by Andrew Post
I slept with someone.
JEFF
What?
NAMASTE
I’m sorry! I am so, so, so, so, so sorry!
JEFF
You—?
NAMASTE
Yeah.
JEFF
Slept—?
NAMASTE
Uh-huh.
JEFF
With someone else?
She can’t bring herself to answer. Instead, she nods.
NAMASTE
This is me, trying to fix my world, Jeff. This is my first step. What Clover and Raquel are going through, what Clover has to face, that’s her problem. You and me, our problem, our future, and our life together, that’s what I have to fix. Me. I have to fix it. I guess I tried helping them because I had messed up ours, and I knew I couldn’t, you know, go back in time and not do what I did. I tried fixing other things because I knew I couldn’t fix myself.
It’s strange sometimes how it takes seeing something of yours performed to see and hear yourself in it. Or see it in print. I once heard someone say if you wanted to know someone better, ask them to write some fiction. I’d taken Namaste & Jeff and made it into the mouthpiece of my own soul.
All those people down in the audience, watching. Some sitting forward. One woman dabbed at the corner of her eye. Her boyfriend or husband put his arm around her. I’d taken the characters places they hadn’t expected. I had pulled them through me, as their filter, and . . . I guess, how could they not end up with some of my thoughts and worries and confessions stuck to them?
I felt a little naked all of a sudden.
But that’s all the further the Namaste & Jeff scene got that night at the Siren House. The actors continued a bit longer, but then the lines faltered on their lips. They looked around. The house lights were thrown back up. The control room guys looking around in confusion, whispering into their walkies, asking what was going on. The actors continued, halfway thrown out of their performances, for a few more beats until something below, in the audience, distracted them and the magic of the moment was stolen away. Screams, a loud thud that reverberated through the whole of the theater.
Smocks flowed up the aisles, on either side of the theater’s seating area, and down the middle. They remained fanned out, as if meaning to corral the audience.
One at the head of the group threw back its head and shouted, “We’re looking for Cassetera Robuck.”
Even though fear climbed the ribbed interior of my throat and made my tongue into a desert, I discerned by her sharp, rough voice that the Smock was female. “We have received a condemning statement about her, and she is summoned to prove false that she is in ownership of a prohibited instrument.”
“Where is she?” came Thadius’s voice over the walkie-talkie. “Anyone know where Cass is?”
The three control room guys looked at me. I was hunkered down, cramming my tablet into my bag and cinching it tight. I looked at each of them staring at me.
The one closest reached out a hand and put it upon mine. “Stay put a second. Let’s see what they want.”
He adjusted one of the monitors on the control panel, and a grainy, black-and-white feed popped to life, painting the goings-on downstairs with a miniaturized holo, making all the Smocks look about the size of Barbies. The control panel operator reached up and dropped the blinds across the windows overlooking the theater. “Maybe they’ll piss off if we just wait it out. No sense in trying to get you out of here and have you run into them on the way out.”
“Does anybody have Cass?”
The operator answered. “Yeah, boss. Control room. Got her right here next to me.”
“Good. Keep her there. I’m going to try to handle this.”
Track 22
POWER TRIP
“No, he can’t do that,” I said, pawing for the walkie-talkie.
The operator snatched it off the control panel armrest. Pressing it against his chest, he shot me a panicked glare and shook his head. “Let him handle it. He’ll have them out of here in a second. This happens sometimes.”
I wanted to believe him.
From above, we watched. The audience was terrified, eyeing one way then the other at the Smocks surrounding them. The one who had spoken stepped, casually, to the front of the pack in the middle aisle. Behind them, two actors backpedaled into the eaves, hand in hand.
“Bring them out here,” the Smock ordered. She knew they were trying to slip away, even without having to turn around and see them.
A few more Smocks emerged onto the stage, pushing half-dressed cast members as well the crew ahead of them. Last, Thadius emerged, flanked by two Smocks. Their harvester hands stuck palm-out toward his back as they led him to the front of the stage. The lights were all up, and he looked washed out.
She turned.
“Mister Thumb, where is the accused?” the Smock demanded. She held a balled piece of clothing. At first it was hard to tell what it was from so far away, but when I noticed the threadbare hem and the tatty elbows, I knew it was Dad’s green hoodie that Darya and I frequently borrowed. The same Darya turtled into that night on the picnic table behind the school. The same Mom cradled as she died. The same Dad left behind for me when he departed, because he knew I liked it so much.
“I don’t know,” Thadius said, hands raised. His voice came from the walkie-talkie in the control room. He still had his mic on. The Smock could be heard without it, as booming as she was, but it came through half a beat later on the radio as well.
“We were told she’s in your employ.”
“Well, you were lied to. She doesn’t work here.”
“But you know of her? You know this woman’s name?”
“No, I don’t know any Cassandra Robuck.” Well done.
“Cassetera.”
“Whatever. I don’t know either a Cassandra or a Cassetera Robuck. I’m trying to run a show here, and right now, busting up in here like this, you’re costing me lots of money. I’m sure I’m losing subscribers left and right with this bullshit you’re pulling right now.”
Ignoring him, the Smock balled the hoodie in her hands, really crushing it down as if trying to pack it into nonexistence. Her featureless, masked head swiveled, and she pointed her eyeless face toward the Smocks. “Seal it.”
They obeyed. At once, each one went to an exit, threw out a hand. With a slight flash that overloaded the capturer cameras for a moment and squiggled the holo in the control room, long stripes of what looked like half-cooled lava began materializing over each door. The side emergency exits, the double doors separating the theater from the lobby. The sound reverberated throughout the place, even reaching me, high above it all. The bars manifesting with a simple flick of their hands, slamming shut each door in turn, sounded like two boulders being rolled into each other at colossal speeds.
People cried out, a few hysterical. The Smocks were always a threat, their ruthlessness often whispered about in an intangible way, but here they were, caging us all. The audience below was a squirming mass, flanked on all sides, while the Smocks looked entirely indifferent to this alarm they were causing.
“What are you doing?” Thadius demanded, striding to the end of the stage and dropping onto the red carpet to face the head Smock. The ones escorting him scrabbled to keep up, holding their open palms near his face, a threat to which he didn’t pay any mind. When one got too close, Thadius shoved him away.
“We’ve issued a clampdown. We will reward anyone who reports a citizen who may be in possession of an illegal machine. Times, I’m sure you know, Mr. Thumb, are tough. Rewards cannot be passed up, regardless of loyalties. Cassetera Robuck will be the first of many rooted out.”
Through rough grain and electronic interference caused by the Smocks’ mere presence, the holo showing Thadius and the Smock took on a warbled, bent look. Thadius became the Elephant Man, while the Smock looked like a crude drawing of a ghost, body arching bonelessly.
The Elephant Man told the crooked ghost
, “You should leave. No one’s coming forward. You have no right to scare people like this.”
The ghost replied, “Sometimes a healthy jab of pain is beneficial. It’s an effective tactic that, in my experience, never fails.”
I looked through the tinted glass to see the exchange live.
“I thought you didn’t have any bosses,” Thadius snapped.
The Smock cocked her head. I’m sure her expression was unreadable to him as it was to us, but I had a feeling Thadius felt the hate radiating from behind her cowl. He shrank back a little.
Still, he persisted. “I thought you were one for all and all that; you were so advanced you didn’t need supervisors; you were all on the same level and—”
“That’s enough,” she said evenly, and with a soft flick of her fingers cued her follows to restrain him.
Thadius let them grab him without struggle. One coiled his arms around Thadius’s and gripped his wrists. The Smock gestured for him to be moved away, and he was. As a stumbling trio, the Smocks guided Thadius off the stage and onto the central aisle’s carpet.
She moved up the aisle while the others moved down it.
In the dead center of the auditorium, a clear space was made.
“It’s contrary to Regolatore convictions to assemble anything other than ourselves,” she announced. “With this clampdown, not only will this constituency gain me as administrator—since apparently this place, this planetwide quarry we’ve allowed you to live on, needs one—but we will change that one statute we hold above all others just to keep the rest of you animals in line.” She gestured at the doors sealed with black stripes of hardening molten rock. “And that isn’t the only trick we’re capable of, Mr. Thumb. I assure you. So, if you please, will you give us the accused?”
“No.”
“Must we force you to tell us?”
“There isn’t a Cassandra or a Cassetera—or whoever you’re looking for—here.”
The Smock took a deep breath. “Fine. Make the liar eat his own fibs it is, then.”
“What are you going to do?” Thadius snarled.
“A test.” She tossed aside my dad’s hoodie. I focused on it for a moment. How did it get here? Did I leave it here? I didn’t remember wearing it anywhere but around the rig.
My whirlwind of questions stopped when she drew back her arms, pushing her elbows back while keeping her hands at chest level, her palms out. The holo in the control room flickered out. The lights of the panel and the entire theater dimmed. I pushed my crutch through the slats of the blinds and peeked out, as did the others in the control room.
Above the audience, a gloom began swirling, chasing itself around in the reduced light. It looked like a handful of pebbles suspended in violently churning water. The mass congealed, and four columns formed in the aisle before the Smock. At the top was a series of ribs, a spine. A creature was being built, two stories tall. Cries accompanied the crackling as the skeleton became more and more complete. Within seconds, it looked like a pachyderm, minus a head. Just a blunt space at its shoulders where the maw began to assemble—a double set of jaws, one pair that opened horizontally like an insect’s and another vertically with daggerlike teeth as long as my arm.
A tech next to me freaked out. “Oh, shit. Not one of those.”
“What is it?” I asked absently. I already knew. I remembered Thadius’s story about the creatures that roamed Wisconsin and Illinois.
“Scary Thing,” he stammered. “They’re building one in here.”
Thadius watched with mounting despair. His gaze was fixed on the Scary Thing as it gained layers of ropy muscle, uniting to the bones at the joint, wrapping and bulking the lengths of each bone, connecting areas with bulky knots of yellow-white cartilage. The more it changed, the less I could see Thadius beyond it.
“I can stop anytime,” the Smock warned.
“Stop,” Thadius shouted over the panicked crowd and the noise of the Scary Thing gaining ton after ton of flesh.
One man charged at a Smock, whiffing a punch over their head as they ducked, mercurially, under it. The man toppled over, screaming, “Let us go! We have nothing to do with this!”
The Smock held out his hands and the man disappeared—harvested, gone. Those who witnessed this compounded their screaming, rising to a collective shrill peal.
“If you want me to stop, then tell me where she is,” the leading Smock screamed. “It’s in your best interest to tell me quickly. The minute the last scrap finds its place on the creature, I won’t be able to control it.”
The Scary Thing, nearly complete, shuddered. The skin bristled with coarse, needlelike hair along its back, punching up and out, then retracting as if stretching after a long, nightmare-riddled sleep. Its saw-toothed jaws opened, one set, then the other, the square aperture within the middle of its four mandibles widening. A droning shriek escaped it.
My scalp tingled. My hands went numb. I had to give myself up. If I didn’t, everyone would die. None of them deserved this. I got up onto my crutches, the control room techs tugging me downward.
I slapped the glass, once, twice, three times.
Far below, Smocks searched for the source of the noise. The leader turned her masked face to me and lowered her hands. The Scary Thing remained incomplete, a sizeable chunk still missing from the side of its head. The lights returned to their full brightness.
For one or two long seconds, we beheld each other. It seemed like she was focusing slightly to my right, but it was hard to tell from behind dark glass and with her eyes hidden.
Then, her attention was stolen away by something below, beneath the balcony. I pressed against the glass to look straight down. It was backlit, the shadow coming down the aisle and falling at the feet of the Smock. It was hunched, apparently walking on its hands. My mind pieced it together—she was pushing forward in a wheelchair.
Beth.
“Which is it?” the Smock asked, sounding almost amused and glancing toward me, then Beth.
The top of Beth’s cobalt hair came into view, her narrow legs cradled by the leather wheelchair seat.
The Smock looked at each of us again. “Well?”
“Me,” I shouted. “It’s me!”
“I’m Cassetera Robuck,” said Beth.
I slapped the window so hard I thought it might break the glass, or my hand. “No, Beth, don’t.” I couldn’t believe she was pulling a Spartacus on me. “Beth!”
The Smock gestured at me. “You can’t both have that ridiculous name.”
“It’s me! It’s me,” I shouted, but my voice bounced against the glass, only working to deafen myself.
Thadius peeked under the unfinished creature toward me. Barely perceptibly, he shook his head. Did he want me to let Beth take my place on the pyre? She may’ve been kind of a jerk, but was that enough to let her die? His whisper came from his mic through the radio, very softly: “Don’t.” He knew I could hear him. “Girlie, don’t say a word.”
Inside, my heart was shredded. I could hardly believe myself. I was letting Beth take my place. I just hoped Thadius had another trick up his sleeve, that all of this was some sort of plan. My hand squeaked as it slid down the glass and fell to my side.
The Smock focused on Beth. “Looks like we have our answer. Guess we won’t have to scent the beast after all,” the Smock said, kicking the balled-up hoodie aside. She stepped toward Beth.
I couldn’t see Beth’s face, but I could see her hands come off the wheels of her chair and settle into her lap, clasped as if in prayer.
“Hold still,” the Smock said and, without warning, dematerialized her, wheelchair and all.
I hit the glass once more, with an erupting shot of force I didn’t even know I had. The glass cracked.
“Thank you for your time, everyone,” the Smock said to the crowd. She issued a quick snap of the wrist, as if dismissing an assembly of students, and I saw it. The final wisp of matter fluttered quickly across the theater—and found its place within the
Scary Thing. It came to life, slow, like a storm forming. Its horizontal and vertical jaws spread out, showing rows and rows of barbed teeth all the way down its throat. It reared back, giving me a clear view into the wet darkness held inside.
Thadius charged forward, directly between the Scary Thing’s legs, to catch up to the Smock.
“You got who you came for, didn’t you?” he shouted. “Break this thing down.”
But the Smock walked on until she was directly below me. I thought about breaking the glass out the rest of the way, picking up something heavy, and launching it onto her. But Thadius was catching up to her, and I didn’t want to risk it.
He leapt at her and had her by the arm, twisting and pulling her toward the Scary Thing. Her fellow Smocks trained their harvesters on the struggling two.
“Let’s just see who the Regolatore put in charge of Duluth,” Thadius hissed, trying to get one hand to her face. “Maybe I know you from somewhere.”
“Unhand me!”
But Thadius’s grip locked on one wrist and pinned the other arm behind her back, wrapping her into a straitjacket of her own limbs. Freeing a hand, he yanked off the mask. Red hair tumbled in a cascade of soft, shiny curls.
He turned her toward him, and he reeled back as if she’d burned his hands with her skin. Thadius looked up at me. He was pale. The mask fell from his hands.
And following his gaze, she whipped around and looked up too. Just as the Scary Thing began its bloody work, I looked down at the Smock—and into my own eyes.
Track 23
MOTHER, MOTHER
Older, a slightly different nose, a smaller mouth—but me. She was me. She was me. I staggered backward, forgetting for a moment I was unable to walk without crutches, and fell over. Through the riot of the Scary Thing’s eating everyone it could scoop up, I could hear the Smock—with my voice—shouting to be let go. Thadius’s bewildered stammers came through on the radio.
I heard her threats. “I’ll be back when I have enough evidence against you. The Scary Thing is now your problem. Maybe you can save everyone and indict yourself at the same time. Go ahead. Get your harvester gun if you have one, scratcher.”
