Obsidian Worlds

by Jason Werbeloff

  I sip my water. It bubbles at the back of my tongue.

  “Knife, I thinks. And there it is. Gleamin’ sharp and bright in ma’ hand. Gun, I thinks, and it’s there. Warm and ready in ma’ holster. Then I had’s me some real fun. Was better than those sim-u-la-shins …” He looks pleased at himself for managing all the syllables. “… they puts us through at the academy.”

  I relax my grip around my glass. Any tighter and it would shatter.

  “And ya know what the funniest part was? In that world, I’s a woman.” He sniggers over his beer. “I fixed that. Cut her up real good.”

  I curl my lips into a smile. Keep my voice steady. “Want to play again quick, before work? I’ve got a game world you’ll love, dad.”

  He looks skeptical. “Gives me a headache.” He rubs the three hairs on his head.

  “Don’t worry about that,” I say, standing. I drop his plate into the sink. “Nothing bad’ll happen to you.”

  He checks his watch. “Alright,” he says. “Fifteen minutes.”

  My father settles in the chair. Scratches at the edges of the skullcap on his forehead. I stand between him and the console, shielding the display from his gaze.

  Love in Paris … Terrorist Shootout … Hot and Heavy in Madison …. My fingers scroll through the list of worlds on the Machine’s screen. Ah. This one. The Cave of Cerebus. Hacked it off a horror game. Voted best RPG last year. So terrifying, talk on the forums is gamers go into shock if they play too long.

  Yes, The Cave of Cerebus will do just fine.

  “Tells me,” he asks, “what’s the game this time?”

  “It’s a surprise, dad.”

  I set the timer to twenty-four hours. My heart almost imploded after half an hour plugged into the Machine. Yeah, twenty-four hours should cook him good.

  “You’ll like it,” I say, and press “BEGIN”.

  *

  Bodies rot strangely in the Experience Machine.

  I don’t notice any changes at first. The old man sits in the chair, his shut eyelids flickering. His breathing gradually increases, but other than that, little happens the first half hour.

  So I get to work. I fetch a bucket from the laundry, and a kitchen chair from upstairs. The dress is a mess. I soak its obsidian fabric. Blood, sweat and urine dance in the water under the basement’s single light. With every touch of the sopping cloth, I remember her. My mother. The last time I saw her was in that dress. Before the party.

  I glance up from the dress every few minutes. Watch the Machine do its work on my father. He’s sweating now. Globules of moisture cling to his brow. Run ever so gently down his splotchy nose.

  I return my attention to the bucket. Tease the grime from the folds of material. Run my thumb over its sequins. Rub and knead the seams, careful not to tear the dress further. As I work around the rip in the fabric, I remember my mother. The last time I saw her.

  “Then don’t come,” she’d said to my father from the kitchen doorway.

  “What you want to go prancin’ around all smarts with ‘em rich idyits anyway?” my dad had asked around a mouthful of chicken.

  My mother had stood to her full height right then. Something in the way her clavicles dropped. In the tone of her forearms. Something beautiful shone through her, as she stood up to my father. “Some of us,” she’d said, swinging her bag over her shoulder, “aspire to more.”

  “Speak sense, woman,” my father said, rising on his globular feet to meet her challenge. “You sayin’ my work ain’t important?”

  “Your work … is work. And that’s all it’ll ever be.”

  My father stepped up to her. She didn’t blink.

  “Mom?”

  “No need to worry, Manfred,” she said. “I’m going.”

  And with that, she turned and opened the front door. They were the last words I heard her speak. The final image I have is of her hair. Wavy and ochre, it brushed over her shoulder blades as she shut the door. I fix the memory in my mind, whenever I think of the Bhutanese bomb that hit her car that night.

  A sound returns me to the basement. A swoosh. A sigh. Something feels different in the dim light. I peer over the bucket.

  His eyes spring open. They stare, unseeing, through the wooden struts above us. His breath is shallow. Wet. As though some vicious creature has found its way into his trachea.

  I’m about to return to my laundry, when I realize that he isn’t blinking. I stand. Wave a dripping hand across his glassy stare. A drop of soapy water lands on his forehead, but he doesn’t flinch. I inch closer, until his capillaried eyes gaze directly into mine. Through mine. The alcohol in his breath laps my cheeks in rapid waves.

  His lips inch apart, and the faintest moan escapes. Saliva runs down the corner of his mouth.

  “Daddy,” I whisper, “be a man.”

  He doesn’t blink.

  I return to the kitchen chair. Glue the broken heel onto my left shoe. Examine the dress. It’s clean now.

  I pour the water down the drain. Swirls of red and gray tunnel down the plughole. Reminds me of the spiral nebula. Of everything I’ve lost. Everything he took from me.

  I could reset the Machine, of course. I could begin again. Meet Forever, for the first time, again. But it wouldn’t be the same. He wouldn’t remember me. He wouldn’t be my Forever, anymore. No. My father ruined everything. My father killed Forever.

  I rinse the dress. Squeeze as much moisture as I can from the material, and return to the chair with a sewing kit. I check the screen on the Machine. He’s been in for just under ninety minutes now, and it shows. Blood streams from his nose. Pools on his lower lip, and dribbles onto his guard uniform.

  I return to my work. My mother taught me how to sew. “Because women shouldn’t have to do everything,” she’d said. I thread the needle through the ripped seams of the dress.

  Drip-drip-drip

  I glance up at him. He’s hemorrhaging from his ears now. Blood runs down his globular cheeks, into a puddle on the concrete floor. And his eyes … a crusty film has formed over his unblinking corneas.

  Almost done, I think, as I sew the torn shoulder strap to the bodice of the dress. I time my needle strokes to his heaving breath. It’s hard to tell for sure in the basement light, but the dress looks good as new.

  And that’s when it happens. The most considerate thing he’s done in years.

  He stops breathing.

  *

  The freezer won’t shut.

  Lifting him up the stairs in one piece is impossible – he’s more than double my weight. And chopping him up seems unnecessarily messy. I’ve been cleaning his shirt stains every night since mom died. I don’t feel like cleaning up another mess.

  That leaves the chest freezer as the only immediate option. I turn the chest on its side, roll him in, and flip the freezer upright. My back creaks with the effort. But the damned thing won’t shut. It’s his shoulders. Fat and broad as a Bhutanese tank.

  The left arm’s got to go. I fetch the angle grinder from his toolbox. So butch, I think, as I switch on the spinning blade. Father always encouraged me to use power tools.

  *

  Sunlight.

  A razor skims across my cheeks. My legs, my arms. My chest.

  Fire engine red lipstick. The blackest shade of mascara.

  The coddling touch of the dress around my hips. Lemon-fresh scent from its wash last night.

  Mushrooms in the pan. Eggs sunny-side up. The kitchen is silent. Mercifully silent. The mushrooms taste right.

  Sunlight, as I open the door. Sunlight, golden, warm on the dress. Its sequins play a billion fractals across the front lawn. Every color of The Spiral Arm.

  I march into the street. Sunlight in my wig. Sunlight on my chest.

  Everything glows. Everything feels right. Even as the conductor gawks at me when I board the bus. Even as the guard in the lobby eyeballs me from behind his counter. Everything feels right.

  Dinggg

  The elevator doors open,
and I step onto the fifth floor. My heels clop-clop-clop past Elbows. Past Cowlick. “Hey boys,” I say, and blow the two a kiss. Elbows’ jaw drops. Cowlick’s unblinking eyes track my sashaying ass on the way to my cubicle.

  I sit. My hair is glorious in the reflection of the dark computer screen. Makeup just right.

  I boot up my workstation. I’m about to open my email, to catch up on the work I missed yesterday, when … my hearing stops.

  I turn in my chair … to look at what was the wall to The Cheese’s office.

  I blink.

  Sunlight.

  The wall has gone. Clouds drift in slow motion past my cubicle. Their edges are black, high contrast against the morning sky. The facade of the building opposite ours is missing. Sloughed away as though a landslide has run down its flank.

  My hearing returns in a muffled rush. Sirens. Screams. “The Bhutanese,” someone wails. “Bomb!” The acrid stench of smoke and burning hair sneezes me. I stand. Scan what’s left of the office.

  Elbows clutches his ears. Blood snakes through his fingertips. Cowlick is immobile at his desk, taking in the new view.

  A thought blazes through my mind. A vision. A plan.

  “Come,” I shout. Cowlick’s stare is glued to the missing wall. I place my hand on his shoulder. A hand that seems too big at the end of my hairless arm. Veiny. A man’s hand. “Come with me,” I say.

  His shocked eyes swing to find mine. He blinks.

  “I have a place we can go,” I say. “My basement.”

  Recognition. Purpose flashes across his boyish countenance. He grasps Elbows. Motions for him to follow. “Stairwell,” I yell over the sirens.

  Running in heels isn’t easy. But home is only six blocks away, and I manage most of the distance without having to remove the shoes.

  “It’s just through here,” I say. Elbows’ ears have stopped bleeding. His ashen face regards the entrance hall. “Quickly.” I open the basement door. “We’ll be safe underground.”

  It sounds strange to hear so many feet on the stairs. I wonder whether the wood can handle the weight. But in a moment we’re downstairs.

  Cowlick’s eyes widen when he sees the Machine. The trauma of the bomb melts from his lips. “An X3000?” He touches its side.

  “With modifications,” I say, crossing my arms. I revel in the smooth feel of my forearms against my thumbs.

  “Full VR?” asks Cowlick.

  “Yup. Ripped dozens of games. Gives you any experience you like.”

  “Woah …”

  “Sit.” I motion to the chair.

  “Can I?” asks Cowlick.

  “Of course.”

  I follow his gaze to Elbows. He stands at the foot of the stairs, silent. Watching me. His eyes on the wig.

  I rummage through the cupboard. Find the extra skullcap. “No problem,” I say. “You can both plug in.”

  “Gotta try this,” says Cowlick, placing the skullcap over his unruly hair. Elbows glares at me one last time. Shrugs. Sits on the kitchen chair beside his friend. I nestle the extra skullcap onto his narrow head. Attach another set of sensors. Good thing I built the Machine with a second port.

  “What experience you gonna give us?” asks Elbows.

  My fingers tap the Machine’s controls. I set the timer to twenty-four hours. Dad managed just over ninety minutes before his heart stopped. Be interesting to see how long these two last.

  “An experiment,” I say.

  Cowlick looks me up and down. Takes in the sight of the dress. The shoes. My face. “This is great,” he says softly. “Thanks, Manfred.”

  The tone of his voice, absent of malice, gives me pause. But I remember the dozens of change meetings I’ve had to sit through, while these two snigger. My eyes find the freezer in the corner of the basement. I can still smell my father’s whisky breath at my ear as he twisted my arm. I remember Forever. My butchered breasts. I remember Elbow’s cackles. Cowlick’s giggles.

  Fuck them.

  “My name isn’t Manfred,” I say, checking the connections to the skullcaps. “My name is Mascara.”

  I press “BEGIN”.

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  Acknowledgements

  Thank you Rae Nash, my editor, for your time, encouragement and insight. I owe much of my growth as a writer to you.

  Warren Goldstuck, fellow writer and friend, thank you for providing a sounding-board for new ideas. Your advice and suggestions are always salient, and always entertaining. Thank you especially for your help with The Photons in the Cheese Are Lost.

  To my crack team of Beta Readers, your changes and corrections are hugely helpful. You’ve polished this book’s pages.

  Finally, Lazarus has asked me to thank the Sharp Pencils writing group, run by Rae, for their suggestions. The Time-Traveling Chicken Sexer, and many of the stories in this anthology, wouldn’t be the same without you.