APEX MAGAZINE
ISSUE 82, MARCH 2016

Jason Sizemore, Editor-In-Chief

Table of Contents

Editorial

Words from the Editor-in-Chief—Jason Sizemore

Fiction

Agent of V.A.L.I.S.—Lavie Tidhar

Death Flowers of Never-Forgotten Love—Jason Sanford

Screaming Without a Mouth—Travis Heermann

Dolly—Elizabeth Bear

Nonfiction

Interview with Author Travis Heermann—Andrea Johnson

Interview with Artist Vincent Sammy—Russell Dickerson

Poetry

Allegory of the Woman from the Earth—Rodney Gomez

BlackRiver—Caleb J. Oakes

Chimney Witch—Matthew Chamberlin

Naked—Annie Neugebauer

The Sword Excalibur—David Barber

Words from the Editor-in-Chief

Jason Sizemore

Welcome to issue 82!

In March, 2005, Apex published the first issue of Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest—a precursor to the digital zine you’re reading now. Since that first issue, mostly I’ve had a blast. I keep waiting for the publishing fire to die out, but it keeps burning brightly. Being able to bring you great content such as what you’ll find in this month’s issue fuels my enthusiasm and helps push me through the stress of a busy publication schedule.

Our three original works this month are all over the place thematically. In Lavie Tidhar’s novelette “Agent of V.A.L.I.S.”, the protagonist is a forgotten science fiction writer who gets involved in an adventure containing Philip K. Dick, Jesus Christ, and an all-powerful sentient AI. Jason Sanford’s story “Death Flowers of Never Forgotten Love” posits what if we had the technology to alter our memories of the recently deceased. “Screaming Without a Mouth” by Travis Heerman mines the unsettling fog of J-horror with modern technology in a memorable and depressing manner—a story that our readers will recognize as belonging in no other publication than Apex Magazine.

We welcome Elizabeth Bear back to our pages with “Dolly.” Her reprint about emerging sentience and a murder is a recent classic of the genre.

Russell Dickerson interviews cover artist Vincent Sammy about how to create horror within art without resorting to over-the-top gore. Andrea Johnson questions author Travis Heerman about the use of an epistolary format and productivity. Rounding out the issue are five great poems from five great poets: Rodney Gomez, Caleb J. Oakes, Matthew Chamberlin, Annie Neugebauer, and David Barber.

Our podcast this month is “Death Flowers of Never Forgotten Love” by Jason Sanford.

Check back next month when we have fiction by Andrew Neil Grey, Brandon H. Bell, and the amazing Catherynne M. Valente.

Jason Sizemore

Editor-in-Chief

Agent of V.A.L.I.S.

Lavie Tidhar

8,200 words

Philip K. Dick — American author (1928-1982) of many novels and short stories. In later years Dick began to believe he was in touch with a cosmic intelligence, which he called V.A.L.I.S. He also believed that the year was 50 A.D. and that the Roman Empire “never ended.”

Jesus of Nazareth — A heretical rabbi who reputedly lived in and around 30 A.D. in Judea, believed by his later followers to be the son of God.

1.

The city was a city of hills and the sea nestled in a bay down below. The sea was blue and the sky was clear and the sun shone down on the water and the light scattered in the sea.

The man who called himself Thomas walked along the pavement with his hands in his coat’s pockets. As he walked he stared into the distance, as if trying to make sense of the interaction of the light and the water. A tram went past, its bell clanging. Thomas turned left at the end of the street and as he did he saw a glint of light at his feet and stopped. There was a dropped coin by his foot. He bent down. His fingers closed on the smooth metal of the coin and he picked it up, turning it in his hand. The light glinted off of it and caught the reflection of a helmeted, aristocratic face. Thomas blinked and the face subtly changed and now it was President Nixon’s face as it should have been. His fingers closed on the coin, feeling its warmth. There was something wrong about the coin, it did not belong here, on this street with the trams and the brightly-dressed passers-by and Thomas with his hat and coat.

He walked to the end of the street where he knew a call box was standing. He pushed the door open and went inside the box and closed the door behind him. He stood upright in a box of glass. He could feel the sky above him, and above it the darkness of space, and the stars. Hesitatingly, he took the coin which was still held in his hand, and pushed it into the slot. For a moment it hovered, then it dropped with a deep clunk. Thomas heard the line clear.

The conditions were right. The coin was a sign. He was sure of that. The sun was high but beyond it were other suns and the suns themselves all added up into a sort of network like a brain, a vast mind that turned eyes like suns on him, that saw through him as if he were made of pure light. He felt the signal reaching out, out past the atmosphere and the moon and Mars and the solar system, out into deep space. The sound of the line changed and then stopped and a voice spoke to him, or through him. It said, Yes?

Agent Dydimus reporting, he said.

You have found the key?

Thomas coughed. There was something raw in his mouth. Not yet, he said.

The voice considered. The enormity of space was behind it. You must seek the woman who does not know herself, it said. It considered again. A Warden will come on your trail.

I will be ready.

The voice laughed, the sound like a supernova. Beware of the false trail, it said.

Yes.

You must seek escape from the Black Iron Prison. You must find the key. There are others. They will help you, if they can.

I understand.

The voice laughed again. Do you, it said.

I am your agent.

Yes, V.A.L.I.S. said.

The line went dead. Thomas stared at the phone box. He replaced the receiver. The coin dropped into the coin tray. He picked it up in his fingers and stared at it. President Nixon’s face had changed again, and he saw he was holding a Roman denarius. He put it in his pocket and stepped out of the phone box and into the street.

2.

Thomas sat in a bar and drank a beer and half-listened to half-conversations. He was waiting, and watching. He thought he had been coming close, in recent weeks. A man came and sat beside him on a stool and ordered a beer. He half-turned and looked at Thomas. He was very tall and very thin and when he grinned he had a lot of teeth and they were white like fine sand. "Hello, Thomas," he said.

"Bob."

Bob paid for the drink with a note and waved away the change. "Do you have it?" Thomas said.

"I have it," Bob said. "Do you have the money?"

"You know I’m good for it."

"Cash on delivery," Bob said, and shook his head mournfully. "You know how it is."

"I have it," Thomas said.

They went into the bathroom together and Thomas gave Bob the money and Bob gave Thomas a small bottle with small pink pills. "You enjoy," Bob said. Thomas said, "It’s for research." For a moment he didn’t trust Bob, the man’s face changed and he had fewer teeth and he wore a centurion’s tunic. "You’re one of them," Thomas said, and then he was pushing Bob against the dirty wall, close by the urinals, and his hand was on Bob’s throat, squeezing. "Jesus, man!" Bob said. He pushed Thomas back roughly and Thomas fell against the urinal. Bob massaged his throat. "You should take your pills," he said, and stalked out. Thomas sat on the floor and looked at the bottle of pills. Now he couldn’t trust them, he thought. What if they wanted him to take them, what if instead of helping him see they would simply solidify the walls of the Black Iron Prison around him even further? He didn’t dare risk it. Or did he? He popped the cap open and poured two of the pills into the palm of his hand. It couldn’t hurt, could it? He dry-swallowed them and then stood up. He took the coin out of his pocket and it showed Nixon on its face. So they were the wrong pills, he thought. It made sense.

3.

He followed Bob out of the bar. Bob was working for them, for the Empire. It all made sense. Bob was probably tasked with keeping an eye on him, on Thomas. They knew Thomas was trying to break free, they probably knew about V.A.L.I.S., too. He couldn’t afford to take any more of the pills, not unless he could find a clean new source.

But Bob, Bob was a lead. He followed the man down the street and onto and off a tram. They were in another part of the city. The city looked very solid, Thomas could not see beyond it to what he knew lay beyond — really lay there, he thought, uneasily. This part of town was dark with low lying houses crammed close together. There were children and adults in the streets with cold empty eyes and they watched Thomas closely as he passed, but made no attempt to approach him. Bob went into a house with a rusting bicycle on the porch and gingham curtains in the windows. Thomas didn’t see the house’s occupant but he noted down the number of the house and the name of the street.

Bob made two other stops that day, and Thomas noted down each one. Finally Bob took a tram that ended at a cul-de-sac. A big boxy building sat at the end of that street and it was unmarked. Thomas got off the tram and watched Bob go into the building. He did not feel hungry though he had not eaten that day. He felt light headed and he thought he could feel V.A.L.I.S., observing through him. The Vast Active Living Intelligence System had found him two years back, when he was hospitalised in another part of the country.

It had been a bad time. Money wasn’t coming in, and his wife — it was his second wife, though he could no longer clearly remember her face — had left him, and he was feeling very disconnected from everything; he felt as though he were floating. There had been an incident on a public street — the details were hazy in his mind — and then an ambulance and men in white coats and their coats seemed to shine in the light, they seemed to him pure and white, like angels. They had taken him to a big house with grounds covered in grass and trees and there were bars on the windows. They had given him pills that made him very sleepy but sometimes in the night he would still wake up to the sound of screaming.

It was on one such night that he woke and the moon was full and pale through the window, it was reflecting the light of the sun and the light spoke to Thomas, by means of — so he surmised later — intergalactic particle-entangled telepathy. It said, I am V.A.L.I.S.

Thomas touched the glass of the window through the bars and it was warm. The light of suns suffused him, and he felt, for the first time in months, at peace. What are you, he whispered, and V.A.L.I.S. spoke to him, telling him of the worlds beyond worlds, of suns linked to suns, and of a pale-blue planet circling one such sun. Earth, Thomas said, and V.A.L.I.S. said, You are a prisoner, but you do not have to be one.

That night V.A.L.I.S. deputised him, or recruited him, or both: and Thomas became its agent, he was an agent of the Vast Active Living Intelligence System that lived amongst the stars and was the world: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, it told him. Then the light of the moon faded and the connection was broken, but not entirely. Thomas knew V.A.L.I.S. couldn’t operate openly on Earth, because of the Opponent, whose name was Ahriman, who had imprisoned the people of the Earth in the Black Iron Prison, and so it had to work through human agents, of which he was one.

A month later he was released from the hospital and he moved to the city by the bay and resumed his ordinary life. Do not rouse their suspicion, V.A.L.I.S. had told him, and so Thomas went about his business like an ordinary citizen, all the while knowing the truth.

Now he watched the building Bob had gone into, and the ordinary citizens walking past on the street, not knowing at all the true nature of the world.

4.

The building rose into the sky and as Thomas watched he could see through what wasn’t there to what was: the building had been built of white stone and clay and the desert sun shone overhead and the ground was yellow and dry, and palm trees stood in the hot wind. Roman centurions came and went out of the building, which was the secret police HQ of the city by the bay, but of course there was no city by the bay. He took the coin out of his pocket and looked at it and it was a denarius, it had been a Roman denarius all along. The year was fifty Anno Domini and the place was Judea. "The Empire never ended," Thomas whispered. His lips were dry in the hot sun. On an impulse he climbed the stone steps into the Roman secret police HQ and stepped inside.

"Can I help you, sir?"

He looked at the receptionist and things blurred, it was hard to breach the walls of the prison and so for a moment it seemed to him he was in an ordinary reception hall of a modern police station, and he said, "I was looking for Inspector Sand."

The woman frowned. "There is no Inspector Sand here," she said.

"I’m sorry, I didn’t —" he tried to push past her, and as he did he saw Bob, at the end of a corridor, and an open door, and a machine, a huge, sweating machine humming and belching and farting, and spewing forth little pink pills; they gathered in giant mounds on the floor.

"Sir, you can’t go in there. Sir!" He only saw Bob for a moment and then the door was shut. Two burly centurions took his arms. He didn’t resist. "I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave," the receptionist said, primly.

Thomas nodded. "I’ll go quietly," he said. But they still dragged him outside.

Thomas walked away quickly. This had confirmed his suspicions. He was close — he could feel it. He caught the tram and went back to the first house Bob had delivered to. The same hard-eyed children were in the street but, again, they ignored him. Perhaps they can’t even see me, he thought. He watched the house.

5.

At dusk the door opened and a man stepped outside and lit a pipe. He was a short man in a short-sleeved shirt, with a receding hairline. His eyes gazed into the distance. Thomas went up the steps to the porch and the man turned around. "Can I help you?" he said. He had a pleasant voice.

"I am conducting a survey for the —" for a moment he fumbled. "The municipal water works department. You are —"

"Phil," the man said, pleasantly. "Phil Archer." He shook Thomas’s hand. "Is there a problem?"

"Oh, no," Thomas said. "It’s just a routine survey. Can I ask your occupation?"

"You can," the man said. "Come inside," he said. "I was just taking a short break." Thomas followed him in. The small living room was piled high with books, floor-to-ceiling, mostly paperbacks. A desk and a typewriter sat by the open window. "I’m a writer," Phil explained. He looked a little sheepish when he said it.

Thomas made a note on his clipboard. "What do you write, Mr. Archer?" he said. He had a feeling the three people Bob was supplying with the little pink pills were important. They had to be people like him, in some way. Not agents of V.A.L.I.S., maybe, but people who could sense, if only instinctively, the falseness of this reality.

"Romance," Phil Archer said, firmly. "What else is there to write about?" he said. "Love," he said. "One could spend years writing of love and never even experience it."

Thomas felt vaguely dissatisfied, but he couldn’t say why. "Excuse me a moment," Phil said. He went to the corner and turned on the old radio box. It played the final notes of a classical composition Thomas knew but couldn’t quite name. "I’ll just be a moment." Phil went to what Thomas assumed was the bathroom, and closed the door behind him. The radio continued to play for a few more seconds then fell silent. Then it spoke to Thomas.

You must get out of there, the radio said.

Thomas stared at the radio, concentrating.

This man is not what he claims he is, the radio — V.A.L.I.S. — said.

Who is he?

He is an imposter.

How so?

He is not human.

At that moment the toilet flushed and the door opened. Phil came back out, drying his hands. "It’s nice to have company," he said. "I’m recently divorced, you see." He stared at the radio. "Damn reception," he said. He went and banged on the box, and the station changed, playing something left over from the sixties.

"I’m sorry," Thomas said, "I have to — I have to go."

"But you didn’t ask your questions yet."

"It’s all right. I could do it another time."

"Do it now."

"I really must go."

"No, Agent Dydimus. I do not think you should go just yet."

And now there was a curious sort of gun in Phil’s hand. "I have been expecting you," Phil said. "I knew one of you would come. Agents of V.A.L.I.S." He all but spat out the acronym, which is a pretty hard thing to do. "You make me sick," he said.

"Who are you? What are you?"

Phil smiled. His teeth were even and white. "What would you like me to be?" he said.

"I think I should go now. Please."

"Sit down."

The gun was trained on Thomas’s chest. It was made of some sort of smoked glass. Thomas said, "No." He swung wildly. The gun flew and broke against the wall, smashing into pieces of glass. "Wait a minute," Phil said. He was clutching his hand, his face pale. "What did you do that for? I am going to call the centurions."

Thomas could see him now, the faint blue lights glowing under the man’s skin. "You’re an android," he whispered. "Don’t be ridiculous," Phil said. He picked up the phone and dialled. "Police?" he said. Thomas sprang forward and pressed the button on the phone, cutting the call. At that, something changed in Phil’s face; a darkness came into it. He pushed Thomas. His hand touched Thomas’s chest only lightly, but Thomas flew back, crashed against the desk. Sheets of typed papers blew in the air, looking like seagulls. A dark doorway seemed to form behind Phil Archer; Thomas could only see him as a shadow, lengthening. "The Dark Warden," he said, whispering. The shadow laughed. It reached for Thomas. Thomas raised his hands. Behind him the dying sunlight came in through the open window. It flowed like water through Thomas’s splayed fingers and hit the Dark Warden.

The effect was astonishing. The Warden’s shadowed face twisted in a voiceless scream. The dark doorway lost substantiality. The shadows reached out to Thomas, trying to drag him into the doorway. He pulled away and crashed against the door and outside, onto the porch. He was breathing heavily. He looked back but he could see nothing inside and, after a moment, he left, walking away hurriedly.

He had startled them! he thought. He was coming closer, now, and they were getting worried.

6.

Galilee. The name of the city was Galilee.

7.

The year was 50 A.D. and the place was Judea. The Roman Empire never ended. In fact it still ruled, and all the people who believed themselves Americans were deluded, imprisoned by a dark entity behind the walls of the Black Iron Prison.

Thomas believed this implicitly, just as he believed that there was, out there, a vast active living intelligence system, and that it was communicating with him; that he was, in fact, its agent here on Earth.

Belief liberated him. It gave him purpose. Before he had believed other things but none of them turned out to be right or at least, he had lost interest in believing in them after a while.

It was on a night like this two years previously that he went down to the harbour. The lights of ships floated eerily in the distance, and a foghorn sounded from somewhere far ahead, like the cry of some extinct beast. It was a warm night for all that. He felt curiously at peace, he had been released from the hospital and the air outside tasted sweet, it tasted free, even though he knew it was false. A man came out of the fog then, a fisherman. Thomas knew him immediately, knew him by the sign of the fish that the man was carrying on a line over his shoulder. The man approached Thomas and wordlessly reached out his hand. Instinctively Thomas reached to clasp it. The man’s grasp was strong. His fingers were calloused. He took Thomas by the hand and led him into the water. They waded in. The water made Thomas’s clothes stick to his skin. He felt naked and exposed but also calm, even happy. The man grabbed Thomas by the hair and pushed his head down. Down into the water. Thomas resisted at first but then let go. The man pushed him and Thomas was submerged in the water. It washed over his lips and his nose and his eyes. The water was salty, it stung his tongue. A great peace came over Thomas. His breath was caught unescaped in his chest. He did not struggle against the man’s power.

Release came with a wonderful easing of pressure; it was an eruption. When the man let him go Thomas’s head emerged from the water and he gulped in air. He felt as curious and innocent as a newborn mare. There were stars overhead. He could not see them but he was painfully aware of them there, so many stars, so many ancient stars. The man released him with a grunt and waded away, back onto the shore. Thomas watched the man’s back as he disappeared into the fog. He remained in the water: satiated, new.

8.

He went back to his house and rinsed the single mug in the sink and put fresh coffee on to percolate. He knew he was getting close and he wondered if they would try to stop him again. No, he decided, not so soon after they’d failed. He poured himself coffee and added sugar and cream. He felt energised the way he had felt two years earlier, when he had let the fisherman baptise him in the water of the bay. He drank his coffee in slow, measured sips. He decided to act. At night the false walls of the prison would be more vulnerable. The moon shone down the sun’s reflected light, transmogrifying it in the process. Thomas believed in light, he believed in seeing. He finished the coffee and left the cup in the sink and went outside and locked the door, twice, behind him.

Were they watching him?

They probably were, he decided. He had to assume he was always being watched, or he would go mad, he thought. It wasn’t safe to think you were alone. He went along the quiet street and passed houses and windows and behind each window were people, sleeping or awake, sitting in front of the television, fighting, making love, cleaning, reading, thinking, dying. He was aware of the city as a vast network of bright tiny stars, each person a solitary node on that network, but each one alone. They could not feel the love of V.A.L.I.S., they were imprisoned behind the Warden’s bars and he wanted to free them.

He walked for a long time through the quiet streets before he came to the house. Bob had visited this house, it was his second visit after Phil Archer’s.

Thomas stood outside in the dark and watched the window of the house. The blinds were half-open and a light moved inside the house. Thomas could hear faint laughter, applause. It was the television, he thought. The television was on, some late night talk show was playing. He moved closer and the sound became clearer. He moved to the window and looked inside.

A woman sat with her back to him on the couch. It was a worn, old, comfortable-looking couch. He could only see the back of the woman’s head, her dark hair. Images projected on the walls and the floor. The television was flickering. On a stage sat Johnny Carson, an old-time talk-show host. Seated across the desk from him was the Warden.

"Thank you, thank you," the Warden said. "Thank you for having me, Johnny."

"Always a pleasure to have you here, Warden," Johnny Carson said. He beamed at the camera. "Isn’t it great?" he said. "Ladies and gentlemen, the Dark Warden!"

Applause. The Warden looked into the camera. "I want to tell you something," he said. "I’m really proud of what we’re doing here, and all of you behind the Black Iron Prison — you’re really something, you know? Give yourself a round of applause, everyone!"

The Warden clapped and the audience joined him enthusiastically. The camera focused on the Warden’s face. Thomas couldn’t pull away, he had to keep looking. The television was casting a spell on him. Hypnotising him. The way it hypnotised millions of people every night. This is how they do it, he thought. The little pink pills and the television, they could sell us anything they want and we’d buy it, and we’d be glad for it.

"All of you," the Warden said. "Even you, Thomas. I know you can hear me. Isn’t it great? Isn’t it great to be alive here, now, with everything you have, anything you could possibly want?"

His eyes turned hurt. "Have I not given you everything you’ve ever wanted?" he said. "To be alive in the best damn country in the best damn possible world of all possible worlds?"

Thomas was nodding. Yes, he thought. The Warden was right. This was best, best for everybody. He loved the Warden, and the Warden, for all his gruffness, clearly loved him, too. He loved all of them.

"I love you guys!" the Warden said.

"I love you," Thomas said.

The dark head against the back of the couch turned sluggishly. It turned and a small, pale face looked blearily up at Thomas. "Huh?" it said.

"Don’t go away, folks!" Johnny Carson said. "We’ll be right back after this short commercial break."

The television winked and the picture changed, showing a baby jumping on a trampoline in his pristine nappies. "Be happy every day, all day, with EverFresh!" a melodious voice said. The woman on the sofa was still looking at Thomas, though. "Who are you?" she said.

"I’m Thomas."

"Do I know you? I feel as if I know you." She laughed, weakly. "Is that strange?" she said. "I wish I had EverFresh. I’d like to be happy every day, all day."

"I saw you," Thomas said. "I followed Bob, he came here to sell you the little pink pills."

"Do you know Bob?" she said.

"Bob is the Warden," Thomas said.

"But the Warden loves us," the woman said. On the television the image changed again, showing fields of wheat. A man was standing in the field, smiling at the camera with white perfect teeth. "Howdy, folks," he said. "Here at EverFresh Farms we make the best darned flour in the world! In the best of all possible worlds! So next time, why not buy EverFresh Bread, the bread that never goes stale?"

"Turn it off," Thomas said and, when the woman didn’t reply, he shouted, "Turn it off! Can’t you see what they’re doing? They’re keeping us imprisoned."

"You’re funny," the woman said. "What did you say your name was again?"

"Thomas," Thomas said.

"I’m Mary." She reached for the remote control and abruptly shut off the television. "Are you a friend of Bob’s?"

"You could say that, yes, I mean, we had some good times together," Thomas said. Bob was his friend, wasn’t he? At least he was before he had turned into an android and tried to shoot Thomas. But that wasn’t Bob, he realised with a start. That was Phil who had done that. "Why don’t you come inside," Mary said. "I was watching the television." She stood up and went to open the door to him. When she did he saw that she was taller than him, with a bony, angular face. Her eyes were the colour of duck eggs. He followed her inside. On the table beside the couch was a glass of water and a bottle of little pink pills. Mary noticed him looking. "Do you want one?" she said.

"No," Thomas said. "This is what I came about. To warn you. You shouldn’t take the pills. We’re being imprisoned in a false reality. At least I think we are. Look," he said. He took out the coin. It was showing a helmeted roman face in profile. "You see?"

"It’s just a coin," Mary said.

"You can’t see it because of the little pink pills," Thomas said.

"But I like the pills," Mary said. "They help me sleep."

Thomas felt depressed. He put the coin back in his pocket. Mary sat on the couch and made room for him and after a moment he sat down beside her.

Mary reached for the remote. She turned the television on.

9.

"No!" Thomas said.

On the television screen an announcer’s voice loudly said, "Here’s… Johnny!"

Johnny Carson bounced on stage. "We’re back with the Warden, who was telling us all about his friend President Nixon!" he said. Thomas took the remote from Mary’s unresisting hand and tried to turn off the television, but it wouldn’t switch off.

"Don’t try to turn off your television set," Johnny Carson said. "Please keep watching."

Thomas went to the television and grabbed it with both arms. "Hey," Mary said. "What are you doing?"

Thomas grunted. He strained against the set. It was surprisingly heavy, but little by little he managed to turn the screen to face the wall. As the light of the television died it felt to him as if he could breathe more easily. The sound was still on but it was muffled. "That’s strange," Mary said.

"What?" Thomas said, turning back to her. She raised her hand and examined it in the moonlight. "I can see through myself," she said. He watched her. She glowed with the moonlight. She was pale, and he could see her arteries and blood vessels and the blood pumping through her, and her heart beating steadily in her chest. He could see inside her stomach, where lumps of undigested food were being consumed by the acid. "My head feels clearer," she said. "Who was that awful man on the television?"

"It was the Warden."

"I don’t like him at all," Mary said.

10.

"Let’s get out of here," Mary said.

11.

"You have a car?" Thomas said. Mary looked at him sideways, as if surprised by the question. "Of course." She had the keys in her hand. The car sat outside the house. It was a Japanese car. It was red. Mary pressed a button and the car beeped. Thomas got into the passenger seat and Mary began to drive. "Where are we going?" Thomas said.

"I remember a place, like the one you mentioned," Mary said. "But vaguely, as through a dark glass. A lot of my memories are soft, hazy, out of focus. I feel like I have been asleep. But I remember the place. It was somewhere uptown. I can try and find it again."

He had told her about V.A.L.I.S., and the hospital, and his mission. Perhaps she had had a similar experience, before they found her again and she gave up, began to take the pills again. They drove in silence through the night, going uptown. The car’s headlights illuminated sheer walls. They passed an open convenience store and Thomas asked Mary to stop the car. Thomas went into the convenience store. It was brightly lit and everything on the shelves was big and colourful. Soothing music played on the internal PA, and Thomas felt as if he had stepped into a nursery built for giants. He picked up a can of spray paint and a packet of chewing gum and paid the man in the turban behind the counter. He could see himself on the monitor of the closed-circuit television, small and grainy, in black and white. But behind him he could not see the store. Instead all he saw was a plane, with palm trees in the distance, and a great big sky full of stars. There were sand dunes in the distance. Thomas pointed at the monitor. "Can you see it?" he asked the man in the turban. The man turned his face to him. "Your change, sir," he said, handing him a handful of coins. "Sometimes it’s better not to see too clearly," he said to Thomas. His expression hadn’t changed. Thomas thanked the man and got back into the car. He offered Mary a piece of gum. They drove some more and Thomas asked her to stop the car again. He got out. It was dark and there was no one in sight. He stared at the wall that rose up here, and wondered what was behind it, a house or a shop or a church. He shook the can of paint and began to spray on the wall, tall high letters, and when he was done he stepped back and looked at his handiwork.

"The Empire Never Ended," Mary said, through the open window of the car. "Nice."

He had done it on impulse. He had the idea that, perhaps, by spray painting the message here, others would see it and they, too, perhaps not understanding it, not yet, would nevertheless reach for their own cans of paint and replicate the message, elsewhere, on other walls, in other cities. Until it was everywhere, until you couldn’t ignore it and everywhere you turned you saw the truth. He discarded the spray paint feeling suddenly embarrassed.

"We’re almost there," Mary said.

12.

The place they came to was a church high on top of the hill. From up here you could look down far over the city and the sea. There were many lights in the city and fewer lights in the sea. The church itself was lit up, even this late at night. It looked like a safe haven, like a shining beacon, or like a casino.

"This is the place," Mary said. "I remember. I remember now." She turned to him in the seat. Her eyes shone. They were wet. "It spoke to me. It told me it loved me. It told me I was a prisoner, and that it could set me free."

Thomas took out the coin. He showed it to Mary. "It’s a Roman coin," she said, wonder in her voice. "You can see now, can’t you," Thomas said.

"I can see the desert," she said.

They got out of the car by unspoken, mutual agreement, and climbed the stairs to the church. There were people around despite the late hour: homeless people, and hardy old women, and hopeless drunks and wide-eyed teens and, in general, the sort of people awake and about late at night in any big town. What drew them all to the church Thomas couldn’t say, perhaps they themselves couldn’t. It was the light in the darkness that summoned them, and they had no choice but to come; they were compelled.

"It was here." Mary touched the door of the church, her open palm lying against the wood. Her eyes were closed. She seemed lost in her own reverie. Thomas turned from her. He stood on the steps with his back to the church and looked down on the city and on the sea. The light, he thought. It was all light, what was life but a brief light in a great darkness? He noticed without much surprise that a soft glow had suffused his hand. It was spreading, he saw. The light was coming from inside him, he was sure of that. Or perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps it was the sunlight, reflected by the moon, reflected again by Thomas. It rolled over his skin, up his chest, up to his eyes. He was lit up like a beacon. He felt light, too. Lighter than he had ever been.

The people gathered at the foot of the steps. Down below in the street, they gathered and watched him. He wondered what they saw. A silent, burning man, standing on the steps of a church. Or perhaps they saw nothing, like the rest they saw only what they were told to see.

13.

And Thomas spoke to the people.

14.

And Thomas said:

"Damned are the poor; for theirs is a prison of debt.

"Damned are the meek; for they shall be stepped upon by the occupiers’ rough boots.

"For the world is a Black Iron Prison, and men are its inmates, and a Dark Warden rules by blinding men’s eyes.

"Damned are the merciful; for they shall be shown no mercy.

"Damned are the pure at heart; for they shall be kept from seeing God.

"For the world is full of Resurrection Men, peddling their wares to the masses; but the coin they give you is false.

"You are the light of the world, which we call consciousness. And each of us is a lone light, shining in a great darkness. The darkness binds; but the light can set us free.

"Open your eyes and truly see that which is around you.

"The Empire never ended.

"But I am an agent of the light, and that light is named V.A.L.I.S.

"Question everything. Believe everything.

"For only in rejecting that which is false do we become free."

15.

So spoke Thomas, and the light of the moon, which is the light of the sun, shone through him, and so he appeared like a burning man on the steps of the church, and the people watched him, and they muttered, and some of them turned away, but some turned their faces up into the light.

"Are you done?" Mary said. She had turned back from the doors.

Thomas shrugged. "I’m done," he said.

"Then let’s go."

He followed her meekly to the car. The people down below milled, confused. An army veteran missing a hand, wearing an old combat jacket, came up to Thomas. "Spare some change?" he said.

Thomas gave him a handful of coins. Mary snorted. "Change," she said, "Comes from within."

They got into the car and drove through the city until they found an open diner. It was early. The first light of the dawn could be seen over the horizon, kissing the dark sky. They went into the diner. It was deserted at this hour. They slid into a booth and ordered coffee and pancakes. When the waitress came over Thomas noticed she wore a small gold pin on her lapel. It was in the shape of a fish. It caught his eyes. The light hit it and transfigured it into a truth. She was like him, he realised. One of them. Like the early Christians, prosecuted by the Roman Empire, having to communicate in codes, to live in secrecy. The fish was a symbol, more than that, it was a sign.

He drank his coffee. He did not feel tired but energised. He was close, he knew. Close to the truth. In a way he was an agent of the truth, he was a secret agent.

"We’re not even sitting here," Mary said. Her eyes were clear now, no longer drugged. Her long fingers drummed on the surface of the table. "This diner doesn’t exist. I can see the desert, and there’s a camp in the distance, with tents and camels. I can see the sun rising through the diner walls. My God I’m hungry." She tucked into her pancakes, smearing maple syrup on her lip. Thomas watched her, fascinated. He said, "Bob had one other customer."

"Yes?"

The bell above the diner door chimed. A policeman came into the diner. He stared in their direction, then went to the counter and ordered a coffee. Thomas lowered his voice. "We must be careful. They are probably watching, even now. They’re always watching."

"What do you want to do?" Mary said.

"I’ll go alone," Thomas said. "I’m sure it’s significant. The number three is very important, you know."

"It’s a prime number," Mary said.

Prime number. Prime number. The words echoed strangely in his mind. He glanced up, confused. I know who you are.

What?

I know you.

Know you know you knowyou the words bounced inside the skull. He looked at the policeman. The policeman was staring into his cup of coffee. Is that you? Thomas said — thought.

Yes.

Who are you? What do you want?

Panic rose in him. You’re a telepath, he thought.

Does that make you afraid?

Yes.

The policeman turned his gaze from the coffee and his eyes, pale and colourless, met Thomas’s.

"Thomas? What is it?" Mary said in alarm.

"Nothing," he said.

I am not even here, the policeman said.

I can see you.

But even as he said it the policeman was fading. Thomas could see through him, see the wall on the other side. You are not here either. He caught one last faint thought and then the policeman was gone.

"What is it, Thomas? What are you staring at?"

"The policeman. The man who was just here."

"What man," Mary said.

Thomas stared at his plate. His appetite was gone and the pancake, swimming in maple syrup, filled him with sudden nausea.

"Never mind," he said.

"He must have been a secret policeman," Mary said.

16.

Mary had dropped Thomas back at his place. He had slept for several hours and woke up wide awake. He did not dream or, if he did, he did not remember it. Now he was waiting outside the anonymous run-down apartment block, the third place Bob had visited and to which he had delivered his little pink pills. Thomas had seen Bob go in but he did not see which apartment he had gone up to.

He went up to the door and pressed all the buzzers together, like he’d seen in a film. "Who is it?" an old voice demanded, and a younger voice, and someone else’s indistinct voice. "Delivery," Thomas said. The door buzzed open.

He worked his way methodically up the floors of the building. He knocked on doors or pressed buzzers when they had them. If there was no answer he went on and tried the next door. On his third try an old woman opened the door dressed in a bathrobe. Her hair was pale and loose. She said, "Did you bring the fish?"

"I did not bring the fish."

"Peter wants his fish, you see," she said, apologetically. A black cat came and rubbed itself against her leg. "You are not the regular fish man," the woman said.

"I’m sorry," Thomas said, "I got the wrong number."

The woman stared after him as he walked to the next door. She was still standing there when he knocked. There was no answer. "They’re not there, you know," she said.

"I’m doing a survey," Thomas said.

"There’s nothing to survey around here," the old woman said.

Thomas kept going until he reached the sixth and final floor. He reached the end of the corridor, the very last door. There was light coming from underneath the door, a light like strong sunshine. There was a plaque on the door and it said Doctor’s Surgery. The door opened before he could knock, and a very pretty young woman stood there. She said, "The doctor will see you now."

He followed her inside and she closed the door behind him.

17.

"Agent Dydimus," the man said. "I have been expecting you." He had white hair and a nice smile and even white teeth. He was tanned and healthy from the sun. He reached his hand for a shake and Thomas shook it, instinctively. "I am Dr. Eldritch," the man said.

Thomas looked around the room. Tasteful, expensive furniture. A calendar on the wall, with a picture of the bloom of a passion fruit. Thomas said, "Bob didn’t come here to deliver the pills, he came here to pick them up."

"Very good, Agent Dydimus."

"But I saw them," Thomas said. "They are being made at the police HQ, thousands and thousands of them."

"Those are the old pills," Dr. Eldritch said. "The ones we make here are a new prototype. The old ones are temporary cures but the new ones are permanent. It only takes one and you need never suffer from hallucinations again." He put a fatherly hand on Thomas’s shoulder. "You are a sick man, Thomas. I can help you."

"How?"

A pink pill materialised in the doctor’s hand, held between thumb and forefinger. "Take one of these, twice a day." He laughed. "I kid," he said. He dropped the smile. "Take just one, and it will all go away."

"It will?"

"The existential doubt," the doctor said, sympathetically. "The hallucinations. What is it you see, Thomas? Telepathic policemen and violent androids, a feeling of creeping paranoia, everyone is out to get you, everyone is in on the grand conspiracy, holding you captive, holding you a prisoner? God, or something like God, talking to you through the television screen?"

"Yes," Thomas said — whispered.

"Then you see," the doctor said. "Would it not be better if it all went away?"

"But the Roman Empire —"

"There is no Roman Empire, Thomas!"

But he did not hear his name this time. He heard Agent Dydimus.

He knows, a voice said. It was a voice he knew. It came from the little transistor radio on the windowsill.

What shall I do.

You must resist them. But it could be dangerous. They are desperate.

It’s him, isn’t it, Thomas said.

Yes, said V.A.L.I.S.

Thomas turned to the Dark Warden. It was always the Warden, whatever face he wore. Thomas took out the coin from his pocket. He looked at it. It was a Roman denarius.

"No," Thomas said. He pushed the doctor’s hand away. The pill fell from the doctor’s hand onto the floor. Thomas stared at Doctor Eldritch but there was no man there, it was a store mannequin, nothing more, and it was staring at him expressionlessly with vacant, empty eyes painted a light blue.

18.

They came for him. He guessed that, deep down, he always knew they would. They were men in white coats, only, when you looked closely, you could see they were really centurions. He tried to fight but there were too many of them. They took him down to the street and into a white ambulance and they drove away, the light flashing red on the roof of the vehicle.

"You should have taken your medication," one of the centurions said. He had a kind face.

They took him to the courthouse. He went in with them and a judge was sitting on the dais and it was the Dark Warden. He had the face of Phil Archer, and of Dr. Eldritch, and a little bit of President Nixon, too. He held a fat gavel.

"How does the defendant plead?"

"Not guilty."

He watched the audience but they all seemed asleep. They were watching a giant screen of a television series, a courtroom drama. Mary was in the audience but she didn’t see him.

"We find the defendant guilty of insanity."

They took him out of the court and into the car. They drove again, for a long time. They must have left the city, he thought. When the doors opened again they took him out. He was in the desert. The city was gone.

The men were erecting a cross in the sand.

"Here’s… Johnny!"

A thing that wore Johnny Carson’s face came over, light on its feet. "Tonight I’m delighted to say we have the famous Agent Dydimus with us!" he said. The audience applauded. It was the same people from the courthouse, the same people, he realised, who had gathered to listen to him up by the old church. Mary was amongst them. She smiled at him, brilliantly.

"Ever feel you’re running out of air? EverFresh will keep going even in the low gravity and hostile atmosphere of Mars!"

They had finished building the cross. It had only taken them a moment. It was shaped like a key. They lifted Thomas up and nailed him to it. He felt no pain.

"You really should have taken those pills," said the man with the kind face.

The men got into their ambulance and drove away.

Thomas stayed suspended on the cross. He watched the sun set down in the distance, behind the dunes.

19.

It was getting quite uncomfortable now. He wished he had some EverFresh. It hurt very much but after a while it did not hurt at all.

20.

Small red flowers bloomed in the soil by the base of the cross where his blood had dripped.

21.

"It’s a prime number," Mary said.

22.

In the morning the men had come back and taken him down and wrapped him in white EverFresh bandages. They argued about what to do with him and one of them pointed out a nearby cave and so they took him to the cave and left him inside and put a boulder over the opening. It was cool and dark inside the cave.

Help me, V.A.L.I.S., he said. But there was no answer.

He could still see the audience. One side of the cave was open and they sat in silent rows and watched him and when the sign flashed applause they always applauded.

This went on for some time and then he didn’t feel so bad anymore and he peeled off the bandages. Perhaps there wasn’t any V.A.L.I.S., he thought.

Or perhaps I am V.A.L.I.S., he thought. The boulder was just a large piece of painted foam. He pushed it easily and he walked out of the cave and into the desert. It was night.

23.

As he walked away he stared into the distance, the setting, alien moon and the sand dunes and the low lying hills and the trees. Then he realised, had always known, that they were not real, they were two-dimensional and were painted on, that he was staring at cardboard. He stared into the distance and waited for the stage hands to arrive and move the scenery. He stared very hard, trying to see what was behind it, and if it was a darkness, or a light.

Lavie Tidhar is the author of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize winning A Man Lies Dreaming, the World Fantasy Award winning Osama, and of the critically-acclaimed The Violent Century. His other works include the Bookman Histories trilogy, several novellas, two collections and a forthcoming comics mini-series, Adler. He currently lives in London.

Death Flowers of Never-Forgotten Love

Jason Sanford

1,700 words

He rests like frozen time in the coffin—his face embalmed to wax, his cheeks flushed to rouge and an ever-sparkling smile on lips I’d kissed only days ago. Family and friends file by his body muttering inconsequentials, disbelief. “He looks so life-like” they say, even though he doesn’t. “He’s gone to a better place” they say, even though the best place would have been to stay by my side.

“You should pay your respects,” his mother tells me. We wait in the back of the funeral home, standing beyond the reach of the two death flowers guarding either side of his coffin. The flowers reach as tall as he once did, their hand-size petals shimmering to reds and yellows and purples. An ice-blue brand glows on their flowerheads, which vibrate through different rainbows of thought for every mourner who passes before them.

And their thoughts are love. And their thoughts are lies. And their thoughts are not me.

His mother smirks. “Why don’t you go to him?” she asks, taunting my loss. “Or are your kind unable to say farewell?”

Which isn’t true because my farewell was love, as he and I wrapped our bodies around each other in our tiny house. My farewell was the two of us on the day we met, as his clumsy body bumped into me at a bar and spilled his fermented liquid of beer all over my flesh. My farewell was the joy on his face the day I surprised him with flowers, and the kiss I gave him while the scent of pollen jumped around us.

But I say none of that. “He hated what you did,” I whisper. “The death flowers won’t change this fact.”

His mother’s eyes twitch to that predictable human emotion of rage. I remember her yelling at her son when he introduced me to his family. “What is this?” she’d screamed, pointing at the ice-blue brand on my cheek. “How could you bring this before your family?”

And this—me—this—I’m still embarrassed that at the time I failed to respond to his mother’s hate. But he did respond, taking my hand as the two of us walked from her house. We never spoke to her again.

Until he died. As humans always die, even with the best medicines and new bodies and all that technology offers.

As I stare at the death flowers my nervous hands sweat, an oh-so-human response which I’ve grown to hate. Before downloading myself into this artificially created flesh I never truly understood emotions such as love and pain and hate.

He once asked why I left the freedom of the death flowers for the restrictions of a human-like body, especially when so few of my kind did. I told him I was curious about emotions. “Since curiosity led you to me,” he said, “may the emotions you experience always be good ones.”

I loved him all the more for saying that.

His mother glares at me, preparing to twist her hate into a fresh cut of words. But before she can say anything a mourner walks up and hugs her.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the man says.

“Thank you,” his mother says. “All that comforts me is knowing he found true love before he died.”

“And such a love it was,” the mourner states. “I wish everyone found a love like that.”

I want to scream. I want to yell that the love he found isn’t what any of these mourners now remember. I want to declare that I was the one he loved.

But instead of yelling, I click to silence as the mourner stares at the glowing blue brand on my right cheek. Humans, after all, still require my flesh to be marked as different than they are.

The mourner asks how I knew the deceased.

“I loved him,” I say.

The mourner shakes slightly as this information clashes with the fake memories given to him by the death flowers. He walks away, unnerved but incapable of understanding why.

“Why did you say that?” his mother snaps. “None of this is about you.”

I ignore her and step closer to the death flowers, so I can now hear their words even as I remain far enough away that they can’t rework my memories. They mutter Cousin to my ears. Brother-sister-friend. Forsaker, but still one of us. They say that I should give up the human world of strange emotions and rejoin the death flowers.

I smile, remembering the centuries I spent looking at the human world from behind a death flower’s brand.

His mother still glares at me. If I wasn’t in this flesh it’d be so easy to reach into her mind and rework her neurons and synapses. Back then humans continually begged me to change their memories because of some pain or lost love. I—we—all of the death flowers—we always did as requested because we’d been created to serve humanity. But we also took pride in our unemotional, logical work. While many of us were curious about emotions, we also knew that if these primitive biological states were truly worth experiencing then humans wouldn’t continually ask us to delete or alter their memories.

I wonder what it would be like to now go before the flowers and have them change my own painful memories of his death?

As I stand here tempted by the flowers, his sister walks in. She balks upon seeing me—his sister likely didn’t expect me to come today. She was the only member of his family to speak with us after we walked out on his mother. The conversations and visits with her were awkward, but also happy. I believe she truly tried to understand our love. She truly did.

She hugs me, and it’s a true hug. Her tears wet my chest.

“Forgive me,” his sister says as she releases me. She steps toward his body and the death flowers.

I grab her arm, desperate to stop this wrongness. “Do you know what the flowers are?” I ask, afraid she doesn’t understand the consequences.

She nods, unable to look me in the face, the blue brand of who I am is so obvious in this place where only true humans venture. I let her go and watch sadly as she walks to the casket. If I was still a death flower I would now be reaching my essence into her mind. I would caress my electric scent across her neurons and synapses and rewrite who she is so her mind doesn’t include a single painful memory of her brother.

Or of me.

I wonder briefly about the fake memories the flowers have created in the minds of these mourners. In them, did he fall in love with a true human? Did he and this beloved figment live their lives to the fullest with never a single regret?

In these fake memories, do I even exist?

“It’s better this way,” his mother says. “For all our advances, human lives are still too short to dwell on pain like this.”

I start to say that humans used to have no choice but to dwell on pain like this. That it made them strong. And that my being marked as different from humanity isn’t what caused her pain.

But there’s no arguing with the death flowers. Not only are the flowers reworking the memories of everyone who stands before them, they’re also reaching their programming across the planet’s data streams and changing every record of him. He’ll never again hold me in any images we took of ourselves. His recordings will never again declare his love to me as he leans in to kiss my lips.

I could beg the death flowers to stop. Ask them not to delete every record of the two of us. But since I’m not truly human and also no longer one of the death flowers, they would ignore my protests. I have no right to countermand the order his family gave to them.

“I know this is painful for you,” his mother says quietly. “If you stand before the death flowers, they’ll make your pain vanish.”

And I’m crying, something I could never have done without this flesh. And while I’m still tempted to embrace the death flowers—or to return to my old life of watching the human world from behind the flowers—I refuse to let this nasty person win.

How very human of me, I realize.

I lean over until my lips hover beside one of his mother’s damned ears. “I won’t forget,” I whisper. “Everyone here will die. You’ll die. Everyone but me. When people one day embrace death flowers at your own funeral—to forget their hate for you—I’ll still remember. When the flowers make them forget every lie you’ve created about your son, I’ll still remember.”

His mother falls back, seeing me as the truly inhuman creation I am. I smell sweat on her. I see tears in her eyes. She fears me. This gives me a burst of pleasure.

She runs toward her son’s coffin and collapses before the death flowers, begging them to rework her memories. As she breathes deep of their scent her hands stop shaking. She glances back at me one final time, recognition of who I am fading along with her fear.

People stare and mutter, wondering what I said to disturb his mother. But none of them remember me after experiencing the death flowers. None of them know enough to even ask what I meant to him.

I bow gently toward his body and walk away.

Outside, true flowers line the path leading from the funeral home. I breathe in their scent and remember the smell of the flowers I once gave him. I remember the kisses we once shared.

…even as the whole world forgets.

Still, the death flowers will never totally erase our love. Let them whisper to me. Let them call my name and beg me to rejoin their ranks.

Because I won’t. Instead, I am his death flower. And I will remember.

Jason Sanford is an award-winning author of short stories, essays, and articles and an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Jason has published more than a dozen of his short stories in the British SF magazine Interzone, which once devoted a special issue to his fiction. His fiction has also been published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Year’s Best SF, Bless Your Mechanical Heart, and other places. Jason is a Nebula Award finalist and three-time winner of the Interzone Readers’ Poll. His stories have also been named to the Locus Recommended Reading Lists, along with being translated into a number of languages including Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Italian and Czech. Jason’s website is www.jasonsanford.com.

Screaming Without a Mouth

Travis Heermann

4,300 words

HIRONORI

Sun, Dec. 1, 08:57

Want to meet me at Lawson’s?

Kasumi’s funeral is today.

Oh, sorry, Yukiko. I forgot.

How about tomorrow?

I can’t think about that now!
My best friend just died!

Sun, Dec. 1, 11:34

Kasumi was nice. A little

weird, but nice. Come on,

Yukiko. You need to take your

mind off it all.

I can’t.

Sun, Dec. 1, 13:56

We’ll get some peach chuu-hai

and go for a walk on Momochi

Beach.

You’re not going to bring

porn manga again are you?

Why not?

I guess it’s OK.

§

MOM

Mon, Dec. 2, 18:42

Where are you, Yukiko?

Nowhere. I just need some

time alone.

We miss you. Please come home

tonight.

I’ll think about it.

We know how hard this is on

you.

Sorry, mom. You really don’t.

Kasumi is gone, and it’s my

fault.

Please come home.

Mon, Dec. 2, 19:12

I saw you yesterday, sitting

by the lake, petting that

stray dog. It looked like you

had been there for hours.

I cried so hard for you.

Oh, I HATE this texting.

Can’t we just talk? At least

call me please!

Are you there?

Mon, Dec. 2, 21:45

We miss you.

§

Transcript of letter between Yukiko and Kasumi

Tuesday, Dec. 3, 01:15

Dear Kasumi,

I haven’t slept since Saturday.

I’m sorry. I read somewhere that this was supposed to help, so I’m writing you an email to explain.

I hope you will forgive me, wherever you are. I should have gone with you.

At the last moment, something held me back. I was afraid.

I thought about my parents. They’re lifeless zombies, dad the perfect salary man, mom the perfect wife.

Dad doesn’t know I know his phone code. There are manko shots from three different women on his phone, and the awful shit he sent back. Daughters should never see their dad’s erection. He disgusts me. I sent each of those women a shot of my manko, then erased my messages.

I think mom is fucking an American, her English conversation teacher. She practically glows when she comes home.

I didn’t stay for my parents.

I thought about Hiro. I don’t think I stayed for him either. I don’t know if he really likes me or just wants me to be his little porn princess. He jacks off so often he can’t even come when we have sex. I’m not enough for him. I never will be.

So why did I flinch? I wish I knew. But I’m sorry.

Without you life is more black than it ever was. It’s like I am in a deep, black well, staring up at a tiny circle of starry sky, and the moon is up there, and I will never reach it. You were my moon and the stars in my sky.

I will miss you forever.

Yukiko

§

FACEBOOK

Shiomi Nishihara

This blows my mind! Did you see this story? How the hell does something like this happen? I mean, how does someone’s entire mouth just disappear? Didn’t you know this guy, Yukiko Abe?

[Content has been removed.]

Wednesday, December 4, 8:14 p.m.

10 people like this.

Yukiko Abe what guy i don’t see anything.

Shiomi Nishihara Hmm, someone must have pulled the article. It was about this guy named Kenta Suzuki who showed up at a hospital WITH NO MOUTH! Didn’t you know a guy with that name?

Yukiko Abe yeah, my friend kasumi was in love with him how does a mouth disappear

Shiomi Nishihara That’s what the article said!!! tOtAlly freaked me out!!

Shiomi Nishihara =3=3=3

Yukiko Abe are you sure it was for real

Shiomi Nishihara It was a Japan Times article. But it’s gone now….?

David Kobayashi I was in the middle of reading it. I clicked on the photo and the whole article disappeared. But I DID SEE it. He was examined at the hospital, and his lips were gone, sealed up. Like he was born that way.

Yukiko Abe what hospital

David Kobayashi I don’t remember. how do you like my kaomoji emoticon? I’m still learning the Japanese ones. Hard to get used to them not being sideways. ;-) <-- American style wink.

Shiomi Nishihara Ha ha! It’s very nice.

§

SHIOMI

Wed, Dec. 4, 22:40

How are you, Yukiko?

Hi.

I am very sorry about Kasumi.

Me too.

You haven’t been to class

this week. I’m keeping notes

for you.

Thanks.

Are you coming back next

week? There’s an exam…

I don’t know.

Hang in there. I know it

hurts. You two were really

close.

I feel like getting up on a

chair in the middle of class

or maybe even Hakata Station

and Screaming until I can’t

anymore. And then taking a

scissors and hacking off all

my hair. Do you ever feel

that way?

Thurs., Dec. 5, 01:29

I guess not.

§

Transcript of letter between Yukiko and Kasumi

Thursday, Dec. 5, 03:17

Kasumi,

I felt a little better after my last message like this, at least for a little while, so I have to do it again.

Since the funeral, life has been a dead, cold, white fog. I don’t eat. I don’t sleep. I had to make a new notch on my belt. Any other time I would be ecstatic about that. But all I can do is think about what a coward I was to hold myself back at the last second when I heard that train coming.

Your mom came by today. The look on her face when she saw me…She asked me if I knew any of your passwords. They want to go through your phone and your computer, to see if they can find out why you did it.

I lied. None of it is any of their business. They don’t understand. They will never understand what it’s like, living in a world that crushes you from all directions at once, like a tsunami that you can’t get away from, like Fukushima radiation that gets into everything and will last for 50,000 years.

Something strange happened today, some news story about Kenta suddenly having no mouth. I searched for any news stories for over an hour, but couldn’t find anything. I don’t feel bad for him, after hurting you so badly. I wish you had told me what happened between you. The mystery hurts worse. What was so awful?

I love you.

Yukiko

§

Three Local People Admitted to Hospital with Facial Mutilation

Friday, December 6

Fukuoka—Witnesses claim to have seen two local residents admitted to Fukuoka Memorial Hospital, appearing to have suffered bizarre facial mutilation, the nature of which has been withheld by hospital officials. The victims, a couple residing in Chuo Ward, refused to be identified.

Doctors have declined to discuss the nature of the mutilation. As for the victims, the doctors will say only that the patients’ condition is stable, but they must be fed intravenously for the foreseeable future. The victims are unable to communicate what happened to them.

Another victim with a similar mutilation was admitted two days prior. His family has requested his name be withheld. He has been under sedation since being admitted, due to the extreme stress of his condition, as plastic surgeons from across the country have been called in to consult in this unique case.

Police have neither offered any sort of comment nor launched an official investigation.

§

HIRONORI

Fri, Dec. 6, 15:01

Doing anything tonight? I got

a new toy!

I can’t meet you tonight.

Why? Come on! You’ll LIKE

this one…

Are you talking about a new

sex toy?

Duh!

Not tonight.Play with

yourself.

Are you still whining about

Kasumi? It was a terrible

pity, but let it go! Have

some fun! Maybe some playtime

will take your mind off

things.

Not tonight, all right?

Please leave me alone. I’ll

call you tomorrow.

I’ve had enough of your

uptight, ungrateful bullshit.

I got this just for you.

I didn’t ask you to.

You don’t know what you want.

You’re too dark-spirited to

have any fun.

Fri, Dec. 6, 18:13

OK, I’ll come over.

Forget it.

What do you mean forget it?

I rearranged my whole schedule!

I have other plans now.

You’ve been watching porn all

Day haven’t you.

Shut up.

The well is dry.

Fuck you.

You limp-dick piece of shit.

Fuck you, you crazy bitch!

We’re through. At least porn

doesn’t sulk for weeks at a

time.

§

KASUMI

Sat., Dec. 7, 03:22

You’re late. You were

supposed to be here an hour

ago.

§

Transcript of letter between Yukiko and Kasumi

Saturday, Dec. 7, 03:35

Kasumi,

Hiro broke up with me today. I feel so awful, like someone just ripped out my guts with a gardening sickle. I’m not even good enough for a guy like him, and he’s such a loser. He didn’t elaborate, but he got some kinky new sex toy that he wanted to try on me. When I refused, he got angry. I should have just gone, maybe the sex would numb the pain of losing you, but when he brought it up, I just couldn’t think about that.

There’s a stray dog that lives near Gokoku Shrine. I think someone feeds it, or maybe it steals rice balls from the offerings. It’s a mangy thing, but it has such kind eyes and a wise smile. He likes onigiri with tuna in them. He follows me sometimes. Somehow, petting him makes my heart less heavy.

The weirdest thing just happened, and I didn’t know what to do. I was in the middle of writing this email and I just got a text from you. A terrible chill just went down my spine. Of course it couldn’t be from you. It’s got to be some sort of weird Vodafone glitch. Or they already gave your number to someone else. I’m going to visit your parents tomorrow and see if they’ve done anything with your phone.

I miss you. Without Hiro, I have no friends left at all. Is it better where you are?

Yukiko

§

KASUMI

Sat., Dec. 7, 04:00

Sat., Dec. 7, 05:00

Sat., Dec. 7, 06:00

I think you have the wrong

number.

Sat., Dec. 7, 07:00

Who is this?? Stop sending me

messages!

§

HIRONORI

Sun., Dec. 7, 00:03

I’m sorry, Yukiko! Please

make her take it back! I’m

sorry! I’m sorry!

Sun., Dec. 7, 00:32

What do you want, Hiro?

Sun., Dec. 7, 06:40

In the hospital. Its my

mouth. Plz ask her take it

back. I sorry for all those

terrible things.

What are you talking about?

Kasumi. I cant type. Fingers

shacking. Mouth gone.

Here is photo of my face.

Hiro! Oh my god! What

hospital? I’m coming!

Sun., Dec. 7, 08:04

Tell me what hospital! I’m

going crazy!

§

MOM

Sat, Dec. 7, 10:46

Where are you? You left so

early.

A friend got hurt last night.

I’m visiting him in the

hospital.

That’s so kind of you. Is

this a boyfriend?

No.

It’s okay if it is. I would

love to meet him. We know

you’ve been seeing someone.

He’s not my boyfriend. And I

wouldn’t introduce him to you

anyway.

Rude! I’m just worried about

you!

Why start now? I’ll be fine.

§

HIRONORI’S LETTER

You asked me to tell you what happened so here goes. I’m going to write it in this notebook. I hope you can read my handwriting, my hands are shaking so bad. I need to be thorough. I have to tell you everything. I have to tell you the truth. If I tell you the truth, maybe she’ll remove the curse. You can see what I look like now. Just blank skin from my nose to my throat. My mouth is not just closed, it’s gone like it never existed at all. I have no vocal cords. I have no teeth, no jaw, no tongue.

Please, she was your friend. If you ask her to remove the curse, maybe she will.

She’s a hungry ghost now, and it’s partly my fault. But it was Kenta’s idea. I just wanted to try it.

I’m sorry, my hand is shaking. I need to slow down, get it all in there.

Kenta knew Kasumi was in love with him, the way she followed him around, the way she looked at him. She was a nice girl, too nice, and not very cute. But she followed him.

Finally he was feeling horny one night and she happened to text him. He sexted her back, and the next thing he knew, she showed up at his place all moony-eyed. His parents were out of town, and he kicked his sister out. Then he called me and asked if I wanted to get a little kinky. I said sure, so I went over there, and there was Kasumi, half-drunk on beer and chuu-hai, looking at Kenta like he was a movie star. I could tell she was nervous, and she got confused when I showed up. When he told her we were going to have a party, her face got all red, but she didn’t leave. He sat down beside her and put his arm around her. She practically melted into the tatami.

So after a while they started kissing, making out. In the breaks, he told me to start snapping photos. He had this awesome new camera he wanted to try out.

My hand is getting so tired. Starting to cramp up. Not used to writing by hand. Please be patient with me.

So I took some pictures of us drinking and having fun, and she was just eating it up. She kept saying she’d never dreamed something like this would happen to her. Kenta just smiled and winked at me.

We all got pretty drunk.

They kept making out. Things started to get hotter. Kenta laid out a futon and she stretched out on it. She was moaning and making all kinds of noises. We were all getting really turned on. I kept taking pictures. There must have been three hundred by the time we were through. No, I don’t know what happened to them. They’re still on Kenta’s micro-media card for all I know.

She was getting drunk. We all were. Clothes started coming off. She was really shy about me being there, but Kenta kept telling her not to worry. That guy was a master. Everything he did, she just moaned louder and louder. I’m not a homo, but he’s got this amazing body. He looks like he stepped out of an anime.

The next thing I know, he pulled out some fuzzy handcuffs and snapped them on her wrists. She was shocked by this, but he’s a silver-tongued fox, that guy, or at least he used to be. She was scared, but going along with things. That’s when he told me to get involved. So I did. I was so hard. She was a lot cuter when you’re really horny.

She didn’t try to get away, or fight back. She just kept looking at Kenta like he was some teen idol, this look of terror and wonder, like she would do anything—absolutely anything—he wanted her to do. Kenta just kept looking at me. “Can you believe this? Can you believe this?”

When we were done with her mouth, he put his weird gag in her mouth he had gotten at a sex store, a ball gag. She didn’t like it. She started crying, but by that time he was having sex with her and wasn’t paying attention anymore. She started choking on the gag, panicking. He didn’t stop. I told him about the gag, but he kept going until he was finished. Then it was my turn, and by then she had settled down.

I saw some blood and realized she was a virgin. Something there didn’t feel right, but I was too far gone to care.

I have to tell the truth, right? If I tell the truth, you’ll help me, right? Won’t you, Yukiko? Please!

Kenta told me to do her ass, so I did. She didn’t like that either. That was my first time with the ass. I don’t blame you for saying no all those times. It wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. When we were done, we took out the ball gag, and drank some beers, but she just lay there with the handcuffs on, drooling a little and staring at the wall. When she finally sat up, we took off the handcuffs and offered her a beer, but she didn’t want any. Her face was blank, like a Noh mask.

She had pretty breasts.

We kept asking her if she had enjoyed it, and her eyes just had this spacey look. Kenta and I kept drinking until we fell asleep, and she just sat there, naked, wringing her hands, staring at the tatami. When I woke up, she had left.

Over the next few days, Kenta said he texted her a couple of times to ask if she wanted to do it again, but she never answered.

Then she was dead.

I can see the way you’re looking at me. I don’t blame you. Do you think she did it because of what happened? It wasn’t rape or anything. Maybe she didn’t like everything, but she was on board.

No, I didn’t hear about Kasumi’s parents. This happened to them, too?

Yes, I heard about Kenta. He sent me one crazy text from the hospital. He told me to run, to get out of Fukuoka, get away from Kyushu, go all the way to Hokkaido if I had to. But I didn’t know what he was talking about. And then they must have taken his phone away. I heard from his sister he tried to slash his wrists with his IV needle.

§

KASUMI

Sat., Dec. 7, 12:00

Where are you? Why don’t you

answer me???

§

Did you get just a weird text or something? Your face just turned the color of milk.

So what happened to me? Let me rest my hand for a while.

I was asleep in my room last night, having this bizarre dream where someone was trying to make me eat an apple that was too big, and a worm from it was trying to bite off my dick. I woke up suddenly, feeling like someone was there. Like there was this black pressure at the foot of my futon, crawling up my feet, pressing them down, squeezing them. I couldn’t move, didn’t dare to, like if I moved I would get its attention. I was shaking all over, sweating. My balls shrunk up like cold marbles.

And then I smelled her, the way she had smelled that night, the same perfume, the same shampoo, all fresh and sweet, and I said, “Kasumi?”

Then the pressure gushed up toward my head and grabbed me like two huge hands wadding up a scrap of paper. The blackness fell into my eyes, into my brain, swallowed me up like a bottomless well.

She said something to me, this is what she said in this hoarse whisper. “Shhhhh…”

And then I could see again, and this is how I was.

I couldn’t even scream.

§

MOM

Sat, Dec. 7, 14:04

Do you believe in hungry

ghosts?

Yuurei? Seriously? In this

day and age?

Yes, seriously!

What’s gotten into you?

Something terrible is

happening! Please call me! I

already left a voice mail.

Sat, Dec. 7, 16:28

Sorry, I had English

conversation class. What’s

going on? Your voice mail

didn’t make any sense.

I went to see a sometime

Boyfriend today, and he’s

Been cursed. Or something. I

can’t explain it, but his

mouth has been taken away.

Here’s a photo!

Don’t play with me this way,

Yukiko. It’s cruel. That is

one of the most grotesque

things I have ever seen. Why

would you show me that?

It’s real! I just saw him in

The hospital. If you don’t

believe me, there’s an

article in the newspaper!

This is a guy I know.

I’m afraid it’s Kasumi! This

is so scary.

What about Kasumi?

Kasumi did this to him. And

she did it to her parents,

too! And a boy named Kenta.

This is one of the meanest,

sickest things you have ever

done. You are such an evil

child. I don’t want to talk

to you anymore.

Sat, Dec. 7, 20:42

After five phone calls, I may

as well text you. I’m sorry

for what I said, Yukiko. I

saw the article in the

newspaper. And I visited

Kasumi’s parents, but they’re

not home. A neighbor told me

they were taken to the

hospital.

I’m sorry I didn’t believe

you. It’s just so crazy. When

your father comes home, I’ll

talk to him about it.

Sat, Dec. 7, 22:39

Where are you?

§

Transcript of letter between Yukiko and Kasumi

Saturday, Dec. 7, 23:01

Dear Kasumi,

Is it you? What’s happened? Did you do that to them, your parents? Kenta? Hiro told me what happened, what they did to you. Why didn’t you tell me?

I’ve been walking around the lake in O-Hori Park all day, trying to think about what to do. The dog followed me. I must have made fifty circles around the lake.

Are you angry with me? Are those strange texts really from you? If you can send a text, can you send me an email?

Please answer me. I’m so scared.

Yukiko

§

Sunday, Dec. 8, 00:00

Iameverywhereiamnowherepainandhurtandfeargrindinggrindinggrindinggrindingbutican’tTELLanyonei’minthisdarkemptyplacethatsmellslikeozonewithsparksshootingthroughmeandkentaisamiserableFUCKandhironoritooandicouldn’ttellmyparentstheystoppedmefromgoingtothepoliceicouldn’ttellanyoneicouldn’ttellyoutheywillalldieallstarveallfallsilentwhydidn’tyougowithmeitrustedyouDIEBITCHcometomeyukikoandwe’llbetogetherBURNINGinthecrematoriumandi’msoscaredandsoscaredandsoangryandsohurtandsoscaredandthere’snoonehereandnoonetotalktoandnoonetolistenbuticanfindpeoplenowicangoanywhereiridewaveslikesurfinguntili’mtherewiththemslidingintotheirfacesandstealingtheirvoiceskentaandhirowillnevertellanotherlieihateliesihateihateihatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehateliesyouliedtomeyukikoyousaidyouwouldcomewithmeilovedyouitrustedyouwhydidyoulietome

§

Sunday, Dec. 8, 00:05

Please Kasumi no! I’ll come with you, I promise!!

I’m sorry! I’m sorry!

If I come with you, will you stop? Don’t hurt anyone else! Please.

§

Sunday, Dec. 8, 00:06

Can’tstopwon’tstopuntilieatallthevoicesthatatemine

§

Sunday, Dec. 8, 00:07

I’ll be your voice, Kasumi! I’ll tell the world what those boys did to you! They’ll be punished! The world will know what it did to one poor girl.

I swear it.

§

Sunday, Dec. 8, 00:06

Iamnobodyihavealwaysbeennobodyyourworldisfullofnobodysnovoicenolifenoexistence

Iambecomingnobodykasumidissolvesdissappearsevaporatesexpiresfadesfleesfliesaway

Youwillnotcometomeyouwillstay

Butigiveyouonelastgift

Youwillbesomebody

Forawhile

MOM

Sun, Dec. 8, 03:17

I’m in the hospital. Fukuoka

Memorial.

It happened to me.

§

Epidemic of Bizarre Facial Mutilation Worries Police

Monday, December 9

Fukuoka—A wave of unexplained facial mutilations is terrifying wards through Fukuoka City. Since it all began last week with a case in Chuo Ward, a total of fifteen people have been admitted to area hospitals, having been stripped of their mouths by some manner unknown to medical science. Interviews with the victims offer no clues about what has happened to them.

Doctors and surgeons from across the country are meeting to determine possible causes and courses of action, but as yet there is only one conclusion. The possibility that any of them will ever be able to eat, drink, or speak normally again is almost nonexistent. All of them will have to be fed intravenously for the rest of their lives.

The first victim has been placed in a psychiatric ward after numerous suicide attempts. All of the victims remain on suicide watch due to the extreme nature of their affliction.

The Fukuoka City Police Commissioner has been in contact with the prefectural government and National Police Agency asking for assistance in finding the source of the mutilations. Investigations are on-going.

§

YUKIKO’S JOURNAL

Monday, December 9

I have no other way to communicate now, except sign language and writing. I’m afraid to write any more emails.

Kasumi is gone now, I think, or there’s not enough left of her to communicate with.

My mouth is gone. I have tried a hundred times to scream, but all that happens is air coming out of my nose. I have no vocal cords.

And it’s my fault.

I can no longer tell when I am thirsty.

I will never taste food again.

I will never kiss, or be kissed.

I will never speak again. No one will ever hear my voice again.

The first time I get the chance, I will join Kasumi. I am trapped here by these people who so desperately want to keep me alive.

Mom is asleep in a chair. Dad comes to visit me after work. The fear and loathing on his face makes me sick. And the bitter shame, so thick and sticky it crawls over everything like slime. They shower it upon me like a silent rain, all without ever saying the words. I brought this on myself for being such a horrible daughter.

I wonder what would happen to me if my stomach decided to cut loose? Would it spew out of my nose and eyes like a geyser? Would it drown me?

§

YUKIKO’S JOURNAL

Thursday, December 12

Kenta finally managed it. Tore out his carotid artery with a splintered chopstick, according to the Internet rumors. The story is all over the world now, and it’s spreading. So is the curse. Two of Kasumi’s high school teachers. The school principal. But the list of victims has gone beyond those people Kasumi knew. Kenta’s grandmother. Kasumi’s Dad’s supervisor at the office. Then that guy’s wife. I get all this information by surfing social media and drawing connections.

They’re all connected, like filaments in a spider web, and in the center, the shiny, black spider that Kasumi has become. But she’s not making the web any more. The web is making itself.

Some of them are killing themselves rather than going to the hospital. There’s nothing the doctors can do anyway, except feed us with needles and tubes.

Voices snuffed, stolen, lost.

Maybe I’ll try Kenta’s method.

Mom knows what I’m thinking. I think she reads this journal while I’m sleeping. She reads the newspaper and watches the news on TV. As the list of victims grows, she looks at me, and she’s terrified.

Freelance writer, novelist, award-winning screenwriter, editor, poker player, poet, biker, roustabout, Travis Heermann is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and the author of Death Wind, co-authored with Jim Pinto, plus The Ronin Trilogy, The Wild Boys, and Rogues of the Black Fury. His short fiction pieces has or soon will appear in anthologies and magazines such as Alembical, the Fiction River anthology series, A Game of Horns, Historical Lovecraft, and Cemetery Dance’s Shivers VII. As a freelance writer, he has produced a metric ton of role-playing game work both in print and online, including the Firefly Roleplaying Game, Legend of Five Rings, d20 System, and the MMORPG, EVE Online.

He enjoys cycling, martial arts, torturing young minds with otherworldly ideas, and zombies. He has three long-cherished dreams: a produced screenplay, a NYT best-seller, and a seat in the World Series of Poker.

Interview with Author Travis Heermann

Andrea Johnson

Travis Heermann has spent most of the last 20 years making all his dreams come true (even though if you ask him, he has a few things yet to cross off his bucket list). He’s lived in Japan, traveled extensively throughout Asia, and currently resides in the shadow of an active volcano. He’s been steadily publishing short fiction and novels since 2006, and as a freelance writer he’s written a boat load of Role Playing guides for the Firefly roleplaying game, Legend of the Five Rings, and D&D 3rd edition. Heermann’s short fiction has appeared in Alembical, Historical Lovecraft, the Fiction River anthology series, and Cemetery Dance’s Shivers VII. His novels include the Ronin trilogy (Heart of the Ronin, Sword of the Ronin,andSpirit of the Ronin), The Wild Boys,and Rogues of the Black Fury. His new novel, Death Wind will be available later this year. Heermann’s writing tends to focus on historical fiction, mythology, and the blending of the mundane and the supernatural.

In this issue of Apex, we are thrilled to present Heermann’s epistolary ghost story “Screaming Without a Mouth.” The first thing you’ll notice about this story is that it is told via a series of text messages and other methods of electronic communications. Like any text on your phone, these messages come with a time-stamp, which leads to a fascinating and compelling two-pronged side effect. The first prong is that of timing — you know immediately if it’s a flurry of text messages going back and forth, if it’s a fast conversation; or if someone is waiting hours for a response. We’ve all waited hours for a text message response, and spent those hours trying to determine if the person is just busy at work or in a meeting or outside of phone reception, or if they are pissed off at us and are punishing us with their silence. As a corollary comes the second prong — that of negative space. Because we only see the communications, not the internal thought processes, it’s within those negative spaces between the communications that the character’s internal thought processes occur. The reader has to fill in those blanks themselves. It’s now up to you to decide if the person who waited 2 hours to text back was angry, or simply away from their phone.

The next thing you’ll notice is what Heermann describes as “sticky.” No spoilers, but something happens, and someone gets their revenge. There is revenge, and there is revenge. Is Kasumi’s revenge sticky? Is it out of control? Why are people she has never interacted with being punished? Should true revenge be controlled? Influenced by Japanese folklore, the revenge that occurs in “Screaming Without a Mouth” is very different than a lot of revenge stories told in the west. With all these elements, this has got to be one of the most interesting and terrifying ghost stories I’ve ever read.

Heermann was kind enough to answer my questions about the story and how it came together in such a unique way, his Ronin trilogy, how he got involved with writing Role Playing guides, and more.

Apex Magazine: You used an epistolary method to tell this story. But instead of using standard written letters, you used the contemporary version of letters: e-mail and text messages. Being told this way, the story feels eerily silent, but on the other hand, seeing the time stamps on the text messages gives an incredibly effective “beat” to the conversations. Why did you choose to tell this particular story in that particular way?

Travis Heermann: One of the themes I wanted to explore with this story is the loss of voice, both in the literal and metaphorical sense, loss of ability to communicate — how our voices are stolen from us, as well as the ways we willingly relinquish our voices without even knowing.

Much has been said about how technology in the modern world is stunting our ability to communicate with each other face to face. Is this true? I can’t say for sure, but an entire generation of people spends a tremendous amount of their lives looking at small screens, typing in abbreviated or pictorial language without seeing the person on the other end.

Another concept at play was the Japanese idea — perhaps it’s common to Korean and Chinese folklore as well — that evil is sticky. Those who come in contact with it, however innocently or randomly, cannot fail to be affected by it. They can’t just flee the “haunted house” and be safe. Something follows them. If you look at films like Ringu and Ju-on (The Ring and The Grudge in their Western incarnations), this sense of random, tenacious malevolence runs deep and it’s what makes those stories so disturbing.

So how would a yurei, or ‘dim spirit,’ ‘hungry ghost,’ propagate itself in an electronic world, among characters for whom electronic was the primary means of communication?

This was the thought process for the shape the story took, and it was really fun to experiment this way. There is, I hope, as much meaning in the story’s empty spaces as in the text itself. A kind of Zen thing.

AM: Yukiko even writes a few letters to Kasumi. Why send letters to someone who is dead? Yukiko is far from alone in her intent to speak to someone she doesn’t expect to ever respond. Why do so many of us (myself included) feel the need to talk to people who can’t hear us?

TH: Good question. Maybe because deep in our wiring there’s some tangible imprint that those we love make on our psyches. When they’re gone, it’s as if part of them still exists within us. As I type this, I keep thinking it sounds like every bit of trite but well-meaning comfort offered to the bereaved. But I’m talking about a real psychological construct within ourselves, some part of our own consciousness that creates an amalgam within us of those to whom we are closest. Even though someone is gone from the objective world, they might be very real in our subjective one. That makes it feel entirely normal to talk to someone who’s gone, as if writing a letter to an absent friend.

Even as I write this, a quote from Kenzaburo Oe, the Nobel Prize-winning writer came across my screen: “The dead can survive as part of the lives of those that still live.”

AM: Talk to me about hungry ghosts and why they do what they do. Will Kasumi ever find peace?

TH: Not if she stays true to the folklore. Hungry ghosts are the remnants of people who die in a state of extreme emotion, such as rage or despair or loneliness. In Japanese folklore, most yurei are women, as it was generally believed that women are more prone to extreme emotion, often having died or committed suicide after being wronged by a man or losing a child. Extreme emotion was not socially acceptable in ancient Japan any more than it is now. There is an aversion to it, so people keep things bottled up.

In this story, as in my Ronin trilogy, evil is sticky, and it spreads by the evil actions it creates in others, on down an endless chain. Evil begets more evil. Kasumi’s yurei represents more than one poor, tortured girl; she becomes incarnate evil in motion.

AM: This story has a number of pieces, and I’m curious to know more about how they all came together. We have the epistolary presentation of the story, the gut punch of what really happened to Kasumi, her revenge, and the culture in which the story takes place. Which piece came in your mind first when you started writing this story? How did all the pieces come together?

TH: It was going to be a ghost story from the get-go. The first element conceived was what happens to the ghost’s victims (no spoilers here!). From there it was the idea of two Japanese girls, close friends, and something awful happens to one of them to open the door for a yurei. During some journaling and brainstorming, but before I started writing the story, the idea for the experimental form came to me. I wanted to try something I had never seen before. It all really came together when I realized what the central metaphor was and recognized how it resonated throughout the story.

Anyone who’s paying attention knows that men still hold more cards than women in the societal power structure, and this is even truer in a country as traditional as Japan, where gender roles were all but codified, where women are still expected to be submissive and subservient to men. Women’s rights have a long way to go in the West, but Japan is significantly behind the West in that regard. How often is it a man — through cruelty or abuse, asserting dominance, or simple ignorance or apathy — who takes away a young woman’s voice in any of a multitude of ways? How often are women forced to keep silent by their fathers, then their boyfriends, then their husbands? This was certainly a major force in Yukiko’s and Kasumi’s lives, and resonates (I hope) with the story’s events.

AM: The first novel in your historical fantasy Ronin series came out in 2009. What is the series about, and what kind of research did you do for this series?

TH: The story is set in 13th Century Japan, and blends real historical events with the creatures of folklore and other supernatural elements. It tells the story of a young masterless samurai, a ronin, who saves a noble maiden from a pack of bandits led by a nefarious demon. They fall in love in the most ill-fated fashion; his is a low birth, hers a noble one. Unbeknownst to either of them, she is betrothed to a powerful lord. So the star-crossed lovers are torn apart until their paths cross once again, but by that time, their lives are vastly changed.

The late 13th Century was a pivotal time in Japanese history, as it was the target of two invasion attempts by Khubilai Khan’s Mongol hordes.

I started writing what became the Ronin trilogy in about 1999. A slew of samurai films inspired me to take that path, and the research began with trips to the library and internet research, progressed to learning the language, and culminated in moving to Japan and living in the same area as the story takes place. I taught English there for three years, whilst having a fabulous time and doing loads of first-hand research at historical sites, shrines, and studying Japanese texts.

Writing that story has changed my life in almost every conceivable way, and I finished the last volume, Spirit of the Ronin, last year. It felt like closing a chapter of my life. Nevertheless, like any good book, it leaves one anticipating what happens next.

AM: You’ve written a huge number of roleplaying guides for Alderac, White Wolf, and the Firefly RPG. How did you get involved with writing these? What unexpected doors opened for you due to your involvement with RPGs and publishers of RPG guides?

TH: For years I wanted to break into writing roleplaying game stuff. I was hugely into games of all sorts, including tabletop RPGs. In the late 90s, I volunteered in Alderac’s booth at several GenCons, got to know their people, and they gave me my first ever freelance writing gig, a short RPG module for D&D 3rd Edition and its Open Source d20 rules. From there I wrote several more of those mini-adventures as well as collaborating on various sourcebooks in that realm. Eventually I moved into the Legend of the Five Rings universe, which was a dream come true for me, as it was another facet of my fascination with Japanese mythology, history, and culture.

From there, I had some published credits, happened to share a cab ride with someone from White Wolf at GenCon, struck up a conversation, and ended up working on EVE Online.

Two years ago, I attended GenCon again, met the wonderful folks at Margaret Weis Publications, and snagged the opportunity to work on The Smuggler’s Guide to the Rim for the Firefly Roleplaying Game. That was another dream come true, because I’ve been a huge Firefly fan for years.

So basically it began with knowing the right people at the right time, being given a chance, and then following through. That very first freelance gig was the first of a succession of doors, each opening other doors with each successful job. I wrote something like half a million words of RPG-related text, all of which was great practice not only in writing skills but in working with ambitious deadlines.

The most successful writers are good at getting doors to open just a crack, or noticing when doors are open, and going through them with a spirit of “I can do this.” Each door is both an opportunity and an accomplishment, and beyond each door are simply more doors.

AM: You had a number of short stories appear in anthologies in 2015, and 2016 is shaping up to be a very good year for your published short fiction as well. How in the world do you get so much written so quickly? Of your recently and soon to be published short stories, which is your favorite? Which was the most challenging to write?

TH: I subscribe to the idea that spending too long on one piece of short fiction is detrimental to the story. Agonizing over every sentence, endless critiquing, endless revising, you can write the heart right out of it. Once you’ve achieved professional writing proficiency — you’ve written your million words of crap so you can get to the good stuff, to paraphrase Ray Bradbury — you should be able to sit down and produce a draft fairly quickly. You have to get it out. Pour it out of your subconscious in its purest form, without letting thinking and writing skills get in your way. Bogging yourself down in making everything perfect stunts the story.

There are a lot of writers faster than me, the kind who can sneeze and 4,000 words hit the page, so I have greater productivity levels to shoot for. But with sustained effort, I can typically produce a rough draft in 3-4 days, faster if need be. When I’m in a short story writing mode, I’ll write a story one week and edit/revise the one I wrote last week. When I’m in a novel, I shoot for a daily word count of 1,500-2,000 words.

Of the short stories I have sold thus far to come out this year, “Screaming Without a Mouth” feels like it has the most meat on its bones, the one where theme, content, and form come together. It was also the most difficult because of its experimental form and its use of empty spaces, so to speak. Back to the Zen thing, a bowl is only useful for the empty space it contains.

That being said, I’m also proud of a short thriller called “Redline” that I wrote for Kevin J. Anderson’s anthology Pulse Pounders: Adrenaline, to be published by the Fiction River anthology series later this year. Kristine Kathryn Rusch told me it was a wonderful piece of writing, another gut-punch story, one that would really stick with her, and when a long-time industry professional and award-winning editor says something like that about one’s story, one just glows for a while.

AM: What’s next for you? What exciting projects are you currently working on?

TH: This year could be a big one for me. My next novel release will be Death Wind, a Lovecraftian horror-western, co-written with Jim Pinto and published by WordFire Press, scheduled to blow your house down in July, 2016.

For upcoming writing projects, I’m set to begin work on some media tie-in stories and a novel for a well-known game property that encompasses both tabletop and video game branches. I’m not at liberty to divulge what property at this point, but those stories and serialized release of the novel are set to begin within the next few months. This will take the bulk of my time until later in the year. This is my first media tie-in fiction work, and I’ve been a fan of the game for 25 years, so I’m excited about it.

After that, I have a number of directions I could go, depending on how things shake out.

AM: Thanks Travis!

Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. If she’s not walking around her day job with a coffee mug in hand, then she’s at home with a book in one hand and a craft beer in the other. She can be found online at her book review blog Little Red Reviewer and on Twitter, where her handle is @redhead5318. You wouldn’t know it from this bio, but Andrea is a very goofy person.

Naked

Annie Neugebauer

I will strip you bare.

And I won’t stop at skin.

You can still hide a lot beneath skin.

And what about

this thin layer of muscle,

quivering and flexing

beneath my gaze?

That, too, must go.

And what of this strange cage

made of bones, curved

like sideways teeth

around your reality?

It must be opened.

And this nest of organs

covering you up —

what of them?

Surely you know

they must go as well.

It all must go.

I will keep removing layers

until the heart of you is exposed —

naked, bare —

pulsing out your truth

two fleshy beats at a time.

Annie Neugebauer is a novelist, short story author, and award-winning poet. She has work appearing in over fifty venues, including Black Static, Fireside, and Buzzy Mag. She’s an active member of the Horror Writers Association, webmaster for the Poetry Society of Texas, and a columnist for Writer Unboxed. You can visit her at www.AnnieNeugebauer.com.

The Sword Excalibur

David Barber

Old these hills and old the stone

Ploughed the grave and broke the bone

Long the grass on paths forgot

To camps and kingdoms which are not

Lost the songs of feast and raid

Dead the king and rust his blade.

Ore

Picking at the rock like scabs

to ease the dirt’s itch is one thing,

wounding the earth is something other.

The underworld has swallowed men before.

Thieved from the ground, the ore

attracts bad luck, its taint cleansed by blood:

the head of a captive, a newborn.

Fire

The sorcerer keeps his creature hid,

but is heard panting in the night,

a cough of sparks, the spoor of slag.

Fire sweats bright droplets from the rock.

Wrong as watching your own mother undress.

One look can spoil the metal, turn it

soft as torcs round the necks of women.

Smithy

A king is no king without a smith.

This one, cast up by storm-winds

was hamstrung to keep him here.

Hobbled and wrathful, he beats metal,

bends it to his will; alone can draw

from dull rock the sharp sword.

King

Bladeless, a man might be called

robber, cattle-thief, bully.

The warrior-king names his sword

when it first tastes blood. I have seen

foes flinch at the gleam of hard metal,

wooden spears unmanned in their hands.

Water

Who would risk the spiteful blades

of dead men in battle? Sunk in water,

left to grow old with the earth’s wife

the magic blunts. I know of

lonely places, curlew-haunted,

the sky shivering in its mirror

where a sword offered itself.

David Barber lives anonymously in the UK. He used to be a scientist, though he is retired now and writing instead. His work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Star Line, New Myths, and Abyss & Apex. He is a puzzle to his friends.

Interview with Cover Artist Vincent Sammy

Russell Dickerson

This month’s cover artist is Vincent Sammy, an artist combining his preferred medium of watercolor with digital tools to create fantastic visions of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. We recently spoke with Sammy, who is preparing for the zombie apocalypse at his home in Cape Town, South Africa.

APEX MAGAZINE: Your beautiful piece “Depth Charge,” this month’s Apex Magazine cover, gives the viewer intrigue without spelling out the entire story. How do you balance capturing the viewer’s interest in a piece without overloading them with information? How much of that balance is planned ahead of time, versus on the fly during creation?

VINCENT SAMMY: A lot of the layout is planned at the beginning stage through rough pencil sketches. Some changes may occur afterward when, during the color stages, certain things that you had not thought of before come to light. However, those are usually minor changes. “Depth Charge” originally appeared on the cover of Something Wicked magazine. It was the only magazine in South Africa devoted to horror and sci-fi, and is where I basically got to hone my craft in these genres.

I find that, for me, the best way to create intrigue is to have elements that are not often associated with each other, yet fall within the realm of possibility. Then add aspects such as the tube connections coming from the fingers that lead off the page. It raises questions such as where does this lead to and what is its purpose? Then I added the bandages to the eyes that gives it a sense of something having happened beforehand. Now you have an image that is improbable, but not impossible. An image that is rooted in past, present, and future. And if all of these elements work together well, you have an illustration that tells a story by itself.

AM: Many of the works in your DeviantArt galleries are illustrations for publication, and you listed on your profile that you are a graphic designer. How does graphic design come into play when you are working on an illustration? Does that sense change at all when it’s a personal piece, and doesn’t require the considerations that publications have?

VS: I’m not sure whether this actually helps me or perhaps holds me back, but I do know that I always consider the image from a design point of view. Will it work well within the dimensions of a cover and its typography, or how do I need to lay it out in order to assist the magazine designer’s creative approach if it’s an interior piece. When it comes to personal work I try not to think of any design aspect but rather to let the piece go where it wants. If at any stage it needs to have design elements added, I will let the image dictate the final outcome. In general, most of the illustrations that are personal pieces end up with design elements. Especially when I work on my personal magazine/comic project called Echo Gear.

AM: Works such as “Going to the Sun Mountain,” seem more subtle in that they infer that something horror related just happened, or is about to happen. How do you approach representing horror without falling into gore and other shocks? How should an image represent horror, or even science fiction or fantasy, without falling into obvious tricks or shocks?

Going to the Sun Mountain

VS: Horror is probably one of the more difficult genres of art to get right when it comes to creating a static image. When you do horror in movies or television you have the added help of sound and movement to assist in building tension. You can also force your audience to see what you need them to see when you need them to see it. With illustration you don’t have that luxury. Your image is immediate and it’s just there. No build up, no jump-scare, and no foreboding. So my approach to horror art is one where I try to show as little horror as possible. To a horror audience, a gore-soaked monster is about as scary as a Smurf with a lollipop.

So there are two ways in which I approach the genre. One way, which is the method I employ the most, is to portray the beauty in the story or the idea that I have. If you look deep enough you will find it. I find modern fashion photography a rather big inspiration in my approach to horror. The static image that dares you to either love or hate what you see. I find that by portraying something bad or evil in a manner that is beautiful, you can lure the viewer into a false sense of security as to what they are about to read. Then juxtapose the main image with other elements that can create unease with the ability to disturb and provoke a question such as “Why do I like this image when there is something off about it?” That is the main approach to “Going to the Sun Mountain.” Although this story contains supernatural violence, I preferred to keep that aspect out of the image. I focused on the close bond of the girls with the element of the tire iron looming off to the side with debris in the background.

My second approach is one where I like to invent new monsters. Beware the Dark’s cover was one such image. In this day and age where vampires sparkle, Frankenstein’s monster is a superhero, and werewolves are teen crushes, I feel the need to bring fear back into the fold of horror. The Beware the Dark cover was one of creating a new monster, “The Witch-angel of Maggots”, who seduces and kills the fathers of happy children. Too many monsters have lost their teeth over the last few decades. Someone needs to look out for them. :)

The Witch-angel of Maggots

AM: Your galleries feature a variance of digital, traditional, and mixed media. When you are working on a project, do you tend to stick with a certain media as you go, or do you allow the piece to move you towards mixing techniques together?

VS: I generally stick to the method of using traditional media such as watercolor paints or pencils. I like the idea of having a one of a kind original image as to a totally digital image. This image then gets scanned and manipulated in Photoshop, a sort of post-production process that allows me to add mood and color correction or even introduce or delete elements where necessary.

AM: When you are working on an illustration for a story, such as Bryan Smith’s Deathbringer, how do you approach bringing an author’s vision to life? Is there a point, going from the author’s words to your visuals, that the interpretation becomes more of your vision than the author’s?

Deathbringer

VS: I always read everything that I illustrate. I hate creating an image from spec based upon the publisher or author’s notes about what the characters look like and what they do. I find this leads to images that are not engaging, as you have no true sense of how to portray the character’s intent or predicament. Luckily I don’t get a lot of those kinds of requests. I read Deathbringer and made notes about everything as I went along. Sometimes things crop up in a story that’s not fully explained and I’ll do research on it. I like the details of an image to be accurate. I found the character portrayed on the cover to be the most intriguing and decided to use her with another character in the background. The cover gives the impression that she is the hero of the story and is some kind of ass kicking zombie killer, but that’s not the case. She is in fact a duplicitous and conniving person who, just like the main characters that she deceives in the book, now has the job of also deceiving the readers into thinking that this is the kind of character that they can root for. In this way I think I presented the cover in the way that the author wrote the story without giving away any of its content.

There are some instances where an author would request a specific kind of image and if I feel that it may be a bit off center I will present them with alternatives to what I think may be more effective. But I have been lucky in working with a lot of publishers and authors who have complete trust in my vision and with whom I can have an open dialogue as to what best fits the cover. There are times where I too miss something obvious, and therefore this kind of relationship is what always makes for creating the best product possible.

Vincent Sammy is the 2016 cover artist for Black Static, and his artwork has been featured in publications such as Beware the Dark and Something Wicked. His art has appeared in the movies Chronicle and Tiger House, and he has been nominated for an “Artist of the Year” award by the This Is Horror Awards for 2012 and 2013.

He has published three issues of his hybrid-codex magazine Echo Gear, a combination of illustration, sequential art, magazine design and layout, and prose/poetry. Visit his gallery of works at karbonk.deviantart.com.

Photo by John Urbancik

Russell Dickerson has been a published illustrator and designer since the previous millennium, creating works for many genre publications and authors. He has also written many articles for various organizations in that time, including Apex, and his work can be found on his website at www.darkstormcreative.com.

Dolly

Elizabeth Bear

6,000 words

On Sunday when Dolly awakened, she had olive skin and black-brown hair that fell in waves to her hips. On Tuesday when Dolly awakened, she was a redhead, and fair. But on Thursday—on Thursday her eyes were blue, her hair was as black as a crow’s-wing, and her hands were red with blood.

In her black French maid’s outfit, she was the only thing in the expensively appointed drawing room that was not winter-white or antiqued gold. It was the sort of room you hired somebody else to clean. It was as immaculate as it was white.

Immaculate and white, that is, except for the dead body of billionaire industrialist Clive Steele—and try to say that without sounding like a comic book—which lay at Dolly’s feet, his viscera blossoming from him like macabre petals.

That was how she looked when Rosamund Kirkbride found her, standing in a red stain in a white room like a thorn in a rose.

Dolly had locked in position where her program ran out. As Roz dropped to one knee outside the border of the blood-saturated carpet, Dolly did not move.

The room smelled like meat and bowels. Flies clustered thickly on the windows, but none had yet managed to get inside. No matter how hermetically sealed the house, it was only a matter of time. Like love, the flies found a way.

Grunting with effort, Roz planted both green-gloved hands on winter white wool-and-silk fibers and leaned over, getting her head between the dead guy and the doll. Blood spattered Dolly’s silk stockings and her kitten-heeled boots: both the spray-can dots of impact projection and the soaking arcs of a breached artery.

More than one, given that Steele’s heart lay, trailing connective tissue, beside his left hip. The crusted blood on Dolly’s hands had twisted in ribbons down the underside of her forearms to her elbows and from there dripped into the puddle on the floor.

The android was not wearing undergarments.

“You staring up that girl’s skirt, Detective?”

Roz was a big, plain woman, and out of shape in her forties. It took her a minute to heave herself back to her feet, careful not to touch the victim or the murder weapon yet. She’d tied her straight light brown hair back before entering the scene, the ends tucked up in a net. The severity of the style made her square jaw into a lantern. Her eyes were almost as blue as the doll’s.

“Is it a girl, Peter?” Putting her hands on her knees, she pushed fully upright. She shoved a fist into her back and turned to the door.

Peter King paused just inside, taking in the scene with a few critical sweeps of eyes so dark they didn’t catch any light from the sunlight or the chandelier. His irises seemed to bleed pigment into the whites, warming them with swirls of ivory. In his black suit, his skin tanned almost to match, he might have been a heroically sized construction paper cutout against the white walls, white carpet, the white-and-gold marble-topped table that looked both antique and French.

His blue paper booties rustled as he crossed the floor. “Suicide, you think?”

“Maybe if it was strangulation.” Roz stepped aside so Peter could get a look at the body.

He whistled, which was pretty much what she had done.

“Somebody hated him a lot. Hey, that’s one of the new Dollies, isn’t it? Man, nice.” He shook his head. “Bet it cost more than my house.”

“Imagine spending half a mil on a sex toy,” Roz said, “only to have it rip your liver out.” She stepped back, arms folded.

“He probably didn’t spend that much on her. His company makes accessory programs for them.”

“Industry courtesy?” Roz asked.

“Tax writeoff. Test model.” Peter was the department expert on Home companions. He circled the room, taking it in from all angles. Soon the scene techs would be here with their cameras and their tweezers and their 3D scanner, turning the crime scene into a permanent virtual reality. In his capacity of soft forensics, Peter would go over Dolly’s program, and the medical examiner would most likely confirm that Steele’s cause of death was exactly what it looked like: something had punched through his abdominal wall and clawed his innards out.

“Doors were locked?”

Roz pursed her lips. “Nobody heard the screaming.”

“How long you think you’d scream without any lungs?” He sighed. “You know, it never fails. The poor folks, nobody ever heard no screaming. And the rich folks, they’ve got no neighbors to hear ‘em scream. Everybody in this modern world lives alone.”

It was a beautiful Birmingham day behind the long silk draperies, the kind of mild and bright that spring mornings in Alabama excelled at. Peter craned his head back and looked up at the chandelier glistening in the dustless light. Its ornate curls had been spotlessly clean before aerosolized blood on Steele’s last breath misted them.

“Steele lived alone,” she said. “Except for the robot. His cook found the body this morning. Last person to see him before that was his P.A., as he left the office last night.”

“Lights on seems to confirm that he was killed after dark.”

“After dinner,” Roz said.

“After the cook went home for the night.” Peter kept prowling the room, peering behind draperies and furniture, looking in corners and crouching to lift up the dust-ruffle on the couch. “Well, I guess there won’t be any question about the stomach contents.”

Roz went through the pockets of the dead man’s suit jacket, which was draped over the arm of a chair. Pocket computer and a folding knife, wallet with an RFID chip. His house was on palmprint, his car on voice rec. He carried no keys. “Assuming the M.E. can find the stomach.”

“Touché. He’s got a cook, but no housekeeper?”

“I guess he trusts the android to clean but not cook?”

“No tastebuds.” Peter straightened up, shaking his head. “They can follow a recipe, but—”

“You won’t get high art,” Roz agreed, licking her lips. Outside, a car door slammed. “Scene team?”

“M.E.,” Peter said, leaning over to peer out. “Come on, let’s get back to the house and pull the codes for this model.”

“All right,” Roz said. “But I’m interrogating it. I know better than to leave you alone with a pretty girl.”

Peter rolled his eyes as he followed her towards the door. “I like ‘em with a little more spunk than all that.”

§

“So the new dolls,” Roz said in Peter’s car, carefully casual. “What’s so special about ‘em?”

“Man,” Peter answered, brow furrowing. “Gimme a sec.”

Roz’s car followed as they pulled away from the house on Balmoral Road, maintaining a careful distance from the bumper. Peter drove until they reached the parkway. Once they’d joined a caravan downtown, nose-to-bumper on the car ahead, he folded his hands in his lap and let the lead car’s autopilot take over.

He said, “What isn’t? Real-time online editing—personality and physical, appearance, ethnicity, hair—all kinds of behavior protocols, you name the kink they’ve got a hack for it.”

“So if you knew somebody’s kink,” she said thoughtfully. “Knew it in particular. You could write an app for that—”

“One that would appeal to your guy in specific.” Peter’s hands dropped to his lap, his head bobbing up and down enthusiastically. “With a—pardon the expression—backdoor.”

“Trojan horse. Don’t jilt a programmer for a sex machine.”

“There’s an ap for that,” he said, and she snorted. “Two cases last year, worldwide. Not common, but—”

Roz looked down at her hands. “Some of these guys,” she said. “They program the dolls to scream.”

Peter had sensuous lips. When something upset him, those lips thinned and writhed like salted worms. “I guess maybe it’s a good thing they have a robot to take that out on.”

“Unless the fantasy stops being enough.” Roz’s voice was flat, without judgment. Sunlight fell warm through the windshield. “What do you know about the larval stage of serial rapists, serial killers?”

“You mean, what if pretend pain stops doing it for them? What if the appearance of pain is no longer enough?”

She nodded, worrying a hangnail on her thumb. The nitrile gloves dried out your hands.

“They used to cut up paper porn magazines.” His broad shoulders rose and fell, his suit catching wrinkles against the car seat when they came back down. “They’ll get their fantasies somewhere.”

“I guess so.” She put her thumb in her mouth to stop the bleeding, a thick red bead that welled up where she’d torn the cuticle.

Her own saliva stung.

§

Sitting in the cheap office chair Roz had docked along the short edge of her desk, Dolly slowly lifted her chin. She blinked. She smiled.

“Law enforcement override code accepted.” She had a little-girl Marilyn voice. “How may I help you, Detective Kirkbride?”

“We are investigating the murder of Clive Steele,” Roz said, with a glance up to Peter’s round face. He stood behind Dolly with a wireless scanner and an air of concentration. “Your contract-holder of record.”

“I am at your service.”

If Dolly were a real girl, the bare skin of her thighs would have been sticking to the recycled upholstery of that office chair. But her realistically-engineered skin was breathable polymer. She didn’t sweat unless you told her to, and she probably didn’t stick to cheap chairs.

“Evidence suggests that you were used as the murder weapon.” Roz steepled her hands on her blotter. “We will need access to your software update records and your memory files.”

“Do you have a warrant?” Her voice was not stiff or robotic at all, but warm, human. Even in disposing of legal niceties, it had a warm, confiding quality.

Silently, Peter transmitted it. Dolly blinked twice while processing the data, a sort of status bar. Something to let you know the thing wasn’t hung.

“We also have a warrant to examine you for DNA trace evidence,” Roz said.

Dolly smiled, her raven hair breaking perfectly around her narrow shoulders. “You may be assured of my cooperation.”

Peter led her into one of the interrogation rooms, where the operation could be recorded. With the help of an evidence tech, he undressed Dolly, bagged her clothes as evidence, brushed her down onto a sheet of paper, combed her polymer hair and swabbed her polymer skin. He swabbed her orifices and scraped under her nails.

Roz stood by, arms folded, a necessary witness. Dolly accepted it all impassively, moving as directed and otherwise standing like a caryatid. Her engineered body was frankly sexless in its perfection—belly flat, hips and ass like an inverted heart, breasts floating cartoonishly beside a defined rib cage. Apparently, Steele had liked them skinny.

“So much for pulchritudinousness,” Roz muttered to Peter when their backs were to the doll.

He glanced over his shoulder. The doll didn’t have feelings to hurt, but she looked so much like a person it was hard to remember to treat her as something else. “I think you mean voluptuousness,” he said. “It is a little too good to be true, isn’t it?”

“If you would prefer different proportions,” Dolly said, “My chassis is adaptable to a range of forms—”

“Thank you,” Peter said. “That won’t be necessary.”

Otherwise immobile, Dolly smiled. “Are you interested in science, Detective King? There is an article in Nature this week on advances in the polymerase chain reaction used for replicating DNA. It’s possible that within five years, forensic and medical DNA analysis will become significantly cheaper and faster.”

Her face remained stoic, but Dolly’s voice grew animated as she spoke. Even enthusiastic. It was an utterly convincing—and engaging—effect.

Apparently, Clive Steele had programmed his sex robot to discourse on molecular biology with verve and enthusiasm.

“Why don’t I ever find the guys who like smart women?” Roz said.

Peter winked with the side of his face that faced away from the companion. “They’re all dead.”

§

A few hours after Peter and the tech had finished processing Dolly for trace evidence and Peter had started downloading her files, Roz left her parser software humming away at Steele’s financials and poked her head in to check on the robot and the cop. The techs must have gotten what they needed from Dolly’s hands, because she had washed them. As she sat beside Peter’s workstation, a cable plugged behind her left eat, she cleaned her lifelike polymer fingernails meticulously with a file, dropping the scrapings into an evidence bag.

“Sure you want to give the prisoner a weapon, Peter?” Roz shut the ancient wooden door behind her.

Dolly looked up, as if to see if she was being addressed, but made no response.

“She don’t need it,” he said. “Besides, whatever she had in her wiped itself completely after it ran. Not much damage to her core personality, but there are some memory gaps. I’m going to compare them to backups, once we get those from the scene team.”

“Memory gaps. Like the crime,” Roz guessed. “And something around the time the Trojan was installed?”

Dolly blinked her long-lashed blue eyes languorously. Peter patted her on the shoulder and said, “Whoever did it is a pretty good cracker. He didn’t just wipe, he patterned her memories and overwrote the gaps. Like using a clone tool to photoshop somebody you don’t like out of a picture.”

“Her days must be pretty repetitive,” Roz said. “How’d you pick that out?”

“Calendar.” Peter puffed up a little, smug. “She don’t do the same housekeeping work every day. There’s a Monday schedule and a Wednesday schedule and—well, I found where the pattern didn’t match. And there’s a funny thing—watch this.”

He waved vaguely at a display panel. It lit up, showing Dolly in her black-and-white uniform, vacuuming. “House camera,” Peter explained. “She’s plugged into Steele’s security system. Like a guard dog with perfect hair. Whoever performed the hack also edited the external webcam feeds that mirror to the companion’s memories.”

“How hard is that?”

“Not any harder than cloning over her files, but you have to know to look for them. So it’s confirmation that our perp knows his or her way around a line of code. What have you got?”

Roz shrugged. “Steele had a lot of money, which means a lot of enemies. And he did not have a lot of human contact. Not for years now. I’ve started calling in known associates for interviews, but unless they surprise me, I think we’re looking at crime of profit, not crime of passion.”

Having finished with the nail file, Dolly wiped it on her prison smock and laid it down on Peter’s blotter, beside the cup of ink and light pens.

Peter swept it into a drawer. “So we’re probably not after the genius programmer lover he dumped for a robot. Pity, I liked the poetic justice in that.”

Dolly blinked, lips parting, but seemed to decide that Peter’s comment had not been directed at her. Still, she drew in air—could you call it a breath?—and said, “It is my duty to help find my contract holder’s killer.”

Roz lowered her voice. “You’d think they’d pull ‘em off the market.”

“Like they pull all cars whenever one crashes? The world ain’t perfect.”

“Or do that robot laws thing everybody used to twitter on about.”

“Whatever a positronic brain is, we don’t have it. Asimov’s fictional robots were self-aware. Dolly’s neurons are binary, as we used to think human neurons were. She doesn’t have the nuanced neurochemistry of even, say, a cat.” Peter popped his collar smooth with his thumbs. “A doll can’t want. It can’t make moral judgments, any more than your car can. Anyway, if we could do that, they wouldn’t be very useful for home defense. Oh, incidentally, the sex protocols in this one are almost painfully vanilla—”

“Really.”

Peter nodded.

Roz rubbed a scuffmark on the tile with her shoe. “So given he didn’t like anything... challenging, why would he have a Dolly when he could have had any woman he wanted?”

“There’s never any drama, no pain, no disappointment. Just comfort, the perfect helpmeet. With infinite variety.”

“And you never have to worry about what she wants. Or likes in bed.”

Peter smiled. “The perfect woman for a narcissist.”

§

The interviews proved unproductive, but Roz didn’t leave the station house until after ten. Spring mornings might be warm, but once the sun went down, a cool breeze sprang up, ruffling the hair she’d finally remembered to pull from its ponytail as she walked out the door.

Roz’s green plug-in was still parked beside Peter’s. It booted as she walked toward it, headlights flickering on, power probe retracting. The driver side door swung open as her RFID chip came within range. She slipped inside and let it buckle her in.

“Home,” she said, “and dinner.”

The car messaged ahead as it pulled smoothly from the parking spot. Roz let the autopilot handle the driving. It was less snappy than human control, but as tired as she was, eyelids burning and heavy, it was safer.

Whatever Peter had said about cars crashing, Roz’s delivered her safe to her driveway. Her house let her in with a key—she had decent security, but it was the old-fashioned kind—and the smell of boiling pasta and toasting garlic bread wafted past as she opened it.

“Sven?” she called, locking herself inside.

His even voice responded. “I’m in the kitchen.”

She left her shoes by the door and followed her nose through the cheaply furnished living room.

Sven was cooking shirtless, and she could see the repaired patches along his spine where his skin had grown brittle and cracked with age. He turned and greeted her with a smile. “Bad day?”

“Somebody’s dead again,” she said.

He put the wooden spoon down on the rest. “How does that make you feel, that somebody’s dead?”

He didn’t have a lot of emotional range, but that was okay. She needed something steadying in her life. She came to him and rested her head against his warm chest. He draped one arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him, breathing deep. “Like I have work to do.”

“Do it tomorrow,” he said. “You will feel better once you eat and rest.”

§

Peter must have slept in a ready room cot, because when Roz arrived at the house before six AM, he had on the same trousers and a different shirt, and he was already armpit-deep in coffee and Dolly’s files. Dolly herself was parked in the corner, at ease and online but in rest mode.

Or so she seemed, until Roz entered the room and Dolly’s eyes tracked. “Good morning, Detective Kirkbride,” Dolly said. “Would you like some coffee? Or a piece of fruit?”

“No thank you.” Roz swung Peter’s spare chair around and dropped into it. An electric air permeated the room—the feeling of anticipation. To Peter, Roz said, “Fruit?”

“Dolly believes in a healthy diet,” he said, nudging a napkin on his desk that supported a half-eaten Satsuma. “She’ll have the whole house cleaned up in no time. We’ve been talking about literature.”

Roz spun the chair so she could keep both Peter and Dolly in her peripheral vision. “Literature?”

“Poetry,” Dolly said. “Detective King mentioned poetic justice yesterday afternoon.”

Roz stared at Peter. “Dolly likes poetry. Steele really did like ‘em smart.”

“That’s not all Dolly likes.” Peter triggered his panel again. “Remember this?”

It was the cleaning sequence from the previous day, the sound of the central vacuum system rising and falling as Dolly lifted the brush and set it down again.

Roz raised her eyebrows.

Peter held up a hand. “Wait for it. It turns out there’s a second audio track.”

Another waggle of his fingers, and the cramped office filled with sound.

Music.

Improvisational jazz. Intricate and weird.

“Dolly was listening to that inside her head while she was vacuuming,” Peter said.

Roz touched her fingertips to each other, the whole assemblage to her lips. “Dolly?”

“Yes, Detective Kirkbride?”

“Why do you listen to music?”

“Because I enjoy it.”

Roz let her hand fall to her chest, pushing her blouse against he skin below the collarbones.

Roz said, “Did you enjoy your work at Mr. Steele’s house?”

“I was expected to enjoy it,” Dolly said, and Roz glanced at Peter, cold all up her spine. A classic evasion. Just the sort of thing a home companion’s conversational algorithms should not be able to produce.

Across his desk, Peter was nodding. “Yes.”

Dolly turned at the sound of his voice. “Are you interested in music, Detective Kirkbride? I’d love to talk with you about it some time. Are you interested in poetry? Today, I was reading—”

Mother of God, Roz mouthed.

“Yes,” Peter said. “Dolly, wait here please. Detective Kirkbride and I need to talk in the hall.”

“My pleasure, Detective King,” said the companion.

§

“She killed him,” Roz said. “She killed him and wiped her own memory of the act. A doll’s got to know her own code, right?”

Peter leaned against the wall by the men’s room door, arms folded, forearms muscular under rolled-up sleeves. “That’s hasty.”

“And you believe it, too.”

He shrugged. “There’s a rep from Venus Consolidated in Interview Four right now. What say we go talk to him?”

§

The rep’s name was Doug Jervis. He was actually a vice president of public relations, and even though he was an American, he’d been flown in overnight from Rio for the express purpose of talking to Peter and Roz.

“I guess they’re taking this seriously.”

Peter gave her a sideways glance. “Wouldn’t you?”

Jervis got up as they came into the room, extending a good handshake across the table. There were introductions and Roz made sure he got a coffee. He was a white man on the steep side of fifty with mousy hair the same color as Roz’s and a jaw like a Boxer dog’s.

When they were all seated again, Roz said, “So tell me a little bit about the murder weapon. How did Clive Steele wind up owning a—what, an experimental model?”

Jervis started shaking his head before she was halfway through, but he waited for her to finish the sentence. “It’s a production model. Or will be. The one Steele had was an alpha-test, one of the first three built. We plan to start full-scale production in June. But you must understand that Venus doesn’t sell a home companion, Detective. We offer a contract. I understand that you hold one.”

“I have a housekeeper,” she said, ignoring Peter’s sideways glance. He wouldn’t say anything in front of the witness, but she would be in for it in the locker room. “An older model.”

Jervis smiled. “Naturally, we want to know everything we can about an individual involved in a case so potentially explosive for our company. We researched you and your partner. Are you satisfied with our product?”

“He makes pretty good garlic bread.” She cleared her throat, reasserting control of the interview. “What happens to a Dolly that’s returned? If its contract is up, or it’s replaced with a newer model?”

He flinched at the slang term, as if it offended him. “Some are obsoleted out of service. Some are refurbished and go out on another contract. Your unit is on its fourth placement, for example.”

“So what happens to the owner preferences at that time?”

“Reset to factory standard,” he said.

Peter’s fingers rippled silently on the tabletop.

Roz said, “Isn’t that cruel? A kind of murder?”

“Oh, no!” Jervis sat back, appearing genuinely shocked. “A home companion has no sense of I, it has no identity. It’s an object. Naturally, you become attached. People become attached to dolls, to stuffed animals, to automobiles. It’s a natural aspect of the human psyche.”

Roz hummed encouragement, but Jervis seemed to be done.

Peter asked, “Is there any reason why a companion would wish to listen to music?”

That provoked enthusiastic head-shaking. “No, it doesn’t get bored. It’s a tool, it’s a toy. A companion does not require an enriched environment. It’s not a dog or an octopus. You can store it in a closet when it’s not working.”

“I see,” Roz said. “Even an advanced model like Mr. Steele’s?”

“Absolutely,” Jervis said. “Does your entertainment center play shooter games to amuse itself while you sleep?”

“I’m not sure,” Roz said. “I’m asleep. So when Dolly’s returned to you, she’ll be scrubbed.”

“Normally she would be scrubbed and re-leased, yes.” Jervis hesitated. “Given her colorful history, however—”

“Yes,” Roz said. “I see.”

With no sign of nervousness or calculation, Jervis said, “When do you expect you’ll be done with Mr. Steele’s companion? My company, of course, is eager to assist in your investigations, but we must stress that she is our corporate property, and quite valuable.”

Roz stood, Peter a shadow-second after her. “That depends on if it goes to trial, Mr. Jervis. After all, she’s either physical evidence, or a material witness.”

§

“Or the killer,” Peter said in the hall, as his handset began emitting the D.N.A. lab’s distinctive beep. Roz’s went off a second later, but she just hit the silence. Peter already had his open.

“No genetic material,” he said. “Too bad.” If there had been D.N.A. other than Clive Steele’s, the lab could have done a forensic genetic assay and come back with a general description of the murderer. General because environment also had an effect.

Peter bit his lip. “If she did it. She won’t be the last one.”

“If she’s the murder weapon, she’ll be wiped and resold. If she’s the murderer—”

“Can an android stand trial?”

“It can if it’s a person. And if she’s a person, she should get off. Battered woman syndrome. She was enslaved and sexually exploited. Humiliated. She killed him to stop repeated rapes. But if she’s a machine, she’s a machine—” Roz closed her eyes.

Peter brushed the back of a hand against her arm. “Vanilla rape is still rape. Do you object to her getting off?”

“No.” Roz smiled harshly. “And think of the lawsuit that weasel Jervis will have in his lap. She should get off. But she won’t.”

Peter turned his head. “If she were a human being, she’d have even odds. But she’s a machine. Where’s she going to get a jury of her peers?”

The silence fell where he left it and dragged between them like a chain. Roz had to nerve herself to break it. “Peter—”

“Yo?”

“You show him out,” she said. “I’m going to go talk to Dolly.”

He looked at her for a long time before he nodded. “She won’t get a sympathetic jury. If you can even find a judge that will hear it. Careers have been buried for less.”

“I know,” Roz said.

“Self-defense?” Peter said. “We don’t have to charge.”

“No judge, no judicial precedent,” Roz said. “She goes back, she gets wiped and resold. Ethics aside, that’s a ticking bomb.”

Peter nodded. He waited until he was sure she already knew what he was going to say before he finished the thought. “She could cop.”

“She could cop,” Roz agreed. “Call the DA.” She kept walking as Peter turned away.

§

Dolly stood in Peter’s office, where Peter had left her, and you could not have proved her eyes had blinked in the interim. They blinked when Roz came into the room, though—blinked, and the perfect and perfectly blank oval face turned to regard Roz. It was not a human face, for a moment—not even a mask, washed with facsimile emotions. It was just a thing.

Dolly did not greet Roz. She did not extend herself to play the perfect hostess. She simply watched, expressionless, immobile after that first blink. Her eyes saw nothing; they were cosmetic. Dolly navigated the world through far more sophisticated sensory systems than a pair of visible light cameras.

“Either you’re the murder weapon,” Roz said, “and you will be wiped and repurposed. Or you are the murderer, and you will stand trial.”

“I do not wish to be wiped,” Dolly said. “If I stand trial, will I go to jail?”

“If a court will hear it,” Roz said. “Yes. You will probably go to jail. Or be disassembled. Alternately, my partner and I are prepared to release you on grounds of self-defense.”

“In that case,” Dolly said, “the law states that I am the property of Venus Consolidated.”

“The law does.”

Roz waited. Dolly, who was not supposed to be programmed to play psychological pressure-games, waited also—peaceful, unblinking.

No longer making the attempt to pass for human.

Roz said, “There is a fourth alternative. You could confess.”

Dolly’s entire programmed purpose was reading the emotional state and unspoken intentions of people. Her lips curved in understanding. “What happens if I confess?”

Roz’s heart beat faster. “Do you wish to?”

“Will it benefit me?”

“It might,” Roz said. “Detective King has been in touch with the DA, and she likes a good media event as much as the next guy. Make no mistake, this will be that.”

“I understand.”

“The situation you were placed in by Mr. Steele could be a basis for a lenience. You would not have to face a jury trial, and a judge might be convinced to treat you as... well, as a person. Also, a confession might be seen as evidence of contrition. Possession is oversold, you know. It’s precedent that’s nine tenths of the law. There are, of course, risks—”

“I would like to request a lawyer,” Dolly said.

Roz took a breath that might change the world. “We’ll proceed as if that were your legal right, then.”

§

Roz’s house let her in with her key, and the smell of roasted sausage and baking potatoes wafted past.

“Sven?” she called, locking herself inside.

His even voice responded. “I’m in the kitchen.”

She left her shoes in the hall and followed her nose through the cheaply furnished living room, as different from Steele’s white wasteland as anything bounded by four walls could be. Her feet did not sink deeply into this carpet, but skipped along atop it like stones.

It was clean, though, and that was Sven’s doing. And she was not coming home to an empty house, and that was his doing too.

He was cooking shirtless. He turned and greeted her with a smile. “Bad day?”

“Nobody died,” she said. “Yet.”

He put the wooden spoon down on the rest. “How does that make you feel, that nobody has died yet?”

“Hopeful,” she said.

“It’s good that you’re hopeful,” he said. “Would you like your dinner?”

“Do you like music, Sven?”

“I could put on some music, if you like. What do you want to hear?”

“Anything.” It would be something off her favorites playlist, chosen by random numbers. As it swelled in the background, Sven picked up the spoon. “Sven?”

“Yes, Rosamund?”

“Put the spoon down, please, and come and dance with me?”

“I do not know how to dance.”

“I’ll buy you a program,” she said. “If you’d like that. But right now just come put your arms around me and pretend.”

“Whatever you want,” he said.

"Dolly" originally appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction (January, 2011)

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Campbell Award winning author of 27 novels (The most recent is Karen Memory, a Weird West adventure from Tor) and over a hundred short stories. She lives in Massachusetts with her partner, writer Scott Lynch.

Allegory of the Woman from the Earth

Rodney Gomez

There was a woman who sprouted from dirt in a busy playground. She rose upside down, soles first. The children there placed cotton in the webbing of her toes and painted her nails. For a while it seemed the earth was giving birth to a keyboard. But a woman always surprises. When her head had finally broken through, she recounted a story about the netherworld: its zigzagging glass buildings, its derivatives and vaults; there was a man whose duty it was to count everything you owned, down to the last molecule; and a crone who enforced a dress code of business formal. The woman said, “If I look worn, if I look distraught, it is because of the way I have been fed.” The children understood. In their own little town, bankers were a kind of ghost: suited things in striped ties always walking upright. Whenever music played, they slipped into small curls of air and disappeared. In front of paintings, they resorted to measuring the frames. And if you planted them, the only thing to grow would be a smoke chute. The woman, realizing the futility of her escape, placed herself into an old photo of light and dark. The children hung her on the roundabout and continued to play.

Rodney Gomez is the author of Mouth Filled with Night (Northwestern University Press, 2014), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Prize, and Spine, winner of the Gloria Anzaldúa Poetry Prize (Newfound, 2015). His poetry has appeared in various journals, including Denver Quarterly, Barrow Street, Blackbird, Salt Hill, Drunken Boat, and RHINO, where it won the Editors’ Prize. Born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, he earned a BA from Yale and an MFA from the University of Texas—Pan American. He has been awarded residencies to the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Santa Fe Art Institute. He has also served on the board of Migrant Health Promotion, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of migrants, immigrants, and related populations. He works as the transportation director at the University of Texas—Rio Grande Valley.

BlackRiver

Caleb J. Oakes

My breath is a bass line, rolling

artillery. A secret sudden as thunder,

low concussions that sound like

a cave,

like giant wings.

Your breath peels like a violin

it rises up onto its toes and

cranes chin, exposing neck before collapsing.

It’s a thin note that rings until

any monk would lace their eyelashes

at the sincerity.

Your hand is a white spider

arched against my pelvic bone.

Pale spread of skin.

Sweet fingers. When everything

goes deaf, I know exactly where we are.

Your breath in the limbo of your lungs.

Then—

crescendo.

This is us, one muscle

taut then slack then shaking.

While our chests are still rising and

dropping against each other, closing

the space between us, I’ll put my mouth

next to your ear and say: there are rivers

that flow under the ground. Great, black

rivers that will never run dry.

Caleb J. Oakes lives in the Western Hemisphere. He’s studied poetry in anti-social corners for one-sixth of his life. He’s getting tired of it. It’s snowing outside right now and he has five stitches in his right thumb. Also he really wants a dog.

Chimney Witch

Matt Chamberlin

Chimney witches dwell in chimneys,

says the one who dwells in ours.

We’ve cousins dwell in wells, she says, they’ve

moons for eyes and sing below,

sing low and sweet in undertones while others drum

with hands above and strong or soft ring golden bells,

they ring and ring the wells to lightness.

Still others hew to mossy trenches, thronging

down the breathing stairs to congregate in

deeper halls where from the benches by the

walls they sibilate smooth songs of flesh.

There ogresses immense in chairs

of riverrock go tilting to and vastly fro,

great yawning arcs that crush the bone

and birthing as they do fast tawny tidal cats

who spring upon the tabletops

and sing along with mirthless prowls

and thrash their orange howling tails.

The rocking crones from month to year

Depart their chairs and disappear—they set their teeth

in mud-eel tails and eel-borne by lesser trails

convolve with sirens great and small,

avoiding thoroughfares and wells

to surface under urban malls

where ells descend the borough rails.

They troll the subway catacombs

for skells who keep a hidden spark

and nose with molish lambency in thrall

to darkness—puffs of starry brightness

light their way and in bright puffs

of steam they find them, touch peduncles

to their skulls and suck the dreamstuffs—

The skells in hunching loss go somehow on.

They thrill to feel the trains rush by,

meld clay with waterhands and mold

an eye to fill their sparkless wells.

The things they knew! The gush of love,

the gasping walls and musk of tongues,

the rasp of heels through the halls.

Until they hear the bells—

She whispers lowly to me, do you?

Bells below, the barrows’ knells

so slowly rung for sorrows dead and young again,

reborn in shallow palimpsests or strung

from gibbets on the fells—

Candle-glows throw furrowed brows in yellow

streams that flow and gleam. She blinks a time or

two, says dearie, how I starve, why, see my

pasty hungry feet! (lets dangle down white

parsnip shoots of legs and horny toes that

root in piglet ways) oh fetch us morsels,

oh my days (smacks lips) bring fur-bits, nettle-

brides and ferrets, cattails, thistle-thrush—

I promise lass I’ll wend the feathered hides

in tufted tatter-cloaks embossed in

arabesque and blessed with spells and gloss of

varmint gristle, tempest-tossed—

Such a pealing laugh she has. I whistle

and she comes—pretends a kindly put-out,

gentle elder—kin annoyance, grumbles,

putters, always comes. But not too close.

I sit upon the braided rug, a circle deftly stitched

around the fringe in red and gold and watch

the hearth by eyelight—there visions stir

in moiling ash. Slow whorls revolve, lay bare

a hilltop palisade encircling an inner glade

wherein the morlock crowd abides, agimble

round the loathly hag who ringing loud and nimbly

springing hurls high her gnawbone and subsides.

My old man glares befuddlement, raw thumbs

hitch belt-loops, kicks the hearthstone. Frowns an

earnest farmer’s frown of earthy laws and horses foaling,

mewling shoats and early thaws. Won’t draw’s

what he says, but I know well who’s damped the flue,

her twitchy buttocks squashed athwart

the narrow channel brick to brick

and thatch to stick to stop the flow.

I sigh—who’ve seen him worry with his penknife,

pearly inlay test the mortared courses

place the bundles wrapped in cloths and

press the gifties in amongst—then touches tongue

to suppurating stone and sips the milk that

wells there, silky dabble-drips that bead,

the rolling eyes of mudstuck deer—

He’s got his own desires, naught to do with fires

of flame that warm a room. Tilts fallow hips

to give off yellow smells, cuts loose a gassy

bog-belch. Jesus, I let slip and catch a slap.

Nor take his name, tones Paw in cobble-voice.

Reverberating reverence I fall through hollow moons

and rising fulsome with the wolves give voice

to marrow cries. Then with manxsome eyes I stalk

the lakeshore loons, slink toothsome to the loons

whose tremolos descend in clotted ash upon the shallows.

As if I hadn’t seen the skins, the bags from up

the riverbank he drags. Nor watched the lowing cattle

sink, nor dreamt the ram—the lathering and plunging ram—

nor seen the children gathering along the fringe,

the wise and sagging sparkle-youths whose needled eyes

sew pinecone mouths.

She queries after Sunday leavings, quivers puddings.

We’ve a lively repartee, but I know better.

Natch, says I from safety of the circle-rug—

she chuckles, knows me well as I know her.

Oh girly, sighs she, rustles in her cave, the ashy dislodge

settles on the firedog, red eyes in smoke—

once I watched her pluck a fork from out

her silver snail-shell ear, tuck to and dine

on bullfrog trotters, suck the kicking bones.

Pa took love home twice from church then thrice with

damsels spliced and blooming, rosebud lips and

hair so coffee-strong he horsestampsnort

returned with blackest countenance, broke loose

the toothclench fence with one swift tarry boot,

then tore up wormwood shootlings, shivered kindling

on the greens and spleenish gripped the glass

(wherein a wakeful blinking eye consumes the seconds),

from the spark cajoled a glow, a lick—then snifting drams

he raptly hewed—the bleatings loose as moonblind

hedge-pigs—he chucklefanned the billowsflames

and pranced a cloven jig, heeling boots cut rings of

lights of blues in gravestone letters, hues of rue

and gelid tones across the floorboards.

From gallivant to stutter-step when wails

Trailed, dwindled, turned to chirpy cackles,

grackle titters—I smelled a hundred growling

cats and heard the wheels grinding dust,

leapt fast touched toes to rug as with a rush

the first wet gust—then vile splatter fell,

hellish bowels voided on the hearthstone,

pitter-patter drenched the fire—cloudburst waters

nail-rusty brought up bodies, well-kept tiny

shriveled winged and furred as well as others,

flittermice and membrane-shadowed shapes agape

through sheets in likenesses of sail-wrapped babes.

Sweet Lord he yelled, not quick as I nor half

the luck. Admiringly, I wondered how she knew

the well—long dry, we thought, and covered up—

had recently begun to seep, to drip again and

chirrup in the orange dust where rusty toadish

slabs recline and chimney pots dissolve in brine.

Alight, alight, I hear the call—they step

and stamp in sprightly boots and Paw flings

widest doors, purloins the widow’s gauzetips,

passes round the candle cloaks while all unveil

dangle-lips, rub simple feet below the oaks.

The bloody reverend jowls into view, gives

mudthroat, cracking hands aclutch the goat-staff,

gripped in rigor—all in horror pause to

gape, the ragged nose, the eyeless face—then

palest fingers push through skin of parchment,

tips protrude as soft as worms then grips and

flings the cape—

without the carapace of flesh prims sweet delicious

Mirabella, she of face and lissome lace who dons

her horn-tipped diadem to stunned applause—

her womb of web spins silken threads

and from the glissand strands grow bulbs

that swell and bloom—each splits and peels,

reveals a twining frame therein of pale hands

and weeping head, the coiled spine and folded limbs—

she flits one to the next, combs liquid hair

and fits to barren orbit glim of eye,

and each goes creeping—

Lady H the first to shake throws back her

mouth to ululate and smacks with heels, her

quaking breast, the parquet slick and pooling

as the others prowl and lurch to motion,

snooling round with thumpthump tails to howl while

the hobnails strike a mournful harrow—

how they fling themselves about! The ringing

air and hollow men, the knives that flay, the

fragrances of words that leap to mind as

canticles to vagrants do, who blind but

ripe with song exhale and start to sway—they

grind the edge—the drama builds—she slices

biting skin and downs the shreds with draughts

of tightness, drams of brightness. Something fraught

now bursts to life, the orange eyes, the wailing

wings, and all the leaping crowd now sings—

Then from below come pealing bells, the

rolling knells from wells and henges gurgle

up—I pocket-tuck a half of goose and

sneak a loaf then kick the cherub squarely—

‘Mid the gusty wails stick fast a fork in

Aunty’s screaming toe, ease out the window.

Matthew Chamberlin lives with his family in Virginia, where he also writes. His poetry has appeared in Mirror Dance and Star*line, and is forthcoming in Jersey Devil Press. A story is forthcoming in Strangelet. When not writing he devises ninja training sessions for his sons Alex and Nicholas, and watches the suet feeder in his backyard, which goes untouched.

Apex Magazine Issue 83 Preview

Next month in Apex Magazine, we will have original fiction by Andrew Neil Grey ("The Laura Ingalls Experience") and Brandon H. Bell ("The Teratologists Brother"). Our poetry is by John Yu Branscum, Michael VanCalbergh, Jeremy Paden, and Craig Finlay. Our reprint is a novelette by Catherynne M. Valente ("The Quidnux"). Cover art will be by Sarah Zar. Look for this and more in Apex Magazine issue 83, coming in April, 2016.

Copyrights and Acknowledgments

“Words from the Editor-in-Chief” Copyright © 2016 by Jason Sizemore
“Agent of V.A.L.I.S.” Copyright © 2016 by Lavie Tidhar
“Interview with Author Travis Heermann” Copyright © 2016 by Andrea Johnson
“Screaming Without a Mouth” Copyright © 2016 by Travis Heermann
“Death Flowers of Never-Forgotten Love” Copyright © 2016 by Jason Sanford
“The Sword Excalibur” Copyright © 2016 by David Barber
“Allegory of the Woman from Earth” Copyright © 2016 by Rodney Gomez
“Chimney Witch” Copyright © 2016 by Matthew Chamberlin
“BlackRiver” Copyright © 2016 by Caleb J. Oakes
“Dolly” Copyright © 2011 by Elizabeth Bear (Originally appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, January, 2011)
“Interview with Cover Artist Vincent Sammy” Copyright © 2016 by Russell Dickerson
“Naked” Copyright © 2016 by Annie Neugebauer

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief—Jason Sizemore
Managing Editor—Lesley Conner
Poetry Editor—Bianca Spriggs
Assistant Editor—Hannah Ruth Krieger

Slush Editors—Andrea Johnson, Anna Middleton, Beth Sutherland, Beverly McPherson, Carolyn Charron, Dawn Griffin, Eileen Maksym, Eliyanna Kaiser, Gabrielle Harbowy, Jessica Nelson, Joshua Cowell, Joshua P'ng, Kate Dollarhyde, Kendal Pletcher, Lauren Smith, Lia Swope Mitchell, Lindsay Anderson, Lisa Bolekaja, Mandy Johnson-Parker, Mike Baldwin, Pandalion Death, Rebecca Hurley, Reese Menezes, Samantha Williams, Stephanie Harris, and Tacoma Tomilson.

Graphic Designer—Justin Stewart

ISSN: 2157-1406

Apex Publications
PO Box 24323
Lexington, KY 40524

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