I only wish I could remember where I left my knives of ivory and stag. They were so very beautiful.
I've got a kitchen knife, but it won't be the same.
Felix Gilman is the author of two novels, Thunderer and the forthcoming Gears Of The City from Bantam Spectra. He lives with his wife Sarah in New York, where he practices law.
* * *
THE MATCHING PAIR
by Mark Budman
He had a poker face only a mother could love—rectangular, perfectly flat, framed by flaming red hair, with a button nose, and with eyes so blue that they seemed to have splinters of the sky in the irises—a face as ungainly as a mixed metaphor, a face best described in the one-step-away-from-reality words of Nikolai Gogol.
She met his gaze with eyes of the same intense color. Their knees did not quite touch under the table. A single light above their heads let the rest of the room drown in the shadows.
She dropped her cards on the table for him to see. Four queens. He had seen her slip in the fourth queen—the queen of diamonds—but he didn't allow himself even the tiniest of smiles.
“Four kings,” he said, holding his cards in front of her like the fan of a flamenco dancer.
She took a smoldering cigar from an ashtray shaped like a screaming mouth and puffed at it. She placed it back. She got up; sidewise she was as thin as the page of a book. Her diamond-studded earrings jingled.
She leaned toward him, letting him peek into the space where her breasts cleaved, and touched his hand. He withdrew it. Blood oozed from the place she touched—a paper cut.
“You're a cheater, your Highness,” she said, and her voice caressed him like a peacock feather. “I hate you.”
She turned away from him. From the back of her hat down to the bottom of her floor-length dress she was a complicated geometric pattern of two primary colors.
When she left, he pulled a handful of gold coins toward him, each stamped with words in a tongue no one speaks anymore, then took her cigar and sucked on it. Another king of hearts slipped from his sleeve and landed on the top of her discarded queens. He longed to kiss the paper-white skin of her neck. He knew she would come back. That was the rule of the game; they were a matching pair after all. The problem with her was that she always followed the rules. Even the bent ones.
He could live with that.
Mark Budman‘s works have appeared (or are about to) in such venues as Mississippi Review, Virginia Quarterly, The London Magazine, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. He is publisher of the flash-fiction magazine Vestal Review. His new novel My Life at First Try is on sale now, and an anthology is forthcoming in 2009 from Persea Books.
* * *
MS ITO'S BIRD
by Chris Ward
About three weeks into the term, after another night woken by that hideous sandpaper-like squawking, Justin, Fred and I decided it was time to free Ms Ito's bird.
I was a hopeless case for Ms Ito. My whole existence revolved around every geography class, when her pinched rat-like face would lurch its way up the aisle towards where I cowered at the back, having spoken out of line just to bring her anger bearing down on me. What possessed me to idolize that monster of a woman was something I could never define. There was just something about her that captivated me.
Her hair was bad enough, a mix of black and white which, as she was barely thirty-five had been with her from birth. It would have looked cool in a chessboard kind of way if it wasn't that the black strands were completely straight while the white were curled like pigs' tails. Imagine a porcupine taking a bath in cotton wool and you'd be somewhere close to understanding what Ms Ito's head looked like.
Her cheekbones were so high that they practically obscured her eyes, which themselves were little black dots that had this compelling ability to swell to three or four times their normal size whenever anger grasped her. Her nose was pointed and bent slightly to the left, while her mouth had thin grey lips that looked like two slugs squeezed together. In short, she was a bit of a monster. And that was just her face.
Ms Ito's right leg was around six inches longer than the left, though it was hard to tell because of the cast. Ms Ito's longer leg was entirely lame, and covered with a jet black plaster cast that went halfway up her thigh. Although she walked everywhere on crutches, the leg was far from useless; she'd been known to upend many a dissenting student with a fast roundhouse chop.
Ms Ito was the most fearsome teacher in a school weighed down with freaks and oddballs. And for that reason I was hopelessly in love with her.
Thunder Crack High School was an entirely self-governing, highly prestigious boarding school sticking out like a boil from the rocky face of a barren island about six miles off the British coast. The brochures guaranteed the highest quality specialist teaching, and even to apply your grades had to be in the top one percent across the country. What the brochures neglected to do was print any pictures of the teachers.
The students came on one boat in early September, and left on the next one in late July. And that was it. You could have swum back, I suppose, but no one ever did.
Fred once remarked that Thunder Crack High School had been built to house all of the brilliant teachers too terrifying for normal schools, and it was difficult to dispute his logic. Mr.Tape, for example, had three eyes. Except that two weren't separated properly or housed in separate sockets, so he looked as though he had one big one and one small, unless you saw them close up—which you might if you were caught not paying attention—where you would realize the big eye was just a normal eye with another, slightly smaller eye trying to squeeze its way out.
Ms. Brankovitch, the English teacher, had six fingers, one of which was eight inches long. And Mr. Jones, the gym teacher, had four toes. On his face.
Ms Ito was a monster among monsters, but when she stumped her way across the classroom I followed her every ill-gotten step, desiring the press of her misshapen body against mine. I made the decision to proposition her as soon as I had a chance, and figured I was in with a pretty good shot. After all, at fifteen I was no mere boy, and I doubted that she had many suitors.
And it was in the course of these efforts that I found out about her wretched bird.
“Kuwaaaackukuaaakkkk!!!”
“There it goes again,” Justin moaned, rolling over in the dorm bed beside mine.
“Like rocks being ground together,” muttered Fred, who was still reading beneath the orange glow of a torch, his face illuminated like a Jack o'Lantern.
“We have a test tomorrow,” Justin whined, “and that thing just won't shut up.”
“You sure it's a bird?” I asked.
“What else could it be?”
“Do those damn things live on this island?”
“Must do.”
“Hey! You guys! Shut up!”
“Kuwaaaackukuaaakkkk!!!”
I skipped a class to meet her. Justin delivered a signed note from me, explaining that I had a fever. He took a whole faceful of hot, dirty breath for it, and was made to promise that he would personally mop me down with ice water and drag me to class if I ever showed signs of sickness again.
Not actually being there might seem counter-productive, but I had a plan.
Homework had been due that class. Now I planned to deliver it personally.
The teachers' block was separate from the student's dormitories, and I had to brave the foul weather of the island to reach it. Rough, salty winds buffeted me as I struggled along the thin, rocky path towards the teachers' apartments. Quite how Ms Ito managed it was a mystery to me, but I'd heard from some of the others that the teachers didn't use the path at all, that they had some secret, personal entrance to the school itself underneath the ground. Students weren't supposed to be visiting them.
If our existence hadn't been so damning in the first place, I might have found it funny how our school was more like a high-security prison than a place of higher learning.
“Kuwaaaackukuaaakkkk . . . ”
Th
e noise hung in the wind above me, and I looked up at the tall, grey teacher's block, seven storeys of mostly dark windows topped with a wedding cake roof, ending eventually in a lightning conductor candle, like a miniature Empire State Building. Whoever had designed this island purgatory had gone to plenty of effort to make things look out of place.
I reached the front door, and peered through the grimy window at a corridor inside. I couldn't see anyone, so I pulled hard on the door and it started to come open. I grunted and strained, the dirt and sand wedged into the joints making it a struggle, and confirming what the others said about the tunnel. This door hadn't been opened in a while.
Inside, the corridor smelled of formaldehyde, and was, as you'd therefore expect, hospital clean. During classes there were often sprinklers on over our heads, spitting out a constant shower of disinfectant. Some teachers even taught behind glass panels. Many of the collective oddities which resided at Thunder Crack High must be susceptible to disease.
I was shaking either from nervousness or cold, and my heart was pounding. I rubbed my icy hands on my coat for a few seconds, then pushed through a fire door and found myself immediately drenched with disinfectant. They weren't taking any chances here, either I saw. The spray drenched me for about twenty seconds, then a viciously strong air shower dried me off. The teachers had special conditions, I noted. We often had to sit through class soaking wet.
Through another fire door was a reception area. A skinny man I guessed to be in his early thirties was sitting behind a desk reading a martial arts magazine. As I approached his head jerked up towards me and his mouth dropped open in surprise. Clearly perturbed at being caught unawares, he flung the magazine at me like a shuriken, and leaped about five feet in the air, up and over the desk, landing in a martial arts stance, the residual of the war cry, “Ninjaaaaaa!” still dripping from his mouth. Luckily the magazine wasn't a shuriken, because it had been heading straight at my forehead, but about half way across the room the pages flapped out and it jerked, twisted, and then flopped to the ground like a dead bird. I looked down at it, then up at the ninja, blocking my way. He was waving one hand back and forth, while with the other he had pulled a headband from his pocket and was trying in vain to tie it round his head. My nervousness faded away at the sight of this moron, and I smiled sympathetically.
“I have homework to give to Ms Ito,” I said, holding up the envelope I carried.
The ninja sentry looked surprised and then relieved. He dropped back into a casual position, and stuffed the headband back into his pocket. He gave me a trying smile. “Floor six,” he said. “Apartment number 65. The elevator's over there.” I followed his gaze to the elevator set into the wall, then nodded thanks and left him to his duties.
“Hey!” His voice came from behind me.
I turned around. “What?”
He rubbed his chin with a forefinger then looked down at his feet. “Were you . . . were you, um, scared?” He looked up at me, desperate hope in his eyes.
“Er, yeah, I guess so.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” I said.
On floor six there didn't seem to be any rooms numbered 1 through 60, but from 6-61 the doors stood on opposite sides of the corridor about five metres apart. As I lifted my hand to knock on Ms Ito's door, I wondered who on earth, if Ms Ito lived in 6-65, could possible live in 6-66. But I didn't have much time to wonder, as with the pressure of my hand on the waxed teak surface, the door, which hadn't been shut properly, swung open, and I was afforded a view of Ms Ito's studio apartment.
I gazed in wonder at this palace of pleasure I had dreamed of entering since my love for the monstrous woman had begun to bloom during the second semester last year. In honesty, though, it didn't look anything like I'd expected. Ms Ito was a calamitous person but her apartment was an absolute oasis of calm and tranquility. There wasn't a spot of dust or clutter anywhere. A cream leather lounge suite gathered around a flat screen television in front of a large, curtained bay window which must look out over the ocean by day, while nearer to me was a serene open plan kitchen, the work surfaces spotlessly clean, the water from a desktop ornamental fountain endlessly trickling calmingly over a small waterwheel into a pool containing a couple of goldfish.
I realised I'd drifted several steps into the room. I was at the mercy of Ms Ito, wherever she was, but I didn't care, I was struck dumb by the tranquility of her apartment. Suddenly exams didn't matter, job prospects were unimportant, and that damn bird that kept us all up at night—
“Kuwaaaackukuaaakkkk!!!”
—was right here in Ms Ito's apartment.
The little fountain shook, water sloshing over onto Ms Ito's pine-veneered work top.
A group of knives on a rack jostled with one another. The noise was so loud, I found the envelope was up protecting my head.
As the noise died I looked around me. It was coming from behind a door to the right, a closed door. I was in trouble to last me until the end of my school days just for being here, but I really had to open it. One more violation of Ms Ito's divine privacy couldn't stitch me up any worse, or so I thought.
Still, I didn't really want her to see me, so I moved quietly to the door, and opened it just a crack. What I saw made my eyes wider than Mr. Tape's double-up.
The room was a study of sorts. There was a small desk, and a shelf of books, a lamp in the corner, a Persian rug centered on the floor. And another bay window, this one opened to the dark, moonlit sky and the groaning of the sea far below. And Ms Ito, sitting on a chair, her leg cast on a stool beside her, her limp right leg crossed over her left, naked to the knee. There wasn't much light in the room but her leg was so white from its lack of exposure to sunlight as to glow in itself, revealing the long kitchen scissors in Ms Ito's right hand and a longer, slightly curved piece of what looked like plastic in the left.
And that was just Ms Ito. A large cage stood on a table in front of her, and in the cage was the strangest bird I have ever seen.
It was clearly alive, because it was moving its large, oversized head up and down, and occasionally trying to flex its wings, but it really shouldn't have been.
It appeared to be made out of bone, or at least pieces of bone. If I'd ever had a Lego Technic kit of a bird instead of a racing car or a digger and all the pieces had been rounded off and coloured a dirty off-white, Ms Ito's bird is what I imagine the completed project would have looked like. It was about the size of a vulture, and moved like a skeleton, its body rustling like a box full of brittle, dead leaves with every flex.
As I watched horrorstruck, Ms Ito lifted the piece of plastic and began to chop it into little filaments which dropped into the cage. The bird caught some in its mouth and bent to scoop up others that had fallen to the floor. The bird appeared ravenous, and even as Ms Ito finished cutting and it gobbled up the last piece, it began to tap its wings against the sides of the cage, a low throaty growl asking for more.
“Always hungry, always hungry,” Ms Ito murmured, still unaware of me watching from the doorway. She shifted for a moment and I caught a glance of something long and off-white near the foot of her lame leg, and as she took up the scissors again I wondered why on earth she was feeding the bird plastic.
And then I realised she wasn't.
Ms Ito twisted in the seat again, now side on to me. A single glance to her right would have caught me out, because I was frozen to the spot, horrified by what I understood. Ms Ito wasn't feeding plastic to the bird. She was feeding it her toenails.
The toenails on Ms Ito's right foot were about as long as a standard ruler, the colour of sun-dried bone, curved slightly like miniature scimitars. As she murmured to herself, “When will you stop? When will you stop growing?” I understood that Ms Ito's right leg wasn't longer than the other at all. She just had ridiculously long toenails. And I could see from the inch-long stub already protruding from the first trimmed toe that they were growing at an abnormal speed.
“Here you are, here you are,” she murmured again, her voice, compared to the roaring nightmare of the classroom, as soothing as honey and lemon on a sore throat. Regardless of the abomination I was witnessing I felt more in love than ever.
“Kuwaaaackukuaaakkkk!!!”
I crashed down to earth again to notice the bird had seen me, and its earth-shattering squawk was aimed like a hurricane in my direction. The blast pushed me out of the room and slammed the door, but Ms Ito was alert now to an outsider's presence. I had a few seconds while she put the cast back on, but it was only long enough to get back to the front entranceway and hang my hand limply in the pretense of a just departed knock.
The study door smashed open and Ms Ito stood hellish and incensed in the doorway.
“Yes?” Her voice was the familiar roar I knew so well from class.
Still in love but like a man stripped of all dignity and painted with a gloss of shame, I held out the envelope in a shaking hand towards her.
“I brought you my homework,” I mumbled, the lost cries of the dying in the crashing storm.
“Why are you in my apartment? Why are you in my room? Why are you in the teacher's block at all?”
“I brought you my homework,” I muttered again, terrified but content, nonetheless, to be conversing with the love of my life.
“You will never come here again,” Ms Ito roared, her face apple red beneath the maelstrom of her hair. “You will put your homework in my tray in the students' building like the other students. You will never, ever, ever, set foot in the teacher's building again. The punishment for disobeying me will rise beyond all levels of your imagination.”
I almost burst with fear and love. I held out the envelope further and this time Ms Ito took it. I could feel the electricity pass between us, and my mind drifted off into a Neverland far away.
“Now, begone!”
I was in the corridor before I knew what had happened. Whether I walked or Ms Ito pushed me I don't know, but the door of 6-65 rose in front of me an impenetrable barrier and I felt like I'd woken up from a dream. I walked back down the corridor to the elevator in a daze.
Weird Tales, Volume 352 Page 8
