The Belletrist
A collection of short stories
by Miranda Mayer
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Miranda Mayer
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
CONTENTS:
'A
Desirable End'
A
better life at last.
‘Continuation’
A
family affair.
'Jacob'
Welcomed
Imposter.
'Lace'
Genteel
Murder
'She
Finally Did It'
Relief
3
Micro-Stories (150 words or less)
Normality
Invisible
Girl
Camouflage
A Desirable End
True silence could be deafening. It was something Adrian had never truly experienced before everything fell apart, although he had thought he had. But true silence meant removing the cars from the distant highway, and the planes from the sky, the background hum of electricity, the quiet whir of motors in the appliances, lights and infrastructure that he used to take for granted. The collective din of these things often made things like the wind and birdsong barely detectable on a day to day basis; mere background noise.
Now, the dead silence made these simple natural things seem raucous. He stood on the curb, looking out at the cracked pavement, where tall grasses had taken root in the fissures, and gone to seed, the feathery stalks swaying quietly in the breeze. He could clearly remember what silence was then, when everything worked. Now it was heavily, stonily still. He could hear the papery feathers of the crow on the cable above him rustle as it preened. He could hear the buzzing of the blue-bottles that circled a pile of horse manure in the middle of the street. Somewhere, a thrush made a song, and a loose sign creaked in the low breeze. He heard the horses coming long before they even touched pavement, their hoof clatter echoing off the faces of the empty buildings. With a smile, he stepped out just as the six horses came clip-clopping up the street.
The horse in the front, a solid, massive bay wearing a red, weathered halter, stopped and snorted. The large, dark eyes studied Adrian for a moment. There was grass sticking out of its mouth, and its tail switched impatiently at the buzzing creatures that followed them. The horse reached its large head down towards the buckets in Adrian’s hands. Like clockwork, they always knew when it was graining time. The sun was soon to go down, after all. Adrian moved purposefully with his two large five-gallon buckets across the street, and the pack of six horses followed. He led them to the large edifice where they were kept at night, an emptied-out motorcycle dealership. It was one of the few buildings with the space for them that also had metal grates over the windows and door. The glass was long-gone, but the metal kept the horses secure.
Inside, the motorcycles, the clothing racks, the posters, the desk, all the accoutrements of a thriving business had been removed. The vaulted warehouse-like space was now divided up into stalls with hammered together wood pallets and other bits of lumber, even a stray sign panel or two and the ribs of a futon. The floor was peppered with straw; a wheelbarrow hunkered in the aisle between the two columns of stalls. As the young man and the horses filed in, they horses knew where they belonged, and they dispersed into the stalls that belonged to them. He followed them in, and portioned out the food and closed each rickety door of each stall, leaning over the half-wall of one stall to watch the horse eat out of its feed-bowl, which was a simple tire thrown into a corner, the food he’d poured into the center of the ring. He then walked to the back to peel off some hay from the huge roll against the wall, and threw some of that in each stall as well. He liked the fresh scent of the clean straw and the hay. He liked the sound of the horses as their teeth bore down on the mouthfuls of food, their contented snorts, the switch of their tail, and the stamp of their hoofs. He never imagined he’d enjoy this kind of sound, and find it soothing. He never even knew he’d like horses. He’d never even seen one up close except once during a parade. Now he took care of them and he took great pride in it. He reached over and patted the big bay, who paid little heed to him and continued to munch out of its tire bowl.
He used a manual water pump in what was once the bathroom to fill buckets and make sure all the horses had fresh water for the night. His arms had grown quite muscled from hauling these weighty buckets, so much so, it didn’t seem like much work at all to him anymore.
When he was done, Adrian picked his buckets and exited, pulling down the rattling metal grate door over the broad, glassless opening. He released the two loops of chain from the steel barred windows on each side, and threaded them through the door. He clicked two solid, slightly rusted locks closed over the thick links of chain on each side. He then loped down the empty street two blocks, and came ‘round to a small common about six blocks square. With a hearty whistle, he invoked a whinny in return. Another, larger group of horses came thundering into view. Twenty four horses total, plus one small foal born only three weeks before, still clinging tightly to its dam’s side first ran towards him, and then veered a bit away.
The horses joined him as he opened up a wrought-iron gate stolen from somewhere else; affixed to the cement archway into the lobby of a to a low-slung seventies-style office building. The sign above the door was still clear and new-looking, advertising a law-office. The wooden doors were long removed now, leaving the old lobby open, the carpeting still present, although the gold acanthus leaves that curled on a burgundy background were only distinguishable on the edges of the wall, the remainder had been trampled into a brownish oblivion. The glass of one of the broad front windows was still intact behind the metal grates bolted to the outside. The reception desk was still there, the monitor of a useless computer still peering up from behind the bar-height portion of the desk. On each side of it, where there were once two wide doors, two corridors led back to a loop of individual offices. The high windows on the outside offices were all intact; the doors had been sawed in half just above the middle hinge.
The horses filed in one after the other down each side of the corridor, turning neatly into their own offices and then turning around to wait for Adrian to close them in, which he promptly did, making the circuit from the left corridor to the right as he did every night. He then walked through a door in the back to where what was once the best office with French doors that opened out into a small courtyard shared by a few of the other buildings on this block. In this commodious space was the main storage of grain and hay. He began to process of portioning it all out, throwing the food into the offices, pumping more water and pouring more into the buckets hung on hooks in each stall. He did pause long enough to pet the curious foal, delighting in the tiny muzzle wrinkling in his hand and the curious toothless bites on his fingers. The stalls were clean; he’d spent the whole morning cleaning all of them. They smelled fresh and the sounds of the horses settling in for the evening comforted him. He sat down in the worn leather wingback he’d saved from behind the reception desk, and listened to the horses for a while before putting his buckets away for the night and locking everything up.
There was simplicity in it all that he could not help but appreciate. He walked quietly down streets that had once terrified him, that had owned him. He remembered with a reflective sigh, the sense of belonging he’d found with the members of his gang brotherhood, how he spent his youth in anxiousness, fearing reprisal, ejection, punishment or death for a simple mistake, a betrayal, an expressed desire to escape the cycle. He remembered the pain of the tattoos that still covered his skin, he recognized the graffiti on the walls that he painted to mark their territories. He remembered it all.
“Hey Adrian, they all snugged up for the night?” a bass voice asked him from ahead. He broke his gaze from the cracked and heaved sidewalk to see Ed standing against the doorway of a townhouse. Ed was a sixty-ish year old man from out of town who got stranded in the city when everything fell apart. He was worn and leathery looking in the face, his eyes barely but glints from inside the folds of his sockets. He wore jeans that were stiff with soil and dirt, and his Van Halen t-shirt was blue-grey and had once been black. He wore a faded blue Red Sox cap.
“Yeah, the baby is a beauty, isn’t it?” Adrian asked. Ed nodded.
“Manny told me to let you know, we’re taking them out tomorrow up the pike to see if we can trade.”
“All of ‘em?”
“Nah, just the nine riders and a few of the trade horses. Manny wants to get one of those big ones that does pulling and stuff.”
“Draft. A draft horse,” he told him.
“Yeah, those. Says we could mix breed them, make some high-value trade horses.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing a real draft,” Adrian admitted. “I’ll get the riders ready for you guys in the morning.”
“You sure about not riding, fella? You sure seem to love the horses, you’d think you’d want to ride ‘em. I'd be happy to teach you...”
“I’m good enough just taking care of them for now, Ed.”
“Fair enough, kid. Fair enough. But anytime you want to learn...”
“Maybe. Right now, I just like looking at ‘em.” Ed took this in with a nod and then turned and disappeared inside. Adrian continued up a few blocks to a house he shared with one of the riders. Nobody was home. He climbed up the front steps and sat down, reaching into his pocket to pull out some deer jerky. His jaw rippled as he chewed.
He remembered it all again, once more before the sun went down. He imagined the street in front of him full of people, cars, the reek of exhaust. Instead, two swans still paddled about in the pond in the common across the street, crows cawed, Max, one of the plentitude of dogs they took care of here, trotted by, giving Adrian a wag of acknowledgement in passing. No police, no unnecessary violence, no money issues, no debts. Just silence, real silence, and horses. Adrian took in a deep breath, listening to the little tree that was slowly busting up the sidewalk. It hissed in the breeze. He smiled wanly to himself before going in. Next door, Marisa was cooking something fragrant. He could hear her little girl squealing in giggles over something.
Everything is so much better, he thought, since the world ended.
Continuation
Her mother’s fingers, slender and pale slid gently down Veronica’s pink cheek, tracing down to her chin, where they pinched gently before her hand fell away. Veronica reached up and clasped it just as it fell softly against her pencil skirt. She received a reciprocal squeeze from her mother and in a swish of silk lining, her legs began to move. Veronica trailed along, four steps to her mother’s one; the clacking of expensive heels echoing in the cavernous space, each one punctuated with a flurry of taps from Veronica’s little black mary–janes. The hum quiet conversation seemed to fade as they moved down the wide aisle of this cathedral-like construct towards a stand of willowy, pale-faced figures lingering impassively on and around the dais. A heavy medieval chair hunched on clawed feet underneath a stained glass gothic window. The great arched glass window depicted what appeared to be the murder of an angel; the dark-winged demon-victor standing with one foot propped on his prone victim, a claw-like hand gripping a polearm. Veronica’s eyes widened at the sight of it, taking little heed of the huge chair silhouetted against the window’s light or the baleful creature sitting in it.
“What’s that, mummy?” Veronica whispered. Her mother’s waxen face peered down at the child’s round, rosy cheeks and her other hand curled closed, save for the index finger, which she lifted and pressed to her lips, her black eyes smiling down on her daughter. Veronica only ever knew her mother as she was, stony and beautiful with hard skin and cold hands.
“Hush little one,” she said. Veronica’s eyes dropped down and her head swiveled forward, finally noticing the occupant of the chair. They walked to the base of the dais and stopped. Veronica’s mother dropped her hand. The little girl stared for a moment at the figure in the chair, her wide eyes fearlessly studying him. As white as a sheet, the reedy, thin man gazed fixedly back at her from the hollows of his eye sockets, the straight, serious line of his thin mouth and aquiline, grave nose lending him a sinister air. His hands, like two spidery, knuckled appendages gripped the thick arms of the chair. His hair was as white as snow long and flowing, curtained in swags on each side of his face, the ends tucked behind his shoulders, hidden partially by a heavy cowl-like hood that was attached to an old-fashioned greatcoat. He wore it over what looked like an ordinary suit of pinstriped suiting wool. His slacks had a neat press-line down the center front of each leg and shoes of expensive black shining leather bound his rather large feet. His knees were spread open, his feet angled outwards. His back was hunched. The cuffs and collar of his pristine-white shirt were only a few shades brighter than the pale skin and his soft snowy hair. He wore an old-fashioned cravat instead of a tie, a shock of sapphire blue against the stark pallet. His eyes were almost white. They made Veronica think of the pictures of wolves she’d seen in her zoo books.
“Come here child,” he commanded. Veronica’s eyes traveled across the dais, taking in the other figures that stood like a copse of saplings around him; lean, pillars they looked like, draped in the finest of clothes, just like her mother. In the strange light of the window and its colored glass, they looked like statuary. They all had the same ghostly white skin, strange haunting gaze and indifference washed across their remarkably beautiful, stony faces. Veronica then looked back to the man in the chair, and she climbed the four steps up towards him. She glanced back at her mother, who merely prodded her forward with a jab of the chin. Her beautiful, elegant mother.
With a strange trusting smile, she stopped between his knees and then climbed up onto his lap, settling her little behind on one of his thighs and smiling at him as if he were the anti-Santa. She gazed up at him, her wide green eyes, her strawberry-tinted curls and vibrant, plump and fresh skin a stark contrast to the man on the throne. Her little black pea-coat was partially open to reveal a dark plaid dress and her ivory tights. She swung her feet in delight. One of the long-fingered hands lifted from the armrest and lighted gently on the child’s head, a soft smile formed with a slow grace on the man’s lips.
“She is perfect,” he said. Veronica’s mother smiled too. His approval seemed to melt the entourage. The statuary began to move, sliding inwards towards her, hands rising to touch this little girl. She sat there with a bemused smile as they patted her and touched her little arms and back, stroked her cheek, caressed her soft curly hair and gazed with wonder at her tiny fingers. They seemed to delight in her vibrancy, celebrating it with their strange subdued joy. When Veronica had enough of being poked and prodded, she grew pouty and started swatting their hands away, causing a ripple of amused and enchanted laughter from her tormentors who found her obstinacy charming. She furrowed her brow and her lower chin pinched; her eyes threatening tears. She squirmed down from the man’s lap and tottered back to her mother, who leaned down and scooped her up, propping her on her hip. Veronica laced her arms around her mother’s cold neck, and nuzzled in, her warm tears falling onto her mother’s marble skin. Her burdensome sigh received even more titters of amusement from her coven of admirers.
“She will remain with the coven,” the ageless white-haired man told Veronica’s mother. “She is worthy.” Off in the distance behind them, a woman started weeping. Veronica’s mother turned to look back into the darkness they’d come from, her face falling into a frown. The statuary’s faces followed the sound in unison, their hard brows pressing down in collective annoyance.
“Elise, you were warned about coming to the temple during offerings...” the man in the chair boomed. A slip of a thing materialized from the shadows of the nave and padded barefoot to the base of the dais, her eyelids red with tears. She was like Veronica, a vibrant living thing, tall and lithe, graceful and beautiful with blue eyes and black hair like skeins of silk cascading down her shoulders. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, the skirts of her gold and cream summery dress flowing about her in a careless, waiflike way. She looked like she’d just come from a picnic, or a walk on the beach; something warm and lovely and temperate and welcoming; certainly not from anywhere with cold stone walls and the flags beneath her perfect toes.
“She should not be here, the child. It is my responsibility to speak up, to try to stop these offerings," she wept. "She can’t choose, she is too young to speak for herself. But I can speak for her, because I am.”
“It is her lot. As it is yours. Nobody chooses," the master snapped. Elise turned to the woman holding the child.
“Helena, you cannot consign her to the coven. You know what will happen if she is deemed worthy... you know her fate. Set her free, give her to the mortals... they don’t have to be imperfect to know the joy of mortality. She deserves better... We all deserve better,” the girl pleaded to Veronica’s mother.
“Elise, it will be well, this I promise you,” Veronica’s mother intoned. Her voice was sweet and velvety and coated in reassurance. “It seems so much more frightening than it really is. You have nothing to fear, for you or for Veronica. I promise.”
“I won’t give a child to this coven. I won’t consign a life I created to the ruin I am destined to become," she sobbed. "How I wish I had been imperfect... How I wish you'd have cast me off to the mortals like so many of our sisters and brothers."
“We are not a ruin, Elise. We are not so awful, you will see when you are changed. It will come clear when you are changed...”
“Can you offer her warmth and affection like you could before when you were mortal?” Elise spat. “You might as well be made of stone. She will never know those things, all she will know is cold and stone and harshness if she is accepted and bade to return with you.” Veronica huddled closer to her mother and made a little noise of fright at Elise’s outburst. Her mother’s cold, hard hand slid up and caressed her hair, pacifying her with her soothing voice, and rocking her on her hip.
“You are no mother to that child... You are a corpse...”
“!” the man on the throne rocketed to his feet and strode forward. “It is how it has been for centuries. It is how we choose our children and how we propagate. It is how we sustain the purity and superiority of our race. You have your place, you will keep it. It is your turn. It will be her turn someday. There is no choice. You are born to our line. It is who you are. Now I have had enough of your intrusions and protestations. You can either be changed now, or you can be changed later after you’ve given the coven a child, make your choice!” Elise fell into renewed tears, covering her mouth with her hands. After a lengthy pause awaiting her choice, the leader sighed in resignation and shook his head regretfully.
“We had chosen such a fine mate for you, the perfect father for the perfect child, Elise. He is one of the finest prospects from the Nettle Hill coven; a beautiful young man who embraces his future with open arms. Why would you force our hand so when you have such beauty and grace to look forward to? How can you decline such joy at the opportunity to do something so sacred for our coven? To serve your people so honorably? How could you force our hand?” He looked betrayed as he spoke, his palm out before him as if offering her something; or supplicating her in a saintly manner.
“Because it’s wrong!” she screamed. Veronica began to cry in earnest. The statuary bristled. Until the child was calmed, everyone remained silent. Elise then spoke again:
“Just because we’ve done it for centuries doesn’t make it right,” she sobbed. Elise’s impassioned plight made her insensitive to her surroundings. The statuary had somehow appeared behind her, closing in on her in a shrinking arc. She did not notice.
"Then you have made your choice," the master said sorrowfully.
“You will know your foolishness soon Elise and you will regret turning down the chance to make a child for the coven while you had the chance,” Veronica’s mother told her, her eyes wide in concern. “Don’t doom yourself to an eternity of regret. Think of Elsa!”
Elise glared at her and turned to run away, only to run into the forest of the lean figures surrounding her. With a strange silence, their pale hands reached out and covered her shoulders and her head and they huddled in on her. She was subdued with little more than a whimper and her slim body crumpled to the ground underneath the weight of their voracious bites.
* * * *
Veronica’s little legs swung as she sat on the top step of the dais. Underneath her bum, to keep her warm from the cold stone, the master had laid down his greatcoat and hood for her to sit on. The coven lingered around her, as if feeding from her innocence, their eyes although seemingly cold were loving and benevolent. The child felt it and she knew. She hummed a little made-up tune. Her mother was kneeling down, her form so elegant in her pencil skirt and her black heels and her crisp white shirt with the little bows on the sleeves. Her golden hair was tied back into a stylish French twist and her white ears were adorned in simple pearl drop earrings. She had her hand on the still form on the ground by the dais, her brow creased with concern.
“Elise...” she whispered. The form stirred and the girl sat up; her once vibrant skin now drained of its youthful flush, her softened lines somehow slightly hardened. She looked lost and innocent for a few shades of a moment, sitting up, her legs curled beside her. She looked around with the expression of a child, her beautiful eyes wide and searching as she scanned the darkness beyond the light of the window, and then turned to fix them on the colored shards of glass with great fascination.
“So beautiful...” she whispered. Her eyes dropped down to Veronica, who still hummed her little tune and rocked on her throne of wool. The master’s hand was on the small of her little back, a fatherly smile wistfully brushing his lips. Elise froze and she got to her feet, padding to the creature who had only a few moments before, invoked such sadness in her. She stooped and put her hand on Veronica’s fabric-covered knee.
“Hello precious treasure, precious, precious gift...” Helena straightened out her lithe form and fell into the same hanging demeanor of the others, still and narrow like a stylized shape, a young oak, watching.
“It is the only way for us to know true family, Elise; to raise our children and our grandchildren. To fill our covens with worthy souls and pure blood and not simply with strangers changed in an alleyway somewhere like so many of the newer covens do. It is why our coven is so much stronger.
“It would have been just one child you would have to bear, from your superior parentage and then you could have raised it as Helena will, until it is Veronica’s turn. It would have made your eternity so much more meaningful, as it is for me, for I can watch my great, great grandchildren grow and then become part of the fold,” Arthur explained, a few strings of his wintry-white hair slipped off of his shoulder and hung in front of his eyes. “I am saddened by your choice...”
“Do not burden her with blame, master. She should not be punished for what she ultimately could not control. We all remember how powerful mortal passion can be,” someone muttered.
Elise straightened and seemed to take account of her body, as if making its acquaintance for the first time. She twirled like a dancer making her skirts flare out into a rippling flower. Veronica’s peals of delighted laughter filled the buttresses of the great temple and then ricocheted back onto the nave. The statuary seemed to swell from the sound of it. Elise vaulted away and little girl the leapt to her feet and followed, her giggles and her exuberance filling the hollow space with life.
Food
Eela exploded from the underbrush in a shower of broken twigs and leaves, her normally smooth summer coat was studded in little burrs. Her muzzle was moist and her chest slick with sweat. She didn’t miss a step as she broke out into the steppes. She used the entire length of her lithe body to gain the most out of each stride. Her long, elegant legs, which were darkened by perspiration and blood falling from her shoulder moved in a graceful dance, carrying her into fluid bounds that made the ground fly by beneath her. She dared not look back and kept her glossy black eyes fast on the vast open space that flanked her. They could appear at any time, but at least here, she could see them. She made sure she had her eye on her destination; where the steppe grass faded into ruddy red sand.
Eela ignored the cuts and slivers from her flight, not to mention the claw marks gouged into the flesh of her shoulder. She was beyond pain or fatigue now; she had handed herself over to the powerful instinctual being that had kept her and her kind alive through the ages, despite being the favored prey for the Retnath. They were performing a culling. It was something she’d heard about before, when they thought the herds too numbered. Eela had purposefully pushed back her own mind, not only to give way to her instincts, but also to set aside the pain of seeing the members of her herd and family destroyed by the massive, hateful beasts. She blinked and the tears merely absorbed into her fur along with the salted sweat of her desperate escape. She felt the pain of her strained lungs as if from a far away; nagging and bitter, but distanced. She bit down and swallowed it. She ran not just for herself, but for the two within her; the children of her gainful match with Oureth, who had fought so valiantly but fell trying to lead the beasts away from her and their unborn ones. She owed it to him to survive; so the little ones could survive.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw one; the Retnath, black and inelegant in the prairie, as if they never really belonged there. They were ungainly but fast on their two legs; standing proud. They had square heads split into a gaping maw with three rows of triangular, serrated teeth; all resting on a thick, short neck. Their arms, complete with their four sickle-clawed hands were curled up against their chests; fur jet black with stripes the colour of rust ribbing their back and laddering their legs. A long, serpent tail balanced them, their powerful thighs and legs the fulcrum. They were as big as trees, and sickeningly intelligent, their strategies changing from year to year. She could hear them speaking in their chattering, guttural language; likely planning her trap. As it approached from her left, she darted back the way she came in a graceful motion, and bounded several strides in that direction before zig-zagging back, away from the Retnath and towards the Divrodell desert, where the Retnath drew their borders. The red desert sprawled into the horizon in a succession of seemingly endless dunes.
Her herd had been slowly migrating eastwards over the past several years. It had been Oureth’s plan. He was convinced it would be what would save them. Oureth was sure that entering the unknown land was no greater risk than remaining in the Ardredu, where the western range and the Retnath gave them no other means of escape. She knew the place known as Divrodell was stark and featureless, and held little in nourishment or concealment for her kind. The land beyond that was a mystery. Her kind had never tread here before, the Retnath patrolled the edge of the desert diligently. She was the last of her kind in these parts. Her entire herd had been culled; in punishment for skirting too close to the edge of Retnath territory. She had decided to keep going when they’d found her. It was the only chance she had for herself and the babies she carried. There could be more Retnath hunters there for all she knew, but she had to chance it. She had no other choice.
With every fiber of her being she poured herself into her escape, catching the parched grass with her cloven hooves, sucking in air and breathing it out pants as she crossed the divide to the Divrodell desert territories. It was hot and arid, and the sand made her graceful gait awkward and laboured. She made sure there was as much distance between her and her pursuers before she dared to look behind her.
Eela trotted to a stop and circled ‘round, her sides heaving, nostrils flared. She stood facing the lands she and her herd had known for generations. Four Retnath stood there, but did not pursue. They stood on the edge of the red earth looking at her, taking tentative steps forward but being tugged back by another. One roared out his fury at the sight of her, but none of them took the step into the sand. The graceful Eela was astonished. Her astonishment grew into a cold terror as she began to imagine what it could be that would keep the fearless Retnath at bay as if held back by an invisible barrier. She swiveled her fine head and faced the desert, and then looked back at the predators, who glared at her with hateful green eyes. With a decisive blink she turned back to the dunes and walked on, occasionally looking back to see the four black killers fade into tiny dots and eventually become unseen behind the dunes.
The hot air dried Reetha’s grayish-brown sweat soaked fur into whorl patterns and scabbed up most of her wound almost immediately. Some flies buzzed around it, but she was too tired to care. The pain was slowly returning as her adrenaline faded and she started to feel the effects of her flight. She kept her ears perked high on her bobbing head, swiveling them to catch every sound. All she heard was the hiss of sand as it blew in sheets over the sharp ridges of the dunes. Her treads were light and delicate, nearly without sound. Occasionally, the scrabble of a beetle or the slither of a sand-serpent caught her attention; otherwise she heard nothing but sand and wind. Eela walked on, following the line of the setting suns, just as Oureth had done for months before as they crossed the herd-lands towards the Divrodell desert.
The long day fell, and Eela walked on, choosing to forego sleep until she could find some means of cover and protection. By dawn, her exhaustion was complete. She was walking as if it was simply an automatic response, her lids drooping low, her muzzle dry and covered in grains of sand, along with the edges of her eyes. When she thought she could go no more, she discovered a small oasis in the scoop between several dunes. She could not see beyond the high sandy hills, so she thought it was prudent to rest here. The oasis was a mere gash in the sand where a shallow pool of spring water bubbled up, towering Franao trees and some strange shrub plants. The fragrance of the trees made Eela’s mouth water. How the seeds managed to find this waterhole and grow into trees she did not know, but she was grateful for them, their nourishment and their shade. She disturbed a nesting Sziszu as she entered the copse and watched it careen into the sky. She drank deeply, sinking down onto her front knees before settling her hind-quarters down onto the soft leaves that covered the ground. There she found a fallen, dried limb of the Franao, which she ate lazily, before drifting off to sleep in the shade of the trees.
* * * *
“It’s a Westlander—a female without horns. So small, almost the size of a child.”
“I never thought that little tale was true. She’s such an interesting color.”
“Indeed,” Eela’s eyes flickered and she was faced by two silhouettes backlit by the setting suns. She lifted her head and tried to focus on their faces. They were like her! At least she thought so. As her head cleared and the light of the suns was filtered by a branch of the tree, she realized she was looking at Idru like her. She stood gingerly, squinting against the glare, and moving around so she could see them clearer. They simply watched her, and waited.
They were almost like her; except the female had four spiraled horns sprouting the back of her head, much the same as Oureth’s had been, horns that were impressive for a male in her herd. But they were small next to those of the male in the stranger’s company, his were nearly as long as his body, and they curved upwards at the tips. They were counterbalanced by a smaller horn that branched from each large one, pointing frontwards over his heavy brow. He was huge. Almost twice as wide and long as Oureth, and the female was as big as Eela’s mate. Eela looked tiny next to them. They were Idru; however; no doubt; the shape of the body, the thick chest and graceful neck, the large eyes, the memory-language. They observed her, eyes wandering down to the four parallel slashes on her shoulder, on which tiny maggots now squirmed, consuming the dead flesh and cleaning the wound.
“You are out of your element,” the male said to her, his voice was deep and filled with certainty.
"I had no choice,” Eela whispered.
“You are injured as well. It looks like the work of a Retnath; a very large Retnath.”
“We don’t see your kind often, that’s for sure,” the female interjected. She sniffed the air, and then shook her head, tossing her wispy white mane. These animals were almost black, much like the Retnath, not the soft grayish brown of her own herd. They each had a mane and the male a beard falling from his lower lip.
“She carries little ones,” the female concluded. Her eyes grew tender. The male shook his own head, but it was an expression of disbelief. He emitted a sigh.
“You cannot stay here, come along. You’re small, alone and injured. You could become hunted.” They moved around her, and she hesitated, choosing to follow when the female paused with one hoof poised, and looked back. “Come along.”
They left the oasis, and moved under the setting suns along the serpentine valleys between the dunes, following what Eela realized, was a well-worn path. The two strangers spoke, one of them surprised that she’d made it to the oasis; she spoke of the dreegu possibly being somewhere else, or sleeping. Eela did not know what they meant, but she surmised there had been some predator that was so great that it frightened even the Retnath, and had somehow missed her during her long walk across the dunes.
Great mountains appeared on the horizon. The scent of greenery and water grew stronger. The sand began to taper as they approached the slopes, and became green prairies, laced with thin vermiculate rivers that wound out into the desert, converging into a lake. There, she saw the dark silhouettes of other Idru. Hundreds of them and they all looked up at the sight of the pair that arrived, trailing a diminutive version of themselves with them. The great herd gathered and they looked upon Eela with curiosity. All the females had horns. Even the little female babies showed nubs of horns-to-be.
In the distance, the distinctive roar of a Retnath echoed against the mountain slopes. Not a single Idru flinched; Eela however, did. She froze and her muscles tensed and twitched, her fear was palpable and the Idru looked at one another in bewilderment. They began to speak out of turn.
“From the size of her wounds, I think that there is probably a reason for her to fear that sound.”
“Well, I imagine with a regular source of food, they’d grow rather large.”
“Yes. They would.”
“Strange, how tiny she is.”
“I’m not tiny,” Eela argued, “…not in comparison to those in my herd.”
“No horns, small size… no match at all,” Eela was distracted by the sounds of the Retnath. It approached them, and nobody seemed to care. The Retnath roared again, and Eela finally spotted it. It was by the river, hovering at the edge of the great herd. It was only a juvenile, no bigger than Oureth. It roared at them again and tried to approach a curious fawn, whose mother reacted without hesitation; instead of running away, she charged it, and lowered her head, butting the animal in the torso with her head and horns. The Retnath went flying to the ground, and scrabbled to its feet, trotting off on its two legs in embarrassment. It went chasing after a rat-like rhashri instead, which was less of a formidable match.
“Stupid things,” someone muttered. The herd then lost interest in her, and returned to their grazing.
“If there’s a little one, there’s bound to be at least two parents nearby, why are you not alerting the herd?” Eela asked incredulously. The male who’d found her cocked his head and then laughed. He looked knowingly at the female who nodded.
“I suppose you need it explained to you. That is an adult Retnath. The ones you know, they are not natural. You are not natural.” Eela’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.
“You are food. The dreegu came south after the time of the black sky, and claimed the red sands as theirs. It was once a connected place, the prairies once grew all the way across, but the dreegu ate everything. They do not care for water, and so they stay there between the range and the western forests. They cut your smaller herdlands off from our great expanse and your people have been trapped there since. The Retnath knew that they had to be careful… that the herds would not be replenished by the herds from the expanse any longer because of the dreegu. So they farmed you instead. They control your numbers and your growth. You are food.”
“We are all food, in the end,” the female added, nosing towards the maggots that seethed in Eela’s wound.
“How do you know this if you are cut off?”
“The meklos have told us. We believed them to be wild tales, exaggerations… we thought the stories of towering Retnath to be ridiculous… however now we know this is the truth.”
“Meklos? What is that?”
“The large flyers that take the sky; they are our brothers. They are Idru of the sky. They fly to cooler lands during summer.” Eela’s eyes filled with tears. Her entire people, not just her herd, her entire people were being contained for food for Retnath who’d grown huge on the glut. Why had the birds not come down to tell them, to encourage them to cross the land of the dreegu? She made it across, perhaps it was a risk, but what was worse? The male seemed to see her turmoil and came to her, nosing her neck affectionately.
“Never fear. You are safe now. Our herd is large, our range wide. Your little ones will grow up with little danger as long as we are here to protect them.
“Can we not tell the Meklos to warn my people? To instruct them to cross the desert?
“The Meklos cannot take ground there. They are no match for the Retnath there. Besides, you alone crossed in safety because you are small, and fleet. You did not disturb the sands too much or make much noise. Many Idru, no matter how small each one is, would certainly cause the Dreegu to rise up from the sands and they would be eaten, bones and all.” Eela was shocked. She thought of Oureth, who was unknowingly leading the herd to certain doom. At least she survived, and the babies too. At least some Idru were allowed to live and breed in the Adredu; even if it meant a possible culling, and the loss of herd members. She knew these wild Idru here were not invulnerable; but they were certainly more equally matched against their predators. With a final look back at the dunes behind her, she sighed and followed her greater cousins into the thick of the herd.
Her
Her darkness attracted me at first. I felt like I belonged to it, and I envied her for possessing such pallid beauty without trying. Me, I had to paint my fingernails black, and to wear black clothes; I dyed my hair pitch coal, and lined my eyes densely with darkness. I brooded; I felt detached, all my life. I didn’t feel connected to the sunnier people; to the giggling and forced nasal speech peppered with the world ‘like’. The shining, well-coiffed hair, and fashionable clothes… The overachievers and the jocks, they might as well be from another planet. I was always aware of the whispers and sneers as I passed them by, a guy wearing eyeliner, reeking of wet cigarette. There's a lot to laugh about there.
I never quite related to any of those people, nor did I seek to. So I made sure they knew I wasn’t interested in their world by making myself appear as separate from them as I could. They lived in their own world and I made my own. My world included two more souls who thought themselves unique, but were exactly like me. Our universe consisted of a notch in the back wall of the racquetball court building that was shielded by the wind by a row of massive poplars. It was the perfect place to hide. The ground was peppered with butts, and smoothened by the soles of our Converse All-Stars. We were all about wristbands with studded leather and a joint made of hash and tobacco that took us a week to finish.
We hardly spoke to one another. Occasionally we would allude to our misery; our troubles, our trials and our shared curse of being chronically misunderstood. There was Kurt, who was gay and angry and Rebecca, who had no idea who she was. Kurt was at least one step ahead of us in our hunt for identity. It was likely on any given day, between classes and at lunch, you would find us there behind the racquetball courts, smoking cigarettes or something less legal, sometimes eating something, other times just standing against the wall, one foot flat on the bricks, knee bent watching the poplar leaves dance in the wind. If it was cold, we would huddle in a circle. We’d share a joint, and I would stare at Rebecca’s striped socks that went up to her thighs and her frayed black denim miniskirt, but mostly at the smooth, pale length of exposed skin of her thighs. She was a nice looking girl, underneath her black lipstick. She had her hair cut in an asymmetrical bob, longer on her left side than the right, and dyed a wine-red. She had a silver stud, a tiny little sphere in her nose. She liked to wear a necklace of little skull-head beads. A string of grimaces. Above them, her pale face. I watched her pupils expand wide, gobbling up the brilliant golden-hazel irises like a lunar eclipse.
But next to her, Rebecca was a shade. A shadow. I don’t really remember where I met her exactly. Things are hazy from when I was around her in the beginning. It could have been at the Tower, but maybe not. I know she likes the place. She’s sort of fascinated by it. The Tower of London is neither a tower, nor is it in London. It’s a storefront in a rather defunct part of town wedged between a cheap furniture store and a used book shop facing a secondary, dead-end street nobody drives down. You can’t see inside because the windows are blacked out, and the door is solid wood. All there is to indicate it’s a business is a sign, a really nice sign for what it is, made of painted wood with the letters routed into it, leafed in a darkened, weathered and patinated coppery gold. They used some fancy scripty-looking text; the T and the L elaborate and curly.
Inside the door, it’s a cross between a cowboy era bordello and something ripped out of the Georgian period. The walls are draped in deep blood-colored velvet swags, some edged in gold fringes and tassels. The furniture is equally as ornate and cheesy; upholstered in jewel-toned purple, deep gold, red, royal blue and emerald green velvets and brocades. Hanging on the walls, over the folds and swags of velvet are gold-framed portraits. They’re all ghoulish and dark, some random figure, sallow, dressed in ruffled shirts and cuffs, or a period gown and bodice, dark hair, glaring eyes that follow you. The floor is carpeted in red with gold acanthus leaves woven into it. It’s really just a hangout. It costs five dollars to just walk in the door for the night. Somehow it manages to stay un-dingy, despite the regular Goth traffic that comes churning through here. There are little black-enameled and gold-leafed tables everywhere. A tacky gold-painted sideboard offers tea and coffee from ugly over-decorated urns. Splenda and teabags are hidden in rows of enameled black and gold boxes. There is a sort of bar on the right as you come in, facing the large parlor. You can get non-alcoholic drinks served to you in cut glass stemmed goblets so you can feel sophisticated. And some nights, if you’re lucky, you can get some wine or something spiked, if the owner is feeling naughty. She sometimes serves snacks, but she prefers to keep things simple. There are booth-like alcoves holding large loveseats along the wall facing the bar, and a large one in the back. Behind the swags the speakers usually play Trance to the Sun or some other faded and obscure Goth Rock group.
Well, expectedly, the patrons of this place are what one would imagine. Kids like me; acting out the melodrama of our lives, baleful gazes and eyeliner; dyed hair, piercings and sorrow. I would go there with Rebecca, we’d choose one of the many cozy alcoves along the wall, sit in the plush loveseat and make out. I’d tell her that she was beautiful. She’d tell me she liked my docs. It suited us.
* * * *
Now I look down on the Tower from above. Across the street from it is the back of a large bank-building. We're on the roof of the high-rise, gazing down. It’s hot tonight, so a lot of the kids are outside, smoking. They’re about eight stories down. There’s a girl who calls herself Elora, bright red lipstick, more Rockabilly than Goth, sleeve tats and a mole drawn on her upper lip with an eyebrow pencil. I like her hair. She has it forties style, with the bangs and all. She looks like a pin-up, glossy patent red leather corset and all. It seems to work with her black cargo pants and doc martens. Kurt’s there with her, they’re sharing the same cigarette, bitching about something. Rebecca is inside the Tower, making out with someone else.
She is beside me. She is fascinated with the place. She doesn’t speak of it, but if I need to find her, nine times out of ten, at sunset she’s here, gazing down at the Tower. She never goes in, but she likes it most when the occupants are outside so she can watch them. There’s a smudge on her cheek. I want to reach out to clean it off, but she doesn’t like it when I touch her.
Behind us, the door to the roof utility shed is still open, and the light bulb is still swinging. It brings back the image of her face, only a few moments earlier. The swinging light made everything strange. Swing; her face is a skull, swing, she’s magnificent, swing, she’s a lost child, swing, she is God. Her eye-sockets looked so hollow for that second, it scared me. Her skin is so white it might as well be bone. Now in the full of the night, she’s back. She’s vibrant. Fresh from the kill. Our quarry is lying on the floor, on his side, his back to us. The pendulous light only seems to touch the folds of his clothing as it swings.
She looks playful. A smirk on her unnaturally red lips. “Before we move him, let’s play a game, shall we?” Her voice is like the velvet from the Tower’s walls; older sounding than her face, husky even, with a lilt and maybe a shred of an accent I cannot identify. She doesn’t like to leave our kills here. She likes it here too much to bring attention to this spot. We usually move them to other locations where they won’t be found. My interest is piqued. I still like games too. She is wry as she looks at me. Her lion’s mane of shimmering blue-black tube curls frames her heart-shaped face and tumbles down to the middle of her back. Her eyes are ringed in long black lashes that would be the envy of any woman. She’s wearing smoky-eyed makeup tonight. Her eye whites pop, her irises look like hematite. She’s dressed in a simple white, billowy sleeved blouse with the buttons open to her cleavage. A jeweled pennant hangs just above the cleft, a rosette of filigree with small stones imbedded in it. She has slacks on with long cuffs that fall over a pair of black leather boots with a round forties toe and a thick heel. She could be any woman; except for her exceptional face. So beautiful. I catch just the tiniest glimpse of one of her canines as she smiles. She’s good at hiding them.
“Follow my lead, grasshopper,” and without any notice she jumps off the edge of the building. My pulse would have quickened had my heart still been beating. I gazed over the edge just in time to watch her land right in the center of the street, between Karl and Elora and four other kids who were standing on the opposite side of the street. Her boots make a loud crack as she hits the ground. She hits it hard; I’m surprised her heels didn't break off. She lands in a squat, her hand touching the pavement, white like a snowflake against the tarmac.
She rises with a smooth liquidity, eyes locked on Elora with an almost seductive gaze. She then looks up at me, and I see in a flash she wants me to follow. So I do. By the time I land, she’s gone; she is fast. Faster than any other one like us that I know of. I glance at Karl and look at him, but I don’t think he recognizes me without my dye and eye makeup. I’m in a pair of distressed, boot-cut jeans I paid $90 for and a striped dress-shirt. She told me that I should look more mainstream, pretty boy-like, she said. I pursue her, and leave behind a group of startled kids. Elora is weeping. As I run away, I hear her cry out; “I knew it! I knew it! Oh my God I knew it!”
Our chase scene is over. We sit on the building’s edge enjoying the aftermath, our legs dangling over the side. Nobody can see us even if they are looking up and pointing at where they thought we’d come from. She is grinning. The whole patronage of the Tower had come out to the street hoping they’d get a glimpse. They were filtering back inside, Elora still weeping tears of joy. She sighs. I think sometimes, she wants to be down there with them. She wants to be like Elora. She wants something to believe in.
I leave her there, she always lingers until they close and kick everyone out. She can move the kill on her own. She's strong enough. Oddly, she never kills from this group--the Goth kids of the Tower. Except me. I feel angry for a second, but it quickly fades away. She treasures them. Maybe she treasured me. All those times Rebecca and I came and went, I imagine she was up here, watching me. Maybe I am her part of the Tower. Her part of that world. Now I look nothing like it. I look like those kids who I could never relate to. The ones I wanted nothing to do with. A pretty-boy. It’s hard not to laugh at that. I glance back and she’s still sitting there, the breeze picking up some of her curls. “Sleep tight,” I whisper, and she hears me. A nod. “See you tomorrow night.” She’ll be here. As long as the Tower is. Little deity, watching over her flock.
Jacob
They weren't simpletons. They knew deep down he wasn't really their son. They had to know. But their misery and their loss had afforded him a place with them, and for all intents and purposes he was Jacob McVeigh. It simply didn't matter to them. For him, for this Jacob impostor, despite having entered this situation with less than stellar motives, it somehow worked out--it changed him, it made him better. Somehow. He acclimated. He settled; something he'd never done before in all his days. He actually liked being Jacob. Liked it enough to let it become him.
He'd learned about them through Brian Walsh; the man who killed Jacob--the creature that had made him disappear. Brian was huge man. Elephantine in a compact way, broad, thick shoulders book-ending a wide, dense chest. He had a round head with shifty green eyes, with tiny ears; his blonde hair was chopped into the standard buzz-cut all the inmates got. He had surprisingly small feet for a giant frame like his. He stood at 6'10"; he had to duck through the metal grate of the cell door to get in and out. ‘Jacob' had made him take the lower bunk.
Jacob making any man that size do what he wanted was part of what made him different. He wasn't a small man; but one of decent height. In a fight, he would have been snapped like a twig by the likes of Brian, but Jacob's special ability for manipulation made the monster his pet. Brian, the heartless murderer, the simpleton, the ham-handed buffoon, was Jacob's personal bulldog. He had to only gaze into the beady, vacant eyes with his own piercing laser-blue gaze, and the tiny mind within would roll over and bare its belly to him. Brian saw a mightier beast in that gaze, a deeper, darker, angrier creature than he could ever hope to be. And far, far smarter.
"It's gotta be the weirdest thing..." the giant would mumble in his oddly high-pitched voice, "...you look just like him, I tell ya. Jus' exactly like him. It's either that or I'm just seeing you this way ‘cuz I did what I did to him." Brian had starting listing his victims to Jacob the moment he was shoved into the cell with the huge man. Brian was in prison for killing a young man he'd picked up on the streets. Jacob... the real Jacob was a similar victim. He arrived in the city, a young and confused runaway-and immediately his innocence was dashed so terribly, he never recovered; never found normalcy, or goodness. Just a life of drugs and prostitution. He just ended up one of many unknown victims of the darkness; dead in some ditch, not even given the dignity of being recovered. The buffoon could do one thing right; and that was hiding a body.
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