The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  * * *

  In the darkness one of the goons said, “Ready?” and the dozens of others responded together, “Ready,” and Laura heard a sound like a thousand bubbles popping. Her captors were going liquid.

  The car stopped, doors opened. She closed her eyes against the light. The chief goon took her arm, and she grabbed her hat as he pulled her outside. His hand felt cool on her arm. “This isn’t how I wanted things to go,” he said. “I wanted a happy ending.”

  Damp grass brushed against her ankles as he led her forward. She put her hat on and pulled the brim low, squinting to see. She’d expected some nameless spot in the desert, buzzards overhead, a shovel to dig with, but here was a lush green place, full of people and noise and music. It looked as though a party was underway.

  “What is this?”

  “Dunno,” the chief goon said. “It’s Gray’s thing. He said to bring you, but I figured if it worked out between you and me…” He threw his head back and set his jaw, making a show of not showing how hurt he was.

  “Gray?” she said. “Gray the writer?”

  The goon didn’t answer, but led her across the field toward something so bright she couldn’t look at it directly. An enormous mushroom, growing dome-like over the grass. No, it was a tent, and there were three of them. Three, just like she’d told the chief goon a few days ago at the Set-It-Down Saloon.

  The goon must have seen the hopefulness on her face, because he said sharply, “Come on,” and dragged her more roughly along. A dozen pinstripe suits slithered through the grass at their feet.

  * * *

  Gray. The wedding guests loved him. Loved him as he strutted over the rugs, telling Jim and Laura’s story. They already knew how it went, but they loved hearing Gray tell it: the bus rides and train rides, evenings camped out in strange bars and diners, those jellyfish men close behind. The biographist, in a trance, listened and wrote everything down while the others swooned and held their breath.

  Jim thought maybe he loved Gray, too. There was something familiar about him, like an uncle he’d forgotten he had. Or like all the mad scientists in all the movies that had mad scientists in them. Gray hugged Jim, and Jim hugged him back. Gray said, “Are you ready?”

  “For what?” Jim said.

  Gray turned to the crowd, arms wide. “For what, he wants to know!”

  The people laughed and bounced their babies, and the babies laughed or cried or stared at other babies.

  “Ready for your own marriage,” said Gray, “so long in the making!” To Jim he added quietly, “And for the premiere of my greatest work to date. Congratulations, my boy. We’re so pleased that you could be part of it.”

  He told the rest of the story. Told how Jim lost his hand—gasp!—told how the goons captured Laura—groan!—told how the goons had her still. “My footmen,” Gray called them. Did they report to this man, then? Had they hunted Laura and him on Gray’s behalf?

  “I knew you’d come one day,” Gray said. “But you got here on your own, didn’t you? You found the clues I left.”

  Gray looked at him and waited. Everyone looked at him and waited. It was his turn to say something. He said, “It was in your play. Everything That Swims.”

  “All the Swimming Things,” said Gray.

  “And we’d heard it before. A fortune teller told us how we’d get home. ‘A window or a small box,’ she said.”

  Gray clapped his hands together. “A window or a small box! That’s the ticket!” And the guests laughed and cheered again.

  Jim went close to Gray and grabbed his arm. He wanted to talk to him, not to everyone. “So you know what it means,” he said.

  Gray pulled his arm away. “Know what it means?” he bellowed. “No, I have no idea what it means!”

  That got the guests going again, and while they laughed and applauded, Gray turned to Jim and spoke quietly and quickly. “A fortune teller said the same thing to me once. An old drunkard, lived down by the docks. He spread his cards over the top of a barrel and told me how to get home. ‘A window or a small box,’ he said. If it were a window and a small box, then maybe we’d have something. It might have to do with an arrangement of some kind: window, box, box, window. But which of the two is it? And which of the million windows and small boxes? For a while I thought it was a local turn of phrase, and I tried it out on everyone I met. Best I can tell, it doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s just something fortune tellers say to people like us.”

  “Like us?”

  Gray frowned. The crowds were quiet now, trying to hear. It felt to Jim as though a thousand bodies leaned closer all at once.

  “Don’t you understand?” Gray said. “I’m not from around here, either. We’re over the wrong rainbow, Jim. East of east of Eden. But it’s ours, don’t you see? I don’t want to go home, and neither will you. They love us here. These people will gobble up anything, just anything. It pains me how easy it is. Watch.”

  Gray turned and raised his arms. “A wedding!” he said. “With the great turtle presiding over the ceremony!” The wire-and-fabric turtle suspended above the altar moved its head and legs, and the wedding guests roared.

  Now Jim spotted a familiar face. The curly-haired boy from the theater walked up the aisle, carrying a plain hinged box in both hands. When he reached the altar, he stopped, knelt, and held the box up to Jim.

  The guests hushed. The biographist stopped writing. She looked terrified.

  “Ah!” said Gray. He clapped Jim on the back. “And now, my boy, it’s time for your wedding present.”

  * * *

  The chief goon dragged Laura through the crowds. People saw them coming and hopped out of the way; some danced and shrieked when they saw the goons in the grass. Laura glimpsed a screen in a field, and for a moment Jim’s face appeared projected. She moved toward it, but the chief goon pulled her close.

  “I know you’ll only ever hurt me,” he said to her as they walked. “And my wild, madcap heart can’t bear it. I have to let you go, don’t you see?”

  But he didn’t let her go, only pulled her more and more quickly toward the tents. The music had stopped, and the sun was going down. The chief goon said, “I wish I didn’t feel like this. You’ve turned me into something I’m not, Laura. I never used to care. I never gave two bits about anyone!”

  It’s all right, she wanted to tell the goon, everything is going to be all right, but she didn’t think that would help, and she didn’t think it was true. Into the smallest of the three tents they went, and here was candlelight, and hundreds of people perched on pillows, and some kind of ceremony underway. A man in what looked like yoga clothes stood at the front of the crowd. And beside him was Jim, her own Jim.

  She called his name, and the wedding guests turned and gazed at her. They shuffled to their feet and said, “Oooh!” as the chief goon led her down the aisle. Music struck up from the next tent over. It was a wedding. It was her wedding or something like it, and aside from the fact that Jim was here, it was all horribly, horribly wrong.

  The other goons stood up, filling their shoes with themselves as they walked.

  * * *

  Jim, hearing Laura’s voice, seeing her straw hat, pushed the box aside and went into the aisle. Gray took his arm and hissed, “Jim, you do want to open your present, don’t you?”

  What Jim wanted was to grab Laura and get the hell out of there. But the goons had her, and just seeing them made the stump of his arm tingle.

  Gray pushed him toward the box. The old man was surprisingly strong. How long had he been stuck in this place? Long enough to get used to being the most interesting thing around, Kal-El under a yellow sun. But this superman was jealous and spiteful, and when Jim and Laura’s wedding began to eclipse him, he must have decided to claim it for himself.

  Jim watched that big goon walk his bride grimly down the aisle. She stumbled, but he kept her marching. Would do worse, Jim thought, if he didn’t stick to his role. So he put his hand on the box. It was warm to the tou
ch.

  The biographist, writing again, shook her head and said, “Oh, Mr. Jim,” as though the whole thing was already written. And maybe it was. He found the catch and slid it aside.

  He thought he heard Laura say, “No,” but the box sprang open.

  * * *

  A small, spindly doll lay curled inside. Its wooden limbs were hinged, like those of a posable artists’ mannequin. It wore blue jeans and a floral print shirt, and its face, Jim thought, looked a lot like his.

  The doll stretched its arms and legs. Then, clacking and moving fast, it climbed out of the box and onto Jim’s arm. It crawled up past his elbow, moving like a bug. Jim tried to fling it away, but the doll held tight. He screamed.

  Laura screamed, too, and the wedding guests went silent. A few fainted, and babies began to cry. The music screeched to a stop. The goons grinned, all of them except their leader, who just looked sad about the whole thing.

  “Now,” Gray said, and stood at the back of the altar, smiling a benevolent priestly smile. Jim thought to charge him, to knock him over, but the thing on his arm seemed to know his thought, and it clambered up to his throat and squeezed.

  Gray gestured with his left hand. The puppet didn’t stop squeezing until Jim took his place there at his side. Even then it kept a strong grip.

  The biographist wiped tears from her eyes as she scribbled notes. Gray gestured with his other hand, and the goon brought Laura forward. She stepped onto the rugs, but turned and took the goon’s arm in both hands. “Please,” she said to him. “Please help us.”

  The goon sighed and looked at Jim. “Look,” he said, “I’m a free agent, but he’s under contract now. Nothing I can do.”

  He sounded genuinely sorry. The other goons only smirked. She recognized the one from the Set-It-Down, the one that Jim had punched and that she had knocked out with her knapsack. She went to stand in front of him and his smirk fell away. He looked at the chief goon, as though for instructions, but Laura didn’t give them the chance to talk it over.

  She tore the goon’s shirt open and plunged her hand into his chest. The goon’s eyes widened, and his breath went out of him. The sound was echoed by the hundreds of wedding guests in the tent and beyond. Laura felt around in the gooey mess of the goon’s innards, cool jelly between her fingers. She found what she was looking for and pulled, but the goon, showing his teeth, wouldn’t release her.

  Her hand began to tingle, and her fingers went numb. She looked at the chief goon. He seemed to understand what she was up to. He nodded at the other goon, and, frowning, the goon let her go.

  In her hand was Jim’s missing hand, perfectly preserved and dripping goo. The guests gasped at the sight, and Jim felt weak to see it there. His hand! They’d done so much together. He wanted to talk to it, wanted to hold it in his arms, his own baby.

  But Laura didn’t give it to him. She tossed it straight into the box the doll had crawled from, still open in the actor’s hands. It landed with a thump and the boy looked at it.

  The thing on Jim’s throat perked up. It knew that the hand had something to do with Jim, and it was on to the scent. It crawled back down his arm, head turning as though to sniff the air.

  Jim brought it closer to the box. The doll leapt down to investigate, and the boy snapped the lid shut.

  A cheer rose up from the wedding guests. They laughed and bounced and held babies bouncing over their heads. Outside, people shouted and honked horns.

  Gray went to the chief goon and grabbed him by the lapels. The guests were loving it, though, and the goons saw their new part in the show. They circled their former employer. He shouted at them to desist, to make room. But the chief goon gave a signal, and Gray vanished in a whirl of pinstripes.

  * * *

  Jim in Laura’s arms, Laura in Jim’s arms, the curly-haired boy clapping and hooting in his biggest role yet, and the food, and the dancing, and the biographist scribbling, scribbling, scribbling.

  Later, there were fireworks, but Laura slept through them.

  * * *

  They got married. Not that night, but two weeks later, with just a few friends in attendance at the Set-It-Down Saloon. They were hoping for a cake, but no one knew what cake was, and when Laura explained the recipe to the chef, he laughed and said, “But alpacas don’t lay eggs!”

  Instead there were muffins, or something like muffins. The bartender’s cousin brought them, and they were a hit, a sure thing. “Here’s to a sure thing!” the bartender toasted.

  They didn’t dress up for the ceremony. He wore his flowered shirt, and she wore her straw hat, and the vows worked fine. For their honeymoon, they asked the goons to chase them for a while, and the goons obliged. They took buses and trains from town to town, and saw a lot of the country they hadn’t seen before. They saw things that didn’t make much sense to them, and some things that did. When they got back to the city that wasn’t Los Angeles, Laura found one of the signs Jim had made glued to a telephone pole. They decided to stay.

  For a while they lived in an apartment above the Set-It-Down Saloon, until one day the chief goon came by and offered them a gift: Gray’s old house.

  “Where is Gray?” Jim asked.

  “Still in the car,” the goon said. “He’s churning out happy endings by the dozen.”

  “And when he runs out of them?”

  The goon shrugged. “Maybe we’ll go easy on him.”

  The house was at the edge of the field where Gray had tried to marry them. It was dark and low-slung, but Laura discovered a room in the back with a view of the broad valley below. “We’ll take it,” she said, though only Jim was there to hear her.

  * * *

  She began to write. She had some ideas for a play—for a few plays, it turned out. The plays did well, and one of the bigger productions made a real star of the boy with curly hair, who was free from his old contract. The biographist moved in, and when she was done with Jim’s biography she started working on Laura’s, and when Laura and Jim had children—a boy and a girl—she wrote their biographies, too.

  Their children, Jim and Laura admitted to themselves, were a little strange to them. They went to school and were given babies to raise, and they were experts at pig and pepper, and they spoke to each other in a way that was different from how they spoke to their parents. But the children listened patiently to stories from the far-off land of upstate New York, like the one about the warrior who stalked the forests and was the last of his kind, and the one about the schoolteacher who saw a rider with no head, and the one about the man who fell asleep in the mountains and woke to find the world changed. Then they didn’t want to hear those stories anymore, so Jim and Laura stopped telling them.

  There were some hard times: Their son was often sick, and he did poorly at school. He ran away, got into some kind of trouble they didn’t understand, trouble that plagued them for many years with documents and visits from officials. Later, the chief goon took him on as a kind of apprentice, and after a few years he went full-time, and they didn’t see much of him after that.

  Jim learned crafts. He learned to knit one-handed, and he learned how to brew Pow-Pow, and he learned spelunking, which wasn’t a craft, exactly, but he took Laura with him into the caves. It was a popular thing to do here, and they made friends with fellow spelunkers, and got spelunking newsletters in the mail, and Laura wrote a play about spelunking that proved to be her biggest success.

  She brought flowers from the garden sometimes, and presented them to him, and he put them in vases.

  They got old, they got used to things, but sometimes they felt as lost as they had felt at that roadside diner all those years ago, and a panic would overcome them. Then he would say to her, “If only we could find a window or a small box,” and Laura would laugh and they’d feel a little better.

  They were sitting out back late one afternoon, watching the sun set over the mountains, and while they were talking they figured it out—a window or a small box!—of course, the answer was
so obvious, how hadn’t they thought of it before? But they didn’t want to go back now, it was too late for that, and they stayed where they were.

  “But where are we?” he asked, and she took his hand in both of hers and said, “Here. We’re right here.”

  Copyright (C) 2013 by Jedediah Berry

  Art copyright (C) 2013 by Victo Ngai

  i. All Saint's Eve in Tokyo

  Eleven-year-old Big D had four years on me, and I wanted his approval. I joined his trick-or-treat posse in the American housing enclave there in Tokyo.

  He and his same-age pals wore cowboy outfits and packed low-slung six-shooters, as did I. Instead of a red bandana, though, Big D sported a flamboyant polka-dot bowtie. I grabbed his shirt and showed him my scrawled hold-up note:

  “Give me all you Babby Rooths.”

  “It's ‘your,’ not ‘you,’” he said. “And Babby Rooths make me puke.”

  But he let me tag along and later allotted me a generous portion of our Halloween haul.

  * * *

  ii. A Lesson outside Seville

  You next meet him in a dependent high school outside Seville, Spain, in art class, where everyone calls him Degas for his depictions of ballet dancers and racehorses. Despite his nickname, though, he eschews that artist's colorful palette for sketches in various shades of blue, using pencil lead or chalk.

  Mrs. Clytemnestra Samaras, your art teacher, likes Degas so much that she makes him class monitor, almost an instructor's aide. You, and others, assume that she esteems his suave looks and gaudy lavender scarf as much as she does his sketches—but you still don't really mind that, after bringing in a pewter stein of blue pencils, he ceases to apply himself so obviously to his own art and goes from table to table correcting your and your classmates’ efforts.

  “Rub out this grackle,” he says of one of your studies, making a blue mark beside the ugly bird.