Electric Velocipede Issue 25

by Megan Kurishage

  No. Yes. Wait. That is what we said, which confuses me because I’m staring at three planes and Shotgun (“that’s a cessna stationair! i can fly that thing!”) was so excited about playing the hero. So Shotgun must be dead. It must just be the three of us. But I haven’t the faintest memory of Shotgun dying. Trying to think about it, I slam against a blank wall in my head, and it seems to firm up when I poke at it.

  And even weirder: I remember something now, but not what I was trying to. The leader of El Reino; he’s here somewhere. He’s the one I’m supposed to shoot (“and the sheep will scatter”) when the truck blows up. It was the best we could do with only three people. I am completely blanking on the name of the man (of la mancha) I’m supposed to shoot. I do remember that Wolf didn’t think the plan would work; he was reluctant but didn’t have a better idea. He kind of quit being leader after his hand slipped off my wrist in the river, and for some reason everyone looks to me now, even though I’m greener than the forest canopy (a storm of orange!). But I guess trees aren’t a SWAT comfort zone; it’s more my thing (fireweed blushing against blue ice, the hands of dad’s watch showing the way south). Preacher seemed more than willing to play his part even though it was probably (why did you take his gun away “it was in his mouth” oh thou bleak and unbearable world) very ill-conceived.

  So I’m waiting for the truck to blow up, and then when I see the guy (raptor eye am i) I am going to shoot him. It’s simple enough to keep my mind on, and that comforts me. It’s useless to try forcing myself to remember the details of (the wound in his shoulder spurting like I’ve never seen “must’ve tore an artery” and he’s hanging onto a tree standing in a lake of his own blood before I help him sit down, before I hold him and try to get his heart not to work so hard and fast at emptying him) what happened and why Shotgun’s blood is all over my clothes. And now, of all things, my vision suddenly goes, like I’m underwater, and my target could be standing five feet from me and I’d miss the shot.

  Shotgun's real name was Zach Vining and he stammered fast like he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say but had to say it quick before someone interrupted. He took a round in the shoulder, nothing serious, probably walked two miles through the woods bitching about it, before it suddenly decided to bleed him out in two minutes flat.

  My nose is running and my body’s shaking like someone’s pumping it full of bullets. I can almost hear Shade’s rant about woman snipers. But it’s not because I’m a woman (preacher’s wet face turned up to a storm of orange!), it’s because I hit my head on a goddamned rock. I haven’t cried since I was thirteen. We’re all falling apart out here (so many we could hear their wings – have you ever heard a butterfly? – and we went to them thinking it was rain, to cover our tracks, but the forest floor and the branches were just covered with them until preacher stepped out and set them all coruscating into the bright sky, oh whithersoever they blow).

  I squeeze my eyes shut and back open so I can see again and look toward the hangar, because I remember that Quijas, my target, is inside, and I am just waiting for him to poke his silver head out to find out why his truck is exploding. Arturo Quijas, not Quijote, but that’s why Man of La Mancha keeps getting stuck in my mind. As it happens, the windmill that Señor Q. is tilting at had some of my friends in it, so he’s going to die with a hole in his head.

  I’m not sure how long I’ve been sitting here, but it’s been a pretty long time, longer than it should have taken for Preacher to get around and get line of sight on the truck. It occurs to me that Preacher might have died. (his real name was no, no, no)It occurs to me that this whole thing might have been easier if I had never gone wandering in the dark and seen (“if you’re gonna be trolling for bone” shade said at dinner “at least take off your fucking wedding ring” because he didn’t know, and when I hit on him I thought he’d kill me, he shoved me up against a tree, i thought because i was married, but no, it was because shade was the one who understood preacher, and i’m so sorry, oh my brave beautiful boys, and if i had it all to do over again), if I’d only just been able to sleep, we all would have died quick with just the pewwft of a suppressor and alcohol-laced blood suddenly drenching our pillows in the middle of a dream. And Quijas would have paid the bounties and my husband would have felt like the excrement he is and life would have gone on.

  I’m thinking this and I’m looking at the end of my rifle (“i wasn’t going to pull the trigger i just had to shut up the voice that kept saying i wanted it, i had to prove it wrong, i would never leave you here”) and then it happens. The RPG comes shrieking and I can’t believe how perfect, as the crappy old truck dies a spectacular death of fire and metal flung high against a sky shredded with clouds. And it means he’s alive (I would never leave you here) and we haven’t lost yet, because now these rebel assholes are going loco with fear. I put the CAR-15 to my shoulder and hold my breath, and what’s left of my mind extrudes through the iron sights right at that doorway. Some thugs come out shouting en español and brandishing AKs as they head toward the truck, but I see not even a ghost of Quijas.

  Shit.

  Is he even real? I must have some reason to believe he’s here, but I can’t remember why, now. Did I see him? Recognize him? That silver hair, those hawkish eyes painted on every wall? Did I see him and come up with this plan? Why did anyone even listen to the girl with her brains bashed in?

  But I’m tired of waiting (“get off your cross, you were never gonna medal”), so I move carefully around the treeline toward the hangar. There’s a gap (the wound in his shoulder spurting like I’ve never seen) between the canvas and the aluminum that I can clearly see from here, and by God if I’m not going to go (it was less like a kiss and more like a flash grenade)and see what I can see through it and end this one way or the other.

  My name is Elizabeth Warczak, and I’m a cop, former biathlete, and musical theatre fan from San Diego. I was born in Alaska, and I’m now about as far south of home as anyone can be. Today, and last night, I have seen things (storm of orange!) that will never seem real to me no matter how much time I have left to look back on them. And that’s about enough of that.

  I stand up and (onward to glory i go).

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mishell Baker is a graduate of the 2009 Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Workhsop. Her stories have also appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Redstone Science Fiction. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Los Angeles, and she occasionally tweets about motherhood, writing, and mental illness at @mishellbaker.

  Nuclear Winter

  Ash Krafton

  Gone, now, is the green man deep into the cold hard ground—

  our May-December romance comes to chilled and frozen end.

  Those fruitful plains once brimming with creeping life and sound

  fall barren, plain and empty, while to darkness he descends

  and with him taking nectar sweet, the lifeblood of the earth.

  Long ago I dreamed a dream of Spring's joyous return

  when love would blossom once again in triumphant rebirth

  and budding shoots and twining vines would bind us. Still I yearn

  to capture that sweet innocence, of winters filled with hope

  but he is gone, this time for good. There is no coming back

  from final death, pit of despair, unscalable steep slope

  where all that's green decays and dies and turns to carbon black.

  I sink with thee in grief and pain and always I'll remember

  the brightness of eternal May 'though evermore's December.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Pushcart Prize nominee Ash Krafton is a speculative fiction writer whose work has appeared in several journals, including Expanded Horizons, Bete Noire, and Silver Blade. Her work also appears in the short story collections “Doorways” and “Blind Alleys”. She resides in the heart of the Pennsylvania coal region, where she keeps the dust jacket for "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" in
a frame over her desk because of its sheer awesomeness. Bleeding Hearts: Book One of the Demimonde is her first novel. For news and updates on the series, visit Ash at ash-krafton.blogspot.com.

  The Woods of Wistman’s Grove

  Tyson Young

  The sceptics will tell you that the woods of Wistman’s Grove are a myth, their howls no more a chorus of mummified voices than the wind through bare trees. Yet when travelling the roads beyond Clearbell, even the naysayers take the sinuous trail over the hills. Lest they disprove their own doubt.

  Most believers are the old-timers, the ones who spin stories of disappearances and dark magic—stories that any folk brazen enough to pass into the mist don’t come out. Lose your way, lose your mind. Still, some folk try. Most lose their courage when the soil darkens beneath their boots and the singing of birds fades to the sounds of wild things with no name.

  And then there’s some folk—some old and rare, crusty-eyed folk—who claim they’ve passed from one end of the woods to the other and lived to tell the tale. Most often it’s the senile ones who lounge with ancient bones in rocking chairs and speak gentle as the breeze on your ears. The details are always fuzzy, it seems—all happened so long ago. But they’ll lock eyes with you like they’d seen the devil and tell you, sure as you were born, them woods are haunted. “You ever get to that fork in the road,” they’ll whisper, “where the hills sink and the breeze chills your bones—you turn right ‘round and take the long road. Y’hear?”

  I perch on the straightest bough amongst the tangle of tree limbs and peck at my feathers. They’re all ragged and I’m itching for a worm or a fat grub. Grubs are good eating when you can find one, but I’ll have no luck this evening; so I start tearing away the bark instead, picking at the rotted wood.

  The cold’s yet to thaw. Clouds hide the stars and sheath the moon in smoke-like wisps. The mist that blankets the soil never lifts and the firmament remains frozen, ever poised to brighten but never doing so. If there is a sun, he never shows his face. Not here.

  A twig breaks behind me. I turn my beak, expecting a mouse, maybe even one of the witch’s beasts sniffing for a scrap of meat. Nasty, brutish things, they are. Big too.

  But a young man emerges from the fog, gazing at the trees as they shiver and sigh with a passing gust. He slinks along with eyes wide like a child, one hand on his hat, feeling his way forward with the other. His coat’s torn and his shoes are all muddied. Worry etches his brow. Regret. Loss. Same as I saw in the woman who came before him.

  My master will want to know he’s here, if she doesn’t already. She won’t have him getting to the other side of the woods, and so I linger a minute and watch.

  The man makes a funnel of his hands. “Charlotte,” he calls into the fog. His voice echoes back to him, unanaswered.

  I watch as he takes the hat from his head, hangs it on a nearby branch to mark his path, and trudges on. He stops soon and clutches his chest like he’s hurting. The woods are changing him already; the reddish hue of his cheeks has faded, flushed by the faintest hint of green. He feels the back of his neck with fingers that are growing all twig-like, and finds the spot where the first leaf has sprouted. With a gasp, he plucks it and holds it out between a shaking thumb and forefinger. “What black magic is this?” he whispers.

  I kick up my wings and swoop down. He flinches when I snatch the leaf away. With a quick turn, I settle down on a branch just beyond his reach. “Moonlight’s changing you already,” I tell him. “Don’t have long, my friend.”

  He just stands there staring at me, puzzled-like. Stupid little man.

  I spy the witch’s hut below, its rotted boards sagging and groaning like it wants to fall over. The window’s open. I glide in to the stench of smoky wax and old leather. A fire chatters in the hearth. My master sits in her worn chair by the table, and a crystal ball lays patiently before her. She’s an ugly old hag. A shock of white hair lies upon her arched back as she clasps her knobbly knees.

  She takes a large, white marble from between her gums and pokes it into the empty socket of her left eye with the sound of a boot coming unstuck from the mire.

  “I’ve been watching you, my little spy.” She wets the glass eye with several blinks. “What have you brought for me?”

  My talons scratch across the table as I hold the leaf for her to take.

  She snatches it, and with her good eye ogles every vein and contour, and then presses the leaf to her nostrils and inhales. “Youth . . . innocence . . . . Well preserved, often recalled.”

  Her lips stretch back over yellowed teeth.

  I watch as the witch drops the leaf into a mortar, adds a sprinkle of black powder, and grinds both into a paste. Her bones crack as she eases from the chair, over to the hearth where she tips the mixture onto the fire.

  Colours coalesce in the flames, things you don’t see in the dreary grove. The hut around me fades. The table and the chair and the witch too. Next I know, I’m sinking into the memory as though it is a dream . . . .

  Beyond the window of the man’s eyes, a watermill turns by the steady flow of a stream. The birds here are unlike me; they wear blue feathers and sing dainty little songs. I breathe the man’s breath and catch the scent of freshly clipped grass, and feel the cold brass ring in his palm as he turns it over and over. Feels heavy for such a tiny thing. No diamonds or pearls, just dull brass.

  He stuffs it back into his pocket when he spots a lithe woman by the stream. She kneels and hums the bluebirds’ tune as she scours a Sunday dress. Rose oil wafts from her neck. Her ribbons of auburn hair curl like the gentle crest of a wave.

  Charlotte. The name brings a tingle to the roots of my feathers.

  Then the scene shifts, like the song has ended and a new one is beginning. A panoply of tools hang on the wall of a workshop, and the air is thick with sawdust and sweat. The man works with a rough slab of oak for a trestle table. The wood is unwieldy at first, but he shapes it to his will with an artisan’s touch. Calluses form on his palms as he carves two elegant crosses to brace the ends and a trident to brace the middle length. He affixes these with a large stretcher along the bottom, attached to two stretcher legs. He does not varnish the table, but favours a rustic veneer. When he is done, he invites the woman’s father to inspect the work.

  The old man bends down and closes one eye to survey each edge and plane. He rises with a satisfied grunt, and slaps a hand across the man’s shoulder. “Edward m’boy,” he bellows. “You’ve won me over.”

  Something warm bubbles in the man’s chest. It rises up and his limbs no longer ache with labour, until he feels he is almost floating.

  The table sinks into the floor and the walls fall away. All the memory’s warmth recedes into the faint glow of the fire as embers dance up the flue.

  “See what else you can fetch me,” the hag says. I can tell she liked it by the lust in her eyes and the weight of her breath. “And the young man, make sure he’ll lose his way . . . . I want to keep him.”

  By the time I find Edward again, he’s leaning on a great big oak and swinging and swaying. Looks like he’s sick. With each staggered step his skin is greener, his limbs longer and more tendril-like. A leaf sprouts from the knot of his elbow, from the budding crown atop his head. A sparse patch grows upon his shoulders. The leaves soon wither and fall in a scattered trail behind him. And when the final leaf falls from the tip of his tallest branch, the final memory, the final piece of him—well, let’s just say every desiccated oak in the Grove stands as a nod to Edward’s fate.

  One leaf, bright and green, catches my eye like a juicy insect, and I dive.

  Edward curses again and shoos me away.

  I land atop a bulbous root with the leaf in my beak and hop down in front of him. “You’re not turning around, kid? You might still make it back home before it’s too late.”

  One of the witch’s pets howls in the distance. It’s already caught the smell of him, I’d bet.

  His arms shoot up, ready to defend hims
elf. “What’s that?”

  “Something that wants you for dinner.”

  He musters a handful of courage and croaks, “Where’s Charlotte? Tell me, you little devil, where is she?”

  “How do you know she’s here?”

  His brow wrinkles as he stumbles to pull a few fragmented thoughts back together. “We were . . . she ran away, and . . . . ” He shakes his head like it aches or as if he might suddenly wake up back in his old little town. He hopes he does. He won’t.

  “You’re running out of time, Edward. You’re fading.” I lift a talon to the trunk of the tree before which I stand. Vestiges of a face remain in the wood: a bulging nose and the mouth like that of a wax figure left too close to the fireplace. Two hollow orbits filled with nothing but blackness stare out at him. At us.

  “See what happened to this old hermit, lost his way? See how far he made it? Better turn back, my friend—while you still have something left.”

  He won’t listen. Stubborn bastard. Stumbles away as though my words are poison.

  My stomach churns empty, and the leaf brings a taste like mint and rosemary to my dry beak. I don’t think about grubs or moths. I think about sliding into the man’s world once more, about breathing fresh air and feeling the sun warm my back. I’m almost certain it’s too late for Charlotte, but not for him. If he makes it out, who knows, she might still be around in his mind. I figure it’s possible; some parts of her might still be there in the moments they shared together.

  Catching up to him, I settle on a low branch. I try to stop myself from what I say next—the witch must be listening, the woods have ears—but like a damn fool I blurt it out anyway. “If you’re stupid enough to keep searching for her, you better start heading in the right direction.”