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

by Various

  A razor sprawled open on the floor below her dangling, lifeless hand. Obvious as can be, even before he saw the note on the mirror. She’d left it in lipstick, in handwriting barely legible, and when he saw the empty bottle of valium, he knew why.

  All it said was “Forget me.”

  Not “forgive me.” Not “I’m sorry.” Not even “good-bye.” Raul guessed she had no one to say it to. Just a message for him, because she’d known he was coming. Or if not him personally, someone else she used to know. The odds were pretty good on that one.

  He looked at her again. Her hands were scaly and rough. They reminded him of a pair of snakeskin boots he’d bought on a gig in Houston, for laughs. He’d never worn them. Her breasts were scaled too, and when he couldn’t stop himself—he turned her over, her body making scarlet tides and messy splashes as she swayed and sank again—he saw the protrusion from her backside, a foot-long tail that ended in a rattle.

  He jerked his hands away, letting her flop back to her original position.

  And now he was soaked in bloody water up to the elbows. His knees, his stomach. No escaping it. No graceful, quiet retreat, and no more kidding himself. Legs O’Dwyer was a joker, for Christ’s sake. She’d drawn a card, and it hadn’t been pretty. That card had turned, sometime since Raul’d last seen her.

  His thoughts raced to assemble a picture that made sense, and he thought of Jake Corallo who must’ve known, might’ve been the only one who knew. Jake had kept her secret, and now he was gone. No wonder she’d mourned him like that. What else could she do? Hard to play with the big boys anymore when this was what waited under the lingerie.

  The button man retreated from the mirror. He turned, and he ran—all the way back down the empty hall, down the stairs, and out the way he’d come because it was always the back door, he was already unwanted and unwelcome. I could’ve talked to her, he thought wildly, the fear and disgust and discomfort stretching into crazy thoughts. We might’ve made some understanding, left together if we both had to go—better than running alone, isn’t it?

  And Jesus Christ, it really was time to run. No more pretending, and he’d wasted too much time to prepare so this would go by the seat of his pants and he hated that. It wasn’t like him. It wasn’t how he’d lived this long, and he wouldn’t keep him alive much longer.

  Still bloody and wet from that godawful bath, he threw himself into the nearest phone booth and jammed his fist into his pocket. He found some change. Threw it into the slot and dialed once, twice, before he got Moe’s number right.

  Moe answered on the first ring. “Shapiro.”

  “I need to ask you something, Moe. I need you to tell me the truth.”

  The other end of the line was silent, which was a promise of a sort—but not the one he wanted.

  Raul continued. “The Murder Tree—I mean, the Deadman’s Tree. The names on it, these last weeks. They had something in common. Something other than what I thought, what I was told.”

  “Raul…”

  “Sammy would’ve blabbed if he’d lived a minute longer, and I didn’t let him. I didn’t have time. But he drew a card, hadn’t he? Nothing obvious, nothing I could see at a glance. But it must’ve been something. You must’ve known.”

  Pause. “I’d heard.”

  “You’d heard what?” Raul demanded. A few blocks away, a siren wailed to life.

  “I’d heard he was hiding an extra face, extra mouths. Extra something, and I didn’t ask for details. But that wasn’t his problem, Raul. A secret like that wouldn’t have put him in the morgue. I talked to Ed. Sammy’d made himself a date with a lawyer, and he was buttoning up. We’ve got interests to protect.”

  “Did Sammy even squeal?”

  “He would’ve, if he’d had the chance.”

  “And Harriet, she never rang up the D.A., did she?”

  “Harriet too, huh?”

  “Are you saying—”

  “For fuck’s sake, Raul. No. I didn’t know. And you’re taking this awful personal. Do I need to worry about you? Do I need to check the tree?” Then he paused and the moment hung between them. “It’s the goddamn mushrooms, isn’t it? You pulled a card too, son of a bitch. I’m sorry.”

  The button man didn’t answer that particular apology. Instead he asked, “Scarfo’s back from New York?”

  “He got in this afternoon.”

  “Shit.” He struggled to keep the shakes out of his voice. He steadied it, leaning his head on the glass for support and leaving a greasy smudge. He said, “You know, they can’t keep us out forever. They’ll have to let us in eventually. Too many of us to kill. Times’ll change, Moe. They’ll change and leave guys like Ed behind.”

  “Tell me something I haven’t known for fifty years.”

  The siren wail drew closer. Raul turned his back to hide his face when a car came swinging around the corner, its headlights cutting through the gloom. “I’ve worked for you guys how long now? Twenty years almost, doing my job and nothing else.”

  “Nobody joins up for the pension.” Moe sighed. “Do us both a favor, and get out of here. Stay gone. This isn’t your fault, but I can’t help you, not in Chicago. Try New York. I can make some phone calls, Raul. You can start over. You can—”

  He didn’t wait to hear the offer.

  He slammed the phone back into its receiver and cringed as another car whipped past, a cop car, this time. Its lights slapped streaks of red and blue in every direction until it made the next turn. The button man leaned his shoulder against the hard black phone. His breath was ragged; it fogged thickly against the booth’s scratched-up glass. His shirt cuffs strained against the swelling fungus. Everything too small, everything outgrown.

  Maybe he’d find more room in New York.

  Copyright (C) 2013 by Cherie Priest

  Art copyright (C) 2013 by John Picacio

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  Contents

  Clockwork Fairies

  Mary the Irish girl let me in when I knocked at the door in my Sunday best, smelling of incense and evening fog. Gaslight flickered over the narrow hall. The mahogany banister’s curve gleamed with beeswax polish, and a rosewood hat rack and umbrella stand squatted to my left.

  I nodded to Mary, taking off my top hat. Snuff and baking butter mingled with my own pomade to battle the smell of steel and sulfur from below.

  “Don’t be startled, Mr. Claude, sir.”

  Before I could speak further, a whir of creatures surrounded me.

  At first I thought them hummingbirds or large dragonflies. One hung poised before my eyes in a flutter of metallic skin and isinglass wings. Delicate gears spun in the wrist of a pinioned hand holding a needle-sharp sword. Desiree had created another marvel. Clockwork fairies, bee-winged, glittering like tinsel. Who would have dreamed such things, let alone made them real? Only Desiree.

  Mary chattered, “They’re hers. They won’t harm ye. Only burglars and the like.”

  She swatted at one hovering too close, its hair floating like candy floss in the air. Mary had been with the Southland household for three years now and was inured to scientific marvels. “I’ll tell her ladyship yer here.”

  She left. I eyed the fairies that hung in the air around me. Despite Mary’s assurance, I did not know what they would do if I stepped forward. I had never witnessed clockwork creations so capable of independent movement.

  Footsteps sounded downstairs, coming closer. Desiree appeared in th
e doorway that led to her basement workshop. A pair of protective lenses dangled around her neck and she wore gloves. Not the dainty kidskin gloves of fashionable women, but thick pig leather, to shield her clever brown fingers from sparks. One hand clutched a brass oval studded with tiny buttons.

  Desiree’s skin color made her almost as much an oddity in upper London society as the fairies. My intended. I smiled at her.

  “Claude,” she said with evident pleasure.

  She clicked the device in her hand and the fairies swirled away, disappearing to God knows where. “I’m almost done. I’ll meet you in the parlor in a few minutes. Go ahead and ring for tea.”

  * * *

  In the parlor, I took to the settee and looked around. As always, the room was immaculate, filled with well-dusted knickknacks. Butterflies fluttered under two bell jars on a charcoal-colored marble mantle with lilies of the valley carved into it. The room was well-composed: a sofa sat in graceful opposition to a pair of wing chairs. The only discordant note was the book shoved between two embroidered pillows on the closest chair’s maroon velvet. I picked it up. On the Origin Of Species, by Charles Darwin.

  I frowned and set it back down. Only last week, my minister had spoken out against this very book. I should speak to Desiree. I knew better than to forbid her to read it, but I could warn her against discussing it in polite company or supporting he heretical notion that humans were related to animals, which contradicted God’s order, the Great Chain of Being.

  Mary, the Irish girl, brought tea and sweet biscuits with a clatter of heels that were muted when she reached the parlor carpet. I poured myself a cup, sniffing. Lapsang Oolong. Desiree’s father, Lord Southland, was one of London’s notable titled eccentrics, but his staff had excellent taste in provisions.

  The man himself appeared in the doorway. His silk waistcoat was patterned with golden bees, as fashionable as my own undulating Oriental serpents.

  “Ah, Stone,” he said. He advanced to take a sesame-seed biscuit, eyebrows bristling with hoary disapproval behind guinea-sized lenses. “You’re here again.”

  “I came to visit Desiree,” I replied, stressing the last word. I knew Lord Southland disapproved of me, although his antipathy puzzled me. If he hoped to marry off his mulatto daughter, I was his best prospect. Not many men were as free of prejudice as I was.

  With his wife’s death, though, Southland had become irrational and taken up radical notions. So far Desiree had steered clear of them with my guidance, but I shuddered to think that she might become a Nonconformist or Suffragist. Still, I took care to be polite to Southland. If he cut Desiree from his will, the results would be disastrous.

  “Of course he came to see me, Papa,” Desiree said from the other doorway. She had removed her leather apron, revealing a gay dress of pink cotton sprigged with strawberry blossoms. She perched a decorous distance from me and poured her own tea, adding a hearty amount of milk.

  “I’ve come to nag you again, Des,” I teased.

  A crease settled between her eyebrows. “Claude, is this about Lady Allsop’s ball again?”

  I leaned forward to capture her hand, its color deep against my own pale skin. “Desiree, to be accepted in society, you must make an effort now and then. If you are a success it will reflect well on me. Appear at the ball as a kindness to me.”

  She removed her fingers from mine, the crease between her eyebrows becoming more pronounced. “I have told you: I am not the sort of woman that goes to balls.”

  “But you could be!” I told her. “Look at you, Desiree. You are as beautiful as any woman in London. A nonpareil. Dressed properly, you would take the city by storm.”

  “We have been over this before,” she said. “I have no desire to expose myself to stares. My race makes me noteworthy, but it is not pleasant being a freak, Claude. Last week a child in the street wanted to rub my skin and see ‘if the dirt would come off.’ Can you not be happy with me as I am?”

  “I am very happy with you as you are,” I said. I could hear a sullen touch in my voice, but my feelings were understandable. “But you could be so much more!”

  She stood. “Come,” she said. “I will show you what I have been working on.”

  There would be no arguing with her—I could tell by her tone—but a touch of sulkiness might wear her down. Lord Southland glared at me as I bowed to him, but neither of us spoke.

  * * *

  In the workshop, a clockwork fairy sprawled on the table. Using a magnifying glass, Desiree showed me its delicate works, the mica flakes pieced together to form its wings.

  “Where did you get the idea?” I asked.

  “In Devonshire, an old woman spoke of seeing fairies. There was an interview with her in Science-Gossip.”

  I snorted. “Old women are given to fancies.”

  Desiree shrugged, taking up a pick and using it to adjust the the paper-thin wing's hinge. “It made me think about how to create flying creatures. I chose to use bumblebees for my model, rather than the traditional butterfly wings. My fairies can resist strong winds and go where I wish them, according to the instructions I have laid into their ‘brains,’ which are based on the papers Babbage has published.”

  Desiree is interested in such things, but I don’t find them nearly as engaging as spiritual matters. She droned on, but I cut her short. “Sometimes I think you don’t love me.”

  She stopped. Her half-parted lips were like flower petals, an orchid’s inner workings. “Why do you say that?”

  “You don’t understand my position,” I said. “As a dean, I must have a wife who is acceptable in society’s eyes.”

  “This is about the ball again,” she said. She reached out to touch my face, but I turned my head away and pretended to examine the articulated form half-assembled on the table near me.

  “Very well,” she said. Her hand returned to her side. “If it means that much, I will go.”

  * * *

  That week fled pell-mell. I went to a lecture by John Henry Newman, and the theater to see How She Loves Him by Boucicault. I stopped by Lord Southland’s on three separate evenings, but most nights I dined at my club, on excellent quail prepared in the French style, or fresh haddock.

  Desiree had started work on a mechanical cat. She took me into her workshop to look at it. A clockwork nightingale sang in the wicker cage hanging from the rafters, set in motion by our footsteps’ vibration.

  “It’s still in the preliminary stages,” she said. A brass skeleton lay disassembled on the table, but it was laid out so I could see the cat-to-be’s shape. Mercury beads rolled in a white porcelain dish. A discarded spray of silver whiskers had been tossed in the coalscuttle.

  I glanced around. “The deanery has a basement,” I said. “It houses our wine cellar and storerooms, but I have sent to have the front room cleaned and whitewashed for you.”

  Desiree’s teeth flashed as she smiled. I stole a kiss and her breath smelled of licorice. I felt her skin’s warmth against my hands. True, the room was not as fine as this, but she would improvise and make do, for she was a clever girl. And once she had started bearing, such fancies would fall away. Her inventions, her clever machines, were simply a way to channel her maternal instinct. Once she had a child, she would find herself devoted to it.

  While Desiree went upstairs to speak to her father, I lingered in the workshop. I amused myself by walking between the tables and shelves, examining her work.

  I paused beside what looked like a dress form, a brass cylinder the size of a human torso. My cheeks flushed as I regarded it.

  Shockingly, Desiree had given it the semblance of a maiden’s bosom, a suggestion of curves whose immodesty appalled me. Headless, armless, legless, the torso stood affixed to three steel rods that culminated in a circular base as wide as an elephant’s foot.

  I reached out and touched its “shoulder,” then trailed my fingertips along the skin towards its chest. The oils from my fingers left a faint trail behind them, smudging the metal�
�s gleam. It was how corrosion started, I knew. Given time, would the stains grow to verdigris, show how intimately I had touched Desiree’s creation?

  I buffed the marks away with a linen rag that lay on a nearby workbench. The stairs creaked beneath me in admonishment as I ascended to join Desiree and her father. They had been arguing again. I heard her father say, “Blasted pedantic popinjay!” and Desiree say, “Oh Father,” her tone coaxing and indulgent.

  “You don’t have to settle for such a man!”

  “If I want to be part of society and not an outcast, I need a proper husband! Claude and I will accommodate each other with time.”

  That had an ominous sound, but we would discuss it later. They fell silent as I appeared. Southland’s face red with anger, Desiree’s smile as bland as her mechanical cat licking cream.

  * * *

  Everyone notable was present at Lady Allsop’s ball. Silks and satins gleamed like colored waters touched with flecks of light from cut gems. The air smelled of hothouse flowers and French perfume. The orchestra played as the dancers glided through a waltz.

  I do not entirely approve of diversions like dancing, but society places demands on us. I was eager for the ton to place their benison on my bride to be. I would dance twice with Desiree when she arrived, but for the most part I intended to stay on the sidelines, drinking lemonade. Still, when a few partners pressed me, I gave in.

  I know well that women find me alluring—no credit to anyone other than He who shaped me. But my calf shows to advantage in breeches, to the point where at least one too-bold miss had called it shapely.

  And I knew very well that it was my looks that initially attracted Desiree. Like all women, she is drawn to this world’s baubles, not realizing their transient, mayfly nature. But with time, she had sounded my mind’s depths, and I flattered myself that what she found there had strengthened her attraction to me.