Lux read them to him, then went out and bought new ones. Superpowers and saving the world. Secret identities. Endless violence. Some made her laugh, probably for the wrong reasons. She wondered where her character would fit in, if she was one of those paper girls in sex-fantasy clothes.
The Dreamer’s file was far from specific. He had been a wild card, developed in unpredictable ways and, when his condition deteriorated, the Doctor lost all contact. He seemed to have been an out-patient, which she didn’t understand, but he was only sixteen then, and in his family’s care. Somehow, all of the Doctor’s subjects had found a way to escape the project before his results were conclusive. Except for the Beast, but he, the first one, had remained stable after a few weeks. He was different. Older than the others. Also, dead before his first treatment.
The dead remain static, the living adapt and grow. Even more so if they are children, like the Dreamer. Like her.
Lux had been reading for a while, a dimpled smile dancing on her lips for the nurses when they came and went, like clockwork, to refill his supplies and check his vitals.
They were reading a new comic today. It was about the king of dreams and his little sister, a young girl who was Death. The ward fell silent, a temple of comatose sleep punctuated by the mechanical bleeps monitoring beating hearts.
Lux walked across a dilapidated manor house, long abandoned, the gold leaf peeling from the rotting wall paper, intricate mouldings on the ceiling slowly turning to dust and beautiful tiled floors covered in dirt.
The white marble chimney was open like a door, gaping in a phantasmagorical green glow, the passageway into the bowels of the house.
She descended iron winding stairs until she began to feel dizzy.
Someone turned on the lights.
She was in the white sterile corridors of the complex. As she walked under the glaring lights there were sounds, voices, cries from the innumerable doors, but she walked straight ahead, never slowing down. She knew how it worked.
The machine was waiting for her, a beautiful beast of polished glass and mirrored steel. It pulsated, it breathed heavily, rubber tubing extended like yellow tendrils to pull her towards the chair. She closed her eyes, willing the dripping tentacles away from her skin.
“So, this is where you hide.”
The boy was sitting on the chair, his face young and clear of disease.
“Why are you hiding in my dream, girl?”
“I’m not. This is my dream.”
He began to stand up and she took two quick steps back. His body was covered in bandages, right to the tip of each finger. He looked around, thoughtfully.
“Perhaps it is.”
He opened the door, the one behind the machine that shouldn’t be there, and left, his red cape billowing in the wind.
Lux followed him, anxious to leave the throbbing glass thing behind. The Dreamer’s world reminded her of the comic books she had become so fond of lately.
It was built in bold colours, sharp corners and deep, contrasting shadows.
Every sound made an echo.
The boy had pulled up the hood of his purple cloak, a new costume, but his fingers were still bandaged when he motioned for her to follow.
They walked a fantastic cityscape of vertiginous angles until she stopped.
“No. Here.”
He didn’t seem put off by her boldness.
“As you wish.”
They were sitting at a long dinner table, a fairytale banquet between them.
“Shall we talk, little sister?”
“I am not your sister.”
He played with a silver napkin holder, two snakes biting each other’s tails.
“We are all brothers and sisters, all we who lay inside the machine. One house, one heart, one soul? No, no souls,” he seemed to be thinking out loud now. “We have no souls. He took them. He made us…more, and we pay the price.”
He nibbled on a delicate cake, sugar flowers on marzipan stems. They were too bright and colourful, uncomfortable to look at.
“Why are you here, little sister?”
“I came to see you. There aren’t many of us left.”
“Did you kill them?”
She looked up, startled. The scope of his power was unpredictable too. He might be connected to all of them, feeling them go out like candles, one by one. But he changed the subject.
“I see your dreams. I see his dreams too. You have ideas, and he doesn’t know,” he smiled a wicked, sugary smile. “What will he do when he finds out?”
“He won’t.”
“No, I suppose he won’t. Because you are very good at hiding. He made you that way.” He offered her a blue biscuit butterfly. “He doesn’t know that either.” She didn’t reply, so he went on. “ Show me what’s in your heart, sister. Your heart’s desires. Are they dark and pure?”
“Yes” she looked at him, and wondered how much he really knew, and if he could be saved, “but you know that. You’ve seen my dreams.”
He changed gears again.
“You used to cry every night in your cage. I listened.”
“I don’t cry.”
“No,” he crumbled a sugar daisy into sticky dust. “You don’t need to anymore. You kill,” his smile was desperately wide. “But you are not going to kill me. I am dead to the world, a thing in a dream.”
“You are alive.”
“Only in here. If you were going to kill me, I’d be dead already,” he blew up his floppy fringe, feigned indifference.
“That’s true. You will die of your illness.”
“It’s not an illness. It’s my power. Did you know that I volunteered? He didn’t take me, like the others. I wanted it, I wanted to be….”
A super hero.
He wanted to be a super hero.
The walls melted into dark branches and their dinner table was in a forest clearing. Every tree was twisted and every shadow had yellow malevolent eyes.
He looked around, surprised.
“You dream of this?”
“Sometimes.”
“Where are we?”
“Outside the house.”
“I see. The world. Yes, I suppose it is like this. I don’t miss it, you know?”
She just looked at him.
“I don’t,” for the first time, a defensive chink on his voice. “I don’t miss it,” he murmured into a teacup.
“What’s there?” he pointed behind her. A path had opened and a merry light could be seen through the branches. Lux knew there would be a house at the end of the path.
“Nothing,”
“Is this it?” he was up and moving already. She tried to grab him but the beautifully inked cloak slipped like rain through her fingers.
“No! Don’t go there!”
She was running after him now, but it was like fighting thick mud. She couldn’t catch up, “NO!”
The golden glow flickering in the window was a Sleeping Beauty nightlight. The bedroom had white and blue wall paper and it smelled of plasticine and baby shampoo.
Lux stopped fighting thin air.
Helpless, she watched the Dreamer peeping into her long-ago bedroom. His previous giddiness had turned into clenched teeth and frozen limbs. A familiar voice, faint echoes through the walls, was reading her a story.
“No,” she sobbed, her voice breaking into a croak, her throat suddenly dry.
So much pity and horror in the dreamer’s eyes.
“He is your father.”
“No.”
“He did this to his own child.”
“NO!” her voice grew into a howl that ripped through his mind. He fell to his knees, useless hands cupping useless ears.
Up was down and unbearable pressure choked them before an implosion released the emptiness.
It was white. Not a white room. Just white.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“A blank page.”
“I don’t like this,” he took her hand. “Let’s go back to mi
ne. I haven’t shown you everything yet. And I can make so much, whatever you want.”
She pulled at the edge of his bandage. The finger underneath was pink and healthy.
“I have to go now.”
His hands were shaking in hers.
“And me?”
“You live here.”
He looked up for a moment, confusion, then horror spreading through his features.
“I can’t. I can’t make anything…I can’t leave,” he turned to her, “please….please, not this.”
“It’s the only way.”
“Plea—”
A nurse picked up the comic that had fallen from her lap. Lux blinked in the half light of predawn and smiled at her.
*****
She found the answer in his old books, the ones yellowing in the attic. Cryptozoology was just something to keep herself entertained until she noticed the little annotations scattered throughout the text.
Dates and places, nothing more. The dates spanned the years before he began experimenting, and the locations were random towns, sometimes addresses, all over the world.
Lux knew that he had travelled; the house was full of mementoes. Now, it seemed his wanderings had been a quest. The Doctor had brought something home, something he could use.
It was all around her. The machine was missing a heart.
The blood had to go through a delicate process of temperatures and speeds, while being enriched with minerals and metals, to a perfect balance, until the immortal heart could beat again. Then the heart would pulse this blood into the subject strapped to the table. It burned, it screamed inside the soft human veins, and it came with terrifying images and wild feelings.
When it was over, the heart would turn to cold hard marble once more.
Lux used to admire the detailed work, where the arteries were broken in irregular patterns. She knew now it wasn’t the product of tiny chisels, but of tearing it from someone’s chest. An immortal that could turn to stone.
*****
Just as with the books and files, he had left her alone at the computer for too long. It was easy, her fingers knew how. The Complex had an Emergency Clean-Up program in place. It only required a few minor adjustments.
As she walked out, resetting every door, the system went into lockdown, irreversible until the procedure had been completed. The robots began as soon as she left. Computer hard drives were wiped clean, every surface disinfected, every machine turned off in an orderly sequence. The Doctor could hear it all, step by step, from his plastic cell. Just for insurance, in case he had devised secret escape routes, she took his biometrics. Eyes, vocal cords, fingerprints. Easy to burn.
Locked cell, knots and straps to keep him in the chair, broken fingers. Magic that out, Houdini.
He wouldn’t die of these injuries, and hunger and thirst took longer than three days. After three days, the robots would fire up the furnace and incinerate every piece of organic matter, dead, alive or frozen.
*****
Lux had flown many times, but this was the first plane she had wanted to take.
The marble heart was a cold reassuring weight in her handbag. It knew her; she could feel it coursing through her veins at inhuman speed. There were several creatures of legend that came from stone, but all her evidence pointed in one direction.
And Paris seemed like the right place to start.
Lux dozed happily in her first class seat and wondered how hard it would be to climb the façade of Notre Dame in the dark.
Figs
Jeremy C. Shipp
© 2011
All rights reserved.
The black ink on the bathroom wall tells me, There is hope in God. And below that, God is a lie. And below that, Your mom is a lie and a whore. Then, a drawing of a cross-eyed stick woman having sex with an anthropomorphic teacup. I search the stall and find the word whore four times. Fag, nine times, and eventually, I hear a woman screaming. I can’t paint over the graffiti, so I do the next best thing. I take the Nikon out of my backpack, and take a picture.
At this point, the woman calms down, and I finally feel comfortable enough to take a dump.
After leaving Sierra Library, I wander around and end up in Cruikshank’s Orchard, sitting on a fern-patterned bench next to the girl of my dreams. She’s wearing a T-shirt that says, Vegetarian Zombie. Below that, the zombie says, Graaaaaaains.
“You don’t mind me sitting here?” she says.
“No, not at all,” I say.
“It’s just, this is my favorite bench. I love the smell of the figs.”
I turn my head toward the old Mission fig tree, and sniff the air as loud as I can.
“Do you have a cold?” She opens her brown leather stash bag. “I think I have some Airborne.”
“No. No thanks. I’m good. Thanks.”
She retrieves a tin of Altoids from her bag and drops a few mints into her mouth. “So, are you a photography major?”
I look down at notice that I’m still gripping my Nikon in both hands. “I used to be. What about you?”
She shrugs, and stands. She approaches the fig tree. Then she picks up a moldy fig and holds the rotten fruit close to her thin red lips.
Time freezes.
No, I can feel the wind on my face. I can hear a boy laughing behind me. She’s the only thing in the world that isn’t moving.
“What are you doing?” I say.
“Posing,” she says, without moving her mouth.
“Um. I can’t take your picture with this camera.”
She drops the fig, which lands on her white tennis shoes. “And why not?”
I could tell her that the camera’s out of batteries, but the thought of lying to her makes me feel a little nauseous. “It’s hard to explain. It’s weird.”
“What’s a little weirdness between friends?”
When she says the word friends, I can’t help but grin. “With this camera, I only take pictures of…well, bad things.”
“And you’re assuming I’m not a bad thing?”
“Yeah.”
Then she runs at me, and wraps her hands around my neck. She squeezes, gently. Then she laughs.
I laugh.
And then she kisses me.
Her mouth tastes a lot like cinnamon and little like manure, but I don’t care.
On the way to my apartment, Teresa freezes on the sidewalk and points. At first I can’t see what she’s seeing, but then I spot what looks like a dead baby bird caught on a low branch.
“The fall broke her neck,” Teresa says.
“Must have,” I say.
The woman in my head whimpers.
I take a picture.
In my apartment, Teresa kneels beside my DVD collection. She runs a finger down the tower.
“You’re a geek,” she says. “You know that, right?”
“Right,” I say.
We spend the next hour and a half watching Bio Zombie and making out. And then I sit on the bed, reading my textbook for the psych test tomorrow, while Teresa rummages through my drawers and cabinets.
“Are you looking for something specific?” I say, smiling.
She shrugs.
After a while, Teresa joins me on the bed and massages my shoulders. Sometimes she squeezes me a little too hard, but I don’t tell her that.
“Take off your shirt,” she says.
I obey.
“Give me my gourd,” she says.
“What?”
“From my bag.”
I open her stash bag, and inside I find five tins of cinnamon Altoids, an egg timer, a simple wooden box, and a small decorative gourd. I hold the gourd close to my face, but even then, the carvings are too small and intricate for me to make out.
Teresa lifts the top off the gourd, and sticks a finger inside the hole. Her finger returns, covered with a dark yellow substance.
“Massage oil,” she says.
“Oh,” I say.
Teresa rubs the oil into my chest.
“Don’t wash this off until tomorrow morning,” Teresa says.
“Alright,” I say, and she kisses me goodnight.
After Teresa starts snoring, I get out of bed and kiss her forehead. I get the feeling that I’ve known this girl longer than a day. Much longer. Of course, that’s probably just the love talking.
In the living room, I sit at my desk and turn on my Nikon. I stare at today’s photographs until the woman in my head weeps.
As my hands tremble, the graffiti and the dead bird swirl together in a whirlpool of ink and blood. The woman shrieks, and I caress the body of the camera.
I say, “I’m sorry.”
I can’t save her from all this hatred and bigotry and death, so I do the next best thing.
I delete the pictures.
After heaving my Del Taco into the sink, I search my mind, and I can’t remember what was on those photographs anymore.
And I finally feel comfortable enough to sleep.
In the morning, I find a pyramid of cardboard boxes beside the bed, on Teresa’s side.
“What’s all this?” I say.
“I’m moving in,” she says.
Things are moving so fast, I know I should freak out. But when I think about living with Teresa, my heart jumps into my throat. Then my heart crawls up toward my head like a snail, and I can’t stop it, and I don’t want to try.
My psych test starts in thirty minutes, but Teresa wants Denver omelets. Then she wants to watch Dead Alive. Then she wants me to sit still and look into her eyes. Finally, she wants me to take her to Cruikshank’s Orchard for a picnic.
We sit near the old Mission fig tree, and the smell of the rotting fruit makes me feel nauseous.
“I’m really excited about the Joining,” Teresa says, and touches my cheek. “You are too, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Of course.”
I try hard to convince myself that when Teresa says Joining, she’s talking about sex. But I know that’s not true. Teresa’s been talking about the Joining all day, and every time she mentions it, her eyes narrow and she starts panting. Whatever this Joining is, it’s more intense than sex. More important.
Here Be Monsters Page 6
