Heather Farthing's Blog, page 3

Ghost Story--Chapter three

Chapter two

News from the Lighthouse



Like many old towns with many paranormal sightings, Ravenswood has its very own White Lady.

A White Lady is a common type of female ghost or specter that appears as a woman dressed all in white. Often she is seen walking down empty, secluded streets. You are probably familiar with the story of the Hitchhiking Ghost, where a man picks up a woman on the side of a deserted road, is instructed to take her home, her stopping him at the cemetery, and then vanishing from his car, leaving him to find out the woman had been dead for years.

The White Lady of Ravenswood is believed to be that of Agatha Emmerson, Ravenswood’s. She was to be married, a rather quick affair due to the failing health of her intended and her financial need to inherit his wealth. Sadly, Brom Davison, her suitor, would pass away at the hour of the wedding due to complications from tuberculosis. She had stood beside her beloved’s bed in her wedding gown, and he was gone before she could say her vows.

It is said she left his home in shock, and walked toward her own crumbling estate in a daze. She never arrived, with no clear historical record as to why, and it is believed the White Lady is Agatha in her wedding dress, walking the path she took all those years ago.
There is a story of a group of teenagers walking the road at sundown. They’re laughing and telling stories and teasing each other with stories of a woman in white that walks the woods, looking for lone men driving at night.

That was when one snapped a candid picture of another doing something silly. While they saw nothing, the picture on the cell phone shows a white, robed dress standing by itself. The figure is slightly transparent and has no face.

Chapter three

I’m stiff and cold when he wakes, the man in my arms with the white hair who smells like flowers. I feel him stir against me, mumbling in confusion as he looks around. Slowly, he attempts to get to his feet, not bothering to dislodge himself from my arms first.

“That’s not a good—” I start.

He cries out in pain as his feet touch the carpet and drops hard to the ground, apparently having not realized the extent of his injuries, and momentarily trembles on the ground.

“You’ve been in an accident,” I tell him.

His pale blue eyes lock onto mine, and there is fear in them. He looks like a deer in headlights, a rabbit out in the open. It’s the look of someone who didn’t expect to be seen.

“Du. Sie haben dies getan,” he growls as I lower myself to the ground between him and the bed.

“It’s alright,” I whisper, putting my right hand on his back and under his chest, taking his left arm in mine, getting ready to pull him up. “Let’s get you back into bed.”
“Fass mich nicht an, Hexe. Löse deinen Fluch und schick mich nach Hause,” he snarls, jerking away and hurting himself for is trouble.

I blink. He’s awake. He’s aware. His eyes focus properly, and his reaction time is where it should be, all things considered.

I don’t think I was prepared for this, for him awake and conscious. I should have expected that he’d be confused and scared, and that’s my fault. If I’m going to keep him from hurting himself, I need to calm him down. Maybe I can coax some information out of him and find out what’s going on.

I wince. He might not speak English.

Taking a breath, I pull away and sit away from him, like trying to acclimate a wounded animal to me.

“I’m Eileen,” I explain as calmly as I can. “You’ve been in some kind of accident. I took you back to my place to…so you can rest up. I think you’ve got broken bones, and I don’t know what that IV stuff did to you, either.”
“Dummes Mädchen. Du hast deine Hand in ein Wespennest gesteckt.”

“Do you…want back on the bed?” I ask, watching the way he shakes on his hands and knees, smelling the floral sweat beginning to build on his temples.
His head turns toward the side of the bed and he starts to shake violently, dry heaving in the floor. As quick as I can I snatch my trash can from next to the bed and put it beneath him, just in time for him to spill his guts in the bag and not on my carpet. When he’s empty, he’s stricken above the can, trembling, pale, and breaking into sobs.

“I’ll take care of it,” I assure him, trashing the contents of the can and washing my hands three times, and then grabbing a wet wipe from the counter and bring it to him.

He pulls away when I try to wipe his face, but his arm hurts too bad for him to really do anything about it.
“Stop being a baby,” I order. “It’s just soap.”

He glares at me when I’m finished, and then glances down at his hands, wincing as his fingers feel the carpet. Quivering, he raises one hand to his face and looks it over, flexing his fingers.

He’s trying to turn into a skeleton, and it isn’t working.
He places his hand back on the ground, and a long, heartbreaking wail emerges from his chest like a chill wind on an October night. It makes my blood run cold, and think of long nights spent in the dark, watching the spindly shadows on the wall from the trees outside, and imagining hands in the shapes.

Um…stroking his hair during fever dreams is one thing, but…what am I supposed to do now? What did I want back then?

Gently, I reach out put my hand on his, and then wrap my other arm around him, scooting closer and pulling him into my lap, trying to take the pressure off his damaged joints.

“Ich bin der Bestatter, der Butzemann, der Schwarze Mann. Ich bringe Angst in Kinderbetten. Ich bin der Schrecken der Friedhöfe von Ravenswood. Ich weine nicht. Was ist mit mir passiert?”

I rock him like a child for a second time, his moonlight hair under my chin, discretely looking over his wrists to make sure he didn’t crack anything.

His sobs start to quiet, less from him feeling better and more from him having nothing left to give, physically or emotionally. When he’s breathing normally, he tries to pull away again, but I hold him close to keep him from hurting himself.

“I’m Eileen,” I repeat, trying to sound strong despite the sound of his pained wails ringing in my ears. “You have been in some kind of accident. I brought you here so you can get better. Do you have a name? A number I can call for you? Do you speak English?”

He is quiet. Aside from his labored, post-cry breathing, I’d almost think he were asleep again, or dead. He starts trembling again in my arms.

“Was war der Name? Sie bauten Särge, sie mischten die Chemikalien, sie sprachen die Worte. Wo ist es hin?” he whimpers fretfully.

I really should find some kind of translator app.

“Do you want to get back on the bed?” I ask hopefully, my feet starting to go to sleep.

“Ja,” he answers in so small a voice that I almost don’t hear it.

I pull myself out from under him without jostling him too badly, taking him under the arms and pulling him up. Fortunately for me, he doesn’t weigh much more than a feather, but it’s enough to make him gasp when he balances on his heels.

“Easy does it,” I placate, stepping lightly backward. There is fear in his eyes and the way he holds tight to my arms as he walks backwards, the look of someone who doesn’t trust easy. “You’ve got to trust me. See? Easy-peasy.”

He lets go of me sharply when he’s in place, like he’s holding something nasty he’d rather not. His whole demeanor is feral cat backed into a cornor.
“Vertrauen wird verdient und Sie müssen es sich noch verdienen,” he purrs darkly with the upturned nose of an aristocrat.

“Where do you live?” I ask, kneeling in front of him. He rubs his head like he has a headache.

“Mein Spuk. Ich kann nicht…Ich weiß, wie ich dorthin komme, aber warum kann ich es nicht fühlen?” he mumbles, looking askance and sounding distracted.
“Look at me,” I command, gesturing to my eyes. “Do you speak English?”

He’s still captivated by his hands.

“Es funktioniert nicht. Warum funktioniert es nicht?”
Kneeling in front of him, I take his hand, even if it feels unnatural. His skin is cool and dry, his flesh recoiling at my touch. He looks up at me, heavy fear and sadness in his eyes.

“Do you want me to take you to the hospital?” I ask. “Or do you have family I can call?”

“Bring mich nicht ins Krankenhaus. Niemand kann mich so finden,” he replies, looking away.

Sighing, I hang my head. A headache is starting to form behind my eyes.

I reach into my pocket to pull out my cell phone and do a search in the apps for some kind of translator, and pick the highest-rated one in the list. It doesn’t take long to download, and has an auto-detect feature, but the voice is robotic and off-putting.

“You have been hurt. I brought you here to help you. Is there someone I can call for you?” I ask. “Du wurdest verletzt. Ich habe dich hergebracht, um dir zu helfen. Gibt es jemanden, den ich für Sie anrufen kann?”
He looks down at my phone like he’s never seen one before and didn’t expect it to make noise.

“Kleines Wunder,” he breathes. “Little wonder.”
Wincing, he reaches out to grab my phone, which on reflex I pull away from him.

“Ihr Menschen, so schlaue kleine Biester,” he says in wonder. “You humans, such clever little beasts.”
I bite my lower lip and say into the device, “Are you…not human?”

“Bist du…kein Mensch?” the app repeats.

He regards me with something almost like disdain, looking me over like a potential purchase at the store, and then growls like an animal, forcing himself to his feet and making a beeline for the doorway.

“No, no, no,” I shriek, grabbing him by the shoulders.
“Fassen Sie mich nicht an!” he snarls, barreling forward with his momentum. “Don’t touch me!”

He might be slight, but he’s also determined. His momentum carries him forward faster than I can counter, and he takes us both to the floor, crying out in pain. I land on top of him, driving the wind out of him in a labored gasp.

“Wieso den? Was habe ich getan um das zu verdienen?” he whimpers, half-sobbing as I climb off of him. “Why? What did I do to deserve this?”

I lay next to him, hands shaking, out of breath and struggling to think of what to do next.

“You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep this up,” I warn. “Du wirst dir weh tun, wenn du so weitermachst.”

“Wie wichtig ist Ihnen mein Wohlbefinden?” he snarls, struggling to his feet. “How important is my well-being to you?”

I take a sharp breath and close my eyes, trying to find the words.

“I heard your voice in the hospital. I untied you and brought you here. I saw you turn into a skeleton, and your head went through my window,” I explain. “Ich habe deine Stimme im Krankenhaus gehört. Ich habe dich losgebunden und dich hierher gebracht. Ich habe gesehen, wie du dich in ein Skelett verwandelt hast, und dein Kopf ist durch mein Fenster geflogen.”

“Wie lange war das her?” he asks, sounding hopeful.“How long ago was that?”

“Um…about two days. You don’t remember talking to me in your sleep?” I answer. “Ähm … ungefähr zwei Tage. Du erinnerst dich nicht daran, im Schlaf mit mir gesprochen zu haben?”

“Wie kommst du darauf, dass du wichtig genug bist, um mit mir zu reden?” he laughs bitterly. “What makes you think you're important enough to talk to me?”

“I’m the one that hauled your ass back to my car, took you into my home, let you borrow my clothes, and fed you,” I retort. “Ich bin diejenige, die deinen Arsch zurück zu meinem Auto geschleppt, dich zu mir nach Hause gebracht, dir meine Klamotten ausgeliehen und dich gefüttert hat.”

“Du bist nicht bei ihnen? Die mir das angetan haben?” he asks, sounding confused and maybe a bit relieved. “Are you not with them? Who did this to me?”

“No. I’m not going to hurt you. I’d like to study you, in exchange for putting you up while you get stronger, unless you got someone better to be. But no, I wasn’t involved with…whatever happened to you,” I explain. “Nein. Ich werde dir nicht weh tun. Ich würde dich gerne studieren, im Austausch dafür, dass ich dich aufstelle, während du stärker wirst, es sei denn, du hast jemanden, der besser werden kann. Aber nein, ich war nicht beteiligt an…was auch immer mit dir passiert ist.”
“Ich verstehe,” he replies, sounding unconvinced. “I understand.”

“Would you like to get off the floor now?” I ask, trying to sound kind and non-threatening. “Möchten Sie jetzt vom Boden aufstehen?”

“Ja,” he sighs, half-meek, half exasperation, like he’s too good for his (literally) lily-white hands to touch me. “Yes.”

I clamber to my feet, self-consciously check to make sure my hair is still in place, and get into position, arms wrapped around his chest.

“Don’t fight me. Just trust me,” I tell him, bringing him upward and back on the bed. “Kämpfe nicht gegen mich. Vertrau mir einfach.”

“Bringst du mich jetzt nach Hause?” he asks, like an overtired child asking to be tucked in. “Will you take me home now?”

I bite my lip as I help straighten him out again, adjusting the pillows and pulling the blankets over him.

“Do you have a family or friends to help you?” I ask. “Hast du eine Familie oder Freunde, die dir helfen?”

“Nein. Niemand kann mich so finden,” he answers, eyes wide, that deer in the headlights look again, and also a touch of shame. “No. No one can find me like this.”
Pursing my lips, I run my fingers through his hair, feeling the silken texture and smelling the flowers. He growls and dodges my touch.

“You are in no shape to be on your own. It’s either a me or a hospital,” I explain. “Du bist nicht in der Verfassung, alleine zu sein. Entweder ich oder ein Krankenhaus.”

He squeezes my hand when I pull away, wincing with pain. He looks up at me with large, silvery-blue eyes, pleading without a word.

“Ist es so, ein Mensch zu sein? All dieser Schmerz und diese Sorge und Not?” he whimpers. “Is that what it's like to be human? All this pain and worry and distress?”

“You get used to it,” I huff. “Man gewöhnt sich daran.”

Ghost Story--Chapter two

Chapter one

News from the Lighthouse



Ravenswood General was originally built in the early-1800s to deal with the advancing White Plague. At the time, it was the most advanced sanitarium in the South, rivaling the famous Waverly Hills of Kentucky nearly a century sooner, with nearly twice the capacity.



As the tragedy of the outbreak gave way to the horrors of war, the hospital found itself to have new and renewed purpose. Several important figures are known to have stayed here, including Robert E. Lee himself, who was injured during his march south of West Virginia.




Naturally, a place with such a storied history of suffering is bound to have more than a few ghost stories.
In the late eighties, as the hospital was beginning to feel its age and make way for newer, more modern hospitals, a training nurse found herself called to a patient room where no patient was known to be assigned. She bid her coworkers farewell, and ran off to attend to her duties, and…apparently walked off the face of the Earth.



The young nurse never returned to her post. Nobody knows for sure what happened to her, but some patients reported, on an otherwise quiet night, hearing the most vile screaming coming from the hospital grounds. Several thought there must have been some sort of calamity, a fire or car accident, and the delirious occupant of an ambulance was being brought inside.

Other rumors suggested that the young nurse had a beau and the page from the empty room was a signal for them to run away together. Still others claim the opposite, a jilted lover luring her away to exact his revenge.

In recent years, the sight of a young nurse in 1980s scrubs making her rounds through the vacant rooms has been a popular sighting.



Another story tells of a groundskeeper who saw a light coming from the now-abandoned hospital. He ventured inside, expecting to see a gaggle of teenagers undergoing youthful tests of bravery and coming-of-age rituals.



Instead, he is said to have found an operating theater in full occupancy, with medical students and spectators watching from the stands while a surgeon in a bloody apron performed an amputation on a screaming Confederate soldier.




The surgeon turned and stared at the groundskeeper, the way one would expect of a busy surgeon in the middle of a delicate surgery having a confused civilian walk in the operating room mid-operation.



The groundskeeper apologized to the specters, turned around, walked away from his post, and never came back to work.

Signed,
The Lighthouse Keeper

My hands are fixed at ten and two, eyes straight ahead, knuckles white. Am I shaking? I think I’m shaking.
The engine idles like I’m at a stoplight. The creature next to me whimpers and begs in German.

“Mein spuk,” he pleads, tears staining his cheeks, absently scratching and the blackened spiderweb of veins at his right elbow beneath my raincoat. “Mein spuk.”

His frail form shivers under my coat, beads of sweat at his temples. There’s a smell in the air, familiar but not comforting, like a melancholy perfume. It’s definitely floral, but I can’t place it, and it isn’t one of mine.

“Look, kid, I’m willing to take quite a lot on faith,” I tell the whimpering form, “but I’m going to need some guarantees. I need to know I saw what I thought I did, that you’re not going to murder me in my sleep, and whoever had you isn’t going to be out for my blood.”

“Mein spuk. Mein spuk.”

I scratch an itch on my scalp under my bandanna, grateful I don’t have to worry about leaving hair at the crime scene, and then sigh heavily into my rearview mirror. I don’t normally let people into the RV. It’s smaller than a traditional home, so the presence of other people weighs heavy on me.

The whole point of living in an RV is, after all, to be able to get away from everything.

I place my head against my steering wheel, taking deep, 3-4-3 breaths. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I must be dissociating, because none of this feels real and I think I’m having an out of body experience.

Still, as they say, I know what I saw. I saw something not human, something made only of bone and yet still moving.

In a hospital thought to be haunted by the patients.
Well, what’s the worst that could happen? Whoever was holding him comes after me, and I find myself in a bed next to him. He turns out to be some sort of deviant who was sedated for the safety of others, and I just brought the fox into the henhouse. I publish a paper definitively proving the supernatural and become the most famous journalist ever.

So what do I do?

He’s gone silent, maybe asleep. He’s breathing, so he isn’t dead. If he dies on my watch, then…

Well, better than whatever was going on in that abandoned hospital.

I put the car in park and turn off the engine. My passenger starts squirming and begging again, like a fussy infant lulled by the sound of the engine.

“You’re safe now,” I tell him in a consoling tone as I unbuckle us both.

I ditched the wheelchair when I loaded him into my car. The walk from the car to the RV is a lot shorter and I didn’t want to get caught with it, seeing as it could tie me to the scene of the crime, and taking souvenirs is considered a social faux pas in my profession.

Once free of my seat, I stand in front of the passenger side, just staring at him. He’s got fine, delicate features like a porcelain doll, large eyes the palest blue I’ve ever seen, and hair I can only describe as “Targaryan blond.” It’s soaked with sweat and plastered to his skull, but even in the fading twilight I can’t deny the spun moonlight color.

His forearms and calves are angry red and purple, reminding me of the skeleton in the hospital bed with cracked wrists. The burned veins stand out like blackened ash against bleach bone, making me picture the shadow in the hospital bed.

I must be losing my mind.

“Sicher?” he asks, barely able to hold his head up. “Ich werde zu Hause in Sicherheit sein.”

It’s awkward holding him up as I fumble with my keys, trying to jam the right one into the lock and dropping the whole ring in the process.

“Bitte,” he pleads. “Bitte, Lass mich gehen. Ich werde es niemandem erzählen.”

“Hush,” I whisper back, trying to hold him up and reaching for my keys at the same time. “We’re almost there.”

Nothing to see here, good people. Just a couple of drunk kids coming home after an afternoon drinking.
After several tries and another almost-drop, I manage to swing the door open. The sudden change in air flow from the AC hits my guest in the face, prompting those deeply, deeply unsettling eyes to snap open.

“Bitte! Bitte! Nicht hier drin! Tu mir das nicht noch einmal an!” he cries. “Ich möchte zu meinem Spuk zurückkehren! Bring mich nach Hause!”

His arms flail out in both directions, his heels dug into the ground, blocking the door, panic dripping from his voice and manner. If he doesn’t stop shouting, we’re going to go viral from someone’s window.

“Sshh,” I whisper, stroking his hair. “You’re going to take a little nap and then you can tell me all about it.”

Despite the thick layer of feverish sweat coating him, he smells like a broken perfume bottle. I smell roses and lilies, and a few other flowers I can’t quite name. As a whole, it smells familiar, but not like a flower shop, exactly, and certainly not a wedding.

“Kein gift mehr!” he begs as I drag him up the two steps and over the threshhold, flailing and kicking his legs, my jacket abandoned in the doorway. “Du wirst mich umbringen! Ich will nicht sterben!”

By this point I’m dragging him across the floor, splayed out in my living room/dining room/kitchen/laundry room. As fast as I can to avoid witnesses, I grab my jacket and slam the door closed, locking it.

“Ich will nicht sterben!” he begs, trying to right himself.

“Hey, hey, calm down,” I tell him, laying my jacket across him for some semblance of dignity. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Gift! Gift in meinen Adern! Es brennt!” he shouts, scratching at the burned veins on his right arm. His fingernails and toenails are an unhealthy black, like the nail beds are damaged. “Mein Spuk! Mein Spuk! Wo ist es? Wo ist mein Spuk?”

He’s lying on his back in the middle of my floor, screaming in German, and I don’t know what to do. I can hear my heart over him, my palms cold and clammy, and I try to remember the right breath counts for keeping a clear head.

“Let’s get you someplace more comfortable,” I tell him gently, wrapping him in my coat to pin his flailing arms down. “You’re going to hurt yourself here.”

“Fassen Sie mich nicht an! Ich werde kein Gift mehr haben! Furchtlose Wenige, ihr Feiglinge!”

He squirms and strains against my coat, but I hold him tight, dragging him limply toward the bedroom. His feet scrabble against the black and white tile, catching on the metal threshold, and then against the tan carpet. He’s light but he’s feisty, and he does not want to be in my bedroom.

I drag him onto the bed and halfway to the pillows before taking off my jacket. He cries and begs and flails at assailants I can’t see, scratching at the angry blackish lines that show where that green stuff burned him.

“Spooky, honey, look at me,” I order, taking him by the chin, watching his eyes momentarily fix on me. “I’m Eileen. You’re in my RV. Can you tell me your name? Do you have someone I can call to get you?”

“Ich will einfach nur nach Hause,” he whimpers. “Mein spuk. Mein Leichenschauhaus.”

“I’m not going to hurt you, but I need you to help me help you,” I continue. “Who was holding you? What were they doing? Is there someone who can help you?”
“Mein spuk. Mein spuk.”

“Do you speak English?”

“Natürlich tue ich das, abscheuliche Hexe,” he raves. “Behalte dein Gift und schick mich nach Hause!”

His eyes are at the ceiling, unfocused. He writhes in my bed like he’s on fire, begging and pleading.

“Calm down before you hurt yourself!” I demand. “Just relax, you’re safe here.”

Pacing the room and not knowing what else to do, I grab the little bundle of sage I keep by my bed. They say it clears out bad spirits, but mostly it sanitizes the air, so six of one, half a dozen of the other. The smell is also pretty soothing, especially since I generally have a ritual of burning it after a long day of work, when I know I’m home and can relax.

I light it up, holding the flameless lighter away from my face, until it catches a spark. The smoke wafts through the air, like a graceful, gray dancer, spinning her skirts through the air.

My guest arches his back, inhaling deeply. I swear the smoke from the sage flows into his nose like water through a straw. As soon as it hits his airways, he sighs, every tense muscle in his taught, toned body relaxing like melted jell-o. His unfocused eyes flutter closed, his breathing deep and even.

I stare at the sage like it did it on purpose before putting it back on the little clay dish to smolder.

“Well…alright then,” I murmur, taking out my cell phone to jot down a note.

Smell sage = sedative?

It could be a coincidence, like he wore himself out, finally, but it certainly seemed like he was inhaling the sage like cats do catnip. It’s worth trying again if he starts getting...argumentative and puts either of us at risk.

But now, onto more practical matters.
I stop in the bathroom to wash my hands three times, staring at my tired, sweaty, oily face in the mirror and think what to do next.

Clothes. He can’t go around practically naked.
He needs a bath if he’s going to wear clean clothes.
I can’t get him into my shower half-crazed and sedated.
Baby wipes. Under the kitchen sink.

I walk through the bedroom, smelling herby sage and floral Spooky, past the couch, and then into the kitchen, and come back with the wipes. The man in my bed looks like a lead statue, solid and unmoving, except for his chest, breathing deeply.

I stand in my doorway, holding the wipes up to my chest, like a child with a doll. He looks so serene, peaceful. Pushing thoughts about privacy aside, I snap a quick picture with my phone, seeing as I am a documentarian, after all.



Once that itch has been scratched, I set to work with the baby wipes, starting at the most needful spots like under the arms and the soles of the feet. He whimpers fretfully and flinches at the cold touch of the wipes, but doesn’t wake.

He’s burning up with fever. I need to do something about that. I got some ibuprofen, but can he have normal medicine?

I make a mental note to do things the old-fashioned way and get an ice pack out of the fridge, just in case.

Once he’s something approaching clean, I wash my hands three times and then start looking for something more presentable. I have a set of jammies I just bought, soft fleece pants with bedsheet ghosts and a shirt that reads “Spookernatural!” seems appropriate enough.
I haven’t even gotten a chance to wear it myself.
I wrangle him into pants and throw the old hospital gown in the trash, then wash my hands three times. With him quiet and dressed, I have a few minutes to think.

So what now?

My stomach growls, as if in answer.

“Oh, yeah,” I murmur. “I’m hungry. How about you?”
“S-spuk,” he murmurs.


Chapter three

Viral Research--NaNoWriMo Ch 4

Chapter three

(C) Heather Farthing, all rights reserved

Chapter four


“It hurts,” I murmur, tugging at my collar.

“You can’t take it off, remember? It’s how we stay safe.”
“It hurts.”

“I know, but it needs to stay on. Now, pick a card. It’s your turn.”

I look down at the small, rectangle objects on the brightly colored square she put on the ground in front of my cage, and reach out for one.

“What color is it?”

“Cock-a-doodle-doo?” I ask, holding it up.

“No, that’s ‘yellow,’ remember? It’s a color, not a sound.”

“Yell-low…”

“Good job. So move your piece to the next yellow space you see.”

“Baa,” I note, picking my tiny candy monster and moving it to the next yellow place.

“No, that’s back. You want to go forward.”

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” I hiss, showing my teeth when she reaches for my hand.

She draws back sharply, eye wide. She smells like fear again, almost like food but too person-y.

“Alright, but to win the game, you need to move here. Do you want to win the game?”

“Yellow.”

“Are you just messing with me? You did it right the first time.”

Bored with the game, I get up and wander toward the back of my cage, staring deep into the depths beyond.

“Bitten?” I ask, pointing into the space beyond the ledges.

“Oh, honey, you can’t go back there. You have to stay in your home where it’s safe.”

“It hurts,” I growl.

“Maybe later, during the day. But not right now.”

“YELLOW.”

“Four? Hey, Four, look at me.”

I shuffle in place and turn around. Her monster eye is very scary so I try not to look at it.

“No, Four, I’m over here. Look at me.”

Reluctantly, I look up at her.

Click.

She passes a piece of something good, but isn’t exactly chicken into my cage.

“Take it nice.”

I take it in my hands and devour it, licking my fingers. She reaches into the cage and strokes my cheek.

“We’re working on it, okay? You just have to be patient.”

“Cock-a-doodle-doo?”

“‘Chicken,’ Four. Say ‘chicken.’”

“Cock-a-doodle-doo. Yellow.”

She pulls her hand out of the cage, her eyebrows knitted, her stance fierce.

“You’re screwing with me, aren’t you?”

I turn away from her again and look deeper into the darkness. There are things back there, none move. I have seen her, The Eye, back there, rummaging through the ledges. She has places to walk in the high areas, so she can do this without ever being near the ground. She is only on the ground when she is playing with me.
She goes lots of places that I don’t. Sometimes she leaves in the early morning, when the light is just getting bright, and doesn’t return until dark.

“It will be a big help to me if you can walk nice. You would be able to come with me when I go scavenging. Would you like that?”

“Bitten. It hurts.”

“But if we’re going to do that, you have to mind, okay? Now, come here and look at me.”

I stare into the depths, trying to forget she is there. All that stands between me and the rest of the world is the metal cage. I want to be outside of the cage, I want to climb the ledges.

“Four, come here, sweetie.”

“Bitten.”

“Four, I mean it. If you don’t do what I tell you, you’ll never get out of that cage.”

“Bitten.”

I shuffle again to look at her. She is in front of the cage, holding something in her hand that smells good.

“If you can say ‘chicken,’ you can have another pigeon breast.”

“Bitten.”

“I know you can do it. If you want another pigeon, you’re going to have to.”

“Cock-a-doodle-doo,” I growl obstinately, looking at the good thing in her hands.

“No, Four, that’s not right.”

“Chi-kin.”

Click.

“Good job. Here you go. Take it nice.”

Again, I take the morsel from her and devour it, licking my fingers clean and purring contendedly. The thing on her ledge crackles to life and starts talking.

“Mama Longlegs, this is Lone Dave. Do you copy? I repeat, Mama Longlegs, this is Lone Dave, do you copy?”

She is gone from the cage and back on her ledge, sitting at the box-thing that speaks and she speaks to.

“Mama Longlegs here, I copy. Lone Dave, what’s your condition?”

“Just checking in, Mama. Have you noticed anything…weird in the city?”

“You mean, besides the biter I just taught to ask for chicken?”

“Ha-ha. Did you really?”

“Sure did. Four, say ‘hi’ to Dave!”

“COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!”

“He’s being difficult today. I think he’s getting a bit of cabin fever.”

“Hi, Four. Glad to hear you’re doing well! Mama, any of the warlords bother you lately?”

“That’s a negative, Dave. I’m deep in biter territory and they don’t come out this way much. What’s on your mind?”

“Been seeing survivors in shiny new uniforms, well-armed. Don’t know who they belong to. Been keeping my distance.”

“Mama, Dave, this is Judge Jury. Could they be government? Military? Are they part of a rescue team?”

“Only seen one unit, Judge. They weren’t wearing combat fatigues, or any of Uncle Sam’s sigils. They were wearing all black, tactical gear. It’s not impossible, but I’d think a rescue team would be more…recognizable.”

“Copy that, Dave. Are they dangerous?”

“Don’t know. We didn’t really…talk. Can’t be too careful these days. Mama, Judge, how you outfitted? Y’all safe?”

“Safe as we can be, Dave.”

“I’m alright, too. Thanks for the heads-up, I’ll keep an eye out. I got to hunker down for the night, so goodnight, boys, and stay safe.”

“Goodnight. Stay safe.”

“Night, Mama. Stay safe.”

When she is done talking to the box, she looks down at me from on high, near her bright, oppressive light.

“Alright, Four. We’re going to try something a little different tonight. I’ll be right back.”

She walks from her ledge into the depths, and I am left alone, tugging at my collar. My hands and feet are sore again, and my nails feel bad, wiggly. I wish I had something I could chase to occupy my time, but there is nothing until The Eye returns.

“What is this?” she asks, holding a bowl in front of the cage. I know the smell, but there is something wrong with it.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo?” I ask, tilting my head. It has been sliced into chunks and mixed around, not like the whole pieces or carefully squared good things I get when she clicks.

“Close. What is it?”

“Chii-ken?”

“Good,” she replies, clicking and sliding the bowl through the small rectangle beneath the sometimes-square. “Take it nice.”

I sniff it before I touch it. It smells…bitter.

“It hurts?” I ask quizzically, looking up at her good eye.

“I just put something in it to help you sleep. You don’t want to get antsy at night, do you?”

“Yellow.”

“It tastes the same, Four, just take it. Do it for Sally.”

Good things are not to be refused, so I take the small bowl and lick in clean. There is a bitter feeling I do not like at the back of my throat, but the void is still gaping wide when I pass the bowl back through the rectangle.

“Chicken?”

“Not right now, it’s time for sleep. Do you want to use your bed tonight?”

“Chicken.”

“You’ll sleep better.”

“Yellow.”

“Suit yourself, you contrarion. Goodnight, Four. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She goes to the top of her ledge and I am left on the cold ground. The tough, blue cloth-skin is cloying and rubs around my ankles and wrists, which does not help the painful throb.

***

“Four, put your hands hear.”

She places her hands on the small rectangle beneath the sometimes-wall, beckoning me.
“Chicken?” I ask, mimicking her.

“If you’re good,” she replies.

When my hands are through the rectangle, she locks something around my wrists, hard and cold and unyielding. I can’t pull my hands apart.

“Bitten!” I snarl. “It hurts!”

I pull my hands into the cage and bang the wrist-restraints against the side of the cage, making Sally the Eye step back, mouth agape and eyes wide. The things around my wrists don’t bend or break or shatter, staying stubbornly around my wrists.

“Four! Four, stop!”

My arms hurt, my ears are ringing. I’m leaking in places where the metal touched me too hard.

“Four, don’t do that. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Bitten,” I growl accusatorily.

She is half-monster, and she does this to me? I don’t understand, but it makes me angry. I am not the one that smells wrong and as a monster eye.

I gnaw on the metal things, glaring at her.

“Come here and I’ll take them off,” she says kindly, reaching out into the rectangle.

“It hurts,” I reply, putting my hands where she can get them. She uses a little metal stick in a slot to unlock the wrist-things, which fall away.

She places them into her belt and the stick into a pouch on her clothes. Once those things are put away, she gently puts her hand against mine.

“You cut yourself,” she observes softly.

“Bitten,” I answer, looking at her, rightly, as if it’s her fault.

From inside the pouches on her clothes, she produces a white packet that smells sharp and hurts my eyes and nose, pressing it gently against the largest of the leaks.

“It hurts!” I grunt, pulling away.

“It’s just alcohol,” Sally explains gently. “It’ll keep you from getting sick.”

“It hurts?” I ask, letting her wipe up the red streaks.

“There’s no doctors anymore, so you have to be careful to keep from getting sick. Er, sicker.”

She goes away for a minute or two and comes back with clean hands and no sharp-smelling cloth, holding the wrist things.

“Do you want to try again?”

“Bitten,” I snarl, pulling my arms in close and turning away.

“Sweetie, you can’t go for a walk without them.”

“It hurts.”


“I know, honey, but it’s to keep us safe. Do you want to be safe?”

I growl in the back of my throat.

“No…”

She blinks and steps back, tilting her head in confusion.

“No?” she wonders, her smell wrong, her left eye creepy.

“No…”

My hands are throbbing, my feet are throbbing. My nails feel loose and wiggly, and move uncomfortably if I touch things too hard. There’s a deep ache in my lower back.

“I got something else for you,” Sally the Eye smiles, reaching into another pocket.

She pulls out a black thing that she holds up in front of her face. It conforms to the lower portion, with straps hanging off the sides. She bounces it from side to side, giggling softly from behind it.

“Isn’t it cool? Do you want to try it on?”

“Bitten,” I state with finality, putting my foot down.

These things, the cage—they restrain, hold me in. I cannot walk freely, I cannot go where she goes. She keeps me here, and I don’t know why.

“Four, honey, you were looking forward to going on a walk today. Why don’t you want to go now?”

I look at the shiny metal things danging from one hand, the black thing in the other.

“Bitten,” I explain resentfully, stepping away from her.

“Well, you can’t get out of your room without them. If you let me put them on you, we can go for a walk and see what’s at the back of the store. Would you like that?”

“NO!” I argue, hiding my arms.

“Someone’s in a mood. A little exercise might help. Are you sure you don’t want to go on a walk with me?”

I want to go on a walk, I want to be let out of the cage. I want to climb and explore and see what is in the shadows beyond this spot, but not if it means just being in a different kind of cage.

Viral Research--NaNoWriMo Ch 3

Chapter two

Viral Research

(C) Heather Farthing, all rights reserved

Chapter three

“You’d be a lot more comfortable if you used the bed.”

“Bitten?”

The light is bright when I open my eyes, painfully so.

“It hurts!”

“You must be new if daylight is only just starting to bother you.”

I sit up, covering my face, hiding my eyes.

“It hurts!”

“Well, you’re a real terror when you sundown, so you’re just going to have to live with it. In the meantime, we have work to do.”

She, because The Eye is a she, slides a box up to the walls of the cage. There is the pungent smell of something good. I reach for it and can’t fit my wrists through the walls.

“You have to solve the puzzle to get the pigeon.”
In front of the box are colored splotches and a stack of colored things in strange shapes. They slide under an opening in the cage, the walls of the little box lining up with the walls of the cage, which slide away so there is only one wall.

The little things are fun to move around for a bit, but I don’t understand their connection to the good thing in the box, at least until I drop one and it lands on the yellow splotch.

“Star!”

There is a metallic click and a piece holding down the walls of the box disappears. If I do that again, can I make it happen again?

I take another piece, but it doesn’t fit on the splotch. I move it to another.

“Square!”

Another piece disappears, and there is only one little thing left.

“Circle!”

The wall to the box slides open, and the prize is mine. It is warm but cooling rapidly, and very fresh, and not unlike the good things from before.

“Bitten!”

“That was…very fast. You are remarkable. You’re not going to be a biter forever, are you? I wonder if…”

The Eye moves away, and then returns as I am finishing up my good thing. She stands at one end of the cage, holding something that smells good in her hand.

“Four.”

I look at her. A piece of something good falls into the cage, and it is mine.

“Four, come.”

I look at her again. Nothing happens.

“Four, come.”

I take a step closer in case the light is too bright for her to see me looking at her.

“That’s right. Keep coming.”

“Come, Four.”

I am near the end of the cage, near where she is. She is a half-thing, half real and half not, half female and half nothing. It would be deeply unsettling if she didn’t have power over the good things.

Click.

“Good job.”

The places a good thing between the walls of the cage, trembling slightly as I take it from her. She then moves to the other side of the cage.

“Come.”

When I am finished with the good thing, I walk to where she is, where the good things are.

Click.

She passes another through the walls, and then moves to another spot.

“Come.”

Click.

A good thing.

“I’m all out for now.”

I follow where she goes, but nothing happens.

“Bitten!”

“I’m out for now. We have to wait for one of the traps to spring. We’ll play some more games later.”

“Bitten!”

“I’m working on it, okay?”

“Bitten!” I shout obstinately, rattling the walls of the cage.

“Cool it. I’m going to go check some of the traps. Hold down the fort while I’m gone.”

She disappears past the ledge and I don’t see where she goes.

“Bitten!” I shout, rattling the walls. “Bitten! Bitten!”
But she is gone and there are no good things to occupy my time. There is the cushion-things and its dangly stuff that rattles and moves.

My hands hurt. The joints click when I move them. I do not like it, and rub them to help ease the discomfort. My feet feel bad, too. Maybe I am standing too long. My fingertips are very sore.

I pace the walls of the cage. The emptiness inside begs to be filled. It wants more good things, fresher, drippier, but there is nothing good in here with me.

It is very boring.

***

The air smells funny. It is damp and…lacking. Sometimes there are rumbling noises and bright flashes of light. The bright flashes hurt, but go away quickly. The rumbling is more worrying.

“Bitten?” I ask the squares in the big walls, where I can see clear splatter and the bright flashes.

The rumbling continues. My hands are too sore to shake.

“What’s the matter, sweetie? The storm bothering you?”

The Eye is in front of my cage. The rest of her is too scary to look at, faceless and blank, but the one eye is friendly.

“Bitten,” I whimper. “It hurts.”

“It’s just rain. It’s a good thing. It’ll fill up our water tanks, water the crops. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Bitten, bitten.”

She places her hand against the walls of the cage.

“It’s okay, I promise.”

Her hand smells good, warm and pulsating with life, but not quite like food. There is a personhood to her, like her eye, but only just.

“It hurts.”

The walls shake, all of them. A bright flash burns my eyes, driving me away from it.

“Hey, it’s okay.”

Her skin is soft and alive against my cheek, her touch gentle. The plainness of her, the lack of features and the wrongness of her smell makes my flesh crawl.
“It’s just a storm. It’s cozy, blanket weather. Just settle in and get comfortable, I’m about to start the radio show. Alright?”

“Bitten.”

She withdraws her hand, which stirs the emptiness inside because she was starting to smell like food, and wanders away, climbing back onto her ledge where she sleeps, high above and under her bright, oppressive light. She moves and rattles things on her platform, before going still and boring again.

“Good evening Utopia, this is Mama Longlegs, coming to you live from the Spider’s Web. Tonight, I’m doing a Q&A on my research project. If you’re bored and you need someone to talk to until the storm passes, Subject Four and I are standing by.”

Sometimes there is an unpleasant noise, a stiff crackle that hurts my hears. I don’t like it.

“Ten-Four, Mama. This is Lone Dave from National Bank and Trust, reading you loud and clear. What’s your little Frankentein doing right now?”

“This is Mama Longlegs, responding to Lone Dave. Dave, I don’t care for terms like ‘Frankenstein’ or ‘zombie,’ because as we all know by now, the infected aren’t dead, just sick. To answer your question, the storm seems to be agitating him somewhat. I don’t know if it’s the thunder or lightning or both. He hasn’t made any moves to get out of his cell yet or shown any aggression, so I am reporting him as operating under daylight hours.”

“Ten-four, Mama. What happens if that thing escapes its pen?”

“I’ve taken precautions, don’t you worry. He’s got a modified shock collar, and I don’t sleep on the ground and keep one eye open at night.”

“Mama Longlegs, this is Judge Jury, up at the Gas ‘n Go. How do we know this isn’t some fairytale…like some creepypasta you’re spinning?”

“I guess you’ll have to take my word for it, Judge.”

“Don’t you think this is kinda dangerous, telling us about it on the radio? What if some fool takes you seriously and tries to bag himself a pet biter?”

“Judge, I do what I do because of the infected’s unique response to me. I don’t condone anyone else but a trained professional trying to do this. I broadcast my findings on the radio so that no one else has to take their life in their hands in the name of science.”

“Science? Is that what you call this? You’re just keeping a pet. You know how that pet chimpanzee story ended?”

“Judge, if that’s what you really are, let the girl have her fun. It’s the Apocalypse. People pretty much know what they’re getting into by now.”

The emptiness inside crawls and roils, begs to be filled. I watch her, blinking at her light. Her platform makes noise, an endless drone of crackling and chatter. I need to fill the void. I need something good, something fleshy to tear.

“Bitten.”

“I’m just saying, there are few enough of us as it is without her convincing people these things can be tamed.”

“You misunderstand, Judge. I am experimenting to see if they can be tamed, which, as far as I know, is something only I can do.”

“And what makes you so darn special?”

“Bitten!” I whine again, reaching for where she sometimes throws the good things. “Bitten!”

“Is that him in the background?”

“Or your friend that does a really good zombie impression?”

The object says something when I do it right. It opens, and it makes a noise. I remember the noise, because it means good things happen.

“Bitten. Bitten-ed. Oodle-oo.”

“What?”

“Was that him?”

“Doodle-doo!” I demand again, mimicking the object.

“They don’t learn things. That’s definitely a trick.”

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

“Uuhh…Guys, I think I’m going to have to call you back. I think Four is telling me he’s hungry.”

“COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!”

The Eye smells afraid as she climbs down from her perch, disappearing into the places I can’t see. She is gone for a long time before coming back with something that smells good, but very cold.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo,” I explain as she stands in front of the cage, clinging the good thing to her chest.
“You remember the test?”

“Bitten. Doodle-doo.”

“You’re learning. You’re not just…reacting to conditioned responses. You’re learning.”

“Cock-a-doodle.”

I reach out between the bars. I can smell it, cold and dead and but fleshy and good, and I want it.

“Four. Four, look at me. What is this?”

“Cock-a-doodle,” I answer, watching where she moves it. “Bitten. It hurts.”

“It’s chicken. Can you say ‘chicken?’”

“BITTEN. IT HURTS! DOODLE-DOO!”

“I’ll have to think about this. I’m…I’m going to have to go supply hunting in the morning.”

She approaches me, the good thing held outward. Half of her is normal, half of her is monstrous, food. Her fingers intermingle with the good thing, the chicken. I want to fill the void, sate the emptiness that grows inside.

When she is close, I grab her wrist and pull her into the cage, slamming her slender body against the slats.

“Oh shi—!”

The item in her hand is cold, hard, but tastes good if licked. She is warm and alive, with blood pulsating under her skin. Her heart is pounding like a dinner bell.
Pain exlpodes in my neck, running along my arms and legs and brain. I can’t breathe, I can’t stand. I am on the ground, looking upward, trembling all over and trying to remember how to make my lungs work.

“Sundowning again,” she mutters, throwing the chicken into the cage, where it lands nearby with a hard thock.

“Doodle…” I wheeze, gasping for breath. “It hurts.”

“Yeah, that’s why you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Are you smarter at night? Does your capacity to learn work better?”

She is afraid, but getting less so. There is still the cage between me and her, and she feels safe knowing that.

“Does it carry over from the next day?”

“Mama Longlegs, this is Lone Dave. Do you copy? What’s your condition, Mama?”

“Wow, this episode is good tonight.”

She retreats from me, rubbing her arm where she scraped it against the cage. Her smell is wrong, like food, but not. Half of her is monstrous, but she is warm and alive. Monsters are to be destroyed, hunted.
“Bitten…”

Back at her place, she adjusts the objects on her platform again.

“Um, yeah, sorry about that. Um…if you’re just…tuning it, Four had a bit of a breakthrough. He…uh…he mimicked a noise that one of the tests I give him does. It’s a modified children’s toy, and…I put chicken under the ‘chicken’ button, so when he guesses right…it crows like a rooster, and he…um…”

“Mama, what is your condition?”

“I’m fine, Dave, thank you for your concern. I…uh…they’re so docile during the day, I…I forget…”

“Docile? You think those things are docile?”

“I’m fine, I just go too close. He didn’t bite me, and based on previous data, it wouldn’t have mattered much if he did. Um…wow. That was exciting.”

“Mama Longlegs, I’ve heard these things speak before. They ramble about whatever was on their mind when they turned. They don’t pick up new words.”

“We don’t know that for sure. Most people can’t keep them alive and around for observation. We don’t know what their capabilities are. What if they can be reformed? What if the difference between euthanizing a loved one, and having some semblance of them back, is just therapy?”

“There you go again. What if some kid is listening to you has Mom locked in her room, and is taking notes? You’re just asking for people to be bit.”

The chicken is cold and hard, but fun to gnaw on. I would prefer something warmer, fresher, but at least the void thinks it will be filled, now. The longer I hold the chicken, the warmer it feels, even if it makes my hands sting. If I wait long enough, it will thaw, but I can’t wait that long.

“Listen, if you’re not resistant to the plague, or don’t know how to handle diseased animals, you should absolutely not be doing this. But each journey has to start with a single step, and someone has to get the ball rolling. Like I said, I’ve decided that’s me. If you’re listening, by all means, take notes and spread the word, and maybe it’ll get to people better equipped than me, but DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT try this at home!”

“Mama, I…look, I know your heart is in the right place, but is there a day when I turn on the radio and we’ll hear you turning, or that thing eating you?”

“I doubt it, Dave. I’m more likely to die from stepping on a rusty nail right now.”

“What makes you so sure of that?”

“Listen, guys, thank you for your calls and concerns, but…it’s been a long night. I’m going to call it early, I guess. This is Mama Longlegs, signing off.”





Chapter four

Viral Research--NaNoWriMo Ch 2

Chapter one

(C) Heather Farthing, all rights reserved

Chapter two

“This is Mama Longlegs, coming to you live from the Spider’s Web. We are about to take the first steps in basic training. This is challenging, in large part because biters don’t pay me much attention during daylight hours, but we’ll see what happens.

“When you first start training a dog, you speak its name, and then when it looks at you, click, and give it a treat. This is what we’ll be doing from now until nightfall.”
The walls of the cage are too small for me to squeeze through. The square has been taken away and replaced with more wall, but at least the place of pain on the floor is gone. There isn’t much else to do here. There are some dangly bits on the silver frame of the cushion that make a fun noise for awhile.

“Four.”

This cage is boring and I very much want to leave it, but I haven’t found a way yet. Even if I could climb it, there is more wall up above. I have tried to fit between the walls, but that doesn’t work.

“Four.”

I think I want to back to the before place and see the pretty see-through thing again.

“Four.”

There is an eye. It is very pleasant to look at, but it is all alone. I hope it finds a match and a face soon.

Click.

Something good, pale and pink and boxlike slides into the cage. It is a small bit and I immediately want more.

“Four.”

There is the eye again, a pretty shade of green with a very humanoid, slitted pupil.

Click.

More good things slide into the cage, but it still isn’t enough.

“Four.”

I look up and find the eye. If I had to guess, I would think it belonged to a female, but with only the one, cyclopic eye, I can’t be too sure.

Click.

More good things.

“Four.”

Before I have finished, I look up and find the eye.

Click.

More good things.

It seems as though good things happen if I look up when the eye makes a noise like “four.” Does this mean that if I look at it all the time, I can eat as much as I like?
“Subject Four seems to have figured me out. He’s watching me as I pace back and fourth in front of his enclosure.”

It said “four,” and I looked at it, but nothing good comes into the cage. I growl deep in my throat and put my hands on the walls, which makes them shake and make a loud noise.

“It seems as though Subject F—my subject has learned the game. Alright, here you go, sweetie. That was fast and effective, but now I need to be careful say his designation or he’ll eat me out of house and home. I’m going to let the subject rest a bit while I set up a new game.”

When I finish the good things, I watch the eye in case it makes a “four” noise again, but it goes away and I don’t see it anymore. It is very quiet when the eye isn’t around.

My ankle itches. I fumble under the cloth-skin where more cloth-skin, sticky and brownish, is wrapped tightly. There is red seeping where I scratch.
Pain explodes around my neck, sending to my knees, gasping and hissing.

“Don’t do that. You need to let it heal.”

If I scratch again, will it hurt?

Yes. Yes it does.

I am lying on my belly, twitching slightly. I don’t think I want to scratch my ankles anymore.

“Four?”

I look up and find the eye.

Click.

A small tray of good things slides into the cage. I can reach them without having to stand.

“Alright, let’s play a new game.”

An object is placed in front of the cage. It smells good.
“Push the button and find the food.”

“Bitten?”

The object smells good. It is a rectangle with colored sections in lines of two. I reach out for it and the red square collapses under my grasp.

“Moo.”

The colored square above the red one opens, and there is nothing inside but a good-smelling film.

“Bitten,” I growl in disappointment.

“That’s okay. Try again.”

I want the thing that smells good. I grab it in both hands but it is pulled away from my grasp.

“No no, just the buttons.”

“Bitten!” I snarl, jerking it close to me. It doesn’t fit through the walls, but it smells good and it is mine.

“You’re never going to get it open that way!”

“Bitten.”

The object smells good, and makes my fingers smell good.

“Alright, maybe the button test was a little too advanced…”

When I shift my position, the object springs open again.
“Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

The object opens again, and there are good things spilling across the floor. I drop the object to to get at them, reaching as far as I can to grab them.

“You shouldn’t eat off the floor.”

I look up at the eye expectantly, momentarily distracted before realizing the good things have been moved.

“Bitten!”

The object is before me behind the walls. All the colored squares are closed. I don’t remember how I made it open before, so I reach out to grab it again.

“Baa.”

The object opens and there is nothing in it but a good smell and sadness.

“It hurts!” I growl in frustration.

“Keep trying, little guy. You’ll get it.”

I grab for it again.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

This time, there are good things. When there are no more good things, I grab for the space again.
“Cock-a-Cock-a-doo-Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

“Demanding, aren’t we? It is getting pretty late. Are you sundowning already?”

“Bitten!” I demand from the object, grabbing for the yellow square.

“Cock-a-doodle-Cock-a-d-Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

“Alright, alright. That’s the last of it.”
More good things fill the empty space where the colored square used to be. As soon as I take the last piece, the object is gone.

“I am not listening to that all night, but it’s a start. Did you ever train your dog to ring a bell when it wanted to go out? That’s not a bad idea…”

“Bitten!” I growl, reaching at where the object used to be. “It hurts! It hurts!”

“Calm down! I only have so many chickens. I see I’m going to have to put more thought into feeding you…”
I pace at the walls of the cage. Something feels…wrong, bad, like my blood is burning me. I don’t want these walls holding me in. I want out, I need out!

“Bitten!” I snarl, reaching through the walls, reaching out for warm flesh to rend and tear.

“Yeah, you’re sundowning. Looks like practice is over for today.”

I smell it, warmth, life, somewhere past the eye. It smells good, and I want it, raw and dripping, coming apart in my hands.

“Biiiteen,” I his at the direction of the warmth and life.

“As with other infected, subject takes note of my existence near sundown. I have adopted the unfortunate term ‘sundowning’ to describe the change in behavior and increased aggression during the night. To put simply, the infected are Night of the Living Dead during the day, and 28 Days Later at night. There seems to be a modicum of increased cognitive ability at night, and as soon as I am able I will be testing for this, but I must circumvent the aggression first.”

“Bitten.”

The walls taste metallic and don’t bend under my teeth. It is deeply unsatisfying. I want something fresher, something that yields and gives and tears and drips.

“Bitten!”

The eye and the source of the warmth and life climbs onto a shelf nearby, a big one, and pulls up a ladder behind it. It scales higher from underneath, having moved aside wooden flooring to get through to the top. Once as high as it goes, a bright light comes on, hurting my eyes.

“It hurts!”

“I know, sweetie, but it’ll keep you away until morning. Lay down and get some sleep. You’ve had a big day.”

“Bitten!”

It is there, taunting me. I reach for it, hungry, empty, the taste of the chicken long forgotten. It is warm and alive and I WANT IT!!

“Don’t make me tranq you again!”

It’s voice, her voice, with warm breath, a pulsating heart. She tantalizes with her fresh meat-smell.

If I put my feet against the walls and use them to force my way up, I can hold on with my hands and reach the top of the cage. There is still no way out, but I can get close to her, close to her warmth, her breath, the sound of her heart.

“You are bound and determined I’m not going to sleep tonight, aren’t you?”

“BIIIITTEEENN!”

“No, it’s sleepy-time. If I throw you a chicken now, you’ll want one every night, and I need some to breed.”
“Bitten! It hurts!”

She is sitting up in the glow of the light, hard to look at, but I can tell. One eye is yellow-green on black, normal, pleasing to look at, the other is brown on white, like some sort of monster. Monsters are to be hunted, dispatched—eaten.

“Bitten! Bitten!”

She is afraid. She curls away from me, lost in the glare of that hateful light. She thinks she is safe in that position, but she is vulnerable. Her spine and ribs might be difficult to get through, but her reaction time will be delayed. If I’m quiet, she’ll never even know I am near.
I should be quiet. If she can’t see me, she doesn’t need to hear me.

The smell of her fear is the sweetest incense. It is the smell of a homecooked meal, the most delicious of meats.

I watch her, wait for her to fall asleep, testing the limits of my cage. I single out the panel that has the entrance, locked tight with several padlocks, like the collar around my neck.

She is clever. Even if I could pick these, it would take a lot of time, and the noise might wake her. I will find a way, and she will bleed by my hand.





Chapter three

Viral Research--NaNoWriMo

Viral Research

(C) Heather Farthing, all rights reserved

Chapter one

I am…

I am.

The floor has an obnoxious brown and black pattern that hurts my eyes. The soft cushion I’m laying on has an edge that hurts my neck. My joints are stiff and I’m cold, but I feel hot inside. There is also an emptiness, a void I don’t understand but need to fill.

If I push up with these things “arms” I am no longer lying along the soft cushion. I am sitting now. There is a face on the wall across from me, some sort of creature standing against a blue banner with red and white stripes.

“Bitten?” I ask in confusion. The faceless being on the wall offers no answer.

“Legs.” They make me tall. I waver a bit, dropping to one “knee.” The room is swaying. I feel bad. Empty.
“It hurts,” I whine, trying to remember how I was tall before and how to do it again. It takes more effort from down here, but I manage. “Walking” is another story, small, wavering steps, backsteps, teetering over.

“Bitten!” I cry when I realize I have made it across the small container.

The container has several white walls and two of the cushion things. There is a box between the cushions, and flaps of fabric in disarray all around. There are small objects, too, baskets with straps, brightly-colored cylinders, bits of cloth, and things I don’t understand.
There is a bright light coming from a square in the wall. It burns my eyes and I don’t like it. The other side of the container is cooler, easier on my eyes. There is a tall rectangle on that side of the room. It is hard to remember what it’s for.

“Bitten?” I ask the rectangle, but it doesn’t answer either, prompting a dejected sigh. “It hurts.”

There is a bright silver round thing on the wall rectangle. Is is very pretty, so I reach out to pick it up.

My “fingers” are clumsy and stiff, but the round thing seems to like them enough to turn and make a clicking noise. The round thing won’t let me pick it up but the wall rectangle moves and there is space beyond it.
“Bitten?”

The space past the wall rectangle smells bad, making my nose sting and I do not like it. There is a man in the space, though, with vividly bright green eyes and thick, blue and black fabric-skin. His head is a black ball with white lettering.

“Bitten,” I say in greeting.

“Where?” he replies. “My daughter…”

“It hurts,” I agree. “Bitten.”

My right leg throbs. I do not like it.

“Where?” the man in blue asks, peering into the container. “Where is?” He sounds disappointed.
I move away from him. There is another open wall rectangle, and a woman inside with a very tight, white fabric skin on her chest and a very short, ruffly one on her legs, red and black and matching the dangle-thing at her neck.

“Cheater,” she murmurs. “Scumbag.”

“Bitten,” I reply in a friendly manner, continuing.
Past the next wall rectangle is a room that smells very bad. Something sticky and dark reddish-brown leaks from under the floor. It smells bad, but something about it awakens the emptiness inside.

“It hurts?” I wonder, tilting my head. Maybe at one time, but this smells sick right now.

Past the space beyond the wall rectangle is an open area. A man in maroon stands at a wooden platform, holding a two-circled object in his hand.

“Checking in?” he asks it. “Checking out?”

“Bitten,” I tell him. “It hurts.”

“Concierge,” he answers. “Complementary breakfast buffet. Bellhop.”

There is a see-through container past the platform. It is very pretty. Several people are gathered around it, admiring it.

“Flight out,” a woman says approvingly.

“Barricade,” replies a man.

“Quarantine,” adds another man, wearing baggy yellow cloth-skin that seems strangely hard to be so pliable. It is ragged and torn around his neck.

“Bitten?” I ask, looking at his cloth-skin.
“Airborne,” he explains.

“It hurts.”

Past the beautiful see-through thing is another space, with rows of platforms covered in silver discs. Things are piled on them, that reawaken that emptiness inside, but they are covered in green and white spots and black dots that buzz and dart.

“It hurts,” I say, dejected.

“Run,” a woman agrees, holding a piece of something soft and brown-white. “They are coming.”

Back in the big container, there is an open space that leads to gray rock. The ground is covered in glitter that, while pretty, makes my fingers sting and leak.

“It hurts,” I growl, disapprovingly, stumbling out onto the gray.

The air out here smells dark and hazy. In front of the big container is a shadowy place, but behind it is a large, bright thing that burns my eyes and I do not like it.
“Bitten!” I snarl reproachfully, looking away from it.
In the shadows, there is a silver box with something alive in it, covered in thick hairs, waving its arms and squawking loudly.

“Bitten?” I ask, tilting my head again.

The live-thing is upside-down and spinning in wild circles. It smells warm and alive and something about it is familiar and that emptiness inside is a gaping void that demands the live-thing.

“Bitten,” I muse, stumbling closer to it.

The live-thing does not like me. It lashes out with a hard face and mean little feet, squawking and drawing the attention of a crowd and I do not want to share. The ground beneath the live-thing clicks under my feet, followed by a loud clang, but the live-thing is mine and it is red and warm.

“Good Evening, Utopia. These is Momma Longlegs coming at you live from the Arcadian Hotel. My trap has already been sprung—good thing, too, that chicken wasn’t easy to come by. Subject Number Four is an apparent male, early twenties, good runner’s physique. Subject is wearing blue t-shirt and khaki cargo pants, post-apocalyptic tres chic, and really enjoying that chicken, which is…no longer with us.

“Hair is unkempt and dark brown to maybe black, but eyes are a shockingly vivid and unpleasant yellow-green, indicating acute infection, if that weren’t obvious enough. Sports a bite mark that needs some attention on the lower right calf, likely route of infection. Subject might have been a courier for one of the nearby settlements, unclear.

“Nails have turned black but not fallen out yet. Subject might be recently out of coma and displays no further mutation past the eyes and diminished intellectual capacity.

“As per usual, the walking infected are paying me…no attention whatsoever, but they really want what’s left of that poor chicken, so I should probably get going back to the Web.

“If you’re out there, I’ll be in touch.”

The silver box clangs and I am on my side. Bits of the live-thing that isn’t alive anymore fall through the metal, buts of fluff and pieces too hard to be eaten.

“Bitten,” I whine is disappointment, reaching out for it.

“Uh-ah, none of that,” a pair of shiny, blue hands barks, swatting at my hands.

“Bitten!” I snap, trying to catch one.

The box drops to the ground with an ear-ringing clang. My hands are caught beneath it, which is very painful and I do not like it.

“Stop grabbing me or we’re never going to get anywhere.”

I am on my side again and the ground beneath me is moving. Where am I going?

“It hurts,” I ask the ground.

“I bet it does, and I’ll take care of it as soon as we get home.”

“Bitten?”

The ground passes beneath me. There are yellow rectangles on the ground that pass at even intervals. I count them, one and one and one and one and one. When I lose count I try to pick one up, and the ground stops moving abruptly and all my weight is on my feet now, which is good because the silver hurts to lay on.

“Alright, someone needs a little nap.”

A clear cylinder bites into my shoulder and I do not like it. I make a noise like air passing over my teeth and try to grab it, but it is gone before I can and the brightness burns.

“Alright, get cozy little guy. It’s gonna be a long walk and we need to be home before dark.”

“Bitten?”

The ground passes beneath me, and I feel heavy. My eyes don’t stay open right, which is okay because the ground keeps turning bright and it burns. The movement of the box feels nice. My eyes are heavy, so I close them.

When I open them again, I am lying on another cushion, looking up at more silver cage. It is very tall this time, I can’t even reach it, no matter how hard I try, but I can make myself taller and…still not reach it.

This cage is strange. The cushion has silver legs. There is a trick of water from a hose above a series of holes in the ground. The water is cool and tastes very good, and I drink it for a long time.

There is also a good smell. I find it behind a silver wall, but I can’t reach it inside. I reach through the rectangle in the wall and my legs jolt and shake with an unbelievable amount of paint that throws me back into the other side of the container.

“Oh, good. You’re awake. Right after dawn, I’m getting better at this.”

I still smell the good thing, and also pain, but there is an emptiness inside I need to fill. I make myself tall again and go to the cage rectangle. I reach up my hand to put it through again, but…what if I hurt again.

“Interesting. Subject Four is showing hesitation at the negative reinforcement test after only one try. His predecessor tried it…ten times? Looks like I have a real overachiever here.”

The smell on the other side is not alive, but it is very tempting. I don’t know that putting my hand through there is what made me hurt…

It is. It definitely is.

It is hard to breathe. Every fiber of my being is on fire. The world is made of flashing lights and agony. I will not be trying that again.

“Crap, I think I killed another one.”

It is a long time before I can make myself tall again. The room sways and smells like pain.

“Nope, he’s still alive.”

When I am standing again, I stare at the wall rectangle again, and yell at it, “It hurts!” in an accusatory tone.

“Funniest shit I’ve heard in a long time. Alright, little guy, you earned a treat.”

Something good appears in front of me with a loud smack. It is damp, light pink, and smells very good, but I step away from it, watching it suspiciously.

“Oh? The plot thickens.”

The good thing on the floor smells very good, but will it hurt me if I grab it? Is it worth it to find out?

The void says yes, my ribs and back say no.

“Yep, I broke him.”

A few more good things appear with a similar sound. They are falling from the sky. Maybe if I can find where they fall from, I can bypass the pain?

I look up, but I see nothing. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be looking for. A hole? Good things floating? A giant good thing, shedding pieces of itself?
There is a platform above me, and something moving above me. There are two lights that shine bright like eyes.

“Oh, hi. We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Sally, and you’re my lab rat.”



Chapter two

Entropy--Chapter Three

Chapter three

When I was a girl, I had a coloring book of different types of mutations, human, plant, and animal. The book said calling genetic deviation “mutation” was an oversimplification, since mutation is a natural part of life that even happened on the Old World.

The book said a more proper term could be called idiosyncratic aberration, since these mutations stopped making complete sense when the colonists realized Tartarus was burning itself out. It was like the star itself was resigned to its fate, as all ancient things eventually do, and had given up trying to keep itself lit. As the last known star had given up, so too, it seemed, did reality itself.

When I was a bit older, I took an anthropaleontology class, and they showed archival pictures of things known about the Old World. Actual visual images of what the Old World looked like were very scarce and none were used in the class, favoring the stories and folklore the colonists brought with them when they came to Discordia.

Their birds were mostly toothless, as I recall, with hard beaks and no claws on their wings. The domesticated meat fowl were considered especially harmless, bred to be no smarter than a vegetable. The teacher made a joke about how these soft, round people from a soft, round world with their soft, round, thin-skinned livestock would be afraid of our meat fowl, and would consider our milkers dangerous animals that shouldn’t be approached.

Of course, when mankind took to the stars looking for a habitable planet they could terraform, they brought with them their fears and anxieties.

I’m told the Old World was very bright, even before Great Sol saw fit to eat his most exceptional child. The atmosphere was clear of debris and phytoplankton and the day was separated by night by more than a few lumen. The diurnal humans, even in their soft, round, thin-skilled world, feared things that prowled at night with teeth and claws.

The evolutionary spikefruit does not drop far from the genetic tree.

The days outside of the dome might be dim and smoky compared to what the colonists knew, but the night is absolute black without the city lights. The broken moon Hesperides is a pale shadow in the dark, a light gray smear against deep and formless black.

And there are things that know how to use the dark in a way that proper humans never do.

A scaly creature, long-legged and bright-eyed, prowls among the rubble, just barely visible by moonlight, and then mostly by its eyes. I can hear its ragged breathing and sniffing, and its soft clack clack clack of the claws against the pavement.

I think back to the coloring books and textbooks and try to remember what it might be, and how to fend it off. I don’t want to get to close if it’s poisonous, and it might grab my club/walking stick if it has tentacles.

Ehnzo moans in his sleep, lightly aware of the looming threat even in his stupor.

I tighten my hands around my club, waiting, counting its steps and watching its eyes. To my horror, three other pairs of eyes light up in the dark.

So this is how it ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. It could be just as well, there’s no telling where the evac trains would take us, or if they would take us at this point. For Ehnzo, it will be quick and he will wake up dead, and may join his soft ancestors in the afterlife.
But I will feel the teeth.

There is a whizzing noise as something fast and sharp pierces the night. The first set of eyes makes a canid-like yelp, knocked sideways, and then close. The three others run whimpering into the shadows as something else leaps off the collapsed roof behind us.

Its eyes glow blue, not white. It moves with intelligent purpose as it approaches the carcass, scuffling and apparently lifting it. The eyes dim slightly, as if the person or creature or mutant is nodding to me, and then it’s gone.

Entropy--Chapter Two

Chapter one

Entropy (C) 2022, all rights reserved

Chapter two

When the last batch of pickled hardroot go on the shelf, I’m tired and almost ready for bed. I settle down beside Ehnzo on the single mattress, laid against the wall so that we can both see the AV. He’s beginning to relax a little since the sirens haven’t yet gone off, and we share a bucket of puffed hardroot between us.

He’s not so bad.

On the AV, the nosy neighbor has just dropped in to see the lady of the house fixing a costume for her son’s school play on the dangers of mutation, and is clearly about to misunderstand what she sees. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’m going to get to see what happens, since the ground has started to tremble and it just cut to a news anchor sitting solemnly behind a desk.

“Oh no, here it starts,” Ehnzo sighs, pulling down the lead-lined hatch that works as a double-shelter in the event of storms, radiation, and monster attacks, securing us in a bubble with only the AV visible, broadcasting to integrated speakers.

“Citizens of Paradise City and the Greater Usoa Region of the Discordian Supercontinent,” the man says, holding up a tablet he’s reading from. “If you have not gone to your shelters, now is the time. Reports are coming in of a sandstorm arriving from the north and a radicane from the south. It is believed that these two storms are going to collide near Paradise City. Damage to the domes in the superstorms is expected to be…”

“Looks like it’s going to be a long night,” Ehnzo muses, wrapping the blanket around us both.

“Yeah,” I sigh, disappointed and annoyed. “That broadcast is going to be on until the all-clear sounds.”

Right on cue, the sirens sluggishly roar to life, filling the miniature dome with an ear-splitting drone for five whole minutes.

“Well,” Ehnzo muses softly, “if you want to get some sleep, I can stay up…in case there’s an emergency.”

Whether I like it or not, in a few weeks this guy will be my husband, so I might as well start learning to trust him.

“Okay,” I tell him, stretching out opposite his direction, foot to face so the blanket still covers us both. “You going to be okay?”

“Yeah, no, I got my tablet in my bag. I got some work to do, and a few books. I’ll be fine.”

His voice is soft and cautious. He’s trying not to overstep his bounds and make a good early impression. I might have only known him a short time, but I feel safe enough alone with him.

So I settle in for the night, close my eyes, and try to get some sleep.

***

The miniature dome bows in on itself with a pained shriek that snatches me out of sleep like a sandtunnler to a desert hopper. My kitchen is currently sitting on top of us, and our shelter is straining under the weight.
“Get out!” Ehnzo yells, wrenching open the pull-down dome with the strength of a SWAT and ushering me through. The ceiling is cracking, groaning under the weight of whatever just fell on my house.
Ehnzo pulls me by the hand, his armored vest under his arm.

“We have to go now!” he shouts, all authoritarianism and calm under pressure. He pulls me under the doorframe, and roughly throws me into the vest, and then pushes me out of the cellar and into the living room.

“The radiation—!” I protest.

“Not the time!” he growls. “We have to get to the City Center!”

Wrapping his arm around me, he ushers me through the front door and sprawling onto my knees at the neighborhood streets.

The dome…the great protector-of-all has blown open. A great glass piece of it is sitting where my house used to be. There’s so much screaming, and I just want to go back to bed.

“What’s happening?” I ask as Ehnzo pulls me back to my feet, wrapping his arm around me again to stop the shaking.

“A lot of bad stuff right now, but I got clearance to get you into the City Center. You’re going to be fine.”

He pulls me down the street, dodging rubble and debris. The wind is blowing sand everywhere, scalding my skin, to say nothing of what the radicane might be doing. Something massive screams for its life in a deafening, low-frequency moan, and I look up just in time to see a massive skywhale crash into what was left of the dome from the open side behind us, shredding its thick hide against the jagged edges, spilling blood and ballast oil before dropping onto the merchant district like a bloody slab of meat onto a cutting board. A lot of the screaming stops.

“We gotta move!” Ehnzo hisses, pulling me again.
The last thing I see is a flying stop sign.

***

The pain wakes me up sometime after full dark. I’m sprawled out on pavement, under a sheet of metal that might have at one time been a roof or wall, sheltered by a sideways ‘mobile, gears and circuitry facing me.

I just lay here, staring at the exposed guts of the ‘mobile, staring up past the dome into the black sky. There’s a flickering glow from somewhere, probably a fire or something from the damage. I just lie here until I hear Ehnzo’s gasps of pain.

When I manage to stand, I’m dizzy and bleeding, and everything’s a bit foggy. I was…in my shelter? So what am I doing on the street?

Ehnzo is leaning up against the ‘mobile, hand over his side in a pool of his own blood.

“Great Sol! Ehnzo!” I breathe, running to his side, which is a dizzying mistake that almost costs me a twisted ankle.

“You’re alive!” he sighs, his voice heavy and dreamy. “I was worried!”

“Don’t worry about me, what about you?” I ask, trying to pull his hands away from his side as he instinctively fights me to keep it covered.

“Took some shrapnel to the side,” he answers through a hiss of pain.

I feel his armored vest on me, heavy like guilt. The gash in his side is pretty nasty. He needs it dressed if I’m going to get him to City Center.

“Don’t drink the skywater,” he tells me, like a commander to a junior officer. “radicanes have messed-up skywater.”

“Noted,” I answer, my vision clearing as I reach down to the hem of my shirt and start tearing it off to make bandages, sticking the strips to the injuries as I pull them off and moving down to my ankles for more.

“I’m thirsty, Sola,” he asks like a child. “Do you have any spikefruit juice?”

“I’ll go get you some,” I promise as soon as I think the bandage job is going to be as good as its going to get.

“Wait here and try to rest. I’m going to be right back.”
I stand up again, swaying, and move around the ‘mobile to get a better look at what I’m dealing with. Paradise looks like early colonial ruins, tall buildings cut down at the waist, collapsed homes, and fires burning in the distance. I smell blood and smoke and sand, with a metallic tang that might be left over from the radicane.
After making sure Ehnzo can’t see me, I drop to my knees, shaking, my eyes drawn up to the endless black void of the sky, which feels like an open mouth about to suck me in, and I am naked and exposed before it.
One more domed city gone dark. One less population of the human race. One step closer to the end of everything.

Like my ancestors have done for generations, I push that away to the back of my mind and focus on what is immediate. I need to find medical supplies for Ehnzo before I can move him to better shelter. That will be in the ruins of nearby homes.

A wise person, their name lost to time, once said, “Keep calm and carry on.”

***

When I return to Ehnzo, I have a bottle of contraband that someone had stashed in the back of their cabinets, which is illegal to drink but should help clean his wounds, and an emergency kit taken from the inside of someone’s ‘mobile, which is currently in their living room.

He’s still alive when I get back to him, but he’s warm and clammy to the touch, and carrion birds have realized the dome is open and are prowling around him, rubbing their muzzles with the single claw at their midwing.

Maybe he still has his club on him. If those things get hungry enough, they’ll skip waiting, and that counts for me, too.

After I get his wound clean and properly patched, I feel around in his pockets but don’t find his club. Instead I grab the twisted stem of a stop sign and run at the birds, swinging it wildly. They hiss and squawk, baring their sharp teeth at me and lash at me with their powerful, clawed feet and prehensile tails, but move back a ways to keep watch. They are patient feeders.
Drained, I take a spot next to Ehnzo, eyes wide, jumping at every little noise, my makeshift club in my lap, watching for birds and beasts, back to the ‘mobile. I sit here for hours until the sky starts to turn deep maroon, and then then blood red, as the dim cinder of the star Tartarus begins to rise in the sky.

Blinking in the unfiltered sunlight, I check on Ehnzo. He’s still warm and clammy, but his breathing is a bit better.

“Wake up,” I tell him, shaking his shoulder.
He opens up bleary eyes and blinks in the sunlight, holding a shaking hand in front of his hand to the sky.

He probably hasn’t seen the free sky before, either, or at least not often. Perhaps as a young officer he was on guard duty as the traders arrived, but only the traders see the sky and sun for what they are.

“We need to get moving,” I insist, getting up, stiff and cold from the night before, and pulling on his hands.

He’s a lot bigger than me and getting him up and bearing his weight on my shoulder is difficult, but it’s better than staying here.

“You should keep going,” he protests. “Go on without me. Leave me here and send a search party when you get there.”

He’s more lucid. That’s a good sign.

“What kind of future bride would I be if I left you out here for the carrion birds?” I laugh bitterly, watching a circling, bald-headed brownish beast with long, hooked claws on its feet, staring at me hopefully with lizard-like eyes.

“It’ll take more than a few birds to take me down,” he chuckles. “You’ll move faster on your own.”

“In two weeks, you were going to be my problem anyway,” I reply breathlessly as I lug him over broken streets and lives. “What’s a few days early?”

“Well, then as your husband-to-be, it’s my responsibility to keep you safe. You can’t stay out here with the dome open like that. You need to get to the City Center before they send out the evac trains out.”

“We got time,” I argue. “Someone has to keep them running.”

“Depends on how many made it to safety. By the look of this, not many. They’ll send out scouts soon. Just leave me somewhere they can find me.”

“This isn’t a normal quake,” I growl, shifting his weight and looking grimly at the shattered dome covered in whaleblood and ballast oil. “They might cut their losses instead of sending scouts.”

The carrion birds are fighting over bits of skin with a few other mangy scavengers, wild hunting spiders and crawling terrors. There’s even a very large blade bug, its dark chitinous hide gleaming in the dusty sunlight, using its proboscis to lick the ichor away.

“It’s a risk you’ll have to take,” he insists.

“Please,” I laugh again, bile rising in the back of my throat. “My dad ran out on us, my mom’s in the fertilizer pits. You’re legally all the family I got.”

“Lucky you,” he snickers. “A SWAT that can’t protect you, with no home, and potentially a hole in his lung.”

“You’re not bleeding from the mouth.”

“I taste blood in the back of my throat.”

“That’s your split lip.”

I sit us down in the shadow of a collapsed house when I can’t carry him anymore. Relief crosses his face before he realizes I’m sitting down, too.

“I need a break, and we both need food and clean water,” I explain. “I’m going to catch my breath and then see if I can scrounge up some food.”

“Just leave me here,” he argues again. “More than carrion birds are going to want that carcass.”

“All the more reason I can’t leave you behind,” I huff, standing up. “There was at least one hunting spider on the dome, and they’re not picky eaters.”

“They follow the smell of blood,” he winces, shifting his position. “They’ll be after me.”

“I’m all cut up, too, so hush.”

Naturally, I check the house we’re against and as luck would have it there’s an unbroken jar of pickled hardroot and some sweetgrass jerky, and a lightly squished spikefruit whose pulp chamber sounds intact.

And so another night in the open sore of a dying world.

Chapter three

Entropy

Entropy

(C) Heather Farthing 2022, all rights reserved

When my grandmother was a little girl, the sky was blue.

It was an illusion, of course, a holographic projection of what the sky was said to have looked like under Great Sol. She used to tell me about how sometimes, under this noble falsehood, some of the plants would get confused and grow green.

As I kneel before the purple-leafed hardroot plant, digging its reddish roots from the ground, I have a difficult time picturing that.

Once in awhile, there are patches of blue across the dome. It’s like looking into a glitch in reality, a blinking, neon hole in existence. My grandmother’s generation find it comforting, but I find it disquieting.

The dome is so dusty now, it’s nearly opaque, bathed in iron-rich, pink and red sand. In some places it leaks, bits of sand falling from above the way the irrigation system did when I was a child. Every so often, somebody makes a motion to fix it, but either there are not enough supplies, or enough energy, human or mechanical.

There used to be cleaning octopodes, who crawled over the outside of the dome, sweeping away the dust with their slime and feeding on pests that roosted there. I’ve seen pictures in school, but they’ve long gone extinct now.

I keep cutting the roots from the vines, one at a time, into the basket. Dig, clip, basket, dig, clip basket. The wrote monotony is supposed to be calming in its tedium. Keep doing the little things to keep going, like a wind-up toy whose mechanisms are wearing out.
The first rule of living in Paradise is that we don’t talk about what’s going on outside of Paradise. So another settlement collapsed in on itself, we still have a harvest to pull in. So another caravan was raided by the night people, we still have repairs to make.

And on, and on, and on.

Just keep surviving for one more day. And another. And another. And try not to think about tomorrow, or next week, or next year.

When my basket is full, I stand up and a stretch, wiping sweat off my brow and frowning. A lady is not supposed to sweat, water being too precious of a resource, but the central climate system has been on the fritz lately.

“Sola? Is that you?” a female voice asks.

It’s one of the neighbors, poking her head over the sand-stained, formerly white picket fence.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I reply wearily, tucking a loose strand of blond hair behind my ear.

“How’re you settling in, love?”

I struggle to remember her name. Mrs. Lovejoy. Mrs. Miller. Mrs…Crumb?

“Just fine,” I tell her lamely, looking down at my basket. “The victory garden is coming along nicely, and I moved my canning supplies into the shelter so I can keep working during an emergency.”

“So productive!” the older woman smiles, her face soft with wrinkles. “I wish I had your energy. But did you hear, love, Mrs. Lovejoy down the street, her baby was born with mutations!”

“Oh, dear!” I reply, trying to remember which one is Lovejoy, coming up blank, but also chilled by the notion.


“Oh, yes, love!” the woman continues, clearly not reading my look of disgust correctly. “My friend Lisa, down at the medical center—you know Lisa? From the Harvest Celebration, she brought muffins?—Anyway, Lisa told me the little girl was born with fangs. Fangs! Can you imagine? Said it was the most ghastly thing she’d ever seen! Unnatural for a baby to have teeth, but there it was! Long and sharp as a bloodsucker’s beak!”

I can feel myself turning pale at the visual, maybe a bit green, as I pick up my basket.

“Must be terrible for a new mother!” she keeps going.

“Sent it to the Wastes, they did. Lisa said Mrs. Lovejoy went a bit mad, calling for her baby girl after they took it from her. Kept calling for her baby until they sedated her, poor thing. Even after they told her the baby was a mutant, she kept asking where it was! Poor thing.”

“Yes, poor thing,” I answer absently, a cold, sickish feeling in the pit of my stomach. “I need to get these inside for pickling…”

“Oh! Pickling!” she cheers. “I used to love pickling. All the trader men used to drop buy for a shipment of my pickles to take out.” She punctuates with a wink before asking, “Your father was a rail merchant, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” I confirm grimly, looking at my shoe and feeling the weight of my basket.

“Well, good for him!” she beams. “Does he still travel?”

“...No,” I tell her simply, shifting my basket with exaggerated discomfort.

The truth is, he never came home. His crew did, but not him, and I don’t want to talk about it to a woman I’ve lived next to for only a week.

“Oh, well, I…oh, dear, love, your hardroot.”

I glance down at the vines and my blood runs cold. The vines are retreating into the round, brown shells that grow around the central root, pulling away from whatever edible tubers I haven’t collected yet. If I’m fast, it makes harvesting easier, but there’s a high probability they won’t be edible in the morning.

“I wonder what they know that we don’t,” I ask, ears perked for the sound of sirens.

“No telling, love. Best hurry up out here before the sirens go off. Hurry along now, off with you.” She wanders away from the fence and back toward the house. I drop back to my knees and start scrabbling for the shed roots. If I don’t get them, they’ll sprout into new shells, choking the garden and prolonging the harvest. I can’t have that, so I can only grab what I can before the sirens go off.

What could they be reacting to? Another sandstorm? Radicane? I should probably sleep in the shelter tonight, just in case. Ever since I was a child, I hated waking up in the middle of the night to the sirens, the confusion and panic. When I was about eight my mom caught me sleeping down there on more than one occasion, often but not always after the hardroot started acting weird.

At least it got rid of the gossipy neighbor.

I shiver again. I went to school once with a girl, a friend of mine, I can’t remember her name. She was one of those early-life friends where you color together, play dolls together, but don’t think about them after second grade, or would be if she hadn’t shown me the patches on her arms. They were scaled, thick armored plating, and she could make them light up and glow. I was so jealous and thought they were so pretty, until the next day when she didn’t come to class and we had a special lecture on the dangerous of mutants and mutation.

With pictures.

It’s not just the radiation storms that cause the mutations. When that happens it’s usually tumors and deformities. Those are sad enough, but sometimes, beneath the murky brown sun and amid the harsh, cold desert, nature just…breaks. When that happens, you can get all sorts of nasty things, like babies with fangs, milkers with no eyes, whales that float in the sky, feeding on atmospheric plankton.

Of those things, we cast them out. We can’t have such monsters breeding and passing on their aberrations, and sometimes such things can spread like a virus. We send them out to the Wastes, no matter how old or young. It’s how we’ve kept ourselves pure since the days of Old Earth.

When I’ve dug up all the tubers I can find, I take the basket inside and wash my hands at the kitchen sink. The water gurgles and sprays before the air in the pipes clear and slightly murky liquid pours out. In my grandmother’s day, it ran clear, but the slight taste of dirt is all I’ve ever known.

I look out the window. Sand-stained, cookie cutter houses in chipped, pastel colors with identical sand-stained, formerly white picket fences line my view. I grew up a few streets over, but when my mother died of radiation sickness I was assigned new housing, and I’ve been in the marriage lottery since I was eighteen.

Last week, I won.

He’s a good man, or so I hear. A bit older than me, a member of City Council and on the police force. We first met at the lottery drawing, although we didn’t know we’d be the winners at the time. He’s due to join me at my residence next week, when we’ll have our civil marriage ceremony, and then I’ll be a married woman with maybe a child on the way.

The Usoan Dream, I suppose.

In middle school we learned that the expedition that brought our ancestors here centuries ago were chasing an Old World dream. There was a time in the settler’s history where things were simple, regimented, and ordered. A man went to work from nine to five and came home to dinner on the table and something gentle and unoffensive on the AV unit. A woman spent her day at laundry and a stove, and children knew no fear or worries.

They were chasing that when the came here. The Old World, orbiting a rapidly expanding yellow dwarf star, was dying. After years of a painful, agonizing near-death, they came here chasing a peace they had never known.

The Old World died from a bang, a blaze of cosmic glory. The new world is dying of a prolonged, wasting illness, orbiting a star guttering like an overused candle in a strong breeze.

But unlike our starfaring ancestors, the people of the domed cities of Usoa just don’t have the energy to care, and there isn’t anywhere to go if we did.

I wash the tubers in the sink, watching out the window as the squat, purple trees draw their leaves in to their branches or trunks, dropping fruit or shielding it inside tough shells.

Yep, definitely a shelter kind of night.

I reach for another tuber. As I lean against the sink, I feel the chain around my neck give and something heavy dropping into the sink, which makes me swear.
It’s a small piece of junk my father brought back from one of his excursions, just a shard of something he thought was pretty, clear glass or resin of some sort, with thin gold lines inside like wires. On the top part, near where the hole for the chain is drilled, is a stylistic drawing of a golden sun, a lot like the picture books show Great Sol.

“I’ve seen things like this in the Wastes,” he told me as I sat on his lap, holding it in my hands. “The traders talk about it being made by aliens. Isn’t that wild?”

I fish it out of the sink and hold the chain up to the window. It snapped at the clasp, an easy fix. I pocket them both to keep from losing them and then go to the city-issued toolkit under the sink, prying open a different loop and tightening it down on the eye of the clasp. One link shorter, but at least I haven’t lost it.
By the time I return to the sink and the tubers, there is a lightmobile parking outside the kitchen window, black with white highlights, round fenders, and a five-pointed star on the hood.

I groan, and then go to the front door to meet him.
Ehnzo is at least a good-looking man. His dark hair is going a little gray, but he’s tall and smooth-skinned with a good, vital job. Any woman would have been lucky to win him in the lottery, but the idea of living with someone I don’t know forever turns my stomach.

“Sola,” he breathes when I open the door, mid-knock. “May I come in?”

“Sure,” I reply, stepping aside. “It’ll be your house in a few days, so why not?”

“I’m glad to see you’re okay,” he nods, closing the door behind him. “When the plants started hiding, I…I thought I should come stay with you.”

“It’s not regulation,” I remind him matter-of-factly. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

I feel a bit like a heel at how it sounds. The man is putting forth an effort. Surely that should count for something?

“Well, I just…” he sighs, looking down, seeming small and awkward in his SWAT gear. “The outlook on the radar isn’t good, and I didn’t want you to be alone.”

“Alright,” I answer softly. “Your stuff hasn’t been moved over yet, so it’s still a single in the shelter, but alright. Shelter nights are more fun with company anyway.”

He blushes, even though that’s not what I meant.

“I keep an emergency bag in the ‘mobile,” he mutters. “I’ll got get it…”

While he steps away, I finish washing my tubers and take them downstairs for canning. At least we’ll get it done twice as fast.


Chapter two

At a Port Not On Any Map...

(C) me, all rights reserved.

The man has pale blond hair, cut close to his scalp, fair skin under his sea-tan, and a sour expression. He would look out of place, more at home in someone’s drawing-room than the humid docks, if it wasn’t for his gray captain’s coat and distinctive, dragon-headed cutlass, to say nothing of how other sailors give him a wide berth
.
He has just disembarked from an impressive ship, gold fresh in the pouch at his hip. His boots clop against the cobblestones as he browses the shops and their wares, a discerning eye passing over every trinket and charm.

He pauses to smell incense burning at one booth, inhaling deeply, thinking of how his young bride likes the smell. He buys several cones, wrapped in paper, and tucks them into his satchel, before moving on to the next stall.

The next stall is a purveyor of gems and jewels. There are obsidian stones set into copper bracelets with thin wires like spun hair, dangling earrings that look like raindrops. Across the main surface of the booth are tiny trees with crystal leaves and wire branches, and in the center is a large rose with petals of ruby and a stem of emerald.

A very old man sits on a cushion, smoking from a hookah, and doesn’t stand when he sees the captain arrive. His skin is leathery, the color of walnut hulls, and his hair has long gone sparse and silver.

“See something you like, Captain? Perhaps present for pretty wife, yes?”

“Very pretty,” the pirate agrees, looking over a blue diamond cut in the shape of a heart, strung on a thin silver chain.

“These? These are common,” the old man scoffs in a strange accent. “Every sailor who comes to my shop buys one for pretty wife. You are man of particular taste, yes?”

The pirate looks up curiously. The old man is standing now, still puffing on his hookah.

“Yes, yes, Sea-Dragon is in the market for rare treasure, not common trinket.”

The pirate raises an eyebrow, unsure of how the old man recognizes him. While he is quite sure he has never seen the old man or his booth before, it is most likely that his reputation precedes him.

“Yes, yes, I have something for Sea-Dragon in wagon. Come, come, you will see.”

With surprisingly youthful vigor, the old man waves for the pirate to follow, past the booth to where a wooden wagon is parked, near a dwarf-sized elephant the old man pats affectionately, apparently the chauffeur.

The inside of the wagon is dark and smoky. A ristra of dried, yellow apples hangs in a corner, the ground is covered in pillows and blankets, as if the old man sleeps where his body gives out, and the walls on the pirate’s starboard side are covered in small drawers, likely where the stock is kept during off-hours.

“Sit, Sea-Dragon, sit,” the old man demands, pointing at a round cushion, depicting blue sea-serpents tormenting a ship in a storm.

The pirate does as he’s bid, and the hold man moves to one of the larger drawers with a key strung about his neck. Inside is a good-sized box, made of teak and closed with another lock. With the treasure in hand, the old man takes a seat on a cushion depicting the firmament as seen from the deck of a ship with surprising accuracy.

The old man sits the box in his lap, hand protectively over the lid. “Sea-Dragon will hear story,” he says. “Young is treasure-hunter, yes? He goes to every place looking for treasure, like Sea-Dragon, but young man is alone, yes? Young man has small boat, big enough for barrel of food and barrel of water. Rain takes care of water, fills barrel, but now young man is cold and hungry, and he needs to find land…”

Without food, the young man sailed for three days in search of land. He checked his charts and his maps, following the stars. He is desperate and needs to find land, and if he doesn’t, well…he wouldn’t be the first to go missing chasing adventure.

In the middle of the night, a heavy fog blows in. The young man can’t see where he is sailing, and between the rain and the fog and the lack of food, he’s beginning to sicken. All of a sudden, the ship lurches, but he doesn’t immediately realize what’s happening at first.

The small boat isn’t moving. He’s made landfall.

The young man carries a rope off the ship, walking into the fog in search of something to tie it to, carrying a lantern to light his way. His footsteps fall flat in the fog, as if the sound can’t travel properly. Eventually, he runs out of rope, and must hope that the weight of it alone is enough to hold if the tide comes in.

The young man keeps walking. There is nothing for him behind, so he can only move forward. He’s hungry and tired, and he starts to see strange things in the mist. A beautiful woman beckons him onward, with skin and hair the color of fog, scales like a snake, and antlers of a deer. He hears his mothers voice calling him for supper, like when he was a child. He narrowly avoids being crushed by something so large he can’t see its belly as its tree trunk-sized legs step over him. Children sing nursery rhymes whose melody he knows but language he doesn’t. Someone is baking fruit in wine.

The mist begins to clear, revealing a lush paradise in the predawn hours. The man is delighted, and immediately begins searching for edible fruit, or even some kind of animal he can net, but the island appears to be completely deserted.

Finally he finds a clearing in the jungle, and a line of fig trees, where he stops and eats his fill. When he’s full to bursting, he lies down and takes a nap, waking to the afternoon sun, when he notices the straight lines the trees are growing in. He’s in a man-made orchard.
He picks what fruit he can fit inside his pockets, and then decides that it is only decent he explains his predicament to the master of the orchard, and exchange some of his precious stones and gold for enough fruit to see himself home.

The orchard is planted outside of a sprawling, white marble city, overgrown with vines, rising out of the jungle like the bones of some long-dead animal. The buildings are as silent as a tomb, not even birds chirping in the fruit trees that grow along the empty streets. He looks into windows and sees nothing, shops with empty shelves, homes with blankets and pillows still on sleeping pallets, dining services set out as if awaiting a meal, but no food in any hearth or pot.

In the center of town, he finds a pool where the water is cool and clear and he drinks his fill, looking down into a forest of freshwater weeds, stringy and bright green, with sandy pebbles and dark rocks.

As he stands before the pool, the hair on the back of his neck begins to stand on end. It is so quiet, no other animals, no people. He’d have believed himself adrift in time if the wind didn’t blow the leaves on the plants. Still, he is disquieted in a way that he can’t quite identify.

He starts, the answer coming to him like a wave. There are no signs of people at all. There are houses and places of commerce set up as if people should be there, but there are no statues or murals depicting daily life or mythology, as the Greeks have.

Suddenly, he feels more alone than ever before.

There is art, however, just none of people.

Some of the buildings are muraled with pastoral scenes of strange animals. One creature has a thick, round dome of a body, the tail of an alligator, but the feet and face of a squirrel, grazing near a river. Another creature has the limbs of an ape but the face of a horse, and uses its great height and hands to bring down a tree branch to his mouth. A third scene showed maneless lions with long, curved teeth like daggers, stalking camels in a grassy field. A fourth shows massive elephants with long, straight tusks.

In one home he finds a rose with ruby petals and an emerald stem, apparently growing from a base of jasper, under a cloche that drips sapphires onto the flower like rain. In another, near a sleeping pallet, he finds a stately tower of selenite that shows him scenes from his previous night’s dreams. A third house has a jade cat with tiny pearl fangs, curled in a woven basket, whose sides rise and fall as if in sleep.

And yet no people. What kind of calamity could have befallen these people, that they would leave such wonders behind? The very notion makes his hands shake in fear, his blood run cold, and his heart deafen his ears.

Still, he has taken fruit and water from this place, and as a guest he must try to pay back his debt in whatever way he can. He must search as far as he can for someone he can pay for fruit and water, and if not, leave something of value to him in an appropriate place.

On the island’s highest hill, there is a handsome palace as if for a great king. He decides that is where he must go, and so he walks again, wandering about the paths as he moves. There is a leather ball in a yard, as though the child it belongs to went inside mere moments ago. A wagon has vases still in its bed, the harness laid out as though the draft animal wearing it blinked out of existence.

As he walks, he realizes it is less that the people who live here evacuated due to some kind of tragedy, like a volcano or storm, and more as though they disappeared suddenly, in mid-action. A cook-pot is on its side as if the owner dropped it while carrying to a table, a vessel is near the pool on its side, facing one of the houses as though someone was carrying water to one of the houses. There is a fishing net and shuttle under a pear tree, as if someone had taken their work outside with them.

He finds the palace as silent as the village below, but is obvious a very rich man once lived here. There is a pool of water in the main hall, as cool and sweet as the one in the village, but clearly put here for the royal family’s personal use. A throne of gold is visible in a straight line from the palace entrance, shaped in the form of a pack of enormous wolves with teeth of pearl and eyes of ruby.

Here, the young man finds a very special room. It is round, with only one entrance, and a window in the ceiling that cast light onto a round vessel in the middle of the room. The walls have a dark mural depicting the night sky, with diamonds as the stars, which he verifies for accuracy by his knowledge as a sailor.

The lower half of the mural is green, with white buildings as viewed from the side. It takes him only a few minutes to realize that he is viewing the city below, as though he were standing on this spot and the palace were not on the way, which placed this room, specifically the window in the roof and the vessel beneath it, in the exact center of the island—or at the very least, this strange civilization.

The importance of the room is clear.

There is a basket beneath the constellation Leo, and inside are dolls made in the likeness of the animals on the mural. Another beneath Orion has rattles made of turtle shell and bone, wooden figures on wheels to be pulled by string or pushed with a stick, and small, wooden carts just big enough to fit small toys, with miniature harnesses. A third has blankets and swaddle of haunting color and unimaginable softness. Beneath Draco is a small, ivory wagon with leather straps, as though for carrying a child, shaped like a miniature of one of the wolves in the great hall.

It’s a nursery, he realizes, and it is almost as if the women have taken the babies out and could be back any minute.

Finally, with the kind of dread only a father can know, he goes to the basket in the center of the room. It’s made from the antlers of some great deer, wider and flatter than any deer he’s ever known, lashed together, strung with bells, and lined with blankets like the ones in the basket. The widest part of the antlers point up, guarding the treasures within with their points.

His heart pounds in his ears as he reaches for the blanket, the weight of the fruit heavy in his belly. He will remember how the textile felt under his calloused fingers for the rest of his life.

Beneath the blanket are three, bejeweled eggs, each the size of a newborn, made of perfect opal, two white and one black. The black one is dark and vibrant with a rainbow of color, but the two white have a washed-out, desiccated look, one is even cracked open with a tiny skeleton beneath the shards.

His fingers touch the second white shell. It fragments at his touch, collapsing into a pile of shards and dust. His blood runs cold again at the thought of what he has done, but the second tiny skeleton reminds him that the egg has been dead for a very long time.

The black one holds, warm in his palm. As he turns it, he feels a liquid moving inside, and a small creature kicking at the shell. The black one is alive.

The young man knows what he has to do, how to repay his debt to the island. He places the egg in one of the blankets, wrapping it gently, and layering inside the basket so that it is safe from the jostle of the waves. This he takes back to his boat and places it below deck, and hides near where he sleeps.

He spends the next day stocking his boat with figs, pears, and fresh water. At night, quartz crystals in the pebbled streets light his way and the murals are as visible as they ever were in daylight.

When he is healthy and strong again, he pushes his boat into the surf. The island becomes smaller on the horizon, and then a fog rolls in. When the fog clears, the island is gone.

“So what happened to the young man?” the pirate asks, resting his hand on his chin as if contemplating the story.

“He goes to shore, and he stays there,” the old man shrugs. “He lets the new young do the treasure-finding, and opens a shop.”

“And…what was in the egg?” the pirate asks, a dry tone coming into his voice.

The pirate balances out the notion that there are stranger things in Heaven and Earth with a healthy dose of skepticism. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d found old sea tales to be true, his personal cut of plunder can attest to that. Still, it also wouldn’t be the first time he found an amazing story to be nothing more than an afternoon’s entertainment.

“The young man never finds out,” the old man replies.
“And…what became of it?” the pirate sighs, eyeing the box.

“The young man keeps it safe, like he promised the ghosts on the island. He keeps it where he sleeps, and the egg keeps him until he is young man no more,” the old man explains.

“The egg keeps him?” the Sea-Dragon repeats, another eyebrow raised.

“Yes,” the old man agrees. “The young man doesn’t take sick, his bones don’t creak in his old age. His sons grow strong and clever and take to the sea and return when they are old men with sons of their own. Egg is lucky.”

“The egg is lucky,” the pirate repeats flatly, but there is a questioning wonder behind his eyes. He doesn’t believe wild tales easily, even when he has a trove of wonders that would make him richer than any king, had he a care to divulge the jealously guard secrets.

He also comes by his name honestly, and the item in the box might be worth it to him for the story alone.

“Opal is lucky stone,” the old man nods, “and black opal is rare. If Sea-Dragon is kind to egg, egg is kind to Sea-Dragon.”

“And what would such a treasure be worth?” the pirate asks, feeling the coins in his pocket.

“A pittance to pirate of Sea-Dragon caliber,” the old man replies. “Two hundred gold, English, Spanish, Chinese—no matter, it all melts the same.”

“If the egg is so lucky, why are you willing to part with it?” the pirate asks.

“The egg rocks now, and there is peeping inside. Baby has been from world’s end to world’s end, and now hatch-ling wants to see the world for itself. Grows impatient.”

“The young man in your story had sons,” the pirate notes. “Why not them? Surely one of them knows how to raise an animal.”

“Sons are not here,” the old man nods. “Such is life.”

“So you’d sell a lucky egg, likely containing an animal worth a king’s ransom in rarity, to some stranger you met in port?” the pirate asks, sighing and getting to his feet.

The old man shrugs, twisting the key from his neck in the lock.

“Egg is safe with Sea-Dragon, like island wants,” the old man says, nodding again. “The Sea-Dragon hoards rare treasure, yes?”

The old man pulls the lid back, revealing the glittering, black gem. A sparkling rainbow plays across the shimmering surface, colors of every sort rolling like waves among the scale-like texture. The pirate reaches out to touch it, but the old man flinches, an apparently unconscious movement.

“It’s a large stone, clearly valuable, but that isn’t an egg,” the pirate scoffs. He’s seen things like this before, decorative objects for curiosity and nothing more.
He’s also seen things he can’t rightly explain.

“No?” the old man asks.

The egg rocks in its velvet-lined box.

“You tilted it,” the pirate accuses.

“I did?” the old man asks, then places the box flat on the wooden floor of the wagon, level and away from the cushions.

Again, the egg rocks.

The pirate kneels in front of the box, removes a glove, and places it on the egg. The stone surface is smooth and glossy, immaculately uniform, no flaws or sharp edges. It’s also very warm, like the deck of a ship under sunlight. Something inside it moves.

“Two hundred gold?” the pirate asks.

“Two hundred,” the old man agrees. “Enough to take me home for burial, bring great-grandson here to mind the shop.”

“You have a deal.”