by Paula Guran
Mrs. Norwood is a pretty black woman in her late thirties: tall, muscular, very short blond hair. She delicately asks if you’d like to use the shower, and finds you absurdly long pink pajamas to wear, and loads up your plate with more takeout than you’ve ever seen. Don’t worry about the cost, honey, she says. Just eat up, and maybe we can discuss your living situation tomorrow.
You desperately want to go along with it. These people are so kind, and you’re so tired, and these empanadas are so fucking good you’re about to cry . . . but you can’t risk it. Mrs. Norwood is black, and Joey is black and Filipina, and all PoC, but especially Asian people, are way more likely to die in these scenarios, virgins or not. Not to mention they live in a converted barn with bad cell reception and six dogs, and the only reason the killer isn’t already here is that Joey’s half-sisters live an hour away with their dad. There just aren’t enough victims for a proper slaughterhouse.
So, you give it to them straight and wait for the inevitable questions about your sanity. Instead, Mrs. Norwood takes her daughter’s hand and says, in this house, we believe in masked killers. Global warming, too. And Joey’s trembling, but her eyes are focused. Will he leave me alone if I’m not a virgin? Because that’s a social construct anyway, and my boyfriend lives five minutes away. And Mrs. Norwood makes a face, but that doesn’t stop her from asking will that work? Because I do have condoms, and you vow to yourself, here and now, that you will protect these precious people at all costs.
Unfortunately, that’s when the doorbell rings and six teenage girls pile in with presents and a Safeway birthday cake. Joey’s surprise party is supposed to be tomorrow, but one girl has to babysit and another has some cheerleading competition, and before Mrs. Norwood can make them leave, the lights cut out, and a dog, barking loudly, suddenly goes quiet. It’s too late, you say. He’s here.
Two girls immediately assume it’s a prank. You tell them they’re wrong, and they say shitty things about you and mental asylums. Joey goes off, which is delightful but also poorly timed, as it distracts you from stopping the panicked cheerleader from running out the door. By the time Mrs. Norwood calms everyone down, it’s clear the party isn’t going anywhere: every car has a severed fuel line and the cheerleader has a severed head.
Everyone screams a lot.
You get them all back inside. That includes the dogs, even the little black one who’s definitely losing that leg but, shockingly, isn’t dead yet. It’s been a while since you could afford bullets, but you gather every knife in the house, all except the kitchen shears, which have mysteriously gone missing. Then you gather the girls in the living room, trying to make it to dawn.
You make it fifty-seven minutes, just enough time for two pieces of birthday cake and a ton of high school gossip: Madison, the blonde who was an asshole to you, used to date Joey’s boyfriend. Charlotte, the brunette who was an asshole to you, hates Sam for beating her in girls’ javelin. Sam, the only other brown girl, thinks Emma’s basic; also, a slut. Emma, who wears both terms proudly, might be cool if she didn’t constantly say things like I don’t mean to be racist, but. And the babysitter, well. You don’t even know her name, since she hasn’t spoken since the cheerleader died. Joey’s efforts to comfort her go pretty well until Emma, completely ignoring everything you’ve said, gets too close to a window. She’s quickly impaled through the gut, her body pulled outside.
The babysitter half-faints. You seal up the window, but now someone else is screaming: a guy, somewhere out back. Charlotte says it’s her boyfriend, Jake, or maybe Joey’s boyfriend, Tyler; they were both going to sneak over with beer after Mrs. Norwood went to bed. We have to help them, Charlotte insists, and runs out the back door into the dark. There’s a strange, gurgling sound. Then, nothing.
Soon, someone emerges from the fog.
It’s Tyler. They’re dead, he says, bleeding from a non-vital place. Oh God, oh God, they’re dead. You want to kill him right now, but no one else will let you. They won’t even let you tie him up, an obviously reasonable concession, probably because he insinuates you’re crazy and lesbian-obsessed with Joey. Madison apparently believes in homicidal lesbians so much that she actually attacks you; you twist her arms behind her and yell, Joey, why are you friends with these horrible people?
No one has a good answer to that, but Sam does ask where Tyler’s car is. Tyler doesn’t think it matters. The killer probably cut my fuel line, too, he says, but that only makes Joey back up. We never told you about the cars, she says, and Tyler’s all whoops before he pulls Madison from you and stabs her in the face.
This time, it’s not just the girls screaming; Tyler does too because he’s one of those types, maniacally laughing as he slashes forward like a drunk Robin Hood. You don’t bother dodging much, just slide a boning knife straight into his heart.
Oh, Tyler mouths, and dies.
So. Easy.
Mrs. Norwood hugs Joey, and Sam hugs the babysitter, and you just stand there, looking at your left arm. It hurts like a motherfucker—Tyler cut it up pretty good—but there’s only minimal blood on your pants and shirt.
Too. Easy.
It’s not over, you say but Mrs. Norwood doesn’t hear you, opens the back door. I’ll check on the others, she says, and you scream—
But someone’s already stabbed her with the kitchen shears.
The killer is tall and narrow, wearing a dark robe and a devil mask. Mrs. Norwood collapses at their feet, while Joey screams and Sam turns and runs. The killer breaks a nearby broom across the countertop and launches it forward. It spears through Sam’s chest into the front door. She slumps over, half-hanging and dead.
You look back at Mrs. Norwood. For just a second, you can’t move. For just a second, you’re not even in this house at all.
But then she gets up.
Her skin is ashy, her forehead beaded with sweat. The shears are still embedded in her shoulder. But she’s on her feet, and when Devil Mask stalks past, Mrs. Norwood tackles them into the dining room. Immediately, she collapses again, but it’s enough to snap your brain back into action. You kick Devil Mask in the devil mask; they grab a chair and knock you into the living room. Something squelches unpleasantly underneath you. You think of a body exploding into blood and cream, but of course it’s just Joey’s half-eaten birthday cake.
Hands around your neck, then. You reach for something, anything. You can’t breathe. You can’t—but your fingers grasp something, even as you knock away the mask.
Of course. Asshole brunette. Girls javelin. Ran outside to “check” on her boyfriend.
Fuck you, Charlotte, you wheeze and stab the plastic cake fork in her eye.
Charlotte screams and reels back. She pulls an actual goddamn machete, but Joey kicks her in the head soccer style. The machete flies up in the air.
Still coughing, you catch it and shove it right through Charlotte’s fucking lying mouth.
Now. Now you’re covered in enough blood for it to be over.
It hurts to move. You do it anyway, staggering over to Charlotte’s purse as inexplicable sirens wail nearby. Charlotte has ten bucks, which isn’t enough to repair your car by a long shot. Tyler doesn’t have any cash at all.
He does, however, have car keys.
Honey, Mrs. Norwood says weakly. Your arm.
Your arm’s nothing. It’s fine. You can do the stitches later yourself. Mrs. Norwood doesn’t seem assured by that and tries getting up again, but she’s woozy from blood loss and almost passes out. Joey, squeezing her hand, bursts into tears. Neither tries to pull out the scissors. You love them impossibly.
But they can’t want you, feral thing that you are, and even if they did . . .
No. You couldn’t risk it. You won’t.
The babysitter makes a small noise. Right, you forgot she was still alive. You should take money from her, too, since she hasn’t done anything productive all night, but she wasn’t actually shitty to you, and you feel bad, robbing some traumatized kid. You tell her it’ll b
e okay. The ambulance is almost here. They’ll all be okay, probably.
You don’t have to leave, Joey says—
But you do. Of course, you do.
Here’s the thing about leaving: you end up in a town ten minutes outside home because that’s where Tyler’s truck runs out of gas.
You hop out with some vague idea of making it to the gas station; instead, you end up at the cemetery where your mother is buried at. And your best friend. And your four other friends, and their boyfriends, too. You’re still wearing the bloody pink pajamas from two days ago, but it’s midnight and no one’s around to notice. Anyway, the important thing is talking to your mom, but what can you say? Sorry you’re dead, Mom? Sorry I’m everything you didn’t want me to be?
You’ve never been able to risk getting drunk before. But right now? You need to get so drunk you don’t even remember your own name.
So, you take your ten bucks and buy the cheapest bottle of whiskey you can find. The cashier is freaked out by your clothes, but he’s also really high; plus, selling to a minor, so hopefully, he won’t call the cops on you. You hike back to the truck and start drinking. It tastes like ass. You keep drinking. It doesn’t taste so bad. You keep drinking. It doesn’t taste like anything. You keep drinking.
Someone gets into the passenger seat. You’re probably about to die.
The person becomes Mrs. Norwood. You think, anyway; her face keeps rippling. A hallucination, then. That’s nice. You can tell the truth to hallucinations; they already know all your secrets, anyway. You try and tell her lots of things, like what fire axes can do to human skulls or how you see your mom in your dreams sometimes, but her head splits open wider and wider each time she says she loves you. And then Mrs. Norwood’s drinking from the bottle, which, when did she get the bottle? And you’re outside somewhere, throwing up, and Mrs. Norwood’s telling you it’ll be okay, and you’re lying down in the back seat of some car, and you can’t see her, but she’s still saying it.
You’re okay, now. You’re safe. Go to sleep. Go to sleep.
So you sleep.
Here’s the thing about passing out in a car that you may or may not have hallucinated: you don’t know where the fuck you are when you wake up, and Jesus Christ, you feel like shit. There’s water next to your bed with a note that says DRINK ME, and you should absolutely not do that, but you’re thirsty, so. If you open the door and get stabbed to death by a man in a Mad Hatter mask, you’ll only have yourself to blame.
You open the door and are immediately attacked by six scrappy mutts. The smallest one only has three legs. You pick him up carefully and go downstairs.
Mrs. Norwood is in the kitchen, moving slowly. Carrying your drunk ass around couldn’t have been any good for her shoulder. She serves you a plate of hangover food and only adds more each you time you protest. Eventually, you give up and eat it. Where’s Joey? you ask.
At her Dad’s, Mrs. Norwood tells you. We’re probably going to move. You’re going to come with us.
You almost choke on your food.
You tell her she doesn’t need to do that. She gets you another bottle of water. You tell her she can help pay for your car. She says your car smells like piss and should be sold for parts immediately. You tell her you’re fine. She says you’re full of shit. You tell her you’re dangerous. She says your Aunt Katherine’s full of shit, too, and everyone else from your hometown, blaming a child for monsters in the night. You tell her you’re eighteen, which is a year and three months from the truth. She says you’re a child and retired from this life of chasing killers, at least until you graduate college. You tell her it was your choice to leave, your choice to fight, your choice to live the way you’ve been living. She looks at you real close and asks was it?
You start crying.
She lets you sob on her shoulder. You’re staying, she tells you firmly, and eventually, you swallow and say, okay.
Here’s the thing about sticking around: sometimes, it’s hard not calling the shots. Sometimes, Mrs. Norwood’s rules are stupid. Sometimes, you and Joey fight over the dumbest things. And killers do come back, occasionally: you go to some Christmas party and find a dead body underneath the tree, but Mrs. Norwood breaks through the door with a chain saw, and Joey’s aim with the rifle is really improving, and all you have to do is make cocoa and wipe blood off the presents. Sometimes, you’re scared to touch your new family; sometimes, you think you should run away for their own good. But mostly, you institute Friday Movie Nights and eat whenever you want. Mostly, you get hugs before going to bed. Mostly, you keep adding to your five-year plan.
CARLIE ST. GEORGE is a Clarion West graduate from Northern California. Her stories can be found in The Dark, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Sword & Sonnet, Lightspeed, and other publications. St. George also writes essays about various movies and television shows on her blog, My Geek Blasphemy. It is entirely possible that she has spent a bit too much time analyzing superheroes, Star Trek, and Teen Wolf.
READ AFTER BURNING
MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY
It is crucial to remember that magic is unpredictable. Old magic, new magic, all magic. Magic has its own mysteries and rewires itself according to mood, like weather discovered between streets, rainstorms dousing only one person, or like a blizzard on the skull of a soldier, a brass band on the deck of a submarine. War magic exists, and wedding magic. Love magic and murder magic, spells for secrets kept forever, and spells for dismantling structures. Magic itself, though, sometimes ceases to exist in moments when it’s most necessary, and even when you’ve memorized the entirety of the history of spells and sacrifices, there are always ways to fail and invent, to combine traditions into something else entirely. There are ways to shift the story from one of ending, to one of beginning.
All this happened a long time ago, before the story you know. You were born in a world that wasn’t ending. This is a story about how that rebeginning came to be. It’s about the Library of the Low, about books written to be burned, and about how we brought ourselves back from the brink.
I’m old now, but old doesn’t matter. How many years have humans been looking up at the stars and thinking themselves annotated among them? How long have the stories between us been whispered and written and lost and found again?
This, then, is a story about the story: It’s about librarians. It begins on the day of my father’s death. I was ten years old. I knew the facts about blood; all ten-year-olds do. Do you? You do.
I knew this fact, for example: There was no stopping blood until it was ready. Sometimes it poured like magical porridge down the streets of a village, and other times it stood up on its own and walked out from the ground beneath an execution, a red shadow. There were spells for bringing the dead back to life, but none of them worked anymore, or at least they didn’t in the part of the country I was from.
I don’t need to tell you the long version of what happened to America. It’s no kind of jawdrop. It was a tin-can-telephone apocalypse. Men hunched in their hideys pushing buttons, curfewing the country, and misunderstanding each other, getting more and more angry and more and more panicked, until everyone who wasn’t like them got declared illegal.
When the country began to totally unravel—there are those who’d say it was always full of moth bites and founded on badly counted stitches, and I tend to agree with them—my mother was at the University on a fellowship, studying the history of rebellion. My daddy was the Head Librarian’s assistant.
The Head Librarian was called the Needle. She’d been memorizing the universe since time’s diaper days, and I never knew her real name. She was, back then, in charge of rare things from all over the world. Her collection included books like the Firfol and the Gutenbib, alongside manuscripts from authors like Octavia the Empress and Ursula Major. The collection also included an immense library of books full of the magic of both the ancient world and the new world. Everything could turn into magic if it tried. The Librarians had prepared for trouble by acquiring sec
rets and spells. They knew what was coming.
If you asked any of the Librarians from my town, they’d tell you their sleep went dreamless long before the country officially declared itself an oh fuck. They squirreled books and smuggled scholars, as many as they could, which wasn’t many. Some made it to Mexico. Others got to Canada. A few embarked on a ship loaded with messages in bottles.
The Needle, though, had plans for saving. She stayed, and my parents stayed with her. They spent the first years of the falling apart sitting at a desk deep beneath the University library, repeating everything the Needle told them, making memory footnotes alphabetically, in as many languages as she could teach them. She started them off small and got bigger.
“Ink,” she told my parents, “is not illegal,” and so they started making ink out of anything they could find. They made it out of burned plastic. They made it out of wasps harvested while eating the dead. They made ink in every color but red: blue and black, brown and gold. Red reminded the Needle of things she didn’t care to remember. My parents sharpened tools, started making plans, married each other in the dark of a room that had been reserved for books damaged by breathing.
The first tattoo the Needle gave was to herself.
The men in charge wanted people to forget penicillin and remember plague. They shut down the schools, starved out the teachers, and figured if they gave it a few years, everybody but them would die of measles, flu, or fear. Citizens ended up surviving on Spam and soup. No medicine. Little plots of land and falling-down houses. Basically conditions like those much of the rest of the world had faced for many years, but no one here was used to them, and so a lot of the population dropped dead due to shock, snakes, spiders, and each other. I was born four years into all of this. My mother died in childbirth, because by that time there were no doctors left in our city. The last one had been executed.
None of the magic worked that time.
The Needle delivered me, and she closed my mother’s eyes when it was time to close them.
