What he did know though was that the Twisted Man was not all powerful. Romez had learned that the jewellery box was a kind of prison for the entity, and that he could not stay outside of it for too long. When he retreated back inside of it, the box would close itself and seemingly only Romez was able to open it again. In the beginning, Romez had tried to get rid of the box, but the Twisted Man had many ways to prevent the boy from doing so. Mental dominance and tricks such as creating the vomit pygmy were merely the tip of the iceberg.
Speaking of the vomit pygmy, it clapped its glob like paws at the rising of the Twisted Man, and now waddled to the open jewellery box. Romez watched in disgust it as it oozed its body inside and disappeared from sight.
He folded his arms to try and keep out the cold. “So, I’ve let you out, what now?”
The Twisted Man leaned forward in a graceful, serpentine motion and pointed one disjointed claw in the direction of the entrance to the washroom. A few moments later, Romez heard the door open.
Resignedly, the boy got up and knew what was going to happen next. He went to the stall door and opened it. There was a man standing near the washroom entrance. He was tall and skinny, in his mid-fifties and dressed in a business suit. A fearful hunger was writ large on his horse-like face.
Romez sneered at the man. It was obvious he was on the prowl. The truck stop was a well-known cruising spot and the guy fitted the typical profile, middle-aged, middle-management and married. He’d probably driven over here from Wire or Spittle, telling his wife he had to work late so he could escape the lie of his existence for a couple of hours and grab a furtive fuck. The Twisted Man let out a hiss of approval, and Romez stepped farther out of the stall.
Middle-manager locked eyes with him, and stared at the boy with open lust.
Romez held his gaze, making it clear he was interested.
Middle-manager hesitated, unsure he could believe his luck, and edged closer.
Romez mustered a long sultry look and slipped back inside the stall. He heard middle-manager’s footsteps, and turned his back to him as the man joined him and closed the stall door. The inky stain of the Twisted Man clung to the wall, unseen by middle-manager.
Without looking at the man, Romez undid his jeans and pulled them down to his ankles. He heard middle-manager’s sharp breathing and his clammy hands yanked at Romez’s underwear. Clammy fingers caressed the boy’s peachy bubble-butt, before exploring the musky dark of his hole. There came the frantic sound of rustling and middle-manager’s torpedo thin cock speared him.
Romez closed his eyes as middle-manager pumped him madly. The man was rough and clumsy, desperate to snatch his brief moment of pleasure. Romez rode with the pain and imagined he was in his favourite TV show and not here as the Twisted Man slithered down the wall.
Middle-manager thrashed wildly, clearly close to sweet release.
The sound of metal cleaved the air, and the man started screaming.
Romez kept his eyes closed, grinding into the man’s crotch as hot blood splashed over his butt.
Middle-manager shuddered and jerked, emptying his seed inside him, before going deathly still. Sharply, he was yanked out of Romez’s hole, and the boy opened his eyes.
The Twisted Man was gone, and what was left of middle-manager was splayed across the floor of the stall. Romez picked through the shredded remains of his business suit until he found middle-manager’s wallet. Then, he went to wash the gore off his lower back, ass and legs as best as he could.
When he’d cleaned himself up, he went back to the stall and found the closed jewellery box sitting on top of the ravaged corpse. He slipped it into his backpack and headed out of the washroom to the diner across the way to get some food.
Escape from the Slave State
—Gio Clairval
“There we are.” The teenage girl who’d guided Bian across the military district halted in front of a postal hangar so high ceilinged it must have served to mail entire trainloads.
“What now?”
“If you want to cross over to Shell County, you’ve got to mail yourself to yourself, woman.”
Bian burst into laughter and couldn’t stop.
The girl kept silent, a frown on her sunken face. Bian studied her more closely—there hadn’t been time as they ran away from the cops. The teenager looked so fragile, with hair dyed black-blue sticking out in odd directions; large almond, gold-specked amber eyes; mouth small and lovely, done in cherry red—features showing both Western and Oriental parentage. Bian was lost in contemplation of the younger woman when the postal warehouse’s blast doors retreated into the walls, affording her a view of the interior: a criss-crossing of aerial conveyors made of steel slabs joined with silver rubber.
Bian wiped her cheeks moist with laugh tears. “Sorry. I’m new around here. How do we do this?”
“You freeze yourself so they think they’re handling a bot. You must take a maoranei cocktail, a substance that stills your heart and body. I’ve used it before, and I’ve stashed some. Come. We’ll go in undetected.”
Bian’s street-wisdom told her the girl was reckless and surely mad, but sincere—a dangerous combination. “And do you have a delivery address in the city?”
“We can use one of my dealers.’”
I could end up in her dealer’s hands, or worse, Bian thought. Surely she could come up with a better plan. “But there’ll be postal employees to snatch us on arrival.”
“It’s all automated.”
“The cops—”
The girl grabbed Bian by the shoulders and shook her. “I’ve gone in a dozen times and I was never caught, you hear me? Or maybe you’re afraid?”
Bian straightened. “Let’s go.”
A smile transfigured the girl’s face. “I’ll get the maoranei cocktail. The stiffing substance.” She disappeared down a street as dark as an ass crack, leaving Bian behind an overflowing trash container. A putrid odour of bad fish raised her gorge.
The teenager came back soon enough, carrying a tiny vial filled with a green liquid. She hunkered down near Bian. “Half for me, half for you. We’re going to sit down on the conveyor over there, to be inspected by the Mailwoman.”
“Who?”
“Dunno exactly. Nobody’s ever seen her. She comes before you’re mailed inside the city.”
“Like what? She inspects you and gives you clearance?”
“Yeah, and she grabs the infected.” The girl looked at Bian through eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re not infected, are you?” A bit late to ask.
Bian grabbed the younger woman, fingers and thumb touching together around the skinny forearm. “D’you want me to show you more strength?”
“No need to hurt me.” Like an eel, the girl wrestled herself free. “I heard the Mailwoman gets it, that you’re infected, by looking at your eyes. If you’re just feeling a bit down, she nabs you and she rejects you.”
“Even if you’re not infected?”
“Yeah. She’s not a real person, so she can’t see the difference. That’s how I started chewing dreamseeds. It blocks out your sadness and you don’t blink. I’ll share it with you.”
One take was enough to become addicted. In her mind’s eye, Bian saw her brother Ng’s dull expression. She would never be able to go back for him if she chewed dreamseeds. The Black Dog would get the two of them. “I’ll take the risk without seeds.”
The girl widened her eyes. “That’s ballsy, but why?”
“I want to rescue my little brother, who’s addicted.” And maybe infected, too, but her guide didn’t need to know.
Interest sparkled in the girl’s eyes, soon erased by the indifference of the seed-dependent. “Whatever.”
Apathetic. Just like Ng. But, once inside, Bian would find the way to cure her little brother.
For an instant, Bian was disappointed at the girl’s lack of reaction—Bian would have loved to impress her, but then shook the feeling away. Why care about a stranger’s interest? Another dreamhead w
asn’t the right choice for a friend. Thinking of Ng, of his vague answer to her suggestion to escape, Bian felt a fist squishing her inside.
The girl pulled a tattered T-shirt over her head. Underneath, she wore a black bra with pink lace. “We’re going to be sexbots.” She said it as if she’d suggested they play an innocent game. “Take off your clothes. Scapulars, too.” She wriggled out of her skirt.
Bian stripped down and chucked her scapulars, which didn’t filter the air anyway. She’d run out of refills a week ago. The sooty air didn’t even prickle her throat, as if her lungs had grown used to the aggression. It was bad, very bad, but she’d heard the city’s air was very breathable.
Maybe this was a scam and she would wake up in chains again—worse, bigger chains, and maybe she’d find fresh scars on her belly, where some bastards would have harvested her ovaries for fresh meat to remake and enslave.
Didn’t matter. She’d never found a guide into the city before. Living in New Zurich was the key to happiness, and she never would forgive herself if she let her good fortune pass. She had to try.
With a dreamhead’s help. Christ! Bian coughed into her palm but refused to look at the phlegm, probably speckled with blood.
The girl piped up. “I know from a few stupid infected who don’t do seeds that you can have hallucinations during delivery,” she said. “Whatever you see while you’re stiffened, don’t move. Don’t even try to breathe.”
As though Bian had spoken her distrust, the girl drank first and handed over the half-emptied vial. “Swallow the container as well. It’ll dissolve in your stomach. It’s important to not leave a trace.”
“What’s your name?” Bian asked again.
“You can call me Lady.”
“It’s a bitch’s name.”
“Back at you. Anyways, you need me, but I need you, too. The citizens go at least two by two. Always.”
“Why?”
“If you’re alone, they think you can’t make friends.”
“And that’s bad.”
“Yeah. It means you’re infected. When the Black Dog has you, you curl up in a corner. . .” Her voice trailed off.
Already altered by the drug, Lady stared, unseeing, and then her eyelids covered her eyes. She sneezed, twitched and went still. The muscles on her face tautened. Every small imperfection, dilated pores and tiny wrinkles, vanished along with the dark circles under her eyes. Her skin took on a rosy colour too flawless to be true, and her hair bristled like shiny black plastic strings. Bian started when the teenager’s eyelids cracked open to show emerald green eyes—instead of amber. The tiny specks of gold were gone and the irises displayed regularly spaced darker lines.
Like a bloody bot.
The eyes were the scariest details on Lady’s redone body, although her stiff nipples, so pink, so small, and the blond curls between her legs attracted Bian’s attention with an equally disturbing intensity. Her mind became a storm of images: her tongue licking the corner of Lady’s mouth, one hand touching the girl’s belly; Lady’s lips on her breasts. Blood rushed to her groin and her clit throbbed. Bian’s chest became too tight to hold her thumping heart.
She tried thinking in a detached way. Looking at the pale-blond pubic hairs, she wondered why the substance hadn’t changed them as well. The girl’s jet-black hair was dyed, after all. As she studied the teenager’s anatomy, feeling guilty because of her indiscreet thoughts, the blond hairs turned light green and glossy around the red-painted slit.
Bian’s heart skipped a couple of beats. Images of her hands on the girl’s body swirled around and she couldn’t think clearly for a moment.
The drug! She was supposed to drain the maoranei immediately, or else she’d be out of phase with Lady.
She gulped the slightly spiced liquid, along with the vial.
Her breath caught. Air. She needed air. She tried to clasp her throat but her arms hung limp, paralyzed, as the conveyor started forward. The sky-high dark ceiling of the postal hangar, the steel doors that were sliding shut—everything dissolved. Blackness gobbled her alive as her eyeballs hardened. For several excruciating moments, two hot marbles scorched her eye-sockets. A prisoner immured within a metallic shell, she howled until her eyelids lifted and she heard her irises whir open.
She floated in a sootless sky.
The city glistened below, a starfish shape with the business district at its core—the reason for its existence. Money.
She forgot everything about Ng. She forgot why she wanted to go through Shell County on a postal train.
New Zurich, the bankers’ city, called to her, flaunting rows of residential palaces and their suspended gardens; inviting her to follow the commercial avenues set like jewelled spokes on a wheel; enticing her senses with sounds and scents and the fresh air soaring from leisure quarters arranged in chequered patterns—here silver, here gold; leading her to the centre and its towers built with liquid amber light.
Bian sensed the city’s need to amass and grow. The crab would conquer cells, tissues, organs, to devour and digest anything, anyone. Being accepted as one of its servants was a privilege no woman or man could turn down without regret consuming them, but the crab-city wanted Bian above anyone else. Her life amounted to this moment—a madness, a realization, an opportunity to be seized before it could vanish.
A tapered tower punching out of a larger rectangular building undulated under her. Two arms emerged from the sides of the tower to squeeze her.
A hot touch burned her forehead and she felt a violent push to the side.
Bian opened her eyes with a scream as her body recovered its flexibility.
Another postal hangar. Similar to the other. Ribbons of silver-coloured conveyors. A ceiling so high it became a dark sky.
That push she’d felt. Had she been rejected? If she couldn’t get through, the Black Dog would get her brother. She couldn’t save him. She couldn’t save herself either.
She had failed.
“Hey? Girl?”
“It’s Bian,” she managed.
The city had tasted her and had spat her out…Bian couldn’t hold back her tears, eyelids fluttering until her sight focused.
Her guide’s face. Dark circles under amber eyes. Naked shoulders.
Lady looked away. “We’ve got to suit up.”
“But I was rejected! The Mailwoman must have found me infected.”
The girl yanked something sticky off Bian’s head, pulling a strand of hair along. “What do you make of this, then?”
Bian stared at a scrap of sticky paper with wavy black lines on it. “What’s this?”
“A postage stamp, idiot!”
Bian had passed like a love letter! A hymn resounded in her head: With Love, from Me to You.
She leaped down from the conveyor. “Good thing there’s no security here.”
“Very few people try to pass through the postal system,” Lady said. “The maoranei is terribly expensive.”
“I was wondering. How d’you—?”
“I deal a bit. Anyways, the chances of being detected by the Mailwoman are very high, without seeds. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d see you on arrival. But we’re in.” Lady picked up a cardboard box Bian hadn’t noticed before. “Our clothes made it through as well.”
Bian put on a clinging tracksuit, identical to the one Lady had already zipped up. The white suit reminded her of the ads sprawled across the army base in Ersatz. Images of happy people.
Lady elbowed her. “Put on your gloves, too.”
As the blast doors glided open, Bian squinted at the brightness. Free. She was free. The two of them started across a marble-paved plaza the size of which Bian had never even thought possible. Now they waded among a throng of people dressed in the same mint, spotless, reassuring uniforms, gloves and boots.
When they arrived at the centre, reaching a well, crowned with intricate volutes, Lady slid a hand in her pocket and chucked something into the aperture.
The ground shook, a humming
sound coming from the depths. Flagstones exploded in the air. From holes in the ground legions of rats scurried toward the crowd. As flames rose high, the passers-by’s heads took fire, and the citizens stood for a while in their fireproof coveralls, thin and straight and topped with tongues of orange, like white-coated matches ablaze.
About the Authors
Laura Lee Bahr—is an award winning indie actor/playwright/screenwriter with stories appearing in various anthologies. Her debut novel, Haunt, is available through Fungasm press and the winner of the 2011 Wonderland Book Award for Novel of the Year. Haunt will be available in Spanish this summer translated and published through Orciny Press. Bahr is currently in post-production on her first feature film as writer/director: Boned. She likes to flop around Los Angeles with her sweetheart and her elderly cat.
John Langan—is an American author and writer of contemporary horror. Langan has been a finalist for International Horror Guild Award. In 2008, he was a Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Collection. He is on the Board of Directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards.
Mary Turzillo—Mary’s novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl and her Nebula winner, “Mars is no Place for Children,” are recommended reading on the International Space Station. Her poetry collection Lovers & Killers won the 2013 Elgin Award for Best Collection. She has been a finalist on the British SFA, Pushcart, Stoker, Dwarf Stars and Rhysling ballots. Sweet Poison, with Marge Simon, came out last year from Dark Renaissance. She lives in Ohio with her scientist-writer husband, Geoff Landis.
Simon Marshall-Jones—Simon Marshall-Jones (aka The Tattooed Head) is editor/publisher at award-nominated Spectral Press and Theatrum Mundi. A writer, reviewer, columnist, and blogger: a book lover, of course—but also likes French cheeses rather too much, as well as rum. He lives with a wife, six cats, six guinea-pigs, five chickens, and two rabbits somewhere (but no partridge in a pear tree) in the Midlands, UK.
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