Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest #9

by Apex Authors

"Only kind we got,” said Joyce. Her tired voice resonated with the long hours of her night shift. “Want cream or sugar—you put ‘em in."

  "Never use them,” said Allen. “They're really not healthy."

  "And I'll bet you don't smoke either."

  "Right. Gave up cigarettes in senior high. My lungs are pink as a babe's."

  "You sound proud of yourself."

  "I am indeed. I have very strong willpower."

  She set the cup of steaming coffee down on the counter in front of him. “So you're a health nut?"

  He smiled. “No, I just believe in proper care of one's body. I work out, take supplements, walk a lot. Never get the flu."

  "Goody for you,” said Joyce.

  "I haven't seen you in here before,” said Allen, wrapping his hands around the cup to warm them. It was rather chilly this time of year.

  "I'm new to California,” she told him. “Came down from Oregon last week. Sign in the window said they needed a waitress, so..."

  "How do you like L.A.?"

  "I like the weather. No snow or ice.” She shook her head, pushing back a loose strand of hair. “No more Oregon winters for this gal. No sireee."

  "What did you do in Oregon?"

  "Went to school. And froze my rosy butt, if you'll pardon the French."

  Allen ignored the harmless vulgarity.

  "I come in here often, late at night,” he said.

  She nodded. “Like a vampire, huh?"

  He grinned at her. “Do vampires come here late at night?"

  Joyce returned the grin. “None that I've seen so far."

  "My name is Allen,” he said. “And I'm not a vampire. I sell real estate."

  "Hi,” she said, “I'm Joyce."

  They shook hands.

  "You must make a bundle, selling real estate."

  "It's a good living,” said Allen.

  She sighed. “Anything else I can do for you? Sandwich ... cake ... slice ‘a pie?"

  "No, I'm fine with the coffee.” His stomach rumbled.

  "You live around here?” she asked him.

  "Yes, I do,” said Allen. “I live in the San Fernando Valley. Thousand Oaks."

  "I know where that is,” Joyce said. “Got a cousin who lives in Thousand Oaks. Been meaning to run out and visit her."

  She scrubbed idly at the counter top. “Kind of far from home aren't ya—way out here in Northridge?"

  "It's a longish drive,” admitted Allen, “but I don't mind."

  He didn't tell her why he came here. For the college kids. From Cal State Northridge. Young. Strong-bodied. In the prime of life. They liked to hang out at the 24-Hour on Saturday nights. In fact, two of them were sitting in the booth directly behind Allen. Two boys. Early twenties. Full of life and laughter. Allen enjoyed their banter and loud voices.

  At forty-five, his youth was gone. Here, in the 24-Hour, he was able to recapture a part of it.

  "I read this graphic novel about Batman,” the shorter of the two students declared. He was reed-slim, with an uncombed mop of red hair. “All about how Ole Bats comes out of retirement after ten years to battle these freakin’ mutants that are causing bad shit to happen in Gotham City."

  His companion, blond and overweight with ruddy cheeks, was duly impressed. “Awesome."

  "Old Bats gets into this humongous fight with the Joker."

  "Joker's a cool dude."

  "Sticks a dart in one of his eyes and then breaks his back."

  "Awesome."

  A silence. Then...

  "Hey, dude, you know what creeps me out?” the lean, red-headed boy asked of his blond companion.

  "What?"

  "Watching these candy-ass phonies from Washington spouting about war on TV. They suck."

  "All politicians suck,” said the blond.

  "Yeah, when I graduate I'm going into social work. Make the world a better place."

  "The world sucks,” said the straw-haired boy.

  They were digging heartily into plates of pancakes drenched in syrup.

  "Breakfast at midnight,” said the redhead. “Way to go."

  "Way to go,” echoed the blond.

  Allen was enjoying their talk. Ah, to be young again, with everything in life ahead of you.

  "Sure you don't want anything to eat?” asked Joyce, breaking into his thoughts. “You look kind of hungry."

  Allen's stomach growled. He smiled, shaking his head. “Nope. Just the coffee.” He took a long swallow.

  "Suit yourself,” said Joyce, moving on down the counter to wait on another customer.

  When the two college boys had finished their pancakes, they left the booth, paid the cashier, and headed for the parking lot.

  Clearing their table, Joyce groaned. “Lousy seventy-five cents! Some tip!"

  Allen left her a dollar, paid the cashier for his coffee, and headed for the door.

  "Have a good night,” Joyce called after him, smiling warmly.

  "I intend to,” Allen replied, smiling back at her. If she wasn't so flat-chested, then maybe...

  In the parking lot the thick darkness was diminished by four tall sodium-vapor lights mounted on iron poles. They cast a pale yellow luminescence over the cracked asphalt.

  The two boys were about to climb into a blue Honda Passport when Allen hailed them.

  "Hey, fellas! Which way you headed?"

  "Burbank,” said the redhead. “Why you askin'?"

  "I need a ride."

  The blond peered at him. “Where to?"

  "Burbank Airport,” said Allen. “I've got a flight out tonight, and my car won't start. Dead battery. I need to catch the redeye into Chicago."

  "What about your car?” asked the blond.

  "I'll phone the Auto Club from the airport. Have my car towed. I can pick it up when I get back from Chicago."

  The two boys looked at one another, shrugged.

  "I guess it'll be okay,” said the redhead. The blond nodded.

  Allen visually checked out the lot. Deserted. No one in sight.

  "Get in,” said the blond, opening the passenger door.

  "Funny thing,” said the redhead, as he walked around the Honda to the driver's side. “Us going to Burbank and you flying out of there. What if we were headed for Pasadena?"

  "Then I'd be out of luck,” said Allen.

  The blond stared at him. “Are you legit, mister?"

  Allen grabbed him by the throat and banged his head sharply against the driver's side window, shattering it with the force of the blow. The blond fell to the asphalt, unconscious, bleeding from cuts on his cheeks and forehead.

  "What the fuck!” shouted his companion, racing around the car toward Allen, hands balled into fists.

  Allen met him with a wicked kick in the stomach. The redhead doubled over, retching.

  Allen reached into the Honda's glove compartment, found a heavy metal flashlight, and slammed it across the boy's skull. After that, the redhead didn't move.

  Allen's stomach growled. God, he was so hungry!

  He removed a small bottle of chloroform from his coat and poured the liquid on two white surgical pads. He placed a pad over each boy's mouth and nose.

  "Sleep well,” said Allen.

  He took a rope which he'd wound around his waist, and tied up both boys.

  He'd lied to Joyce. He didn't live in Thousand Oaks; his true home was Aantar III in the Alpha Cluster, far from this solar system. He'd still be on Aantar had it not been for the Earthship that had landed there a fortnight ago with its crew of humans.

  Allen and his friends at the Grand Feast, he had acquired an overwhelming taste for human flesh. A trip to Earth, which teemed with edible humans, seemed a logical step.

  * * * *

  As he stood looking down at the unconscious bodies, Allen regretted that they were both males. Females were more satisfying. Their full, young breasts offered delicious fare. But, on this particular night, he was far too hungry to care.

  His stomach grumbled. />
  Time to eat.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Jeremy Adam Smith is managing editor of Greater Good Magazine. His essays, stories, and poems have appeared in Instant City, The Nation, New York Review of Science Fiction, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Strange Horizons, Tim Pratt's Flytrap, Utne Reader, Wired, and numerous other periodicals and books.

  Jeremy tells us that the following story is inspired, in part, by Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

  Pyramus and Thisbe

  By Jeremy Adam Smith

  I. Cooking Meat, Baking Bread, Garlic

  It is told among the exanimate that Pyramus stole into the port of Eusapia undetected by the confraternity that guards the city. Entering the narrow streets through the Arsenal Gate, Pyramus saw a sky unlike any he had seen before. In the vault overhead, a sunset lit the underbellies of the clouds vermillion. Music and laughter played through the stucco homes, mingling with the lap of water against stone. Standing alone on one of the viaducts that crisscrossed the city, Pyramus smelled cooking meat, baking bread, garlic. Humans, he realized for the first time, are creatures of pleasure, their bodies yearning to be caressed.

  He walked all that first night, sleepless, as are all machines. The floating city, which had appeared so serenely young at first sight, aged as he walked. All the piers seemed to sag and the walls to lean, so that the water's plangent lapping took on a more sinister cast, like that of a tongue licking a cube of sugar until it is gone. In the hour before dawn, when fishmongers called in the market and awnings opened, Pyramus saw what appeared to be a human skeleton in the shadows of an alleyway. He approached, but the bones seemed to melt away in the alley's chiaroscuro. Pyramus shrugged, a gesture he'd written into the behavioral subroutine of his human guise. Even machines may be tricked by accidents of light and darkness.

  II. Baleful Chambers, Secret Passageways

  Of course, at that time, no city in the solar system was more inclined than Eusapia to enjoy life. Because its citizens loved Eusapia so much, they had built a mirror image of their city beneath the first—so Pyramus had heard—to serve as a destination for their dead. Hearing the tales of Eusapia's beauty—whose passing exiles and the exanimate alike now lament—Pyramus had formed a desire to see with his own optical units the city's peaceful waters and elegant galleries. Powerful among his kind and proud in his thinking, the android's desire to see the city was only increased by Eusapia's embargo against activated intelligence.

  On the morning after that first night, Pyramus saw Thisbe sitting in a café on the Via Vittoria, a porcelain cup raised to her lips. She is well-remembered by those who tell the story. Her face had the strength of carved wood but its skin was white as vellum. Her hair and the irises of her eyes were of a hue that seemed darker than black. Pyramus sent a yellow rose to her table, and she, liking the fleshly mask that concealed his true face, invited him to sit with her. At the table Pyramus read her eyes as human beings read the sky, fashioning constellations from the patterns of light he found there. New to the mechanics of love, he did not yet understand that Thisbe's eyes were not windows but mirrors.

  The two strolled down the street through the stalls of the bazaar, where Thisbe purchased a lavender scarf and paper cone of roasted chestnuts. As they walked, Pyramus pretended to eat the chestnuts, leaving a trail of burst shells along the cobblestones. That evening they rode the bottle-green vaporetto along the city's Grand Canal and watery byways, surrounded by many strangers as they conversed.

  From the gunnel, Thisbe pointed to an ivory line of colonnades arrayed along the canal. “There I played when I was a girl, with my friend Fabrizia. My family lived nearby on the Palazzo Pisani."

  "What did you play?"

  "I was sometimes a unicorn, occasionally a dolphin, often a mermaid!” As she said the name of each creature, Thisbe gestured and wiggled with imaginary hooves and fins. “For many minutes at a time I truly believed that I was a dolphin, and that Fabrizia was a mermaid. Sometimes, as I would sit at my harpsichord lessons or do my chores, I felt myself suddenly and secretly change, becoming again some far-fetched animal."

  "It sounds to me like a wonderful childhood."

  "Oh, no,” said Thisbe. “I was always afraid. Just as I concealed many beasts within myself, so I assumed that others did the same. I feared that at any moment, my papa might be transformed into a mindlessly ferocious griffin, or my tutors into monstrous ants. I imagined that behind the doors of the cathedral where we played—” she pointed back to the diminishing spires and colonnades “—were concealed baleful chambers and secret passageways, where a cabal of griffins and mermaids conspired against me."

  Pyramus feigned a deep breath while he searched for a similar story to share. “When I was new to creation, I did not imagine myself to be anything but what I was. I looked up, however, at the planets and stars—true celestial bodies, not the imitation lights of the Eusapian vault—and yearned to travel among them. I wanted those isles in the sky to be united in the body of my memory. I wanted and I still want the entire universe to be a part of myself."

  "Such a quest will take an eternity,” she said.

  "Do you fear an everlasting life?"

  "No,” she said. “I look forward to it, as do all Eusapians."

  He stared at her. Though his argentic eyes reflected only the lights on the water, behind them Pyramus surrendered to sympathy for Thisbe's mortal plight. “Like you, I had fears that grew from my fantasies,” he said. “In my imagination I saw the universe expanding and all things in creation moving further apart from each other, and I grew old in the distances between objects. I did not die, but as time stretched I grew tired, knowing that everything around me would perish."

  Thisbe leaned against the white handrail, the wind gusting as the boat curved around Santa Marta. “It sounds to me as though you are the one who fears the prospect of perpetual life,” she said; her black hair was cast across her face like a shadow.

  "Perhaps,” replied Pyramus. He touched her cool, dry hand with his own and then brushed the hair from her face. “It is also possible, Thisbe, that I love life too much."

  III. The Sky of a Hundred Hulls

  In the days and nights that followed, Pyramus found within himself the capacity for pleasure—both giving and receiving it—that had previously lain dormant in his psyche. It was as though the metal beneath his skin had melted to organs and bones, the mantle of flesh absorbing and transforming what it concealed. His disguise was so complete that even in greatest intimacy Thisbe did not guess.

  How was it, then, that Pyramus was eventually detected? Those who tell this story do not know. Perhaps a mechanical gesture betrayed him to some loyal citizen of Eusapia. Possibly he stepped within the field of some device whose power he did not anticipate.

  It is known that when the agents of the confraternity burst into the room Pyramus and Thisbe had come to share, the two lovers flew apart to either side of the Corinthian bed.

  "What is this?” Thisbe demanded. A prima donna of the city's opera and every bit as proud as Pyramus, she did not hide her nakedness. Had Pyramus and Thisbe been given more time together, we may suppose, surely the weight of one's haughtiness would have borne down on the other.

  "Madame,” said the first brother, eyes concealed beneath the shadow of a scarlet hood, “perhaps you are not aware—or perhaps you are—but the one you lie with is a Jinnee."

  She laughed. “You cannot expect me to believe that! Look at him. He is a man and nothing else."

  The brother drew a weapon from his robe and flame flashed from the nozzle. Thisbe did not scream but covered her eyes with her hands. Faster than any human could, Pyramus fled to the balcony overlooking the city's Grand Canal. The flame creased the air and caught him there between the French doors, devouring the flesh until only metal remained. A dervish of black smoke filled the balcony.

  How well we know the fear and hatred of our people for the unborn! In such moments as when the façades we know cru
mble, then fear does its work. We must therefore pity Thisbe as a breeze cleared the smoke and revealed a lustrous white figure crouching among the balusters, its violet optical units searching her darker-than-black eyes. All reason left her face and she dashed from the bed to the balcony, as Pyramus had a moment before. He opened his metal arms as if to receive her, but she leaped past him and over the balustrade, down into the Grand Canal. No machine can ever forget anything, and so Pyramus must still remember the reverberation of her body shattering on the surface below.

  He jumped after her, the weapons of the confraternity slashing after him, crashing down into the dun-colored water, sinking to the debris-scattered bottom. He recovered himself and stood gazing around. Schools of fish hung like mirror shards in the auroral waters and green algae covered every rock and wall.

  Thisbe, her body cruciform, was already ascending to the surface. The eyes that had been mirrors were now walls. Pyramus fled along the canal floor beneath the sky of a hundred hulls. He pulled a grate from the brecciaed wall and retreated into the algae-lined tunnel behind it. Foolishly, Pyramus waited for death to come. Hours passed, but he did not die. He would never die.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  IV. Message for Cordelia

  That night he roamed the canal floors until he found, in the submerged foundation of a palace, an underwater grotto that he could enter through the eyes or open mouth of a face carved in the stone. The eyes of the face were wide with what he supposed was terror; the mouth formed the oval of a scream. Inside, the walls of the small rotunda were lined with pilasters and entablatures whose friezes depicted a myriad of birds sailing through the solar system. Swimming up to the level of the frieze. Pyramus traced an albatross perched atop Mercury. Sparrows nested in the planetoids between Mars and Jupiter and, at the solar reaches, hummingbirds flitted among the cometary masses of the Oort cloud. The grotto was very still and yet somehow Pyramus expected something to be born there. It seemed to him like a replica of the universe at some cosmic Precambrian point, swathed in nebulae and still gravid with stars.

  As time passed, Pyramus began scrounging the cast-offs of the city, sculpting them into images of Thisbe. One such Thisbe, was constructed entirely of variegated metal rings, twirled on a rope like a ballerina, toes pointed and arms raised above her head. Another cut from driftglass seemed lost in a moment of corporeal rapture. As Pyramus built his Thisbes and watched Eusapia from its foundations, the impression he'd formed of the city on that first night deepened. The face behind the mask of serenity emerged as lassitude. The tattered whole of Eusapia seemed to be sinking into its own canals.