by Huskyteer
By the time it was starting to get dusky outside, I’d hauled the door out, trashed all the food, swept up the glass, and mopped everything down. The ice chest was still chained to the pipes when I opened the cupboard under the sink to get the Pine Sol; I closed it before Grendal came back to report.
Grendal sat in the doorway as I washed the mop in the kitchen sink. “I’ve got to hand it to you,” he said. “First the rotten food, and now this pine stench: no one’s gonna be able to sniff out that custard in this house.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but I smiled at him and went to put the mop away.
We watched TV for a while, Grendal sprawled like a sofa cushion in my lap. I made some soup for dinner and some popcorn, and Grendal helped with that: I’d never seen a cat eat popcorn before.
At about ten o’clock, the news came on, and I switched the set off. Grendal stirred, hefted himself from my legs, and thudded to the floor. “Well, I’d better get to work.”
“Work? What’s left to do?”
“Oh, nothing.” He yawned. “Just convince my fellow felines not to creep in here while you sleep, tie you down, and slash squares from your skin till you tell them where the custard is. Shouldn’t be too hard.” He jumped onto the wreckage of the sofa and the windowsill above it. “Lock everything up. This ain’t over yet.” Then he was gone.
As I got up to close the window, I started wondering how I could properly thank Bruce for getting me involved in all this. Everything else was shut and locked, so I turned out the lights and got ready for bed.
It was a quiet night; I was awake for most of it. My list of things not to think about was growing by leaps and bounds, but trying not to think about them got harder and harder as the night wore on.
I finally did fall asleep, though, as images of various groups of animals chasing this bouncing sack back and forth over my crushed and bleeding body gave way to blank nothingness. Then there was a sudden weight on my chest and a slash at the side of my head. Fur filled my mouth, and a voice hissed, “Stop squirming, simian, or it gets nasty real fast!”
I froze and managed to get my eyes open. Dawn glowed at the curtains again, and in the dimness, I saw at least fifteen cats peering down at me, one of whom I recognized; Grendal was the mass on my chest and the paws in my mouth. An axe-faced orange cat, one eye much darker than the other, cut between us and growled, “Grens had his chance. Now it’s me.” The cat held up a paw, blood glittering from his claws. “Let’s talk custard, shall we?”
It sounded like a very good idea to me, but before I could even nod, my bedroom door burst open, and a voice yelled, “Don’t move, any of you!”
They all moved, of course, a shrieking, spitting storm of cats springing up above me. Grendal remained on my chest, the other cats swirling around him, then he took his paws from my mouth, gave me a wink, and bounded out the window. I heard more scuffling, shouts and hisses; bundles streaked over me and through the curtains, and things quieted down.
The light snapped on. Two men in black suits and dark glasses stood at my bedroom door. The shorter of the two stepped forward and held out a hand. “Mr. Carr? Sorry we couldn’t get here earlier.”
I blinked, sat up, took his hand, and shook it. He brushed at the cat hair on his jacket. “We usually let the lesser animals duke these things out themselves, but we knew something big was going down when every one of our informants mentioned this house and this weekend.” He ran a hand through his short-cropped blonde hair. “And the custard, of course.”
My eyes had gotten used to the light, but the cut on my face was starting to sting. I threw back the blankets to get up and get a band-aid, and both men had guns suddenly leveled on me. My hands went up, and I managed to squeak, “I’m just going to the bathroom!”
The blonde man smiled tightly. “Force of habit,” he said; they both tucked their guns away.
I got up more slowly, pulled on my pants, and stumped past them to the bathroom. “So who are you guys?”
“Interspecies Affairs.” The short one seemed to be the talker; he flashed a vague badge shape at me from his wallet. “We try to keep the peace, keep the lesser animals in check.” He blew out a breath. “For all it’s worth. They just don’t understand that if the truth got out, the whole system would crash down on top of them and they’d be right back out on the streets. They just keep pushing; your own dog seems to be the leader of some sort of insurgent front.”
“Imagine that,” I mumbled, laying a band-aid over the gash on my cheek. It wasn’t as big as it felt.
“But their tribal rivalries keep them from cooperating in any real organized effort; it’s all instinct with them, you know.” He tapped his head and smiled. “We control things pretty easily.” His smile got thinner. “So if you’ll just hand over the custard, we’ll be on our way.”
I splashed some water on my face while I tried to think. “Why does everything keep coming back to this custard? What does it have to do with anything?”
“We don’t know,” the man said evenly. “But if they all want it, we have to get it first.” He lowered his voice. “It’s a war, Mr. Carr, a war no one but us knows about. We give them food, shelter, a lifestyle they couldn’t even dream of in the wild, and how do they repay us?” His face was going red, veins shivering on his neck. “Dirtying our homes and cars! Running loose in the streets! Barking and scratching, chittering and twittering, hissing and howling all day and all night! And now this whole custard thing!” He held up a fist. “If I had my way, I’d line ’em all up, get me an Uzi, and—”
The taller man put a hand on the short man’s shoulder; he shuddered and straightened up. “We’ve got to keep ahead of them,” he said after a moment, “so if you’ll hand over the custard, please.”
I decided then that I had taken all I was going to take. “Can I get some coffee first? I’m still a little shaken up.”
“I understand,” the short man said. “War’s not pretty.”
I led them into the front room and gestured to the chairs. “I’ll just be a minute. Can I get you anything?”
“Only the custard.” Another thin smile, and he settled into my armchair. I smiled back, pushed into the kitchen, let the door swing shut, then bolted it and latched the chain.
I fell to my knees and pulled open the cupboard under the sink. The key was still in my pocket, and I wrestled it till the lock came undone. I dragged the ice chest out, got a plate, dumped the custard onto it, and dug in face first.
By this time, I could hear the short man calling my name. That was followed by a knocking at the door, then a pounding. I continued to eat. It was pretty good custard, but there was a lot of it; I had barely finished when they battered the door open and sprang in, their guns drawn.
Custard clung cold and hard to my face and chest, and for a minute, I was sure they were going to shoot; the veins in the short man’s neck were twitching again. But the taller man tucked his gun away and put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. After another few seconds, the short man gave a strangled sort of sigh and snapped his gun back into his jacket. I licked the custard from my fingers.
It took him a minute to find his voice. “If this wasn’t all so covert, I’d shoot you down like the traitor to your species you are.” I could almost see his eyes glowing behind his dark glasses. “You symps make me sick.”
I shrugged. “What can I say? I like custard.”
He took a step toward me, but his partner again grabbed his shoulder. The blonde man glared at me, then choked out, “When everything hits the fan, mister, don’t you come crying to me! When that dog of yours stops wagging his tail and turns on you, you’ll remember me! And then it’ll be too late! You hear me?! Too late!” He shouldered past the taller man and stormed into the front room; I heard the door crash as he threw it open.
The tall man looked at me for a second or two, then pulled down his dark glasses, gave me a wink, turned, and walked out.
I spent the rest of the day cleaning up the remains o
f the sofa: breaking up the framework and setting it out by the back gate, vacuuming up the fuzz and fabric, and trying to find a way to set the remaining furniture in some sort of balance. I finally got one I liked and was heating up another dinner of soup when I heard the door open; Bruce came bounding into the kitchen, a big grin on his face. “Jim! Miss me?”
“You!” I tried to shout angrily, but he leaped up and covered my face with licks; I finally pushed him down and got out: “What’s been going on here?!”
His eyes were dancing as he looked around. “I like what you’ve done with front room, but where’s the refrigerator?”
“Mice!” I blurted out. “With guns! And crows! And cats! And—”
“Oh, so they showed up, huh? Grendal get through okay?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know anything! How could you—”
“Grendal did show up, didn’t he?”
“Yes! He was the only one who didn’t try to kill me! At least, not at first!”
“Good, good.” He looked around again, his tongue lolling out. “So where’s the custard?”
I’d been waiting for that question. “I ate it! You hear me?! I will not be a pawn in anyone’s little game! I ate your whole stinking custard!”
Bruce nodded. “I was hoping you would; it’d probably be a little stale by now, anyway.”
I stared at him.
He gave a panting sort of laugh. “See, we had to get everyone’s attention focused somewhere else so our real plan could come off. We got this whole custard thing circulating, and it worked like a charm. You were terrific.”
For a minute or two I could only blink. “You…you mean it was…was all a front? All phony? You…I…you…you could’ve gotten me killed!”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. It got a little hairier than we thought.” He was all grins. “But, hey, it worked.”
“What worked?! What were you doing?! What’s been going on this weekend?!”
“Woof,” Bruce said.
“What?!”
“Woof,” he repeated.
I made him sleep outside that night. When I let him in the next morning, he dropped an envelope it at my feet, gave a few licks at his water dish, then went into the front room. I picked up the envelope, and there were eleven one hundred dollar bills inside. It was just enough for a new refrigerator and sofa, and the little that was left rented a carpet cleaner to get rid of the spot of crow’s blood.
I put the whole adventure on my list of things not to think about and let him sleep in my room again. He did pay for the damage, after all. And what good does it do to hold a grudge?
Especially against your own dog.
DEITY THEORY, by James L. Steele
Abby twisted the cork from the glass bottle, shook a capsule into her hand and stared at her palm. She had taken one of these pills almost every night for the last fourteen years. Tonight she thought of all those people in the school, coughing and moaning and screaming at things that were not there. Nobody had died yet, but she had heard on the radio this morning that thousands had already perished in the plague sweeping the globe.
The scientists were at a loss to explain it. The population density was intentionally kept low to prevent the spread of disease, so by all logic and reason this plague should not exist.
Over the last few weeks Abby thought of the jackal while she listened to the news broadcasts. She remembered him prancing about Canvas, bragging about what he just made to the tiger and the cheetah and even the lion, arguing with them over how many of their plants and animals were dying, how it wasn’t right to make something that affected what someone else created. None of it made sense then, but now it added up.
In her hand Abby held a choice: to sleep peacefully and wake up to a nightmare, or to visit Canvas again and find out if her intuition was right. She had not been to Canvas in eight years. This was the first time she wanted to go back.
She tipped the pill back into the bottle, corked it and set it next to the radio on the shelf. She removed her clothes. When she was a little girl, she often broke into hot sweats whenever she went there. The village only had electricity for six hours a day, and she didn’t want to waste it laundering a few pieces of clothing. She could wash them in the river, but the scientists advised everyone not to risk it, as the plague might be waterborne. She thought she knew better, and now was the time to prove it.
She slipped under the thin blanket and lay her head on the pile of clean clothes. She used to have a pillow, but two weeks ago a stray dog had wandered in and chewed it up, along with several books and her winter blanket, and there would not be a supply train from the city for another month.
The sun was setting. The warm wind blew the curtain inward and waved it around. Her brother’s mat was on the other side of the narrow room, empty. The farmhands were living in the makeshift village far away and dared not come back until the scientists could figure out a way to treat the plague.
The village scientists had been pleading with the city for extra electricity for days to expand their research, but their village was only three hundred residents. Their labs were not expected to make any kind of breakthrough, which was ridiculous because it was Abby’s village that had first isolated the proton more than a decade ago.
She was thrilled not to have to take night shift, but she shivered in the summer heat thinking about the sick she needed to tend in the morning. The spasms, the bleeding, the hallucinations, the mucus everywhere… The scientists insisted the plague was not airborne, but they also did not know how it was transmitted.
Abby knew. Her nerves calmed, and she began to slip across. The heat of summertime faded, and a new, more intense heat replaced it. The sleeping mat and the pile of clothes under her head now felt like sand. Canvas felt just as real as the world she left.
She opened her eyes. She was lying down in the desert this time. She rose to her feet, conjured loose clothing for herself, and took in her surroundings. There was nothing but majestic sand dunes as far as she could see in all directions. She was hoping to appear in the forest, but it seemed her childhood ability to be anywhere she wanted at will was weaker now.
Returning here after so many years was a strange sensation. As a child, this was her private playground. Now she felt like a stranger in an unfamiliar country. Canvas felt dangerous, and she disliked the change. She couldn’t see them from here, but she remembered where the forest would be and ran in the direction of the trees. She glanced back and was relieved to see her bare feet still left no footprints in the sand.
When she was four years old, she had described the sensation to many doctors and scientists, but none could come up with an answer for why she was always so sleepy during the day. It wasn’t until a few years ago she concluded that she never really went to sleep when she came here. She wasn’t dreaming, but going to a real place where she was awake and alive, and yet Canvas also had dreamlike qualities. She could will things to appear, become invisible, fly—all the expected elements of a lucid dream.
The doctors had diagnosed Abby with “chronic dreams,” her being the very first to have the condition. The pills they prescribed inhibited them. Without the pills the doctors designed for her, she would never have been able to concentrate on her schooling. From her pre-school years all the way into her late teens she cheered every time the train arrived, bringing the raw herbs and chemicals the apothecary refined, distilled and combined to make the medicine that allowed her to sleep peacefully.
Now she was back. This had been her second home, and she had wandered these deserts and forests and mountains and oceans and observed everything that went on. She explored every corner of the place, completely invisible to all the inhabitants. When she knew the pills worked, she occasionally skipped her medicine just to come back. Now that she wasn’t prisoner to Canvas every night and was free to come and go as she pleased, it was a playground as large as the imagination, all for her to enjoy in any way she wanted.
When she graduated primary sc
hool and had to help with the housework and the harvest, Canvas seemed like something she needed to leave in her childhood. She had taken her medication every night all through secondary school and grew up into a happy, normal young lady.
She heard voices over the next dune and crouched low as she climbed it. She peeked over the crest. The valley between the next two sand dunes was wet, and there was a giant snake with purple and green scales down there. He was coiled up and screaming at the heron flapping just above his reach.
“I told you to stop bringing rain here!” The snake’s fangs were as tall as Abby. “This is the only place I can sculpt the sand the way I like it!”
As he shouted, the heron’s wings created wind and blew the dry sand in Abby’s face. The dunes on either side of them were visibly wearing away.
“And stop that! I wanted no wind here! It destroys my work! It took me years to mold the sand to look like this!”
“Your desert needs rain just as much as the tiger’s forest. More so now that you have plants and animals to care for.”
“Well, move the shark faster! Maybe it will only take me a few weeks to fix it all!”
Abby ventured to look to her left, the direction the heron’s wings were blowing the wind, and sure enough it was raining on that side of the desert. She remembered the myth: the shark had a massive stomach and used it to swallow vast quantities of the ocean. She was unable to deliver it anywhere, but her lover, the heron, drew up the wind and cast her aloft, carrying her around the world so she could spread the rain.
“I don’t know how you tolerate this place,” shouted the heron. “Why do you surround yourself with emptiness? Don’t you want things to grow here? If not for me bringing a few showers here, nothing would.”
The snake coiled up, stretched into the air and snapped his jaws at the bird. The heron was about the same size as the snake, though it was difficult to appreciate the size of these Animals because her sense of scale was so distorted here. The heron easily flew out of reach and flapped harder, creating more wind that blew the sand around.
