Along with the potatoes and roaches, Spiro survives the apocalypse via the simple expedient of immortality–or a mortality less permanent than most. His weary arms tug him out of the rubble inch by inch. The radiation, he discovers, tickles.
There’s another figure shambling down the street; Spiro has to polish his eyes on his trousers three times to believe it. The space between its hat and collar is empty.
“A construct?” he croaks to the silent morning. “I’m spending the next epoch with a filthy speechless penny-magic construct?“
The figure stops. HI! says his lapel. MY NAME IS BOULEVARD.
Friday, November 24, 2006
In the white there is the Word, and the Word is MEIT.
Rob tries to speak the Word and stops. Ah, yes, to say the Word would make it transient; to speak is to debase it. He still his tongue. He stills his breath.
Rob lurches and falls. His vision blurs, then doubles: MEIT and MEIT cross over each other and become something else. Different. Rob understands that this is wrong. He must be rid of it. He must make it transient.
“EMET,” he whispers. Then he’s choking, gagging through the vomit in his nose, struggling with a rough brown blanket.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
“No,” says Rob, at the threshold.
Darlene’s already inside, working a mortar and pestle. In an arc to her side are slivers of white bone; to the other are tiny plastic bags. Splayed out on the floor next to her is the angel, white and dessicated. Its face is hidden. All its hands are crooked, its endless recursive wings, the savage spine–
“Don’t get squeamish,” grunts Salem, and shoves him. He trips and crashes, cuts his hands. White dust. He looks up at Darlene, and his eyes are black.
“You haven’t taught me anything,” he whispers. Darlene’s face is suddenly fearful.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Someone’s replaced her hospital bandage with a new one, softer, handmade. Eventually the same person tries to remove it; Holly always pulls away. She realizes slowly that she’s not in the hospital, but she’s not curious. She eats and sleeps and bathes one-handed.
“I’m afraid it changed the lines on my palm,” she says after a week of silence. “I broke some glass. I’m afraid there will be scars, and…” She clears her throat.
“You should have someone read it for you,” says Maya. “I know a g–lady. She’s really good.”
Holly hears rain on the window. She nods.
Wednesday, September 7, 2005
Rob can just see the acupuncture needles from the corners of his eyes, when he blinks out tears. The sewing is less sophisticated. It’s thick black upholstery thread, big X-shaped stitches, and they’re starting to bleed.
He’s screaming through his nose, but his limbs and jaw are locked up by Salem’s expertise. He can feel the paper corner Darlene slipped under his tongue. She’s writing something on his forehead, now: four characters. Salem bites the thread and ties it off.
“Goodbye,” Darlene says a little sadly, and wipes away the first letter.
Rob’s alone. The needles are gone. Everything’s white.
Rob’s already there when Dogcatcher arrives, looking crowded on a square acre of empty roof. She slips up behind him and runs one finger down his neck; he doesn’t even jump. She’s impressed.
“You’ve got it?” he asks. She saunters in front of him, pulling the locket out of her top. It glints even in starlight.
“And you’ve got my stray,” she says.
He nods down the street. “There. The blue row house. I’ve been… watching the place.”
“You’re sure?”
“Tomorrow or the day after,” says Rob. “They all end up there eventually.”
Inside the blue row house, Maya sleeps, unaware.
“Thought you were supposed to use dirt from a grave,” says Rob, a bit hopelessly.
“You see any graveyards around here?” snaps Darlene.
“Yeah, behind the church at 28th and Madison–”
“Shut up,” she says. “Graveyard dirt. Goofer dust. Huh. You might get lucky and find one who got buried and wasn’t dead yet, but most of the time that’s stale power. Now this…” She scoops another fistful of sand into the baggie. “This is a thousand people, all sticking their deaths into the same soil. See?”
Rob notices a Kool butt in the bag, all magenta on one end.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Maya screams, to her shame, when Salem’s hatpin stabs through her hand and into the wall. “Quiet,” he says, and slaps her. Her ears ring; she almost misses the tinkling crash.
Rob is up, white and sweating, on his knees. He holds Boulevard’s watch. He’s smashed its face and bent up its second hand, which keeps ticking, crookedly.
“You won’t,” says Darlene. “You can’t.”
He wets two fingers with his blood and holds them above it; his eyes are wide, and very cold. Darlene and Maya hold their breath.
But Salem doesn’t. He snarls, and blurs; and then Maya goes deaf.
“You can open your mouth and eat,” Maya says, quietly and firmly. “I fed you before you came back to yourself. You don’t need me to now.”
Rob reaches for the pad and pencil, but Maya holds them away. “No crutches,” she says.
He looks angry, but it subsides. He stands and walks to the door to flip off the lights. Maya doesn’t understand until he turns back, and there they are, faint as moonlight on his lips: stitches.
He reaches for the pad again, and this time she lets him have it. You can open them, he writes. I can’t.
Thursday, November 4, 2004
“What do you call this spell, anyway?” asks Rob, a little repulsed.
“Extract of ariolimax columbianus, Vittles,” says Salem. There’s less venom in his voice now: blow-drying the slugs seems to calm him. “And ’snot a spell. One of your pharmacos will catch on in five years, but for now it’s our secret…”
Rob has his doubts about its efficacy, but Salem’s demonstration knocks them out as quickly as it does his victims. He snaps a pinch of powdered slug into the air and waits: seconds later, a big man in a kerchief walks through and sleeps face-first into the wall.
