Fiction Vortex - December 2013 Read online

  "You're shouting again."

  "I'll shout all I want, woman! I gave up on my dreams, when the pack wanted me to! I stayed here and I fought my father like I oughta, and I took a wife like I oughta, and I raised a brood, and I got stuck here in a damn trailer home in the middle of the damn desert like I oughta, and no one ever done asked me what the hell it was I wanted to do, now did they?"

  "Well, if that's how you feel about it..." Edna said and got up, walking back home.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Back to our damn trailer to mind our damn kids. The ones you raised like you oughta. I'm gonna leave you with your dreams, if you don't mind," Edna said, a hint of venom in her voice.

  "Cactus flower, I'm sorry, I just..."

  "Ma? Was Pa shouting again? He woke me up and now I can't sleep," Jemima said in the darkness.

  "Well then sweetie, why don't you go to Pa and ask him to take care of it." Edna's voice came from the darkness, her great form leaning over Jemima. "Like he oughta," she said. Jebediah's knees turned to jelly.

  "Yay!" Jemima said, running at her daddy and laying on top of him. "Tell me a story, Pa! Tell me a story about hunting!"

  Jebediah groaned. It was going to be a long night.

  ~~~~~

  "The boy lacks discipline, same as you did." Grandfather grumbled, after hearing Jebediah's tale.

  "Elijah don't lack discipline."

  "Back in my day, we used to give those uppity little deviants a sound thrashing. Once, your uncle gave me lip. Know what I did?"

  "You tore off his ear," Jebediah said.

  "I tore off both his ears! Then I done take his wife, too!" Grandfather growled, clawing at the dry earth.

  "I'm not going to mutilate my boy, dad."

  "Only way to raise a boy proper, Jebediah. I gave you hell and you grew up just fine," Grandfather said and Jebediah felt his hatred for the old man (a thing he had thought long since forgotten) rise back up to the surface.

  "Maybe if you hadn't, I wouldn't have taken your eye." Jebediah spat at him.

  "Maybe if you hadn't, I woulda wrung your neck!" the old wolf laughed back at him. "Boy needs to be taught his place. You need to be a proper alpha, not a whipped little cub no more, Jebediah."

  "This conversation is over."

  "Boy needs to be put back in his place!" the old wolf shouted at Jebediah, as he walked away. "For once in your life, he needs himself a proper man for a father!"

  ~~~~~

  Jebediah had promised himself that he wouldn't let the old bastard poison him with his bile. He'd also promised himself not to ever take his frustrations out on his kids. One time, he even caught himself thinking he'd rather swallow a silver bullet than let himself be the kind of man his father was.

  Now, as he was snarling at Elijah, tugging at his bedsheets so he could drag Elijah out into the moonlight, he found himself being exactly the kind of man his father had been.

  "Dad, no! Stop!" Elijah screamed, holding fast at the edge of his bed. Above him, the moon's great idiot face peered from the cloud cover, shedding bone-white light upon the desert.

  "Jebediah! You get off Elijah this instant!" Edna snarled at him.

  "Pa? Pa, what's going on?" Billy-Bob asked, peering around the door with little Jemima peeking her muzzle underneath. The trailer rocked on its axles, as the older wolves clawed and bit at each other, baring their fangs and snapping at the air between them. The cramped little space in the trailer smelled of bile and anger and Elijah's sweat.

  "Get outta here, Edna!"

  "Let go of Elijah, Jebediah! This isn't what he wants! This isn't what you want, either!" she snarled at him.

  "Don't tell me what to do, woman! Don't you dare give me lip!" Jebediah said, and he knew how much like his father he sounded. It made him sick to his stomach, this terrible new inflection, this venomous tone. "Back off!"

  Edna was on him the next instant. Her teeth, strong as her mother's, went for his throat. Her claws, sharp as ever, aimed for his eyes. Jebediah howled and rolled with the blow, crashing through the trailer's walls out into the dusty ground. They were a mass of fur and dust, spiked with blood, that snarled and rolled around in the ground, a black-brown thing that raised a cloud of dust around them.

  "Pa! Pa, stop it!" Jemima screamed.

  "Ma!" Billy-Bob shouted, charging into the melee, his claws and fangs out to protect his mother, his own howls of pain joining those of his mother's, his own blood spattered on the parched earth.

  ~~~~~

  Inside the trailer, hidden beneath his blanket, Elijah listened to the sounds of his little world crashing down around him. There was thunder in the desert. There was gnashing of teeth and snarls. His senses, honed to a fine edge by the prospect of transformation, translated the blood and the fear and the snarling into a coherent image.

  Without seeing, Elijah could read his father's face, twisted by anger, pushed on by pride. His mother's muzzle, pulled back to reveal a row of teeth, ripping at her lover's fur and skin. His brother's claws, pawing at his father's back uselessly, struck down by a flailing backhand.

  In his little refuge, Elijah felt his body tense up, as the wolf inside him called out for blood and violence, fueled by the light of the moon. Something primordial stirred in him, something that was pushing outward from deep within himself, something mad and hungry that was waiting for him to become it.

  "Elijah?" Jemima's voice came from the other side of the blanket. He didn't have to peek out to tell that she'd shifted to her human form, so she could hide inside the trailer. He could smell her fear, which fed the thing in him, making it thrash madly. "Ma's hurt. So's Billy-Bob. I think Pa is going to hurt them real bad soon."

  "I know."

  "I'm scared."

  "I know," Elijah said, and there was the faintest hint of something old and hungry in his voice. Jemima couldn't see, but she knew what was taking place beneath that blanket.

  Outside, Billy-Bob was struggling against Jebediah's paw, pressed against his throat. Jebediah's lover, howling her son's name, was sinking her fangs into his shoulder, tearing at the flesh beneath.

  "You got to save them, Elijah."

  "I know," he said.

  ~~~~~

  Jebediah's world was a great red blot now, stained with black. His paw pressed down on something soft that fought feebly. He could not fathom it being his son. There was a growing pain in his shoulder and a pair of eyes that were punching holes in the back of his head, but he could not have known they were Edna's.

  There was only a voice in his head, a growling, howling thing that frothed at the mouth and whispered words of murder in his ear. There was someone hidden in the trailer whom he should rip open and expose to the world or tear his throat rather than suffer his existence. His spittle was hot and tasted like blood that he knew did not belong to him. His fur bristled and his muscles tensed. He burned with an unknowable fire.

  With a flex of his mind, he changed his paws into functioning arms and stuck at Edna's muzzle, breaking her grip. He increased the pressure on Billy-Bob' throat until he felt his son's pulse beating at his fingers and then...

  There was a scent that seemed familiar but he had never witnessed before. There was a howl with a familiar inflection. There was a shape in the air, shifting and growing until it seemed to outgrow the moon itself.

  Jebediah raised his arms to protect himself from the coming attack, braced his hind legs against impact, but he knew he was outmatched. The great thing slammed into him, a mass of claw and teeth and black fur, knocking the breath from out of him. Teeth tore at his muscles, claws dug themselves in open wounds. He felt something trickle down his tongue; a taste of blood that seemed all too familiar.

  It lasted only for a moment, the tearing and the howling and the screams. Jebediah was tossed around like a rag doll, dragged into the dirt. He struggled, but the black thing struck him once and one of his eyes darkened. He tried to get away and fire erupted in his sides.

  The red subsided
. The black pulled back. The starry sky loomed above him, the moon's great face illuminating his features. At the edge of his vision, something huge and mad followed his every move.

  "Elijah?" he muttered.

  ~~~~~

  Billy-Bob never challenged his brothers' place in the pack and neither did any of the others. There was, of course, a challenger as custom decreed, but the battle was a formality, a friendly spar in honor to Elijah.

  Edna watched as her son stood at the head of the pack, a great black silent thing with eyes the color of silver. Little Jemima was there too, her head bowed, her muzzle resting against the ground for fear of meeting Elijah's eyes.

  Jebediah was not there, on that day nor any other day since. He was, of course, provided with a share as custom dictated, and he accepted it with the proper show of gratitude. Unlike his family, he was not there when Elijah was proclaimed alpha. He had been with the old wolf who had welcomed him silently, having recognized his wounds, picking up the hatred that had soaked Jebediah's fur and very skin, same as he had been soaked in the spit of his son.

  The old wolf died, alone and bitter. The only words he said to Jebediah were:

  "You done good, boy. For once in your life, you done good."

  And the old wolf perished, leaving Jebediah in his stead.

  Konstantine Paradias is a jeweler by profession and a writer by choice. His short stories have been published in Third FlatIron's Lost Worlds anthology, Unidentified Funny Objects! 2 and Nightmare Stalkers and Dream Walkers by Horrified Press. People tell him he has a writing problem, but he says he can quit, like, whenever he wants, man! You can find him on FaceBook (https://www.facebook.com/konstantine.paradias) or follow him on Twitter (@KostantineP) or you can cut the middle man and go straight for his blog, Shapescapes (https://shapescapes.blogspot.com).

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  The Passage of Aldo

  by Colin Heintze; published December 27, 2013

  It was twenty years ago that Aldo came to this village. It was quite the event.

  Usually we don’t get more than five or six travelers passing through our village every year, and not since the oaks were acorns has one been a knight. After Jenny moved in, nobody would visit us.

  It was embarrassing knowing what we had become—a blank spot on the map. We had gotten the reputation of a place no traveler wanted to visit, and knew down to our marrow that Jenny was the reason for it. That’s why when Aldo came prancing in on his pretty charger we made a point of putting on our best shirts and coming out to say hullo.

  The women were crowding around him like a flock of hens when he took off his helmet. He shook out long, amber locks that fell over shoulders I could have yoked my plough to. He wasn’t a heartbeat past twenty, his face fair as fresh snow.

  Aldo dismounted and introduced himself. He bowed and held out a coin to whoever would board him for the night. We told him to put the money away, that we were good courteous folk and wouldn’t hear of accepting payment for our hospitality. Everyone except that scoundrel Ralf, who would have taken Aldo’s coin, and horse, and shirt off his back if given the chance.

  I’d an extra room since my two youngest died, so everyone decided Aldo would pass the night at my cottage.

  But, before I go on about Aldo, I should back up a bit and tell you about Jenny Green-Teeth.

  No one knows how Jenny came to live in Erik’s pond. Most people agree it happened during the flood, that when the river receded it left something behind, something big and green and nasty.

  A few weeks after the flood one of the village boys came racing through town. He was wailing and crying, looking white as a sheet and just about as sturdy. When we got him calm enough to speak, he told us that he and his sister had been playing by Erik’s pond when some green lady jumped out of the water and took his sister. Nobody was more shocked than Erik himself, and within minutes we’d grabbed our axes and bills and were marching to his farm.

  The pond had taken a bad turn. Before the flood Erik kept it stocked with fish, but nothing lived there anymore, nothing except a crust of slimy pond-scum that bubbled and popped on the surface of the water.

  The boy begged Erik not to approach the water, but Erik wouldn’t listen. The moment Erik’s foot fell on the bank, the water surged. A horrible, green woman came lunging out. Her arms were nearly the length of a man and her face had a bloated, fishy look to it. Broad, knobby hands wrapped around Erik’s neck and pulled him under. The pond-scum bubbled a little more than usual until Erik stopped kicking.

  That’s when we knew we had a monster in our village. The boy buried his head in his mother’s skirts and sobbed about those horrible green teeth, so that’s what we called her: Jenny Green-teeth.

  From then on everyone steered clear of Erik’s pond. Erik’s widow moved in with kin in Mayshire, and soon Erik’s farm had gone to nature. Thistles reached up to a man’s ears. Serpents weaved through their stalks like rabbits through their warrens. Except for a few boys that liked to throw rocks into Erik’s, or now I should say Jenny’s, pond, nobody went near the place.

  Still, Jenny got her share of victims. A three-year-old girl got lost and wandered up to the pond. Her mother grabbed her just as Jenny sprang. Both pulled. The mother got her daughter, and Jenny got the girl’s arm. Years after, the girl swore she could feel pain in the missing arm, which we all figured was the times Jenny was gnawing on it somewhere under the water.

  Then there was Heneric. Heneric was a mean, coarse fellow that kept the village up all hours with his drinking and carousing. One night he was boasting he could take any man in town. One of his friends suggested he try his luck with Jenny Green-Teeth.

  “Ah, shut up, you,” Heneric said.

  “Of course, if you think you can’t beat her…”

  “Who says I can’t! I’m not afraid of nuthin’, not man or beast or even monster. Let’s go!”

  His friend laughed and told Heneric he was merely jesting. But Heneric had made up his mind. In a few minutes he was parading through the streets, his friend begging him to turn back. A crowd of people came out and followed him to Erik's farm. They held their breath as Heneric dipped a toe into the pond and launched a big glob of spit into the water. Nothing happened. Heneric started pacing around the banks, calling Jenny a coward and a fiend and other things I’ll not be repeating.

  He carried on like that for a few hours until he’d shouted himself hoarse. By then, just about everyone in the village was watching. A few even clapped as Heneric put his hands on his knees and wheezed out a few more oaths.

  Then, she sprang. See, Jenny was smart, or at least had a sense of humor. Heneric was a big, strong wight, and she waited until he had tired himself out before dragging him under. It’s a tragedy and all that, though I can’t say anyone misses him.

  A month later, Aldo visited our town.

  We were in my cottage eating dinner. I had invited all my friends to entertain our guest, everyone except Ralf. That snubbing is where people say my feud with Ralf started, but that’s a different story altogether.

  Everyone was impressed with Aldo. He had manners, real manners, not the kind people use to spin gold out of lies. He was the picture of graciousness and courtesy, listening to our stories without interruption. He never pitied us for our poverty, nor did he pretend that we shared something in common. There was nothing false about him and even some of the rougher, coarser townsmen didn’t snicker at his pretty face or fancy way of talking.

  The candles were guttering on the table and we’d all had quite a bit to drink when I asked, “So, Sir Aldo, might I inquire why you are passing through this village?”

  The young man’s face flushed like a plum.

  “You may, though I am no ‘Sir’. I am not yet a knight, but a mere squire.”

  Everyone cried out at such an injustice, which Aldo silenced with a raising of his hand.

  “As to your question,” he said. “I am traveling the realm seeking adventure. If am to find a jus
t and able lord to take me into his service, I must make a name for myself. Which, reminds me: you people have been so civilized and hospitable. Surely, there must be some service I can do for you? Perhaps you have some bandits that need cowing, or a cruel magistrate that requires justice?”

  “There’s a dragon,” one of my neighbors slurred. “Up yonder mountain.”

  “Nay,” said another. “Tis’ a basilisk. One glance from that fiend will turn a man straight to stone.”

  “Let him alone and stop teasing!” I shouted. The table fell silent. After a moment, Eadwyn the Miller said, “There’s Jenny Green-Teeth.”

  “Quiet!”

  It was too late. A chorus went up around the table. I kept protesting, and they kept talking over me. By the time it was over they had lifted Aldo onto their shoulders and were carrying him towards the village.

  I was there for the preparations. Aldo listened as they told him about everyone Jenny had killed in the past couple of years.

  He nodded and fell into thought, breaking the long silence with, “Why do you suppose she waited so long to take Heneric?”

  Some of us shrugged, others scratched our heads.

  “Because,” he said, thrusting up a finger. “He was drunk. She waited for him to sober up before taking him under. She must not like alcohol.”

  Everyone thought that was a right good explanation. He became very excited and turned to us, saying, “I’m going to need some of your carpenters, and as much wine and ale as you can spare.”

  A roar went up and everyone ran to get the things Aldo asked for. Even Ralf pitched in a cask of wine, though he insisted Aldo pay for it until we threatened to wring it out of his scrawny neck instead.

  The next day we went to Jenny’s pond. With us we had six casks of wine, three of brandy, and fourteen barrels of ale. The carpenters had worked through the night making the long chutes that Aldo had specified.

  Groups of our strongest men picked up the chutes and placed the ends in the pond, keeping well away from the banks as they worked. From thirty feet away, we were able to pour all the beer and wine into the water. Within a few minutes, some of us had noticed that the level of the pond had risen.