What the #@&% Is That?

by John Joseph Adams

  If that day had played out any other way. If Chelsea had taken the front seat instead of Nan. If Nan had been trapped in the broken seatbelt while water filled her lungs. Chelsea had been the clever one; she would have figured something out. And if she hadn’t, if Nan had paid that price so her friend could live, Chelsea would have been the strong one. She would have survived and thrived and carried Nan’s memory forward into a life worth living, instead of wasting everything.

  Maybe Chelsea would have met Evie.

  Soon, the monster whispers from the angled sliver of the rearview mirror.

  “Did you say something?” the cabbie asks.

  “No,” she says. “We’re almost there.”

  “Look, I know this is none of my business, but this isn’t a suicide thing, is it?”

  Nan catches his eye in the mirror. “No.” She manages a smile this time. “It’s not a suicide thing.”

  “All right, then,” he says reluctantly. “This is it.”

  He turns off the main road onto the narrow lane that leads to the park. Scraps of color break the gloom, orange and black balloons tied to a post, dangling in tatters from their ribbons. Markers for a party come and gone, or thwarted by the storm.

  The creek is already flooding, sluicing over the grass and blacktop. The driver curses as wings of white water flare on either side of the car. Nan’s stomach turns over as they hydroplane. The cab slues to the left, spray tracing its turn. The cabbie hits the brakes and slaps his hazards on.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  Nan looks up in time to see sleek black shapes move at the edge of the headlights. She might mistake them for dogs if she didn’t know better. “Don’t worry. They won’t bother you. I can make it from here.”

  “Are you sure, lady?”

  “Yes.” The conviction in her voice surprises her. She tugs her wallet out and hands him all the cash she has. She doubts she’ll need it again. “Thank you.”

  He shakes his head. “Try not to drown.”

  “I’ll do my best.” She opens the door into the deluge.

  Two steps and she’s soaked to the skin. Three and her boots squelch. Four and the lights of the cab fade into the gloom. She spares a moment’s distraction to reassure herself that he’ll probably make it home tonight.

  Would you do anything differently if you knew he wouldn’t?

  “No.” Rain fills her mouth, sour with the salt and grime sluicing off her skin but better than the lingering taste of bad coffee. The moisture makes her realize how thirsty she is.

  Implacable. Indifferent. You’d make a good hunter.

  She doesn’t look at the hound straight on but tracks it from the corner of her eye. “You didn’t used to talk so much.”

  Hard for us to interact with your world, for the angles to intersect the curve. But you slip further and further into ours. A pause, broken by thunder. It won’t work. Not like you hope.

  “I know that.” The first time Nan has admitted it, but she does know. All her experiments warned her, a missing pair of jeans the final piece of data. Her now always overwrites the before. Whether it’s five minutes or fourteen years. She’ll never be young with Chelsea again. All the futures they could have shared have long since burnt out. Her might-have-beens with Evie smolder behind her.

  The monster gives a soft whuff. You give up your mate for your sister, even if it means giving up both of them.

  “Evie will be better off without me. I’ll give up everything to let Chelsea have a future. She’ll do something with hers.”

  You don’t know that. You cannot.

  “No, I can’t. But I wish it. I hope it. I’d pray if I knew how.”

  The water reaches her knees now, weeds and branches catching on her jeans with every step. The weight of wet denim and soaked boots drags at her. The creek is somewhere in front of her, only yards away. Not that its boundaries mean anything now. To her right is the low bridge, whose flimsy guardrail hadn’t been able to stop her parents’ car from sailing downstream.

  You are ridiculous creatures. But hope is sweet. Hope, love, despair—we drink them all.

  Another step toward the bridge. Mud shifts beneath her, sucking at her boots. She reaches for the pain in her spine. Only a few more strides—

  Headlights flash behind her, the sound of tires and engine lost to the storm. The cab, Nan thinks, and then the realization hits her.

  “Nan!” Evie is a dark blur in the rain, but her voice carries. “Nan, don’t! I won’t let you do this alone.”

  “I have to!” she shouts back. “Evie, go!”

  The water surges around her thighs. She can’t see the car, but she hears Evie’s shout, watches the headlights slide sideways.

  Time slips. Slows. Raindrops hang in midair, crystalline and iridescent. The roar of the storm dims to a sound like hollow breathing. The hound slinks across the water, its faceted claws carving slices out of the frozen surface.

  Forward or back?

  “If I go back, if I change it, she’ll never come here in the first place. I’ll save her either way.”

  She can change the past, and erase herself from it. Or she can try to salvage the life she has instead of longing for something that never existed. All the things she dreamt of with Chelsea, she could find with Evie. No—they could find new dreams together. But she knows better even as she tries to convince herself. She’ll never be free of her past, not that way.

  She dives for the bridge.

  Time resumes as the water envelops her. The surge crushes her, scathes her with debris. Her outstretched arm catches the guardrail. Metal bites skin. Bitter froth fills her mouth and nose.

  A seam opens. The station wagon stutters in and out of focus. Almost there. Muscles strain and stretch. Her fingers slip. The cold breath of the hounds chills her neck. Waiting to drink the last of her down.

  Her grip gives way. Nan reaches.

  Warm flesh closes around her wrist, hauling her back. She screams in pain and frustration and inhales a mouthful of water.

  Evie holds her close, braced against the storm’s fury. “You can’t do this,” she says, lips moving against Nan’s ear. “But I can.”

  She lets go, and Nan’s scream is lost as water closes over her head.

  * * * *

  The car tilts, shuddering in the surge, caught in a tangle of tree branches. Nan leans over the passenger seat, stretching her hand toward Chelsea. Her back screams, and every movement is agony. Her breath comes in high, keening sobs.

  Chelsea struggles against the broken seatbelt as water rises higher around her head. It laps against her chin now, closing on her mouth. Her lips part as if she means to speak, but instead she spits and coughs. Her dark eyes widen.

  A shadow moves across the windshield. Nan glances back, and shrieks as the glass spiderwebs under a blow. Another impact and a thousand glittering fragments rain into the car, stinging her outflung hand.

  A woman crouches on the slanting hood of the car. Dark curls writhe around her face, and her clothes are plastered to her skin. Shadows move behind her, like a pack of rib-sprung black dogs.

  The woman shoves broken glass aside, shoves Nan aside, and reaches into the back seat. Muscles strain as she tugs on the seatbelt; the tendons in her neck leap taut. Joints pop. Fabric pops. The tongue snaps free. The woman falls back as Chelsea clings to the driver’s seat and gulps sticky wet air.

  The woman looks at Nan with sad, dark-flecked hazel eyes. She raises a bleeding hand, brushes Nan’s face with warm fingers. Her lips move, but Nan can’t hear over the roar of water and her own pulse.

  Then the dogs surge through the broken windshield, closing skeletal jaws in the woman’s clothes, in her flesh. She doesn’t scream as they drag her out into the storm.

  Nan screams for her, grabs for her, but she’s too slow. Then Chelsea squirms out of the back and into her arms, wet and chilled and shaking. They hold each other tight, sobbing, as the flood rages on.

  * * * *

&nbs
p; Nan Walker sits on her porch swing, a cigarette smoldering in one hand and her phone warming in the other, watching heavy pewter storm clouds slide across the sky. The wind rises, whipping fallen oak leaves across the lawn. The smell of ozone prickles her nose.

  “Are you listening to me at all?” Chelsea asks, five hundred miles away.

  “Sorry.” Chains squeal as she shifts her weight. A column of ash falls to the floor, disintegrating in the breeze. “A storm’s on its way.”

  Chelsea makes a soft noise, equal parts sympathy and disapproval. She pretends Nan’s fear of storms is a childhood foible to be outgrown, but Nan doubts her nightmares have stopped, though it’s been years since they shared a bed. “Anyway, I said I might come back to Texas next month. For Vangie’s birthday. She’ll be four.”

  “I know.” She’s seen Chelsea’s daughter more often than Chelsea has, but she doesn’t mention that. Evangeline’s grandmother doesn’t talk about Aunt Nan’s visits. Chelsea’s mom knows about the fallouts and makeups and the slowly widening gyre of two people who love each other but can’t live together, but she’s too polite to talk about that, either. “Shall I come down?”

  The sky darkens during Chelsea’s silence. A fat drop of rain splatters on the steps. Thunder growls in the distance and Nan shudders.

  “Sure,” Chelsea says at last, trying too hard for nonchalance. “Vangie would like that.”

  A shadow flickers at the corner of Nan’s eye. She glances up to catch a lean black shape moving at the edge of the yard. A dog, maybe, but so thin. It’s gone before she’s certain it was there at all. Her scalp prickles. Chelsea dreams of storms even if she won’t admit it; the black dogs are Nan’s alone.

  “You’re still not listening,” Chelsea says with a sigh.

  “The connection’s bad. Must be the weather. Call me back later. Or else I’ll see you soon.”

  “Yeah. I’ll see you.”

  A familiar ache opens in Nan’s chest, the absence of something she can’t quite name. She used to think Chelsea was the only thing to fill that void. She’s not sure anymore.

  “Hey,” she says before she ends the call. “Love you.”

  THOSE GADDAM COOKIES

  SCOTT SIGLER

  Nobody could bake like Bubbah.

  The scent filled Jamel’s nose, his mouth, and his lungs. He didn’t just smell it, he felt it, an instantly peaceful sensation that whirled in his brain and chest.

  Chocolate-chip macadamia cookies . . . his favorite.

  Walking down the corridor toward Bubbah’s quarters was like walking through a cloud of joy. It made Jamel happy for two reasons: First, if Bubbah was making cookies, that meant he was okay. Sick, maybe, perhaps feeling under the weather from an extended exo-shift and soaking up a little too much raw radiation outside the hull, but not so sick he couldn’t perform alchemical magic with sugar, flour, eggs, and butter.

  Since the load-in at Rhea, Bubbah had missed the last three shifts. Missing a shift in itself wasn’t a big deal, not with ten people in Jamel’s crew. That built-in redundancy of having ten bodies for jobs that took eight provided flexibility for people calling in sick, either because they were ill or because they just needed to burn a sick day. But three in a row?

  Bubbah had called in the first time; he hadn’t the second. The second time, Jamel had called him to find out if he was showing up for the shift or not—Bubbah had said he still felt like crap. The third time, Bubbah hadn’t called in, and he also hadn’t answered Jamel’s calls. With that shift complete, Jamel and Inaya, another member of the crew, decided to pay a visit to Bubbah’s cabin and make sure everything was A1.

  The second reason the smell made Jamel happy, of course, was that he would soon be noshing on the very same cookies that he smelled. Those little chocolate chip bits of magic had made Jamel realize—after twenty-five years of blissful ignorance—that his own mother couldn’t cook for shit.

  And maybe . . . maybe Bubbah had scored some milk, too, and if so, the universe would rejoice.

  “Gaddam, Jam,” Inaya said. Her eyes were closed and a smile tugged at her crinkled cheeks. She walked with one hand lightly touching the wall. “You smell that?”

  “Fuck yes, I do,” Jamel said, although the loud rumbling of his belly was answer enough.

  Inaya kept walking, eyes closed, fingertips sliding along the wall. After four years aboard the Suraa Horse she could probably walk every inch of the ship blindfolded with her hands cuffed behind her back. Jamel could do exactly that. He knew because he’d done it. Sometimes, space travel is crazy-boring. Finding ways to entertain oneself was as important as actually being able to do the job.

  “You think he’s really sick?” Inaya asked. “Or is he having another emotional episode?”

  She didn’t hide her disgust. Inaya liked Bubbah, everyone in the crew did, but the man ran at the mouth talking about his feelings of inadequacy, wondering if he’d made the right decisions in life, bemoaning the fact that he was thirty-five and still only a level-two maintenance tech.

  Jamel liked Bubbah, too—in fact, Bubbah was probably his closest friend on the ship—but Jamel shared Inaya’s disdain for the man’s constant whining. Exo-work was a hard job for hard people: feelings weren’t something that merited attention.

  Inaya sniffed deep again.

  “He missed three shifts, but he’s baking,” she said. “I know he’s your boy and all, Jam, but if he’s just faking, you have to do something about it.”

  Jamel shrugged. “Maybe he had that corridor crud that was going around after we laid up at Iapetus. I caught it. Had the shits for three days.”

  “Information I did not need,” Inaya said. “I wonder if he’s been bingeing all this time.”

  “And nary a purge to be found, I’ll bet.”

  Inaya laughed, finally opening her eyes.

  “That’s mean,” she said.

  Jamel knew it was and felt bad for saying it. He didn’t want to talk poorly about Bubbah, but sometimes, looking out for the man was so damn frustrating.

  “Well, you laughed at it,” Jamel said.

  “Because I’m an awful person. We all know this. I expect better of you, crew leader. Let’s hope he hasn’t put on so much they have to adjust his EVA suit again.”

  Jamel made a reactive mmm-hmmm noise of agreement.

  Bubbah had weight issues. He also had self-esteem issues, which were connected to his weight issues. And to deal with the self-esteem issues, he overate, creating a vicious circle that gradually added inches to his waistline. The one-size-fits-all EVA suits turned out to be not so much with the one size, at least not where Bubbah was concerned.

  They reached his cabin. Just a wheel-out door, same as twenty others in Corridor B. Inaya rapped her knuckles on the door. The knock left a tiny streak of blood, a dash of red on white.

  Jamel tilted his head to look at her hand. “You cut or something?”

  She glanced quickly at the knuckles on her right hand; Jamel saw they were dry and cracked. Inaya covered her right hand with her left.

  “Stupid psoriasis,” she said quietly. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Inaya pulled a small tube from her pocket, squirted the white lotion into her palm, then rubbed it into her cracked skin. It made some of the dryness vanish, but Jamel could still see angry red lines that carved her hands up like tiny riverbeds running through long-dry hills.

  “That stuff a prescription?”

  She nodded. “For all the damn good it does. You know our dispensary is for shit. I’ll get it looked at when we get to Europa.”

  Jamel nodded and let it go. Dry skin was a problem for a lot of people on the ship, especially those who spent twelve-hour shifts in EVA suits. He didn’t have that problem himself, but then again, he was just a bit over half Inaya’s age.

  She didn’t look fifty, that was for sure. She didn’t feel like it, either, especially in his bed late into off-shift hours, but all the jogging and lifting and yoga couldn’t keep the years at ba
y. Genetics was genetics. Inaya hated any reminder that she was that much older than the young kids she hung with.

  They stood there awkwardly for a moment, Jamel staying quiet because anytime Inaya’s age came up, it created a conversational vacuum. She chased away the silence with a swift kick to Bubbah’s door.

  “Hey, fat-ass,” she yelled. “Answer the damn door.”

  Bubbah didn’t.

  Inaya crossed her arms. It seemed like she wanted to stay mad, but her nose crinkled once, twice, and the anger faded from her face.

  “Gaddam, that smells divine,” she said. “He’s not answering. Open it up.”

  Jamel shook his head. “Privacy regs, man.”

  “Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I know you know his code, so get to getting. The brownies still smell warm.”

  He looked at her, surprised.

  “Brownies?”

  She gestured to Bubbah’s door as if it was made from the very delicious confection she was talking about.

  “Yes, brownies. You said you smelled it.”

  “I smell cookies,” Jamel said. “Chocolate chip macadamia.”

  Inaya huffed. “Maybe your sense of smell isn’t as good as mine.”

  Jamel sniffed again. No question: cookies. Didn’t smell anything at all like Bubbah’s brownies, which were also to die for. Those were Inaya’s favorite, he knew. Maybe her age also affected her sense of smell? Just one more reason Jamel was not looking forward to getting older.

  He waited a little bit longer, but still, Bubbah didn’t answer.

  “Ah, screw it,” Jamel said. “We’re worried about his safety, right? Possible medical emergency, right?”

  “Of course. He might have slipped on some melted butter and bonked that head of his. Don’t worry, Jam; I’ll back your story if the commander crawls up your ass.”

  Still, Jamel hesitated. He already had one privacy strike against him, courtesy of a drunken night at the crew lounge and misreading the signals given off by Camilla Bolden. He’d followed her back to her cabin, his alcohol-soaked brain convinced that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. She’d asked him to leave her be but he hadn’t heard, or maybe hadn’t wanted to hear. Putting his foot in her door to stop it from shutting had been the final straw. Frank and Jenny Anne from security had come, cuffed him, taken him to the hold. Commander Shobatzi didn’t fuck around with stuff like that. A week’s worth of correctional courses, a month’s worth of cleaning toilets, and the threat of a second offense costing him his crew leader position were enough to teach him to drink less, pay attention more. On top of that, he’d had to face Camilla again the next day. He’d manned up and apologized to her; she hadn’t accepted. Their interactions remained icy, at best, even six months later.