Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds

by Fiction River

  “Relax,” he said.

  “How am I supposed to relax? I have sand in my hair.” No one could relax with sand in her hair.

  I thumped my head against the top of my desk again, and that’s when Diz started to massage my shoulders.

  Diz had given me a shoulder massage once before, and it had been marvelous. His fingers are long and strong, and he seems to know exactly where to apply pressure. I wasn’t sure how he’d learned to do that—he’d probably tell me it was another elf thing—but right about then I didn’t care. Any day that included making one of the fey angry enough she hurled things at me was bound to make me tense, and Diz knew just how to work all the tight muscles in my shoulders and neck.

  Dog nuzzled at my arm again, but right about then I didn’t feel like I had enough energy to keep petting him. We had things to do, people to interview, a ceramic cat to find, and I should really get busy on that before the fairy decided she’d been patient enough, but I didn’t feel like I had enough energy to do that either. All I cared about was the wonderful feeling of my tight muscles finally letting go. It was a marvelous feeling. It was an awesome feeling. I could live in this moment for the next hundred years and I wouldn’t care one—

  And just like that, I fell into a vision.

  ***

  I’ve had precog visions since I hit puberty. My mother, after she got over the fact that her daughter wasn’t exactly normal, treated my visions like the ultimate locator of lost objects. Heaven forbid if anyone misplaced a set of keys or couldn’t remember where they left their wallet. According to my mother, I could just gaze into the crystal ball inside my head and find whatever had gone missing.

  Well, my visions don’t work that way. For one thing, I could never control when a vision decided to show up, no matter how much my Great Aunt Betsy needed her reading glasses. Besides, my visions showed me glimpses of the future. If Great Aunt Betsy had already lost her glasses, I couldn’t help, no matter what my mother thought.

  Most of my early visions were just hints of things, like a smell that didn’t belong or a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. I still remember the first time I realized the smell that had been driving me nuts was really a vision. Two hours after I’d started to smell Chinese food, right down to the sweet and sour sauce and hot oil mixed with ginger, my father came home with takeout.

  These days my visions ranged from an out-of-place smell to a full-blown 3D movie complete with digital surround sound. The vision where I’d met Dog had felt like I’d piggybacked someone’s dream, which, as it turned out, I had.

  Diz and I focused on finding missing persons instead of objects because my precog visions put me in the point of view of someone else. When I got lucky, that someone else was the person we were looking for.

  This time when the vision hit, I found myself staring out at the world from the point of view of the ceramic cat figurine.

  In the vision, I smelled absolutely nothing. Which made sense, considering that something made out of ceramic couldn’t smell, but the total absence of smell felt so alien it almost kicked me back to reality, and I had to fight hard to stay right where I was.

  I shouldn’t have been able to see, either, but that sense worked just fine. I appeared to be in a huge room. Exposed pipes ran beneath a stadium-height ceiling, all painted white, and banks of fluorescent lights hung in neat rows extending as far as I could see. Books featuring Japanese-style cartoon characters on the covers packed the wire mesh shelves in front of me. I couldn’t move my eyes or turn my head, but I thought I saw a wall of stuffed animals off to one side, only these animals were made of felt instead of the fake fur toys I remembered from my childhood. An annoying buzzing sound filled my head, like white noise only louder but muffled at the same time.

  Something came into my field of vision—the top of someone’s head with a pink headband on which odd-looking, droopy ears had been attached—and then a hand reached out to grab me.

  As soon as I saw that hand, my heart kicked into high gear, my flight-or-fight instincts coming down firmly on the side of flight. I wanted to run right now, right now, right now, only I couldn’t move, and Dog wasn’t in this vision to help me. The world tilted to the side as the hand picked me up. I caught a glimpse of a teenage face surrounded by long, straight, strawberry blonde hair. Next to her I saw the dreadlocks of a pirate I knew all too well.

  Oh, brother. I’d seen enough.

  My heart still hammered double-time in my chest when I came out of the vision a moment later. “You can stop now,” I told Diz. “The massage worked.”

  He stopped rubbing my shoulders. My muscles felt all tingly, and except for my heart, which had finally started slowing down, I felt pretty darn relaxed. Too bad we had a figurine to find. At least I had a pretty good idea where to look.

  “Remember the trade show the guy at the comic shop mentioned?” I asked.

  “Vaguely,” Diz said.

  I wouldn’t have remembered now except one word on the stack of flyers advertising the show had caught my attention, so I’d asked the guy behind the counter what “cosplay” meant. He’d told me way more than I needed to know. Or so I’d thought at the time.

  “I think we need to head over to the convention center,” I said.

  My partner groaned. I guess he remembered after all.

  ***

  “Aren’t you a little big to dress up as a video game character?” the girl dressed as a bondage version of the Queen of Hearts asked Diz.

  He glowered at her. She giggled and asked if she could take his picture. She hadn’t been the first, and I doubted she’d be the last.

  The thousands of fans who’d descended on Moretown Bay for the Northwest Regional Anime Convention had taken over the entire convention center and all the fast food restaurants and hotels within a three-block radius. From what I could tell, at least half of them were in costume, or what my friendly comic store guy told me was “cosplay.” Diz and I had to register as attendees to get inside the retail sales area, which was where I was pretty sure my vision had taken place. With the cute little convention name tag adorning Diz’s normal outfit of cargo pants, boots, and a style of shirt that’s more tunic than polo—today’s color dusty green—no wonder people like the Queen of Hearts thought Diz was in costume. All he needed were a bow and arrows and a jaunty hat.

  The convention center stretched over two city blocks and had six different levels connected by escalators, elevators, and glassed-in skyways that crossed the streets below. We had to ride up three sets of escalators, cross two skyways, and make our way through a never-ending line of people waiting for a chance to meet their favorite voice actors before we finally found what the convention called a “dealer room,” which turned out to be an auditorium the size of three football fields and packed wall to wall with shoppers.

  “Which way?” Diz yelled down at me to make himself heard over the din of the crowd.

  I had no idea. Most of the booths in the immediate vicinity had been constructed of the same kind of wire mesh shelving I’d seen in my vision. The booths were jam-packed with everything from artwork to tee-shirts to costumes to realistic-looking swords to boxes upon boxes of vinyl and resin figures. I didn’t see anything made of white ceramic.

  “We’re looking for a manga dealer,” I yelled back. “And Captain Jack Sparrow.”

  Even with Diz’s height, which gives him an advantage in a crowd, it took us nearly two hours to find the right dealer. I recognized the shelves of manga and the wall of flat stuffed toys from my vision.

  I also recognized the strawberry blonde with the droopy headband ears. She was dressed in a white pinafore that could have doubled for lingerie, and her hair hung straight past the bottom of her dress. She was with a guy doing a pretty good imitation of Johnny Depp’s character in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

  Diz and I got to the booth just as the girl grabbed the little white ceramic cat. I’d witnessed some frenzied shopping in the dealer room, an
d I wasn’t about to come this far only to lose the figurine to the anime version of Little Bo Peep.

  “Stop right there!” I yelled at her.

  I must have startled her because she let go of the ceramic cat like it was a hot potato.

  Elves move fast. I’ve always known that, but Diz surprised even me this time. One moment he was standing alongside me, and the next he was on his back on the floor at the girl’s feet. He caught the figurine before it hit the concrete.

  “Outstanding!” the Captain Jack cosplayer said. “I believe I have a spot for you on my crew. Do you like rum?”

  A short, rotund man with a dealer badge clipped to his shirt bustled up to Diz. “See here, you. Give that back. It’s not for sale.” He glared at the girl with the headband ears. “It’s not for sale. Didn’t you see the sign?”

  Sure enough. The figurine had a “Display Only” sign taped to the front.

  By the time Diz got up off the floor, still holding the figurine, Little Bo Peep and Captain Jack were gone. At least we wouldn’t have to fight them for the figurine.

  The dealer was another story. He held out his hand to Diz. “I believe that’s mine.”

  Diz ignored him. “This is the right one,” Diz said to me.

  “How can you tell?” Three more white ceramic cat figurines crowded the wire shelf where this one had been. Other than the “Display Only” sign, all the figurines looked identical.

  Diz made a fist with his other hand. That was the signal he used when he sensed magical energy but didn’t want to say so out loud. The first figurine we’d found had no magical energy at all.

  I turned toward the rotund man. “Why isn’t this one for sale?”

  He glared at Diz, but the glare didn’t last long. He clearly wanted the figurine back, but like a good many criminals before him, he decided he’d have better luck with me.

  “It’s our display piece,” he said.

  “It looks just like the rest of them.”

  “It’s the first one. It’s our good luck charm.”

  I gestured toward the shelf, about to point out that he had three other good luck charms.

  Only now four white ceramic cat figurines crowded the shelf, all identical.

  I raised an eyebrow at Diz, and he nodded. He’d seen the same thing. “It replicates itself when it feels threatened,” he said.

  The flight-or-fight sensation I’d felt when my vision put me inside the ceramic cat, that was right before the figurine used its magic. One way for something to hide in plain sight, especially when that something couldn’t move on its own, was to surround itself with a whole bunch of somethings that looked the same. I guess I knew now where the first replica we’d found had come from. This poor little inanimate ceramic cat must have felt seriously threatened when Customs opened its box.

  Or was it so inanimate? I’d never heard of an object that could use magic on its own.

  I took a stab in the dark. “You know,” I said to the dealer. “It’s illegal to trap a magical being inside an inanimate object. The penalties for things like that are pretty severe. Am I right?” I said to Diz.

  “Severe,” he said, cranking up the wattage on his glower.

  The color drained out of the dealer’s face.

  “I wouldn’t want you—” I began, but I was interrupted by another guy with a dealer badge who’d just worked his way through the crowd.

  “What’s up, Harry?” he asked the guy I was grilling.

  I turned to glare at the intruder and found myself face to face with the owner of the comic book store.

  Hadn’t even opened the package, my ass. More like found the goose that laid the golden egg.

  “Hi, there,” I said. “Remember me? I was just discussing with Harry here the penalties for trapping someone magical inside a figurine.”

  “They’re severe,” Diz said, right on cue.

  The guy didn’t even try to bluster his way out. “Take it,” he said. “No charge.” He snatched a stuffed toy off the display and thrust it at me. “In fact, take this, too. You see anything else you’d like? I got the latest compendium of The Walking Dead. You can have it, my compliments.”

  What was it with zombies? Maybe I should catch up with the rest of the world. After all, my nights weren’t exactly booked solid.

  “We’ll let you off with a warning,” Diz said. “This time.” He arched an eyebrow, and damn if he didn’t look like The Rock, only with much more hair. “Don’t do it again.”

  He grabbed my elbow and steered me away from the booth before the owner could hand me anything else or wake up to the fact that we weren’t undercover cops.

  We made it out of the convention with only three more people asking Diz for his picture. When he got outside, the first thing he did was unclip the badge from his shirt and drop it in the trash.

  So much for my partner’s first foray into cosplay. Diz still held the little ceramic cat carefully against his chest, pretty much the same way I held the felt toy. I hoped my cat would like it. If I brought home one more strange thing she didn’t like, I might find myself sleeping in my office along with Dog.

  ***

  My cat loved the felt toy. In fact, I don’t think she’s stopped grooming it. I’m not sure all’s forgiven, but it’s a start.

  The little fairy forgave us, too. I’ve never seen anyone so happy to get a little ceramic cat in my life. Joy radiated from every inch of her, her happiness so bright that it lit up the inside of Mrs. Takahashi’s store and turned the fairy’s hair golden blonde. The fairy even cast a spell that removed every last granule of sand from my hair.

  The rest of what happened with the fairy and the figurine I didn’t witness, but I’m a decent detective and it was pretty easy to make an educated guess. The next morning when I stopped by Mrs. Takahashi’s store for my sweet bean roll fix, I noticed that the case that held the ball-joint dolls was unlocked. Other than a little dust at the bottom, the case was empty.

  “You sold them?” I asked Mrs. Takahashi as I handed her money for the roll. “All of them?”

  She smiled at me in her normally reserved way. “They have found a home,” she said.

  “All of them? The same home?” I had a hard time imagining someone spending that kind of money on dolls.

  Her dark eyes twinkled. “Every being has a home. Some, like your dog, find it on their own. Others need a little help.” She placed the money I’d given her for the roll back in my hand and closed my fingers over it. “Thank you for yours.”

  It took me a moment, but I got it.

  The dust at the bottom of the case was all that remained of the ceramic cat figurine—and the ball-joint dolls—that had housed the beings held inside each of them. The ceramic figurine hadn’t been a prison. It had been a shipping container, just like the dolls—a way for the rest of the fairy’s family and their pet to leave Japan. The pet inside the ceramic cat had been the last one to make the journey, and, more than likely, the fairy needed the pet’s magic in order to work the spell to release the rest of her family from the dolls. Just like the being inside the ceramic cat had hidden in plain sight by replicating itself when it felt threatened, Mrs. Takahashi had hidden the dolls in plain sight in her store by putting them up for sale but pricing them so high that no one—especially no one in our neighborhood—could afford them.

  I left her store smiling to myself. Sure, the fairies and Mrs. Takahashi had broken a bunch of immigration laws, but I wasn’t with the cops anymore. Things weren’t black and white in my world these days. I might be terminally single, but I’d helped reunite a family, and that was pretty darn cool. It didn’t improve my love life, but I had a fresh bean roll, a kinda-magical dog, and my cat didn’t hate me anymore. Right now, in this moment, life was good.

  What do you know. Maybe I’d finally figured out Zen after all.

  Introduction to “That Lost Riddle”

  USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith pens several short story series. By far, the most pop
ular series is Poker Boy. These standalone short stories rely on his offbeat writing skills (there is a Planet Dean as well as a Planet Ray) and his years as a professional card player. In the next six months, he will publish three Poker Boy collections. He’s currently finishing the first Poker Boy novel, The Slots of Saturn.

  In addition to the Poker Boy stories, he has published more than a hundred novels under different names, and hundreds of short stories.

  About Poker Boy, he writes, “One day, a decade or more ago, while I was sitting at a poker table, a guy who couldn’t play a lick of poker and who was losing a lot of money to me and the others at the table, complained that the poker gods weren’t watching out over him. I started wondering what the gambling gods would actually be like. So I tried to imagine if I woke up one day to discover I was a brand new superhero working for the God of Poker who worked directly for Lady Luck. Thirty or more Poker Boy stories later, I now have Poker Boy and his sidekick and girlfriend, Patty Ledgerwood, still saving the world, doing favors for Lady Luck, and generally having a great time.”

  That Lost Riddle

  Dean Wesley Smith

  Out of thin air I heard Stan, the God of Poker say, “Knock, knock.”

  It wasn’t a bad joke. It was how he asked to come into my private doublewide trailer up in the woods in Oregon. It seems that when Stan teleported, he couldn’t just drop in outside and then use the door to actually knock on. But he was a God, and my boss, so I supposed he could do just about anything he wanted, even make bad “knock-knock” sounds in thin air in my living room. I was only Poker Boy, a lowly superhero. Not much I could say about it.

  I pushed aside the cold fried chicken I had been eating while sitting on my old green couch and watching the evening news out of Portland. “Come on down.”