Some of the Best From Tor.com, 2013 Edition: A Tor.Com Original

by Various

  A sound like a gunshot deafens me. It takes several long, horrible moments for me to realize that it came from Natasha’s stomach. My mouth hangs open. My Other begs me to run, to hide.

  My mind won’t accept what I’m seeing. Her shirt is covered with blood. Her belly …

  Her belly is missing. She sinks onto her knees and falls backwards.

  The mute setting in my brain clicks off and I hear screaming all around me. A greasy yellow tentacle slides out of the hole in Natasha’s stomach.

  My Other yelps in my head, Otherself’s hysterical terror mixing with my own.

  I run.

  Vomit bubbles in my throat. I run and run and run until the cars and the grass and the terrified people blur into a smear of color and light. My feet barely touch the ground.

  I stumble on something, a rock or a discarded beer can, and crash onto the damp grass. My face is in the dirt, and my nose is full of the smells of sweat and shit and terror.

  I have to get up. I have to do it now, but my body won’t obey my orders.

  I drag my hands over the grass and manage to prop myself up for a few seconds before collapsing again. Finally, I roll over.

  I’m on my back, and, suddenly, a slimy creature is on top of me, a mass of yellow tentacles and oozing flesh. It’s exactly like one of the pictures I used to look at online for hours and hours every single day. I scream.

  The creature speaks to me.

  No, wait, scratch that, it’s not using words. It’s emitting scents, but somehow I can understand exactly what they mean. It’s sending out waves of reassurance. I can smell—smell—the thing’s excitement, and the undercurrents of anxiety that it’s trying like hell to keep out of the scent.

  It’s not attacking me. It’s an invitation. It—she, Natasha—is asking me to change with her. It’s okay, she’s telling me. Everything will be okay.

  I open my mouth, trying to respond in the same language, but of course I can’t. Otherself—myself (me, it, I don’t even fucking know)—tries to reply for me, but it’s drowning in a cocktail of fear and disgust and eager anticipation.

  Separation?

  No, Natasha is telling us, not separation. Just the opposite. Unification. Two minds melting and merging into one.

  Time stretches out, and for a few floating moments, images and feelings wash over me and it’s like I’m watching a movie. I think about my mother, and about “Uncle” Josh who secretly thinks I’m evil. I think about coffee and cigarettes, teachers and friends, what’s me and what’s not and what that even means. There’s no coherent conclusion to any of it, no reasons for or against, nothing on the conscious linguistic level at all. Just feeling.

  Then, all at once, a decision, like a white flame kindling in my brain. This is good. This is right.

  A noise like a gunshot, the first sound these ears have ever heard, and I’m crawling out of a bloody hole of flesh and severed bone.

  I gulp down my first breaths of pure, sweet, cool air, a baby shivering in the frigid waters of baptism, a child of the stars crawling through the dirt and the grass of this world, merging with my destiny in an explosion of joy.

  For the first time in my life, I am one, and I am whole, and I am right.

  Copyright © 2013 by Ben Burgis

  Art copyright © 2013 by Jeff Simpson

  eISBN 9781466850866

  Contents

  Title Page

  Begin Reading

  Copyright

  The water that falls on you from nowhere when you lie is perfectly ordinary, but perfectly pure. True fact. I tested it myself when the water started falling a few weeks ago. Everyone on Earth did. Everyone with any sense of lab safety anyway. Never assume any liquid is just water. When you say “I always document my experiments as I go along,” enough water falls to test, but not so much that you have to mop up the lab. Which lie doesn’t matter. The liquid tests as distilled water every time.

  Uttering “this sentence is false” or some other paradox leaves you with such a sense of angst, so filled with the sense of an impending doom, that most people don’t last five seconds before blurting something unequivocal. So, of course, holding out for as long as possible has become the latest craze among drunk frat boys and hard men who insist on root canals without an anesthetic. Psychologists are finding the longer you wait, the more unequivocal you need to be to ever find solace.

  Gus is up to a minute now and I wish he’d blurt something unequivocal. He’s neither drunk, nor a frat boy. His shirt, soaked with sweat, clings to a body that has spent twenty-seven too many hours a week at the gym. His knees lock stiff, his jeans stretched across his tensed thighs. His face shrinks as if he were watching someone smash kittens with a hammer. It’s a stupid game. Maybe in a few more weeks the fad will pass.

  I don’t know why he asked me to watch him go through with it this time, and I don’t know why I’m actually doing it. Watching him suffer is like being smashed to death with a hammer myself. At least Gus is asking for it. I know I’m supposed to be rooting for him to hold on for as long as possible, but I just want him to stop. He’s hurting so much and I can’t stand to watch anymore.

  “I love you, Matt.” Gus’s smile is radiant. He tackles me on the couch and smothers me in a kiss, and at first, I kiss him back.

  Not only does no water fall on him, but all the sweat evaporates from his body. His shirt is warm and dry. A light, spring breeze from nowhere covers us. He smells of flowers and ozone. This makes me uneasier than if he’d been treated to a torrent. That, at least, I’d understand. I’d be sad, but I’d understand.

  He’s unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans when my mind snaps back to the here and now. It’s not that his body doesn’t have more in common with Greek statues than actual humans. It’s not that he can’t explicate Socrates at lengths that leave my jaw unhinged. It’s that not only did “I love you, Matt” pull him out of his angst, but it actually removed water.

  Fundamental laws of physics do that. Profound theorems of mathematics do that. “I love you, Matt” doesn’t count as a powerful statement that holds true for all time and space. Except when Gus says it, apparently.

  “Wait.” I let go of him. My hands reach down to slide to a sit.

  Gus stops instantly. He’s skittered back before my hands have even found the couch cushions. His head tilts up at me. This is the man who seconds ago risked going insane in order to feel soul-rending pain for fun. How can he suddenly look so vulnerable?

  Oh, if there’s anything Gus can do, it’s put up a brave front. He does that stony-faced thing where his mouth is set in a grim, straight line better than anyone I know. But behind his hard, blue eyes, I can see the fear that’s not there even when some paradox rips him apart.

  Best to take the pain now. I’m half-convinced nothing can actually hurt him, even when he’s afraid it might. It’d only hurt him more later.

  “That’s some display you just did there, Gus.” I’m stalling. Stop that. “I don’t love you, not as much as you obviously love me.”

  The water that falls on you from nowhere is freezing cold. I slip on the couch, but it just follows me. When it’s this much water, it numbs you to the bone. I want to scream, “What the fuck?” but if I even breathed, I’d drown. Gus tries to shield me, blocking my body with his, but not even he’s fast enough. I try to push him out of the downpour. However, he’s a mixed martial artist and I’m not. We share everything after the initial shock. The torrent lasts for seconds. We’re both soaked and he’s laughing so hard that he’s fallen off the couch, doubled over on the wet floor, flopping like a fish.

  I feel like I should be insulted, but his laughter is joyous. It’s like the peal of giant bells, low booms that vibrate through you and make everything in the room rattle. I can’t tell if those are tears on his face, or just the water from nowhere.

  My body shakes so hard, I can’t stand. The cushions squeak around me, keeping me bathed in ice cold water. Gus stands up. He’s not even shivering. He picks
me up, wraps me in his arms, then kisses me gently on the forehead.

  “I’m sorry, Gus. I just ruined your couch.” The floor is covered in rubber weight-lifting mats. I’ll mop that up once I can move again.

  This just sends him into another fit of laughter, more controlled this time. His hands are gentle around my waist. Without them, I’m pretty sure I’d crash onto the floor.

  “You’ve just told me that you love me in I think the only way you can, and you’re worried about the couch?”

  Coming from anyone else, that sentence would make me feel too stupid to live. Still, he has a point. I fumble but can’t find any words to answer.

  “It’ll dry off,” Gus says. “Besides, you bought the couch for me.”

  Biotech engineers make more money than personal trainers, even the world’s most overqualified ones. Who knew? Rather than actually moving in together, I’ve been slowly furnishing his apartment. Gus has patiently assumed that once the apartment no longer looks like a cross between a library and weight room, I’ll move in. He’s long offered to move in with me, but I don’t want him to. My efficiency isn’t worthy of him. It’s just a body locker.

  “I should clean up the mess I made.” I pull away and Gus catches me before I fall. He literally sweeps me off my feet.

  “Stop fretting. It’s okay.”

  We get out of our wet clothes in the bathroom and huddle together under blankets in bed. It isn’t until he starts shivering that I realize he’s just as cold as I am. The mixed martial artist has just been more heroic, or stupid, about it.

  “You know.” Gus’s voice is surprisingly steady given how his teeth chatter. “Now that we know how we feel about each other, how about we solemnize the relationship? Make it official.”

  My brow furrows so tightly, it hurts. He’s serious. As lightly he tossed it off, he meant it.

  “You risked permanent insanity just to ask me to marry you?” Honestly, there are less life threatening ways.

  “No, that was just training.” He’s not joking. “I can’t imagine life without you. You can’t imagine life without me. Say yes?”

  The air stays resolutely dry. He could have made it all one big question to avoid letting whatever makes the water fall have a say.

  “My family . . .” I have no idea how to broach this. It’s totally possible for him to love me and still never want to see me again.

  “They know about me, right?” I swear the man reads minds.

  “Yes?” It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth either. The air gets distinctly humid. My arm hairs stand on end, as if thunder were about to strike. I’m still shivering from my last lie. My mind is in tatters, torn between the cruel truth that will make him lose all respect for me and the blatant lie that will plunge me into fatal hypothermia. The pang that gnaws at my heart grows and spreads. It wrings me, twisting and squeezing the life out of me. I jerk my face into what I want to be a smile.

  “Matt, this isn’t a root canal. Don’t stretch it out. Whatever you have to say, it’s okay.”

  I take a deep breath. The release of saying something true though warms as if I were buried in Gus’s arms on a winter’s night and we were the only people in the world. No wonder all the cool kids suspend themselves between truth and lie. However, rehearsing this speech for months in my head has not helped one bit. The words rush out so quickly, I’m not even sure what I’m saying.

  “Mandarin doesn’t have gender-specific third person pronouns. Well, the written language does, but it’s a relatively recent invention and they all sound the same and no one really uses the female and neuter variants anyway. And it’s not like there aren’t words for ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’ but I always refer to you as ‘’ It means ‘sweetheart,’ ‘lover,’ ‘spouse.’ And never using your name isn’t all that unusual. Names are for friends and acquaintances. Members of your family you refer to by title—”

  When Gus interrupts me, the only thought in my mind is “Did I just tell him that I call him my spouse to my parents?”

  “Wait. Slow down.” Gus’s intellect trains on me like a sharpshooter. “The way you talk about me to your family, we might as well be married?”

  “Yes.” My stomach is in my throat. The world bobbles around me and I’m stumbling at a cliff’s edge.

  “But they don’t know my name, or that I’m male.”

  “Yes.” His bullet strikes my heart and I’ve just crashed on the rocky shore.

  “Hmm.” He wears his “I’m going to fix this” face, but then it hardens into that grim, stony thing that breaks my heart. He nudges himself against me then holds me as if only I can fit in that gap between his arms and chest. “We can’t marry until you’re ready to come out to your family. I’ll wait as long as you want.”

  His skin transforms from cold and clammy to warm and dry. He uses declarative sentences. The truth of each one is obvious. No weasel words or qualifiers. Instead of being soaked in water though, Gus is soaked in disappointment. Normally, his smile glows and I melt in its heat. Right now, he’s wearing a cheap copy. He’s about as likely to admit that I’ve hurt him as he is to use anesthesia.

  This isn’t like him. I expected an argument. I mean, I should have come out to my family a decade ago. If they don’t suspect anything, it’s because I’m still years younger than Dad was when he married Mom. Instead, we behave as if I hadn’t just said no to him, albeit tacitly.

  Gus chatters on about Procopius’s Wars of Justinian. He’s just finished volume four, in the original Greek. I talk about stem cells and gene splicing. It’s as if tonight were any other night I’m over, and we’re just catching each other up on how our day went. His hands and his tone slowly ask if I’m interested even though he always interests me. I’m still cold and he covers me with his now warm body. The thoughtful smile, the affectionate way he holds me, nuzzles and kisses my neck, they try so hard to let me know that everything is fine between us, that he desires me as much as I desire him. He’s not aggressive. We’ll go as slowly as I want.

  “Let’s visit my family this Christmas. The two of us.” My voice is louder than I’d expected. “Not the ‘Christ is born’ Christmas, but the ‘get together with family and give presents to the nieces’ Christmas. We stopped when my sister and I outgrew the whole Christmas present thing, but when she had kids, we started again. With the water falling now, I wanted to skip this year for my own sanity but—”

  “Stop.” He’s on his side, his arm around me. He’s not as happy as I want him to be. “Are you sure? I can wait years if that’s what you want.”

  “I should have done this a long time ago. I don’t think I’ll ever be any more ready.” If Gus realizes that I’m outing myself to my family for him, he’ll probably refuse to go out of sheer principle. I’m not sure I can do it with him, but I know I can’t do it without him.

  Gus senses that all I want is to be held so that’s all he does. The condoms stay in the drawer. He drifts off to sleep, and I lie next to him listening to the calm rhythm of his breath. I’m the only son. All I can think about is my parents’ “you’re responsible for carrying on the family name because when your sister marries she will become part of her husband’s family” speech. It freaked me out even before I’d come out to myself.

  The family gathers in the atrium of my sister’s mansion as we stomp the Christmas Eve storm off our boots. The high vaulted ceiling has room for the sweeping staircase and the Christmas tree, big enough to dwarf Gus, that sits in the handrail’s curve. Ornaments. Tinsel. Holly. Ivy. A copy of Michelangelo’s God giving Adam life tacked taut on the atrium ceiling. We’ve entered Victorian Christmas Land. No half measures here.

  The disappointment when the family sees that my friend is a man is palpable. It’s like the adults were all my nieces’ age and someone told them there was no Santa Claus. Mom asks me if we’ve eaten. According to the textbooks, it’s a polite greeting, but she always means it literally. If I tell her I’m not hungry, she’ll say, “” (Even if
you’re not hungry, you still need to eat.) That must be true since that never causes the water to fall. Fortunately, rather than being forced to eat dinner again, this time I have Gus to derail the conversation.

  I introduce him to my parents, my sister, Michele, her husband, Kevin, their kids, Tiffany and Amber, and, to my surprise, Kevin’s parents. As I negotiate the simultaneous translation, a horrible thought hits me. Everyone in the room speaks at least two languages, but there isn’t one language everyone speaks. Beside English, Gus speaks only dead languages. Kevin’s parents speak Cantonese and Mandarin, but not English. My parents haven’t needed English since they retired, not that theirs was good before. I’ve trapped Gus in a mansion where he can’t speak to half the people. Repeatedly slamming my head against the handrail now would send the wrong message, so I don’t.

  The instant Gus crouches down and starts talking to the nieces, they stop being scared of him and start playing with him. All physically imposing people seem to be able to win over little kids in mere seconds. They head off to the living room. I start to join them when my sister marches me into her home office.

  “How dare you?” She slams the door behind her and I remind myself that I’m bigger than her now and it’d be harder for her to beat me up. “Are you trying to kill Mom and Dad?”

  Well, that was easier than I’d expected. She knows and I didn’t even have to tell her. Also, I’ve broken my record. It usually takes an entire day before I make her angry. At this rate, I could be kicked out of the house and in a motel room by sunrise. I reserve one for every trip. She gets all offended if I don’t stay with her at first.

  “No.” Ideally, Mom and Dad accept it. That can happen. “I want everyone to meet the man I’m going to marry.”

  The future’s not fixed, but right now, Gus and I are headed toward marriage, so the air stays dry. She slaps me. My cheek stings. I’d slap her back but I need to out myself to our parents before she throws me out of the house.