Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest #11 Page 9

  Half of the woman's head remained intact. His daughter's—his adult daughter, not the sweet, angel-faced child struggling to breathe in the night, when his wife was alive and his life was alive and his mind worked and he hadn't been in the woods when his best friend was burned away and this couldn't be Dianne, it couldn't be her—face, what was left of it, staring at the ceiling, the remaining eyeball sunken in the pit of its socket. The skin ended like a cliff face beyond the remnants of her regal nose. She was so beautiful these days, elegant, her brows weighed down recently with too much concern for her drifting father but still ... still ... down the chasm that had once been the left side of her skull, pieces of muscle and skin, odd colors, muted reds and blue, a lot of blue, why would the inside of a head be so blue? Something lumpy and white balled on the floor, spotted with red, looking like a wad of wet paper towels.

  Her left shoulder was gone, burned away. Like Martin. She wore a dress, dark blue, the edges where her shoulder had been now frayed and stuck to the skin above her left breast.

  One tooth hung awkwardly in the half-mouth. The remaining ones were straight and perfect—no braces.

  The left arm bent on the floor, no longer attached, deflated like a spent water balloon, a fragment of sleeve. A round metal ball on the floor beside it, fingers curled but not enough to hold on to it.

  All of these images drifted in through the unreliable window of his open eye. They settled, burrowed deep, looking for a place to lay eggs like flies on a window screen when the weather warmed. When the world was sunny and good, and he still had his mind and his soul.

  Nurse Charles took two quick steps toward him on the comforter, small red paw prints trailing behind. She nuzzled her head under Hank's elbow. He stared, scratched the dog, imagining the screen of his kitchen window, Phyllis bustling around the room behind him, occasionally sneaking up and slipping her arms around him.

  Then he was falling backward, down a hole, the rabbit hole from the stories he'd read to his daughter who was now dead on his floor, down into a darkness where gravity was too strong to resist.

  * * * *

  The day was gray and wet, rain falling relentlessly on his shoulders. He didn't remember getting dressed, felt as if he'd done this before, gotten up, walked out the back door. Too much fluff in his head. Usually the mornings were the clearest time of the day.

  Martin's legs lying lost and abandoned on the ground. Flies on the window screen. Dianne's face a torn Halloween mask.

  Hank shouted, a quick bark of pain and sadness, then stumbled down the porch steps and across the grass. He was barefoot. Something in his hand. He looked down, saw the odd ball with the indentations and protruding dorsal shape. What was this? Where was he going without shoes?

  The woods at the back of the house looked wrong, a tree or two missing. Some of the darker branches moved back and forth, looking for a way to escape. No wind. How were they moving?

  He tried to remember why he was outside, carrying such a bizarre object in his hand. Taking it back, putting things right again.

  The branches stepped out into the clearing, stumbled and fell, raised themselves up and moved apart to reveal a handful of distinct forms. Branches didn't do that. Hank took a few steps toward them but his feet were slick on the grass and the ball in his hand was too heavy. He knelt, let the ball roll away, blinked away more rain. The branches moved with no sense of grace, as if they'd just come to life and hadn't adjusted to the world below. Slowly, cautiously, they converged on the place where he waited.

  He was dying. It explained everything. The bad dreams, nightmares of death. These were angels, too beautiful to comprehend so he saw them only as tall, dirt-colored stick-people who couldn't walk for shit. The one closest to him reached down, lifted the ball, turned, stick-walked away. The others followed, entering the woods from the same place they'd emerged.

  Was he supposed to follow? They'd only taken the ball. Maybe that was his soul. It fell from his body and now he was empty, a shell left to rot on the grass.

  Inside the house, Nurse Charles barked, Stop! Stop! Here! Me! A voice from the Old World—that purgatory where he'd been left to stare at his bedroom ceiling every morning, struggling to remember his name, where he was, where he'd been. That wasn't his world anymore.

  Hank got up slowly, the pain in his ankle trying to pull him back down. His pants were soaked through, clinging to his knees and thighs. He limped as the angels had, toward the edge of the woods. Nothing for him in there either, but that was where they'd come from. He'd been left behind, his death incomplete.

  The rain transformed the woods into a gray-black underwater scene. The stick figures moved and swam among the remaining trees, disappearing behind one only to emerge from the other side. The one with the ball zigzagged toward him. No expression, no face. You cannot look into the face of God and live, he remembered reading.

  Hank Cowles raised his arms and shouted, “I'm ready. Please, take me with you.” The angel seemed to nod, raised its arms and bathed him in glorious white light.

  Samual Tinianow lives in Columbus, Ohio. Any further details really depend on when you ask, but at present he puts up a living as an editor, ghostwriter, and pizza cook.

  UNCANNY

  By Samuel Tinianow

  I wish I didn't have to be here. I hate Alice, and the hospital monitors and stuff are annoying. Mom and Dad and Jenna are all delusional—after they learned about the accident, and what Alice is, they convinced themselves they didn't hate her. And Brent, well, he was always delusional. But I hate Alice. I don't care if she might be dying, and I don't care what she's made out of; she's a ditzy, flaky, airhead.

  I'm sitting by her bed, alone. I was reading when Mom asked if I wanted anything to eat, so I missed the fact that everyone else was going with her. They're probably talking right now about how “negative” I've been. I stand up so that I can look down at the bed and think, at least I'm human and alive.

  Alice got the fracture in her head while they were skiing, a freak accident on the lift. She fell. They say if she was human, she would have died instantly. I still think she deserved it.

  Nobody knows where Alice came from. Whoever made her left nothing to go on; nobody in her cell phone knew anything; she doesn't have any family, even parents. All she has is titanium bones and hydraulic muscles, the doctors say. Her brain is human (we don't know where that came from either), but that's it. Everything else is fake, even though it looks and works like it's real.

  Nobody has asked Brent about it yet. I know they did it though; Mom and Dad always talked, behind closed doors, about how Alice was keeping him in her pocket by being a little slut. Not even the doctors or scientists have asked about it, even though I'm sure they've seen down there during the examinations. I can't help but wonder if they know, and what the answer is.

  I hate Alice. I hate everything she does, for Brent's sake. Not even for mine. Brent is eleven years older than I am. It's not right that she can take advantage of him the way she does. Did.

  Her eyes open. It happens just like that, no fanfare or drama or anything, and they just sit there in her head, all glossy, looking at nothing. I figure they just opened on their own until she starts turning her head to look around. She finds me and stares.

  Right away I know all the questions I should be asking. Where did you come from? Who made you? Why? Did you even know that you were ... this? I don't say anything. I can't. Somewhere in the room there might be a machine that's beeping or pulsing or doing something faster that shows she's awake. I can't hear it though. Time is still moving, and I can still see her and smell the rubbery hospital smell, but I can't hear the monitors, and I can't say anything.

  She opens her mouth. What comes out is gibberish, sounds made by a machine.

  "What did you do with Brent?” I feel myself ask.

  I'm not sure she's awake anymore. This whole thing is hazy, like nothing in the room is real, the way Brent told me when I was eleven of how it feels to be drunk. He doesn't
talk to me much anymore, but I always remembered that conversation when I thought about all the times he and Alice must have been drunk.

  My hand floats through the air and comes down between her legs. All I've seen is the diagrams they show us in sex ed, and there's a blanket, a sheet, and a hospital gown between me and her. I don't know if I can feel anything that might be anything. I'm not even sure what I'm looking for. But I love it. I can't make my fingers stop pressing.

  "God damn it, I hate you,” I say, or maybe just think.

  When I've finished, I pull my hand away and straighten the covers.

  I'm reading when everyone comes back. They ask if there's been any change, and then notice Alice's eyes are open. They flip, of course, and Jenna is ready to call the doctor when Dad checks Alice over and sees that she's not really awake.

  "They told us we might see stuff like this,” he reminds everyone, heartbreak in his voice. “They said she might move or make noise or even talk a little, the way people do when they're asleep."

  Jenna asks if she should get someone anyway, and Dad shakes his head. Brent starts to cry. And it's really weird, right now, how much I feel sorry for Alice, and how much I can't stand Brent.

  Alethea Kontis's first publication was her essay in Apex Digest issue #3. She is now the author of AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First and the official Sherrilyn Kenyon Dark-Hunter Companion, as well as co-editor (with Steven Savile) of the SF all-star anthology Elemental. Find out more about Alethea's plans for world domination on her website: www.aletheakontis.com

  CURSES OF NATURE

  An Essay by Alethea Kontis

  Most kids grow up afraid of something.

  I was afraid of an eye.

  Okay, so it wasn't technically an eye—actually, I think it was an artist's rendering of a peacock feather. But it looked like an eye. It was an eye to me. An omniscient, ominous, omnipresent eye. All-knowing, unyielding, never tiring. I couldn't hide from it; it saw into my head when I was asleep and watched my dreams. I was afraid, and that's all that mattered. My parents took it down off the wall so I could sleep at night.

  In a Greek family, eyes are something to be afraid of.

  Eyes are also used for protection against other eyes, unfortunately not something that occurred to me as that painting stared malevolently down and scared any thought of sleep far, far away. I knew, deep down, that this eye had no intention of keeping me safe. This eye was evil.

  And, as everyone knows, evil eyes can curse.

  "Cursing” in a Greek family is not exactly the same as it is South of the Mason-Dixon line. In our house, “ugly” was the four-letter word we were frowned at upon using. (Although I did get smacked once for saying “jeezem crow.") When we say “cursing,” we mean it in the traditional, legend-steeped Old World Gypsy sense of the term. Little old ladies and devil horns. Whammys and hexes. Wishing for something, and then wishing you never had (á la Stephen King's Thinner). Curses: intentional, unintentional, and all ways otherwise.

  The same rule applies, however: nice girls don't curse.

  Nice girls don't curse, especially if they want to stay nice. Call it the pagan “threefold” rule, call it karma, most backgrounds and religions have the same basic tenet. Don't put anything out into the world that you aren't prepared to get back and then some. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Do the world right, or prepare for Fate's ultimate smackdown.

  And don't mess with the universe.

  I grew up superstitiously. Nothing as inane as sidewalk cracks, black cats, misplaced ladders, or tails-up pennies (pick it UP for heaven's sake, it's MONEY)—you're rarely going to experience any misfortune you didn't bring upon yourself. (And if God wants to give you a sign, He'll Give You A Sign.)

  But we threw salt over our shoulders, never spoke ill of the dead, never sang at the table. We didn't open umbrellas in the house; we never gave knives as gifts. We ate every bite of the New Year's bread, and predicted the sex of unborn babies with coffee grounds and pendulums. We wore new clothes on Easter (well, my Nana bought them, even if I refused to wear dresses). We paid attention to itchy palms and looked for ladybugs. Any time a piece of silverware hit the floor, we knew exactly who would enter the room next.

  And we spat. A lot.

  Oh yes, it's easy enough to curse a person when you don't mean to. Call a baby cute and it will grow up homely. The Greek version of knocking on wood is spitting—and when every other word that comes out of your mouth can harm someone, you realize (as I like to remind Sherrilyn Kenyon) how important it is to stay hydrated.

  But why would you want to harm someone intentionally? If you're taught not to put bad things out into the world, then where did this cursing mythology come from? What special power do wizened old ladies have that makes them immune to all repercussions? Perhaps a lifetime of pious living tips their scales so far into the good that once their hair goes white Fate gives them a blank check where cursing is concerned ... but I highly doubt it.

  I've heard their stories too.

  I learned, by reading Little Women, the universal truth of writing everyone tells you: write what you know. Well, I know this. Up until a few months ago, I had only ever cursed a person once. I have a ridiculously high pain tolerance, but this particular individual went above and beyond. He hurt me, emotionally and physically (no, not on purpose, or there wouldn't have been a body left to curse). More than I hated him, though, I hated myself for letting him waltz right in and use me as a doormat.

  So I cursed him.

  I knew I had it in me, knew that I had to have been born with the gift. I was sure it was buried deep down in my DNA, a furious dragon waiting to be awakened so that it might rear its head back and wreak its wrath upon an unsuspecting populous.

  I was scared to death. When I spoke the words—the only words I knew to use—I could only manage to say them at a whisper. (Those of you who read “Foiled” in Apex Online know what I'm talking about firsthand. You also know the words to use; if you decide to learn them, use them wisely. And do NOT repeat them in front of a Greek person.)

  He deserved it. At the time. Maybe. Maybe the only thing that made it easy (not that there was anything easy about it) was knowing that it would be an essentially wasted curse—the worst thing that could ever happen to this person, honestly, was simply having to be HIM for the rest of his life. I didn't really think the cursing would do anything beyond making me feel better ... and just a little bit powerful ... and after completely freaking myself out I wrote the story that explored the possibilities of what could have happened.

  Deep in my heart, I still knew it was wrong.

  And then my little sister told me a story that changed my life forever.

  It's not a rare thing, my sister telling stories. She has a repertoire of jokes second only to my father, and she is the first one at the table to arrogantly yell, “Don't let her tell it, she always tells it wrong.” Wrong or not, the arrogance is justified. Few people can tell any story as well as Sam.

  Sam works at a fancy, exclusive jewelry design studio that makes amazing and unique creations that can only be afforded by the crème de la crème of upper crust society. (Crème and upper crust? I'm suddenly craving pie.) And, I know this may shock you, but some of those women are selfish, snotty, and just plain mean for no reason.

  Which is why, my sister tells me after relaying one incident in particular, she cursed this woman's necklace.

  We'll call this woman Mrs. Smith-Hayes (because Mrs. Smith is far too hoi polloi, and I hear hyphens are “in"). So Mrs. Smith-Hayes commissions this necklace, and my sister designs it to exact specifications ... which Mrs. Smith-Hayes then flatly disagrees with and forces her to change three times, because she's rich and important and she can.

  When the sale is finally completed (several weeks of work later), Sam wishes Mrs. Smith-Hayes a cheerful goodbye and gives her a mischievous smile. Suspicious, her boss asks her what's up. After the door closes, Sam admits to cursing the necklace. Her boss
laughs. End of story. Or so they thought.

  A month later, Sam's boss rushes into the studio a-flutter.

  "Did you hear about Mrs. Smith-Hayes?” Sam admits she hasn't. Her boss waves her arms about frantically. “She's got throat cancer."

  "Oh my gosh, that's horrible,” Sam says with genuine concern.

  "I can't believe you gave Mrs. Smith-Hayes throat cancer,” says her boss.

  "What?!?"

  "The necklace! You told me you cursed the necklace!"

  Sam takes a few minutes to regain her composure. “Whoa. What kind of monster do you think I am?"

  "Then what did you do?"

  I know my sister, just as well as I know she did not say the following with a straight face: “I cursed it so that every time she wore it she'd look like she gained ten pounds."

  I imagine at that point they both dissolved in gales of laughter, throat cancer or not. (I have since heard that Mrs. Smith-Hayes went into remission and is doing fine.) It's a great story. (Yes, Sam tells it better than I do.) But more than a great story, it was an epiphany.

  This was it. This was the magic recipe, the secret ingredient. This was the evil eye that white-haired, hunchbacked yia yia gave you when you crossed her. Wishing ill on people was without a doubt going to get you backhanded by Fate. But petty annoyances ... now, THAT is where the craft lies. In fact, if you're inventive enough, the Furies might just be so impressed by your uniqueness that they back you up one hundred percent.

  Oh yes, even in the realm of the Gods there are points given for originality.

  Sam's story opened my eyes. I was reborn into a world of power, and that power was mine to have ... and to USE. If someone comes into my office and asks me to drop everything I'm doing to complete some inane task, I figure that justifies a bad hair day. If someone completely ignores my greeting in the hallway, that's worth an hour of unnoticed spinach in the teeth. At least.