Weldon walked with his friend to the front gate. “Don’t think too much, or you’ll end up like her.”
Bert said, “I know that I’ll end up worse.”
As Bert walked out of the room, Weldon blew a smoke ring into the air and thought about Martha.
Weldon had his dinner early and went to bed. He was tired, but he could not sleep.
It felt good to be back at his old country mansion after so many years. In the glow of the bedside lamp, the shadows of the old furniture pieces drew strange shapes over the wall. Weldon studied his pistol under the lamplight. He smiled drily.
Nothing works better than a bullet.
Martha was beautiful, as he remembered her. She had a little mole just under her right eye, but it made her look different than the other girls. Her father, Nick, was a faithful worshipper of whiskey. Weldon had lent him a lot of money over the years; Nick thankfully wasted it in the local pub.
Weldon used to look at Martha in a not-very-brotherly way. One day he was visiting at Nick’s house, but Nick was too busy with the booze to chat with him. Martha was cooking in the kitchen when Weldon entered. She was young and breathtaking with her long auburn hair tied into a loose bun and her hazel eyes practically dancing when she looked at him. Desire rose inside of him, and he knew he had to possess her.
At first she objected, but she was no match to his physical power and she yielded herself.
Nobody knew of the incident except Bert. Weldon could not keep it from his best friend. Bert delightedly patted his shoulder. “Good catch, John!”
Two months after this incident Nick died of cirrhosis of the liver, and after three more months Martha came to visit Weldon with a swollen belly.
He couldn’t believe it. The dirty whore expected me to marry her!
So the girl was immediately kicked out of the mansion.
The tongues of the local people were sharp. Although no one was bold enough to say it in public, the news that John Weldon had planted a seed inside Old Nick’s daughter without marrying her traveled faster than a forest fire. At first, Weldon cared little for the rumours. But Martha’s belly grew larger, and the whisperings increased. John Weldon felt like a criminal in the accusing eyes of the people of the Good Folk village.
Why didn’t you get rid of it when you could, whore? You planned to be my wife only because of that ugly, fat belly of yours? You wanted to be a part of the Weldon fortune?
You’ll have to pay for this.
One day Bert came for a visit and informed him that the people were thinking that he would ultimately marry the girl. It was then that Weldon realised that he could do nothing to stop the people from murmuring. The gossip was gradually ruining his reputation as an aristocrat and a gentleman.
What he could do was, obviously, far more ferocious.
Weldon bided his time until Martha gave birth. He visited the hospital and went to see the boy while Martha slept. He waited for two more months. Then one night he invited Martha to his house and snatched the baby from her.
He did not want to kill Martha; he wanted her to suffer.
Nothing works better than a bullet.
He took the bloody bundle to the Fields of Charity and buried it.
Bert kept Martha silent and made her watch through the window. In muted horror, she was forced to see the bundle go inside the earth.
The next morning, people found Martha wandering in the Fields of Charity and howling the boy’s name.
Based upon her story, the police filed a case against Weldon. But he had been careful; he had planned it for months. The police found no clue, and he was released for lack of evidence.
The body was never found.
It was thought by the people of the village that the place where Martha saw Weldon bury the bundle was not the actual place of burial. He must have planted it somewhere else later, and it was not possible for the police to dig up the whole of the vast Fields of Charity.
Weldon went out of the village for some long years. Martha went insane. End of story.
Weldon switched off the light. He thought of Bert.
Bert used to be a trusted friend and equally sadistic. But today he had not seemed to be his old self.
Bert has softened.
He sighed and went off to sleep. In his sleep, he heard the sound of rain pattering on the windowpane.
The next morning, one of his servants gave him the news. He rushed to the Fields of Charity in his nightdress and slippers.
Bert was dead.
He was staring with open eyes. His face had an indescribably horrified expression.
Weldon saw something else, but could not share it with anyone.
Where Bert’s body was found, there were a number of little footprints on soft mud, like those of little children.
The doctor who did the postmortem said that it was a case of heart attack by sudden shock. But Weldon knew better.
Night came like a creeping lizard over the village and Weldon shut himself inside his mansion. He sat by the fire with a glass of whiskey in his hand, sipping and reliving the memories. His faithful pistol rested on his lap.
Thunder boomed outside; it started raining again. A window had not been latched properly and the wind threw it open with a rattle. Through the open window, gusts of wind full of watery grains were coming in. Weldon drained his glass and got up to shut it.
That was when he heard the faint giggling.
Lightning flashed and Weldon saw the dark shape standing outside the window. He could not tell whether it was a man or a woman, but it stood there.
He shouted, “Who’s there?”
The shape did not stir, nor did it answer. It just stood there. Lightning flashes made it look like a creature from an unknown world.
“Answer me, or I’ll shoot you.”
The shape giggled again and Weldon swallowed a lump in his throat. How could he forget that voice?
He raised his pistol. “Go away, or I’ll shoot.”
The giggling did not stop.
He shouted, “Go away!”
Martha said in a raspy voice, “Why don’t you come out here, John? I’m so happy that you’ve come to see me after so many years.”
Weldon gritted his teeth.
He fired at her but missed.
“Do you know what happened to Bert, John? You know what he said to me before he died? He said, ‘I’m sorry’! After so many years and so many things, he just said, ‘I’m sorry’! Are you sorry, John?”
Weldon fired his pistol again. Again he missed.
Rainy wind wet his eyelashes; he wiped the water from his face and saw the dark shape moving away.
She killed Bert! She’ll have to pay for this!
Weldon wrapped himself in a raincoat and ran out of the mansion carrying a flashlight and his pistol. He could still see the figure headed towards the Fields of Charity. He followed.
The rain was pouring from the sky, dousing his head, but he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered to him was to hunt that woman down. A blind anger drove him through the muddy Fields of Charity.
Over his head, lightning bared its teeth. The distance between him and his prey decreased. It seemed to Weldon that Martha was tiring; she was staggering to get away from him in the thick mud.
Weldon smiled a cruel smile. This was easier than hunting small game. She squatted upon the soft ground. He aimed. Another sitting duck!
This time, he hit her. Martha dropped to the wet earth, clutching her left shoulder.
Weldon came forward and shone the flashlight upon her body.
“What did you say, wench? You want blood payment?”
Martha looked up; there was a strange smile on her face.
She had grown old in these years, her skin loose, her eyes shrunken, the mole on her right cheek looking like a round clot of blood under the flashlight. She was still clutching her shoulder where the bullet had pierced her, but then he noticed, oddly, that she was convulsing in silent laughter.
“You got it wrong, John. See this?”
She showed her arm to him; there was a long sharp cut running from the wrist to the elbow. Under the flashlight, the wound, fairly fresh, looked like a dark fissure on the crust of the earth.
“I want you to pay for what you did, John, but you are not the one to pay the blood payment. It’s me!”
Weldon felt something weird happening around him. He swivelled his flashlight here and there, but could spot nothing through the deluge of raindrops falling on the vast Fields of Charity.
“This was the payment I made to the Earth Mother so I could show Bert something pleasant a few nights ago.” She gestured to her wound and imitated a knife slicing over her arm. “And tonight you’ll see it all too.”
She smiled with disdain. “All I needed was to make you shoot me upon this ground. You see, the blood of a victim is a powerful offering.”
She pointed to the blood flowing from her shoulder onto the muddy ground. Kneeling, she said solemnly with closed eyes, “I offer you my blood as payment, O Mother Earth, to raise in plenty those who were snatched away from their mother. Curse those, O Mother, who bleed both the child and the mother.”
Weldon felt an uncanny sensation again. The ground began throbbing beneath his feet. Pulsing as if . . . as if he were standing on an enormous living body.
Thunder growled and streaks of searing light flashed across the sky. The flashlight fell from his hand, now stiff with shock. With the next violent burst of lightning, Weldon watched with disbelief as the ground began swelling into thousands of mud heaps, round like the bellies of pregnant women. The heaps expanded, and then suddenly exploded into muddy bubbles and bloody waters. In horror he watched as little babies slowly emerged out of them. The sky showered them with more heavy rain and they crawled and waddled in the deep brown mud of the Fields of Charity. With the next flash of lightning, Weldon could see that every one of them had a neat little dark hole in the forehead.
“What’s this, you witch? What are you doing?” He tried to shout over torrent of rain, but hundreds of droplets hit his tongue like sharp arrows as soon as he opened his mouth. The wind rose, and the water beat down on him even more severely.
Martha cackled like a madwoman. Her maniacal shrieks were a perfect blend of joy and hatred. “Mother Earth is extremely productive and fertile. You reap a hundred times more back from what you’ve sown.”
John Weldon knew what he had sown in these grounds.
He struggled to pull his feet out of the mud, but tripped and fell into the muck. He struggled to stand, but the mud was so deep now that he couldn’t pull himself upright. The little babies with holes in their foreheads came closer to his body. He shot at them. Some fell, but more spawned from the clay. He shot at those until his pistol clicked empty. Thunder boomed with laughter over his head. Lightning flashed, revealed the blazing eyes of a smiling woman eagerly waiting for the moment of her lifetime. It was then that he noticed the fingernails of the babies were rapidly changing into sharp claws. And these mud creatures had needlelike teeth, reminding him of sparkling piranha.
The earth sucked him down, covering his body with cold mud as the little babies climbed upon his chest.
Soumya Sundar Mukherjee is an admirer of engaging science fiction, horror and fantasy tales. He is a bilingual writer who lives in West Bengal, India, and writes about stuff bad dreams are made of. He teaches English in a school and spends his leisure time in writing, studying the myths and legends of different cultures around the globe, and drawing monsters both horrifying and cute. When he is not writing or making any interplanetary journeys in his pet-spaceship, he remains busy reading emails received in [email protected].
Acquired Taste
by
Chad Stroup
Uncle Ray peels back the first layer or so of his thumb and drops it in the frying pan, adds some cayenne pepper and liquid amino acids, says those two things get wedged in the creases of the fingerprints and spruce up the flavor real good. He wraps up his thumb tip in a previously soiled cloth bandage before the wound has a chance to take a deep breath. He doesn’t even wince. Hunger pangs trump traditional pain. He adds a few hunks of Yukon Gold potatoes with the skin intact and some slices of white onion and stares at the sizzling food.
Jess Tyler watches from across the room, her bantam body curled up in a cracked plastic Adirondack chair. Jess is not old enough to sign the Eat Treaty yet, so her Uncle Ray has to take care of all the feeding duties around the house, which he has proudly done ever since the secretive flesh sharers across the nation were finally permitted to publicly declare their beliefs. The Tylers had some leftovers of Mr. Martin, from next-door, out in the spare freezer in the garage, but those are gone now. Jess thinks Mr. Martin was a good neighbor, a good friend, hell … a good American. He knew about the worth of sacrifice and what an honor it was to be consumed, absorbed, and shat out. From the earth and back to the soil, Uncle Ray had said when he took his first nibble of Mr. Martin’s sautéed cartilage in between two stale slices of ciabatta. The true cycle of life.
But their neighborly feast was cut short because some jerks broke into their garage a couple of nights ago and took what was left of Mr. Martin, what would have been enough to feed Uncle Ray and Jess and her big brother Jojo for at least a week. Normally they have Jojo guard the garage ’cause he’s built like a fortified prison, but Jojo was out sharing some flesh with his lady friend last night. Sharing some flesh in both the biblical and the modern sense. Jojo came home this morning with fiery bloodshot eyes and a soaked bandage around his left forearm. He said they were spreadin’ ’round some blood like may-o-naise. Must have been quite a party.
Poor stealing from the poor, just like before, Uncle Ray says in an unintentionally poetic cadence, followed by a few indiscernible obscenities directed toward the thieves. Jess doesn’t know much about “before.” She was less than two years old when the Great Reverence passed into law in Black Briar. Even now, at fourteen, she can barely grasp what eating meant in the old world, what a typical meal might have consisted of. How it played into the family dynamic. How the now sacred flesh of sentient nonhuman beings was ravaged and disrespected. The concept is like a dream that never existed, a wraith of the recent past.
Uncle Ray likes to spout off about how Aunt Nickie used to be such a great homemaker and made the most delectable peanut butter cookies every Sunday. From scratch. He licks his lips as he describes how she used to make crisscross impressions in the tops of the cookies with fork tines. But what does anything about Aunt Nickie matter? She passed through multiple colons months ago, and none of that flavor was even remotely close to peanut butter.
Uncle Ray finishes frying up his thumb layer and veggies, takes out a butter knife and slices the skin sliver in perfect thirds, sprinkles some sea salt and freshly crushed peppercorn on it. They each crunch on a meager piece. Uncle Ray Mmm mmm mmms all the way to Christmas and Jojo releases a belch like a whale queef, but Jess just forces a grin. She’s had worse and she’s had better. She feels grease tickling her lip and reaches for a napkin with her right hand, temporarily forgetting that the fingers are barely healed stumps, sacrificed for the greater good of nutrition. Just because Jess can’t legally sign the Eat Treaty doesn’t mean there aren’t some loopholes to be found courtesy of Uncle Ray.
The phantom pains are still fresh, wiggling like invisible, bony worms. Jess feels the sensation may never go away. She switches hands, uses the napkin, and washes down the family flesh with tepid gray water. She anticipates there will be ice cream for dessert, still does not know for certain what the creamy, bitter substance is made of, shudders to think of the possibilities. Sugar and coconut flavoring can only mask so much, and sexual education during class time has robbed her of at least some smidge of naiveté.
When the family shows up to Worship the following morning there are three animals strategically placed on the stage: a Saanen goat,
an albino cow, and a Flemish rabbit. The goat will not lift its head from its water bowl, the cow is wearing a muumuu for some reason, and the rabbit is extra twitchy. The church is not the animals’ natural environment, yet somehow they look like they belong. Jess was hoping for the appearance of a gharial this time, just as she always does, but reptiles are a rarity at Worship and Uncle Ray has promised her again and again that those ugly shits went extinct prior to the Great Reverence. He’s sure of it.
Jess ignores Uncle Ray’s rudeness. She believes the gharial is a creature of beauty, of wonder, a crocodile designed as if God had taken design tips from Pablo Picasso. One hundred and ten teeth, and yet Jess has read in some old dusty encyclopedia in the Black Briar Library that there is not a single documented attack on a human. She does not believe they are truly extinct, though. How could there suddenly just be none of something? Just like that, snapped out existence? Would the last one even know it was the last? Who would allow any of God’s innocent creatures to pass from this world, and will humans one day be a part of this list? If so, who will be around to take note of it?
Jess will find another gharial. She knows it is her destiny to see one in the scaly flesh. The image of the gharial comes to her in her dreams some nights, smiling its elongated smile, gazing at her with reptilian wisdom.
Jess keeps leaning over to Uncle Ray, asking him in a whisper why they can’t eat any of the animals that pass naturally in the world. The ones that were treated like part of the family, bathed weekly, passed around as community idols, medicated into euphoric states. Not that Jess even wants to eat them, exactly, but it seems like a waste. When Jess’s gerbil Herman went to that Great Runabout in the Sky two months ago, his empty husk was placed on their mantel and a shrine was constructed to honor his sweet life. The smell eventually became too much to bear and Herman was given a proper burial in the side yard, the topsoil sprinkled with lye. Jess always asks Uncle Ray about this waste of perfectly edible meat, and Uncle Ray does his best not to act irritated when he responds. Jojo tells Jess to Shut up ’cause she’s a stupid know-nothing ingrate brat, and Uncle Ray says not to question the decisions of God and Government. All will become clear at adulthood. Jess has heard some stories in between class times about those who broke the laws of the Great Reverence, and those weren’t all that pleasant—they made tales of the Spanish Inquisition seem like a senior-citizen cruise in the Bahamas, so she thinks maybe she should just listen to Uncle Ray. He’s no dummy. He used to be a senator or a manager or a janitor or something useful like that.
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