Interfictions 2

by Delia Sherman

  "'Bring down the noise, Charity!” he exclaimed, his jaw set.

  As she clenched the trigger—

  Roger closed the notebook. “Total shit,” he said, falling asleep, drifting backward to the air force bases of his prime, when he had been a prime mover, an adviser, a prophet of policy. No one would ever understand, not even the apprentice. The only ones who understood were long dead, at one time laid to rest in desecrated Arlington graves: the rear admirals who had requested signed copies of Fierce Power by the boxload for mandatory frigate book clubs; the Secretary of Information and Coercion who sent his daughter to shadow him for a week for a school project; and, of course, the president, the commander in chief, his commander in chief. Roger imagined that others in the inner circle of Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan must have felt the same thrill—not only to be living at the same time as an architect of history, but to advise great men and great decisions, by sheer accident more than anything else. He was, after all, a writer of stories, an entertainer, and he never let himself forget that. And yet ... he was there when the world changed. He was there. He was there in the bunker, a mile underneath Minot. El Paso burning, Dallas burning, the District of Columbia cordoned, Chinese peacekeepers amassing on the Canadian border, and the choice resting on heavy shoulders.

  "Tell me what to do,” the president said to him in the bunker's lounge, velvet upholstery muffling any sound, any klaxons and shouts. The words and the president's face echoed in the chambers of his sleep. “Tell me what to do, Roger."

  "Your advisers, sir...” Roger said, swirling his bourbon and looking down into it.

  "I don't trust them. Don't trust any of them. You know that, Roger.” The president could get petulant without enough sleep, but who wouldn't?

  "I do know that, sir. I would...” Roger set his bourbon down on a stack of his own paperbacks on the coffee table. A poster of Roger on the door stared back at Roger—arms crossed, wearing sunglasses, an ammo belt draped over his shoulders like a scarf, a baseball cap that had embroidered on it: DON'T TREAD ON ME, and underneath that: KILL ZONE. Roger tried to think of what that Roger would do, what Mick Solon would do.

  "You have to root out the problem at its source, sir.” The commander-in-chief stared at Roger. “Do you understand what I mean, sir?"

  The president thought about this, licking his lips. “Do you mean to bomb Mexico City? Nuclearly?"

  Roger shrugged and tried to keep his eyes on the president. When the president didn't say anything, Roger said, “Have you seen the war games for that, sir? With the bunker busters?” Roger had no idea whether war games for that even existed, or what his real advisors would say.

  "No ... no. But maybe that's for the better.” The president stood up, and Roger followed suit. The president reached out to shake hands, and Roger moved right away to salute, leaving the president's hand dangling there. But then the president returned the salute.

  "Stay here as long as you want,” the president said before leaving, and in two hours the bombers were in the air, reaching their cruising altitude. And Roger did stay in the bunker, for five months, as winter set in, and then—instead of spring—winter set in again throughout the Americas. Then, after that, another winter of fog and ash, and the president's hanging at Mount Vernon. Then the third winter skipped right to fall, winds of acid and ice, the fall of two or three provisional governments, and then no governments at all, at least in the old sense of the word. Roger took a Humvee from Minot to Minneapolis, and he had to pay for the trip with his collection of Liberty dollar coins. The soldiers never talked with him, joshed with him, as they had before. The zoo was the safest place he could find.

  Of course, the world stabilized, after a fashion, and he was able to write again. People were still hungry for his stories. They were the same people as before, for the most part, the same survivors. And their children, who had little in the way of television, grew up with Mick Solon instead. Roger found an agent who understood this—his old agent having disappeared in the Manhattan reorganizations. Enclaves still believed in the rightness of Mick's causes, that Mexico Moon was necessary and cleansing, only one salvo in the war for civilization.

  Roger obliged them.

  When he woke from his long sleep, he was put under house arrest. Not in so many words; no one announced this to him. But there was always an armed groundskeeper within sight of his house. The apprentice had disappeared and was found a few days later on the outskirts of the old zoo, where she had set up a makeshift bomb-making factory and blown herself up by accident. The apprentice's family demanded that Roger pay for her funeral. He used the request for a fire-starter. There was no body, he wanted to tell them. How can you bury a person without a body? Do you want to bury her jaw? Her femur? Her dental records? The investigation into the destruction of the sloth and the walkway found him neither guilty nor innocent, but rather complicit in a long-standing pattern of harboring and brainwashing terrorists. No charges came, though. On the other hand, they did arrest the fucker who had drugged the giant sloth—tampering with megafauna was a serious crime. She was one of the medical assistants who administered chemo at the free clinic and hated everything Roger stood for. He tried to follow her trial on the daily bulletins, but the painkillers he took for his legs would not let him focus on anything for too long, except for sleep. He tried to call his agent but couldn't remember the right access codes, and the screen would always stay blank, no matter what he did. Then in the middle of the night he heard the apprentice calling for him, pausing with her blowtorch and asking, Isn't this what you would want me to do? And he would have said, No, not exactly—see, action has to be clean like writing is clean; there have to be clear consequences and no loose ends. Self-defense has to be guided by the conscience of liberty. The fight has to be a true one. People just want to forget about their problems. Also, you're really fucking scaring me.

  And she might have paused, after listening to that impromptu lesson, letting it sink in.

  But she always went back to her welding.

  After a few weeks of this toss-and-turn, he received a package. The sky was clear and inviting when the courier knocked on his door and asked him to sign. The courier was young, barely out of UPS U. It was the first time Roger had gone outside, even a few steps, since the apprentice died.

  "What if this is a bomb?” Roger asked.

  "I've scanned it,” the courier said, waving his black wand. A little too casual for Roger's taste. “It's fine."

  Roger pulled the package to him and closed the door. The box was taped over and over again. He set it on the kitchen table and then saw it had a passport from India.

  "Shit!” Roger said, swiping at the package and pushing it to the floor. Maybe there was a contact poison. Those stupid wands couldn't account for everything. He let the package sit there for a few more days, until he summed up the courage to face his own death. Placing the package back on the table, he closed his eyes as he cut it open with scissors and reached inside. It was a manuscript. His manuscript, a copy of it, scribbled upon in red ink. In his haze he had forgotten about it. There was a handwritten letter attached to it.

  Dear Sir:

  You may be surprised to find this returned to you, as you have not had any dealings with me in the past. However, your agent—who I now fear to be dead—has often utilized my services to doctor your recent synopses and novels, though I am rarely able to make sense of them. It took me great trouble to track you down. I assume you are in hiding.

  I have enclosed my transcription and my edits, in order to complete my contract and rid myself of you. I have to say that I found the ideas devoid of meaning, the characters cold, the prose poorly written—like everything else of yours. And yet, in a manner utterly alien to your later projects, there is a vulnerability, too. The people who inhabit these pages are shallow, but they are not inhuman. You started with something at least honest—in your own fashion—and cast that aside.

  You had a letter stuck in the pages of your note
book. Do you remember this letter? You must. It's a letter of commendation from the last president of the United States, “personally, and with great warmth, thanking you for defending the Constitution and the integrity of the nation during a time of great trial.” The letter goes onto list the names of the bomber pilots who “would vouch for the great effect your writing had on their thoughts as they dropped the collateral payload on the enemies of America and freedom.” These words made me—

  Amar felt his wife's hands on his shoulders in the middle of his composition. He flinched, though he didn't want to.

  "Let it go for now,” she said. “The children are asleep.” She curled closer into him, arms around his neck. He felt that she was naked. A torrent had come into her when he had told her everything, about every distant monster he had to face, the innocent blood embedded in every file. The planes taking off and landing lighter six hours later.

  She told him that even monsters needed to be forgiven—not right away, of course. But even Devadatta, the Buddha's worst enemy, the traitor of his inner circle, was able to be a great enlightened teacher after many successive lives, after many hells and trials. She had told him that calamity was the loom and that all sentient beings were the cords of silk on the loom, interwoven in the warp and the woof, bound tightly together. She struggled to find the spirit of these words, but even this attempt comforted him. It gave him the courage to write the letter to the American—which his wife needed to interrupt. She told him she needed him. He turned around his chair and kissed her neck and then licked each nipple as she pushed herself onto him. She unclasped his pants and slid his cock out, rubbing its head and pressing it against the tangle of her pubic hair. He put his hands on her ass and guided himself into her.

  She came first. After he came, she lifted herself off and knelt in front of him. She sucked his softening cock and ran her tongue on the foreskin until it was clean, and then placed her head against his thigh. He stroked her hair and told her he was ready to finish the letter. He wanted to finish strong, vicious, to devastate the author so that he would never be able to write another word again. And then Amar could go on with his life.

  After she left, he sat there for a long while. No words came to him. He had no idea what to say next. That girl who thought he lived in Albany—what would she have told him? She would have told Amar (or so he imagined) that he didn't have the right to say anything, really, even to a war criminal, that he was trying to dredge up memories he didn't possess of a time he didn't live through. And that it was better to quit while he was ahead and pretend none of those false memories ever existed.

  Really, she would be all right.

  The wound on her cheek—he closed his eyes and saw her lean forward—look, Amar, it's healing.

  * * * *

  I had a prescription for myself that I followed for many, many years: “Don't write stories about writers.” It seemed like a great rule of thumb to avoid self-reflexivity for its own sake and therefore tedium. However, no rule is hard and fast, and sometimes it can provide a temptation: “How can I get away with it?” So there was a basic challenge in writing the story in a way that was creatively fruitful.

  A few more impetuses came together with this story, and combining them was part of the interstitial act. I wanted to put a thriller writer in a world that he has helped bring into being. What happens when writing's power (and pedagogy) gets out of control? I think a lot of right-wing-leaning thriller writers play fast and loose with their content, but what does that mean in terms of a country's political discourse?

  Another motif I wanted to play with was that of a “cursed manuscript.” However, I wanted to ground that “curse” in a future political reality that would reflect back on our own. Finally, I wanted to explore the idea of middle-class comfort and how it's shaped, and how the middle class perceives the world through a narrow view.

  The obvious reversal, of course, is that America and the “developing world” change places in this story. If a cursed manuscript comes to us from halfway around the world, how do we handle it? Do we even have the tools at our disposal to adequately assess it? Finally, the story's form (no section breaks) gave me an opportunity to thread all of the characters together on one spool, so to speak. Whether all of these elements together make the story “interstitial,” I can't say—but definitely having these thematic elements bumping up against each other was part of the thrill of writing this story—I wasn't ever sure how they would collide.

  Alan DeNiro

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  The Marriage

  Nin Andrews

  This is a story about a man who ties a woman to his bed. No, it's not what you think, he says. Please understand. But how can he explain? All those nights his wife turns into other things. Would anyone believe him?

  He should have known the first time he saw her, he thinks: her waves of dark hair spilling down her back, her torn jeans, her look of fuck you, too, her scent of wet leaves, sweat, and dirt. It made him horny. What else can he say?

  She's wild, his friends smirked. As if they knew. But he'd always wanted a woman like this. Not one of those local girls who knit and pray and stare at the ceiling all night. But these days he's not so sure.

  Each night when he comes home, he suspects something is amiss. And it is. She's not there. She returns so late at night. Where have you been? he asks. She doesn't answer him at first. So he asks her again, and that's when her soft skin grows fur, her head sprouts horns, the buttons on her blouse burst off and fly across the room like seeds. She charges after him, lunging again and again, letting loose such bellows and curses. What do the neighbors think? What if someone knocks or calls the police? he asks.

  After a while, he has no choice. (Or so he says.) He takes out the harness, the ropes, the bucket of oats and corn. He talks to her softly, crooning her name. And she lets him get close. She lets him do with her whatever he wants.

  But the mornings after, the house is in shambles. The tables and dressers are cracked and splintered. Clothes are torn and tossed over chairs and lamps. Even the framed wedding pictures are shattered into glass splinters that shimmer on the bed sheets and floors.

  Sometimes he tells her, I can't live like this anymore. Her eyes fill with tears. Her voice, a whisper, she begs him, please, please. Then she showers and washes the night from her skin. She slips into one of her silky underthings and stands there, hosing her hair with a hot wind. How can I resist? he thinks. What man is as lucky as this?

  He bends to kiss her again and again. My wife, my love, my forever after, he says. Don't leave me again. Please. And she promises she'll stay. She won't go anywhere. She'll just be happy in their home. She will cook dinner and wait for him to come home. There is nothing she would rather do than wait for him to come home. And he almost believes her. He almost believes she's his.

  * * * *

  I suppose this is a bit of a fairy tale, or maybe an anti-fairy tale, an anti-happily-ever-after tale. I've always loved fairy tales and ghost stories and the like. I think in some ways they often tell the ugly truths in a magical way, or an indirect way, which is oddly more believable. I particularly love tales of shape-shifters. I think we all do that—turn into other things, I mean. But by the time we grow up, marry, have a home, etc., we have learned to pretend we are one thing. After a while, pretenses are all we are. But that, of course, is another story.

  As to the questions of interstitial versus regular fiction, I've never been one thing or another. Fiction writer or poet or, occasionally, a memoirist. I recently received a letter from an editor saying, We like this, but what is it? I'm happy to take on any labels and no labels. And I never have a clue what it is. I'll go anywhere they will let me in.

  Nin Andrews

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  Child-Empress of Mars

  Theodora Goss

  In the month of Ind, when the flowers of the Jindal trees were in blossom and just beginning to scatter their petals on the ground like c
rimson rain, a messenger came to the court of the Child-Empress. He announced that a Hero had awakened in the valley of Jar.

  The messenger was young and obviously nervous, at court for the first time, but when the Child-Empress said, “A Hero? What is his name?” he replied with a steady voice. “Highest blossom of the Jindal tree, his name is not yet known. He has not spoken it, for he has as yet seen no one to whom he could speak."

  The Ladies in Waiting fluttered their fans, to hear him speak with such courtesy, and I said to Lady Ahira, “I think I recognize him. That is Captain Namoor, the youngest son of General Gar, who has inherited his crimson tongue,” by which I meant his eloquence, for an eloquent man is said to have a tongue as sweet as the crimson nectar of the Jindal flowers.

  Lady Ahira blushed blue, from her cheeks down to her knees, for she had a passion for captains, and this was surely the captain of all captains, who had already won the hearts and livers of the court.

  * * * *

  "Let the Hero's name be Jack or Buck or Dan, one of those names that fall so strangely on our tongues, and let him be tall and pale and silent, except when he sings the songs of his people to the moons, and let him be a slayer of beasts, a master of the glain and of the double adjar.” The Child-Empress clapped her hands, first two and then four, rapidly until they sounded like pebbles falling from the cliffs of the valley of Jar, or the river Noth tumbling between its banks where they narrow at Ard Ulan. And we remembered that although she was an Empress and older than our memories, she was still only a child, hatched not long after the lost island of Irdum sank beneath the sea.

  "Light upon the snows of Ard Ulan, he is indeed a slayer of beasts,” said the captain. The Ladies in Waiting fluttered their fans, and one sank senseless to the floor, overcome by his courtesy and eloquence. “He wounded two Garwolves who approached him, wishing to know the source of his singular odor. He wounded them with a projectile device. They are in the care of the Warden of the reed marshes of Zurdum."