The Best of Talebones

by edited by Patrick Swenson

  “Rubby-Tubby feels funny, guys . . . .”

  Jackie turned back in time to see a star — a multi-directional crack — spreading over Rubby-Tubby’s belly with a creaking noise. The clown had his mouth in a tiny “o.” He exploded, knocking the others against the blocks, coating them with dark goo. Connie laughed. Then Bosco joined her, and finally Jackie, too. It was funny.

  Then the cinder blocks were moving, grinding against each other as they slid. A steel spade jabbed at the clowns, chipping the concrete floor, weilded by the man. Jackie ran out between the man’s legs and headed for the doorway. The man spun around and lunged at Jackie with the spade, but tripped and fell onto the shards of the bottle. “Shit!”

  The three clowns made it into the train room, hopped the two feet up to the table, and ran along the rails to the station. They peered through the glass windows back toward the playroom.

  The man appeared, holding his elbow up — there was a blood-dripping gash on his forearm. The man carried the burlap bag, also dripping, with his other hand. The man walked across the room around the train table to the door to the Outside.

  Pausing, the man half-turned and said, “I’m going to get you little sociopaths.” He felt his arm and winced, then flipped the switch plunging the room into darkness. He slammed the door, hard. His steps receded.

  The latch clicked, failing to catch.

  The door to Outside creaked open.

  After a lengthy, joke-laden debate, the clown trio crept into the sliver of light and scuttled through the doorway. A flight of carpeted stairs led upwards.

  Jackie and Connie started jumping up the stairs. Bosco followed a moment later.

  There was another door at the top, but it was ajar. Jackie stood on the top stair, and, balanced on the tips of his big shoes, could just look into the upstairs room. He saw a round table with six chairs around it, peanuts and pretzels spilled on the green tile floor, cabinets around the edges of the room. The burlap bag poked up from a waste can by a closed door. A few drops of blood on the tile sparkled in the flickering light of an overhead fixture.

  Jackie jumped onto the tile floor and somersaulted across the room. “Clear!” Bosco and Connie followed. They huddled under the kitchen table.

  “We should get out of here,” Bosco said. “Somewhere all the way Outside.”

  Connie said, “We should look for the girl.”

  “We have to stop the man,” said Jackie. “He said he would get us. We follow the blood.”

  Connie and Bosco followed Jackie when he started off. Jackie nodded. He was leader now, outside the basement, Outside. Bosco had led the clowns when their job had been to entertain, to make the girl laugh, back when there’d been more clowns to lead. Now there were only three clowns left, and Jackie was the best at what they now had to do.

  The man had tried to break — no, kill — them, and would try again. It bothered Jackie, the broken clowns not coming back. The man had something to do with that. Jackie intended to keep coming back.

  The girl had stopped coming back.

  The blood led Jackie to another set of carpeted stairs, with a hard, ceramic tile landing at the bottom. He led the clowns up. Dim light outlined an ajar door down the hall at the top of the stairs, but Jackie noticed bloody finger prints on the knob of a door halfway down on the right.

  Whispering, Jackie said, “First let’s check out the near room.”

  “But the man —” Bosco began in a loud whine. The frightened and the stupid had no place under Jackie’s brave new leadership. Jackie smacked him in the face. Bosco, positioned at the top of the stairs, teetered and fell back. He tumbled down the stairs and cracked open when he hit the distant tile.

  The man did not appear. Connie giggled, quietly.

  Jackie waddled to the door, leaned on it until it had opened the few inches needed to squeeze through. The room inside was dark save for a glowing rectangle on top of a desk. Jackie headed for the light. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the room.

  “Jackie,” Connie whispered, “This is the girl’s room!”

  There were dolls and stuffed animals, and a bed, and a pair of ballet shoes half sticking out from under the bed. It was the girl’s room. Jackie hopped up on the chair, then the desk. Connie joined him.

  The glowing rectangle was a screen on a box. Flashing letters reported something important, but Jackie didn’t know what.

  “It’s a computer console,” Connie said. “What does ‘Delete Personalities’ mean?”

  “You can read?”

  “I used to read books with the girl.”

  Jackie didn’t like this, that Connie could do something he couldn’t, but he was the leader.

  “Tell me what it says.”

  Connie said, “The top bar says Clown World version one point ex, and then below that, there’s a list: Load New Clown, Update Old Clown, Comedy Routines —”

  “What are the flashing words?”

  “Oh, that’s the ‘Delete Personalities’ I said before. And below that in the box it says ‘Now deleting Rubby-Tubby.’ What is it, Jackie?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s find the man and make him tell us.”

  “But he’s so big.”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  They found the man passed out on his bed, fully clothed, a plastic bandage slapped on one arm, an empty whisky bottle cradled in the other.

  “Let’s find some rope,” said Jackie, “and a big knife.”

  *

  Several hours later, Jackie climbed onto the man’s face and pinched his nose.

  “G’way,” the man grumbled. Then his eyelids fluttered open. “What the . . .

  Jackie increased his speaker volume to maximum. “You are our prisoner.”

  The man grimaced, snorting air from his nose. Jackie wobbled, but kept his balance. The man tried to sit up.

  “Hey! What is this?”

  “You are our prisoner. You will answer our questions.”

  Connie said, “Yeah!”

  “You must be joking.” The man struggled, went limp, then held his breath and strained again. He couldn’t move; Jackie and Connie had tied him too well. “Safe my ass . . .”

  “What have you done with the girl?”

  The man blinked, and crossed his eyes at Jackie. “The girl? Sarah?” The man closed his eyes and blew air out of his mouth. “Sarah was visiting her mother in L.A. when the Big One hit. She died.”

  “Broken?” Jackie demanded. “Why didn’t she come back?”

  “Come back? You don’t understand. Her skull was crushed. She’s dead.” His closed eyes squeezed closed more tightly.

  Connie said, “The girl won’t come back?”

  Jackie ignored her. “And when the girl was out of the way, you sent the animals to kill us, didn’t you?”

  The man opened his eyes, focused on Jackie again. “What are you talking about?”

  “The rats, the cat.”

  “No,” said the man.

  Jackie jumped off his face, grabbed the butcher knife, and jumped back onto the man’s chest. Brandishing the blade over the man’s face, Jackie said, “Talk.”

  “I didn’t —”

  Jackie swung the knife like a child swinging at a piñata. The tip of the man’s nose came off.

  “Shit!” The man shook and struggled against the ropes. Blood welled and dribbled down his nose, down his cheeks.

  “You promised to ‘get us,’ and you ‘deleted personalities,’ didn’t you?”

  The man clenched his eyes tight, but tears trickled out anyway. “You butchered the cat!”

  “Answer the question!” Jackie brought the knife down, splitting the man’s lips.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes! Your base code is wiped — no more downloads are possible if you break. Not that I’d do it anyway.”

  “No more coming back?” Jackie said.

  “Finish him off,” Connie said.

  “Safe my ass . . .” the man said. “You defecti
ve little fuckers . . .”

  Jackie wrestled the blade around until it rested on the man’s throat. “What did you say?”

  “The sales rep said you were perfectly safe toys, but if you didn’t have a cruel streak, you wouldn’t be funny. Safe my ass!” The man spat blood at Jackie.

  Jackie considered this, then slit the man’s throat. “Maybe you should have played with us once in a while.”

  Connie laughed.

  You can spot Bruce Taylor easily at a convention when he wears his white suit and top hat, his signature outfit. Of course, his fiction stands out too. Mr. Magic Realism lives not too far away from me, and I’ve known him a long time. He’s been one of the magazine’s biggest supporters, and a dear friend. This story appeared way back in issue #4, and meant that for years Bruce had to endure some sort of spider-themed gift on his birthday or at Christmas time. Doug Yamada did the cover, and he did the cover for the following issue as well.

  SPIDERS

  BRUCE TAYLOR

  A part of me must think they’re cute, you know, the spiders in my bathtub. I used to call them ‘pie-ders’ when I was young. I’m not sure if spiders are cute enough to call them a cute name. I mean, if you don’t like spiders, then a bathtub filled with them is hardly cute. Also, it’s difficult to take a shower or a bath.

  Pussy Galore, my huge tiger cat, frequently wanders in and, standing with paws on top of the bathtub, looks down, his gaze darts about as he contemplates the writhing mass of black spiders that fill the bathtub halfway up. His tail switches wildly, his mouth twitches and he makes noises like “shk-shk-shk-shk.” If he could think, I would fantasize him saying, “What are you doing? What are you doing? Keeping a tub filled with spiders. What are you doing?”

  If I had to answer Pussy, I confess, I would not know what to say.

  “You do have a problem, don’t you?” says Sally, my next door neighbor. “How many times have you hauled them out?” She’s fiftyish and stands back away from the tub. She even pulls her long, gray hair back around her shoulder as if somehow the spiders are going to erupt en masse from the tub up to her hair and maybe weave her to death or dump silk on her and put her into some sort of cocoon.

  “Kind of like a vein of live coal,” I say. “No matter how much I excavate, I can never excavate enough.”

  “They come up through the drain or what?” she asks.

  “Damn if I know. Maybe they drop through the ceiling, but,” and I look up to the bare ceiling, “no place they can drop from.”

  “Hmm,” she says. “And you just moved in here.” Her blue eyes scrutinize the mass in the bathtub. “Because you had problems at your last place with —”

  “Scorpions —”

  “Um.”

  “And before that — sow bugs —”

  “Bathroom sink?”

  “Toilet.”

  Sally gazes a few minutes more. “There’s a pattern.”

  “You could say that.

  “You know what I think?”

  “I’ve already made an appointment.”

  Dr. Glazier has something of a cool temperament and maybe it is just as well. His mind is as intricate as a snowflake and with insight equally well designed. He is a moderately heavy man, and I have the sense that he has been much heavier. He doesn’t wear glasses, nor a tie, nor is he bald. Rather, he has thick grey hair, wears a green shirt, open at the neck, and gray trousers. He does his therapy on a patio with the pool in the background and an absolute whammo view of Mt. Ranier towering above him like a big blunted Freudian dong getting a slow, cold blowjob from the glaciers. Counseling has been good to Dr. Glazier. Very good. “So,” he says, “you got spiders in the bathtub.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lots?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You get rid of them —”

  “They come back.”

  “And if it’s not spiders —”

  “Scorpions.”

  “And if not scorpions—”

  “Some other god-forsaken creature.”

  “Bug.”

  (Pause) “Yeah. Bug.”

  Dr. Glazier nods. “Ya know,” he says, “in some clients I see, they either can’t face their feelings or their past issues and it comes out as a fear of something — being locked in the closet as a kid comes out as a fear of the night, of closed doors, a habit of giving away clothing; sometimes a fear of a parent which was never expressed comes out on some unfortunate bug — betcha you were either abused or stuck in a place with lots of bugs — as punishment, locked in a cellar, perhaps.”

  He looks directly at me. Matter-of-fact look of pride — he’s done this for a long time. Years. A decade. A thousand years. Maybe since humankind began wandering this rock and first learned Fear. And, for the most part, how not to take responsibility for it. Paste the Fear Picture on Mommy, Daddy, the Democrats, the Environmentalists, and make them the enemy. You know. Glazier has been around for a long time, therapeutically inching down the incredibly unending incline of the Human Condition.

  Like a monkey putting two sticks together and thus able to reach for the metaphysical banana, I say, “My bathtub filled with spiders is a symbol of my unfinished business/fear regarding my father—a sort of three dimensional creation of my fears —”

  “Did you see your father as a spider?”

  “No.”

  “How did you see him?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “He was never there.”

  Dr. Glazier looks at me. On his slow journey down the Incredible Incline of the Human Condition, he has just hit a rock. I look over his shoulder. I point. He looks. He stands. The entire swimming pool is filled with spiders. Big ones. Small ones. Black ones. Brown ones. Pretty ones. Poisonous ones.

  He whistles through his teeth and says, “Holy shit.” A long pause, then, softly, “Ho-lee shh-it —!”

  I offer to pay him. He shakes his head and I leave him standing by the swimming pool, hands on his hips. I don’t hear him whistling.

  On the way home, I have to admit, what Dr. Glazier said hit something. My father wasn’t around. Where was he? Where was that son of a gun? Where was that son of a bitch? Where was the prick! I catch myself. Anger? Come to think of it, where was my mother? Where was — where was — I squeeze my eyes shut; suddenly a hot blade of pain — no, rage — skewers my guts from my anus to my throat and inside something burns and blisters and I have an uncontrollable need to sneeze — achoo — and there on my lap, a little spider. It turns, waves a leg in greeting, and scampers off my leg.

  I muse. I think I’d like to tell Dr. Glazier of my experience, but I don’t think he’d be too happy to hear from me right now.

  And when I get home, I go to the bathroom, only to see what appears to be a Martian or an alien sitting on the toilet.

  “You’re out of toilet paper!” it screeches.

  “Tough shit,” I say. I have an idea of what this is about. Later. Later. Inwardly, I sigh at the other work that I now know needs to be done, but right now, the spiders, the spiders—my attention is drawn to the bathtub. The spiders are gone — or — melted? — for what is in there looks like a slowly moving black pool of India ink.

  “Toilet paper!” shrieks the alien. “How can you be so cruel as to put me through this? How can you do this to me, the one who cared for you? How can you do this to me?”

  I don’t reply. I kinda gotta hunch who that is. But right now, I retrieve a fountain pen from a desk drawer, go to the bathtub and fill the barrel of the pen.

  “You never treated me well,” says the alien writhing on the toilet. “You never could do anything right . . . what a rotten grandson — (and blah, blah, blah —)”

  I’ve more important things to do. I go to the desk and, taking out a stack of paper, I write, long, long into the night; each letter becomes a spider, running, hiding — from the light.

  Issue #10 featured a Wolf Read cover. Uncle River’s “Love of the True God” has been
reprinted a number of times. It was on the long list of nominations for the 1998 Nebula Award., and it was a finalist for the Sturgeon Award.

  LOVE OF THE TRUE GOD

  UNCLE RIVER

  What are they saying?”

  “They say, ‘All hail the beloved of the True God.’”

  “I will not have idolatry.”

  “They understand, Lord. They do not worship you. They worship the True God who sent you.”

  “Praise God! How wonderful are His ways.”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “I will retire to my chamber. Have the accused ready at ten.”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  The Sky Lord, whose name nobody can pronounce, entered the Court, as the Sky Lords now call it. I trembled. Until the arrival of the Sky Lords, this was the Palace of Sacred Virgins. For a man even to set foot on the steps was unthinkable. Once-glorious Amarez, Who we worshipped as Creator of Sun and the River, rules Heaven no more.

  I was trained as a royal translator. I am still proud of the skill that has enabled me not only to interpret many tongues, but to comprehend the lives of the peoples who speak those tongues well enough to share their jokes and their songs. Now, though I still earn my keep by my skill, I do not know who I serve. The new God is mighty beyond my comprehension. I have learned the language of the Sky Lords who brought Him to us, but their ways are greater than my understanding.

  I sometimes fear I may offend the True God by transcribing the record of each day’s proceedings, but it has always been my duty. Is it wrong to provide future generations of my people a chronicle of their own history? I have not dared to tell the Sky Lords of this record, but their all-seeing God has not instructed them to forbid it. Perhaps it is sanctioned.

  I accompanied the Sky Lord to the entrance of the Court. How it terrifies me still to set foot on those so-recently-forbidden sacred stones. The Sky Lords have purged the Court of our former false God. The Sacred Virgins are dispersed to useful service, those who have been willing to continue living.