeks now, he'd been working — trying to take the faces he had learned, apply them to all he remembered. Basic scientific research rules: take the Standards, those things that truly are, the facts. The Laws of this world. Add them to what you think might be. Each time getting a little bit closer to what the truth is. He closed his eyes.

  Walking outside his house, in his field. Walking in that field with the sun on his side. He turned to look at her. Instead of that blurred face, the face that everyone told him was that of his daughter. It was his daughter with the sky behind her, lighting up the place. Her mother, his wife? That lovely woman, that honest smile, she should have been somewhere near, too. Maybe inside the house. That's right, she was in the house preparing them lunch. They were ready to get back, him checking the field for insect specimens and his daughter ... just sitting there, in the middle of the field, staring. Toward him, but not at him. Her eyes wide open, looking at something beyond where he stood. The lake. Calm, iridescent. He knew what that lake looked like. He turned to see what she was looking at. In the middle of watery stillness, something stirred. Something creating circular waves, as if a huge fish had just reached the surface, ready to jump. But it was no fish that came out of that stir pot. It was something big...

  But what?

  Charles was so close now, he was almost there, ready to find out. To know. Every time he managed to free a bit of the blackness, replace it with something, a possibility, it felt like he was pulling out a huge suction cup attached to his brain. This one — the last leech sucking on his remaining memories — was going to need all of his strength to get rid of.

  He didn't stop, not this time. He forced the brain to do its job. Remember. Something coming out of the lake. Big — not a fish. Lakes have fish. And algae, plants. A plant coming out of the water. Green ... no, it wasn't green. It was the color of death.
Black. Whatever came out didn't look alive, but it very well could have been. A tree. Eyes shut tight, Charles pushed even more, until logical deduction and imagination worked together to force out a specific image. He saw darkness underneath the crystal clear water, the skeletal frame of a huge tree. That was where the branches sprang from. They grew, tangled up from the deep until they reached just out of the surface. And then they rose, expanding, a sudden mass demanding space, splashing water furiously out of its way. Above and over the surface, the emaciated appendages moved rapidly, entwined, forming the most bizarre patterns, carving the sky. Reaching out, finally reaching him.

  And there it really ended. Nothing more could come out of his memories; there weren't any for him to build a story upon. He nervously got up, moving aimlessly through the room, finally settling in front of the window. Outside, the rest of the patients were wandering around the yard, under a sky stained with heavy clouds. Black sky, harboring rain. The color of death, alive.

  Charles sat on a chair, eyes fixed high, mind circling all the possibilities of his revelation. That image in his head, that unreal growth emerging from the depths, tracing him. Forged by a diseased brain, under extreme duress, birthed out of his absolute need to solve this. Of course it was unreliable. Unbelievable, unscientific. As far as he knew, he could still be on the way to actual madness. Even worse, that image could send his mind down that path faster than he ever had imagined. The logical part of the brain told him so, but something else inside him screamed that he had found at least part of the truth.

  Connecting the two opposites pulling him apart, wasn't going to be easy, especially if he had to do it on his own. But how could he ever share what he found with Doctor Cohen? With anyone? He refused to end up as one of the zombies walking outside, tripping on their own feet, not when he still had a chance to get out of there, whole.

  He took another look at the walking dead outside his window, never happier to be in his own room, separated from the everyday signs of madness that lived in this place. But maybe now was the time to get a feel of the other side. How it worked, how it operated. What it is they had, that he didn't? Yet.

  Before he really, truly, became one of them, he had to recognize the kind of thinking he had to avoid. See the way obsessions could take someone and rip him apart. Then maybe he would avoid the same fate — learn to keep this, whatever it was that he'd come up with, from destroying him completely.