The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine

by Jason Sizemore

  But I don’t care.

  I can still see my Jakie in my living room, thin and dark and laughing like when he took me to dinner. But he is still misty, still like a dream. So I limp to the bathroom, and find my pills, all the different colors and shapes, and take them back to the living room with a glass of water. I take two more pills and wait for a few minutes, and then I squint my eyes and concentrate like I used to concentrate over my French lessons as a girl. And suddenly, I don’t have to pretend any more—Jackie is here, sharp and clear and looking at me with that saucy American grin on his face. I take two more pills and stand, and so does he, and I take his hand and lead him back to the cafe.

  And we are sitting at the table again, and I can hear the chatter of the other two couples. My stomach is full, and I am wearing a nice dress and real shoes, and I take Jakie’s hand, and he takes one of the wine bottles off the table, and we stand and walk into the forest while his friends laugh and cheer and call out things in English that would probably have made my mother faint. But I don’t care—when we are far enough away, I kiss Jakie hard on the lips. He tells me that we have the rest of our lives, but I know better this time. I will have this moment, this lovely moment.

  After, Jakie strokes my hair, and touches my lips, and says he loves me, and will find out how he can get permission to marry me and take me to America. But now, he says, he’s hungry, and he goes off to find some food, and I sit in the pine needles and straighten my clothes, and take out the comb he gave me to fix my hair. There is still some wine in the bottle, and I raise it to the strange God who killed so many but let me live, and drink it down.

  And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see an old woman who is standing a little ways off. She is a terrible old woman; her hair is white and thinning, her figure is thick and flabby underneath the cotton dress; she wears slippers on her nasty bare feet and only a single gold ring on her wrinkled hands. She smiles at me. “Now you are happy,” she says.

  Happy? Stupid old woman—how can I be happy? I am thin and used up. My family is dead, my childhood is gone, and I have spent three years screwing Nazi soldiers so that I can live.

  The old woman starts to cry. “I thought this was the right time,” she sobs, and I can’t stand it, so I stand and walk into the forest. It is an old, beautiful forest, full of moss and thick trees. They remind me of the tall firs near our home, and the hours I spent as a girl playing there, and dreaming about my future. In the woods next to my uncle’s house. Before.

  My uncle’s large home with the red shutters and large wooden door, and the fat cat who would not stay in the house no matter how often we tried to shut her in, and Peter the butler who frightened me because he was so tall and stern, but who would let me sit in the kitchen and watch the servants prepare dinner. This morning my father and my uncle were quieter than usual after the meal, and I knew it was because of the letter my uncle had received that morning, and that it had something to do with the political situation. They talked together until my mother came over, and touched my father on the shoulder. He smiled at her, and then we played cards because it was raining outside.

  The rain stops, and although my mother tells me to put on my galoshes, it’s still wet outside, I run outside and stand in the grass. It is lovely; in the sunlight, the wet grass is as bright a green as I have ever seen in my life.

  There is a noise, and I look down the wide drive, and there are men in uniforms approaching, the sun bouncing off their belt buckles and buttons. I’m wearing my favorite dress, the one that my uncle just bought me for my thirteenth birthday party, and I’m so glad that I’m wearing it now because there is a handsome soldier behind the four men who is dressed differently than the others. His uniform is dirty and creased and he needs a shave, but he has lovely brown hair and nice eyes.

  The adults have come out too, despite the wet. My mother says my name, low and with a tremor in her voice that is so strange I turn and look at her. Her face has gone still and she is standing so stiffly that for a moment she doesn’t look like my mother. She is motioning me to come back to the house in quick, angry, waves of her hand, as though she is afraid somebody will see her.

  My father and my uncle are closer, though. They have walked down the wide front drive, and have now stopped, waiting. My father stands a little behind my uncle, his pipe in his mouth. His hands are clasped behind his back. My uncle, shorter and stouter, is shaking his head just a little, the way he does when I come to him with some complaint about my mother, his hands pushed deep into his pockets.

  Just beyond them is a strange woman standing on the grass, wearing a flowered dress that is a too big on her. She is very thin and has funny short hair and she is smiling at me. Nobody else seems to notice her—maybe because they are all looking at the soldiers.

  “Now you are happy,” she says, and that sounds strange at first. But then I realize that the sun is shining, and I am with my family, and looking forward to my birthday, and only worried about my algebra homework and whether I’ll ever grow breasts.

  “She can’t be happy. Jakie isn’t here,” and it isn’t the young woman talking, but an old woman who looks a bit like the beggar in town who sells eggs by the road. She is very ugly, but then she smiles at me too, so to be polite I smile back.

  My mother calls my name louder but instead I run to my uncle and take him by the arm. Before I can ask, he says quietly, not looking at me, “Darling, go to your mama. Now, please.”

  The child pauses, not knowing what to do. She looks back at the soldiers and squints at something—and there, down the driveway, as insubstantial as hope, is a tall young man with dark hair and eyes, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe. “Jakie!” we scream. “Save me!” But he is not alone—he is holding the hand of a stranger, a woman with knowing American eyes, and he is not looking at us.

  We two, the camp whore and the crazy old woman, remember running to our mother’s side, watching as the world suddenly changed, but we know that this time she will not go. We watch as the young girl in her first grownup dress stands and holds her uncle’s arm, her hands only trembling a little. She is young enough to be brave; to believe, to the bottom of her soul, that nothing really bad can happen.

  The old woman is sniffling again—doesn’t she ever stop?—and her nose is all red. “I thought he would save me from this,” the old woman moans. “From the memories. I thought he would save me.”

  I stroke her hair, and remember the lipstick, and the cafe, and Jakie’s kind eyes. “I know,” I tell her. “I know. But we will have to do it ourselves.”

  She nods, and wipes her eyes. “You are right,” she says. “Of course. It’s all up to us.”

  My uncle has stepped forward, and one of the clean German soldiers, an officer I think, takes a gun from his pocket and points it at him just like the gangsters in the American movies. I know I should run back, but I won’t leave my uncle. “You fucking Jew,” the officer says, calm as if he were just saying hello, “You fucking rich Jew, you think you own the world?”

  My uncle pushes me away. “Back to the house,” he says, his teeth clenched, every word distinct. “Now! Do you hear?”

  The soldiers are scaring me, so I look at the two women. They are crying about something, but then they hold their arms out to me. “Come, sweetheart,” says the old lady. “It’s a beautiful morning. Forget the handsome American soldier. He will not save you. Come to us—come and show us your lovely new dress.”

  I walk toward them, passing in front of my uncle. There is a loud sharp sound from far away, and it all stops.

  Clockwork, Patchwork and Ravens

  Peter M. Ball

  Jackson said she’d been hanging with the Corvidae before he found her, that she was one of those girls that bounced between gangers named Jackdaw6 or Raven8. They’d pumped her full of genemorphs laced with avian DNA, hoping she’d be lucky and avoid the bad reaction. It had already affected her teeth, turning the molars into rotting shards. Her lips were growing hard, thickeni
ng into dark cartilage, and I could see the shadow of her organs beneath the bleached skin stretched across her ribcage. Jackson said he found her wandering in the alley behind the crow boy’s nest, trying to staunch the fluid seeping from her fresh-plucked eye-socket. He brought her home, patched her up, and turned her over to me for safe-keeping while he went downstairs to work. I stood over her and watched her, letting the hours tick by, and eventually I kissed her.

  My kiss didn’t wake her, though she stirred a little at my touch. Downside is not a place where fairytales happen, and no-one would mistake me for a handsome prince. It was a clumsy kiss, as you’d expect, but a kiss. A kiss!

  When she did not wake I stood, resuming my vigil. I could feel myself blushing, my right cheek warm. I turned my other cheek toward her, hiding behind the copper mask.

  Even now, looking back, I’m still not sure why I did it. It’s not as if she was a pretty thing, with her bruises and her missing eye, but there was still some remnant of beauty beneath the blue stitches of Jackson’s repair. She was a creature of the Downside streets, all feral promise and rough allure. I didn’t love her—that would be unseemly for a half-man like me—but I envied her, desperately, for the blue stitching that held her together and the heart that still beat in her chest. I wished, for just a moment, that Jackson had done the same for me. I could feel the steady flick of that pulse when our lips touched. It was alive; faint, but eager to exist. My own heart ticked on, steady and regular, the soft tick-tock marking a regular beat as it pulped blood through those veins I still possessed.

  Jackson wanted to be a hero, I knew that without asking. When I was little, just after he took me in, Jackson used to tell me stories about heroes, about knights and princes and ducks that turned into swans. I would listen to his stories, curled up in bed, crying as the pain of a new graft wracked my chest and shoulder. I had to ignore the sound of the gangs and the crowds that filled the Downside streets, the occasional brawl or gunshot cutting through the din. Jackson would fill my head with heroes, with worlds where heroes still existed. I never believed in his stories, but I always believed in Jackson. It was easier, cleaner, but it was just as dangerous in the end.

  The girl slept for three days, sedated and monitored. I spent my nights watching her fight against the painkillers, twisting against the thin sheets in Jackson’s cot. I was afraid to move, afraid the grinding cogs in my arms would disturb her bad dreams. I dreamt of kissing her again, dreamt of her waking up and looking on my copper mask and grafted limbs without the inevitable shudder. It was not to be. She woke in the dim light of the third morning, jettisoned from her nightmares with a gurgling scream. She cast about the room with her good eye, looking for something familiar, but all she got was me, and the mangled nubbin of flesh that had been her tongue started making strangled sounds that could have been words. I knelt beside her, putting my good hand on hers, making sure there was contact between her flesh and mine.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You’re safe here.”

  She struggled and I held her down, the steady tick-tock of my heart frightening her more than the cold grip of my hand. She had a coppery, nervous scent and I saw blood stains on her bandages. Her good eye stared at my face as I leaned in to check the stitches. She waited, trembling and sluggish, still woozy from the barbiturates. I pulled back and limped away. She was scared of me, so scared her fear emerged through the painkiller haze, and I couldn’t calm her down.

  “You’ve pulled your stitches,” I told her. I couldn’t make my voice sound soothing, no matter how hard I tried. “You’re bleeding. Wait here, I’ll go get Jackson.” And I ran, fleeing the bedroom, as she let loose an angry gurgle that should have been a scream.

  There was comfort in the clutter of Jackson’s workshop downstairs; the overburdened workbenches piled high with bits of clockwork and old tech and equipment we scavenged from the burnt-out hospital on the river. I followed the sound of Jackson’s snoring through the cramped maze of junk and spare parts, found him in the overstuffed chair he left by the boiler, soaking up warmth as he slept. He looked old, even for Jackson, the wrinkled features like the grooves of a thumbprint, the wisps of hair hanging limp around his face. I leant over and shook him, letting the metal fingers close over his shoulder. “Jackson,” I said. “Jackson, the girl’s awake.”

  He slept, stubbornly, until I placed a cold right hand against his bare forehead. Jackson had built me that arm from scratch, and the one I’d worn before it, and the one before that. Its touch woke him faster than any jostling or loud noise ever could. “Randal?” he said, blinking. His eyes were never good, especially in the dark. I lifted the notebook off his lap and helped him to his feet, setting his journal on a nearby bench while he straightened himself up.

  “It’s morning, Jackson,” I told him. The left side of my mouth twisted into a wry smile. “She’s awake and she’s pulled some stitches. I think I might have frightened her.”

  “She’ll calm down,” he said. “And pulling the stitches won’t harm her anymore than she’s been harmed.” Jackson rubbed his eyes with one hand and smiled his forlorn smile. “How is she?”

  “Struggling to speak.” I clenched my fist, metal straining against metal. “They took her tongue, Jackson. The crow boys, they cut it right out.” It was a mistake to mention the tongue. Jackson nodded, eyes growing distant, and I knew that I’d lost him, that his mind had the association it needed to turn toward to his beloved work. Jackson picked up his notebook, finger tracing the anatomical sketches and blueprints. He was making plans, figuring out a way to replace what was lost. I touched his arm again.

  “We should run,” I said. “We can. She’s awake now. We should run before they come for her.”

  Jackson looked up and shook his head. “It would kill her,” he said. “To move her now, so soon, so soon after...” He shook his head again and sighed. “We need a week. Maybe two. Enough time for her to heal. Then we can leave. Then we can run.” His eyes dropped to the notebook as he said it, the blue-and-black plans and the detailed annotations. There was a thump upstairs as she fell out of bed. A loud moan of pain filtering down through the floorboards. I thought of the mangled face, the blue stitching and the scars. Beaten by the Corvidae, Jackson had said. We both knew what would happen when they realised the girl had lived.

  “They’ll find us before then,” I told him.

  “I know.” My heart beat, tick-tock, tick-tock, as I watched Jackson blink back tears. His face set, trying to hold back a shiver of fear. The Corvidae were bad news; both of us knew that. He put his hand on my shoulder, fingers wrapping across the scars. “But I’m going to take care of her,” Jackson said. “She didn’t deserve this, Randal.”

  No-one ever does. Jackson didn’t look at me, just tore a page from his notebook and held it out. It was a list of parts, carefully annotated, written in Jackson’s sloppy script. I ran down the list, noting the unfamiliar names. They were small parts, tiny. Expensive, too, with our finances.

  “I’ll take care of her stitches,” Jackson said, limping toward the stairs. “It will be okay, Randal. We’ll get away before you know it.”

  I double-checked the locks as I left, nervous about leaving him alone. Most of the time, shopping for Jackson takes effort rather than money. This time he was working small, and that meant parts with names I didn’t recognise. Technology; state of the art; the kind with names that read like a secret code. Finding those parts meant someone with black-market contacts. It meant shopping fast and getting off the streets before someone noticed what I was doing. It meant Jackie Pelican.

  I went down to the river and found him sitting near the harbour tunnel, hawking cheap tech to Cityside tourists heading home after a day in their favourite kink-house. There was an art to the way Jackie worked, pretending to thumb a ride and then hustling the drivers with cheap promises and stolen tech the moment the car stopped. Pelican always said that anyone stupid enough to stop for a Downsider wearing six jackets as he thumbed a ride was goi
ng to be an easy mark for his patter, and it turned out he was right more often than not.

  He was cutting a deal when I found him, a lump of layered coats and furs pushing data-chips through the window of a Cityside Lexus. I hung back, out of sight. The Pelican didn’t need me interrupting his business, and I knew better than to get in his way. It took him five, maybe six minutes to close the deal. Money changed hands and the Lexus sped off, threading into the tunnel that linked the Downside grime with the towers and gleaming lights of the city. The Pelican stood by the side of the road, shuffling through his bills, then nodded and slipped the cash into the pockets of his second jacket. I lumbered across the concrete, coming up behind him. Pelican heard me coming, recognised the tick and the steady thump of my limp. “Randal,” he said, making a wide turn, his small face beaming among the layered jacket collars. I clapped Pelican on the shoulder and the gears in my arm groaned. He feigned a shudder at the noise. “Clockwork was a bad fad, Randy. When are you going to let me fix you up with something a little less retro?”

  “I don’t have money for your upgrades, Pelican. You know that.”

  “You could work it off, Randal,” Pelican said. “You’re a good kid, talented, and you’re wasted in Jackson’s workshop. I’m sure I could find a job for you.”

  “I like the workshop,” I said. “It’s homey.”

  Pelican rolled his eyes and laughed, the thick layers of coats wobbling, his throat swelling up as his humour boomed out. “Fine,” he said. “If you can’t be lured away from the aging reprobate, why don’t you tell me what the Pelican can do for you? I assume Jackson’s sent you on another shopping trip?”

  I held out the list and pointed at the items I needed, letting the Pelican study them through the cracked lens of his glasses. He puffed his cheeks out as his read, fleshy jowls ballooning as he chewed on the air. “That’s a strange list, Randal. What’s Jackson up to?”