by Hal Duncan
They introduced themselves as Mr. Pechorin and Mr. Carter.
“But you can call us Vlad and Rosie,” said Pechorin.
They looked like raptor birds, one dark, the other fair, a black falcon and a golden eagle.
“We only call him Rosie,” said Carter, the blond-haired one, absently, nosing around the radio. “It’s not his real name.”
“But then, Vlad’s not his real name either,” said Pechorin.
“It’s short for Rosebud…because that’s the way he likes them, you know?”
“Sweet little pink things,” said Pechorin, showing his teeth with something too sweet to be a sneer, too cold to be a smile.
“And why do they call you Vlad?” the girl asked, pushing her dark red hair back out of her eyes and flicking up the collar of her biker’s jacket in a way that—as soon as she had done it—she regretted. Too much attitude, she thought, defensive.
He ignored her question and, instead, just ever so slightly cocked his head and sniffed, like a curious dog. Or like a hungry dog.
“Where is he?”
“Paranoid delusions of grandeur,” said Carter as he twirled the dial on the radio through snatches of classic rock and country music, static shrieks, hiss, strident ads and Radio AWZ 104.5’s Super Sounds of the Sixties, and finally settled on some orchestrated molasses that just oozed out of the speakers.
“Isn’t that…? I know this song.” said Carter.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Sounds vaguely familiar.”
Pechorin still circled like a vulture. “So, little girl. Who do you think you are?”
“This is…oh, what’s it called?” the other said. “I know this song.”
She looked from one to the other. Are you guys for real? she thought.
“So full of yourself,” said Pechorin. He leaned in close to her face. “You think you’re something special? Think you’re better than the rest? Think you’re up there with the likes of—”
And the word he used sliced through reality and left it soft and open, like quivering flesh, and the mug of Earl Grey on the table in front of her had somehow sort of shifted into the blackest espresso that she’d ever seen, blacker than the sharp suits worn by the pair of them, blacker than the leather binding of the book that the other one had lain on the table beside the cup…blacker than hell; and the instant after he’d spoken it, she couldn’t remember that word at all, only the emptiness in her head where she had heard it and the ripples in the air through which it had moved.
“That,” he said, “is what it is to be unkin.”
“Go on,” she said, “tell me all—”
Carter snapped his fingers. “Of course. That’s what it is.”
“—about it,” she finished. She lifted the coffee toward her mouth but stopped just short, held the cup just almost at her lips so she could smell the bitter steam of it, the rich black scent. She waited.
“I knew it,” said Carter. “I knew I recognized the tune. That’s some cover.”
“Where is he?” said Pechorin, suddenly, casually.
She just smiled and shook her head. She didn’t know, and wouldn’t have told them anyway; they could go fuck themselves; she wasn’t part of their stupid fucking war, their stupid fucking game, and she wasn’t going to be dragged into it.
“You think you’re God’s gift, eh?” said Pechorin, sneering, and she sneered right back, at the sheer idiotic irony of it. “Another little hatchling got a taste of godhood and you think you’re the fucking Second Coming?”
“You know,” said Carter, suddenly leaning in just as close as Pechorin, speaking quietly, firmly. He nodded toward the radio. “They crucified the original.”
His Long, Thin Fingers
The ugallu clapped their hands with glee. They went to seek Dumuzi at the house of Geshtinanna.
“Tell us where your brother is!” they cried out.
Geshtinanna would not talk.
They offered her the gift of water. She rejected it. They offered her the gift of grain, but she rejected it. They raised her up to Heaven and they threw her down to Earth. Geshtinanna would not talk. They ripped her clothes off. They poured tar into her cunt. And Geshtinanna would not talk.
Pechorin stepped over the girl, looking down at her for a second, where she lay on the floor, naked and smeared with blood and filth, the broken and twisted limbs still quivering. He sniffed the air. She was still in there, somewhere, somewhere buried deep enough they couldn’t reach her, no matter how far down inside her soul they reached. He looked at Carter, licking the smears of red and specks of white off of his long, thin fingers.
“I don’t think we’re going to find him here,” he said.
“Since the start of time,” the small ugallu said to the large ugallu, “who has ever known a sister to betray her brother’s hideout? Come, let us seek Dumuzi at his friend’s house.”
The ugallu went to Dumuzi’s friend. They offered him the gift of water and he took it. Then they offered him the gift of grain. He took it.
Seamus Finnan clicked his Zippo open, snicked a thumb across the wheel and brought the flame up to the cigarette that dangled from his mouth. He sucked in a deep, deep breath. Christ, Tom boy, what have you fucking gotten yourself into now? And I’m the one supposed to get you fucking out of it. He couldn’t do it. But he had to. He looked up at the thing that called itself Carter, fastened his eyes on it, locked on it like he was cutting it open with his gaze and opened his mouth to curse the fucker.
And the angel slammed him against the wall, hand tight around his throat, twitching with tension, with the snarling, spitting drive, the urge, the need, to just crush his larynx, snap his neck.
“Where is he?” it hissed. And then Pechorin was standing beside him. And then the real pain began.
“Dumuzi hid among the grass, among the bushes or among the trees,” he said. “I do not know where.”
The ugallu searched among the grass, among the bushes and among the trees but could not find Dumuzi.
He leaned forward in the chair, retching, spitting up blood. Pechorin looked at the lump of rounded, red chambers and tubes held in his hand. His heart.
“You don’t really need this, do you? You are one of us, after all, god or monster, angel or demon. Whichever side you choose, you’ll always be like us…unkin. What do you need this…flesh for?”
He was empty inside now, hollow. The pain just didn’t mean anything anymore. Nothing did.
“The ditches of Arali,” he said, coughing. “He’s hiding in the ditches of Arali.”
THE DITCHES OF ARALI, THE TRENCHES OF THE SOMME
The ugallu caught Dumuzi in the ditches of Arali. He turned pale, began to cry, cried out:
“My sister saved my life. My friend has brought about my death. If my sister’s child goes wandering in the streets, may they be safe; I bless that child. If my friend’s child goes wandering in the streets, may they be lost; I curse that child.” And Tammuz cursed, he cursed his friend, and his friend’s child and the words hang in the air now, as embedded in eternity as in the wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay, caught in a moment thick as the smoke of war, the clouds of a storm, and all Seamus can do is stand there listening and looking on in silent sorrow as the other lads drag the poor boy kicking and screaming, and sobbing and cursing, cursing like Seamus has never fookin heard in his life, sure, and they drag him down along the trench, like a fookin animal, dragging his feet through the mud, sure, and they throw him into the dugout and it’s Seamus and the lads, his mates who have to do it, have to do it, sure, and they don’t want to harm him but they have to hurt him, have to slap some sense into the boy ’cause it’s the only way and if he doesn’t come out of it, if he doesn’t fookin come out of it, he’ll end up fookin shot as a fookin coward and Seamus can’t let that happen, he can’t let that happen, sure, because he’d never forgive himself…so he goes into the dugout with the other lads and they don’t listen to poor Tommy’s curses.
The
ugallu surrounded Dumuzi. They bound his hands; they bound his neck. They beat the husband of Inanna. Dumuzi raised his arms up to the skies, to Shamash, God of Justice, and cried out: “O Shamash, my brother-in-law, I am your sister’s husband. It was me who brought food to the sacred shrine, who brought the wedding gifts to Uruk. It was me who kissed the holy lips, who danced upon the holy lap, Inanna’s lap.
“Make my hands the hands of a gazelle. Make my feet the feet of a gazelle. Let me flee my demons. Let me flee to Kubiresh!”
“Ah, Christ now, Tommy boy, what have ye fookin gone and gotten yourself into? What have ye done?”
The boy looks at Seamus with eyes so hollow, so broken and scared, that it just breaks his fookin heart to see the lad like this, and he grits his teeth and swallows, and wipes his nose, so he does, because if he doesn’t do something he’s going to fookin fall apart himself, sure. Christ, they’ll fookin shoot him, so they will.
“I just went for a walk, Seamus. It was so nice out there, it was so nice, because the sun was shining and the grass was sort of blowing in the wind so soft and gentle, like…and there wasn’t any shells, Seamus. There wasn’t any shells at all.”
“For fook’s sake, Tommy. Talk fookin sense. What are ye talking about? It’s been fookin raining fookin shells and mortars and fookin bullets as well as fookin cats and dogs.”
“It wasn’t raining, not out in the fields. But there was a river, see, and I couldn’t get across the river, so I had to come back. To…to get something…so I could get across. You could come with me, Seamus. You can open the door and let me out and you can come with me and we can cross the river and we can…”
Seamus looks out the door of the fookin dugout where he’s standing with his fookin gun, just fookin waiting for the word to get back to the officers that the boy’s still fookin doolally. Sure and it’s officers who get shell shock and the rest of them are just fookin cowards to shoot.
“I don’t know, Tommy boy,” he says, “I don’t know if I can go with ye where ye’re going, lad.”
Shamash took mercy on Dumuzi’s tears. He made his hands the hands ofa gazelle. He made his feet the feet of a gazelle. Dumuzi fled his demons, fled to Kubiresh.
Dumuzi, the dumu-zi, shining child, escaped. Tammuz escaped. From that ancient Sumerian text, Dumuzi’s Dream, he leaps, from myth to myth, only to be captured again, in The Most Bitter Cry, captured and chained, to wake under the rising sun that tries, time and again, to save him. He wakes from his dreams, naked and wounded, and in this version of the tale or that a prisoner of militia, a deserter or a fugitive conscript, being taken back to face punishment. He breaks free and runs, into fields that go on forever, trying to escape, from death, from war, from myth into reality or from reality into myth.
DUMUZI’S CAPTURE
“Let us go to Kubiresh,” said the ugallu. And they walked the road of all dust till they arrived in Kubiresh. But Dumuzi fled his demons, he fled across the fields of illusion to the house of Old Belili. He crept into Old Belili’s house and spoke to her.
“Old woman. I am no mere mortal man. I am the husband of a goddess, of Inanna. Would you pour water for me to drink? Would you sprinkle flour for me to eat?”
He ransacks the shelves and the cupboards of the farmhouse, looking for something to eat, he does, because he’s starving and he’s so tired of running, so cold and wet and tired that he’s no longer sure what it is he’s running from, his clothes so filthy that when he strips them off to lay them by the fireside to dry, he looks at them and doesn’t recognize them as an army tunic or an afghan coat or the rags of a runaway slave or anything but clothes. He puts the dusty black-and-white photograph of the old woman back on the mantelpiece but then there’s another shell blast and it falls and smashes on the ground, and he instinctively drops into a huddle. He can hear the beating of their baseball bats and the beating of their wings as he crouches down and eats the beans out of the metal pot with his fingers.
“Let us go to Old Belili,” said the ugallu. And they walked the fields of illusion till they arrived at the house of Old Belili. After the old woman had poured water and sprinkled flour for Dumuzi, she left the house. The ugallu watched her leave and entered. But Dumuzi fled his demons, and he fled across the fields of illusion to the sheepfold of his sister, Geshtinanna.
Geshtinanna found Dumuzi in the sheepfold, and she sobbed. She raised her mouth up to the sky. She lowered it down to the earth. Her sorrow cloaked the world to its horizon, like a rag of soiled sackcloth. She tore at her eyes, her mouth, her thighs.
And the door is crashing open and he’s leaping out through a window shattered by months of mortars, back into the churned-up horror of no-man’s-land in France and running through the mud and rain of the mountain storm in North Carolina, and falling over a split-rail fence in the Wyoming snow and trying to drag himself to his feet, but they’re vaulting the fence of the sheepfold, coming after him, always after him, with baseball bats and rifle butts and ancient maces raised, and he’s holding his sister as she sobs for him.
And the angels come down from the sky on wings, imperial eagles, hawks of war.
A War of Ideals
Asheville, July 13th, 2017.
Thomas watches the door of the bar swing shut behind Finnan and turns his attention back to the blond frat boy at the table across the bar. He’s gone quiet now, like something is working its way through his unconscious, trying to crawl up into his mind so that all he can do is try not to think about it. Christ, thinks Thomas, it’s fucking 2017 and it may be this isn’t the most forward-thinking area of the world, but get a grip. There’s more important things in the world than who or what you want to fuck. But the poor sweet angel-eyed lion just drinks his beer and glances at Thomas now and again, and burns with blushing shame as he looks away again, stuck in the story he tells himself of who he is, who he should be.
Still, there’s something about him, an air of dreamy distance, that hints at possibility. He could be a junky punk in leather jeans and ripped tee or an English aristo in tails and a straw boater and he’d still fit the bill. There’s this blank grace about him, like wherever he is it doesn’t really matter because he’s not really there.
Thomas is just about to give up when five of the frat boys stand up, pulling their jackets from the backs of the chairs, slinging them over shoulders or folding them over their arms. They sway a little, drunken and still loud as they talk about the party later on tonight and slap the other two on the back, head for the door. From snatched phrases and mumbled admirations, Thomas gathers that a couple of them have dropped out of college to sign up with the armed forces. America is in danger, after all, and the freedom and democracy of puppet-states all over the Middle East and North Africa are at stake. The tenuous order of the world needs to be maintained.
On a small TV set tucked snug in a corner up behind the bar, CNN is showing another broadcast of the infamous Amar al Ahmadi Malik, another video diatribe, scrolling text translating his claims of responsibility for this atrocity or that. He’s emerging as the great villain now, since Alhazred’s assassination and, even with the sound muted, Thomas can hear the resonance of the Cant under his angry tones. Malik in Syria, al Mashaikh in North Iraq, Khalifa in Iran—Thomas doesn’t know if they’re really all linked in this “network of terror” but he does know one thing. They’re all unkin.
Thomas has been watching the news recently and he wonders if the new recruits, bright-eyed and bitter, have any idea at all what they’re in for. There are stories, weird stories, coming out of Jerusalem and Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran, and to Thomas all those stories say one thing. Whether it’s an army base in Jericho surrounded in the night by singing children, evacuated the next day with every GI in the place gone crazy, or “suicide bombers” staggering naked and deranged into a cafe, bleeding from the writing cut into their flesh and exploding in a blossom of white light even though survivors swear they had no explosives strapped to them, no sir, not a single thing but that weird
writing on them—whatever the story is, to Thomas it says that the unkin war has started now for real. He’s still not sure if President Freemont and his coalition allies know they’re on the side of the angels, or if the handful of demons behind this whole chaotic cocktail of warring terrorist groups and factions are actually allied or as opposed to each other as to the Western forces; somehow that seems too obvious, too simple to be true. It’s just as likely that there are Covenant unkin and their Sovereign enemies on all sides, using the collapse into anarchy and atrocity to mask a different war. But Thomas isn’t going to stick around and find out.
He slips the card for Madame Iris Tattoos into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, takes out a smoke.
The dark-haired friend is up at the bar getting another couple of beers and leonine Jack is sitting there, staring off into the distance. He looks just the square-jawed type to sign up in a war of ideals, and Thomas can’t help but want him. He slides out of the booth and wanders over slowly to ask for a light. There’s nothing going to happen right now, with his friend still here, but he can make a contact, an unspoken sign of possibility opening. Draw out just enough of the suppressed desire to maybe bring him back here later.
He looks uncomfortable but he nods at the request—sure, yeah—and fumbles in his pocket. He brings out a Zippo, flicks it open and sparks it. Thomas holds the guy’s hand steady as he lights the cigarette, and holds the guy’s gaze steady with a smile.
“Thanks…eh?”
“Jack,” the guy says. “Jack Carter.”
No More Gods
They wore the gray synthe armor of all angels but around their gaunt bodies it looked skeletal, and the black slanted eyeshades on the mask only added to the unnatural appearance, reminding Thomas of carvings he had seen dug up in Predionica, strange heads with almond eyes, straight noses, sharp faces, stylized to an elven alien catlike grace. Like the bird figurines carved out of paleolithic mammoth ivory, designs of wave, spiral and swastika filigreed their forms; and the tall, steely, silvered weapons that they carried—something between a crossbow and a lance—seemed, like the great and graceful giant axes of the graves and the caves—surely too large for any use but ritual.
