by Various
The tall woman holds her for a moment more, there in the safety of the doorway. Then, abruptly, she lets go, massaging her hands like the holding had been something painful.
They don’t speak again. They step side by side into the ruined street and then turn and go their separate ways.
• • •
She picks her way home through the debris: cracks and hillocks in the road, shattered glass, a fallen tree. Here and there a building has collapsed, but not too many. There’s not even a window out in her building.
She climbs the stairs and the baby is screaming, screaming. The sound picks some last, frayed nerve in her and when she sees Ted leaning against the wall between their apartments smoking a cigarette she stops dead and throws her purse on the floor. “I’ve had it.” There’s a heat behind her eyes but she isn’t crying. “I’ve had it with that goddamn baby. It’s got to go.”
“Hey, no.” Ted pushes off the wall with his elbow, spits his cigarette on the ground and grinds it out with his toe. “You okay?”
“No, I’m not okay. I just need that thing to stop crying. I need it gone.”
She fumbles with her keys and goes to open the door but then Ted’s hands are on her shoulders and he’s drawing her back, turning her around. “You can’t,” he says.
“Why not?”
“Don’t you know?” Ted sounds genuinely surprised. “Why even with all these earthquakes, this building doesn’t fall down. You never wondered?”
“No,” she says. “No.”
“People need a safe place to live,” he says. “We have to make some sacrifices.” Ted’s palms are heavy on her shoulders.
“No,” she whispers.
She whirls, and Ted’s not fast enough to keep her from getting through the door and sliding the deadbolt. He hammers on the door but she’s already moving away. “Don’t do anything stupid, now,” he calls, but she barely hears him.
She brushes her north-side wall with the tips of her fingers and the baby hiccups and sobs. “I’m going to get you out of there,” she says.
• • •
Laura puts a hole in the wall just above floor level with one of Max’s old fifteen pound weights. It takes a few swings but she gets it eventually. Then she uses her hands, pulling away pieces of drywall and plaster and insulation. She’s white with dust and wet with sweat. Ted knocked on her door for a while, yelled in at her, but he’s stopped now.
She uses the weight to punch in another section of drywall and the baby stops screaming. She drops everything and pulls at the hole she’s made, her heart in her throat. She strips a gap nearly big enough for her to crawl in and then she finds it.
“Oh,” she says. “Oh no.”
He’s well-preserved, some scraps of cloth and dried flesh still stringing his bones together, and she’s very careful. Very gentle, like you have to be with babies. She barely got to practice, before, but she knows that much. You have to be gentle. She pulls him out of the hole in the wall and holds him to her chest. Presses her lips to his dry skull and rocks gently, back and forth. “It’s okay,” she says. He’s not crying anymore.
Gary B. Phillips became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “The Lady Electric” in Daily Science Fiction (Apr. 2013), edited by Michele-Lee Barasso and Jonathan Laden.
Visit his website at garybphillips.wordpress.com/my-fiction.
* * *
Short Story: “The Lady Electric” ••••
Flash: “Enteral Feeding” ••••
THE LADY ELECTRIC
by Gary B. Phillips
First published in Daily Science Fiction (Apr. 2013), edited by Michele-Lee Barasso and Jonathan Laden
• • • •
THERE WAS a hole in the fabric of your favorite dress and the light seemed to bend around it. Light always favored you, softening or illuminating to give you an ethereal beauty at all times.
I didn’t say anything to you about the hole. I knew how angry you would be. I knew what could happen if your anger got the best of you, but I didn’t fear it. I wanted to keep you safe.
Halfway through dinner you saw the hole and your face flushed that brilliant, pure white. The other patrons took notice. How could they not? Children pointed at you, gazing in wonder at the black dots that burst around you and sucked in the light.
The restaurant emptied and the police came in, their guns drawn, shouting at you to get down. A few of them got too close and winked out of existence, though I’m not sure anyone noticed in the confusion.
“I love you,” I shouted to you, in the midst of the chaos. Bullets and light and the sound of the earth coming apart at the seams.
“I love you too,” you said.
It seemed to calm you.
And then they were upon you. They led you away in handcuffs.
Word about the incident spread quickly. The papers ran rife with speculation. The names of the missing cops were released and the city held a candlelight vigil in their honor. The mayor pleaded with the public to come forward with any information they had about the “freak accident” or mysterious woman.
They didn’t know how to deal with you, so they kept you in solitary for two weeks. I tried to visit you but they turned me away every time.
“She’s a danger to herself and others,” they said.
A deal was made and they transferred you to a laboratory outside the city. A man named Edison had taken a keen interest in you.
I took a train to New Jersey and hailed a carriage to Menlo Park. His lab looked less like a place of research and more like an oversized residence. Thomas Edison stood on the porch, puffing at a cigar and looking up to the heavens.
I let myself in through a white picket fence.
“Strange night,” he said.
I looked up to the stars but only saw a few twinkling, as if a veil had been draped over the sky.
“Indeed. Are you Mr. Edison?” I asked.
He nodded and shook my hand.
He asked, “Mr. Atwood with the Times?”
I nodded and he invited me in.
When I first contacted him, I had lied and told him I was a reporter. You know I’m not a liar so I had even surprised myself, but if it meant getting to see you again, it was worth it.
His lab was bright, lit by a queer light that made my eyes water. He introduced me to his assistants and showed me around the lab.
“This is really special,” I said.
“But this is all yesterday’s news. I have something new,” he said, drawing closer to me and speaking with a hushed fervor. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Would you like to see?”
I nodded, following him downstairs and through locked doors. We stopped in an enormous white room, heavy with the sound of machinery.
“There she is,” he said.
I scarcely recognized you. Your hair was gone, replaced with tubes and wires that ran to strange devices.
“I call her The Lady Electric,” he said. “Mark my words, she will change the world.”
You had already changed mine.
Your eyes were milky, rolled back into your head, but you stirred when I came close.
“I am not of this place,” you said. “I was not supposed to but… I met you…” Your voice trailed off.
I saw a spark of recognition light your eyes and then they were listless again.
I left crestfallen.
But he was right. You changed the world.
The newspapers hailed Edison as a genius. They covered up the real story of course, printing lies that he had found you in an alley begging for food. They wrote of the quaint invention he had been working on until he met you.
Within a year, every major city used you. They took their fill of you. The lady that lit up the night sky, replacing the stars and moon.
I met with Mr. Edison often, under the false pretense that I was writing articles about him and you. I could not keep up the charade though.
“
I love her,” I told him over coffee.
His gaze did not meet mine. He was fixated on his cup of coffee. His hair had thinned and turned white since our first meeting. He was a far cry from the young man I had met a year prior.
He looked up at me.
“As do I,” he said.
“You’re not surprised that I know her then?” I asked.
The diner was quiet, save for the faint clink of silverware and murmured conversation. The silence was heavy between us.
“She speaks of you often,” he said.
I knew I couldn’t fight him on the grounds of morality. I had to appeal to his heart.
“Does she love you?” I asked him.
“I’m thinking of leaving Mina,” he said. Then he paid the bill and left. He did not contact me again and I was no longer permitted in his laboratory.
I took up arms against him. Not with gun or sword but with words. I told the world your story. That you were not a machine to be used up, but a woman. A girl.
Others took up the cause, condemning Edison, calling him a monster. But they were hypocrites because they cursed him under your light.
You wavered in your tenth year of captivity. Your light blazed one minute and was gone the next.
I stepped outside to see the city darkened, and yet still illuminated. The stars shone in the sky, brighter than I had ever remembered seeing. Such a vast array of radiant light above us and I wondered why we needed anything but them for light.
After gazing at the stars that night, I knew that you were gone, before I read it in the papers.
Are you with the stars? Is that why they shine so brightly?
ENTERAL FEEDING
by Gary B. Phillips
First published in Kazka Press (Jul. 2013), edited by Michael Haynes
• • • •
ON FRIDAY, I pray. The sun shines on my back, warming me. I lay prostrate, palms pressed against the thin fibres of my worn prayer mat. I am vulnerable. That’s when they take me. And still, my soul sings.
• • •
On Saturday, they place a bag over my head. My own stench is suffocating. I have been traveling, by plane, I think. I must be thousands of miles from home.
When they remove the bag from my head, I am blind. Is it heaven’s light? My eyes adjust as they drag me down a series of long corridors, every twist and turn leads through the same hallway; steel maroon doors extending down both sides. Hell is a well-built fortress.
Finally, we reach our destination. My own maroon door. A heavy set of electronic locks click and the door opens. They thrust me inside. I try to speak, to cry out for mercy, but my mouth is a desert. The words never find their way to the surface.
• • •
Sunday is their holy day. I hear them singing hymns when they deliver my food, which I leave uneaten.
My temple is ninety square feet of cement. A cot and a pot to piss in are my altars. There is a thin slit on the wall, a single eye that lets in a shaft of light. I don’t know what time it is, but I kneel and pray. A voice taunts me, though I can’t tell where it’s coming from.
“You’re wasting your time. Your god can’t hear you in here.”
I ignore the voice and continue praying.
“They are monsters and mean to make you into one. Embrace the change, brother. It is the only way to fight them.”
“You are not my brother,” I say.
He simply laughs.
• • •
By Monday evening they have had enough of my refusal to eat. They drag me from my cell, strap me down, and shove a tube down my throat. I gag and fight it, but I am too weak.
The taste of copper rings in my mouth. It drips down my throat and makes my belly warm and fat. When they return me to my cell, I vomit and convulse on the floor.
“Relax, brother,” the voice says.
I try to speak, but my mouth is a forest. Flora and fauna bloom within my throat, choking out the language I once knew. A new language forms like a cityscape in my mind, vibrant and full of knowledge that I can barely understand.
“Save your strength. You will be tempted to kill them, but you must wait. You are too weak. They will kill you first.”
I was wrong about him. I feel it now. He is my brother. My father. My mother. He is me and I am him.
• • •
On Tuesday, I am a new man. But to call myself a man would be a disservice to my true nature. They feed me again. It takes all my willpower not to break the chains and their necks. I can feel a new strength coursing through my body. I close my eyes and think of home. My wife, Hadil, with her emerald eyes and dark hair. My son, Samir, always making me laugh. They are waiting there for me. I can almost touch them with the edges of my mind.
If I can survive this, I can go back home, and save them. So I wait.
• • •
Wednesday brings rain. I can hear it in my cell and it lulls me to sleep.
“Brother, how do you feel?”
He speaks in my mind. I no longer need to use my voice. Human words are inadequate.
“Whole.”
“They will feed us again tomorrow. The temptation will grow stronger, but you must wait.”
I think of my wife and children. I can no longer remember their faces or voices. I can no longer remember their names.
Home is a foreign place now. Scarred with war.
• • •
They arrive early on Thursday and pull me from my cell. If I don’t help them, they will not be able to carry me. So I fake it. It will be dangerous if they learn how strong I have grown.
I am the light and the darkness. The alpha and the omega. I am the creeping thing that haunts their dreams. I am the reason their children come into this world crying and the reason they go out with a whimper.
Each night they kneel and pray. They ask that their aim be true. That their enemies fall before them. That they win the battle. They pray that God hears them and He does.
But so do we.
• • •
On Friday, we pray. A shimmer of silver moonlight streams in through the window. We lay prostrate, palms pressed against the cold floor of our prison. Our temple. They come for us and that’s when we take them.
Our souls sing.
Trina Marie Phillips became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “Until They Come” in AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review (Aug. 2012), edited by D.F. McCourt.
Visit her website at www.tmphillips.net.
* * *
Novelette: “The War of Peace” ••••
THE WAR OF PEACE
by Trina Marie Phillips
First published in Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show (Nov. 2012 & Jan. 2013), edited by Edmund R. Schubert
• • • •
SOMETHING smelled wrong. Ardam flared his nose flange and sniffed the air. Amidst the scent of trees and sun was something so pungent it almost made him retch. The realization that it was coming from the direction of their breeding grounds set his seven hearts to knotting in descending sequence. The last one pounded a furious beat. It was only the second birthing season since he became Paramount and the future of the Family was at stake.
He let out a keening wail in the communal dialect and the caravan of five Families shambled to a stop behind him. The breeding grounds were over the next rise. If they had been destroyed he didn’t want to inflict his fellow Cranthers with the vision. No doubt they smelled what he did, but if there was something horrible to be seen, it was his burden to bear.
He sprinted up the hill before his advisors could break from their Families. In past seasons he had made this run for pleasure. Now, he did so out of panic. The soft dirt squeezed through his toes begging to be enjoyed, only to be kicked off the backs of his six pounding feet.
Cresting the ridge, the vision he saw was as unexpected as it was abhorrent. The breeding ground had been invaded. He made fists of his three right hands. His first
instinct was to race down and protect the seedlings but the sight was so bizarre he had to stop and assess the situation.
Stark red structures rose from the ground. They were made of hard edges and were as tall as trees. The settlement bore a resemblance to the homes of the Sanai in the south, but taller and more rigid.
Perfectly straight, black trails ran between the red structures. Ardam had never seen dirt as black as that. Could the seedlings still be alive underneath it? Where had it come from? More importantly, with the Birthing Ritual only six days away, could their children be saved?
Ardam squinted his fourth eye, his distance eye, and saw the beings that inhabited this strange town. They were tall and had only two legs and two arms. One head. At least they had that in common. But why so few limbs? They couldn’t be very fast like that. Maybe they were strong instead, like the Oloths in the Doron mountains. The Oloths were easy to trick, but this new race had built a town in less than two seasons. He didn’t think they were so dimwitted.
Footsteps rumbled up the ridge behind him, his advisors. He contemplated stopping them, easing the shock, but they would have to see eventually. Let them discover the situation as he had.
The five advisors lined up along his left side according to protocol, in descending order of the size of their families. Raychit was on his immediate left. She’d held that position since Ardam became Paramount and was his closest confidante. Sometimes Raychit’s fiery personality had to be tempered, but she also kept Ardam from being overly-cautious. A grinding emerged deep in Raychit’s throat. She was angry. So was Ardam, but analysis was needed, not anger.
The rest of the advisors responded each to their manner. Kaliff huffed through her voluminous throat pouch, Ezcar keened in a barely audible range. Terron growled from deep in his round belly and Hefkot whistled nervously with every exhalation while scuffing his right front foot. Ardam stepped around to meet up with Hefkot pulling the line into a circle. It placed him next to the lowest ranking member of the caucus, a reminder that the distance from top to bottom was not so great.
