The Long List Anthology Volume 5

by David Steffen

  But all I saw was how, each time I stopped, there were half as many people, that the presents were gone and then the toys too, that the rooms were smaller and dingier, that Mom left on a rainy day and never came back, that Princess didn’t seem to care. She still had her Daddy and he always always held her tightly, close enough that even on watch I could smell the liquor on his breath—just like those booze pops I’d ordered. I still felt a little of the way she’d felt when he called her Brenda, all lit up from inside like candles on a birthday cake, but this time I wasn’t swept up in the share—she was just some sad little girl wearing grimy clothes, living in a dirty room with an old man who finally died in a rocking chair. Some girl who leaned over and let a perv at a front counter see down her shirt. Some girl too dumb to figure out her own stupid memories.

  I left the booth before the half hour was up, still trying to get the stink of Princess’ dirty life out of my nose. Pervy was back on duty and waved me over from the front counter as I passed by.

  “Your friend gonna be alright?” he said. “Seems like a sweet girl.” He licked his skinny lips and I had to try not to shiver. Princess would end up swapping more than ’grams with him one of these days.

  “Leave her alone,” I said.

  “I’m just a concerned citizen.” He lifted a bushy eyebrow in a way that was probably supposed to make me feel something. “Maybe I should be concerned about what you were doing during my break.”

  “Just making a back up,” I said. “In case there’s another quake or she gets hit by a truck or something.” Pervy leaned forward a little.

  “I’ve got an extra,” I said. “You want it?”

  Pervy had his hands out before I could blink. They looked pale and clammy, like a piece of gum stuck under a chair too long. I fished the cube with Princess’ memories out of my pocket. It was the only one I had, but she’d be better off without it. Who wants to find out at eighteen that their life has been so fucking pathetic? Screw having something real.

  “I give you this, you leave her alone, alright?”

  Pervy nodded. I handed the cube over, making sure not to touch his sweaty hands. Fifty-fifty chance he’d try to pull some double-cross, but if I needed to, I could take care of his memories as easy as I had Princess’, so I just smiled and walked out. Can’t hurt somebody you can’t remember.

  • • • •

  This time, I made curfew. I could tell by the way Miss Miranda stared me down that she couldn’t wait to have some reason to give me punishment, but she was gonna have to. I smiled right at her and headed up to the third floor like I had a mouth full of cotton candy. Soon as I got off the elevator I saw Princess lying in the bed she liked, hair spread out on the pillow like a pool of old soda. Flash sprang up soon as she saw me, with that big smile she got like she was either gonna hug you or eat you.

  “It’s all gone,” she said. “All that shit about her daddy and her perfect life? Wiped just like if the Agency got her.”

  I smiled back, but it felt weird, like baring fangs.

  “I thought you were bullshitting about the hacking part, but you give good, Ghost,” Flash said. “Maybe next you can reboot Whispers so she won’t talk so damn much, right? Or creep up on Miss Miranda and take everything she’s got?” She laughed hard, and I knew not to tell her anything about how it really was with Princess, ’cause then she’d be mad I gave all the good stuff away.

  “The rest of her okay?” I said, like I didn’t care too much really.

  “Yeah, she’s good. Not like Whispers or anything. Just less annoying. Cuter too.” Flash glanced over at Princess like she was sizing her up in a prize booth at a fair.

  “Yeah, but fosters’ll probably get her soon.” She’d be fine. Just like Hope. Better than her memories.

  “Maybe,” Flash said, “If she figures out how to keep her mouth shut.”

  “Fifty credits says she’s gone in a month.”

  Flash shook her head. “She’s not that cute.”

  “You said that with Hope.” I shrugged and hoped my palms wouldn’t be too sweaty.

  “Fine.” Flash grabbed my hand tight with her cold one. “But make it sixty. And when she starts blabbermouthing again, I’m gonna laugh at the both of you.”

  “We’ll see,” I said, and started over for Princess. I thought Flash might follow, but she just went back to practicing whistles like always. Princess wasn’t doing much, didn’t even look at me as I walked over and sat down right by her ear. Just stared up at the ceiling like any other new girl who got wiped and dumped on the third floor. Sour milk squared. But that was okay. You didn’t have to stay a sour milk girl forever.

  “I’m Ghost,” I said, low and quiet so only she could hear. “You know Flash and Whispers. And we call you Princess, but your daddy, he called you Brenda.”

  * * *

  Erin Roberts is a writer and communications consultant who somehow found a way to be a storyteller when she grew up. Her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Podcastle and The Dark, and her non-fiction has appeared in venues including Tor.com and People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy. She is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and Stonecoast MFA program, an Associate Editor for Escape Pod, and the winner of the Speculative Literature Foundation's 2017 Diverse Worlds and Diverse Writers Grants. She can be found on Twitter at @nirele.

  Asphalt, River, Mother, Child

  By Isabel Yap

  The girl does not come to Mebuyen, so Mebuyen goes to the girl.

  She is standing ankle-deep in the river, looking down, her mouth open. Mebuyen notices, as she draws closer, that the child’s calves are skinny, her cheeks chubby, and her SpongeBob Squarepants sando has a bullet-sized hole above her ribs. Mebuyen frowns as she steps into the river, waiting for the girl to speak.

  “Why is this river so clean?” the girl asks. “I can see my feet!” She lifts one foot, then the other; her voice is high and filled with wonder.

  “It isn’t clean, really,” Mebuyen says. The dirt they are standing on is packed with fears and pains, the current made of tears, the silt of sadness. There are no fish, not even algae. Though it is sweet to drink, the water cannot be used on anything in a garden—Mebuyen has tried, and grumbled at the results. “It’s just clear, at the moment.”

  The girl turns her gaze to Mebuyen and blinks. “You’re bomba! Why?”

  “I don’t like clothes,” Mebuyen says impatiently. “What’s your name, anak?”

  “Adriana po.” Mebuyen reaches out her hand, and after a brief hesitation, the girl takes it. Her skin against Mebuyen’s is warm, still full of life, and she curls her fingers into Mebuyen’s fleshy palm as if suddenly afraid. “Where are we going?”

  “To my house. You can rest there a bit.”

  Adriana considers this. With her free hand she fingers the hole in her shirt. Then, with a slight tremor: “Am I dead?”

  Mebuyen sighs. She was hoping the girl would not ask.

  • • • •

  The girl shares her story as if she is recounting something peculiar that happened at school: thoughtful, but not with extreme anger or sadness. She sits at Mebuyen’s table, elbows splayed, drinking the sweet milk Mebuyen poured for her. “This tastes like Yakult,” she says. Mebuyen wonders whether to take that as a compliment. She has not felt concern in a long time, and the emotion sits heavy in her chest, like a stone.

  There was a man, Adriana starts, then scrunches up her face. I was playing jackstones on the second floor. There were three of them actually, who came in. They … I think they were police. They were all wearing blue shirts and um, um, blue pants. I did not see them come in but I heard them come in so I ran to the staircase to see. They shouted “Bonifacio! Bonifacio Magsaysay! We know you’re here!” Lolo Basyo was outside helping mama make tinola. Lola came out from her room and saw them and screamed, so I ran down the stairs to—to be near her. My lolo came in through the screen door, they said “That’s him!” and then I heard a bang, and then … everything
stopped. That’s why I think I’m dead po. They shot me yata.

  You were shot by the police?

  Mebuyen brewed herself a glass of pandan tea, but she has not been able to drink, intent as she is on listening. Mebuyen is never cold, but she warms her hands against the glass anyway.

  Adriana shrugs. Her face grows sulky, like she doesn’t want to talk about it. Mebuyen softens, in her heart if not in her gnarled face, and asks Adriana if she wants another glass of milk. The girl nods eagerly. “Do you have TV po? I want to watch Naruto.” Mebuyen realizes this visit may last longer than she expects.

  • • • •

  Juan Miguel Pulag, known to friends and family as JM, has not slept in two days. His mother doesn’t know, though she tells him, jokingly, that he looks like he has seen death. He does not have the heart to say: that’s not funny. It’s not that he doesn’t have time to sleep, the way it was back in high school when some nights he’d only have twenty-minute naps between textbook chapters. This is different. These days, he lies in bed and stares at the creaky ceiling fan forever, and when he closes his eyes it’s as if he’s still awake, and there is no darkness; only the ceiling fan, lazily spinning. Sometimes there are shadows behind it that slowly shift into shapes like hands and faces. Then he opens his eyes again, drenched in sweat, cold to the bone.

  Sometimes he hears, far-off but steadily growing louder, like someone slowly turning up the volume on a TV, the cry of an old woman—startled at first, high and sharp, followed by a wail of despair that stretches, endlessly, until the sound cannot possibly be human anymore.

  Adriana-a-a-a-aaaa. The old woman grabbed the girl, clutching her hair, her shoulders, patting her face gently, then with more and more force.

  JM doesn’t remember who pulled the trigger, but when Sir Marco barked at them to chase Bonifacio Magsaysay, he followed his orders. He ran out the back door, gun held out, and the mother outside screamed, of course she did. As he chased Bonifacio Magsaysay down the street, neighbors rushing out of the way, he continued to hear the woman’s cry, stretching that a-a-a to eternity. He lost Bonifacio Magsaysay in a crowded market, him and Digo both. Without a criminal in hand he dreaded it more: returning to that house, to see blood on the floor, the little girl covered in it.

  JM is sure he did not pull the trigger. JM is pretty sure he did not. He is a good shot. His hands never tremble when he holds a gun. When they returned, him and Digo panting, the mother was at the door, staring blankly. Her tinola soup was overflowing; he switched the stove off. Sir Marco could be heard from the street: “Why did she run down the stairs? Look what happened, because of that!”

  JM's mother isn’t wrong. He has seen a lot of death before. He is not some candidate fresh from the academy, jumping at every little thing. It was unfortunate, what happened, but he always knew the price to end the war on drugs would be high. He’d known from when their new president stepped into power. They were told things would be difficult, but in the end the world would be safer-better-more-productive, free of crime and the scum of the earth, those who succumbed to the sweet siren call of shabu. And JM, like all his fellow policemen, wanted the Philippines to be free. Your mothers, sisters, daughters will walk safely through the night! the precinct chief told them, a few weeks after they started, when some were growing faint of heart. Their shrunken minds are useless to our society. Don’t you see?

  JM saw. JM did not question what they did, because he knew what good it would bring.

  On the third day, Nanay makes him lugaw, his favorite from when he was a child. While stirring in toyo, he sees the line of soy sauce turn red, the rice blending from gray to ghastly pink. He chokes. Nanay turns to him, concerned, but the lugaw looks normal again. “Nasamid lang po ako,” he says.

  “Drink water,” she advises fondly.

  He falls asleep for the first time since the little girl died. In his dream the old woman passes him a cup of her granddaughter’s blood. She tells him to drink it, and calls him a sinner.

  • • • •

  “Manang Em, Manang Em!” Adriana has taken to calling her this. Mebuyen does not mind. The last few days, in response to Adriana’s wistful droning about being bored because there’s no TV and now she won’t know what happens next on One Piece, she has set Adriana to work on her garden, where she grows okra and kamote and corn. She has a finicky banana tree that turns out sweet little latundans from time to time. And a precious lemon tree that she does not shake, for fear of how many might fall. There is no way to mark the seasons, here in the underworld, Mebuyen’s town with its endless river and little stone house. The sky turns from a pale gray day to a soft blue night, and there are no stars. She recognizes all this only because of Adriana’s endless questions. Mebuyen answers, and tries not to grow fond. She’s too old for that sort of thing.

  Adriana muses aloud: “Why did they come for my lolo? He voted for the president, you know. He wasn’t a pusher. Lola said he went to the police station to make sure he was safe. We thought he was safe.”

  Then: “I wonder why they shot me?”

  This, Mebuyen cannot answer.

  She is preparing her milk when Adriana calls her, so she does not rise immediately. “Manang Em,” Adriana repeats forcefully; Mebuyen lumbers off her stool to see what the matter is.

  There is a new visitor, kneeling by the river. A beautiful girl, looking dazed, dreamy. She looks twenty, twenty-one—still a child to Mebuyen, but not quite as young as Adriana. She is wearing a Barong Tagalog, which Mebuyen finds odd, until she looks more closely and thinks: Ah. Adriana is capering near her, full of adrenaline. Closer now, Mebuyen can see that the girl is wearing makeup, expertly applied, but tears have smudged the mascara, and the color on her cheeks is chalky.

  The girl notices this scrutiny, and with dignity, says, “It’s not waterproof makeup, okay? That’s too expensive.”

  Mebuyen smiles in spite of herself. “What’s your name?”

  “Babygirl Santos,” she answers, defiant, like a pageant contestant. At this she finds her strength and stands, regally. Mebuyen notices that despite the barong, Babygirl is wearing heels—beautiful, shimmery, four-inch heels that make her tower like a gorgeous pillar. “My name is Babygirl Santos, twenty-four years old, from Tondo. My talent is singing like Whitney Houston and Ariana Grande. I am also very good at dancing the cha-cha and kpop covers. I am not a drug dealer!”

  Hay naku, Mebuyen thinks. She may have to visit her brother in the world of men, little as she likes to.

  • • • •

  For dinner that night they have mashed bananas and cassava cake. Mebuyen is not sure if they can taste anything—she has never bothered to ask—but she knows the physical sensation of food, of chewing and swallowing, is comforting to those who visit her. Many of them cry when eating their first meal. But Adriana did not, and neither does Babygirl, who has broken through her bewilderment to become effusive and bubbly, much like the beauty queen she was in life.

  She tells her story like something out of a telenovela. They knocked on my door. They said my real name—Eduardo Reyes—so macho, no? I hate it—and I immediately knew what it was about. But they were wrong! I haven’t taken drugs in like three years. And the last time I sold one was eight months ago and it was to some rich boy in Makati, which of course as you know, he won’t get caught, because he has a driver and a huge condo. So they called my name and the knocking became banging and my sister, Janelle, the sweetheart, she looked me dead in the eye and said do not open the door. And I said, Jel, Jel, where can I hide? They’re going to kill me! She told me to go upstairs and they kicked the door open as I was going upstairs and, yun nga, there was nowhere to hide. I crawled into the closet. Janelle screamed at them as they came up the stairs, and they found me, of course.

  Our house isn’t very big kasi.

  I shouldn’t have been home. I’m so sorry Ma had to see it all. She was standing by the Santo Niño as they dragged me out, then she fell to her knees bigla, pleading. Don’t t
ake my child away! He’s my only son! She was crying and crying. Outside the street was empty and the sky was medyo reddish. Janelle tried to grab the arm of one man and he shoved her away and pointed his gun at her. Do you want to die? he asked. I was calm then, I knew there was no way to escape, and the funny thing was, he didn’t sound angry or threatening—he actually sounded scared. Like he was begging her not to follow.

  Jel, I called out to her. Jel, tama na, it’s okay. Stop na. It’s okay. Tell mama I love her. Tell papa I love him, I’m sorry I could never be his son. The one dragging me hit my mouth. A bloody mouth tastes like salt pala. Shut up! he said. Nag-English pa siya.

  I think they took me to a side street. It smelled like pee. There was garbage on the floor. I prayed to the Lord that I trusted He would not put me in hell even if I am transgender. I don’t pray very often but I was scared. I kept thinking don’t let it be painful, I don’t want to die suffering. They asked me two questions and I answered, then the one that shouted at Jel came forward, and the one that dragged me told him to shoot. And he shot.

  Babygirl sighs. “I’m glad I’m not in hell,” she says. “At least—I don’t think this is hell?”

  “It’s not,” Mebuyen says.

  “But what is this place? Does this mean I don’t have peace?”

  Mebuyen hands her a glass of milk. “This is Gimokudan—my domain. You’re safe here. But as for your second question, I would like to know the answer too.”

  Babygirl drinks the milk, then looks at Mebuyen’s boobs. “You have so many,” Babygirl says wistfully. “Can’t I have just one set? Not even here?”

  • • • •

  JM is not surprised when the sister of Eduardo Reyes appears on TV. Beneath her name, Janella Reyes, is the subtitle: sister of the deceased. Her eyes are bright, huge and accusing, as she says to the reporter, “What they are doing is wrong. What they are doing is murder. They killed my innocent sister as if she were a pig. Are we pigs, that you can treat us like this?” She looks at the camera; it’s as if she’s looking right at him. “Shame on you.” Her tone is low and even, each syllable clearly enunciated. “Putangina niyo, you murderers. We will not let you get away with this.”