Miscreations

by Michael Bailey

  I entered the empty room and closed the door behind me and stood under the dangling lightbulb and waited.

  Eventually, my family would come down to check on me, and together we would play.

  There were no windows here.

  The Vodyanoy

  Christina Sng

  I keep you in a tank

  By the washing machine

  Where I watch you bob

  Up and down in the water,

  Like an old buoy by the harbor,

  Adrift and forgotten after

  A lifetime of ill-gotten gains,

  And great, terrible adventure.

  I remember so clearly the day

  You seized me from my family,

  Butchering each one of them

  While you made me watch,

  Screaming till my voice was gone,

  My home and everyone

  I’d ever known and loved

  Burned to the ground.

  You took me back to your world,

  Kept me as your property and pet,

  Paraded me to your family and friends

  Despite your people’s obvious contempt.

  I returned the favor to you

  At your 40th birthday bash,

  In the chocolate ganache cake

  I made for all of you.

  Watching your people choke and die,

  Bleeding to death from the inside,

  Was my greatest joy

  In the endless years I lived with you.

  I fed you the antidote,

  Paralyzing you,

  Transporting you home,

  Far from everybody’s eyes,

  Placing you in a tank

  I custom-built to keep you,

  Floating like my lost foetuses

  In the jars you filled with glue.

  Often, my daughter asks,

  What kind of monster are you?

  I tell her you are a vodyanoy,

  An evil water creature

  Who loves to enslave girls

  And destroy worlds.

  We keep you here to ensure

  Humanity is safe from you.

  She likes that answer

  And much later,

  As a world-class mythologist,

  Immortalizes you.

  You’ve always wanted to be famous,

  Boasting about how great you are

  For the better part of twenty years.

  Now you live in a museum.

  Don’t say

  I’ve never done anything for you.

  Imperfect Clay

  Lisa Morton

  What I’ve discovered:

  We’re all born broken.

  ~

  My name is Ariché Stone; my mother’s mother was from Chihuahua, and my first name means “dusk” to her people, the Rarámuri. My friends just call me Ari. I’m a twenty-five-year-old, heteronormative, cis-female magician, like mi abuela. I’ve had two year-long relationships with men; neither ended well.

  You’re probably more interested in hearing about my vocation, though.

  I’m a magician, but not the kind who performs card tricks for drinks or produces doves from scarves. I’m only five-foot-three, and my hands are too small to palm anything larger than a grape. I also don’t enjoy appearing in front of large groups of onlookers scrutinizing my every move in hopes of discovering my secrets.

  That won’t work, anyway, because my secret is that I’m a real magician, as in, I can perform severe alterations in matter by thought, willpower, and spellcasting. My particular specialty is working with organic material. Hand me a scarf, and I won’t just show you a dove, I’ll produce a small dragon that might set your hair on fire.

  I’m in my third year of apprenticeship, and my master is the renowned Dr. Jameson Charters.

  I don’t like him much. Certainly, he’s a genius at what he does, and I’m lucky to be studying under him (I know that because I hear it so often). But he takes a little too much enjoyment in making sure that I know I’m under him.

  In case you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of any of this, if you’re thinking that I’m full of shit, just some new age believer gone too far, or maybe I’m a few meds short of sanity, let me assure you: Magicians (we call ourselves the Gifted) are real and we’re all around. Sure, we don’t advertise what we do; the first spell most of us learn is erasure, so you won’t remember our miracles. Why? Because most of the history of the Gifted’s interaction with humans consists of us being shunned, tortured, hanged, and burned. Maybe you’ve even met me and don’t remember.

  Anyway, I’m glad that I’m coming into the concluding year of my apprenticeship. For the last three years, I’ve shared a small apartment near the Charters Institute in Los Angeles; my roommate, Mackenzie, is also a third year apprentice but she’s studying alchemy with Kristina Ling. She adores Kristina; they sometimes have coffee together after sessions.

  Jameson is likelier to make me bring him coffee and then tell me to leave. Kristina teaches her students in a lovely, airy, wood-paneled studio behind her home in Brentwood. Jameson’s lessons are learned in a dingy university lab, unpleasantly lit by overhead fluorescents that only add to the greenish pallor already provided by the color of the walls.

  Fourth-year apprentices are required to create and complete a major project of some kind. It’s the final test of everything they’ve learned, the Gifted’s equivalent of completing grad school. Mackenzie’s project will be to create a ship from seawater. She’s always enjoyed the beach.

  I’m going to make a man.

  The final project must be something that will take at least six months to create. Mackenzie’s ship, for example, will have to be a fully-functional vessel, with a solid hull and engines and navigation system and crew quarters and guest rooms and decks and everything else a ship needs to travel the ocean. When it’s complete, she and Kris will take a cruise; if the ship is found satisfactory, Kris will approve Mackenzie as a journeyman magician, and Mackenzie will theoretically have a number of jobs to choose from. She’s hoping someone will hire her to make underwater cities.

  Me, I want to be a healer. I’d like to go from studying under Jameson to employment in R&D with a biotech firm.

  If I survive Jameson. And if I can create a man.

  It’s a notoriously difficult project. Other students have tried and failed. There was a story (it sounds like an urban legend to me) of a young man named Nick Hronis whose attempt to make a woman resulted in a quivering blob of sentient jelly that pulled him down into its hot red essence, where he suffocated.

  “Do you think you can do it?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Do you actually think you can do it?” Jameson asked.

  I told them both I could.

  Mackenzie’s next question was, “Why that?” When I didn’t answer right away, she added, “Is this because of Devonté?”

  “No,” I blurted out, but after a few seconds I added, “Maybe a little …”

  I said that I’d had two year-long relationships; Devonté had been the last one, and I was lying slightly because we’d actually been together only nine months. Nine months: long enough for me to realize we were not pregnant with future potential. Devonté wasn’t a magician, but a musician, so we understood each other well enough. Surely the creation of a song, made up of individual notes pulled from nowhere, is a form of magic.

  My favorite evenings with Devonté were the ones we spent together at home, either mine or his (a guest house behind a beautiful if slightly tumble-down old Victorian in Silver Lake that was probably kept standing by a few spells Mackenzie had secretly cast). On those nights, I’d study and practice my magic, while Devonté, working with a laptop and a plug-in four-octave keyboard, would create his music. We’d occasionally look up at each other and smile. At som
e point we’d come together, kiss, grapple, fall into bed.

  The evenings I was less fond of were when we went out. I’ve never been good at parties, but Devonté didn’t help when he’d forget to introduce me to his friends. At restaurants (which he chose), he’d order for me. In small groups, he never even noticed how often he cut me off in mid-sentence.

  I accepted it for a while, blinded by his many gifts, but then he started asking me questions about working with Jameson. The questions got more aggressive (“Are you sleeping with him?”), and Devonté got angrier. He’d throw open the door to his guest house and stride furiously around the backyard. This, too, I accepted for a while, but it was Mackenzie who finally got through. “You’re not happy, Ari,” she said, one night over frappuccinos, “and I hate seeing you like this.”

  So I worked up my courage and told Devonté it was over. He screamed for a while, apparently believing the decision to end it should have been his choice. He stopped calling after a week, especially when Mackenzie intercepted one of the calls and told him she could change all of his equipment into blocks of granite.

  I, of course, could have done far worse to him. But mi abuela, who’d also been a healer, had taught me well.

  Mackenzie was a little bit right, though: I did want to create a man in part because of Devonté (and Tom before him, and my father before him, and Jameson now). I would create a man who was a true partner, an equal in every way.

  Mackenzie smiled at me. “I think my boat’s gonna be easier,” she said.

  I told her I’d never been interested in easy.

  ~

  So it began:

  The ancient texts all indicated an order to the creation of a living being. First, a half-body was created from clay, to serve as the shell. Jameson—who had assured me over and over that I would fail my final project—gave me my own workshop room. It was small, just large enough to hold a steel table and a few counters, but it was fine for my needs. I set up two webcams; I might be working with unseen powers and eldritch magicks, but I would need to provide modern documentation to Jameson.

  I started by choosing a name. I wanted my creation to be perfect, angelic. The thought of making him musical amused me, so I named him Gabriel.

  It took weeks to mold the clay into a six-foot-long hollow form, only the open bottom half. The clay had ash from the tomb of an ancient Mycenaean priest mixed in, and some of my hair and blood.

  The next step was bones. These I formed from cedar branches, laid carefully into the clay half-body.

  Then: muscles from strong hemp fiber. Veins from cotton threads. Nerves from spider webs.

  I was into the fourth month of Gabriel when I began work on the major organs. Jameson appeared from time to time to check my progress. At first his lip curled, but as the weeks wore on his expression became sober, his tongue silent. I thought he was no longer amused but impressed.

  In Month Six, Mackenzie finished her ship. I rode on it with her, parting the waves of Santa Monica Bay on a glorious early spring day. We cried at the beauty of it all, and laughed, and hugged. It far exceeded her plans. For her graduation, Kristina gifted her with a fifteenth-century grimoire, still bound in the original vellum. Mackenzie received multiple job offers.

  Gabriel, meanwhile, was nearing completion. Stomach, liver, kidneys, had all been placed. The brain had been crafted from the trunk of a 300-year-old oak tree that had just been cut down for a housing development. The heart was the purest mother-of-pearl, ground and mixed with a piece of dried skin that had once belonged to the body of a great hero. Jameson had reluctantly granted me that item from his own store of materials.

  The last touch was something that none of the texts or records talked about, something that no other magician had—as far as I knew—ever tried. If it worked, I would be not just be a full magician and free of my apprenticeship to Jameson, but even famous.

  The last touch was to place one of my own ribs into Gabriel.

  I had performed simpler surgical procedures; I’d set broken bones and sealed cuts. Once, when my brother was five and I was eight, he’d been bitten by a rattlesnake, and I’d extracted the venom and smoothed out the bite marks. The biggest thing I’d ever done was remove a grapefruit-sized tumor from my Uncle Danny. Working under Jameson (always under ), I’d assisted with psychic surgeries; I knew how to transplant organs, graft bone, and restart hearts.

  I’d never tried any of these things on myself.

  I knew I could ask Mackenzie for help, but I was afraid she’d stress out, try to talk me out of it. I thought the whole thing over and over for days, until I was convinced I could do it.

  The time came.

  I’d already prepared a replacement rib from some of the same cedar wood I’d used for Gabriel’s bones. I would remove my clothing and lay down on the floor below Gabriel; I would clear my mind first, as I did before more difficult healings. When I was centered, I would use my right hand to reach into the left side of my chest; my fingers would move through the skin easily. The bone would be more difficult, but I knew my concentrated effort would finally allow me to press my fingers together through the bottom (floating) rib like I was pushing through butter. I would then remove the rib (about four inches of it), and immediately replace it with the artificial one. I expected pain, I expected a few hours of recovery as the cedar transformed, aligning with my marrow and osseous tissue.

  And Gabriel would be born from a part of me.

  It was, of course, agonizing, as this kind of labor should perhaps be. Removing the rib tore fascia that was not easily repaired. Because I needed to stay awake, I couldn’t apply any unconsciousness spells. The pain nearly overwhelmed me, causing my vision to fail. I clung on to awareness and life, barely keeping hold. I felt the heat of blood smearing my body, smelled it bubbling up from within as well. My shuddering fingers found the replacement, shoved it in without caution or finesse. I had to turn it inside, each movement causing fresh waves of red excruciation. I bit back screams, choking.

  At last I felt the new bone align, meshing with the existing me under my fingers. The wood changed, knit with the surrounding tissues. I extracted my hand, massaged the skin, healing. The blood dried beneath my touch.

  I passed out.

  When I awoke, it was a day later. I was weak, famished, still covered in dried blood, but alive and whole.

  I placed my rib within Gabriel. His interior was complete. It took me three days to recover. I moved on to the final stage.

  In another month I finished the upper half of the body, and then began the process of instilling life. For seven days—a span of time I’d not specifically planned, but which I recognized as rich in meaning—I chanted over my creation, invoking the most ancient energies. I paused only for my own basic needs. As the enchantments flowed from me, I watched the clay of his body take on the suppleness of skin, turning to a hue of dark bronze; the hairs I’d mixed in to the material of his head grew, becoming ebony, luxuriant waves. The features of the face took on definition, day by day molding themselves ala the most revered expression of classical beauty.

  On the night of the seventh day, Gabriel took his first, trembling breath.

  I leapt from my cross-legged position on the countertop and stood over him. He struggled for the second breath, then the third. I put my ear to his chest and heard the beat of his heart. Placing my hands on him, I focused my energies and he breathed easier. Soon he seemed like someone in a deep sleep.

  I made notes, spoke to the cameras, and waited. I had an ice chest full of food, water ready, boxes of adult diapers.

  On the eighth day, he opened his eyes. For a few minutes he didn’t move, but then he looked at me. What did I see there? He was unfathomable.

  “Hello, Gabriel,” I said, in the gentlest of tones.

  He blinked, uncomprehending.

  I’d cast spells of intelligence, treating him as a
human computer with a pre-installed operating system and files to draw from, but had I failed? What if he emerged as an exquisite, mindless thing?

  He slept again.

  On the ninth day, when he awakened, I got him to sit up. It was hard, he had to cling to me, but at last it was accomplished. He needed nourishment, so I held up a carton of almond milk, drank from it with exaggerated gulps. He watched, and I saw the first hint of understanding. I had a jug specially prepared of the milk enchanted with spells to speed his development; I offered that to him, and he reached for it. Working together, he took his first, sputtering sips.

  He wanted more.

  After that, his growth proceeded quickly. Within another week he was walking, eating everything I ate, and watching videos on a tablet computer. I replaced the steel table with a comfortable cot. He learned to use a bedside toilet.

  On the eighteenth day, as I washed him, he stiffened under the cloth. We both looked down, both curious, both something more.

  On the twentieth day, he used my name for the first time. “Ari,” he said, as my back was to him while I made notes. I turned, saw his erection, saw the wash cloth he held out toward me, the pleading look in his eyes.

  I at least turned off the cameras before I pushed him back onto the bed and climbed on top of him.

  Maybe you’re thinking that was a mistake, that I’d confused my professional and personal goals. Maybe you’d be right. But it was incredible, and when he climaxed inside me, I saw a new spark in his eyes.

  After that he progressed even more rapidly. He learned to speak complete sentences; he watched movies and television and news shows on the tablet, he listened to podcasts and music; he took it all in, a ceaseless sponge. He told me one day he wanted to go outside. Dressed in a simple T-shirt, jeans, and trainers, we took a walk out of the dingy university building.