Nebula Awards Showcase 2009

by Ellen Datlow

  Jayna shoots her a glare. “Face it, we’re hideous. Freaks of science. It’s a life of spinsterhood for us. At least for a while you had . . . well, whatever it was you had.”

  “She won’t talk to me,” Alice murmurs.

  “You don’t fit her fetish anymore.”

  “It wasn’t a fetish.”

  “I’m not saying that fetishes are bad things. Hell, I’d love to find someone whose kink I fit. There’s got to be someone out there into scar tissue and wheelchairs.” She wrinkles her mashed nose. “Then again, maybe I should just put in for plastic surgery. Maybe they’ll give me dating lessons too. ‘Hi, I just learned to pee all by myself again. Wanna go out?’ ”

  “I don’t think that’ll work,” Alice says. She levers herself out of her wheelchair and grabs her crutches. She is determined to be walking unaided as soon as possible.

  “You’re probably right. I could try, though. I mean, what would it hurt?”

  With a smile, Alice says, “You never know. You could get lucky.”

  Jayna laughs. “Yeah. I guess I need to find just the right fetishist of my own—”

  Alice whirls around, nearly losing her delicate balance. “Will you stop calling her that?”

  “What do you care what I call her? It’s not like she stuck by you or anything.”

  Alice looks down at her feet. “I know. But I still miss her.”

  “So do something about it already.”

  “But she won’t see me.”

  “She’s fine with seeing you. She just doesn’t want you to see her back.”

  Alice’s head snaps up, her eyes focusing beyond the room. That’s it. Why didn’t she see it sooner?

  “Thanks,” she whispers, and clops down the hall on her crutches.

  “For what?” Jayna asks.

  But Alice doesn’t answer. She hobbles into her room, sits down heavily at the computer, and types out a message.

  “Marika. I have a proposal. I think we can make this work. Please come visit me. Bring a mask.”

  She gets an answer within moments. “I’ll be there.”

  Marika arrives the next day. Alice has asked Jayna to answer the door for her and bring Alice the mask. It is a white full-faced hood, and the eyes, ears, and mouth are taped over. Sitting in her mechanized wheelchair, Alice pulls a keypad onto her lap, tugs the mask over her head, lining up the nostril holes so she can breathe, and freezes in sudden panic.

  She is crippled again.

  This won’t work. It can’t work. She can’t go back to this. At least last time, it was for selfless reasons, but now—

  The muffled sound of approaching footsteps snaps her mind out of its panicked spiral. Through the plastic and the tape, she hears the bedroom door close, a body sink into a chair.

  She lets out a long breath. No. She has to try. Besides, she can stop it at any time. She has that power now.

  Alice carefully positions her hands over the keypad and types, “Can you look at me this way?”

  There is a long pause, then through the tape, she faintly hears Marika answer, “Yes . . . I . . . I think so.”

  The panic screams at her from the animal parts of her brain, but after ten years strapped helplessly into a chair, she’s gotten good at ignoring her flight response. “Do you think you can love me this way?” she asks.

  She feels a shaking hand touch the plastic over her face, then jerk away. “I don’t know. It’s not . . . it doesn’t look like you.”

  “We can have a new mask built. It can look just like the old one.”

  “But you . . .” The hand flutters to her chest. “The tubes are gone.”

  “I know.”

  “And . . . the walker . . .”

  “I can stay in the wheelchair for you.”

  “It’s not the same. You’re . . . I know you’re whole under there. I know you can get out of that chair, pull off that hood. You’re not my captive girl any longer.”

  “I know. But I’m willing to pretend. Isn’t that enough?”

  She hears a sigh. “I don’t know.”

  “Well let’s find out.”

  “Alice, I . . . I’ve never felt this way about anyone else. Never.”

  “I haven’t either.”

  “What if it’s because of the mask? What if I can’t love you out of the chair? I’m terrified that we’ll try and . . .”

  Alice nods. “I know.”

  “At least if I walk away, I can’t be disappointed.”

  “But it’ll still hurt.”

  There’s silence, and she hopes she’s struck a nerve.

  Finally, Marika says, “This isn’t normal. You deserve normal.”

  Alice laughs behind the plastic. “Honestly, I wouldn’t know what to do with normal. Not after . . .” Not after her senses were hijacked. Not after she spent over half her life crippled and strapped to a walker. Not after she sacrificed her childhood so that other children wouldn’t have to. She lifts her fingers from the keypad and clenches them into fists.

  Gentle hands clasp her fists and massage them until they relax.

  “You deserve someone who loves you for what you are,” Marika says. “Not for what we made you.”

  Alice lays her hands back on the keypad and types, “It’s too late for that. I am what you made me. And now I need you to love me again. You can put me in the old mask, and the old chair. I’ll be the old me for you, and the new me when you’re not around.”

  Marika clasps the mask and rests her forehead on Alice’s. “God, I missed you.”

  “We’ll make this work,” Alice types. “We have to.”

  Marika’s doorbell rings four times. That’s the signal.

  Alice logs off of the work database and closes her eyes, letting a deep breath out through her nose.

  This is never easy. But these are the rules.

  She grabs her canes and limps over to the walker. It’s a terrifying contraption—one that she’d never seen with her own eyes for all the years she spent in it. Dull metal, faded padding, straps and buckles, and that rail circling the entire thing, trapping the occupant inside.

  Trapping her inside.

  But she doesn’t need to look at it for long.

  She pulls off her clothes, straddles the chair, and carefully connects the seat/body interface until it is just right. Then she pulls on the thin cotton gown, tying only the very top tie, letting the rest hang loosely off of her still-thin frame.

  And then there’s the mask.

  This is the hardest part.

  It takes several deep breaths for her to work up the courage. But she finally closes her eyes and pulls it over her face, making sure the breathing tubes and earplugs are perfectly aligned before tightening the straps around her shaved scalp, sealing her inside the sound- and light-proof prison.

  It’s always heavier on her face than in her hands, and she sags forward, shuddering under the weight.

  She slides her hands into the thumbless mittens that are now permanently strapped to the rail. Marika won’t walk in until she uses their controls to type the all clear.

  And she hesitates, just like she does every day.

  No. This is love. And love requires sacrifice. Hers is just more tangible than most.

  She steels herself, then types, “I’m ready.”

  She feels the air change as the door opens, and there are hands strapping her into the mittens, trapping her in the chair until morning.

  And as always, panic grips her with that realization.

  But then hands and lips roam all over her, and she’s lost.

  JENNIFER PELLAND

  This story began at the Boskone science fiction convention. There was a painting in the art show of a woman with the top half of her head completely covered in a metal helmet. Wires trailed from it, and there was a wire-covered glove on her outstretched hand. Later, I went to a writing panel where one of the panelists asserted that you should try to write about things that fascinate you to the point of scaring you. So I
started musing in my composition notebook about how terrified I was of the thought of total captivity, which led me back to the painting, which eventually turned into a tentative idea for a story about a girl strapped into a chair with all her senses (but touch) hijacked for a greater cause.

  And then I realized it was a love story.

  This raised all sorts of interesting questions in my head about what it must be like to look for companionship when you have some sort of disability or disfigurement. What do you do when your choices are limited by your physical condition? Is it wrong to be with someone just because they’re turned on by your disability? And what if that person is your caretaker? Is it ethical for them to get into a romantic relationship with you? It was a scary story to write, and even scarier to show to other people, but I’m very pleased by the reaction it’s garnered.

  I’d like to thank Ellen Klages for helping me refine this story, and William Sanders for publishing it. I couldn’t wish for better godparents for my Captive Girl.

  NEBULA AWARD NOMINEE, SHORT STORY

  UNIQUE CHICKEN GOES IN REVERSE

  ANDY DUNCAN

  Andy Duncan’s short fiction has won two World Fantasy Awards and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award; this is his sixth Nebula nomination. His books include the collection Beluthahatchie and Other Stories, the anthology Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (coedited with F. Brett Cox), and the nonfiction Alabama Curiosities, soon to appear in a second edition. A 1994 graduate of Clarion West, he teaches part-time in the Honors College of the University of Alabama and works full-time as a senior editor at Overdrive magazine, “The Voice of the American Trucker.” He lives in Frostburg, Maryland, with his wife, Sydney.

  Father Leggett stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the three narrow stories of gray brick that was 207 East Charlton Street. Compared to the other edifices on Lafayette Square—the Colonial Dames fountain, the Low house, the Turner mansion, the cathedral of course—this house was decidedly ordinary, a reminder that even Savannah had buildings that did only what they needed to do, and nothing more.

  He looked again at the note the secretary at St. John the Baptist had left on his desk. Wreathed in cigarette smoke, Miss Ingrid fielded dozens of telephone calls in an eight-hour day, none of which were for her, and while she always managed to correctly record addresses and phone numbers on her nicotine-colored note paper, the rest of the message always emerged from her smudged No. 1 pencils as four or five words that seemed relevant at the time but had no apparent grammatical connection, so that reading a stack of Miss Ingrid’s messages back to back gave one a deepening sense of mystery and alarm, like intercepted signal fragments from a trawler during a hurricane. This note read:

  OConnors

  Mary

  Priest?

  Chicken!

  And then the address. Pressed for more information, Miss Ingrid had shrieked with laughter and said, “Lord, Father, that was two hours ago! Why don’t you ask me an easy one sometime?” The phone rang, and she snatched it up with a wink. “It’s a great day at St. John the Baptist. Ingrid speaking.”

  Surely, Father Leggett thought as he trotted up the front steps, I wasn’t expected to bring a chicken?

  The bell was inaudible, but the door was opened immediately by an attractive but austere woman with dark eyebrows. Father Leggett was sure his sidewalk dithering had been patiently observed.

  “Hello, Father. Please come in. Thank you for coming. I’m Regina O’Connor.”

  She ushered him into a surprisingly large, bright living room. Hauling himself up from the settee was a rumpled little man in shirtsleeves and high-waisted pants who moved slowly and painfully, as if he were much larger.

  “Welcome, Father. Edward O’Connor, Dixie Realty and Construction.”

  “Mr. O’Connor. Mrs. O’Connor. I’m Father Leggett, assistant at St. John for—oh, my goodness, two months now. Still haven’t met half my flock, at least. Bishop keeps me hopping. Pleased to meet you now, though.” You’re babbling, he told himself.

  In the act of shaking hands, Mr. O’Connor lurched sideways with a wince, nearly falling. “Sorry, Father. Bit of arthritis in my knee.”

  “No need to apologize for the body’s frailties, Mr. O’Connor. Why, we would all be apologizing all the time, like Alphonse and Gaston.” He chuckled as the O’Connors, apparently not readers of the comics supplement, stared at him. “Ahem. I received a message at the church, something involving . . .” The O’Connors didn’t step into the pause to help him. “Involving Mary?”

  “We’d like for you to talk to her, Father,” said Mrs. O’Connor. “She’s in the backyard, playing. Please, follow me.”

  The back of the house was much shabbier than the front, and the yard was a bare dirt patch bounded on three sides by a high wooden fence of mismatched planks. More brick walls were visible through the gaps. In one corner of the yard was a large chicken coop enclosed by a smaller, more impromptu wire fence, the sort unrolled from a barrel-sized spool at the hardware store and affixed to posts with bent nails. Several dozen chickens roosted, strutted, pecked. Father Leggett’s nose wrinkled automatically. He liked chickens when they were fried, baked or, with dumplings, boiled, but he always disliked chickens at their earlier, pre-kitchen stage, as creatures. He conceded them a role in God’s creation purely for their utility to man. Father Leggett tended to respect things on the basis of their demonstrated intelligence, and on that universal ladder chickens tended to roost rather low. A farmer once told him that hundreds of chickens could drown during a single rainstorm because they kept gawking at the clouds with their beaks open until they filled with water like jugs. Or maybe that was geese. Father Leggett, who grew up in Baltimore, never liked geese, either.

  Lying face up and spread-eagled in the dirt of the yard like a little crime victim was a grimy child in denim overalls, with bobbed hair and a pursed mouth too small even for her nutlike head, most of which was clenched in a frown that was thunderous even from twenty feet away. She gave no sign of acknowledgment as the three adults approached, Mr. O’Connor slightly dragging his right foot. Did this constitute playing, wondered Father Leggett, who had scarcely more experience with children than with poultry.

  “Mary,” said Mrs. O’Connor as her shadow fell across the girl. “This is Father Leggett, from St. John the Baptist. Father Leggett, this is Mary, our best and only. She’s in first grade at St. Vincent’s.”

  “Ah, one of Sister Consolata’s charges. How old are you, Mary?”

  Still lying in the dirt, Mary thrashed her arms and legs, as if making snow angels, but said nothing. Dust clouds rose.

  Her father said, “Mary, don’t be rude. Answer Father’s question.”

  “I just did,” said Mary, packing the utterance with at least six syllables. Her voice was surprisingly deep. She did her horizontal jumping jacks again, counting off this time. “One. Two. Three. Five.”

  “You skipped four,” Father Leggett said.

  “You would, too,” Mary said. “Four was hell.”

  “Mary.”

  This one word from her mother, recited in a flat tone free of judgment, was enough to make the child scramble to her feet. “I’m sorry, Mother and Father and Father, and I beg the Lord’s forgiveness.” To Father Leggett’s surprise, she even curtsied in no particular direction—whether to him or to the Lord, he couldn’t tell.

  “And well you might, young lady,” Mr. O’Connor began, but Mrs. O’Connor, without even raising her voice, easily drowned him out by saying simultaneously:

  “Mary, why don’t you show Father Leggett your chicken?”

  “Yes, Mother.” She skipped over to the chicken yard, stood on tiptoe to unlatch the gate, and waded into the squawking riot of beaks and feathers. Father Leggett wondered how she could tell one chicken from all the rest. He caught himself holding his breath, his hands clenched into fists.

  “Spirited child,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. O’Connor. Her unex
pected smile was dazzling.

  Mary relatched the gate and trotted over with a truly extraordinary chicken beneath one arm. Its feathers stuck out in all directions, as if it had survived a hurricane. It struggled not at all, but seemed content with, or resigned to, Mary’s attentions. The child’s ruddy face showed renewed determination, and her mouth looked ever more like the dent a thumb leaves on a bad tomato.

  “What an odd-looking specimen,” said Father Leggett, silently meaning both of them.

  “It’s frizzled,” Mary said. “That means its feathers grew in backward. It has a hard old time of it, this one.”