Clockwork Looking Glass

by Michael Rigg

  He rolled over on the bed and sat up, and came face-to-face with a stranger.

  The woman sat cross-legged on the bureau at the foot of the bed. She had black hair pulled behind her head, deep-set dark almond eyes, and full round lips that considered him with a smirk. Brass and steel goggles, with multiple magnification lenses on adjustable arms, were parked on her forehead. Those were Pandora's "repair specs." The woman wore a red fireman's shirt and riding trousers with suspenders, and his boots.

  "Who... Who are you? Where's my d—?"

  "Right in front of ya," the woman said in a husky voice. Though the voice was considerably deeper and more smoky, the inflections and tiny changes in her face when she spoke were all too familiar.

  "Pandy?"

  "You know I hate that name." The woman sprang from the bureau and tackled the dwarf, wrapping her arms and legs around him in a full-body hug as she kissed his bristly cheeks and cried. "Oh, Daddy! You're back!"

  "Pandy!" he tried to push her off, but she was, well... So big! She wasn't the scrawny seventeen-year-old little girl he'd raised. She was grown. Then it hit him with a deep, cold sour note when he realized the price she paid to bring him back from the dead. "No... No, Dorothea, no. Tell me you didn't."

  She eased up and sat on his legs, thrusting out the noticeably larger bosom contained within the red shirt, and laughed. "Um, yeah. Obviously, I did." She looked down at him with a more serious smirk. "I was only seventeen when I threw the magics, daddy. It was a small price to pay."

  Wilco's chin moved. His eyes watered. "But... Oh, Dorothea, you— you gave up so much—"

  "For you." She smiled, not feeling a single ounce of regret. “And why not? If you were a witch you'd do the same for me, wouldn't ya?”

  He couldn't answer. Of course he'd sacrifice his own life to save his baby girl, but this—this was reversing what had been done. And it carried a huge price.

  There was practically no limit to the power a witch or ghoul could exercise if they put their minds and concentration to it. It was only good fortune that none tried to eradicate entire neighborhoods or create new demonized species of animals to walk the earth, to stalk the night at the top of the food chain.

  While there were some who tried, most notably a witch named Flower who was called upon by the Empire to choke the rivers flowing through the Confederate states, none succeeded. Flower came the closest, standing on the edge of the Mississippi river and touching her left index finger to her right thumb, the tell she used to cast.

  She never woke from her coma. Some say the Empire cut off her hands (just in case she woke up—they didn't want her casting again). Others say the Empire burned her—some say alive, others say she'd passed in the night—and moved on. River experts on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line were left scratching their heads over the anomaly discovered one year later. The water table had dropped by a foot.

  Giving and taking lives, at least one at a time, were part and parcel for the magic set. But each side carried a curse. For the damned, the male witches cast to the dark subterranean alleyways to live their lives as cannibalistic ghouls, every life taken with magic added a life to their own souls, damning them to an eternity of living in darkness and eating flesh. For a witch, like Pandora or Flower, giving a life back cost them ten of their own years. No ghoul ever thought to give back a life, and not many witches thought to take them, after the Magi Riots, but the general thought was that nothing would happen—or that they'd be similarly cursed.

  It was the realization of a decade lost that filled Wilco's eyes with tears as he looked upon his fully grown, albeit beautiful, daughter. "Dorothea, you're—"

  "Only twenty-seven, daddy. I knew the risk and I took it. Don't you think you're important enough to me that I would sacrifice ten lousy years to bring back my—?"

  "But you've missed out on so much!" As Pandora rolled off her father and the bed and stood up, now a full head or more taller than she was an hour ago, Wilco sat up and gaped at her. With a tone painted thick with disappointment, he frowned, "I can't believe you did that!"

  Tears filling her own eyes, she glared at him. "I did it to bring you back! I love you! I need you!" Unable to contain her sobs, Pandora ran from the room, still every bit the teenager she was mere moments ago.

  ~~~~~~~

  It was the smell that hit Perek Grubbs first. The dank, horrifyingly strong humid stench of sewage and human waste made his eyes water and his nostrils burn. He tried breathing through his mouth, but then he could taste it as well.

  Grubbs stood in a cubical room, chest deep in filth, and naked except for his bandages. The room was composed of black stone, windowless, the ceiling arched and trimmed with a meticulous hand-carved cornice of marble. Stone imps and angels frolicked between the stone teeth, carved to look as though they were crawling up to a skylight in the ceiling. The skylight, nothing more than a portal the size of a dinner plate with rusted iron spokes fashioned like a spider web, faintly glowed gray and was the main source of light for the latrine in which Grubbs waded. He imagined he was still in Philadelphia, probably in one of the ornately-fashioned city sewers.

  He faced a barred door, set high in the stone above the level of the filth, with a raised walkway above it. He could only imagine there was a ladder or something submerged below the pool of sludge with which he would have to climb if he exited the room. Given the circumstances, he didn't think such a thing was going to be allowed any time soon. Grubbs heard distant moans, gibberish like prayer in some foreign tongue, and the skin-crawling sound of nails scraping on stone.

  A burning tickle in his nose made Grubbs lift his hand to scratch it, but the hand and forearm that came out of the filth only further stirred the sewage around him and made it more pungent. His hand and arm dripped with black slime. Grubbs tried wiggling his nose to stave off the tickle, but it was no use. His face was still bandaged, his nose still splinted.

  Then he heard the footsteps. Dipping his head slightly, craning to see through the bars to the raised walkway, he saw the orange reflection of a torch on the far walls as it illuminated the arched doorway of the "cell" across from him. Then the ghoul appeared.

  Since the door and walkway were above his position, Grubbs could only see the tall black boots and velvet trousers, a shining silver belt buckle and the silver buttons on a black vest that absorbed light, probably velvet.

  The ghoul crouched and peered in at Grubbs after setting the torch in a holder outside the cell. The orange light now flickering above the ghoul gave his black shiny hair a fiery halo and made the eye shine of his retina's flicker. His gray face, still shadowed, was pinched around a pointed hawk-like nose. If not for the fact he was a ghoul, Grubbs might mistake him for a rather slimy Prussian prince of some kind with flared nostrils and weak chin.

  "Why did you bring me here?" Grubbs managed. "Where are my clothes?"

  "You don't need them." The ghoul arched an eyebrow. When he spoke, his deep voice resonated with an English accent.

  Grubbs blinked at the simplistic response. "Who are you?"

  "Curious. You were more so curious about your modesty that you completely forgot your first question."

  Grubbs looked around. He started to turn, to move, but the thick warm sludge around him crawled around his skin and made him gag. He looked up at the Ghoul after holding still. "W-Why...?" he whimpered. "Why'd you bring me here?"

  "Ah. That's better," the ghoul grinned, showing dark gray teeth, pointed at the outside, nubby fangs. "But how rude of me. I know all about you and you know nothing of me."

  Grubbs stared. He didn't try to move or speak.

  "My name is Teivel Hearse. And, yes, I am what you mortal tower-dwellers call a 'ghoul'. Ghastly nonsense, if you ask me. Not all of us are the crude gutter-crawling monstr
osities you tell your children about." Teivel stretched while still in his crouch, turning his neck to make it pop. The muffled sound echoed in the corridor. "Why, I am a leader of my people, the magistrate, judicator and lord of all of lower Philadelphia."

  Grubbs stared. "Y-You don't expect me to bow, do you," he said, glancing down at the deep pool of filth.

  Hearse laughed, "Oh, that is delightful, Perek. Oh, absolutely delightful. Oh, I simply must keep you around as entertainment, except.... Well, there is the matter of the smell." He wrinkled his long nose for emphasis.

  "You put me here!"

  "True. True enough, yes. Do you know why?"

  Grubbs blinked. "I'm a prisoner, and this is some ghoulish idea of a sick joke?"

  “Delightful sense of humor, what!” His captor laughed, then smiled coldly. "Do you like to laugh, Perek? I do."

  "Wha—?"

  Hearse said, "Your situation reminds me of a funny joke. It seems a man, much like yourself, was condemned to an eternity in hell. The devil—let's call him Teivel, shall we? After all, it means 'devil' in Yiddish." Hearse spotted a piece of lint on his trouser leg and picked it off before brushing at the fabric and continuing.

  "The man was shown three rooms. He would choose one of these as his eternal resting place in hell. The first room was a fiery pit of molten rock, filled with the tortured screams of those burning from the heat, their skin melting into bubbling puddles. The second room was bloodied from wall to wall. Innards of those drawn and quartered by the demon hordes dripped from the ceiling as little horned monsters prodded and gouged screaming souls with their pitch forks." Hearse pointed to Grubs with a long-nailed gray finger. "The third room was much like the one you're in now. It featured a host of souls all standing around chest-deep in filth, each of them holding a saucer and a cup, enjoying tea time." His eyes leveled on Grubbs. "Which do you think the man chose for his eternal punishment?"

  Grubbs slightly shook his head, swallowing hard and cringing against his own mouth-drawn breath.

  "Go on. Guess."

  Glancing around, he finally answered, "Well, I'd guess the last one."

  "Right you are! The room of filth, much like your own. No screaming. No burning. No blood. ...So it was there that the man was sentenced." Hearse smiled as he delivered the punch-line. "Before the devil Teivel left, he announced, 'Your break is over. Back on your heads!'"

  The ghoul's laughter echoed through the dank corridors and bounced off the walls of Grubbs' cell. Grubbs didn't even sneer at the joke, only watched helplessly until his captor turned his attention back toward him after the rippling laughter subsided.

  "Ahh, but enough energizing merriment. Your break is over, Perek. Back on your head.”

  “Back—?”

  Hearse pointed into the pool of filth. “Dive, you devil.”

  Grubbs stood, his eyes widening. He shook his head, partly to deny the command, but also to stave off the sudden rise of bile in his throat. “No. No, please.”

  The ghoul smiled and pointed down more insistently.

  “But... But, I can't. I-I'll do anything. Don't—”

  “Down!”

  Grubbs' face scrunched up and he took a long deep breath before moving forward. He swallowed hard, then spit. He drew another long breath, then another before bending his knees and bending forward so his nose—

  “Stop!”

  Grubbs looked up, his eyes wide.

  Hearse muttered, “Do you always do what you're told, no matter by whom or no matter the cost to your own self worth?”

  “I—”

  Hearse waved idly at the air. “Shall we discuss your fate, Perek?"

  Grubbs nodded slightly, his chin quivering as he stood upright.

  "Oh, fear not, my friend. I have a use for you. And you shall live so long as I find you useful. As an Acquisitions Officer for a major corporation, I take it you are used to that line of survival, are you not?"

  He nodded, resolve slowly returning now that he could see a way out of the pit. "I have to always be one step ahead, sir."

  Hearse smiled at the form of address. "Please. You're working for me now. You may address me as 'my lord'."

  Grubbs' head jerked up and down. "My lord."

  "Very good.... Now," Hearse took a deep breath. "Tell me of this person Thorne & Wolfe are pursuing.... And tell me why." Hearse suddenly raised an eyebrow. “You do realize she has the mark, don't you? It's the sense of the mark that first made me look up, and then... like Manna from the heavens... your name fell into my hands.” Hearse smirked, then he steepled his fingers and touched them to his chin. “So... Tell me everything you know.”

  “A-And what if what I have to tell you isn't what you'd h-hoped... my lord?”

  Hearse parted his hands and clapped them back together. “Then your break really will be over.”

  ~~~~~~~

  "Pandora, wait!" Wilco rolled off the bed and waddled after his daughter, "Please listen to me."

  She stood in the middle of their cluttered living room. The main part of the apartment housed a small kitchenette with stacks of dirty pots and pans and a small round dinette table piled high with airplane parts, tools, large pans of black grease or oil and several coffee cups and cans stained brown with Pandora's chewing tobacco. An eight-foot airplane rudder leaned against the wall next to the door. The rest of the room included a sagging couch, a roll-top desk with a softly whistling ham radio and a broken wooden bench with a Greyhound bus logo next to the wide sliding-glass door that opened onto a broken terrace with no railings. Several of Wilco's empty whiskey bottles and cigar butts littered the small concrete ledge where the man would sit at night and watch the air traffic.

  With nowhere to really go, Pandora turned and wiped the tears from her face. "Don't you realize I'd do anything for you? You're the one who saved me from the Imperials, who took me out of that laboratory and made me a free woman. You're the one who saved me when mother couldn't." Unable to say more, burying her face in her hands, Pandora lowered herself to the floor and cried.

  Wilco stood in the doorway, his own eyes glistening, and scratched his beard. He spoke softly, barely audible over her sobs. "Oh, Dorothea, I had just always hoped to see you continue to grow up into the, well, fine young woman you are... now. Just... not in the blink of an eye." He stepped up to her and knelt at her side, wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "Oh, little doe, I know why you did it. I do. And I know you've carried the weight of yer mother's death for the past six years as well."

  She met his eyes and blinked. “I miss Momma so much.”

  They fell into each other's arms.

  The Glass & Christian Genetics Company occupied one fifth of the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia until the Confederacy seized all the G&C assets in the last Civil War. It was in the hidden black-painted corridors of Glass & Christian, a hundred feet underground, that the Empire unveiled and tested its genetic experiments and mind-altering drug therapies. It was here that scores of children—from infants to pre-teens—were either sold by their parents for exorbitant amounts of money, Corporate Idents or visas, or kidnapped in the night by G&C agents. Dorothea Rink was barely past her eleventh birthday when the agents took her. She never told her father about what happened inside, but he guessed by the scars and metal rivets in her shaved head that they tortured the poor girl as they tried to turn her into a magic-wielding abomination.

  They succeeded, just as they had with the rest of the army they spawned. But, since the witch-creating process was a painful one, and since very few of the girls were mature enough to understand the "great gift" the Empire was giving them, stories of break-outs and runaways were just as rampant as desperate parents or relatives who tried to take back their children, and the failed attempts of a group k
nown as FOYL (Free Our Young Ladies). The FOYL headquarters in Lexington, Kentucky was razed only a month after it was founded, every member arrested for treason against the Empire and summarily executed before the building had finished burning down.

  Some parents succeeded. William and Jacqueline Rink were one of the few groups of parents who managed the heroic act, but only because of Jacqueline's knowledge of the Imperial Postal System and William's experience as a pilot and soldier with the Confederacy.

  Witches created by Glass & Christian were stripped of their proper names because a charm or hex directed at them could easily be deflected if their identity was hidden. G&C witches, like those made at other corporations, were given "callsigns" or nicknames to hide their identities and protect them from the hexes of other witches. Florence Weathers became Flower. Dorothea Rink became Pandora, and so on.

  Pandora liked her new name (though she hated it over the years that followed when her father would tease her by calling her "Pandy"), and she relished the curious power she could now wield, but she wouldn't help the "bad men in the black suits." They hurt her, treated her like a "thing" and spoke coldly to her, always telling her what to do and not to do and never answering the questions about her parents. She wanted to be with her daddy and momma. She wanted to show them what she could do.

  Using her magic to create a mental link with her parents, Pandora worked at escaping the Pentagon from the inside while her parents worked from the outside. In her parents' minds she found the truth behind what the Empire was doing with girls (and the boys, who were taken someplace far away), and how they wanted to turn them into weapons to use against Confederate soldiers and enemy corporations.

  Everyone who worked at Glass & Christian wore Warders, copper headbands that kept the young witches from getting into their minds. Ironically, they didn't need to have their minds read. They talked constantly in front of the girls. Since the witches were all "things" to them, it never occurred to some of the workers around them that anything they said might be used against them. Pandora caught a simple conversation about an expected package delivery and that was all she needed.