Nightmare Magazine Issue 25, Women Destroy Horror! Special Issue

by Nightmare Magazine

  Refusing got me fired. Ken’s sister came to see me before the circus left town. She was like her father, kind just because she could be. I’m sure she called in a favor to get me work. She helped me find a small apartment. The neighbors weren’t exactly welcoming, but they left me alone.

  She’d told me, “Don’t lock yourself up all the time, okay? You’re going to need people around you.”

  She was right.

  “Why did you trust them?” Minos asked.

  “Because even monsters get desperate for company. We can’t always wait for trustworthy companions—even the beautiful wait a long time for those.”

  He nodded, possibly remembering betrayal. Maybe recalling how often he’d dished it out.

  “I was surprised when they asked me out after work. They’d always been civil, but not friendly. That should’ve been my first clue. But I hadn’t been out in so long. The Labyrinth wouldn’t have been my first choice, though. It’s just another sideshow. Oh, don’t give me that look—I know a circus when I see one.”

  Minos laughed softly. “It is, isn’t it?”

  The Labyrinth is all theatrics: strobe lights, bone-rattling music, brightly-painted dancers who don’t really worry about the Minotaur coming out. Although, for insurance reasons, they’re all warned it might happen. You enter at your own risk. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

  Maybe they believe that because they’ve never seen it there isn’t really a monster. But they should know better. Sideshows always have a monster.

  And in my case it was Justin. He learned the guards’ routine; he found the one door that would be unlocked for a few minutes. One drink past midnight he pulled me further into the maze and backed me into a corner. I knew then. The only men who want to get that close to me are barkers and aspiring pornographers. When I let go of my glass it took a long time to hit the floor.

  History repeats itself. There’ll always be people who hurt others for fun. Those who think monsters never get lonely, and those who know all too well that we do.

  There’ll always be a date-rape drug.

  Old story.

  • • • •

  He said, “You tell your story well. But you’ve never told it to the press, no matter how much money they offered.”

  “No. I didn’t want to be found.” I’m good at reading expressions, but I couldn’t read his. He looked weary. His gun hand trembled slightly, which didn’t help my nausea.

  “Turning down cash has never been a common practice among my acquaintances,” he said. “Especially the women.”

  I deciphered his new look just fine. “Or whatever I am?”

  “What are you?”

  His candor was a nice chance from the usual.

  “I’m not a Minotaur. That’s what you’re wondering, right? I’m a mishap, not a myth. A misshapen woman who fits into a limited number of niches. Admittedly, the maze is a big one, but it still has its restrictions.”

  “Then why are you so determined to go in?”

  “Where else would I go? I’m not sleeping on the street tonight.”

  He sat up suddenly. “You intend to stay in there?”

  “Yes.”

  After the rape, a social worker had taken me to a home for women in crisis, which was miraculously empty at the time; but it had filled as the months went by. I wasn’t the scariest thing the other women had ever seen, not by a long shot, but I frightened their children. When some of them started having nightmares I knew it was time to move on. My landlady was too miserable with all the media attention for me to think of going back there. No decent hotel would have me.

  I considered my choices: Ken would probably take me back; Minos might not throw me out. I had my choice of circuses.

  I glanced up as the Minotaur ghosted across the nearest screen. “I have to admire you, Mr. Minos. Up to a certain point, that is. It was clever of you, turning your last piece of real estate into a nightclub.”

  But he’d always been tough. Kings live on the goodwill of their subjects, and there had been less and less of it the last few years of his reign. There had been stories of sorcery and terrible rituals practiced in the palace, some of them true. There had been rumors of his death and several attempts to make gossip into fact, but he was still on his feet.

  “You’ve done your homework,” he said.

  “I told you, I know who you are. Minos, former king of Crete, husband of Pasiphae. I don’t know much about her—she was sent to the asylum before my time. I suppose giving birth to the Minotaur would drive any woman insane. But even before that—falling in love with the white bull you were supposed to sacrifice to Poseidon because it was so beautiful? A little peculiar.”

  “Twisted,” he murmured.

  “Definitely. But since you couldn’t stand to slay it for the same reason, maybe you shouldn’t throw stones.”

  “May I tell you something?”

  “You’re holding the gun.”

  “Poseidon made Pasiphae love the bull because I refused to sacrifice it. Her madness is my fault.” He didn’t say anything about the curse Poseidon had put on the Labyrinth, slowing time inside to a crawl so that Minos’s misery would last longer. He didn’t say that when he’d used sorcery to move the Labyrinth through time to what he’d hoped would be a safe place, he’d had no way of knowing the curse would come with it. A leap of faith, not knowing where he’d land. We didn’t need to revisit that story.

  “I know about time with no meaning,” he said. “The white bull is dead, but I’m still serving penance.”

  We watched his son move through the heart of the maze, dark and filthy and mad. He was hard to look at, and I wondered if that wasn’t part of the reason for the looser security inside. There were hundreds of security cameras in the maze, but maybe the guards simply couldn’t stand to look.

  I wondered if disbelief had frozen them the night of my assault. No one had expected to see people that far into the maze, and there was a good chance they’d never seen such violence before. Who believed such brutality possible?

  I believed. And so did King Minos.

  • • • •

  “And what are you?” I asked.

  “Not getting by as well as you think.” He was tired, if he was opening his heart to monsters. Or maybe it had just been a while since he’d had someone to talk to.

  I checked the view of the bar. “The crowd’s dwindling.”

  “That is the crowd.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I have a talented PR man. Business is good if you believe the papers. But word-of-mouth has slowed us down considerably. The club is taking on the air of bygone days.”

  He was right. That was exactly how it felt. “What will you do if it closes?”

  “It can’t. Feeding my son still takes money. I have an obligation to family.” His gaze held mine for a long moment. I looked away first. “Tell me what you remember about that night.”

  “Bones. I remember scattered bones. And the crowd that gathered to watch me being carried out.”

  “That’s it?” he asked.

  “After being drugged I shouldn’t remember even that much.”

  But in my nightmares there’s the sound of my bones cracking under the Minotaur’s weight. The smell of my blood spraying and my bladder letting go. The Minotaur’s breath, rank beyond description. The manure he dropped on my legs in his excitement. The sound of him mounting me. I’m sure some of it is memory.

  “I’ve been waiting to hear from your lawyer,” he said. “My men expected to be sued for not getting you out of there sooner.”

  “It never crossed my mind.” They did the best they could—even the Minotaur runs from a dozen Tasers. “I don’t blame anyone but Justin.”

  “Not the others?”

  “I can’t see Marcus and Caroline planning this. I think they went along with it because Justin needed an audience.”

  I wish I could say they set me up for some bizarre ritual, that they needed
a sacrifice or something. But I know better. For somebody like Justin, jaded and oh-so-entitled, betrayal is just another game, and disappearing is an adventure. It’s possible with enough money.

  I suspect he’ll always have enough—an anonymous someone is copying the Labyrinth’s security tapes and selling them to special collectors. My rape is a popular show in certain circles now. I’m a star.

  I’m sure Minos knows more about that night than I told him, right down to how many stitches I needed.

  Many: an hour before I’d been a virgin.

  Some of my hair was ripped out. Bones had to be set. The doctors were horrified at the damage to my face, and more so when the x-rays showed there wasn’t any.

  They said there was less damage than they’d expected.

  I expect anything less than DOA would have been a surprise.

  One of them said my survival was a miracle and asked if I thought the gods had played a part in it. I looked at the old man watching the Minotaur onscreen, and I wondered if they’d played a part in his survival or if they’d just turned their backs. He was neither loved nor missed in his former kingdom, and he must be relieved to be away.

  But he also must be lonely. Monsters get that way.

  It’s so easy to lose everything. One mistake, one moment of doubt.

  Old story.

  • • • •

  “You’re really human?” He wasn’t being rude; he just couldn’t come to terms with it.

  I nodded. “My parents made sure. If I hadn’t been, they might have felt less guilty about sending me away with the circus.”

  Mr. Avery never told me how he’d heard about me; he wasn’t proud of the fact that he listened to gossip. He came to our house on my fourteenth birthday, hat in hand, and offered me a place in his show. He took us to the circus to meet his “oddities” and asked me what I thought. I didn’t want to go with him, but I told my parents I did because I wanted them to stop looking over their shoulders. The tension at home wasn’t my fault, but I was still the cause.

  Even at fourteen, when you become self-conscious about your body and hate being stared at, I knew this was how it would have to be. There were only so many places I would ever fit in.

  My parents sent me off with warm clothes, volumes of the poetry I loved, and all the extra money they had. Bless them, they never once looked relieved.

  I remember them pointing out clouds shaped like animals, and the constellation Taurus, because my birthday is the end of April. I remember the flower-shaped chocolate cake they made me every year.

  I remember red paint splashed on the house and detergent dumped in the koi pond. The neighbors were afraid I’d infect their children with repulsiveness. Fear can make you stupid. My parents did their best to keep me safe.

  They should’ve come with me.

  But we all knew safety was relative.

  “I know what I’m walking into,” I said. “They say there’s someone for everyone, right? And he’s half-human, which is more than I can say for some humans.”

  I tried again to find a comfortable position on the hard chair. There didn’t seem to be one. Realization dawned on his face as my coat fell open. “You’re—?”

  “Yes.”

  He pointed with the gun. “Tell me.”

  Where to even begin?

  “They say pregnant women get this glow, but I don’t see it. My back hurts all the time. Your son likes human flesh, and his son appears to have the same tastes—sometimes I get . . . cravings. The doctors gave me standard treatment at the hospital, so this should have been impossible, but . . .”

  “Should have been,” he sighed, and I heard what he hadn’t said—that nothing in the Labyrinth was what anyone expected.

  They’d told me what to expect after the rape—sleep disturbances, change in appetite, severe mood swings. By the time I realized the symptoms could mean something else it was too late for a safe abortion.

  It was too late for a lot of things.

  “I’ve memorized the layout,” I said. “I think I can avoid him. And if I can’t . . . I know what to expect this time.”

  “You memorized . . . ? How?”

  “The design of the maze was one of the files I put on disk. Apparently Justin saw it, too. Daedalus was a brilliant architect, wasn’t he? And you tried to put him out of business so he could never build another Labyrinth. You arranged for a little crash-and-burn. That’s why I made sure people saw me come in—you remove people you find inconvenient.”

  He nodded. We were running out of conversation. But finally I couldn’t help asking, “Were you ever really planning to use that on me?”

  He set the gun on the desk. “Sometimes I think about using it on myself. But then who would feed my son? No, I’m not about to kill the mother of my grandchild.”

  It was nice to hear him say it. “So it’s just an accessory?”

  “Yes. Like you, I enjoy the illusion of choice.”

  It occurred to me that he probably didn’t want to need me, either. I glanced around the office. “You’ve been living in here, haven’t you? Sleeping on the couch.”

  “Time moves on. Sometimes it leaves us behind. I don’t fit in many niches, either.” He watched the screens for a moment. “Amazing,” he said. “We might actually be too strange for Las Vegas.”

  • • • •

  “You didn’t know, did you?” I asked. “You didn’t always have security cameras.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Some of the bones in there are awfully small, Mr. Minos. I think a couple of your sacrifices died in childbirth.”

  He spoke on the second try. “I never thought of that.”

  “Neither did anyone else, apparently. But it’s still possible to survive the birth. Your wife is living proof.”

  Neither of us said, If what she does can be called living.

  I said, “By this time next week you’ll have all the customers you can handle.”

  They’ll come looking for an encore. Their need for spectacle will exceed their fear. I’m going to sell more tickets than he can count.

  “I’ll be watching,” he said. “I’ll send help when you go into labor.”

  He’s the head of the family; he won’t neglect his kin. He’s a businessman; he won’t risk losing his star attraction.

  He opened the door for me, an unexpected courtesy. “How long do you have?”

  “Cows and humans both take nine months. So, maybe three.”

  “But you really don’t know.”

  “Time is different in the maze.”

  “Shall I have my men escort you in?”

  “No, thank you. I know my way.”

  “Rumer?” I looked up at him. He didn’t flinch. “Is this an old story, too?”

  “They all are, remember?”

  “How does it end, do you suppose?”

  He watched me look for an answer. He saw me not find one. He closed the door quietly behind me.

  © 2014 by Catherine MacLeod.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Catherine MacLeod lives and writes in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, where she also spends too much time watching “One Step Beyond” on YouTube. Her publications include short work on Tor.com, and in On Spec, Black Static, and several anthologies, including Fearful Symmetries, The Living Dead 2, and Tesseracts 17. She’s waiting patiently for Joss Whedon’s “Drive” to be released on DVD.

  To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.

  Unfair Exchange

  Pat Cadigan

  Art by Sam Guay

  Dear Future Me:

  I haven’t been myself lately and neither have you.

  I don’t even know if I’ll understand that or remember anything of what happened. TBI—traumatic brain injury—is dicey and unpredictable. Did you know you could fall down a flight of stairs, hit a concrete landing head-first, and after spending a week comatose in intensive care with a subdural hematoma, wake up bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed with nothing more than some minor gaps in your memory and a tendency to get headaches in rainy weather? Or you could bump your head on a kitchen cabinet door, never lose consciousness, but stroke out two hours later and spend the rest of your life in a care home. The brain is a strange and temperamental organ. This is why it’s so dangerous for people to use magic—we’ve got a lot to lose.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Or am I? What do I talk about first—the necklace Grandma gave me—you—and my—our—twin brother Jesse? Or the fact that I was wearing it when the three kids broke into my downstairs neighbor’s flat? Or that I forgot I was wearing it when I charged in like Jools the Superwoman?

  • • • •

  After bumming around Europe for a few months after college, I knew London was the place for me. Haringey wasn’t a wealthy garden spot but that didn’t bother me. It had an energy that appealed to me on sight. It reminded me of our old neighborhood in Massachusetts, but where that area had been primarily Italian and Puerto Rican, here it was Turkish, Greek, both kinds of Cypriot, African, and Indian.

  The main road, Green Lanes, was lined with small businesses—news agents (what we called candy stores back in the day), grocers, butchers, restaurants, dry-cleaners, locksmiths, and, here in the twenty-first century, internet cafes that advertised cell phone unlocking. The grand old pub on the corner was over a hundred years old and had been featured in the movie Chaplin. The Chinese restaurant advertised its food as both halal and kosher, Orthodox Jews from nearby Stamford Hill bought fresh produce in the Muslim-owned twenty-four-hour fruit and veg shops, and there were kids everywhere. Estate agents called it the inner city; I called it a working-class family neighborhood and managed to buy just before the housing market went completely insane. My clients warned me to keep my doors and windows locked and never go out alone after dark. Six months after I moved in, a twelve-year-old boy tried to mug me as I was on my way home with some shopping; he ran off when I said I knew his parents—a lie, but in that area, entirely possible. In the nine years since, that was my only brush with crime. Until that night.