The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013

by Angela Slatter

  “No,” a quiet voice said, and everyone tuned to where Coach O’Laughlin sat in the corner. “That will just make Beaufort upset.”

  “Beau’s dead you old fool,” Darren said.

  “He’s a hero. Heroes live forever.”

  “You call him a hero?” Darren asked with a murderous whisper. The clubhouse remained silent.

  The Coach was pretty old by then. There had been a seventieth birthday in his past, and the white shock of hair that was his trademark had finally decided to thin out. But his voice was still strong, not muffled by the years. What he said held weight.

  “He was a good footy player, and he won our team more premierships under his Captaincy than anyone else. For that the mighty gods will elevate him to Valhalla.”

  “Christ Almighty, you talk bullshit.”

  “But!” Coach shouted. “But he was also a bad man!”

  By then Darren had been about to walk off the lectern, but Coach O’Laughlin words made him pause. Hadn’t Kylie said a similar thing?

  “I say we retire ninety-two, no votes, no discussion. We put the guernsey up on the wall with the others like Beau planned.”

  “It’s disrespectful to every single man on that wall to put him there!” Darren shouted.

  Coach O’Laughlin shook his head.

  “They’ll keep him in line, those fellows. They also have a hero’s immortality; they also sit at the table of the gods and the gladiators, the great warriors of history. Beaufort won’t have any influence when he’s got the big men of North Trafalgar surrounding him.”

  Any complaint Darren might have had was drowned out by ferocious clapping and hollers of support.

  * * *

  Darren tried to get in contact with Kylie Kinsey a few times, but as good as her word she had disappeared from Trafalgar with her two daughters. He travelled to Melbourne that next year, hoping she would be at the inquest that cleared James Duncan of the crimes he had never committed. He stood on the windy, leaf-littered street outside the Supreme Court and smoked an illicit cigarette. She never showed.

  A week after the club AGM, a newly mounted guernsey had been sent from a memorabilia framing supplier in Mildura, with a brass plaque and a colour photograph of Beaufort Kinsey taken just before he died, arms crossed, glaring out at the camera. It wasn’t the heroic action photograph they had ordered, but it suited, for Beaufort’s presence was that of warning, a wicked Cronos locked up in Tartarus, buried in the prison of the gods.

  All around Beau the other framed guernseys stood guard, and a casual observer might have noticed what others had not. Every face in every photograph was turned towards Beaufort Kinsey, watching him despite whatever else they were doing.

  Beaufort’s photograph seemed to glower in a barely restrained anger. His hands were fists. His power to hurt was taken from him. But he hadn’t given up, Darren knew that. He was waiting, waiting for the day when the Trafalgar football team would run out of two-digit numbers and vote to begin guernsey numbers again from zero.

  Then it was only a matter of time.

  The Oblivion Box

  Faith Mudge

  It is a white box in a black void. There were people once, she remembers, or believes she remembers; long enough alone and you might believe anything if only to slow the spreading gangrene of an unused mind. If the memory is real, there were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, a long queue of the damned stretching behind and ahead of her to file down into the dark. When the grille slammed down behind each one it was like the chomping of vast steel teeth, and when it rose they were gone.

  She, too, was swallowed. She woke up here.

  Her name was Shaya. Stripped of her jangling jewellery and elaborate henna tattoos, she finds it difficult to recognise that woman in herself. The only colour left in her world is the cinnamon tan of her skin and the blue tracery of veins beneath. Everything else she sees is white or black. Muted white phosphorescence pulses from each side of the cube in which she is imprisoned; when she stands at the wall and squints against the light, all she can see beyond is unremitting darkness.

  There are other cubes like her own. Shaya knows this the same way she knows there are stars and sunrises, intangible theory grown meaningless from too much contemplation. Sometimes she remembers faces from that day, that queue—a gaunt dead-eyed woman, a man heavily muffled in robes as though he thought he might get to keep them. She wonders whether they are still here, somewhere in the abyss. She wonders if they, too, are slowly going mad.

  Food appears on a ridged circle in the middle of the floor. For a while she tried to judge time by that but she quickly lost track of how many times the food has come, and she has nothing with which to make a record—not even a knife to mark the tally on her own skin. Once Shaya coated her body in creams and studied it critically in the mirror with ideas for improvement. Given a knife now, she knows she would cut herself purely for something to do.

  Sitting beside the circle, as she often is, she reaches quickly for the much-anticipated supplies. It is, as always, a small slab of coarse dark bread and two white nutrient bars, accompanied by a black enamel jug of tasteless dark liquid Shaya thinks is some type of water. Holding it up to take a gulp, she catches a blur of reflection: a pale oval of face swimming between shadow curtains of hair, punctuated by black blots for eyes. Her lips, her beautiful irresistible lips, which were once painted every shade between orange and vermilion, are too pale to be seen at all.

  Her throat tightens. She drinks anyway. She will not receive more supplies until the emptied jug has been replaced and phased away, denying her the comfort of one small and useless object to break the emptiness of her cell.

  With the food, though, she takes her time. She tears the dense grainy bread into small pieces and chews each to a fine mush before swallowing. The nutrient bars are hard and chewy with a sour tang. She does not need to invent tactics to make them last; by the time they are gone her teeth and jaws are aching.

  On a full stomach it is easier to sleep, though she has never grown used to the inescapable light of the cube. Shading her eyes with hair, cushioning her head as best she can on her arm, she drifts into uneasy dreams.

  * * *

  The show was about to start.

  The Royal East Pavilion was all old-world glamour: crimson glass walls swimming with shining fish, tasselled carpets patterned to look antique. Servitors in red robes glided between the private balconies in the treble-storeyed auditorium, bearing trays of sweet wine and decoratively shaped fruits to be picked over by disinterested patrons for whom this event was attended more as a display of wealth before their friends than for the formal entertainment. Teardrops of petrified oil dripped from the earlobes of beautiful women; tiger hybrids settled at their feet, growling softly as the servitors passed by.

  Testosterone-enhanced men in gilded robes gathered in small groups at the balcony railings. They cast scornful glances through the curlicued wooden screens at the secondary seating below, teeming with an eager crowd. The Third Millennium Sultanate might be founded on co-opportunist philosophy, the new heart of modern democracy, but old capitalist feeling was bred into the bones of the urban elite.

  Backstage with her zither strung across her back, Shaya tugged fretfully at her midriff-baring blouse until its fringe of bright bronze discs bounced and jangled a counter-rhythm to her many bangles. Rationally, she knew she was beautiful, but it was easier to take her nerves out on her looks than endure the wait peacefully. Running a fingertip over the cherry pink bow of her lips, she was suddenly certain she should have picked a different shade.

  The gong sounded, a crystalline reverberation thrumming through her blood like electricity, and she swung her zither down into her arms, sashaying onstage as though she’d never possessed a doubt in her life.

  The central podium was lit by a single golden spotlight. Shaya positioned herself on the stool provided and struck a pose there, fingers poised on strings, allowing her audience a moment to admire the picture. Then
she struck the first chord, opened her mouth, and sang.

  Later, Zali told her that was the moment he’d fallen in love with her.

  “You must get a thousand proposals a night. God, your voice. You could make me believe anything. I hadn’t cried since I was nine, until I heard you sing.”

  “Flatterer,” she purred. “You’d never heard a balladeer before, that’s all.”

  “You’re not a balladeer, Shaya, you’re a fucking hypnotist.”

  She bowed off-stage three hours later to thunderous applause. Laying the zither in its case, swaddled up in padding like a baby, she swapped her flamboyant costume for a light violet modesty robe and began the triumphant walk back to her apartment.

  It was a sultry night. The street bazaar outside was fragrant with sizzling meat and aromatic spice, perfume, dust and sweat. Shaya stopped at an imaginatively constructed booth with stacked tyres forming a bench and a shuttercraft wing for an awning. She tossed over a couple of brass sequins to the stallholder, who caught them deftly and passed across a lamb skewer. Shaya bit into tender meat, her tastebuds popping at the hot herb dressing, and strolled away through the crowd.

  She liked this part of town. The street was a canyon of steel and glass, physical reminders of last millennium’s disastrous alliance with the West Union, but the capitalist shells were not as abandoned as they seemed. The alleys between buildings were criss-crossed with treble-deep lines of washing, coils of jasmine trained around the concrete pylons of an underground carpark below. What had once been the domain of computer drones was now home to entrepreneurial families, many of whom held booths in the bazaar. This appropriation of property was not strictly lawful but the authorities turned a lenient eye, recognising the spirit of co-opportunism when they saw it at work.

  Shaya didn’t live here. Her apartment was a nice little pad in the residential zone of Aladeen three blocks away. In reality she’d never trade that up for what was essentially a modified squat, but her bohemian side sometimes indulged in a little wistful speculation. The bazaar looked at its most romantic at this time of night, lit by solar lanterns in a hundred colours strung overhead in the narrow laneways between booths. Music was playing nearby—tambourines, drums. Dancing.

  Elbowing her way towards the sound, Shaya broke through a ring of watchers surrounding an improvised dancefloor where a bare-chested young man was doing handstands. He flipped back onto his feet with easy grace, snapping off a salute to the crowd, and bounded away, replaced by a trio of girls in matching headscarves performing synchronised pop-kicking.

  Normally, Shaya was self-conscious about the way she danced. The Muslim Sisterhood school she had attended as a teenager had offered classes, but it had taken her rapidly growing limbs a long time to catch on and in the meantime two girls from her clique were putting everyone else to shame with their killer moves. They had gone on to join a dancesport company in the Ausasian Empire, but Shaya still felt stilted and slow when she danced in public.

  Not tonight, though. She had wowed a pavilion of wealthy punters with just her zither and her voice—she could dance the world down if she wanted. The pop-kickers ended their routine to a flurry of applause and Shaya grabbed her chance, leaping into the emptied floor. A flute joined the drums and tambourines, a high sweet piping. Shaya swayed backwards until her spine arched, spun a tight pirouette, spun again—and nearly fell when a hand caught hers. A man had joined her in the circle.

  She stiffened, astonished. Men and women didn’t dance together, not in the Sultanate. He took full advantage of her confusion, spinning her neatly back into the crowd, and claimed the floor. Watching him, Shaya had to admit he deserved the spotlight. He seemed boneless, swinging his limbs at impossible angles, with moves that would have given Shaya’s old friends a run for their money.

  As he snap-footed past he flashed a bright white smile her way. Admiration re-ignited into indignation. She waited until he finally relinquished the floor and stalked over to intercept him.

  “Hey, you. What was the idea? That was my turn.”

  He turned and grinned again. Dark-skinned and clean-shaven, he had a lean athletic body and chin-length black hair streaked with metallic gold at the temples. She could smell the incense of expensive cologne on him from a foot away.

  “You’re the balladeer,” he said. “I was at your show. Maybe I just wanted an excuse to touch you.”

  Shaya felt her eyebrows brush her hairline. “That’s your defence?”

  She was charmed, though—she always fell easily to flattery. He swept her a flourishing bow and took her hand.

  “Shall we start over?” he asked, and kissed her palm. “My name is Zali Scherade.”

  And that, she thought later, was the moment she had fallen in love with him.

  * * *

  The deluge comes.

  Shaya is woken from her unsettled dreaming to a drenching spray of cold water jetting seemingly from every direction. There is no place inside the cube where she can move to escape; within seconds every surface is slick wet and her thin white shift is transparent, clinging to her body like a second, extremely ineffectual, skin. Knowing what to expect, she closes her eyes and endures.

  The water stops. There is exactly a minute’s pause before the heat comes.

  Like a wind direct from the desert, warm air pumps through the cube, transforming it into a sauna. Shaya’s hair and shift are still slightly damp when the heat shuts off and the temperature returns to its neutral standard. Throughout the entire business she has remained seated on the floor, not seeing the point in rising. Now she stands and looks upward.

  The ceiling of the cube is exactly like every other side. For all Shaya knows it may not even be the ceiling but she calls it that to spare her sanity. She is sure there are sensors embedded into this cube to monitor her and that there is a warden somewhere out there in front of a screen, watching, so she tries to look strong. The resentment hot in her veins helps a little. She had been dreaming of home.

  Anger feels good. It burns up her throat, stinging her apathetic brain into response. She must do something. There is nothing she can do. But she must do something. The two thoughts form an inescapable litany inside her head, triggering a surge of frustration and panic, until she suddenly flings back her head and screams.

  The full power of her trained voice is unleashed in a raw siren of sound. It amazes her. She has not spoken aloud in so long she had almost forgotten she could speak or hear at all. As the aftershock of her scream fades from her ears, the silence falls again like a suffocating weight. Well, this she can change.

  “My name is Shaya Scherade,” she says. Her voice sounds raspy, her throat still sore from the screaming. “I am twenty nine years old. My father died from canine flu when I was three and I grew up with my uncle. He is the most honourable politician I have ever known. He fought to abolish the death penalty for thirty years. He’s dead now too. I’m glad. It would have broken his heart to see me like this.”

  Her eyes blur with tears. Shaya rubs them away and keeps talking, pretending someone is listening, waiting for her to go on. She has never failed an audience yet. Even an imaginary one.

  “He was awarded the Commendation of Service by the Sultaness herself before he died. I performed at the ceremony. I can play the zither, lute and mandolin. I know over two hundred traditional ballads by heart and wrote forty of my own. When I sing, grown men cry. I lived my life to the full. I was remarkable.”

  It does not sound convincing, even to her own ears. But it is true.

  “I loved a man!” she shouts. “And he loved me. I know he did.”

  * * *

  Zali was vain. Shaya knew that from the first time she met him.

  He exercised religiously to maintain his gorgeous physique, adhering to a strict regimen of nutrient bars, protein capsules and power shakes, untempted by Shaya’s diet of indulgences. She admired his dedication, but felt no need to emulate it—how he started the day without a strong Turkish coffee and a bowl of
sweet, pitted dates, she didn’t want to know. His apartment was a shrine to fitness and health and was possibly the blandest place she had ever been. She barely ever saw him there. Most nights, he came to her.

  It was Zali who introduced her to genEx.

  “It’s no different from getting a skin rejuv or a hangover killer,” he said persuasively. “It’s great. You’ve already sampled the goods, I know you’ll love it.”

  “What goods?”

  He brushed a hand over his muscular chest in one of those extravagant gestures that were so him and Shaya laughed. They were in the sun swing on her balcony, watching the sun rise. The sky was streaked in vibrant pink, the tall palm trees lining the shady street below outlined with halos of gold. The winged silhouette of an ROC flew low across the city—one of the genetically engineered super-eagles used by wealthy risk-seekers for their joyflights. They scared the hell out of Shaya at close range, but from a distance filled her heart with an ache at their beauty. Dawn was the most peaceful hour of the day, she thought, the time when this overcrowded, overheated city of hers was at its loveliest.

  “Just try it,” Zali urged, breaking her reverie. Exasperated, she twisted to look at him. He was very attractive, it was true, but he would have to learn she didn’t appreciate pressure.

  “What improvements do you think I need?” she asked sweetly.

  He shifted awkwardly, not stupid enough to take the bait. It won her nearly ten minutes of quiet before he found a comeback.

  “Do you like this?” He held his arm against her nose and the faint fresh scent of citrus drifted into her lungs. “Is that cologne?” she asked. “It’s a serious improvement.”

  He knew she didn’t like his intense incense colognes but it would probably have triggered an argument anyway if he had not been so focused on persuasion. As it was, he laughed stiffly and drew his arm away.

  “It’s not cologne. The scent is a skin enhancement from genEx. Interested now?”