The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eleven

by Jonathan Strahan

  Then everyone remembered that they had their phones and one by one they appeared in the dark as busts glowing delicately blue in a far-future museum, the unspecified museum they were trying to make it into with their writing, as stupid as that sounded and whether they admitted it to themselves or not, because it wasn’t as if their jobs or families or stations in life or beauty or kindness or cruelty would get them there. They were investing their current happiness against future gain, except the cause-and-effect was screwy and some of them weren’t doing this on purpose—some of them were very, very unhappy so their main consolation was that their eventual glorious future would stretch backward in time. So they dug in, burrowed tight foxholes where they could be surrounded by their unhappiness, nurtured sweet little gardens made up of and inside their unhappiness.

  Hey! Holy fuck. Are we still alive or are we dead right now? Oh my god. Hiiiiiiiii! they said to each other, laughing. Kim took a photo of everyone in their tiny blue islands. Lee found a flashlight, and the girl produced candles and a bottle from a backpack they hadn’t noticed.

  “They said there would be a storm tonight,” she said, laughing as she laid out the candles for Lee to light. “I came prepared!” Her teeth glinted. Lee noticed that her hair hadn’t dried at all, not one bit. Dark ropes of it clung to her shoulders and chest, and a few strands were wrapped around her throat; Lee had the urge to brush them out of the way.

  The girl said, “I want you guys to be happy.”

  “We’ve been talking a lot,” said Lee. “What about you? What do you write? What are you doing in the city?

  “Look, I brought alcohol,” said the girl. “Bourbon.” She sprang up and scampered to Lee’s kitchen, where she pulled out the first cup-like objects her hands touched—mugs, a highball glass, a soup bowl. “You guys drink bourbon, right? Writers. All you writers. Bourbon is a thing writers are supposed to drink. Drink up.” They felt both flirted with and completely humiliated.

  Somehow, they had ended up in a circle sitting on the floor. It felt safer that way. Once the lights went out, it was best to pre-emptively cut your ties to other so-called necessities, like furniture.

  “Let’s do shots,” said the girl.

  They drank. The girl’s arm snaked out, long and white, and poured more. “Another!” she shouted. That was certainly a kind of person, the person who demanded that everyone do shots. Or, given that you couldn’t always predict who would get that antic gleam, who would yell for more shots the way a child might scream for another story and would literally not stop with the shots until something bad and un-fun happened—the shots-monster was more like a demon that roamed bars and colleges and work holiday parties to possess the susceptible.

  Lee’s face never got red but too much alcohol still begrimed her on a cellular level; her drunks felt dark and deeply allergic, but at least they didn’t fuck up her countenance. Unlike Kim, whose eyes always went an itchy highlighter pink in the presence of even a drop of a beer, though there was something manly and endearing and almost bruised-looking about his inflamed face.

  “You’re being so guarded around me,” the girl whispered sadly.

  When are we going to talk about my writing? Lee wanted to say but didn’t. Who cared, anyway. It was a particularly gnarly excerpt from book two of her fantasy trilogy, the kind of piece that would drag the group into unhelpful arguments about blood spatter patterns and what kinds of plausible damage could be done to a person via broadsword, unicorn horn, mace. They did not respect her. Just wait, she thought. I will be rich and respected. I will not have to choose, the way you all think you’re choosing.

  The shots-monster changed form and the girl lit up. “I know!” she said. “Drinking game!”

  The girl made everyone write down nouns on little scraps of paper, torn from a small notebook she produced from her backpack. The paper scraps were folded and piled in the middle of the circle. The girl took a die out of her pocket and told them that when it was your turn, you would pick a scrap of paper, before rolling the die—making sure no one else could see the number you got.

  If you got an even number, you had to tell a true story that involved the thing that was written on the paper scrap you picked. If the number was odd, you would make a story up. Then everyone would go around the circle and guess if the story was true or false. Whoever is wrong drinks. For each person who guesses right, the storyteller has to take a drink.

  “Because you’re all writers,” said the girl. They felt embarrassed again.

  Kim said, “Let’s do this.” He selected a piece of paper and turned away from the circle and rolled. “Okay,” he said. “I can work with this.” The paper said NAME.

  “My last name—there’s a shit-ton of us,” Kim said. “But my first name is less common.” The first time he got a story published, he thought about changing things up, maybe throwing in a middle name. But he decided to use his regular name, as is, since he wanted all the glory and acclaim (“such as there was”) for himself, the normal everyday self with whom he was already familiar. Why should some artificial new construct—some guy who hadn’t even been there through the hard work—take all the credit?

  Years passed, he got a few more things published, and one day something strange happened. Kim received an email from a prestigious literary journal accepting a short story of his. Great! Except Kim didn’t recognize the title of the story, because he hadn’t written it. He let the journal know that they had gotten him mixed up with someone else. Now, if it had ended there, it would have been a funny little blip, a cute story he could tell about the time he got something he really wanted but it turned out to have been a terrible mistake and was thus immediately wrested from him, talk about impostor syndrome, I’ll tell you about impostor syndrome.

  But that incident begat others, in which he started receiving both acceptances and rejections for things he hadn’t written. “A lose-lose situation. The acceptances didn’t feel good and the rejections still felt terrible.” Kim started thinking again about using another name, except now he’d racked up a few publications and it would be a giant ass-pain to start all over again. But nor could he let the current situation stand. What to do?

  Just the other day, the other Kim contacted Kim. The other Kim’s email was neutral in tone, very direct. He stated that he had been getting mistaken for Kim off and on over the past few years, and surmised that this must also be happening to Kim in the other direction. So he made a proposal: Since it was apparent that they both worked slowly, why not pool their resources and combine themselves into one Kim? The other Kim wrote, “I have read your work and though it is quite different from my own, I believe we would complement each other well. Please also keep in mind that half of something is better than all of—as it stands right now, for both of us— absolutely nothing.”

  “We complete each other,” said Kim. This whole time, he had kept himself from reading the other Kim’s stories. He had this irrational idea that if he were to do so, something awful would happen—he might learn something it would be much better for him not to know. So he hadn’t decided yet. Although, of course, he was definitely going to say no.

  “True,” said Wong.

  “False,” said Lee.

  “False,” said Huynh.

  “True,” said the girl.

  Kim pointed at Lee and Huynh. “Drink,” he said.

  “Why would you never tell us this?” said Huynh.

  Kim shrugged. “It just happened.”

  “No, dick, I know you said the other Kim just wrote to you, but I’m talking about the earlier stuff.”

  “I didn’t know you then.”

  Huynh glowered at him. The girl threw her head back and laughed. “Love it. I’m getting so much out of this. I’m so glad we’re doing this.” She refilled their cups. The level of liquid in the bottle appeared unchanged.

  Wong was next. The paper said SCHOOLBOY. He blanched.

  “I got a bad one,” Wong said, making a face. He thought for a moment, th
en began.

  When Wong talked at length, he was hypnotic. Which could be bad at times, since his clipped accent, the precision of his speech, and the rich perverted sweet-rot depth of his voice all combined to make it sound like he really meant everything he said. One learned very quickly that this was not the case, but when confronted with that voice, one had a little trouble remembering that, now didn’t one. He could be intimidating, especially for Huynh, who was already continually shoulder-chipped by the fact that she hadn’t gone to the same fancy college as the rest of them. He hurt feelings often, but he didn’t mean to—a dumb joke from another person would sound like a blithe yet piercing condemnation from the president of the 1% from Wong. That voice!

  Wong told of a friendship he had had while in boarding school in Switzerland. This was a close friendship, childish because it was so obsessive, but adult because they seemingly saw each other clearly; they were fully mutually admiring of each other. Though Wong and the friend resembled each other physically and had similar tastes and personalities and aptitudes for school and sport, they treasured in the other the things that were different: Wong’s easy, conversational manner with teachers and fellow students alike; the friend’s single-minded ability to complete a paper or problem set from start to finish without interruption; one’s thick, fashionable glasses; the other’s adorably decorative smattering of acne. “It was very gay, as I can see you thinking, but my friend was not gay. Or perhaps a little, just for me. There was this one time in Paris—”

  “Anyway, I was extremely popular,” Wong said, as only Wong could say. But this friend gave Wong something no other friend could. Wong, who had been orphaned when he was a small child, knew no one else and was known by no one else to such a comforting extent. The friend knew Wong so well partially because they were so similar, which then made the differences all the more apparent, something to be mapped and delineated and treasured.

  One winter break, they lied to various parties and spent break unsupervised in one of the Wong family properties in Paris. Toward the end of break the friend received news that his parents had been killed in an accident. And after the funeral, the friend would be moved to another school, closer to his relatives.

  The friend did not want to go to a strange new school, to leave Wong and his other friends behind. So they came up with a plan. Wong would go to the new school in his friend’s stead, while the friend would stay at their school, where he could impersonate both Wong and himself. “When you feel bad, be me,” Wong had told him. It would help. And if the friend missed himself, felt the need for a small pocket of space-time in which to grieve, then he could always return to himself. It was only supposed to be temporary. So it was that Wong left their school in his friend’s place.

  “For a whole season, I pretended to be him,” said Wong. He blinked slow and smoothed his hair back. “The end.” he said.

  Kim made a farting noise. “When did you guys switch back again?” he asked.

  “Yeah, what happened? Did anyone ever find out?” said Huynh.

  Wong said, “Time’s up. Make your guesses.”

  “False,” said Lee.

  “False,” said Huynh.

  “True,” said the girl.

  “Falsest horseshit I’ve ever heard,” said Kim.

  “You’ll all have to drink,” said Wong. “All of you!” As the rest of them complained, he cackled and drained his glass.

  “I’ll allow it,” said the girl. She and Wong clinked glasses.

  It was Lee’s turn. The paper said SUCCESSOR. “Pass,” said Lee.

  The next slip of paper said USURPER. Well, if she didn’t want SUCCESSOR, she definitely didn’t want USURPER. “Pass on this, too,” said Lee.

  The next slip said REPLACEMENT.

  Lee yelled, “I’m not doing any of these, you assholes,” and against her will she remembered finding the pictures of her ex-husband’s old girlfriends, the new girlfriend who had usurped Lee’s position, the one who had replaced that one, and the other one, or was it two, after—it was hard to remember exactly because the photos had been in some kind of circular book with no covers, no clear end or beginning, you could easily have flipped through all the women and gone back around to the beginning without even noticing; that was what they looked like.

  Huynh was looking at her calmly. Lee remembered how perfect Huynh had been, matter-of-fact yet merciless. “Don’t dwell. Just another yellow fever cracker-ass white guy,” Huynh had said. “Throw him back.”

  Huynh pushed a square of paper toward Lee. “Here, try one more.” Her face was unreadable.

  Lee unfolded the paper. Printed on it in tiny block letters was the word SHART. She hung her head, then began to shake with laughter—something about the careful, meek handwriting, more than the word itself even. “Noooooo,” she moaned. “That does it. I’m skipping my turn.” Huynh raised her glass to Lee. Wong and Kim looked relieved and drank. The girl refilled everyone’s cups. The bottle remained nearly full.

  “You humans,” murmured the girl. She grinned at them, tilting her head. “I mean, us. Us humans. We’re just such a blast.”

  Huynh got MATTRESS. She nodded as though she had been expecting it. Years ago, before all of them had met, Huynh had been going through a rough time. There was no money. She was living in an expensive city, but was too poor and depressed to move anywhere else and could not stomach the thought of going back home—her dad was mentally ill and homeless, and her mom had left for Vietnam a while back. “I guess with all the people over the years telling her to go back to her own country, she was finally like, ‘Huh, you know what, that’s actually like not a bad idea!’” said Huynh. “You fuckers.”

  Huynh had signed up with a temp agency, who immediately found her an assignment with amazingly inconvenient hours that paid terribly, but she took it, afraid that if she turned this one down she would not be placed elsewhere. During the final days before she had to move out of her current apartment, she searched through the classifieds and found exactly two apartments she could afford. One was so affordable because it was free— she would only have one roommate and would have to refrain from wearing clothing while in the apartment (‘no sex no touching,’ the ad had said, ‘I’m not some CREEP’).

  Huynh took the other apartment. It was a room in a two-bedroom apartment, clean and empty except for a mattress and a suitcase. She had a roommate who she would never see. The roommate slept on the mattress from about 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Normal-people stuff. Huynh slept on the mattress during the day. At night, she worked as an admin in a warehouse where they made and sent out copies of X-rays to hospitals. The schedule did not feel so good. She slept when she was supposed to, and presumably for the right number of hours, but waking up always felt cruel, as if she had just closed her eyes and hours passed in seconds, an evil trick.

  Her roommate communicated with her through notes. Like: Please wash the sheets. I did it last time. We will trade off on this. I hope you understand. Best, A.M. Huynh wrote back: No problem! Thank you. Best, P.M.

  This could not go on forever, but it went on for a while, until the night that Huynh, wracked with a flu and three canker sores, slept through her two alarms, slept through the sinking of the sun and the rising of the sun, and sat up midday, horrified that she had stolen her roommate’s bed time. Huynh lay back down, sweaty and weak, figuring that when her roommate came back she could apologize. Maybe the roommate would take pity on her when she saw how ill she was, since she seemed very reasonable in her notes.

  But the roommate never returned. No notes, no nothing. Huynh stayed in bed for three melty days, alternately dozing off and listening fearfully for the turn of the doorknob. And then: “Then I got in that accident and became the woman you see before you today,” said Huynh.

  “True,” everyone said in unison. Huynh nodded again and drank once, twice, thrice, four times. She didn’t seem drunk. Lee wondered just what was in the bottle that the girl had brought.

  “My turn,” said the girl.
She leaned forward and plucked one of the slips of paper out of the pile. Her hair, still soaking wet, spattered the floor.

  BARGAIN, it said on the paper. The girl sat up straight. She suddenly seemed very tall, and not only tall, but big.

  “I really liked hearing your stories,” she said. “I really like that kind of thing. I had a good feeling about you guys. Not just the one who drew me here—all of you. Such great need.” She stood in one swift motion, unswiveling herself from the ground like a ballerina, walked over to the window, and yanked the blinds open. Lee shouted.

  The girl said, “Don’t worry. There’s something I want you to see. It can’t hurt you.”

  The slight emphasis on “it” clearly bothered everyone, but they got up and stood next to the girl by the window.

  Outside it was still raining, though not as hard as before. Some people must have had generators, because they could see scattered lights on in some of the apartments across the way and in the bodega on the corner. There was the beast, ambling down the street. It raised its arm and waved at the girl. The girl waved back. “You see?” she said gently, not looking away from the beast. As quietly as possible, Huynh puked up the wedding cake. Finally the girl glanced behind her, annoyed, and snapped her fingers. The candles went out.

  In the dark, they ran scared and huddled together in a corner. Lee thought, I let it in. I let it in!

  No: Somebody called it here. And, also, this is true: We all kept it here.

  Their knees buckled; they all became sleepy at once. “Shh,” said the girl somewhere in the dark, and they slowly slumped to the ground. “Let’s end it nice,” she said. “Like a slumber party. We’ll lie down, and just talk until we sleep. In the morning I’ll be gone and you won’t remember a thing. Won’t that be nice? Doesn’t that make you less scared now?”

  They had spread out around the living room, lying flat and exhausted and finding themselves already drifting off to sleep, despite the hard wooden floors and the fears that one of them would encounter Huynh’s puke puddle. Each of them felt the girl pressing against them, her body huge and warm and firm, snaking and coiling around the room.