The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014 (Volume 5)

by Kaaron Warren

  “God, look at her,” Mr S said. “Can’t you cover that up so she looks normal?”

  The whole back of her head was dented. The funeral director had done his best cosmetically, and they nestled her head in cushions, hiding the damage.

  Terry pulled on gloves, walked to his bar fridge and removed a syringe.

  He’d scratched himself before, raising blisters which were filled with tiny growths, so he always wore gloves now.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “It’s going to help us make her look better in the photo. Trust me. It’s an element of the universal fluid that runs through us all, even your beautiful girl. Her flow has been interrupted, but I can get it going again very, very briefly.”

  Terry emptied the syringe into the corner of her eye. Stepped back. Waited for the moment. That sudden flare of colour in the cheeks, as if the flesh was infused with dye. This he needed to capture.

  A twitch. The glow. “There it is!”

  “Is she alive?”

  “Just for a moment.”

  He heard a soft sighing and it was so sweet it made all else seem empty. The smell was ammoniac, though. It made his eyes water.

  He took some shots. “Touch her. Go on. She’s warm.”

  There was no personality in the revival. It was the physical body alone that reanimated. No conversation, no thought process.

  Still, Terry said, “Say goodbye. I love you always feels good. She might hear you. Think of her as in a coma. Your voice might pass through to her. And hold her while she’s warm. She’ll feel good.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mr S said to her. “I’m sorry I made you die. If you hadn’t left it wouldn’t have happened.”

  Mr S touched her.

  “Go for it,” Terry said. “Most people do.”

  “Really?”

  Terry showed him some photos. “Really. Look. I can take a record if you want. Just for your private viewing. You have to be quick, though.”

  Grief sold. Grief-struck fucking even more so.

  The woman blinked. Her mouth opened.

  Terry took the photos then printed them out while Mr S went to the bathroom. He added his special touch to them, here and there, the colours he loved. Split lip red, Vagina pink. All shoots excited him, but these ones in particular. He didn’t relieve himself though; he had a date that evening and looked forward to it. The only dead one he’d ever been tempted by was an actress. The funeral director alerted him, describing her wild bush, her protuberant labia, her large and obvious clitoris. There were no loved ones but that didn’t matter.

  Terry took photos anyway.

  They say a photographer (pornographer) should never star in his own work and Terry agreed. He took plenty of photos, though. She was a beautiful woman.

  * * *

  He presented to Mr S, now waiting in the viewing room, flicking through magazines. Terry liked his clients to sit with him at the large desk on the comfortable chairs. He made coffee or cocoa or he poured wine and he had chocolate truffles to eat.

  “You’re a magician. How do you do it?” Mr S said, surprised even though he had seen the body, felt the warmth.

  “I colourise here and here. It’s an art.”

  “You’re a genius.”

  Another high-paying happy customer. Terry loved to help.

  He sprayed air freshener around the studio to absorb the odours. His nose was sensitive to the smell of decay, although he was far more used to it today than he once was. He burned incense by the handful and people liked it. It made some of them think of church, which was a comfort for most.

  2pm/Client: Ms T/Subject: her daughter (stillborn)

  He didn’t take bookings too far in advance. He needed to be ready to move, ready to snap on an hour’s notice or less. The funeral director kept him updated with lists and he watched the papers, so he could vaguely estimate his day if he wanted to. There was never a dull day, never a quiet one. He sold dreams in a different way now, but he still sold calm, respite and comfort.

  * * *

  Aunt Beryl took a call from the hospital. “Can you go? There’s a lady there who needs your help.”

  “It’s better to do it here.” She knew that.

  He’d never tell the truth of it.

  The mother arrived, supported by her sisters. Hair drawn back into a loose, messy pony tail, done by someone else, he thought. Her face washed clean—the sisters again, he thought, and the clothes were her pregnancy ones, as if by wearing them she could pretend she hadn’t had the baby yet.

  “Come in,” he said. He asked the sisters to wait downstairs. Before Aunt Beryl went back to her shop she filled the place with yellow roses and they brought a deep warmth. He took the dead baby gently. “So beautiful, so pure,” he said. He nestled her sideways on the soft cushions.

  He syringed the mist into her small, clouded eye.

  Her cheeks flushed.

  “Oh!” Ms T said. “Look! She’s alive, she is! I told them. Those doctors.” She picked her baby up, held her close. Shucked off her shirt, engorged breasts leaking colostrum.

  He snapped, filmed, clicked, close up of her stretched skin, the bluish nipple moist and dripping.

  The baby didn’t suckle.

  “She’s warm. She feels warm. Why doesn’t she drink?”

  He took photos of the baby before the warm flush faded.

  “She doesn’t have the strength, poor darling.”

  The baby lost her warm colour. The spirit had departed. She looked greyer than before, like marble, and so cold his fingers chilled touching her. He placed her in a basket and covered her head.

  He laid roses around her. “Such a beautiful girl.”

  He called for the funeral director to collect her. Ms T sat slumped in the corner, her shirt still unbuttoned.

  “That was amazing,” she said. “I don’t know what you did.”

  He showed her the photos on his camera.

  “She looks alive. She really does. Doesn’t she? I’m not imagining it.”

  He didn’t show her the shots of her tits. He’d cut her head off for those, no need for permission.

  She stood up shakily. He took her arm, held her steady. “It’s okay. This is difficult for you. It’s the worst thing you’ll ever have to go through. No one else can imagine it.”

  Mothers were so grateful they often wanted to do him right there, by the cash register, as if he could make them another baby.

  This one didn’t have sex with him and he didn’t want it, anyway. She’d be all messed up down there after giving birth, he knew that, but he wouldn’t mind sucking on those milky tits.

  “Do it again, what you did,” she said, her voice throaty with grief.

  “I can’t do it again. I only do it once. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, God, please. Please. I’ll give you all I’ve got. Have you got a girlfriend? A wife? One day you’ll have a baby and you’ll know what it’s like.”

  He had girlfriends, but not the kind she meant.

  She fell to her knees, her arms around his shins, begging, weeping. He was glad his mother had died first because he’d hate her to suffer like this.

  He wasn’t sure how it well it would work a second time. Oddly, no one had ever asked him before.

  “This has to be the last time. We’ll take one last photo so that you’ll never forget your beautiful girl.”

  5pm/Client: Ms T/ Subject: Her daughter (stillborn)

  Terry dressed in a pale blue t-shirt, some lightweight pants. He didn’t have time to enjoy this hunt, so drove to the city’s tallest building where he climbed to the roof and took out his camera.

  He thought of the woman in his studio with her milky, firm tits, and her needy lips, and her gratitude. And he thought of the baby and how much he loved to see them revived, how god-like he felt when that movement came to them.

  He patrolled the roof until he found it, a small patch of mist. One two three ghosts there, a family, perhaps.

  * * *
>
  His studio was always cold.

  Ms T waited, sleeping on the couch. He took a few photos, wondering if she’d notice if he moved her around, shifted her arms and legs.

  She stirred. She could almost be one of his subjects, he thought.

  “Come on,” Ms T said. She sat rocking her baby; it had a glossy sheen to it now. He couldn’t call it a girl anymore; it had moved beyond anything very human.

  He bent over the child. Ms T saw him this time and gasped to see what he was doing, but then the child stirred, sighed, and the mother cooed and sang.

  Ms T danced around with her baby but then started to sob as the body cooled again. Held her up in the air, hoping to revive her. Her daughter’s mouth fell open.

  “You killed her! What did you do! What did you do?”

  “This beautiful soul has left now. Didn’t her hear her sigh? She’s done. She was ready.” He walked to the door, looking for the funeral director.

  “Yes,” she said. She rolled her shoulders. He’d heard that breast-feeding woman were easily sexually stimulated and he wondered if that was happening here. He gave her his charming smile, the one women liked and thought was only for them.

  “Let me help, then,” she said. “Let me be part of it.”

  2pm/Client: Mrs J/ Subject: Her husband (heart attack)

  Ms T (he called her Mama T. She loved that) proved adept at wearing the Mama Suit, happy to sit sheathed in the black curtain for hours. Sometimes he forgot she was there as he went through his routines, but always they shared a glass of champagne afterward.

  She never went with him on a ghost hunt; in fact to him she seemed only to exist in his studio.

  He captured this ghost at the hospital, locked roof or not, after hearing a report of the suicide on the radio. On the way back to the studio he’d stopped by Auntie Beryl’s shop and bought some roses for his Mama T.

  She cooed. “From the hospital?” she said. “Did you collect my baby? Is that who you’ve got in that syringe?”

  “No. It couldn’t be,” and her mouth formed a sweet moue that made him want to touch his fingers to her lips.

  “Sit with me,” she said, and he sat beside her. She lifted his chin, kissed his neck. He wouldn’t say no, never did, birth-mess or not.

  “Close your eyes,” she said, and she kissed him on the side of the mouth. His tongue flicked out, catching her lip, and she kissed him harder.

  “Wait there,” she said. He liked surprises. “Eyes closed,” she said.

  She opened his fridge and scrabbled in there. “Champagne,” she said. “We need champagne.”

  “After the client,” he said.

  “Now. I can’t wait.”

  She popped the cork. Sat on his lap and swallowed some from the bottle, then poured some into his mouth.

  She held his eyelid open. “Such beautiful eyes,” she said. It was gentle, aggressive, made him itch to get at her. It felt as if she was looking deep inside him.

  “Here’s my baby,” she said, purring like a mother cat, but she didn’t mean him. She meant the syringe she held. “Here she is,” she said, as she injected his eyeball. “Here she is. I’ve been watching you. I’ve figured it out.”

  But she hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t. When had he ever injected into a living person?

  He was instantly filled with despair and a sense of . . . the opposite of vertigo. He wanted to fall, to fly then fall and land and he wanted oblivion desperately.

  His skin formed large, pus-filled blisters like spiders under the skin, and moving hurt. The blisters leaked clear fluid and he wondered; is that him leaving me? That poor sad suicide who had nowhere to die but the hospital? He reached for his phone to call Aunt Beryl; she’d save him. Instead, he slumped to the ground. As the blisters opened, the heat of him and the cold of the studio formed a subtle mist, but he could not see anyone in it. He heard the funeral’s director’s deep and comforting voice as he ushered the client in, felt Mama T rocking him like a baby, cooing, and he thought he remembered his mother singing to him that way.

  His skin was so puckered, so painful, each time she rocked him he wanted to scream but there was no sound beyond her sweet whispering comfort.

  * * *

  ‘ . . . filled with the sighs of sweet music and soft female voices’ from Harper’s Weekly February 1873, “Delusions of medicine. Charms, talismans, amulets, astrology, and mesmerism” By Henry Draper

  Kneaded

  S. G. Larner

  My Mama loved to knead. Her flesh jiggled and her breasts swayed as she pushed and wrapped and pushed again. She smelled of sweat and flour and the earthy-sour of the Mother-starter.

  I stood beside her in the humid kitchen and watched her, breathing in the heady scent and tracing patterns in the fine white dust that settled like snow on the bench. “I’m meeting Daniel soon,” I said.

  Mama wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. It left a white smear against her brown skin. She looked at me, from my feet to my head.

  “Oh, my lovely Berry, you’re growing up, and I hadn’t noticed.” She leaned over and kissed my nose then frowned. “I’m not ready for you to fly the nest.”

  “Are you mad with me?” I asked.

  She resumed her work and said what she always said. “No, my sweetling, but be back before sundown. And stay out of the old forest. It’s dangerous in there.”

  I watched a little longer as her strong brown hands wrestled the dough into submission, then put on my coat and left.

  * * *

  Daniel waited by the cobbler’s shop. A few autumn leaves danced through the air, one settling on his dark curly hair. He brushed it off and grinned, then looked away. A ruddy glow stained his pale cheeks.

  “Well met, Berry,” he said as he offered me his arm. I took hold and we walked, oblivious to the clatter and bluster of the town’s goings-on. He steered me to the old bridge. I glanced up—he’d grown in the short space of time since I saw him last. He reddened again when he noticed my gaze.

  “Why are you blushing like a maid, Daniel Sweeney?” I asked, flipping my skirt against his leg. He mumbled something.

  “I didn’t catch that.”

  He stopped in the middle of the bridge, and leaned against the rail, staring out over the water. “I’d like to kiss you, Berry.”

  My heart did a little jig. I draped myself next to him, following his gaze to the deep river below. A kingfisher dive-bombed, surfacing with a silver streak in its claws as it flew off. Heat spread through me.

  “I’d like that.” I turned and studied his profile: his lips were full and inviting. He smiled and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. Then he moved swiftly and we were pressed together. His olive green eyes twinkled.

  We kissed, and it was awkward and wet and fumbling. I giggled when we separated, but Daniel had one eyebrow raised.

  “Were you eating your mama’s jam buns?”

  I blinked, swishing my skirt. “No. Why would you ask that?”

  He shook his head, his eyes unfocused, and said, “You taste sugary.”

  “Well,” I said, catching his hand and placing it on my chest. “Aren’t you lucky I’m so sweet?”

  His eyes refocused and he grinned. “Yes, I am.”

  * * *

  He walked me home, planting one last graceless kiss on my cheek. Mama called from the kitchen when I opened the door. A waft of cinnamon tickled my nose as I waved to Daniel and went inside.

  I hugged Mama from behind, peering around her generous form to watch her shape the doughy lump.

  “Is it a gingerbread man?” I asked.

  She shook her head, body shuddering with the movement. With a satisfied grunt she poked raisins into the ‘head’.

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s something for me, sweetling,” she said, and I let go of her waist, stepping back so she could put it on a tray. I considered the little loaf.

  “It looks like a baby.”

  “Mmm.” She smiled
at me. “Harold Croft visited while you were walking with Daniel. Annie’s in early labour. I said I’d go around when it was time.”

  “Exciting,” I said. “So that’s not for her?”

  “No, nor for you.”

  I pouted, then asked, “Mama, why don’t other people taste like me?”

  She tipped her head to the side and looked at me. Heat crept up my cheeks.

  “I mean, when I kiss your forehead, you’re salty. But I’m not. And Daniel . . . ”

  Mama’s eyebrows shot up.

  I bit my lip. “No one smells the same as me. Not even you. Is there no one like me?”

  She wiped her hands on her apron, took it off and hung it on a hook. “You’re just special.” She kissed my cheek. “You’re my sweetling.”

  I glanced at the dough baby. “Mama, am I a real girl?”

  Her face paled, and her mouth flapped wordlessly before she finally said, “Of course you are. What a strange thing to say!” But her gaze shifted from mine and she hurried off before I could ask anything else.

  * * *

  The next morning the air was frigid and my tummy growled. Why was the house so cold?

  Then I remembered Mama bustling into my room in the middle of the night with the news that it was Annie’s time. She’d said I’ll be back when the babe is safely delivered, and then she’d mumbled something about how Annie had best enjoy it while she could, because it would grow up and leave her soon enough. Then I’d dreamed that Annie’s baby had been made of gingerbread. I screwed up my face. “I never want to have a baby,” I muttered as I kicked my legs out from under the quilt. In the kitchen I stoked the embers and looked around for the cob Mama usually prepared for breakfast.