Heather Farthing's Blog - Posts Tagged "marfan-syndrome"
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
(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
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
(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 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
(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 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.
(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.
Masquerade
(C) Heather Farthing 2023, all rights reserved
I WILL BE POSTING THIS STORY ON ROYALROAD.
Chapter one
The world had ended.
I suppose it doesn’t matter how.
The first way it could have ended is with the computer, a wall-sized, steam-powered behemoth of glowing diodes and greenish screens. A supercomputer, built to help mankind, it instead decided mankind would be better off serving it, some as mechanically-enhanced soldiers, some as twisted genetic experiments.
The nineteenth century denizens of Steampunk Singularity, it what is ordinarily the Metropolis zone of technology-themed thrill rides, are preoccupied with the service of their Master, of bringing new flesh for upgrades. People who wand there are likely to disappear, reappearing as a loyal and dutiful servant, body parts replaced by machinery, or distinctly nonhuman features, such as claws, tails, or fangs.
The second way it could have ended is…to have just stopped.
It could have been nuclear war. It could have been a mass coronal ejection. Perhaps it was some kind of disease or pollutant, and it every well could have been all or none. The point is: it ended, and left nothing but blackened ash behind.
The buildings are crumbling. The trees are nothing more than brittle charcoal sticks. Bodies burn, but don’t decay. What little sun still shines is angry, red, and capable of leaving third-degree burns.
The are some that would think that nothing could live in such a place, and they would normally be right, but something yet moves in the dark. Somehow, the plague doctor-like carrion birds have managed to survive, dressing themselves in full-body coats, flat hats, and snouted or beaked masks.
Curious by nature, the carrion birds are fascinated by humans, our bare skin, or shiny jewelry, or the logos on our clothes. Masked and silent, sometimes the sneak up behind, sometimes they slide on their knees, kicking up sparks in their wake.
Maybe, instead, the world ended with some kind of pathogen, not like the one that nearly closed the event and sent people behind masks. This pathogen, thought to be some kind of prion, is more insidious. Found in tainted cotton candy, popcorn, and circus peanuts, it began with laughter that never stopped, a wide grin, alterations to the pigmentation in skin and hair.
The affected became clowns, driven mad by the disease eating their brain. Always searching for new acts and new playmates, the world has become one giant circus, and the performers aren’t picky about safety practices. Step one foot inside Psycho Circus and you’re the audience volunteer.
The final way was through agriculture. Astro Adventure is usually the home of outdated sci-fi, flying cars and jetpacks, and stuff, 1950s values under a veneer of rayguns and martians. The animals decided that this wholesome family dynamic should be theirs, and so they took it, herding humans for fun and profit.
Consider the way humans treat animals, for better or for worse. Now imagine that your beloved pet, curled loyally on your bed by your feet, has decided that a spay or neuter would improve your quality of life, or that it would be kinder to put you down, now that you’re getting on in years.
Now imagine that the cows in the field have decided to throw a barbecue, and ask yourself: where did they get the meat?
There’s also Lost Garden, set between Kiddie Carnival and Metropolis, where the imagined becomes real. While Kiddie Carnival becomes Psycho Circus and Metropolis is split between Steampunk Singularity and Soul Survivor, Lost Garden’s haunted roots have taken hold. They say the castle is haunted, and a headless horseman can be seen on the path to the pirate adventure.
I’m a giggling mess after the dragon dark ride, the one in the castle. I’ve never been inside the park before, and it was everything I hoped it would be, even if the scares are a bit light this year.
It’s about sunset now, and I’m getting ready for dinner. The diner just at the edge of Metropolis, where Soul Survivor meets Steampunk Singularity, is supposed to be really good. The burger’s are cheap, but to die for, and on Halloween, that really means something.
The haunt sliders are out. They were originally designed as plague doctors, and I would be walking through a village that died out due to plague in a matter of hours, but someone found that distasteful, so the outside artist group they brought in had to suddenly retool everything at the last minute. The remnants still show, in their sparking canes and flat hats, the common design of the masks being largely birdlike.
A female, with a black tulle skirt and a feather-print cloak, follows behind a group of men, watching them from the shadows. When they notice her, she drops to her knees and slides headlong toward them, stopping just short of knocking them over, her knees and the tip of her cane sparking.
A taller one, a man with a vulture-inspired mask, slides toward the group in front of me, sending them scattering. Upon seeing their luminous blue bracelets, he loses interest, moving past them toward me, where he bows gracefully, dragging his cane along the ground to show me the sparks.
A clattering in my ear makes me jump. It’s a smaller haunt slider with a more trench warfare-style gas mask, clicking the sheathes of his fingers together just behind my ears to make me jump, which the three of them find hilarious, heaving with silent laughter. The photo opportunity with the vulture one was a distraction.
The short one paces a circle around me, evidently examining my tail, then holds his hands up over his hat to mimic my eared headband. His costume looks familiar, the shape of the mask, circular filters on either side, and the faux leather coat and empty rucksack, a prop shovel slung through the loops. I think it’s the one that doesn’t stay on the hanger.
I smile politely, forgetting I’m wearing a mask, as I move through the crowd. The taller vulture has found new prey, the shorter one is posing, leaning against a park bench, pretending to examine a blackened skeleton to the delight of picture-taking onlookers.
The blackened, ruinous wasteland of Soul Survivor gives way to the cobblestone streets and Victorian facades of Steampunk Singularity. The smell of popcorn from Psycho Circus fades away, giving way to the greasy, fried foods of the 80s-style diner.
Between it and me is a carriage pulled by a beautiful, black stallion. His legs from the knees down are glass and clockwork, with gears and pulleys. He turns to look at me, revealing a spiraled, glass and bronze horn, and the metallic sheeting that makes up the left side of his face, a single red light inside a camera-like aperture where the eye should be. He stands next to a sign that reads “Repairs while you wait,” and then a list of body parts and pricing.
One great, black hoof stamps the dirt. I’m impressed, because I didn’t know it could do anything but turn its head. Air blows out of its nose in agitation, raising steam in the chilly, October air, another convincing effect.
A woman has her skirt pulled up over her knees, revealing brass and clockwork under glass casing, not terribly different from the horse.
“I can’t feel my legs,” she whimpers.
“Funny,” I smile politely, waiting for the crowd to move so that I can move on.
Beyond her, a soldier in a dark blue greatcoat shoves someone, who must be plant, against a wall, raising his brass rifle and firing. The squib goes off to great effect, and what looked like a regular parkgoer drops to the ground.
Apparently startled by the noise, the horse raises up on his hind legs, screaming. Transfixed, I watch how convincing the moment is, the ripple in the muscle. Whoever their outside consultants were, they really outdid themselves.
The horse comes down in slow motion, like it’s actually moving forward, like I might actually get it. I’m swept into strong arms, smelling strongly of leather and pumpkin spice, pushed to the cobblestones just in time for the horse to clear us, shooting off into Soul Survivor at breakneck speed, heavy leather covering me to protect my head.
That seems…really dangerous. All the power to them if they made a fully-independent robot, but letting it shoot off into the crowd like that seems like a lawsuit Wonderland isn’t going to want to deal with.
“Flesh for the Master!” a soldier shouts, discharging is rifle into the air, sending the crowd scattering.
I climb off the ground, dusting myself off. A hunchbacked mutant with extra, stunted arms on its back slams a meaty fist into the nearest parkgoer, shouting the same battlecry.
Have I wandered into some kind of show? Shouldn’t there be a warning?
The one that knocked me out of the way, it’s the short haunt slider, the one with the World War Something-era gas mask, coughing lightly, probably from the smell of gunpowder.
“What’s happening?” I ask him. “Is this part of the show?”
“This isn’t us,” he replies, sounding worried.
A mutant with one large arm dragging the ground lifelessly grabs at me, sending me back to the ground, pain erupting from my back, chanting, “Flesh for the Master!” Hissing, I spray venom toward his eyes, but it’s the haunt slider, lashing out savagely with his shovel that drops the creature, dazedly moaning about its master.
A volley of gunfire goes off somewhere. There’s screaming, now, the smell of blood. A smell of burning and ash like black snowfall is blowing on a frigid breeze from Soul Survivor. Something with a human head and eight spiderlike legs made of rebar is striding purposefully towards us, pausing to spin its head in a circle, casting a red light from its eyes.
“Flesh for the master!” it cries mechanically.
“Get behind the diner!” the haunt slider insists, pulling me up and pushing me toward the glowing neon.
A nozzle emerges from the spider’s mouth. Flames erupt. Flesh burns. People scream.
“Flesh for the master!”
Without another word or second glance, I follow the haunt slider into an alcove where the restaurant hides the entrance to the service tunnels, where parkgoers won’t see it. The good news is: that means we’re out of the flow of the crowd. The bad news is: the door doesn’t have a knob on this side.
“What was that?” I whimper. “You’re going to get someone killed!”
“That’s not us,” he repeats, still holding his prop shovel. “That’s…”
He stops talking long enough to cough behind his mask, and press a button on his shovel, extending it from about a foot to just long enough for him. Without completing his thought, he jams it into the doorframe, about where the knob would be on the other side, and wedges it open.
“That’s cool,” I tell him. “I thought it was just a prop.”
“It is,” he replies, sounding a bit confused or distracted, pulling it out of the door and pressing the button. The shovel’s handle slides in on itself, putting it at its original length. One of the edges on the bowl is serrated, I hadn’t noticed that before.
“Do you have a cell phone?” I ask, patting down my hips with a stab of panic. “I think I dropped mine…”
Using his shovel, he taps one of his metal knee-plates.
“Right…probably would have broken it…”
As the spider-thing approaches, I follow him inside, stepping down a ramp toward the service tunnels. The lights come on automatically, responding to our movement, lighting up the room in sickly florescent lighting. He slams the door closed, leaning against it, still holding his shovel one-handed, trembling slightly, gasping for breath and coughing lightly.
“You shouldn’t have come into work with a cough…” I mumble.
He draws in ragged air, a plume of candy corn-scented gas emanating from the side filters in his mask. I taste blood, tangy and metallic, under the sweet vapor.
Something slams hard against the door, making him jump. Next to the ramp is a mostly-empty vending machine. Acting on impulse and instinct, I start trying to lift it from the bottom, just enough to tip it. The haunt slider appears by my side, lifting from the bottom. There isn’t room enough for both, so I push from higher up, and it topples over, pinning the door closed, the plexiglass front crack and all the snacks knocking loose.
Coughing, the haunt slider moves to the folding table in the center of the room, leaning on it, groaning in pain and rubbing his throat and chest, like you do when you have a bad cold and lots of congestion.
His hands are shaking, his shoulders trembling. He looks like his knees might give out at any second, but he manages to hold himself steady, but just barely.
“What’s happening…to us…?” he asks vaguely, staring down at his upturned palms, flexing his fingers, like he’s never seen them before.
A wracking coughs send spasms throughout his body, driving him to the floor. A bit of red sprays with the amber of the burning leaves-scented smoke pouring from his mask, dissipating into the air.
“You might breathe better without that,” I tell him, kneeling beside him to help him get the mask off, hands at the straps holding it to the back of his snood.
His fingers wrap around my hands, the metal sheathes cool against my cheap Halloween gloves. The leather clings to his hands like a second skin, supple and buttery, as he pushes me away.
“No…touching…please…”
His voice is hoarse and raspy, the vapor still with a bloody taste, autumn leaves giving away to pumpkin spice.
“How are you doing that?” I ask, looking for tubes to connect to some kind of sprayer, maybe inside his rucksack. Wouldn’t that be bad for his back, during his sliding?
“He…just…does…?”
Looking a bit dazed and somewhat confused, his focuses on the overturned vending machine. He scrambles to his feet and with a powerful kick from feet that don’t quite look right, smashes the plexiglass in, then starts filling the inner lining of his coat with snack cakes and candy bars.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Something’s wrong…” he mumbles, pausing in his scavenging. “We feel…what’s happening…to him?”
The hoarse rasping in his voice fades into something more like poisonous fog crawling insidiously across a barren wasteland. He’s staring at his hands again, confused, but then shakes his head and goes back to filling his pockets.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He looks up at me with a moment of something approaching clarity.
“We know you…you’re the girl with the vacuum…that puts him back on…his hanger when he falls…”
A shiver runs down my spine, causing my hood to spread again. It’s possible he’s seen me on the job, as he was getting into costuming, but that has to be some of the creepiest way to phrase that imaginable.
There’s a phone by the door to the tunnels. I grab for it, dialing the emergency line. It rings…and rings…and rings, and then disconnects.
Must be a busy night. I didn’t even know they could do that.
“Was…that…helpful…?” the masked man asks, having finished emptying the already sparse vending machine.
“No, not really.”
He pauses, falters, as if having forgotten what he’s supposed to be doing, then shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. I see the remote on the tabletop and grab it, turning the television on as he moves to the refrigerator, loading up on water bottles.
The television lights up with a news broadcast, something about civil unrest, which is pretty common these days. It describes rioters disguised as Halloween merry-makers, and then the feed cuts out abruptly.
Something heavy slams against the door, making me jump. The haunt slider, driven by some sort of compulsion, continues his scavenging.
“Hey,” I tell him, placing my hand on his shoulder.
“No…touching…please…” he wheezes through candy corn smoke, never looking up.
I have no idea where he’s putting those water bottles. They just disappear into the coat, apparently adding neither weight nor bulk.
“They’re going to come through the door,” I whimper. “We can’t stay here.”
He falters. The coughing has stopped, but he still doesn’t look right. He seems distracted. I’ve only known him for, like, five minutes, but it seems like he’s…not himself.
I give him a harder shove, which draws his reproachful attention. He stares at me, a capsaisin smell like cutting fresh peppers showing his displeasure.
“We gotta go,” I plead. “It isn’t safe…”
Never looking away from me, he places one more bottle in his coat, and then retrieves his shovel from the floor next to him. His vapor fades from candy corn to a purplish mist of lavender and chamomile, and he holds his shovel defensively, nodding to me in a placating sort of way.
I feel the tension relax. Already I feel a bit calmer, whether it’s the sight of him ready for action, or the calming effect lavender is supposed to have.
Taking point, he opens the door to the downward incline of the tunnels. Someone screams and something else roars, but we’re caught between a rock and a hard place, and the only direction is forward.
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
I WILL BE POSTING THIS STORY ON ROYALROAD.
Chapter one
The world had ended.
I suppose it doesn’t matter how.
The first way it could have ended is with the computer, a wall-sized, steam-powered behemoth of glowing diodes and greenish screens. A supercomputer, built to help mankind, it instead decided mankind would be better off serving it, some as mechanically-enhanced soldiers, some as twisted genetic experiments.
The nineteenth century denizens of Steampunk Singularity, it what is ordinarily the Metropolis zone of technology-themed thrill rides, are preoccupied with the service of their Master, of bringing new flesh for upgrades. People who wand there are likely to disappear, reappearing as a loyal and dutiful servant, body parts replaced by machinery, or distinctly nonhuman features, such as claws, tails, or fangs.
The second way it could have ended is…to have just stopped.
It could have been nuclear war. It could have been a mass coronal ejection. Perhaps it was some kind of disease or pollutant, and it every well could have been all or none. The point is: it ended, and left nothing but blackened ash behind.
The buildings are crumbling. The trees are nothing more than brittle charcoal sticks. Bodies burn, but don’t decay. What little sun still shines is angry, red, and capable of leaving third-degree burns.
The are some that would think that nothing could live in such a place, and they would normally be right, but something yet moves in the dark. Somehow, the plague doctor-like carrion birds have managed to survive, dressing themselves in full-body coats, flat hats, and snouted or beaked masks.
Curious by nature, the carrion birds are fascinated by humans, our bare skin, or shiny jewelry, or the logos on our clothes. Masked and silent, sometimes the sneak up behind, sometimes they slide on their knees, kicking up sparks in their wake.
Maybe, instead, the world ended with some kind of pathogen, not like the one that nearly closed the event and sent people behind masks. This pathogen, thought to be some kind of prion, is more insidious. Found in tainted cotton candy, popcorn, and circus peanuts, it began with laughter that never stopped, a wide grin, alterations to the pigmentation in skin and hair.
The affected became clowns, driven mad by the disease eating their brain. Always searching for new acts and new playmates, the world has become one giant circus, and the performers aren’t picky about safety practices. Step one foot inside Psycho Circus and you’re the audience volunteer.
The final way was through agriculture. Astro Adventure is usually the home of outdated sci-fi, flying cars and jetpacks, and stuff, 1950s values under a veneer of rayguns and martians. The animals decided that this wholesome family dynamic should be theirs, and so they took it, herding humans for fun and profit.
Consider the way humans treat animals, for better or for worse. Now imagine that your beloved pet, curled loyally on your bed by your feet, has decided that a spay or neuter would improve your quality of life, or that it would be kinder to put you down, now that you’re getting on in years.
Now imagine that the cows in the field have decided to throw a barbecue, and ask yourself: where did they get the meat?
There’s also Lost Garden, set between Kiddie Carnival and Metropolis, where the imagined becomes real. While Kiddie Carnival becomes Psycho Circus and Metropolis is split between Steampunk Singularity and Soul Survivor, Lost Garden’s haunted roots have taken hold. They say the castle is haunted, and a headless horseman can be seen on the path to the pirate adventure.
I’m a giggling mess after the dragon dark ride, the one in the castle. I’ve never been inside the park before, and it was everything I hoped it would be, even if the scares are a bit light this year.
It’s about sunset now, and I’m getting ready for dinner. The diner just at the edge of Metropolis, where Soul Survivor meets Steampunk Singularity, is supposed to be really good. The burger’s are cheap, but to die for, and on Halloween, that really means something.
The haunt sliders are out. They were originally designed as plague doctors, and I would be walking through a village that died out due to plague in a matter of hours, but someone found that distasteful, so the outside artist group they brought in had to suddenly retool everything at the last minute. The remnants still show, in their sparking canes and flat hats, the common design of the masks being largely birdlike.
A female, with a black tulle skirt and a feather-print cloak, follows behind a group of men, watching them from the shadows. When they notice her, she drops to her knees and slides headlong toward them, stopping just short of knocking them over, her knees and the tip of her cane sparking.
A taller one, a man with a vulture-inspired mask, slides toward the group in front of me, sending them scattering. Upon seeing their luminous blue bracelets, he loses interest, moving past them toward me, where he bows gracefully, dragging his cane along the ground to show me the sparks.
A clattering in my ear makes me jump. It’s a smaller haunt slider with a more trench warfare-style gas mask, clicking the sheathes of his fingers together just behind my ears to make me jump, which the three of them find hilarious, heaving with silent laughter. The photo opportunity with the vulture one was a distraction.
The short one paces a circle around me, evidently examining my tail, then holds his hands up over his hat to mimic my eared headband. His costume looks familiar, the shape of the mask, circular filters on either side, and the faux leather coat and empty rucksack, a prop shovel slung through the loops. I think it’s the one that doesn’t stay on the hanger.
I smile politely, forgetting I’m wearing a mask, as I move through the crowd. The taller vulture has found new prey, the shorter one is posing, leaning against a park bench, pretending to examine a blackened skeleton to the delight of picture-taking onlookers.
The blackened, ruinous wasteland of Soul Survivor gives way to the cobblestone streets and Victorian facades of Steampunk Singularity. The smell of popcorn from Psycho Circus fades away, giving way to the greasy, fried foods of the 80s-style diner.
Between it and me is a carriage pulled by a beautiful, black stallion. His legs from the knees down are glass and clockwork, with gears and pulleys. He turns to look at me, revealing a spiraled, glass and bronze horn, and the metallic sheeting that makes up the left side of his face, a single red light inside a camera-like aperture where the eye should be. He stands next to a sign that reads “Repairs while you wait,” and then a list of body parts and pricing.
One great, black hoof stamps the dirt. I’m impressed, because I didn’t know it could do anything but turn its head. Air blows out of its nose in agitation, raising steam in the chilly, October air, another convincing effect.
A woman has her skirt pulled up over her knees, revealing brass and clockwork under glass casing, not terribly different from the horse.
“I can’t feel my legs,” she whimpers.
“Funny,” I smile politely, waiting for the crowd to move so that I can move on.
Beyond her, a soldier in a dark blue greatcoat shoves someone, who must be plant, against a wall, raising his brass rifle and firing. The squib goes off to great effect, and what looked like a regular parkgoer drops to the ground.
Apparently startled by the noise, the horse raises up on his hind legs, screaming. Transfixed, I watch how convincing the moment is, the ripple in the muscle. Whoever their outside consultants were, they really outdid themselves.
The horse comes down in slow motion, like it’s actually moving forward, like I might actually get it. I’m swept into strong arms, smelling strongly of leather and pumpkin spice, pushed to the cobblestones just in time for the horse to clear us, shooting off into Soul Survivor at breakneck speed, heavy leather covering me to protect my head.
That seems…really dangerous. All the power to them if they made a fully-independent robot, but letting it shoot off into the crowd like that seems like a lawsuit Wonderland isn’t going to want to deal with.
“Flesh for the Master!” a soldier shouts, discharging is rifle into the air, sending the crowd scattering.
I climb off the ground, dusting myself off. A hunchbacked mutant with extra, stunted arms on its back slams a meaty fist into the nearest parkgoer, shouting the same battlecry.
Have I wandered into some kind of show? Shouldn’t there be a warning?
The one that knocked me out of the way, it’s the short haunt slider, the one with the World War Something-era gas mask, coughing lightly, probably from the smell of gunpowder.
“What’s happening?” I ask him. “Is this part of the show?”
“This isn’t us,” he replies, sounding worried.
A mutant with one large arm dragging the ground lifelessly grabs at me, sending me back to the ground, pain erupting from my back, chanting, “Flesh for the Master!” Hissing, I spray venom toward his eyes, but it’s the haunt slider, lashing out savagely with his shovel that drops the creature, dazedly moaning about its master.
A volley of gunfire goes off somewhere. There’s screaming, now, the smell of blood. A smell of burning and ash like black snowfall is blowing on a frigid breeze from Soul Survivor. Something with a human head and eight spiderlike legs made of rebar is striding purposefully towards us, pausing to spin its head in a circle, casting a red light from its eyes.
“Flesh for the master!” it cries mechanically.
“Get behind the diner!” the haunt slider insists, pulling me up and pushing me toward the glowing neon.
A nozzle emerges from the spider’s mouth. Flames erupt. Flesh burns. People scream.
“Flesh for the master!”
Without another word or second glance, I follow the haunt slider into an alcove where the restaurant hides the entrance to the service tunnels, where parkgoers won’t see it. The good news is: that means we’re out of the flow of the crowd. The bad news is: the door doesn’t have a knob on this side.
“What was that?” I whimper. “You’re going to get someone killed!”
“That’s not us,” he repeats, still holding his prop shovel. “That’s…”
He stops talking long enough to cough behind his mask, and press a button on his shovel, extending it from about a foot to just long enough for him. Without completing his thought, he jams it into the doorframe, about where the knob would be on the other side, and wedges it open.
“That’s cool,” I tell him. “I thought it was just a prop.”
“It is,” he replies, sounding a bit confused or distracted, pulling it out of the door and pressing the button. The shovel’s handle slides in on itself, putting it at its original length. One of the edges on the bowl is serrated, I hadn’t noticed that before.
“Do you have a cell phone?” I ask, patting down my hips with a stab of panic. “I think I dropped mine…”
Using his shovel, he taps one of his metal knee-plates.
“Right…probably would have broken it…”
As the spider-thing approaches, I follow him inside, stepping down a ramp toward the service tunnels. The lights come on automatically, responding to our movement, lighting up the room in sickly florescent lighting. He slams the door closed, leaning against it, still holding his shovel one-handed, trembling slightly, gasping for breath and coughing lightly.
“You shouldn’t have come into work with a cough…” I mumble.
He draws in ragged air, a plume of candy corn-scented gas emanating from the side filters in his mask. I taste blood, tangy and metallic, under the sweet vapor.
Something slams hard against the door, making him jump. Next to the ramp is a mostly-empty vending machine. Acting on impulse and instinct, I start trying to lift it from the bottom, just enough to tip it. The haunt slider appears by my side, lifting from the bottom. There isn’t room enough for both, so I push from higher up, and it topples over, pinning the door closed, the plexiglass front crack and all the snacks knocking loose.
Coughing, the haunt slider moves to the folding table in the center of the room, leaning on it, groaning in pain and rubbing his throat and chest, like you do when you have a bad cold and lots of congestion.
His hands are shaking, his shoulders trembling. He looks like his knees might give out at any second, but he manages to hold himself steady, but just barely.
“What’s happening…to us…?” he asks vaguely, staring down at his upturned palms, flexing his fingers, like he’s never seen them before.
A wracking coughs send spasms throughout his body, driving him to the floor. A bit of red sprays with the amber of the burning leaves-scented smoke pouring from his mask, dissipating into the air.
“You might breathe better without that,” I tell him, kneeling beside him to help him get the mask off, hands at the straps holding it to the back of his snood.
His fingers wrap around my hands, the metal sheathes cool against my cheap Halloween gloves. The leather clings to his hands like a second skin, supple and buttery, as he pushes me away.
“No…touching…please…”
His voice is hoarse and raspy, the vapor still with a bloody taste, autumn leaves giving away to pumpkin spice.
“How are you doing that?” I ask, looking for tubes to connect to some kind of sprayer, maybe inside his rucksack. Wouldn’t that be bad for his back, during his sliding?
“He…just…does…?”
Looking a bit dazed and somewhat confused, his focuses on the overturned vending machine. He scrambles to his feet and with a powerful kick from feet that don’t quite look right, smashes the plexiglass in, then starts filling the inner lining of his coat with snack cakes and candy bars.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Something’s wrong…” he mumbles, pausing in his scavenging. “We feel…what’s happening…to him?”
The hoarse rasping in his voice fades into something more like poisonous fog crawling insidiously across a barren wasteland. He’s staring at his hands again, confused, but then shakes his head and goes back to filling his pockets.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He looks up at me with a moment of something approaching clarity.
“We know you…you’re the girl with the vacuum…that puts him back on…his hanger when he falls…”
A shiver runs down my spine, causing my hood to spread again. It’s possible he’s seen me on the job, as he was getting into costuming, but that has to be some of the creepiest way to phrase that imaginable.
There’s a phone by the door to the tunnels. I grab for it, dialing the emergency line. It rings…and rings…and rings, and then disconnects.
Must be a busy night. I didn’t even know they could do that.
“Was…that…helpful…?” the masked man asks, having finished emptying the already sparse vending machine.
“No, not really.”
He pauses, falters, as if having forgotten what he’s supposed to be doing, then shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. I see the remote on the tabletop and grab it, turning the television on as he moves to the refrigerator, loading up on water bottles.
The television lights up with a news broadcast, something about civil unrest, which is pretty common these days. It describes rioters disguised as Halloween merry-makers, and then the feed cuts out abruptly.
Something heavy slams against the door, making me jump. The haunt slider, driven by some sort of compulsion, continues his scavenging.
“Hey,” I tell him, placing my hand on his shoulder.
“No…touching…please…” he wheezes through candy corn smoke, never looking up.
I have no idea where he’s putting those water bottles. They just disappear into the coat, apparently adding neither weight nor bulk.
“They’re going to come through the door,” I whimper. “We can’t stay here.”
He falters. The coughing has stopped, but he still doesn’t look right. He seems distracted. I’ve only known him for, like, five minutes, but it seems like he’s…not himself.
I give him a harder shove, which draws his reproachful attention. He stares at me, a capsaisin smell like cutting fresh peppers showing his displeasure.
“We gotta go,” I plead. “It isn’t safe…”
Never looking away from me, he places one more bottle in his coat, and then retrieves his shovel from the floor next to him. His vapor fades from candy corn to a purplish mist of lavender and chamomile, and he holds his shovel defensively, nodding to me in a placating sort of way.
I feel the tension relax. Already I feel a bit calmer, whether it’s the sight of him ready for action, or the calming effect lavender is supposed to have.
Taking point, he opens the door to the downward incline of the tunnels. Someone screams and something else roars, but we’re caught between a rock and a hard place, and the only direction is forward.
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Masquerade--Chapter two
(C) Heather Farthing, all rights reserved
Chapter one
Chapter two
Lost Garden used to have an animatronic dinosaur on the log flume, but it was too close to a waterfall and stopped working. Somebody took it off the ride and put it next to East Props and Makeup, and it’s a tradition for zone ambiance to pat his nose for a good performance, causing the teal scales to fade to a sickly gray.
I know this because I’m the one that dusts it, and I know for a fact it’s nothing but latex scales over a cheesy metal endoskeleton.
I also know for a fact it’s chasing a tall man dressed for Steampunk Singularity at breakneck speed as he tries to fend it off with the stream from fire extinguisher.
The haunt slider, true to his assignment, drops to his knees and power slides toward the dinosaur, taking its legs out from under it with the shovel. Before hitting the wall, he’s back up on his feet, spinning with the shovel and smashing the skull with a heavy crunch. For a split second of abject silence, he trembles all over and then sinks to his knees, gently stroking the creature’s head as bruising forms around the left side of its face, it moaning in pain, and something sweet that numbs my tongue flowing freely from the gas mask.
“Has everyone here completely lost their minds?” the tall scareactor shrieks.
At over six and a half feet tall and very thin, no older than his early thirties, he’s a striking figure in black and white stripped pants, black combat boots, and an olive drab with brown suspenders, hanging loose at his narrow hips. His brown hair is cut short, his long, pointed teeth crowded. There’s a noticeable swideways curve to his spine and a dip along his sternum, his arms and legs too long for his comparatively short torso. A silver bracelet with a medical alert symbol jangles at his right wrist.
“Crazy tall…creepy flexible…soft-hearted…” the haunt slider muses, looking up at him.
The tall man flinches, training the extinguisher on the masked figure, then sighs, “Oh, great, you’re cuckoobananas, too.”
“Wrench…would be…more…effective…” the slider wheezes, indicating the prop wrench at the tall man’s hip.
“It’s a prop,” the tall man replies, taking it from the holster. “It’s plas…that does have some heft to it.”
The slider has a breathy laugh, lemon entering the lavender/chamomile mix of his smoke. I’m staring transfixed at the tall man’s hands, long palms with foot-long fingers, blackened in color, writing and moving like octopus tentacles, a tail at the base of his spine to match.
“Your hands…” I whimper, then immediately feel bad for having pointed it out, like observing another person’s deformities in public.
“Yeah, I know,” he grins, showing his elongated canines and sharpened incisors. Were those even meant to be seen inside the leather and mesh mask around his neck?
Looking up at him, I stifle a squeak of surprise and alarm. He has no eyes.
None.
Whatsoever.
There’s not even an indent where they’re supposed to be, like he closed his eyes and they stuck that way. It’s all empty skin between his cheekbones and eyebrows.
“What’s happening here?” he asks.
Tearing away from his lack of eyes, I gesture at the dinosaur. “That’s the one they put in Props and Costuming, isn’t it? The one that used to be on the log flume?”
The tall man looks down at the whimpering creature. The haunt slider gently slides open its lip and pries free a few loosened teeth, placing them inside his breast pocket.
“That’s a robot,” the tall man replies. “It doesn’t have a power source, and when it did all it could do was turn its head and hiss.”
“Yeah, well, we were…um…just upstairs and it’s…” I start, not sure how to finish that sentence.
“What’s happening?” the tall man asks cautiously.
“…Gunpowder…screaming…bad things…” the haunt slider answers. “Collecting…flesh…for the…Master…”
“It could be a terrorist attack,” I suggest. “Something in the fog machines?”
“This is not a terrorist attack,” the tall man growls, holding out his hand, the tentacles hanging limp and lifeless, like he doesn’t know how to use him. The tip of his tail flicks, like cats do when they’re ornery.
Impulsively, I reach out to touch the appendage, to see if they’re flex or latex, but he pulls away from me like I ran at him with a hot poker.
“No touching, please,” he chides, then sort of stares at his hand, flinching as if to offer it to me in handshake before thinking better of it. “I’m Isaac.”
“Is…that supposed to be funny?” I ask quietly.
“I See You…” whispers the haunt slider.
“I’m sure someone thought it was.”
“Sherene,” I reply, keeping my job quiet, because I know I don’t belong here, not in the park and not with them.
“Snake…Charmer…”
“What about you, Locomotive Breath?” the tall man asks. “You got a name?”
There’s a whiff of something like bleach and an undercurrent of candy corn. The haunt slider doesn’t answer, just staring.
“…Right,” Isaac sighs. “Are you seasonal? With the art collective? Who are you?”
The slider’s hands pause in their dinosaur-petting, the scented smoke from his mask skipping, as if he doesn’t know how to answer or…just doesn’t know.
“Um…we were up top,” I tell the tall man, fidgeting with my fingers, feeling the scaleprint of my gloves. “The…the unicorn…ran away…and then there was gunfire.”
“That’s a puppet, too, you know that, right?” Isaac asks, frowning. “It can’t do anything but turn its head and neigh.”
“Well…it…um…took off, into the crowd. And then the soldiers started firing…and the spider-legged thing…”
“That’s just a puppet. It just lights up.”
“Should tell…it that…”
Despite having no eyes, I can see the wheels in Isaac’s head turning, adding up things I haven’t seen.
“Do either of you have a ride out of here?”
“I think I dropped my cellphone, he doesn’t have one,” I explain, patting my hips again. My legs are cold.
“So, new plan…I’m going to drive you two home, if that’s okay with you,” he says. “Employee parking is that way.” He points in front with his wrench.
“Yeah…I don’t want to be here anymore,” I murmur, as unsure about going back into the park as I am about getting in a car with two men I don’t know.
“Props and…Costuming…Valuable things.”
I took a bus to get here. I’m not so sure of my options, but at least these two haven’t tried to kill me. Yet.
From deeper in the tunnels there’s a noise. It’s like the howling laughter of madmen, the kind they describe from insane asylums, back when they had those, and the honking of bicycle horns.
And it’s getting closer.
“We need to move,” Isaac growls, chewing his bracelet.
The haunt slider looks down at his feet, hidden under the hems of his coat. He moves to stand, but doesn’t quite succeed.
“You hurt?” the tall man asks.
“…Feet…legs…”
Kindly, the tall man leans down, so they’re something close to eye level. “Do you want to show me?”
The haunt slider shakes his head, looking a little embarrassed, but it’s hard to be sure under all the leather.
Leather? The costume was faux, made of plastic. It was convincing enough, but definitely not real. I picked it up enough to be sure, plastic fittings and faux leather material. What he’s wearing now is real, more than just convincing, it’s real, and he never had a chance to change clothes.
“Do you think you can get up?” Isaac asks.
I offer my hands to help him, but he looks at them as if my touch might burn him, instead using his shovel to support himself, a hand balanced on the wall as needed. His boots look like gloves, splitting five ways, three load-bearing toes and two opposible digits, one on the inner ankle and one on the outer. The boots buckle all the way to the knees, and the heels are raised above the ground, like an animal. Each toe has its own metal sheathe, like his fingers, and a small, round puck of sparking material. He wiggles his toes, like fingers, demonstrating grasping ability.
It’s seamless, like he’d always been wearing them, and he definitely wasn’t before. High-heeled boots would be murder on his joints and bad for the haunt sliding.
“What is happening here?” Isaac breathes, watching the haunt slider tentatively learn to find his balance.
“…Obvious…” the haunt slider wheezes.
Something cackles in the distance.
“You gonna be okay?” I ask, beginning to move away from the approaching crowd.
“…Neat…” he replies in a cloud of candy corn-scented vapor, following behind with a growing comfort.
Me, I feel a bit sick, like I’m looking into something my brain just literally can’t understand. Human legs don’t bend like that. We walk on the flats of our feet, not the tips, and his boots definitely didn’t look like that earlier.
Ahead of me, there’s the tall man, Isaac, and his octopus-like hands and missing eyes. He can still see, and the fingers writhe like living things, his tail lightly swinging with his steps. Reality has somehow fractured and they’re turning into what they’ve been wearing.
I step down bad on my right foot, the ground rushing up to meet me. The both of them turn and stare, fumbling at reaching up to help me, as if touching me might poison them. Shockwaves run up my knees to my hips, the ground cool and smooth beneath me.
“…Okay?” asks the haunt slider, blank-faced masked tilted slightly, offering me the handle of his shovel.
“What did you trip on?” the tall man asks, kneeling to get a better look at me, again halfway reaching out to offer me a hand but stopping short.
Maybe it’s the tentacles? He’s afraid I’m grossed out?
“Just my feet,” I reply, pulling himself up on the slider’s serrated shovel, rubbing my knees, my glove scratchy against me. “Clumsy.”
A touch of vanilla flows from the slider’s mask as he looks deeply into me. It’s creepy, being unable to see his eyes or face, but knowing he’s staring into my soul.
A bicycle horn honks from behind us.
“Run!” the eyeless man orders.
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter one
Chapter two
Lost Garden used to have an animatronic dinosaur on the log flume, but it was too close to a waterfall and stopped working. Somebody took it off the ride and put it next to East Props and Makeup, and it’s a tradition for zone ambiance to pat his nose for a good performance, causing the teal scales to fade to a sickly gray.
I know this because I’m the one that dusts it, and I know for a fact it’s nothing but latex scales over a cheesy metal endoskeleton.
I also know for a fact it’s chasing a tall man dressed for Steampunk Singularity at breakneck speed as he tries to fend it off with the stream from fire extinguisher.
The haunt slider, true to his assignment, drops to his knees and power slides toward the dinosaur, taking its legs out from under it with the shovel. Before hitting the wall, he’s back up on his feet, spinning with the shovel and smashing the skull with a heavy crunch. For a split second of abject silence, he trembles all over and then sinks to his knees, gently stroking the creature’s head as bruising forms around the left side of its face, it moaning in pain, and something sweet that numbs my tongue flowing freely from the gas mask.
“Has everyone here completely lost their minds?” the tall scareactor shrieks.
At over six and a half feet tall and very thin, no older than his early thirties, he’s a striking figure in black and white stripped pants, black combat boots, and an olive drab with brown suspenders, hanging loose at his narrow hips. His brown hair is cut short, his long, pointed teeth crowded. There’s a noticeable swideways curve to his spine and a dip along his sternum, his arms and legs too long for his comparatively short torso. A silver bracelet with a medical alert symbol jangles at his right wrist.
“Crazy tall…creepy flexible…soft-hearted…” the haunt slider muses, looking up at him.
The tall man flinches, training the extinguisher on the masked figure, then sighs, “Oh, great, you’re cuckoobananas, too.”
“Wrench…would be…more…effective…” the slider wheezes, indicating the prop wrench at the tall man’s hip.
“It’s a prop,” the tall man replies, taking it from the holster. “It’s plas…that does have some heft to it.”
The slider has a breathy laugh, lemon entering the lavender/chamomile mix of his smoke. I’m staring transfixed at the tall man’s hands, long palms with foot-long fingers, blackened in color, writing and moving like octopus tentacles, a tail at the base of his spine to match.
“Your hands…” I whimper, then immediately feel bad for having pointed it out, like observing another person’s deformities in public.
“Yeah, I know,” he grins, showing his elongated canines and sharpened incisors. Were those even meant to be seen inside the leather and mesh mask around his neck?
Looking up at him, I stifle a squeak of surprise and alarm. He has no eyes.
None.
Whatsoever.
There’s not even an indent where they’re supposed to be, like he closed his eyes and they stuck that way. It’s all empty skin between his cheekbones and eyebrows.
“What’s happening here?” he asks.
Tearing away from his lack of eyes, I gesture at the dinosaur. “That’s the one they put in Props and Costuming, isn’t it? The one that used to be on the log flume?”
The tall man looks down at the whimpering creature. The haunt slider gently slides open its lip and pries free a few loosened teeth, placing them inside his breast pocket.
“That’s a robot,” the tall man replies. “It doesn’t have a power source, and when it did all it could do was turn its head and hiss.”
“Yeah, well, we were…um…just upstairs and it’s…” I start, not sure how to finish that sentence.
“What’s happening?” the tall man asks cautiously.
“…Gunpowder…screaming…bad things…” the haunt slider answers. “Collecting…flesh…for the…Master…”
“It could be a terrorist attack,” I suggest. “Something in the fog machines?”
“This is not a terrorist attack,” the tall man growls, holding out his hand, the tentacles hanging limp and lifeless, like he doesn’t know how to use him. The tip of his tail flicks, like cats do when they’re ornery.
Impulsively, I reach out to touch the appendage, to see if they’re flex or latex, but he pulls away from me like I ran at him with a hot poker.
“No touching, please,” he chides, then sort of stares at his hand, flinching as if to offer it to me in handshake before thinking better of it. “I’m Isaac.”
“Is…that supposed to be funny?” I ask quietly.
“I See You…” whispers the haunt slider.
“I’m sure someone thought it was.”
“Sherene,” I reply, keeping my job quiet, because I know I don’t belong here, not in the park and not with them.
“Snake…Charmer…”
“What about you, Locomotive Breath?” the tall man asks. “You got a name?”
There’s a whiff of something like bleach and an undercurrent of candy corn. The haunt slider doesn’t answer, just staring.
“…Right,” Isaac sighs. “Are you seasonal? With the art collective? Who are you?”
The slider’s hands pause in their dinosaur-petting, the scented smoke from his mask skipping, as if he doesn’t know how to answer or…just doesn’t know.
“Um…we were up top,” I tell the tall man, fidgeting with my fingers, feeling the scaleprint of my gloves. “The…the unicorn…ran away…and then there was gunfire.”
“That’s a puppet, too, you know that, right?” Isaac asks, frowning. “It can’t do anything but turn its head and neigh.”
“Well…it…um…took off, into the crowd. And then the soldiers started firing…and the spider-legged thing…”
“That’s just a puppet. It just lights up.”
“Should tell…it that…”
Despite having no eyes, I can see the wheels in Isaac’s head turning, adding up things I haven’t seen.
“Do either of you have a ride out of here?”
“I think I dropped my cellphone, he doesn’t have one,” I explain, patting my hips again. My legs are cold.
“So, new plan…I’m going to drive you two home, if that’s okay with you,” he says. “Employee parking is that way.” He points in front with his wrench.
“Yeah…I don’t want to be here anymore,” I murmur, as unsure about going back into the park as I am about getting in a car with two men I don’t know.
“Props and…Costuming…Valuable things.”
I took a bus to get here. I’m not so sure of my options, but at least these two haven’t tried to kill me. Yet.
From deeper in the tunnels there’s a noise. It’s like the howling laughter of madmen, the kind they describe from insane asylums, back when they had those, and the honking of bicycle horns.
And it’s getting closer.
“We need to move,” Isaac growls, chewing his bracelet.
The haunt slider looks down at his feet, hidden under the hems of his coat. He moves to stand, but doesn’t quite succeed.
“You hurt?” the tall man asks.
“…Feet…legs…”
Kindly, the tall man leans down, so they’re something close to eye level. “Do you want to show me?”
The haunt slider shakes his head, looking a little embarrassed, but it’s hard to be sure under all the leather.
Leather? The costume was faux, made of plastic. It was convincing enough, but definitely not real. I picked it up enough to be sure, plastic fittings and faux leather material. What he’s wearing now is real, more than just convincing, it’s real, and he never had a chance to change clothes.
“Do you think you can get up?” Isaac asks.
I offer my hands to help him, but he looks at them as if my touch might burn him, instead using his shovel to support himself, a hand balanced on the wall as needed. His boots look like gloves, splitting five ways, three load-bearing toes and two opposible digits, one on the inner ankle and one on the outer. The boots buckle all the way to the knees, and the heels are raised above the ground, like an animal. Each toe has its own metal sheathe, like his fingers, and a small, round puck of sparking material. He wiggles his toes, like fingers, demonstrating grasping ability.
It’s seamless, like he’d always been wearing them, and he definitely wasn’t before. High-heeled boots would be murder on his joints and bad for the haunt sliding.
“What is happening here?” Isaac breathes, watching the haunt slider tentatively learn to find his balance.
“…Obvious…” the haunt slider wheezes.
Something cackles in the distance.
“You gonna be okay?” I ask, beginning to move away from the approaching crowd.
“…Neat…” he replies in a cloud of candy corn-scented vapor, following behind with a growing comfort.
Me, I feel a bit sick, like I’m looking into something my brain just literally can’t understand. Human legs don’t bend like that. We walk on the flats of our feet, not the tips, and his boots definitely didn’t look like that earlier.
Ahead of me, there’s the tall man, Isaac, and his octopus-like hands and missing eyes. He can still see, and the fingers writhe like living things, his tail lightly swinging with his steps. Reality has somehow fractured and they’re turning into what they’ve been wearing.
I step down bad on my right foot, the ground rushing up to meet me. The both of them turn and stare, fumbling at reaching up to help me, as if touching me might poison them. Shockwaves run up my knees to my hips, the ground cool and smooth beneath me.
“…Okay?” asks the haunt slider, blank-faced masked tilted slightly, offering me the handle of his shovel.
“What did you trip on?” the tall man asks, kneeling to get a better look at me, again halfway reaching out to offer me a hand but stopping short.
Maybe it’s the tentacles? He’s afraid I’m grossed out?
“Just my feet,” I reply, pulling himself up on the slider’s serrated shovel, rubbing my knees, my glove scratchy against me. “Clumsy.”
A touch of vanilla flows from the slider’s mask as he looks deeply into me. It’s creepy, being unable to see his eyes or face, but knowing he’s staring into my soul.
A bicycle horn honks from behind us.
“Run!” the eyeless man orders.
Chapter three
Chapter four
Masquerade--Chapter Five
Chapter five
What I hadn’t expected was what the haunt slider had kept hidden under his trenchcoat. I sort of expected not to see any exposed skin, but the intricately brocaded leather waistcoat over a high-collared shirt and tie, tucked snugly around his snood, was a bit of a surprise, as was the skull-shaped buttons along his abdomen and matching skull and crossbones belt buckle, reminiscent of a poison warning label. I’m not sure what the long-sleeved shirt, tucked into his elbow-length buckle gloves, is made of, but it looks sturdier than cotton or silk, silver buckles up his forearms, metal scutes at his elbows,
The tooling in the waistcoat is hypnotic, like swirls of mist. I could lose myself, following the pattern for hours.
He seems wrong without his coat, too small, like a bird without feathers. I feel bad for having taken it, watching a slight tremor form in his shoulders, like he might be cold despite the leather gloves and long sleeves. Even his tail seems to coil into itself for warmth, fretfully stroking the studs of his belt at his hip, making nervous little tapping noises.
A cheer went up when the lights went out, the sound of clowns excited for the show to start, from the sound of it, mistaking it for a curtain dropping. We knew it was taken as a sign to start performing, because we turn a corner to find the show in full swing, the helpless non-costumed administrative and backstage personnel for Wonderland as the audience participants.
Some enterprising individuals have brought out a knife-throwing wheel, the test of strength thing with the bell on top, and part of a dog’s agility course. Naturally, it’s the clown throwing the knives while the regular, uncostumed human spins, the clown wielding the hammer and clapping delightedly as the regular, uncostumed human slides up the town and bangs their head on the bell, and the giant, human-like pitbull leading the regular, uncostumed human along the agility course by a leash, shoveling popcorn from an overflowing machine into their mouth when they do it right.
Isaac takes a step forward, I grab his arm and pull him back, which makes him flinch and pull away like I stuck with with hot iron.
“No touching, please!” he snaps.
“Don’t,” I whisper pleadingly, trying to figure out why I’m thinking of hamburgers, fear gripping my chest so tightly that I can barely breathe.
“That’s my supervisor on the wheel,” he hisses. “He’s got kids.”
“They’re not right,” I whisper back, somewhere at a Fourth of July picnic in the back of my head. “And they’ve got knives. And hammers.”
My hood is spread defensively, wings outstretched under the heavy leather coat, a bitter taste in my mouth. There’s a familiar smell in the air, that warms my stomach and reflexively makes me hungry.
I remember asking once, why the air above the grill looked like water, seated on my mother’s lap. It’s the cooking gas, the propane.
The air around the haunt slider’s mask looks like water.
“Осовец,” Isaac breathes quietly. “Don’t move.”
The haunt slider stands stock-still, staring down the hallway toward the impromptu circus performance, at the lady clown lying languidly on her belly as she uses her feet to throw knives at the wheel, the male clown’s merry dance when he strikes the bell, the big dog’s hackles raised when his leash-bound captive misses the mark.
“Ozzy,” Isaac whispers again. “Calm down…and don’t move.”
I look down at the haunt slider’s dinosaur-like feet, the claws hidden inside protective metal sheathes, the round puck of sparking material at the spot between his soles and his toes.
“…Don’t…move…”
The haunt slider’s gaze never leaves the sadistic display before us. He makes no noise except the wheezing beyond his mask.
“Ozzy,” Isaac pleads urgently. “Ozzy, look at me…deep breaths…don’t…move…”
The haunt slider raises his left foot less than an inch above the ground, and Isaac’s wrench collides with his thin chest, bending the smaller figure nearly in half, the smell of propane giving way to frying oil, perfume, and bleach. In one motion, Isaac has the haunt slider over his shoulder, a cloud of roses, ammonia, and butter in his wake.
“Run!” Isaac shouts.
He doesn’t need to tell me twice, seeing as the clowns have realized there’s new playmates and dogs chase things that run.
“First left!” I shout after him. “Second door on the right!”
Pleasebeopenpleasebeopenpleasebeopen…
It’s supposed to be lock, but it can be a pain in the ass to track down someone with a key to open it, so some, especially Wonderland employees, leave the door open, or stopped with a box.
Isaac dashes into the room, slamming the door with a kick of his boots, engaging the auto-lock and sealing us inside. He immediately finds a stepstool and leans the haunt slider he called Ozzy down on it, bent in half and hissing orange blossom, pine cleaner, and bitter almond, silently bearing his pain, using his shovel to hold himself up.
The eyeless man drops to his knees and seizes the haunt slider’s right boot, growling, “Get this stuff off of you before you blow us all to kingdom come.”
The haunt slider kicks him with his free foot, slapping him with the tail for good measure.
“How were you exhaling propane?!” I shriek as something heavy collides with the bolted door behind me, making us all flinch.
Isaac, nursing a forming bruise on his cheek and a cut lip from one of his fangs, jumps up in alarm.
“It auto-locks,” I explain, grateful, for once, that someone violated the rules by leaving the door open for easy access. “They can’t get in.”
“And we can’t get out,” Isaac growls.
“Service hatch,” I reply, pointing upward at the ladder leading toward a vacant space, and the ceiling beyond. “Goes up to the roof, I think.”
Ozzy’s smoke has a bloody smell to it, coppery, under notes of cherry blossom and rubbing alcohol. He inclines his head, looking at his surroundings, his smoke starting to cycle into a more reasonable combination of lavender and chamomile.
“Are you alright?” Isaac demands, stern but a touch of apology, letting the haunt slider groggily seize his arm and place two fingers at his wrist. “You could have…I’m…sorry.”
“Supply…closet…” Ozzy murmurs, dropping the eyeless man’s wrist, evidently starting to notice his environs. He stands up off the stepstool and begins rummaging in the nearest first aid box, reaching to place bandages and alcohol pads in the coat he doesn’t have, pausing in apparent confusion, and then stuffing them into his leather waistcoat.
A flash of embarrassment warms my face. I shouldn’t have taken his coat.
“How did you know this was here?” Isaac asks, looking up at the hatch. “Do you work for Wonderland, too?”
I blush, looking away, not wanting to admit that I don’t really belong here, not in the park, and not with them
.
“Not…really…” I mumble.
“No, you’re the girl that cleans the makeup tables,” Isaac says, snapping his fingers…somehow. “He thought he recognized you.”
I blink, pretty sure I’d recognize Isaac as he was coming out of makeup, a figure like that being hard to miss, over six and a half feet tall with definite scoliosis. When I realize he knows what I am, I turn a few shades redder.
“We really appreciate it, makes things go smoother the morning after a busy night,” he smiles. “The makeup artists always seem to find things a little faster after you’ve been working.”
“He…doesn’t like…being on…the floor…” Ozzy murmurs, examining the first aid box for what he can fit in his pockets.
Feeling self-conscious in his coat, I take it off and hold it out to him.
“Here…um…it’s yours,” I say as he turns his vacant gaze in my direction.
“…Cold…” he replies, still holding a box of bandages, not reaching for the coat.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him, shaking my head. “There’s worse going on out there.”
My exposed thighs seem a small thing to complain about, when I’m not the one on a knife wheel, or taking wrenches to the gut.
“…Kind…”
Ozzy puts the bandages down long enough to shrug into his coat, feeling the material in a way that makes him look like he’s welcoming an old friend back. Once buttoned back up, he goes back to his foraging.
“He seems to like you,” Isaac observes, watching the haunt slider’s magpie-like hoarding, chewing his bracelet thoughtfully.
“Huh?”
“Giving you his coat,” Isaac shrugs. “The carrion birds…the world they come from is dead. The air will kill you. The sun will kill you. They dress like that to keep everything out, to protect themselves, a side effect of the haunt slider safety gear. It’s basically his skin, and he took it off for you.”
I twist my clawed hands in front of me. The haunt slider called me kind, but I haven’t really done a single kind thing in his presence, not like offering someone the coat off my back, or carrying them to safety when I could have just left the potential incendiary device behind. I didn’t even try to help those people, talking someone out of it, in fact.
“You’re a professional scareactor?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Zone ambience, I’m regular, not seasonal,” Isaac replies proudly, letting his voice slip into a Bostonian accent. “Most days I’m a reporter in front of Full Throttle’s facade, disguising guest surveys as hard-hitting news reports.”
“Did you do the stage show? For Monsterland, this year, I mean.”
He shrugs, his accent going back to normal. “Understudy. I’ve done one or two.”
“I might have seen you. Online, I mean. Someone recorded a showing.”
The eyeless man shrugs, Harlequin peeking out from her nest at his throat. “Might have been.”
“And um…him…” I ask. “You know him?”
“Not that I know of,” Isaac answers, reclining his chin on his long fingers, Harlequin shaking them playfully. “Most of the haunt sliders this year are outside consultants or seasonal workers, especially in Soul Survivor.”
“You called him by name.”
“‘Осовец,’ it’s the fortress he mentioned that inspired his costume. World War One story, Germans gassed it, then, thinking they killed everyone, went to claim it. Then, about a hundred pissed-off Russians, covered in chemical burns and coughing up their own lungs, chased them back out. The ‘Attack of the Dead Men.’ Seemed as good a thing as any to call him. You good there, Ozzy? You up for climbing the ladder?”
The haunt slider puts the cover back on the now-empty first aid kit, gingerly climbing to his feet and leaning on his telescopic shovel.
“He…will…manage…”
“…Right,” Isaac sighs, placing his braclet back in his mouth.
Before either of us can approach the ladder, in a corner by the mop drain, Ozzy pulls open a cabinet and starts staring at industrial-strength cleaning products.
“Nope!” Isaac barks, shooing the haunt slider away and toward the ladder.
His clawed feet grasp the ladder’s rungs as he makes his way up, his tail clacking as it brushes by. Isaac’s tail slides along the ladder’s sides. I look down at my own feet self-consciously, adjusting a strap starting to burn against my newly-formed scales.
“You got it, Sherene?” Isaac asks, kneeling from above and offering me his hand, pulling back slightly as I approach.
“Yeah, I got it,” I answer, immediately slipping when one of my sandals slides off the rung, my face getting hot again.
The service hatch leads to a small, unfinished room with a door on one side. Ozzy closes the hatch and turns the wheel that bolts it closed, keeping the clowns from following, even if they figure out how to wedge the door open like he did.
Isaac unlatches the door and steps out onto the roof, into the frigid, October breeze and a light pattering of rain, his lanky form outlined in moonlight. Far from the sound of a theme park at peak, the sound of screaming and gunfire flows into the little room.
I follow him out onto the rooftop, smelling smoke and gunpowder.
“What…is happening…?” Isaac breathes, looking down onto the park below.
It looks like someone ripped chunks of other places and threw them haphazardly into a pile. The relatively-untouched set pieces for Metropolis collide sharply with the barren and decayed Soul Survivor, butting straight up against the Victorian gaslamp Steampunk Singularity. At first, I think the power might have come back on, but it’s literally gaslamps lighting up the area near the steel Full Throttle coaster.
Over on the other side, the facades for Kiddie Carnival, now Psycho Circus, have changed from fiberglass and concrete to canvas and tarps. Deeper into the park’s Lost Garden, where the Dragon’s Breath coaster resides, what’s normally a soundstage from this angle is an ominous, dark castle with something large and reptilian curled on top.
“Full moon…unmasks…stranger in us…all…” Ozzy says, walking toward the edge of the building, head and hands raised to the sky. “Shadow…is cast…on who…you used to be…”
“You see that, right?” I ask Isaac, looking at the seams of cobblestone in Steampunk Singularity to the cracked asphalt of Soul Survivor, pointing over to where a circus tent sharply becomes a Victorian manor house along the barrier between the two sections.
“It’s like…it all became real,” Isaac breathes, turning his attention to Full Throttle, where a full-sized race track sits where the steel coaster used to.
Below us, a partially glass and copper unicorn has joined a herd of brightly-colored, circus-themed horses from the Kiddie Carnival carousel, a color palate of fur no horse was ever born with. Pirates, armed with cutlasses and flintlocks, have barricaded themselves in one of the collapsed Soul Survivor buildings, in an apparent standoff with steamborg soldiers.
“Are those the pirates from the whitewater ride?” I ask incredulously.
“…Halloween…full moon…very rare…” Ozzy rambles, still looking skyward, dropping to his knees, hands and head still held high.
“What are you…” I ask, following his gaze. “Isa…Isaac, look up.”
“What now?” Isaac whimpers, clearly expecting to see WW1 fighter planes from Kiddie Carnival’s plane ride, or an invasion of UFOs from the simulator ride, or some such.
The full moon, which rarely falls at the end of October, is a massive, orange jack o’lantern, its yellow gaze surveying the chaos bellow with a mirthful grin. It isn’t a color projection, it’s like the moon turned into a pumpkin, and then someone carved it and placed a candle inside
“Well…that…is some nonsense right there…” Isaac mumbles.
What I hadn’t expected was what the haunt slider had kept hidden under his trenchcoat. I sort of expected not to see any exposed skin, but the intricately brocaded leather waistcoat over a high-collared shirt and tie, tucked snugly around his snood, was a bit of a surprise, as was the skull-shaped buttons along his abdomen and matching skull and crossbones belt buckle, reminiscent of a poison warning label. I’m not sure what the long-sleeved shirt, tucked into his elbow-length buckle gloves, is made of, but it looks sturdier than cotton or silk, silver buckles up his forearms, metal scutes at his elbows,
The tooling in the waistcoat is hypnotic, like swirls of mist. I could lose myself, following the pattern for hours.
He seems wrong without his coat, too small, like a bird without feathers. I feel bad for having taken it, watching a slight tremor form in his shoulders, like he might be cold despite the leather gloves and long sleeves. Even his tail seems to coil into itself for warmth, fretfully stroking the studs of his belt at his hip, making nervous little tapping noises.
A cheer went up when the lights went out, the sound of clowns excited for the show to start, from the sound of it, mistaking it for a curtain dropping. We knew it was taken as a sign to start performing, because we turn a corner to find the show in full swing, the helpless non-costumed administrative and backstage personnel for Wonderland as the audience participants.
Some enterprising individuals have brought out a knife-throwing wheel, the test of strength thing with the bell on top, and part of a dog’s agility course. Naturally, it’s the clown throwing the knives while the regular, uncostumed human spins, the clown wielding the hammer and clapping delightedly as the regular, uncostumed human slides up the town and bangs their head on the bell, and the giant, human-like pitbull leading the regular, uncostumed human along the agility course by a leash, shoveling popcorn from an overflowing machine into their mouth when they do it right.
Isaac takes a step forward, I grab his arm and pull him back, which makes him flinch and pull away like I stuck with with hot iron.
“No touching, please!” he snaps.
“Don’t,” I whisper pleadingly, trying to figure out why I’m thinking of hamburgers, fear gripping my chest so tightly that I can barely breathe.
“That’s my supervisor on the wheel,” he hisses. “He’s got kids.”
“They’re not right,” I whisper back, somewhere at a Fourth of July picnic in the back of my head. “And they’ve got knives. And hammers.”
My hood is spread defensively, wings outstretched under the heavy leather coat, a bitter taste in my mouth. There’s a familiar smell in the air, that warms my stomach and reflexively makes me hungry.
I remember asking once, why the air above the grill looked like water, seated on my mother’s lap. It’s the cooking gas, the propane.
The air around the haunt slider’s mask looks like water.
“Осовец,” Isaac breathes quietly. “Don’t move.”
The haunt slider stands stock-still, staring down the hallway toward the impromptu circus performance, at the lady clown lying languidly on her belly as she uses her feet to throw knives at the wheel, the male clown’s merry dance when he strikes the bell, the big dog’s hackles raised when his leash-bound captive misses the mark.
“Ozzy,” Isaac whispers again. “Calm down…and don’t move.”
I look down at the haunt slider’s dinosaur-like feet, the claws hidden inside protective metal sheathes, the round puck of sparking material at the spot between his soles and his toes.
“…Don’t…move…”
The haunt slider’s gaze never leaves the sadistic display before us. He makes no noise except the wheezing beyond his mask.
“Ozzy,” Isaac pleads urgently. “Ozzy, look at me…deep breaths…don’t…move…”
The haunt slider raises his left foot less than an inch above the ground, and Isaac’s wrench collides with his thin chest, bending the smaller figure nearly in half, the smell of propane giving way to frying oil, perfume, and bleach. In one motion, Isaac has the haunt slider over his shoulder, a cloud of roses, ammonia, and butter in his wake.
“Run!” Isaac shouts.
He doesn’t need to tell me twice, seeing as the clowns have realized there’s new playmates and dogs chase things that run.
“First left!” I shout after him. “Second door on the right!”
Pleasebeopenpleasebeopenpleasebeopen…
It’s supposed to be lock, but it can be a pain in the ass to track down someone with a key to open it, so some, especially Wonderland employees, leave the door open, or stopped with a box.
Isaac dashes into the room, slamming the door with a kick of his boots, engaging the auto-lock and sealing us inside. He immediately finds a stepstool and leans the haunt slider he called Ozzy down on it, bent in half and hissing orange blossom, pine cleaner, and bitter almond, silently bearing his pain, using his shovel to hold himself up.
The eyeless man drops to his knees and seizes the haunt slider’s right boot, growling, “Get this stuff off of you before you blow us all to kingdom come.”
The haunt slider kicks him with his free foot, slapping him with the tail for good measure.
“How were you exhaling propane?!” I shriek as something heavy collides with the bolted door behind me, making us all flinch.
Isaac, nursing a forming bruise on his cheek and a cut lip from one of his fangs, jumps up in alarm.
“It auto-locks,” I explain, grateful, for once, that someone violated the rules by leaving the door open for easy access. “They can’t get in.”
“And we can’t get out,” Isaac growls.
“Service hatch,” I reply, pointing upward at the ladder leading toward a vacant space, and the ceiling beyond. “Goes up to the roof, I think.”
Ozzy’s smoke has a bloody smell to it, coppery, under notes of cherry blossom and rubbing alcohol. He inclines his head, looking at his surroundings, his smoke starting to cycle into a more reasonable combination of lavender and chamomile.
“Are you alright?” Isaac demands, stern but a touch of apology, letting the haunt slider groggily seize his arm and place two fingers at his wrist. “You could have…I’m…sorry.”
“Supply…closet…” Ozzy murmurs, dropping the eyeless man’s wrist, evidently starting to notice his environs. He stands up off the stepstool and begins rummaging in the nearest first aid box, reaching to place bandages and alcohol pads in the coat he doesn’t have, pausing in apparent confusion, and then stuffing them into his leather waistcoat.
A flash of embarrassment warms my face. I shouldn’t have taken his coat.
“How did you know this was here?” Isaac asks, looking up at the hatch. “Do you work for Wonderland, too?”
I blush, looking away, not wanting to admit that I don’t really belong here, not in the park, and not with them
.
“Not…really…” I mumble.
“No, you’re the girl that cleans the makeup tables,” Isaac says, snapping his fingers…somehow. “He thought he recognized you.”
I blink, pretty sure I’d recognize Isaac as he was coming out of makeup, a figure like that being hard to miss, over six and a half feet tall with definite scoliosis. When I realize he knows what I am, I turn a few shades redder.
“We really appreciate it, makes things go smoother the morning after a busy night,” he smiles. “The makeup artists always seem to find things a little faster after you’ve been working.”
“He…doesn’t like…being on…the floor…” Ozzy murmurs, examining the first aid box for what he can fit in his pockets.
Feeling self-conscious in his coat, I take it off and hold it out to him.
“Here…um…it’s yours,” I say as he turns his vacant gaze in my direction.
“…Cold…” he replies, still holding a box of bandages, not reaching for the coat.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him, shaking my head. “There’s worse going on out there.”
My exposed thighs seem a small thing to complain about, when I’m not the one on a knife wheel, or taking wrenches to the gut.
“…Kind…”
Ozzy puts the bandages down long enough to shrug into his coat, feeling the material in a way that makes him look like he’s welcoming an old friend back. Once buttoned back up, he goes back to his foraging.
“He seems to like you,” Isaac observes, watching the haunt slider’s magpie-like hoarding, chewing his bracelet thoughtfully.
“Huh?”
“Giving you his coat,” Isaac shrugs. “The carrion birds…the world they come from is dead. The air will kill you. The sun will kill you. They dress like that to keep everything out, to protect themselves, a side effect of the haunt slider safety gear. It’s basically his skin, and he took it off for you.”
I twist my clawed hands in front of me. The haunt slider called me kind, but I haven’t really done a single kind thing in his presence, not like offering someone the coat off my back, or carrying them to safety when I could have just left the potential incendiary device behind. I didn’t even try to help those people, talking someone out of it, in fact.
“You’re a professional scareactor?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Zone ambience, I’m regular, not seasonal,” Isaac replies proudly, letting his voice slip into a Bostonian accent. “Most days I’m a reporter in front of Full Throttle’s facade, disguising guest surveys as hard-hitting news reports.”
“Did you do the stage show? For Monsterland, this year, I mean.”
He shrugs, his accent going back to normal. “Understudy. I’ve done one or two.”
“I might have seen you. Online, I mean. Someone recorded a showing.”
The eyeless man shrugs, Harlequin peeking out from her nest at his throat. “Might have been.”
“And um…him…” I ask. “You know him?”
“Not that I know of,” Isaac answers, reclining his chin on his long fingers, Harlequin shaking them playfully. “Most of the haunt sliders this year are outside consultants or seasonal workers, especially in Soul Survivor.”
“You called him by name.”
“‘Осовец,’ it’s the fortress he mentioned that inspired his costume. World War One story, Germans gassed it, then, thinking they killed everyone, went to claim it. Then, about a hundred pissed-off Russians, covered in chemical burns and coughing up their own lungs, chased them back out. The ‘Attack of the Dead Men.’ Seemed as good a thing as any to call him. You good there, Ozzy? You up for climbing the ladder?”
The haunt slider puts the cover back on the now-empty first aid kit, gingerly climbing to his feet and leaning on his telescopic shovel.
“He…will…manage…”
“…Right,” Isaac sighs, placing his braclet back in his mouth.
Before either of us can approach the ladder, in a corner by the mop drain, Ozzy pulls open a cabinet and starts staring at industrial-strength cleaning products.
“Nope!” Isaac barks, shooing the haunt slider away and toward the ladder.
His clawed feet grasp the ladder’s rungs as he makes his way up, his tail clacking as it brushes by. Isaac’s tail slides along the ladder’s sides. I look down at my own feet self-consciously, adjusting a strap starting to burn against my newly-formed scales.
“You got it, Sherene?” Isaac asks, kneeling from above and offering me his hand, pulling back slightly as I approach.
“Yeah, I got it,” I answer, immediately slipping when one of my sandals slides off the rung, my face getting hot again.
The service hatch leads to a small, unfinished room with a door on one side. Ozzy closes the hatch and turns the wheel that bolts it closed, keeping the clowns from following, even if they figure out how to wedge the door open like he did.
Isaac unlatches the door and steps out onto the roof, into the frigid, October breeze and a light pattering of rain, his lanky form outlined in moonlight. Far from the sound of a theme park at peak, the sound of screaming and gunfire flows into the little room.
I follow him out onto the rooftop, smelling smoke and gunpowder.
“What…is happening…?” Isaac breathes, looking down onto the park below.
It looks like someone ripped chunks of other places and threw them haphazardly into a pile. The relatively-untouched set pieces for Metropolis collide sharply with the barren and decayed Soul Survivor, butting straight up against the Victorian gaslamp Steampunk Singularity. At first, I think the power might have come back on, but it’s literally gaslamps lighting up the area near the steel Full Throttle coaster.
Over on the other side, the facades for Kiddie Carnival, now Psycho Circus, have changed from fiberglass and concrete to canvas and tarps. Deeper into the park’s Lost Garden, where the Dragon’s Breath coaster resides, what’s normally a soundstage from this angle is an ominous, dark castle with something large and reptilian curled on top.
“Full moon…unmasks…stranger in us…all…” Ozzy says, walking toward the edge of the building, head and hands raised to the sky. “Shadow…is cast…on who…you used to be…”
“You see that, right?” I ask Isaac, looking at the seams of cobblestone in Steampunk Singularity to the cracked asphalt of Soul Survivor, pointing over to where a circus tent sharply becomes a Victorian manor house along the barrier between the two sections.
“It’s like…it all became real,” Isaac breathes, turning his attention to Full Throttle, where a full-sized race track sits where the steel coaster used to.
Below us, a partially glass and copper unicorn has joined a herd of brightly-colored, circus-themed horses from the Kiddie Carnival carousel, a color palate of fur no horse was ever born with. Pirates, armed with cutlasses and flintlocks, have barricaded themselves in one of the collapsed Soul Survivor buildings, in an apparent standoff with steamborg soldiers.
“Are those the pirates from the whitewater ride?” I ask incredulously.
“…Halloween…full moon…very rare…” Ozzy rambles, still looking skyward, dropping to his knees, hands and head still held high.
“What are you…” I ask, following his gaze. “Isa…Isaac, look up.”
“What now?” Isaac whimpers, clearly expecting to see WW1 fighter planes from Kiddie Carnival’s plane ride, or an invasion of UFOs from the simulator ride, or some such.
The full moon, which rarely falls at the end of October, is a massive, orange jack o’lantern, its yellow gaze surveying the chaos bellow with a mirthful grin. It isn’t a color projection, it’s like the moon turned into a pumpkin, and then someone carved it and placed a candle inside
“Well…that…is some nonsense right there…” Isaac mumbles.
