The Doomsday Book of Fairy Tales

by Emily Brewes

  “Okay. Lie back here and try to rest. I’m just going across the hall for a sec. You feel a spell coming on again, you just —” I paused, looking around. My eyes landed on a multibit screwdriver with a handle of smoky black plastic. I picked it up and folded Mum’s fingers around it.

  “You feel like you’re gonna seize or spew or anything, just use this to bang on the bed frame. Or throw it on the ground or something. Make a noise, and I’ll come running. Got it?”

  Another nod.

  “Good stuff.”

  I stood up. The tokens jangled in my pocket. Two would get the stalest of dry rations, another two got an override for extra water or fuel (not both). That left six to pay the sawbones to come, but none for treatment. Assuming he could do anything but shrug and advise me to pray. As though reading my mind, Mum tugged at my pant leg and pointed to a rusty coffee can on a shelf in the kitchen. When I peeled off the red plastic lid, there were seven more tokens inside.

  “Ssssaving them fo-or your birthdaaay,” she croaked. When she smiled, half of her mouth pulled into a grit-toothed rictus while the other half stayed slack.

  I made myself smile back, swallowing the horror and dread rising like bile in my throat. “They’ll be plan B, then. Just relax. I’m going to have a chat with Mr. Metzler.” I put the coffee can back on the shelf and hustled out of the room. Every step felt further weighted by a burden of illness, until I was sure I was bent double stepping out the door.

  Once in the hall, I straightened. Free of the room, of that twisted version of my mother’s face, I was tempted by a giddy impulse that told me to run. Run far, run fast, run away. Several deep breaths were enough to walk me back from the edge of that cliff. It was another minute before I felt composed enough to approach the Metzlers’ door.

  “D’you know what fucking time it is?” His face appeared like a big, beefy moon, with only a dim light in the room behind him.

  “Who is it?” called Stella.

  “Vanderchuck’s kid,” he called back. To me, he said, “What d’you want?”

  Clearing my throat, I said, “Mr. Metzler, I think my mum’s sick.”

  Then I threw up on his door.

  “WHAT’S THE POINT of all this, Jesse? I thought this was about Mum’s deathbed speech. So say it already.”

  “I’m old, Olivia. And that’s not how memory works. Shut up and listen.”

  SHE LINGERED FOR NEARLY two weeks. Seizures wracked her body with increasing regularity. The barber came and witnessed one. Then he shook his head and advised us to send away for a proper medic, if we could afford it. I replied that if we could afford a medic, we wouldn’t have wasted his time.

  Our neighbourhood barber was typically surly at the best of times but never more so than when performing his sawbones routine. Mum had said it was a reference to an old television show that her sister watched all the time. Instead of giving me what-for, he clapped me on the shoulder with something that seemed like sympathy.

  “Keep that sense of humour, kid. You’re gonna need it down here.”

  Then he left.

  They all left. I was alone with Mum for days. She’d developed a cough that made it hard for her to take in food. No sooner was the empty spoon pulled from her mouth than its contents were sprayed out by a fit of growling wet coughing. As a result, she lost a lot of weight, even in that short span. I could carry her in my arms to and from the tin washtub in the kitchen. It was little more effort than carrying Doggo.

  One morning, I just sat beside her bed, my head on the mattress. I was running low on will, we were running short on tokens, and the neighbours were running short on charity. Mum’s breathing sounded like lengths of corroded chain being hauled out of a swamp, all loud rattles and damp slapping.

  And I felt like I was standing at the foot of a tall dam made of salt and it was dissolving. Eroding. I didn’t know how much longer it would hold back the tidewater. I only hoped it was long enough to see this to the bitter end.

  This. Mum’s death.

  I was just waiting. Maybe we both were. Counting down the clock, alone together in our dingy little room for two. Sitting there, half dozing, I was woken by her hand gripping mine. It was strong enough to hurt. I sat up.

  “Hey, what’s wrong? What’s up?”

  She sputtered for a moment, getting frustrated at herself and making it worse.

  “Calm down. Take it slow.”

  Mum closed her eyes and took two deep, deliberate breaths. When she opened her eyes, the pain in them hit me like an actual slap in the face. Some instinct made my body shrink back, but she held me fast by the hand. Pulled me closer.

  “I was wrong,” she said. Her words were slurred, but I heard her clearly in spite of it. “We shouldn’t have come here.” Tears welled and dropped from those tortured eyes. My petty complaints were shamed to insignificance by the exhaustion I saw in them — years of toil and sacrifice, of compromise and ingratitude. I saw all of this, and I watched it rise up and disappear like smoke.

  Her grip tightened another notch. This time, I gripped back.

  “And I’m sorry about your dad,” she said. “I should’ve let you say good-bye, but I thought you were too young. I didn’t think you’d understand.” The end of her sentence was pinched and twisted by a rising fit. She turned her head so she wouldn’t cough into my face. When the fit was over and she turned back to face me, the pillow and her chin were smeared with bloody sputum.

  “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, no,” I sputtered. I wanted to get a cloth to wipe her face. I wanted to hug her and beg her not to leave me all alone. I wanted to apologize for any and all bratty teenage transgressions of which I was guilty. At the same time, I would not — could not — let go of her hand.

  “Mum, no.”

  “Tell Olivia, when you see her.” With her free hand, she reached across and brushed my hair back from my forehead.

  WE WERE STILL STANDING in the ruin of Dad’s workshop, a little ways from each other. Olivia hung her head and picked at a loose tail of yarn that hung from the end of her mitten.

  “Don’t do that, you’ll unravel the whole thing.”

  “Shut up.”

  I guess the story took longer than I’d thought it would. The sun was high enough now to throw most of the room into shadow.

  “We should bring in some firewood. Or something. Right?”

  She said nothing. My story had woven a spell to make her six years old again: stubborn and silent in the face of strong emotion. I tried the only counterspell I could think of to rouse her out of herself.

  “Hey, Liverwurst.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  It worked. I grinned. “What’re you gonna do, tell on me?”

  The joke was dark, but it broke the tension. We ended up collapsing on each other, our faces wet with tears of release, our ribs aching. It might have been the first good laugh either of us had had in years.

  “I’ll grab some firewood,” she said when the laughter had faded. “You head inside and chase out any raccoons that might’ve got in.”

  I feigned surprise. “That a regular problem?”

  “Regular as a cow on a high-fibre diet,” she replied.

  WATCH OUT FOR THE ICY PATCH

  IT WAS GETTING DARK and Olivia wasn’t back yet. We’d hit the depths of midwinter and it was horrendously cold. I wasn’t worried exactly — there were times she’d be gone for days — but the prospect of being alone right then was unpleasant. There was an unshakeable funk on my shoulders. Being sick, being lonely, being old, and ruminating about the past. Everything had just kind of mounted up. Pair that with a dose of cabin fever, and it was a perfect storm of suck. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than somebody to play Scrabble with. I settled for chucking another log on the fire.

  “Don’t be sad, Food Bringer.”

  I started. Hearing voices was not a good sign. Especially voices that belonged to the dead. Holding still, I listened hard for the least signal that Olivia was nearby, playing
a prank in incredibly bad taste. Nothing but the wind creaking around the roof. At times, it gusted up hard, blowing across the top of the chimney to make a deep hooting sound.

  When I concluded I was alone, I let go of the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding in. From close by my ear, Doggo said, “Can I get under your blanket? It’s cold and scary out here.”

  Before I could stop myself, I leapt up off the couch. The blankets fell to the floor. I shrieked to an empty house. In reply, the wind continued its jug-band solo across the chimney.

  “Don’t do this,” I begged aloud, but barely. “It’s not fair. He’s gone!”

  “Who’s gone, Food Bringer?” His voice was so close, it seemed to come from my ear. Not inside, exactly, but not outside, either. “Is it time to eat?”

  On the verge of breaking down completely, my haunting was interrupted by a loud bang from the back door being kicked open. Creaks and heavy thumps on the floor were followed by the damp thud of a fresh kill landing on the kitchen table.

  “Jesse?” called Olivia. “If you’re awake, come help dress this buck.”

  The whole house was dim. I’d lit no lanterns or candles, so the only light came from a few slanting rays that reached through the kitchen window. Before Olivia closed the door behind her, I could see past her shoulder that it was starting to snow.

  “Thought you were off on one of your wanderings,” I said, lighting a hurricane lamp we ran off refined animal fat. The flame burned lower overall than it did on kerosene, but the glass chimney kept it protected from the drafts that pervaded the old house.

  In reply, Olivia gestured to the carcass she’d slung on the table. “Would’ve been quicker, but my aim was off. Hadda follow this one over hell’s half acre till he tired out, so I could finish him off.”

  She tossed her hunting knife into the sink, its blade dark with blood, along with her similarly stained mitts. Then she continued methodically divesting herself of no fewer than seven layers of clothing, down to a sagging set of trapdoor long johns the colour of an old dishrag.

  “I heard Doggo,” I blurted. I was desperate for reassurance, to hear her dismiss the fancy as the sickness talking. That there was nothing to worry about.

  “What, like walking around the house?” she asked, to my disappointment.

  Mild shock at her indulgence held my tongue for a moment. “No,” I explained. “Talking. To me. Like he’s alive.”

  She looked at me askance. Oh, now she was gonna get skeptical.

  In response, I got indignant. “Don’t give me side-eye. I’m serious.”

  Olivia crossed the room, put her hands on my shoulders, and looked up into my face. “Jesse, I’ve been meaning to say this for a while. Listen to me carefully: dogs can’t talk. Okay?”

  “Doggo could talk, Olivia. I heard him all the time.”

  “What about other people?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  She sighed and guided me into the living room. She was silent as she sat me back on the couch and bundled the blankets around me. Then she crouched by the wood stove and stoked up the fire.

  “‘What about other people’ as in did anyone else hear Doggo talk? Did they comment or say something like, ‘Holy shit! A talking dog!’?” She picked up the poker and jostled the partially burned logs into a better configuration.

  I scrunched down into my woolly cocoon on the couch. The conversation was beginning to make me uncomfortable. Much as I might’ve questioned my sanity from the safety of my own head, it was decidedly unmooring to hear someone else do the same. Neither of us spoke for a time. Meanwhile, the wind blew up a hootenanny that only ended when Olivia damped down the flue.

  “Well?” she asked, finally.

  “No, not really.” I had to admit. “Not as such. That I can recall.”

  “When you heard Doggo talk to you for the first time, didn’t it strike you as odd that a dog was talking?”

  I sat for a long while without answering. Of course it had, but then I’d dismissed it as some fluke of life in the future. Just something that happened, like phosphorescent forests of fungi or the instinct to check a stranger’s hands for weapons.

  “This is dumb,” I said. “He was just a talking dog in a post-apocalyptic world. What’s the big deal?”

  Olivia shook her head. “I get it,” she said. “For a while, after I found Dad, I heard him. Not just his voice. I heard him walking around the house. That weird frog croak thing he used to do in his throat.”

  There was another one of those pauses that seemed to plague our conversations. She got up and sat on the other end of the couch, burrowing her feet under the edge of my blankets.

  “I was alone,” she explained. “I was afraid. I’d spent a few weeks trying to find this place, dodging bandits, getting lost. Because I didn’t know where I was going exactly. I had to look at maps, when I could find them. Ask directions when I came across somebody and hope to God they didn’t try anything. I only had the name of the town, and lots of folks who might’ve known the way were either dead or gone Underground. Getting to town got me close. Not everyone I met was helpful. Or kind.”

  She exhaled through her teeth before going on. “So I finally got here, but I didn’t go in the workshop right away. I only went in to look for some tools I needed, and then … Jesse, I felt so guilty. We left him, we left him, I kept telling myself. I got so mad, I almost burned the whole place down. I was about to, just torch it and move on. That’s when I started hearing him. And I couldn’t.”

  “Maybe you should have.” My words fell heavily as stones into a still pond.

  Olivia shrugged. “I’m just saying I understand. I don’t remember much about how things might have been before, so maybe I’m used to being afraid. I heard him for a while, and then I stopped. Maybe you’ll stop hearing Doggo when you stop feeling guilty about his death.”

  “But I heard him when he was alive. Maybe I’m just crazy. What if I’m crazy, Olivia?”

  She laughed. “You think this world is sane?” Then she reached over and started rubbing my back, between the shoulder blades.

  “That calms you down, not me.”

  “It calms everyone down,” she replied, brooking no argument. “Anyway, even if you’re crazy, just promise me one thing.”

  I tried not to, but my eyes slid closed and I let myself relax. “What’s that?” I muttered.

  “Don’t axe murder me in my sleep, okay?”

  I nodded slowly. “Got it. Only axe murder during waking hours.”

  “You’re such a shit,” she told me.

  “It runs in the family,” I replied.

  ANOTHER FINE MESS

  “THE CHARGE IS RECKLESS endangerment of a community by ailment and communication of disease resulting in death. The truth of this charge has been proved to the satisfaction of this court, and you are found guilty. The sentence of banishment without parole will be carried out immediately.”

  The scent of cooking meat was enough of a rarity that it was acrid even in my memory. Or dream. Or whatever this was. The knowledge that the meat was my own flesh was something I tried to keep from my conscious mind. Being kicked out of Underground permanently was bad enough. No need to make things worse by upchucking on the brand-wielder’s shoes.

  I did throw up, but that was later. Doggo and I were alone beyond the city gate, which was no more than a derelict access hatch behind one of the towers. The door slammed in our faces with an echoing metallic clang. And that was that.

  Like an idiot, I scratched at an itch on my face. On my newly burned and branded face. Instead of relief, I felt a round patch of wet emptiness as the barely formed scab came away in my hand. The emptiness filled with stinging pain when a drying breeze blew across the wetness.

  That’s when I threw up. Doggo was thrilled.

  “Oh, thank you, Food Bringer! Your miracles are truly great!”

  Disgusted, I nearly served up seconds. Instead, I managed, “Don’t mention it, Doggo. Serious
ly, please don’t.”

  For hours after getting the boot, I sat in silent self-pity. Doggo joined me once he’d finished ridding the world of my stomach contents. He licked his chops heartily, then sat down for an enthusiastic crotch cleaning.

  “This is a big tunnel, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not a tunnel, Doggo. We’re outside.”

  He scratched at the corner of his eye with one outstretched back claw. “What’s outside?”

  “It’s where we’ve been going this whole time. Where my sister is. I think.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  We sat in silence a moment longer before he continued. “When is she coming by?”

  I picked up a handful of gravel and started skimming stones, one by one, through the tall grass.

  “She isn’t. We have to go find her. If she’s still alive.”

  Doggo rolled onto his back and lifted his front leg, giving me the side-eye stare of full submission. It was a look he used when he was about to say something he thought would make me mad. “Then, Food Bringer, why do we sit here?”

  Much as it pained me to admit, he had a point. Who knows — without the simple questions of his tiny brain, we might never have got going. Maybe I would’ve just sat my stupid ass down in front of the Underground gate, locked forever behind me, and let myself get eaten by a mountain lion.

  The sun was about two-thirds of the way across the sky. Everything was bright and difficult to look at. Still I scampered up onto an old wrecked car so overgrown with vegetation it was practically buried. From there, I could get a read on the direction we needed to go and where we might set up camp. North-ish from our position was a set of concrete walls jutting out of the grass. It looked close enough to reach well before dark.

  As I got myself down from my perch, I noted how easily and well these skills came back to me. Long-dormant instincts floated up from some forgotten well to bob on the surface of my brain. Beneath the throbbing of my face, I was almost proud.