by Rhys Hughes
I told her I did not want the responsibility at my age, I was far too weary. I had no wish to be woken in the middle of the day by little bats. Thisbe was amused by my reaction. As the days wore on, my attitude softened. I was as completely under her spell as I once thought she was under mine. We wandered the passages arm in arm and I showed her all the secret rooms, false doors and mechanical traps. I was lucky in having an imaginative architect.
When the time came, she helped me unwrap the bandages and we opened my lower stomach. Already eviscerated, there was plenty of room inside. Six black pearls glittered fearfully; she placed them on soft cushions arranged for the purpose. She stroked the objects tenderly. In this form she could caress her children, but when they hatched the laws of physics would disrupt the relationship like a cosmic social worker. Such is the thermonuclear family’s lot.
My task was to incubate the eggs. Deprived of my constant attention Thisbe grew bored, trying to amuse herself by flying further afield. The desert animals were grateful for her absence. Anaemic hyenas crowded the dunes, sniggering with relief. Sometimes I did not see her from dusk to dawn. I adjusted myself on the cushions and sighed. Beneath me the eggs pulsated with horrible life.
“What would you do if we were discovered?” she asked me, after one jaunt. I shrugged my shoulders. I had been haunted by this prospect for centuries. A team of explorers might easily chance upon our abode. If nomads could find their way here, why not the pale men with their picks and shovels? I would make a fine exhibit in the British Museum. It was fortunate our desert had no fossil fuels to exploit, no military value. Yet it was a cruel question. She could fly away whenever danger loomed, unless I locked her cage.
When the eggs finally hatched, three boys and three girls, Thisbe and I drank a mordant toast of ancient red. We decided on suitable names for them: Edgar, Vernon, Poppy, Bram, Carmilla and Desmond. We kept them in a wooden chest in the attic and took it in turns striking them with a stick. We did not want to spoil them. Like all baby vampires they were quick to learn the rudiments of speech. Thisbe talked to them in German. I used Hungarian and Sanskrit.
They called me mummy. They called her daednu.
After the mock christening, I took Thisbe aside and questioned her about her escapades. “What’s out there that is so fascinating?” I asked. She was reluctant to tell; this suggested she had discovered something of interest. Finally, she gave in. “For the past nine weeks, a group of explorers have been making their way towards the pyramid. They are led by a nomad who knows you are short on silver. He has sold your secret. They’ll be here within a day or two.”
I was shattered by this news. I decided to defend my home with all the strength of my shrivelled limbs. The treachery of the nomad saddened me. But I wished to be a presentable villain, an elegant adversary, so I wasted no time in brooding. I cleaned the pyramid from top to bottom, setting the traps as I worked my way down.
When I had finished, the dust of dynasties had been swept up and given to the winds. All that remained was to clean my grubby bandages, return to my sarcophagus and await the siege. I unwrapped the bindings and coiled them into the washing machine. Adding soap powder, I shut the door and started the device. I watched as the contents tumbled in a sea of foam. On spin cycle the screams began.
Somehow, one of the children had climbed into the machine. Peering closely into the whirling drum, I glimpsed a tiny face with milk fangs. It was Desmond, who was always falling asleep in strange places. As soon as the machine shuddered to a halt, I opened the door and retrieved him. I saw at once that he had changed.
I called for Thisbe at the top of my voice. She was by my side in an instant. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Desmond. His wings have turned green. He has become a daednu! It must be something to do with rotation. You mentioned the Ferris wheel and the lightning. The combination of centrifugal force and electricity seems to reverse the polarity of vampires. I wonder if this holds true for all supernatural beings?”
Thisbe was delighted. At long last she was able to hold one of her offspring without detonating. If it was possible for Desmond, it should also be possible for his brothers and sisters. There was no reason why we could not become a normal family.
There were, however, problems of an ethical nature. We had hoped to release the children into the vampire community. We wanted the best for them. I had set the residue of my heart on seeing them enter the medical profession. If we now span them all into daednus, we would be condemning them to an unlife of exile.
This dilemma required much thought, but time was limited. Tomorrow the explorers would be knocking on our capstone. While Thisbe retired to her cage to mull the issues, I frantically searched through my spellbook for a way to delay them. In the musty papyrus, I found a seismic answer, an incantation of tectonic splendour.
The resulting earthquake, big enough to swallow expeditions whole, was much more powerful than I had bargained for. Possibly I overdid the chants. The pyramid twisted on its axis, snapping at the base. Mortar of long ages was ground to nothing. The crack extended along all four walls of my chamber. My home was suddenly detached from the ground, separated at its widest point, a loose wonder.
Thisbe made a reconnaissance flight of the epicentre, one day’s journey from our position. The explorers had vanished. In many ways it was an unsatisfying vengeance, but our purpose had been served. I told Thisbe, “We are safe again.”
She shook her dark head, holding me to her grave-scented bosom. I nestled like a maggot in her cleavage. “Such an unnatural shock will intrigue geologists. We have destroyed one set of researchers only to encourage another. Before long someone will find us. The world is too small, there is no more room for our kind.”
This time I was too tired to argue. With a broken home and a host of dependents, I had been eroded away to nothing. I felt as drained as if my veins were full again and Thisbe was drinking me dry. I wanted to escape to some silent and mindless void. As I pounded my crumbling brow with my fist, the idea came.
I nudged Thisbe and we raced up to her attic. On the way, I paused to collect Desmond and one other. It was vital to hold them apart. At the top of the building, beneath the cage, I suspended Desmond and his sister over the two ventilation shafts.
“The pyramid is no longer fixed to the ground. With enough thrust we can launch it out of the desert. The shafts converge at the base. If I drop Desmond down one and Poppy down the other, they will meet at the bottom. My room will act like a combustion chamber. The force might even be powerful enough to enable us to escape Earth’s gravity. We’ll be free of interference forever!”
Thisbe frowned. She wrestled with her conscience. Could she allow her children to be used as rocket fuel? I reminded her of our potential to make more. Provided we kept one breeding pair for emergencies, there was nothing to stop us reaching the stars. The washing machine would ensure enough daednus to keep us going indefinitely. Food and wine was no problem, we were well stocked. Besides, being supernatural, we did not need to eat. Nor would vacuum bother us. “Algol is pleasant at this time of aeon,” I joked.
With a slight inclination of her head, Thisbe gave me permission to drop Desmond and Poppy down the shafts. There was a long minute in which nothing was audible save the hiss of falling offspring. I held my musty breath. Then the inconceivable happened. The details of the explosion cannot really be imagined. But again I shall be content with offering a key word: blagharghtakm!
My knowledge of physics was never very good. We were squashed flat, pyramid and occupants. Being immortal, it did not matter. At least we were rushing through the atmosphere, into space. The cosmos is one big coffin. So we began to feel at home.
We like it up here, cold and mute. We slide like shadows across the inner surface of our compressed vessel. My dreams about steering to the stars have also been squashed. We have gone into orbit around the moon. And yet, strangely enough, the washing machine survived the blast. I am tempted to enter it myself and change
my own polarity. Too long have I been a mummy. Now I want to be an anti.
Is My Wife on Mars?
Hunky Pal watched his wife put on lipstick and said, “Are you going out tonight?” Then he sipped his beer.
Greta made that special face in the mirror that is supposed to be a test to see if a reddened mouth is right and said, “Darlene’s having a party just for all the girls. I promised to go.”
“It’s Friday night,” said Hunky.
“That’s right, it is. You don’t mind?”
“We play cribbage on a Friday, that’s all.” Hunky finished his beer and wiped dry his chin with his sleeve.
“Guess we’ll have to skip it for once.”
“So what’ll I do on my own?”
“Play solitaire instead. There’s a nice wooden board that Uncle Conker carved for us with his bare hands.”
“Suppose I could do that. Then sit on the roof with my telescope, if the clouds will let me. Gaze at stars.”
“There you go. Don’t wait up.”
Hunky shifted in his seat. “OK, take care, then.”
“Of course I will. Always do.”
She walked out of the house and closed the front door behind her with a click as soft and precise as an insect’s jaws. Hunky opened another beer but didn’t bother pouring it in a glass. He drank straight from the can like a jackal would, lapping the foam.
The television wasn’t on, it was never on.
He finished this second beer, went to look for the solitaire board. Then he realised he had never known where it was kept, that he hadn’t heard of Uncle Conker before. But it was worth a search. He rummaged behind the sofa, under the bed, up in the attic.
He backed down the ladder an hour later.
There was nothing for it but to dial Darlene’s house and ask to speak to his wife so Greta could tell him exactly where it was. Surely she wouldn’t object to such a simple request. Or would she? Women. He yanked up the telephone and pushed the sequence…
“Good evening, Darlene. This is Hunky here. Hunky. Sorry to disturb. May I speak to Greta for a minute? Greta. My wife. Oh, I get it, she’s not there. Did she leave the party?”
“What party, Mr Pal? There’s no party here.”
“No party there, Darlene?”
“Just a quiet night in, me and Rolf.”
“I understand. Thanks Darlene. Have a good night now.”
He replaced the telephone.
And frowned to himself. No party?
In that case, where was she? Where was his wife? Could it be possible he would never see Greta again?
He sobbed to himself, then went and resumed the search, still sobbing, still wondering who Uncle Conker might be. At last he found the solitaire board at the bottom of the laundry basket. The little cloth bag of wooden balls was missing, so he played with peanuts, unsalted, and kept failing to win against himself. He resigned.
He went to bed and lay under the quilt and the same thoughts bounced from one side of his mind to the other, as if two mirrors had been lodged there face to face, reflecting each other to infinity, batting spherical ideas back and forth in a game of insanity tennis. Greta had left him, gone back to her mother, fallen in a river, been eaten by moths or goats, combusted spontaneously or after arrangements.
She came back after midnight and slipped in beside him. He pretended to snore. Much later, when the time was right, he reached out and hugged her close. Then he snored for real.
The car outside honked its horn and Hunky kissed Greta goodbye and left for work. Crumbs of breakfast toast twitched on the corners of the grin he used to greet Zanger, his colleague.
Every morning Zanger gave him a lift to the factory. They drove down the road and Zanger said, “Do you think that rights should be proportional to the number of senses of a species?”
“That’s a strange question. I don’t know,” said Hunky.
“Well, how many do we have?”
“Most people say five, some say six.”
“Senses, right? But precisely how many rights in total? I’m asking you this because I want to know. Truly.”
Hunky wasn’t sure if he should really make an effort to count. Zanger had high expectations at times. He shrugged. “Hundreds, thousands, more than that maybe, after revolutions.”
Zanger nodded. “Yeah. That’s where the problem is, friend. There’s no fixed scale of rights for any individual being. But with my system, errors of dignity and miscarriages of justice are prevented at the nascent stage. I mean, we’re aware that a moose has the same number of senses as a boss, so it must have all the same rights.”
“But it doesn’t, generally,” pointed out Hunky.
“That’s what’s wrong in our society. Vegetables have less senses, so if we eat them that’s better than eating a moose. Five senses, five rights. Six senses, six rights. Seven senses…”
“What about a pebble? No rights at all?”
“Minerals are out of the equation, brother. Those igneous rascals don’t deserve any respect, not a crumb.”
Zanger slowed as his car passed a newsstand.
“You want me to jump out and fetch you a paper?” asked Hunky, as he did every morning. Zanger nodded.
Hunky opened the door, hit the kerb running, did the business, jumped back into the moving car, sat down.
“Hold it up at an angle,” insisted Zanger.
He always read the newspaper while driving and Hunky abetted him in this schema of negligence, but not entirely willingly. It seemed an absurd talent to possess, the art of steering and reading. They turned a corner and Hunky turned a page. Zanger sniffed.
“More obtuse, if you please, my good fellow.”
Hunky surmised he wasn’t alluding to the quality of the journalism but to the angle at which the print reached his eyes. He preferred surmising to guessing, Hunky did. Even better was deducing, but that didn’t occur very often in his life. Lack of opportunity.
“Well, that’s remarkable. I’m amazed,” said Zanger.
“What is it?” squeaked Hunky.
“The statue of a woman has been found on Mars.”
“May I see?” Hunky dribbled.
Zanger nodded his assent and Hunky scanned the relevant report. The monochrome pictures were unmistakable. A space probe had parachuted into the Martian atmosphere and had taken the photographs while falling toward the alien surface. There she was. His wife, Greta. A statue on such a monumental scale couldn’t have been built in less time than a thousand decades with tools familiar to the Ancient Egyptians, the story said. Mars was none of their business anyway, it went on. How dare they? The stone woman was a cool reclining nude.
“It landed last night. The probe, I mean. Last night was Friday. Before midnight, Earth time,” said Hunky.
“That’s correct. We’re here now, brother.”
They reached the gates of the factory, were waved through by a guard into the car park. Then it was time to begin another day in the workshops grinding mirrors, mirrors for solar heating projects, not for telescopes that could help to resolve this enigma.
Greta on Mars. But what excuse was that?
He couldn’t ask her directly, of course, for that would turn her sarcastic. It had to be done subtly, but Hunky doubted he was capable of such subtlety or any subtlety at all, even one wavelet of it, if that’s how it comes, and he suspected subtlety had something against him. He enjoyed suspecting less than guessing, or so he supposed.
Hunky waited for next Friday to come round, wondered what makes a Friday do that every time. Earth spinning on its axis, swinging around the sun, other planets doing the same. He shifted on the sofa, sipped his beer, watched her as she sat next to him.
“Aren’t you going to Darlene’s tonight?”
Greta squinted. “What for?”
“A party just for the girls, feasibly,” he said.
“That was last week, Hunky.”
“Did you enjoy it, last week, Greta?”
“I did. Ye
s I did. Mostly.”
“Wasn’t the atmosphere a little thin, though?”
“No it wasn’t. Not at all.”
“Did you require root canal work, Greta?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“What exactly is your knowledge? To how many decimal places can you compute pi? Any pyramid experience, Greta? What about a sphinx? Ever used theodolite or plumbline?”
She laughed but her eyes were uneasy. “Why don’t we have a game of cribbage now? Get the cards.”
“I don’t feel like it. Let’s watch TV instead.”
“Hunky, we never do that.”
He refused to be dissuaded from this particular course of action. With the remote control he switched the set on. It warmed up slowly, like soup made by dinosaurs, and sparks crackled around it. The hairs on the backs of his hands stood up. Then a red glow appeared on the screen, dusty and uncomforting, and bathed his face.
It was a documentary about Mars, about the probe.
“New discoveries,” he breathed.
“Aw Hunky,” protested Greta. “It’s boring.”
“Is it? For whom? Look at those pictures. The surface from above. An alien world, that is. Very alien.”
She climbed along the sofa and mounted him, blocking his view of the screen. Facing him she began to make saucy motions with her hips. “This is more fun. Let’s do it right here.”
“You’re trying to distract me, Greta. I know it.”
She unbuttoned her blouse…
He held her large breasts in his hands and she didn’t stop pulsating and soon he found himself matching her rhythm. Then he half stood, twisting her to the side, and climbed on top, reversing their positions and grabbing handfuls of her remaining clothing.
In the process, the heel of her foot touched the remote control, turning the TV off. An accident, obviously.
She was naked now. Him too. He hovered above her, in the sky of her presence, lowered himself gently.
Always it was this way. A direct descent from above. Face to face. He was a falling probe and she was both an alien surface and the implausible statue of herself on that surface. Later he dressed himself, opened another beer and asked, “So did it move?”
