Pop the Clutch

by Eric J. Guignard

  I held tight to her hand. “You are cool. You’re so cool. You can be my best friend, if you want to. I like you.” I wanted to say she was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and that I wanted nothing more than to kiss her again, but we were in the middle of a strange place, in the dark, and it felt like the whispers were getting closer to us.

  Another creak, in the distance, and then a splash. A sound like something heavy was Army-crawling over the sidewalk toward us. I heard a grunt.

  I pulled us back in the direction I thought we had come. “All we have to do is get back to the fence,” I reasoned, “and then we can trace it back, and find the hole.” I put as much confidence as I could into my voice, because Gayle was starting to whimper.

  “It’s all my fault,” she said.

  “No, it’s not,” I said, and pulled her along as fast as I dared. “I wanted an adventure, too. I wanted to impress you. And it’ll be a fun story, once we’re out. We just won’t tell anyone about you-know-what.”

  She pulled my hand to her mouth and kissed it, and inside my chest my heart melted. We weren’t safe yet, we might not even be going in the right direction, but it was worth it to be here with her.

  A line of figures ran past us, zigzagging like soccer players after a ball. They seemed about our height, only they were very fat, and the speed at which they ran reminded me of the sound of a pack of cards being shuffled. Because, I saw in the moonlight, they were a pack of cards, with arms and legs and faces. Like in Alice in Wonderland. Only real.

  And all at once, I forgot to be scared. Because what sixteen-year-old could really be scared of fairy tales?

  “Rub-a-dub-dub,” called a voice in the distance. Then came a hefty splash of water in a bucket, and then what I could only imagine was the watery sound of a whale exhaling. The park was alive, all around us, with a mix of chirps and whispers and giggles and animal noises. In the distance I heard an elephant’s trumpet.

  “You kids get off my lawn,” an old woman called out. “It’s my shoe, and I’ll live in it if I want to.”

  “Meet you at the top, Jill,” a boy yelled. “Last one there’s a rotten egg!”

  Then a grown man’s voice. “You have to come down off that wall, Mr. Dumpty.” And a grumpy man’s voice, a little slurred. “No, I do not! Who are you to tell me where to sit?”

  The grown man was patient. “I’m one of the king’s men.”

  I pulled us to a stop. “Listen,” I said. “It’s the fairy tales come to life. I don’t think we’re in any danger.”

  And I knew from the way Gayle looked at me then, like she pitied me, that a gulf had suddenly developed between us. Even in the darkness, her eyes had gone flat, like she’d retreated inside herself. “Fairy tales aren’t real,” she said, slowly and deliberately.

  But I could hear them all around us. I could see them out of the corners of my eyes, and more than anything I could feel them, and they were playful. Curious. These stories had been around for centuries, some of them. It made sense that at some point they’d been told enough times, they’d frightened and thrilled enough children, that they’d become real, here in the darkness with no grown-ups around. Especially now that they were made into physical objects, here at Children’s Fairyland. Daily they were worshipped, in a sense, by what must be hundreds of children oohing and aahing and running around. Perhaps my dad was right in thinking Children’s Fairyland wasn’t Christian. But it wasn’t dangerous. I felt like I’d know if something was dangerous, and these creatures just weren’t.

  But I didn’t argue with Gayle. “It was just a joke,” I said. I could still hear the cackles and whispers and animal calls, and part of me wanted to run back and play with them. The fairy creatures were real; they knew it, and I knew it, and they clearly didn’t need for her to believe in them.

  “I think I see the hole in the fence,” I said. “This way.” I went to take her hand, but she pulled away from me.

  “I can see it, it’s all right,” she said. Her voice was flat and she wasn’t looking at me but I think she was angry.

  My heart broke. Somehow I’d done this to her. Made her get small and hard. It hurt worse than I ever knew how to hurt. I didn’t know what it was I had done that was so bad she had to pull away from me, but I thought it was because I could still feel the fairy tale creatures, and she must’ve too, but she couldn’t accept it.

  But my life had prepared me for keeping inside what I really felt. There were some secrets that people just couldn’t handle. So I wouldn’t let her know how much she had hurt me, when she pulled away like that. Of course she thinks fairy tales aren’t real.

  I kept putting one foot in front of the other, without crying. I found the fence, and I held it up so she could crawl through, and then I took off her jacket and passed it underneath the fence. The air was cold against my arms, but I didn’t mind. The hairs on my arms raised up, and I could feel the creatures coming closer, wanting to check me out. I thought of Shakespeare, of the Scottish play, that people don’t use its real name because they think it has magic in it. The magic of witches. The magic of women. Because it wasn’t only children who had access to magic. Surely it wasn’t just fairy tales that were real.

  Gayle reached through the fence to hold open the gap. “Come on,” she said. She was annoyed now, I could hear it in her voice, and it made me want to disobey. Because what was it that was so important about being on the far side of the fence, anyway? I wasn’t scared of the creatures at all now. I felt like I was safe here. I remembered a story about a boy who was turned into a tree because of a magical spell, and I wondered if that would really be so bad. Because I knew how fairy tales worked. If you stepped into the woods, into the realm of the fairy tales, you were under their rules.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  I didn’t answer. I knew what would happen if I crawled under the fence after her. I’d go home, and do what my parents wanted me to do, I’d get married and have children and take them to church. The same way my parents had done these things to make their parents happy. I’d probably never kiss a girl again.

  Behind me the animal calls grew stronger.

  I felt like, to Gayle, I was still a child, someone who believed in fairy creatures, while she had already crossed the gulf between childhood and being a grown-up. Because my parents had that same flat look as her in their eyes sometimes, and so did the church ladies, and my teachers, and everyone who said I was lucky and I would have a better life than they had. I knew I wasn’t a child anymore. Children didn’t have the feelings I had. I knew this because when I had kissed Gayle, I felt magic, and I couldn’t go back to a world where that kind of magic was forbidden.

  “Come on already,” Gayle said on the other side of the fence. She sounded really scared now.

  But I didn’t. I felt something old and powerful coming up inside me, and I savored it. If The She-Creature was based on a true story like it said it was, I might have a past life as a monster that I could call up. After all, if I could feel the fairy creatures, and hear them, I must belong with them. I must be one of them. If I stayed here with them, I’d be free. Free from a world that had no place for me.

  I squatted down so I was eye level with Gayle. A fence separated us, and she looked uncomfortable reaching through the fence to hold open the gap. I puckered my lips, and moved toward her, expecting that she would pull away, but she didn’t.

  I kissed her goodbye through the fence. Just a little smacker, on the lips, with my nose and cheeks against the cold metal. Already my teeth were changing, so I kept my mouth closed. I felt muscles coming to the surface, and wings sprouting from my back.

  She must have called out, when I leapt up and ran back into the park, but I didn’t hear her. I was the She-Creature now.

  * * *

  AMELIA BEAMER is a lifelong reader and writer. When she was a child, she wanted to grow up to be a writer, or maybe a Muppet. Her publications include the queer zombie novel The Loving Dead, as well as sho
rt fiction and nonfiction about literature and pop culture.

  For over a decade, she’s worked as a book and magazine editor, doing work she loves. These days she focuses mostly on novels by independent writers of SFF/H who want to level up their writing chops and bring their best work to market. For fun she likes to run around on playgrounds with her niece and nephew, and she is a great lava monster. Her nephew says she’s the most fun person ever, except for maybe Jim Henson. Her website: ameliabeamer.com.

  * * *

  FISH OUT OF WATER

  by Will Viharo

  She reminded him of the girl he’d first seen swimming along the surface of the Amazon River . . .

  * * *

  Seattle, 1958

  THE BIG MAN WEARING A TRENCH COAT OVER his hulking body and a Fedora on his domed skull avoided all eye contact as he navigated the bustling crowds at Pike Place Market, hoping no one noticed his pants were shredded to tatters, or that his shoes had been stretched and torn to try and cover large deformed feet.

  His face of course was even worse, and why he kept his head down, hidden in the collar of the coat. Passersby would dismiss him as a vagrant . . .

  Hopefully.

  Sinatra was singing “Witchcraft” from the radio of a brand new Ford Thunderbird parked near the fish market, where the big man loitered, attracted by the scent of fresh seafood. This festive, colorful environment was completely foreign to his sensibilities and understanding, though one thing he did know from experience: He had no money.

  Around him, merchants were tossing fish as part of some entertainment for a crowd of tourists. First a snapper flew past, then a great cod. No longer able to withstand his gnawing hunger pangs, the big man leapt and intercepted a large tuna being flung through the air that seemed to hang, leering, right before his eyes. He caught it, but when he landed, his hat flew off, fully revealing his horrible face.

  A woman screamed. The crowd scattered. A nearby police car sped forward, sirens wailing.

  The big man picked up his fedora and ran with the tuna under one arm, fleeing up Pike Street and knocking people over like they were bowling pins, until finally making a right on Third Avenue to duck behind trash cans. The police raced past; he’d escaped for now.

  Little did he know, a citywide bulletin had already been issued. The authorities were on the lookout for a hideous fish-stealing giant.

  ***

  THE BIG MAN MOVED on to a dark and deserted alley in Pioneer Square. Enveloped in the shadows of dusk, he felt safer and began devouring his stolen catch.

  He’d only finished one mouthful when he heard a woman’s sudden cry of terror and assumed someone had spotted him again. But when he turned to locate the source of the scream, farther down the alley, he saw instead a young woman being viciously assaulted by a gang of leather-jacketed thugs with greasy hair, three with their jeans pulled down around their ankles, another already on top of her.

  Instinctively, the man lumbered toward them and began tossing the four assailants aside as the girl, shivering in the cold, misty air, tried covering her violated body with the remnants of her bloodied clothes.

  The teenage rapists jumped on the man, cussing and stabbing him with switchblades, but his prowess was overwhelming. Their punches bounced off Phinn’s face like pennies off a brick wall. His blows landed with far more efficiency, but seemingly less effort, as he pummeled the punks with a mixture of ferocity and ennui, as if he’d been in this type of battle many times before, against far more powerful adversaries. This was amateur hour for a veteran warrior like himself.

  Bones cracked loudly and flesh bled profusely as the big man fought off the gang, swatting them like bugs, and soon they were limping away in painful retreat, bruised by the humiliation as much as the beating.

  The big man carried the nearly nude girl, now passed out from shock, up the alley and into an abandoned warehouse nearby.

  She was about twenty, with long, wavy, brunette hair, ivory smooth skin, and a taut, curvaceous figure that was bruised and sullied with street grime and bodily fluids, little of which were her own. She also had track marks on her arm, but he didn’t know what that meant.

  Despite the experiments, human beings were still an alien species to him.

  The big man set her down gently on the dusty floor. He hadn’t even a chance to finish his first meal in two days, having dropped the tuna during the struggle. But he didn’t care. At least he wasn’t alone anymore.

  As he sat beside her, contemplating her broken beauty with sadness, his mind wandered back to his place of origin, his memories as murky as the lagoon that spawned him, so many, many years ago, and so very, very far away from here . . .

  ***

  SHE REMINDED HIM OF THE GIRL he’d first seen swimming along the surface of the Amazon River as he glided deep below her on a parallel path. Even though his brain had been chemically altered, he recalled her angelic visage, and the primitively erotic sensation of her soft skin against his scales, which had been shed due to the scientifically-engineered transformation, forcibly induced while he was in captivity for the second time.

  Why couldn’t they have just let him alone?

  The expedition that first disrupted his tranquil, solitary existence in his natural habitat was not even the first. That one had left him for dead. The second, commissioned by an aquarium in Florida, drugged and kidnapped him from his home and put him on public display as a source of amusement for gawking tourists, chained and humiliated, his resistance kept in check by an electronic prod.

  Until he escaped and wreaked havoc in this so-called civilized society. Until he was again shot, and again mistaken for deceased.

  The third time he was discovered, a team of scientists took him captive and transported him from the Florida Everglades to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was caged at a private Marin County residence. There, murky medical operations were conducted, removing much of his original identity, converting him from a humanoid amphibian to something closer to a human being, essentially manipulating the process of evolution by accelerating a mutation that might’ve otherwise taken centuries.

  Once again, he escaped captivity, wounded and near death, returning to the only sanctuary he knew: the nearest large body of water, which happened to be the Pacific Ocean.

  But his gunshot wounds, along with the fact his gills had been surgically removed, disallowing his ability to breathe underwater, would’ve proven fatal had the sole passenger of a passing yacht not found him floundering near the shore, gasping for air.

  The boat’s occupant, a retired medical doctor on vacation, rescued the drowning mutant and assumed he was either a disfigured burn victim or a poor soul suffering from a progressively degenerative disease like acromegaly.

  The doctor treated the mutant’s wounds and fed him life-saving nutrients intravenously. The mutant was touched by the doctor’s kindness, since it was an unprecedented attribute in his experience with humans thus far.

  By the time the yacht returned to its homeport off Bainbridge Island, just across Puget Sound from Seattle, the doctor and the mutant had become friends, communicating through hand gestures.

  Two years later, the doctor and the mutant—now dubbed “Phinn,” after the doctor’s late wife’s maiden name—were close friends, though no one knew of this secret relationship. Phinn was kept hidden away in the doctor’s remote residence, where he was taught the English language and some rudimentary skills of social function.

  Then one day the doctor died suddenly of a heart attack while they were sharing a meal in the dining room. Phinn was confused and devastated. Grief-stricken, he wandered out into the night.

  Though he knew he could no longer swim underwater due to his altered physique, Phinn realized he could still swim above the surface. Given his immense strength and stamina, he was able to cross Puget Sound and come ashore on a secluded section of the harbor, where he rolled a bum for his clothes and crusty fedora, and then let him go. His urge to kill had greatly diminished
over the past two years.

  But his primitive instincts had not been completely mollified by the hormonal injections.

  After hiding out in the shadows of society for two days, Phinn decided to try roaming amongst the humans in his “disguise,” driven by hunger . . .

  ***

  THE GIRL WOKE SUDDENLY, saw Phinn’s face, and screamed.

  Phinn winced at the sound, and a tear rolled down one of his greenish cheeks. Tear ducts were one of several involuntarily triggered biological by-products of the transformation that still surprised him.

  Her screams ceased, and she sat up, assessing the situation. Her exposed flesh was covered by old newspapers that formed a makeshift blanket.

  Phinn had found some old newspapers and covered her exposed flesh with a makeshift blanket. She realized it was Phinn who’d covered her, and asked in a hoarse whisper, “Who are you?”

  “I am . . . Phinn,” he responded in his halting, gravelly voice, still adjusting to the development of biologically synthesized vocal cords. “I . . . saved you from . . . the . . . the . . . ”

  “Thank you,” she said as tears escaped her eyes. “Thank you. My name is Julie.”

  Phinn nodded, then bowed his head, no longer able to sustain direct eye contact, suddenly ashamed of his wretched countenance.

  Julie reached out with a trembling hand and wiped the tear from his cheek. “You saved me. No one else has ever lifted a finger to help me. Ever.”

  “Someone saved me . . . once,” Phinn said, his normally slow speech pattern accelerating with emotional momentum. “So now . . . I save you. Can you also save me? I need . . . to hide . . . ”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Julie asked abruptly, letting her internal thoughts slip through her restrained façade. Despite her gratitude, she found Phinn’s appearance unsettling. But she didn’t want to alienate her savior with an outward expression of revulsion. So she instantly recalibrated her reaction, and said, “I mean . . . are you sick or something?”