Then they find their purpose and it carries them higher.
On the day the earth shakes, the horses come out of the sea.
They come with the sea. They come of the sea. At first people think that it is the sea, surging up over walls and beaches, cars and shacks, tin and adobe and concrete—buoying up the rubble, carrying it like a gift. Some of the older ones have seen this before.
But no. They have never seen this.
The horses are running when they come, hooves softened by centuries in the salty water. They shake their dripping manes, seaweed clinging. Their flesh is gray, uneven, bloated in some places and gone in others; there is a gleam of exposed bone in the light of the fires. Their eyes are milky and staring and dead.
People are driven before them, clinging together, hands in hands, babies held against chests, professions of love, of hate, the final instincts of lethal fear. In the seconds before the hooves pull them down and crush them they try to understand.
At the crest of a hill Sebastian stops again, Jaime stops with him and they turn.
It’s a mourning process done at high speed and in the midst of utter confusion, because how can any sense be made of this? But there is sense. Sebastian feels it like the hidden shape in a picture puzzle as he watches the water surging into the city.
All at once Jaime is dragged away from him. There is the flash of a blade. Sebastian stares stupidly at it, at the wild-eyed man holding the machete to Jaime’s throat. Jaime is staring back at him, hands limp at his sides—his surprise and the resulting lack of a struggle may be what, for the moment, has saved him.
“Heard you were running.” The man presses the blade into Jaime’s throat and there’s a corresponding trickle of blood. Jaime does not cry out and Sebastian feels a strange flush of pride. “You can’t just run. Not with that kind of plata tangled up with your ankles.”
Sebastian holds out his hands. His gaze flicks from Jaime’s face, abnormally pale in the red light, to the shattered road that continues up the hill. He hears thunder behind him. “Please . . .”
“Yes, say please. Plead with me. Make it so much sweeter when I cut this little cacorro’s head off.”
His eyes meet Jaime’s again; there is nothing he can say because fear makes men crazy. And in the last minutes of both of their lives, with all their good fortune burning and drowning below them, he is not going to abase himself. He feels every muscle coiled, ready to spring.
He never does. A rearing horse, white-eyed, rotten hooves crashing into the side of the man’s head in a spray of blood and pinkish brain matter. The man doesn’t have time to scream. Jaime, as he drops to the ground, does not scream either.
But the horse does. And then there are more, surging around them, thundering, reeking. Sebastian has fallen to one knee. Jaime is motionless. The horse stands over him, nostrils flaring. Its eyes are white, but not without expression. Lost rage. Hatred. Sebastian has seen it before. At that flash of familiarity all the fear vanishes and he understands: it’s about using. It’s about being used. And cast aside when one is used up.
He reaches up in supplication, his head bowed. He is thinking of the flies on the eyes of the dead horses, how he had wished then that someone had closed their eyes while they were sticking their heads on the stakes, because it had seemed like such a final insult.
“Lo siento,” he whispers. “Perdoname. Por favor. Forgive us all.”
The horse stares at him for a long moment. White-eyed gaze, drowned in hate. More horses around them, more white eyes. Ring upon ring of them, staring, surging. Going still. Sebastian drops his arms.
And then, one by one, the horses go.
It doesn’t feel like forgiveness. It feels like blood for blood.
Buenaventura lies burned and drowned, and the parts of it that have not perished in water continue to do so in fire. There is still screaming but it sounds weary and thin. The last of the dead down in the city, a chorus of silent eyes arrayed in the hills. What now?
There has never been an answer.
Sebastian pulls Jaime into his arms. One shallow breath. Another. Sebastian tilts his head back and looks up. The sun is gone. There is a tear in the clouds. Through it—for only a moment, for the first time in many years—he can see the stars.
boyfriend and shark
berit ellingsen
Brandon didn’t want to be boyfriend and boyfriend, yet when it suited him, friends with benefits was fine. Michael didn’t take it personally. Brandon didn’t have any other lovers. In that light, he and Michael were boyfriend and boyfriend.
Michael wondered if he was undermining his own dignity by servicing Brandon, but came to the conclusion that he probably wasn’t. There weren’t many good people in circulation and he didn’t have the patience to search for another someone when he had one, even if occasionally and on whims.
Brandon slept next to him in bed. At least he didn’t run off in postcoital panic like some of the others. He even stayed for breakfast. But then he was just Michael’s friend, not his lover.
Michael wriggled over to Brandon and hugged him.
“Don’t hug me when I’m sleeping,” Brandon would have said had he been awake. “It feels like you’re crushing me.”
“How can you tell?” Michael would have replied. “You’re asleep.”
“I can still feel it and I can’t get away because I’m paralyzed,” Brandon would have said. “It hurts. Don’t do it.”
He did anyway.
Sometimes Michael wished Brandon would have an aneurism and become locked inside his own body. Then Brandon would be helpless in bed, able to move only his eyes. He’d take care of Brandon, every day, every night.
The sheets beneath Michael were cold and wet and smelled of ocean. What the hell? He jerked back and fumbled for the lamp on the nightstand.
There was a shark in his bed! A shark! With a dark back and white belly and black-tipped fins, just like on nature shows. Michael screamed. He was on his feet, up against the bedroom wall, hand over his mouth.
The shark had dark eyes and a sleek body. It opened and closed its maw. Michael didn’t dare look at it; the teeth were probably enormous. The shark’s eyes took in the room, the walls, the ceiling, him. Did it look hungry? Michael moved to get out of the fish’s field of view. The gills fluttered, opened, and then sank back into the skin with a wet sound.
Okay, okay, stay calm. He had a shark in his bed. He had to call animal rescue or a vet or something. The shark moved like a released spring. It flailed and shattered the lamp on the nightstand. Michael watched, like an animal caught in headlights. The shark made another attempt at moving, then stopped. The dark eyes searched Michael’s face.
Oh, water! The thing couldn’t breathe air. Michael ran to the bathroom and filled the tub with medium-cold water. He heard the shark thrash, but when he returned to the bedroom, it just lay there.
He lifted the shark without thinking. It was as long as a man, and as heavy, yet he managed and put it front first into the tub. There wasn’t room for the tail, but at least the fish got its head under water. The eyes rolled shut. The gills pumped hard.
The shark was breathing and Michael had survived getting it inside the tub. Time to call for help. Where was Brandon? Had he fled after all and left a shark in bed as a warning against more sleep-hugs? His suit and shirt hung over the chair. Michael looked at the shark. There was something familiar about the dark eyes and slender body.
The employees from the aquarium rolled the shark onto a blue net, carried it downstairs, out of the semi-detached house, and into a large truck containing a plastic tank. Michael stood in the doorway and watched them drive away.
Every day he visited the shark at the aquarium. He told friends and colleagues he was seeing a sick friend at the hospital.
“You’re so giving,” they said.
“Thank you,” he said and smiled.
At first, the shark just lay on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling window and tracked Michael with its eyes, gills moving slowly. Michael pressed his hands against the cold glass. The shark ignored him.
After a week, the shark started swimming in circles, around and around. When Michael approached the tank, the shark came close and rolled its eyes at him, before it sped off into the gloomy water.
“How’s the new blacktip doing?” Michael asked one of the aquarium employees, a man with too much body and not enough hair. “Looks like it has lost some weight.”
“He’s not eating,” the employee said. “Just swimming and swimming.”
“How are the other sharks treating him?” The tank held several white tip and tiger sharks, even some hammerheads, and many species of skate and eel.
“He’s ignoring them,” the man said.
Brandon was being fickle about his food, like always when he was unhappy.
Michael got a job at the aquarium. He bought fine meat without bones:
farmed boar, forest moose, Argentinian ox, Arctic reindeer, and thoroughbred horse. He smuggled it inside in a large canvas bag and fed only the slender, blacktip shark.
Once, he nearly fell into the tank. He leaned too far forward on the catwalk above the water. The shark shot up and almost closed its jaws around his hand. He fell backwards on the sharp grating, sloshing liquid high. After that the shark refused to take his meat.
Michael wanted to write letters in thick black marker on white paper and press the sheets against the glass: I M S O R R Y. But what would be the point in that? He already knew the shark’s reply.
The shark kept swimming, around and around, as if it wanted out. It grew thin and full of sores, its tail and fins ragged with nips and bites from the other predators. Michael tried to make eye contact with the shark. The slick body passed over him like a shadow.
There was just one thing to do. Michael bribed a colleague on the night shift with liquor and money. They lifted the shark out of the tank in the blue net it had arrived on. The shark bucked a few times, then lay still.
They drove to the bay and lowered the shark into the sleeping water. Michael looked over the edge of the net. The shark took him in, searched his face like it had in the bedroom.
“I’m not holding you any longer,” Michael said. “Goodbye. Please be happy.” The shark circled him twice, then cut the dark surface with its tail and disappeared.
never the same
polenth blake
Everyone thinks my brother is nice. He set up a rescue centre for birds, after the terraforming accident poisoned the lake. That’s always the image of him, holding a bird covered in sludge. The birds are never the same after they’re cleaned, but the gossips never talk about that.
Cleaning birds is a safe way to make people notice you, and my brother likes safe. I jumped off a cliff once. He was all, “You’ll die if you jump.” I broke most of my bones, but I made it. It’s worth trying for the feel of it. Not the bones part, but the rush of something new. It should have been something, falling and surviving. But the gossips only cared about how much it upset my brother.
When I was younger, people assumed I was nice. I knew when to smile and when to cry. They never believed it was me who stole the biscuits or set the cushions on fire. Until they ran the routine scans and I failed. Then every tear was viewed with suspicion. Every smile was cause to check for smoke. My sister was the only one who disagreed. “You can’t fail a scan,” she said. “We’re all different.”
That’s why I choose the role of the supportive sibling. I turn up to her party wearing her favourite colour. There’s fruit on the food table, because they’ve spared no expense. I load up a plate with cherries and mango slices.
An old man passes me, with hair glowing a subtle shade of peach. “Like the hair,” I lie with a smile. He smiles back, but he won’t look at me properly. He won’t come near me again.
There are banners above the table. My sister is running for president of the world. It sounds grand, but the world is so tiny I recognise everyone in it. They’ve only seeded a few hundred square miles, and most of that is stunted grass. The only people out there are scientists, because the air’s too thin to be comfortable. We huddle in our domes, making occasional wheezing trips outdoors just to prove we can.
I see my sister, but she’s with her girlfriend. She has people to meet and greet. Sometimes the supportive sibling has to stand back.
“You must be proud of her,” says a person I’ve only seen before at a distance. They’re wearing a fashionable patchwork suit, but have avoided the ghastly hair glow trend.
“Yes. She always gets what she wants.”
It’s unusual to meet someone who wants to talk to me. Most gawk from a distance at the world’s only psychopath. But this person doesn’t have that look of hidden fear.
“It’ll be a landslide, if the polls stay on track,” they say.
I smile and ask, “I don’t think we’ve talked before?”
“I’m on the terraforming crew.”
“It must be a luxury, being back where there’s air.”
“You get used to it,” they say.
That’s not the whole truth. The wheezing might subside after some time, but it’s never comfortable. I’m not the only one who lies.
The person looks past me and I glance back. My brother has arrived. There’s something odd in the person’s reaction. The sudden intent gaze on my brother. A hard edge that implies they know my brother is not as nice as people believe him to be.
I smile at the person. This time, it’s genuine.
I dream of the cliff most nights. I landed in the sludge and it saved me. The poisons slowed down the internal bleeding. The thickened water held me up even when I couldn’t swim.
The gossips think it made me worse, like the birds. That isn’t true. I was the same person before and after. All it did was make me bolder about speaking my mind. I jumped from a cliff and survived. It’s more than they’d ever done.
My brother likes to keep score with my sister. She invited me to a party, so he has to take me out to the park. It’s a fancy park where people with credits go. It makes the gossips think he cares.
He walks over the grass towards a cart selling toffee apples. People act like I don’t understand the idea of rules, but I understand better than they do. There’s a sign saying to keep off the grass, yet everyone walks over it. The same people wouldn’t steal a toffee apple from the cart. Why is the grass less important than the apple? It isn’t, but they’ve made themselves believe that. They have to believe that, so they can break the rules and not feel guilty.
I take the long route around the grass. It’s my own form of defiance. They all expect me to break the rules, but I keep them better than anyone else.
My brother waits for me to finish traversing the gravel paths, his arms folded in irritation. He buys me an apple anyway. It suits me. The more he buys, the less I have to work.
We take our apples to a bench, facing the clear dome wall. It’s the best view of the lake and grasslands beyond the dome. The lake is brown from dead algae. It should be green, but the terraforming is not going as expected and no one knows why. My sister’s going to solve that. It’s part of her election promise, to assess the terraforming and ask the hard questions. Some politicians wouldn’t mean it, but she keeps her promises.
He examines the bite marks he’s left in the apple. “Have you thought, it’d be easier if she was gone?” Not even a glance my way. That’s the trouble with guilt.
“Where would she go?” I say.
“Don’t say you’ve never thought about hurting us.”
I shrug. He wouldn’t believe denial. My games don’t need violence, but this isn’t something my brother understands. His games with me involve his fists, because no one believes the psychopath.
“She loves me,�
�� I say.
That ends the conversation.
When we were young, my sister had a bird. It slept in a cage, but the rest of the time it travelled on her shoulder. She taught it to speak. She made sure it got to fly. I didn’t see the point in the bird, but my sister liked it and I didn’t have to look after it, so that was that.
I set fire to a lot of things. Cushions, boxes, and food I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t set fire to the cage that night. My brother did that.
My sister cried. I worked on stoic mourning, as I wasn’t close to the bird. I hoped it was the right level of reaction, but it wasn’t enough to avoid the blame.
“I know killing animals is wrong,” I told my parents. I knew the lists. Harming animals was wrong. Hugging your sister when she’s sad was right. Walking on the grass was wrong. Honesty was right. I’d forgotten to hug my sister when she was sad. It was too late now.
After that, I was careful about my fires, so I couldn’t be blamed. I signed up to cremate bodies, because some things are acceptable to burn. I didn’t pretend to understand that.
What my brother signed up to burn was a mystery.
My sister’s kitchen has murals of blue birds on a green sky. She dreams of the day the terraforming succeeds, and we can run outside with the wild birds. I thought it was a random desire, until one day she admitted to missing her bird. So many years and she still mourns it.
We sit at the table, eating a protein cake she made herself. I compliment the cake and do the expected things, before I ask, “Do you think our brother is nice?”
“Don’t you?”
He wants me to kill you, but you won’t believe that. “Have you talked to the terraforming people?”
“Not yet. I’ve been busy on the campaign.”
“It’d make a good visit,” I say. “Show you’re going to figure things out.”
Talk to them. They know something.
The Humanity of Monsters Page 23
