Fiction Vortex - September 2014 Read online

  The voice started again. “I have time. I’ll starve you out. Give me the bones, and I’ll let you go. I want them. I need them.”

  “Why?” At last, the question was out in the open.

  “I—” But he let the word hang in the air.

  Tenbe opened her hessian bag. For years she’d spent every free moment stringing them together, tying each bone into lengths that, stitched together at the top, stretched across her doorway. Without them, she felt exposed, naked, defenseless. Her bone curtain clacked in a reassuring way. She almost smiled. Like the warm blanket she imagined them to be, her bones would protect her. They had power. Why else would the Master want them?

  “Go on, then.” She kept her voice steady.

  “You’re inviting me inside?” He sounded waspish, short-tempered.

  “No.” Her heart skipped a beat. “First, toss me that finger bone. Then I’ll know if it’s mine. Maybe you’re making the whole thing up.”

  Silence.

  He’s lying. Tenbe closed her eyes. Bones, hear me. Defend me. Please. She shook out the bone curtain, stood up, and hooked both ends onto sticks she’d driven into soil on either side of the cave entrance. The bones clacked softly as they settled into place.

  “Nice display.” The Master's voice was taut. “Now, give them to me.”

  “Why? Because you don’t have any of your own?” Tenbe bit her lip. There. She’d said it out loud. Every time she collected her finger bones, she wondered about the Master. In her mind’s eye, she added bones to those long, probing slug fingers of his. Instantly she tried to bury the image. Such a creature didn’t deserve bones. She touched the small human ones in her pocket.

  “Is that what you think?” His voice sounded like a fishing line hitting the wave, a faint swish barbed with death.

  She shuddered. Did he read minds, too? “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  After a moment’s silence he gave a disgusting gurgle. “To walk, I need ... support.”

  The bone curtain clacked softly, as if unseen fingers stirred it.

  Tenbe shivered. So she was right. He who never left his dwelling had followed her here and now waited outside, exposed as any newborn baby. He wanted bones. She tried to imagine him walking upright, like a man. The unseen world tilted again.

  Something touched her cheek, as if a dog brushed by her, and she heard a long, piercing whistle. Old Dog. How many times had she heard him, over the years? She leaned forward. The old man emerged from the forest and stepped into the clearing outside her hidey-hole. He cupped his hands, as if urging something forward. From nowhere dogs appeared, formed a circle and advanced on the white shape.

  Tenbe held her breath. Old Dog pointed and snapped his fingers. Slobbering, growling, and whining, the dogs rushed forward. With a long thin wail the white shape gathered itself and tapered into something resembling a human body. With liquid ease it extruded two arms and lunged at the dogs. They whimpered and scampered off.

  The unseen world teetered.

  If only she had a lever so that, for once, things could go her way. Of course! Trembling, Tenbe pulled out the child’s bones from her pocket and flung them at the white shape with all her strength. Gloop, it formed a mouth, squish, swallowed them and unhhh, fleshed out again.

  Enough. This whole ridiculous game was going to end right here, right now. Tenbe parted the bone curtain and stepped outside. The white shape reared. She marched up. It slithered back.

  Tenbe reached for it, flexing her fingers. “You want my bones? Here! Feel them, test their strength!”

  She grabbed, dug her fingers in and twisted, hard. The damp skin felt disgusting, like rotting flesh. She twisted harder. The flesh writhed, convulsed, and suddenly went limp. Tenbe gagged and stepped back. In the distance, Old Dog whistled. Out of nowhere, the dogs raced up and pounced, all teeth and jaws. In seconds they tore the Master to pieces, then grinned and drooled.

  “Oi! Spit that out now!” Old Dog yelled. “Get down to the river, drink, fast. Probably poison! Git!”

  The dogs fled. Tenbe’s legs buckled under her. Old Dog limped up and looked down at her. Tenbe propped herself up. She’d never felt so soiled. She rubbed her hands in the dirt, and felt better.

  Old Dog spat. “Guess he got what he wanted, after all. Good riddance.” He cleared his throat and surveyed her bone curtain. “I’d hate to think of him getting his hands on that. Pretty thing. It‘ll fetch a good price in the markets, I bet.”

  Tenbe frowned. “I’ll never sell it. I’ll clean, sweep, do anything. I’ll find a way to live. I can do lots of things, now.” She peered at him. “You followed me here?”

  Old Dog bared his two good strong teeth in a gummy smile. “Yeah. Hard work keeping up. ‘Course, I had help. Dead or alive, dogs are my eyes.” He chortled. “Little girl, get outta here. You don’t belong here. You’re smart. Leave and don’t come back.”

  She nodded, her thoughts elsewhere. “I worked for him.”

  “Forced labor.”

  “But ... how did he get here so fast? He’s never been this far from his shell.”

  Old Dog looked reflective. “Got desperate, I guess.”

  Tenbe grimaced. “For what? We’re all bones in the end. He didn’t need them, but he wanted them. To walk, he said.” She struggled to put her thoughts into words. “All he got was death.”

  “Yeah.” He gummed another grin. “You done real good, little girl. Now, git going.”

  Tenbe got to her feet. Up close, Old Dug stunk. She reached forward to shake his hand, but he flinched.

  “Nah. Some dogs bite. Some’re mad, or dead. You don’t wanna get bit. Git, now.”

  For the first time in her life, Tenbe laughed. “I might come back. Visit, maybe.”

  Old Dog pursed his lips. “Like the plague?”

  Tenbe gasped and hiccupped, as if a long-trapped bubble had finally escaped. The unseen world had strong, warm arms. “I’ll find you. Nearest rubbish heap.”

  “Yeah? Try.” Old Dog gummed a grin.

  Tenbe smiled, grabbed her bone curtain, and walked away.

  ~~~~~

  ~~~~~

  Brenda Anderson’s fiction has appeared in places like Andromeda Spaceways, A Cappella Zoo, Penumbra and Defenestration. She lives with her family in Adelaide, South Australia, and loves the offbeat.

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  Sometimes the Scenery Is Beautiful

  by Chloe Clark; published September 23, 2014

  Winner of the September 2014 Editor's Choice Award

  The Doctor

  “Lucy, you’re going to be all right,” I said. I liked this part of my job best. The moment of relief that crosses a patient’s face. She had a scare. Cancer. We caught it early. We took care of it. Now a couple of months of treatment and she’d be fine.

  My wife was seven months pregnant, and she stopped being emotional around month five. I’d tell her about my day and nothing moved her anymore. It was a relief to come to work and see emotions flood across people’s faces.

  “But, how long will I live?” she asked. She was forty two years old, and her father died years ago of the same thing. I’ve never been seriously ill and I wondered what it’s like. I’ve never thought about that before. All those patients, and I never really thought about what it’s like to be like them. To really be that scared.

  “Well, no one lives forever, but I think that you’ll live a very long time.” I smiled at her.

  She looked at me a little oddly, as if she was thinking about a funny story that she had heard once and only just gotten the punch line.

  “I knew someone once, when I was young, who said that she would,” Lucy said. She wasn't looking at me; her gaze focused on something that no one could see.

  “Would what?” I asked. I thought about how my wife used to laugh all of the time. I loved her laugh. The way it sounded too loud for her tiny body, as if her sense of humor was bigger than she was.

  She paused for a second as though not
sure that she should continue, as if she worried I'd think there was something wrong with her. Finally she said, “Live forever.”

  The Teacher

  I never liked the school uniforms. They were a mix of dark blues and grays. They always seemed foreboding to me like clouds racing across a storm sky. Did the children feel the same way, like they were in the dreariest outfit the school could think up?

  The uniforms looked good on no one. Well, that’s a lie, actually. There was one student who wore the uniform well. They suited Mari, a girl who introduced herself on the first day of class by saying, “It’s Mari. You don’t pronounce it Mary, and you don’t pronounce it Marie. It’s somewhere lost just at the middle of them both.”

  Mari was a tall girl with dark hair. She kept her hair tied back. Always. She wasn’t friends with anyone. Or she wasn’t until Lucy arrived. The two of them were like peas in a pod. Except not. They were two different species stuck in the same pod. There was something that drew them together. I used to walk home, past the playground, and see them there together. Two teenage girls at play. I watched them once, unable not to. They seemed like how I wished I had been twenty years earlier. There was something free in them.

  Mari would swing and flip over the bars.

  “You’ll kill yourself!” Lucy said.

  “I can’t die. I’m going to live forever,” Mari said, and the way she said it was like a book closing, a subject off limits, a stone falling down a well. I walked away as fast as I could. There was something in the way she said it that terrified me.

  The Mother

  “Do you remember that friend I had — Mari?” Lucy asked.

  We were at the café. We never met at our homes anymore, as if Darren’s death had taken us from mother and daughter to mere friendly acquaintances, the kind of person you called up when you were in town but only wanted to see for an hour or so, didn’t want to interrupt your real life too much by meeting with them. The thing was, though, I knew that Lucy liked her lattes made slightly cooler than usual; and that she was terrified as a child that her teddy bear would become possessed because she walked in once when The Exorcist was on the TV; and that she hated strawberries; and that she sometimes sings in her sleep, not talks but sings.

  “Mom, do you remember her?”

  “Oh, the strange girl with black hair.” Of course, I remembered her. Lucy had never made friends easily. When we moved I thought she’d hate us. Darren almost didn’t take the job offer just because he didn’t want to uproot her. But she met Mari. Sixteen and finally having a best friend. But Mari wasn’t the kind of best friend I would have envisioned for her. A girl with a tight bun in her hair at all times. So severe. So quiet and calm.

  “I never thought she was strange,” Lucy said.

  “You wouldn’t. She reminded me of this other girl we met when you were born.” I had never told her this story. It wasn’t something that one tells. When someone survives, one must never speak of how they almost didn’t. It was tempting fate. It was saying "almost" over and over until "almost" became "did."

  “Oh?” Lucy took a sip of her latte. She scowled, just a little. No one else would have noticed it but I did. It must have been too hot.

  “There were complications, you know. We thought you were going to die. And your father kept saying ‘Please death, don’t take her.’ I always thought that was strange, even in that situation, praying to death for mercy instead of to God. An atheist to the core, your father was.” I stopped a second before saying your father. We never spoke about him; his death hung between us like some curtain I could never pull away, some door that just wouldn’t open anymore.

  “What about the girl?” Another sip. Another tiny scowl.

  “She was just passing by the room. But she stopped and saw us and came in. She had a cold voice but kind eyes like she wanted to be harsh but wasn’t really. She asked about you, what the prognosis was. We told her, and she just nodded, very slowly, as if considering the information. Then she said you’d live, and then you did.”

  “And you think she had something to do with me living?” She took a longer sip, smiled.

  It was one of the strange questions that Lucy could still always surprise me with. “Don’t be absurd! What could she have possibly done? But she did give us hope, you know. There was just something about her that I trusted.”

  “Why did she remind you of Mari?”

  I shrugged, “They both seemed like they didn’t quite belong.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. Anywhere.”

  Lucy looked at me for the longest time. I knew that her next sip would be of cold coffee.

  The Father

  I didn’t tell them right away, but I think that Lucy knew from the moment I came home from the doctor. She looked at me and her eyes were sad.

  A few days later, I was drinking coffee in the kitchen. Lucy came in, and Mari was trailing her as always. Sophomores in college and Lucy looked it with two piercings in each ear and a streak of violet blue in her hair. Mari, though, always looked like she was older than anyone else in the room. It wasn’t her face; it was this stillness she held inside herself.

  Lucy grabbed a couple cans of soda from the fridge. Mari stared at me, blinking her wide eyes slowly, as if even blinking were something to do carefully, precisely. They had been talking as they came in and continued the conversation as if I wasn’t there.

  “Jacob asked me if I believed in life after death, today.” Lucy said. I wasn’t fond of her boyfriend but never said anything. There wasn’t anything intrinsically wrong with him. In theory he was a wonderful young man with a promising future ahead of him. There was just a dullness there.

  “Oh, yeah?” Mari said. “I suppose he was able to answer definitively on the subject.”

  I always liked Mari. She may have been a strange girl, but she always spoke what she was thinking.

  “He does believe. Do you, Mari?” Lucy handed her the can of soda as she asked.

  Mari carefully popped the top of the can, listened to the bubbles hissing as they were exposed to the air, and smiled. “What do you think would be the ideal afterlife, Luce?”

  Lucy thought for a moment, took a sip of soda. “I think it would be just exactly like this except everything would be a little kinder.”

  Mari nodded. “I like that. It’s like life after life.”

  I liked it as well.

  Lucy

  My father looked different. I had heard once that the dead looked smaller. But it wasn’t that. If anything he looked bigger, as if he would keep getting bigger and bigger until he was the only thing I’d ever see. I touched him and his skin was still warm.

  “We’re going to move him now,” a woman said next to me. “Your mother said that would be all right.”

  I nodded and turned away. I couldn’t stand to see them move his body. There was a young woman in the hallway. She looked just like Mari except that her dark hair was up in gelled spikes. The girl was looking at a painting on the hospice wall. Then she turned to me and smiled. She looked exactly like Mari.

  “Mari?” I asked. I knew it was foolish; she couldn’t possibly be suddenly and always there exactly when I needed her, but still I asked. The girl was gone.

  I went up to the painting she had been studying so intently. The painting was of a city made of stone. There were people moving about on the streets but none of them had eyes. There were lips and noses and even delicately painted eyebrows. I walked closer and closer to the painting; I was determined to find the eyes. That seemed important for some reason. I imagined that I was missing them somehow. I practically pressed my face to the canvas. If I found the eyes then everything could be different. Then I noticed the rain puddles collected in the streets of the painting’s city. The muddy water was filled with the eyes. Hundreds and hundreds of pairs staring up helplessly at their bodies walking around without sight.

  I gasped involuntarily. It was the first time I ever fainted.

  The Husband<
br />
  She had hit an artery. Accidentally, while chopping carrots for a vegetable soup. She was so stunned seeing the red overcome the orange on the cutting board that for an idiotic second she thought the carrots were bleeding.

  She held up her hand in front of her face, staring at the blood coming down in rivulets. “Jacob, this is a lot of blood.”

  I took her to the emergency room. “I told you those knives were too sharp for you to daydream while using them.” I was trying to be funny, to lighten the mood, but she just stared at me.

  In the hospital, I thought she might faint or throw up. She kept looking at the floor and blinking rapidly. She hated hospitals, not just since her father died, but always, I think.

  She stared out the window as the doctor spoke to her. “Remember to keep the wound elevated even while you’re sleeping.”

  She nodded. I walked outside. I needed coffee or something. The sight of blood made me nauseated. I never really cut myself. It was always Lucy who was injuring herself. I told her once that I just wasn’t fond of blood. She stared at me, repeated the word fond aloud, and then asked if I thought that blood was an old friend of hers who showed up a little too often and always unexpectedly.

  I stood outside the room. A woman brushed past me. She looked young, maybe 16 or 17, but she seemed old. She had dark hair pulled back into what my mother used to call a severe bun, as if hair could develop a personality.

  “Excuse me,” she said coolly. She had a voice like a whisper even when it was a shout. She walked into Lucy’s room. I saw Lucy look up and break into a smile. Then I remembered the woman, Mari. She had been Lucy’s friend in college, though she disappeared shortly after Lucy’s father died. Lucy had been nonplussed by this; she told me that Mari was always disappearing.

  I stood closer to the door, eavesdropping.

  “Mari! It’s been—“ Lucy’s voice was so happy. I hadn’t heard her that way in years.

  “Too long.” Mari walked in and touched Lucy’s shoulder.

  “You haven’t aged a day.” Lucy said. It was more of a statement then a compliment.

  “I live forever. Why would I want to age?” Mari smiled.

  “I almost believe it. You look wonderful.”