B is for Broken, page 28
The crystals edged the silence with soft bells. Charla thought about her tables at the market, the unknown histories behind each piece: the polite clinking conversations of silver cutlery against fine china. The whisper-drip of wax making its way down a pewter stem, pooling in a scalloped dish. The satisfying click of a lock sliding into place, keeping secrets inside a carved wooden box.
Vintage things held souls; these were the voices of the dead.
She thought of careless women plucking at babydolls, angry children coming to smash them.
I’m breakable too. And I can’t be.
The promise of transformation awed her from the moment it surfaced in his brilliant smile; the night would be sweet, but it demanded sacrifice. No turning back to what she’d been, but there was no telling what she’d become, either. She hid her breathlessness behind bitter sips of beer.
Leather could shield from what the road could do, wouldn’t shatter against it. She wanted to streamline it into her skin, all that confidence to handle such a wicked machine, make it part of herself to keep all the antiques from bursting apart, be a better guardian of an ever-trembling world. Of Lillie.
The alchemy itself would be severe, she knew. But the warlock? A notorious ancestry of roadlust, the blood passed down through the branches of his family, his dead honored in a lunar shrine that sang at every breeze... honored in the sparkling graveyard of her market table. She flashed on his ringed hands dancing along the porcelain.
She looked up at him. He was still staring into the fire, quieted by grief that had lain dormant for a long time, until today. Muscle was hidden within his slim body... teeth too. He was just choosing not to show them to her.
She brought her fingertips to his jawline, and he looked at her with surprise. Smiled, as she pulled him into a kiss. Her ribbons skimmed his face as she ran her hands over his back, down the patchwork and up under his jacket, gliding across his flesh. Tender and smooth inside his armor – just as vulnerable as she was, but better protected. And his hands, warm, strange and delightful across her senses. She savored this last sweet spell in her old skin before the moment came, when she’d take one deep breath and shed her petticoats forever.
She climbed on top of him, unzipped her dress, and he arched an appreciative eyebrow at her black lace bustier, tap panties, the prettiest of the vintage underclothes she always wore. Slowly, between kisses, they stripped down until she grabbed his jacket, whispered softly, leave it on. When he curled his arms around her and lifted her to be as close as they could possibly be, the leather brushed her cheek. Tough and soft, upholstery from the gentleman’s den stolen and refashioned for the road. The earthy fragrance melted her open.
Pain. She willed it aside and breathed him in. Thought of accidents, all the spills and breaks one could live through and keep going, keep flying down the highway. Absorb the impact, roll with it, ride it. The sting gave way to hunger, the way the engine had pulsed her on from below, steady vibrations against the asphalt, reaching up into her hammering heart. Tangled hair, ragged breath as she rocked against him.
She’d never hurt like this again. She could not be so easily broken, now.
Her skin was turning golden.
The soft morning light fell across silver compacts, cocktail rings. Lillie was sitting in her chair, needlework in her lap, teacup in her hand. Bessie Smith kept her company. Only the blues, today.
“Mama.”
Lillie looked up.
Charla stood in front of the tables, completely dressed in leather. The pants were almost too big for her, and her lace bustier peeked from beneath the vest, but it all fit, just enough. Her hair was combed completely straight and fell down past her shoulders, with only two ribbons left, trailing down the sides of her face.
Her eyes glowed.
She walked onto their lot, unfolded a wooden chair and faced Lillie. The teacup settled back in its dish with a little clank. All around them, other merchants were busy setting their wares out for the day, drinking coffee, chatting with each other.
“Were you afraid I would leave?” asked Charla.
Nearby, on another lot, a child began to cry. Lillie didn’t answer.
“I’m still me. You must believe that. I wasn’t going to leave you. I just needed...” To change? To become something else?
“...I needed to become stronger.” Yes.
She had crept out of Adrian’s bed at dawn and started to put on her clothes, but caught sight of his riding gear. It was tossed around his bedroom in plentiful piles of beaten black. Careful not to take anything emblazoned with his family’s symbology, she dressed in his warrior armor. She brushed her hair out, gathered up her ribbons in a clump and knotted them to the string of crystals. Barefoot, she had walked back to the market along the side of the road, the sand warm on her soles, the breeze playing with the two remaining ribbons in her hair.
Her peacock dress lay crumpled on his floor. The pretext to see him again.
Lillie stared at her, took it all in. Charla watched the storm of emotions within her mother’s eyes: gladness, and acceptance, maybe even admiration... but a trace of unmistakable anguish. The teatime sprite was gone forever.
“I’ll get you something to drink.” Lillie went into the camper and brought out one of Charla’s favorite cups. Orange and pink roses tangled beneath the rim, with a couple more blooms hiding inside, just waiting to be discovered as the tea was sipped away. She placed it in Charla’s hands and filled it up, just as a man in a polo shirt called out to them.
“How much is this picture frame?”
We’ll talk later.
Lillie walked over to handle him, and Charla settled back on the chair, looked out over the market. The early birds were out in full force. The start of another work day.
A small figure blurred by the table.
Something occurred to her that wouldn’t have, yesterday, before that thrilling ride. Charla got up, grabbed a crate of soda bottles from beside the camper. Nothing truly valuable—just glass recycling.
“Hey! Hey kid!”
Surprised, the boy turned around, pedaled back. He stopped in front of her.
“You’re bored to death, aren’t you?”
Silently, he stared at her, before nodding a little.
“You like breaking things. Alright. Here—smash all this instead, as much as you want. But in the dumpsters, OK?”
He blinked at her. Being encouraged to do something most adults yelled at you for? Unheard of, she could see. He took the box from her and balanced it on his seat, looking unsure of what to say.
“You don’t look like you did yesterday,” he finally managed, as he walked his bike away.
Hopefully that would be the end of it. If not... well. He’d find out what kind of teeth were hidden behind her smile.
So would she.
Charla went back to her chair and sat down, picked up her tea. Lots of milk and sugar, just the way she liked it. She watched a couple of teenagers try to haggle with her mother over a vanity set as she sipped the sweet warmth.
Thought of kisses.
She ran her lips over the edge of the cup. Last night. Last night. She shuddered, bit lightly on the gilt. Firelight. Adrian’s skin beneath her fingers. His hands on her hips, in her hair. The crystals calling from the window. The grind of his body beneath her. Inside her.
In the distance, a cycle roared.
The china shattered between her teeth.
Y is for Yesterday
KV Taylor
I.
I didn’t expect it to look like a pumpkin exploding. I suppose when you see it on television they cut out the gorier bits, even on HBO—or they go the opposite direction and make it look as if human blood and guts are under twelve-thousand pounds of direct pressure. The truth is that when someone is shot in the head, it’s generally like something in between. And reminded me of our brothers lining up pumpkins on the fence for shooting with their air rifles on cool fall days.
I lost my mind; that’s what the courts decided, anyhow. It didn’t help that the woman who shot Marisa got off on a technicality. No, I said, no, Marisa lost her mind because she rolled down her window to give a stranger directions. But the mind and the brain aren’t the same thing, are they? I was just confused. That happens a lot.
For a long time, I wondered why they couldn’t just put her back together. Scrape up the brain, mend the pieces of skull, make her smile and laugh again. For an even longer time, I wondered why she didn’t shoot me too. Why she left me in the passenger seat, just sitting there with the right number of holes in my head. I wondered why she didn’t shoot me instead, if she wasn’t even interested in taking the car. Or maybe she was and she panicked and pulled the trigger instead. I don’t know and there was a mistrial. All I could think of over and over was a pumpkin sitting on the fence out back and how the bits exploded out of it.
I don’t even know her name, the woman who shot my Marisa. I know where she lived. I know she was supposed to be taking a taxi to the airport. I know everyone thinks she’s on vacation.
But she’s not. She’s in my basement.
II.
“It’s okay,” I lie. “I’m a nurse.”
Maybe it’s not a complete lie, maybe I’m a self-trained nurse. Stitching up dolls and dresses and teddy bears since the age of three, since my clumsy little fingers could pull thread through an eye. Marisa always broke her toys, the wild twin, my free half. I always mended them, the quiet twin, her conscience. It’s like learning to walk with one leg and no crutches; I know I can do it, but I keep thinking something’s missing.
No one else should have to go through this suffering, this pain, so I’m here to make sure. And so is the woman who shot Marisa in the head. She’s crusty with dried mud from outdoors and dirt from the unfinished basement floor, chained to the hot water heater. She screams when I take a step closer.
I say, “There’s no one here. Marisa’s gone now. If I’d known how to put her back together she’d be here, but then, you wouldn’t, would you?”
I’m amazed she hasn’t burst into tears, but maybe there’s no water left in her to make them. I crouch to hand her a bottle of water and she cringes, even though I haven’t laid a finger on her since dragging her unconscious body down here. Finally she snatches the water and swallows it down, and I shake my head. I tell her, “Not too fast. You’ll vomit.”
“Fuck you, bitch.” She spits like a cat when she talks. Like a mean cat, not Marisa’s cat Spartacus, who sits on the stairs watching us with interest. The woman adds, “You fuckin’ monster.”
I nod, because she’s not wrong. “At least my monstering is for a good cause,” I say. “You can’t say that, for yourself.”
“I’m gonna cut your fucking heart out,” she promises.
I doubt this very much, but don’t see the point in telling her. I know how dangerous she is. I’ve seen my twin sister’s brains blasted all over the front of her Chevy. I was willing to let the State have her, but they lost her, and now she’s mine.
I go back upstairs and look to my closet for inspiration. Spartacus follows on his silent padded feet and asks me what I’m doing, so I tell him. (Not really, of course, I know cats don’t speak; I haven’t lost that part of my mind. Yet.) I ask him what he thinks would work better. Could I use buttons? No, that would leave gaps. Velcro would become messy.
Well use a zipper, dummy, Spartacus doesn’t say, with an indolent lick of his paw.
I have to admit, he has a point. I pick up Marisa’s old Teddy Ruxpin and stroke his matted fur, smiling. The zipper on the back broke when we were ten, and I’d replaced it all by myself. Of course, of course, it was perfect. “I don’t know if silk will hold,” I admit.
Wire, suggests Spartacus.
So it’s just a trip to the hardware store before I’m ready, at last.
III.
The woman’s blood mingles with the dirt of the floor, dirt some pioneer woman once trod while stacking her potatoes and canned goods for winter. There was a log house here before Pappy built this one, and this one is ours, mine and Marisa’s, now our brothers are all long gone. Shooting pumpkins in other states. They’d be appalled, I think with odd detachment, as I watch the red and brown mix into a thick, muddy black. Look at the mess in Pappy’s basement.
I brought a pile of towels, but now the time’s near I can’t wait. I shovel some new dirt over and lift the woman’s half-smashed head—yes, like a pumpkin, too, except when our brothers would run around the neighborhood on Halloween smashing jack o’ lanterns. The sound had been different, but also better, so I didn’t mind. There’s too much blood to work on the back, where the smashing is really good, so I start at the front with the silver wire. It’ll be congealed soon and all I’ll have to do is push in the wet, pinkish-grayish brain and sew it up tight, silver wire and shiny new zipper. That’ll hold it in. That’ll hold it all in and stop it from looking like our brothers were in here with their Louisville Sluggers.
I used my own, not theirs, anyhow. I don’t like guns.
The light fades through the tinted windows and the blood turns to jelly and the piles of red-turning-brown towels beside me grows. It’s soaked through my jeans now but it’s going to be worth it when it all comes together. Smears of red fingerprints on the bright new zipper, just like Teddy Ruxpin’s when I pricked my fingers trying to sort him out. I have to stand and pull the cord on the naked bulb overhead to really get into things, but the wire’s working beautifully. A bit of bone here and a tuck of brain there. “Now who’s the monster?” I ask into her open skull.
Even when I hear someone ring the doorbell, even when I hear footsteps overhead, even when Spartacus comes flying down the stairs, I don’t stop. If I can just finish. If I can just show them.
They say my name and the footsteps come down the stairs. My fingers are shaking, cold and stiff with drying, clotting life. But all I have to do is put all the stuffing back inside, just to prove it works, and no one will ever have to feel this pain again. “It had to be her,” I say reasonably. “It had to be her because she shot Marisa. Who else should help develop the technique that could’ve saved her.”
Someone throws up, and I look up from my work at the retching sound. “Oh,” I say.
There are two men and one woman in uniform. When I notice the gun pointed at my head, I’m carried out of myself. Floating up to the ceiling, looking down at my body with the mess of her head in my hands, the remnants of her misshapen skull decorated by tiny silver teeth.
I don’t know, comments Spartacus from the stairs where he sits watching and lashing his tail. I think some of her can still get out through the gaps between the metal parts…
I don’t think that’s right, but if it is… I’ll do better next time.
Z is for Zipper
Contributor Biographies
BRITTANY WARMAN is a PhD candidate in English and Folklore at The Ohio State University, where she concentrates on the intersection of literature and folklore. Her creative work has been published by or is forthcoming from Mythic Delirium, Jabberwocky Magazine, Ideomancer, inkscrawl, Cabinet des Fées: Scheherezade's Bequest, and others. Her story “Q is for Queen” appeared in A is for Apocalypse. She can be found online at BrittanyWarman.com
MILO JAMES FOWLER is a teacher by day and a speculative fictioneer by night. When he's not grading papers, he's imagining what the world might be like in a dozen alternate realities. His work has appeared in AE SciFi, Cosmos, Daily Science Fiction, Nature, Shimmer, and the Wastelands 2 anthology. His novel Captain Bartholomew Quasar and the Space-Time Displacement Conundrum will be available later this year. www.milojamesfowler.com
C.S. MACCATH is a writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry whose work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, Mythic Delirium, Murky Depths, Witches & Pagans and other publications. Her poetry has been nominated twice for the Rhysling Award, her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and it has also received honorable mention in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection. You can find her online at csmaccath.com.
SARA CLETO is a PhD student at the Ohio State University where she studies folklore, literature, disability, and the places where they intersect. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Goblin Fruit, Cabinet des Fees: Scheherazade's Bequest, Ideomancer, Niteblade, The Golden Key, and others. Her work has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.
SAMANTHA KYMMELL-HARVEY's stories can be found in Spark: A Creative Anthology, Every Day Fiction, and Waylines just to name a few. She is a 2012 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. You can follow her adventures on her blog: http://samanthakymmell-harvey.blogspot.com/
MEGAN ARKENBERG lives in northern California. Her work has appeared in Asimov's, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, and dozens of other places. She procrastinates by editing the fantasy e-zine Mirror Dance.
GARY B. PHILLIPS is a writer and software developer surviving in the desert wastes of Arizona with his wife, three children, three cats, and four chickens. His work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, and the A is for Apocalypse anthology, among others. He reads slush for Flash Fiction Online. Find him on Twitter @garybphillips.
ALEXANDRA SEIDEL is a writer, poet, and editor. H is for Hanging Man (aka The Hanging Man Who Does Not Heal) is her second story in the Alphabet Series. Other than that, her writing appeared in Strange Horizons, Lackington's, Stone Telling, and elsewhere. If you are so inclined you can follow Alexa on Twitter (@Alexa_Seidel) or read her blog: www.tigerinthematchstickbox.blogspot.com.
