by Priya Sharma
“I’ll take these with us. We can burn them later.”
I went upstairs. I edged into the darkened room as if Kenny might sit up at any moment. He was a purple, bloated corpse with fang marks in his neck. I fumbled with the chain around his neck, not wanting to touch him.
“Where’s Kathy?” Tallulah asked.
I told her.
“Show me.”
“No, I don’t want you to remember her like that.” I seized Tallulah’s face in my hands. “You do know that she didn’t mean what she said, about you not belonging with us? She was trying to protect you.”
Tallulah nodded, her mouth a line. She didn’t cry.
“We have to bury her.”
“We can’t. Tallulah, we have to get out of here. Do you understand? Ami will come for you when she realises you’ve gone. There’s something else.”
I put my hand in the cottonmouth’s tank. It curled up my arm and I lifted it out, holding it up to my cheek. He nudged my face.
“Lift out the bottom.”
Tallulah pulled out bits of twisted branch and foliage, then pulled up the false base. She gasped. Out came bundles of notes and cloth bags. She tipped the contents out on her palm. More diamonds than I could hold in my cupped hands.
We loaded the money into Kenny’s rucksack and tucked the diamonds in our pockets.
“What about the snakes?”
We opened the tanks and carried them outside. I watched them disappear into the undergrowth. Except for Shankly. I put him in a carrier bag and took him with us.
*
There are days when I wake and I can’t remember who I am, like a disorientated traveller who can’t recall which hotel room of which country they’re in.
I’m hurt that Georgia didn’t want me to collect her from the airport.
There’s been a delay. I won’t get in until late. Go to bed, I’ll get a cab.
I wished now that I’d ignored her and gone anyway instead of lying here in the dark. The harsh fluorescent lights and the near empty corridors of the airport are preferable to the vast darkness of our empty bed.
Not going is a stupid test with which I’ve only hurt myself. I’ve resolutely taken her consideration for indifference. I want her to be upset that I wasn’t there, as if she secretly wanted me there all along.
See, I confuse even myself.
The front door opens and closes. I should get up and go to her. She comes in, marked by the unzipping of her boots and the soft sound of her shedding clothes.
Love isn’t just what you feel for someone when you look at them. It’s how they make you feel about yourself when they look back at you.
Georgia is the coolest, most poised woman that I know. We’re older now and our hearts and flesh aren’t so easily moved but I still wonder what she sees when she looks at me.
“Do you love me?” It’s easier to ask it with the lights off and my head turned away from her.
Everything about us is wrong. We’re lovers, sisters, freaks.
She answers in a way that I have to respond to. I glide across the floor towards her and we become a writhing knot. We hunt mice in our grandiose pile and in the morning we are back here in our bed, entwined together in our nest.
When we wake again as human beings she says, “Of course I love you, monster.”
When we shed the disguises that are Georgia and Eliza, and then the skins that are Lola and Tallulah, we are monsters. Fabulous beasts.
Acknowledgements
I have so many people to thank for believing in my work.
Mike Kelly, for his excellent advice and hard work in putting this collection together. C7 Shiina and Jeffrey Alan Love for the use of their beautiful artwork. Vince Haig for impeccable design.
Ellen Datlow and Paula Guran. I’m not sure thanks are sufficient.
Andy Cox at TTA, Mark Lord at Alt Hist and the team at Albedo One for taking so many of my stories.
Michelle Noble, nee Coles, whom I’ve known since we were four years old, and her husband Hadrian Noble. Thank you for our small town stories, tales of bloated corpses and malicious ghosts.
Sara and Dave Moore for the Arosfa and Newgale beach. When gorse goes out of flower, love goes out of fashion.
Cait Taylor, Natalie Tsang, Paula and John Halliday for friendship.
Andy and Melanie Flanagan for showing me parts of the world I might never have seen and that have bled into my fiction.
The writing community in the UK has been a revelation in how welcoming it is to new writers. And tonnes of fun. I’ve made friends, even though I only see them a few times a year. You know who you are. A special thanks to Simon and Cate Bestwick for their awesomeness. Without them I wouldn’t have dared ventured into the world of cons.
Dev Agarwal who has been tremendously supportive in many ways.
Roy Gray for being an unsung hero and always helping fledglings.
Julie Travis and Sean Demory for their correspondence in all its forms.
And finally…
Veronica, Krishan and Ravi Sharma, my parents and brother for stories in all their guises and for your unconditional love. I am what I am because of you.
And Mark Greenwood, who whistles. For everything.
About the Author
Priya Sharma is a doctor from the UK who also writes short fiction. Her work has appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Albedo One and Tor.com, among others. She’s been anthologised in various annual Best of anthologies by editors like Ellen Datlow, Paula Guran, Jonathan Strahan and Johnny Mains. Her story “Fabulous Beasts” was on the Shirley Jackson Award shortlist and won a British Fantasy Award.
More about her can be found at www.priyasharmafiction.wordpress.com. For more information about this book, visit http://www.facebook.com/AllTheFabulousBeasts/
Table of Contents
The Crow Palace
Rag and Bone
The Anatomist's Mnemonic
Egg
The Sunflower Seed Man
The Ballad of Boomtown
The Show
Pearls
The Absent Shade
Small Town Stories
Fish Skins
The Rising Tide
The Englishman
The Nature of Bees
A Son of the Sea
Fabulous Beasts
