Dead Shift

Dead Shift
by
Bobby Derie

The bell sang and cadavers punched out as the moon started to rise, under the careful eyes of the union rep, and the next shift shuffled in. A few broke apart from the throng toward the parking lot or the bus stop, but most had a place close by the factory, and the streets were busy with the movement of a hundred bodies.

The bars on the street knew their business, and by a quarter ‘til the hour the old thing in the clean white shirt and crimson vest behind the pinewood bar had set out a line of shots for the first comers, straight formaldehyde with a little insecticide coating the glass. Rough tables filled up quickly as the corpses jammed the bar, and not more than twenty minutes after they’d been let loose, the old bones were resting and staring at the stage, waiting for the show to begin.

She was seventeen if a day when she died, but that was long enough ago she’d be legal now. Lips peeled back on a mouth of perfect teeth, hair bright and dry and shiny as a doll’s brushed too often, skin varnished to a pale olive brown that could pass for a tan under the stagelights. Strong thighs gripped the pole as she slid up and down, and the gents sat silent as a femur rasped against aluminum and heels clacked in a slow bump and grind, a flap of skin and muscle peeling back to reveal the grey-white of tailbone.

The crowd clapped politely as she finished her set, a tinkle of coins and a few loose bills of brown corporate scrip littered the stage. Enough to cover her stage fee, maybe, and a little more for herself. One set down a small stack of brown leaves himself, to pay his drinks, then rose to leave. The others stayed, no where else to go.

It was three miles and three sets of stairs to the apartment, an hour’s walk past the pharmacies and mortuarists, the furniture-makers who did a sideline in taxidermy. They did good business in the town, ever since the Union had pushed the Occupational Health Plan through. They even got dental. There were century-old shamblers now with ceramic teeth and patches of fresh silicone skin that might last fifty years or more, with care. The necromancer had been good about it, once he’d heard the argument. Preventative maintenance, an investment in the future.

The steps down to the crypt were clean, save for some graffiti. Resurrectionists, protesting the union mentality, the corruption. Another gang for the young ones that didn’t remember what things were like back in the old days—the clatter of bare heel-bones on the factory floor, pieces of workers caught in the machine and torn off, the terrible conditions—fire was the main thing, but there had been no thought to safety at all. He fumbled with the heavy key in the padlock, opened the gate, then threaded it back through behind him.

She was waiting there for him, still sitting up in her chair as always, little more than a brown skeleton in a floral print dress. He sat down in the adjoining chair, and clasped her hand in his, dry mummified palms one against the other, not too tight lest something brittle should crack and break.

They sat there for a long while, hand in hand, until it was time for his shift again.

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I Can't Talk To My Son

I Can’t Talk To My Son
by
Bobby Derie

“Leth? Daddy needs you to come out now.”

The boy scuttled farther into the nest he’d made in the wall. Merle saw himself reflected dozens of times in the vast compound eyes. His son chittered, mandibles gnawing at a piece of wood.

It had started out as a large crack at the base of the wall. Another security deposit gone, a sleepless four-hour night worried about asbestos; another a week later about support beams when he found the boy crawling into it.

Merle set a plate with a sandwich and a pile of oreos on it in front of the hole, just out of reach. Watched a skinny limb extend out of the damaged stucco, shiny yellow chitin in a threadbare skeleton hoodie, listened to the plate scrape its way along the floor. He could just barely make out the curly black hairs on the back of the claw-like hand, just like his.

Merle sat down by the wall and listened to the clicking as his son ate.

**

“Mr. Gwynne, your child has special needs.”

The desk was practical, weatherbeaten, scarred by decades of hard service and the merciless attention of students. So was the man that sat behind it, with his Marine Corps haircut, the dark low-slung pouches beneath his eyes, muscles going to fat. The whole office, taken as a whole, felt cheap. Bargain-basement furniture for a bargain-basement man, a half-decent NCO playing at being an officer, a state college boy who hadn’t even managed to find a calling as an educator, and ended up an administrator.

“It’s not an uncommon problem. According to the aptitude tests, Leth is as bright as other children in his age group. He simply has trouble communicating and socializing with the other children.”

There was a file on the desk, but neither man moved to open it. Incidents in the lunch hall. Complaints from other parents. Teachers. Skipping class. Failure to obey class room rules. Then, the thing with the girl. Merle’s fist tightened on the arm of the chair. They’d handcuffed the boy, called him at work.

“There’s a program we’d like to move him to, for children like your son. I think he will do well there. More one-on-one time, more interaction with his peers. The best thing for him.”

*

Merle felt his chest seize and cramp, like he’d just shat out his own heart and all the muscles were trying to keep pressure on the wound. Leth had bent the other girl over and was sticking his thing in her.

The man half leapt, half fell off the park bench, lurching in the direction of the two children pronging on the merry-go-round. A strong arm with long nails caught his shoulder, dug in.

“Wait. Let them finish.”

Merle stared back at his own open-mouthed reflection in her black wrap-around mirrored glasses. Something registered dark skin spotted with black across the cheeks, hair in cornrows, no lipstick.

“It’s what they do. He’s not hurting her. They’re too young, just doing what comes natural. Look.”

An imperative finger, drawn to the spot where his boy’s jeans had fallen to the backs of his hindlimbs, the girl’s dress drawn up to expose an opening in her thorax where Leth was busily plunging the pale spike of his aedeagus.

“There are spikes on that thing. You can’t see it, but if you had pulled them apart you would have ripped her almost in two.”

Merle stood up, muscles no longer racing, chest pounding, adrenalin shakes coming on. The woman reached into a purse, took out a clear plastic spritzer bottle from the dollar store, and handed it to him.

“Here. Orange water. You can use it to discipline him, if you have to. They don’t like the taste, or the smell. That’s how they talk to each other, with smells, and body language. You’ll see it when they meet, how they rub up against each other. When they dance, that’s how they teach each other.”

Merle stood there, staring past the woman, back at the kids. Another pair of kids had come up next to them, jeans barely slung over their thoraxes, began rubbing their fuzzy cheeks against the other two.

“You need to learn how to talk to your kids.”

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The Heart of Zeus

The Heart of Zeus
by
Bobby Derie

Ganymede carried the smell of ozone and animal musk with him always, the union of celestial and terrestrial scents, like the skin of a new born babe left out in a thunderstorm. The chambers of Zeus were thick with the smell, mired in the god’s clothing past any lye to wash away, and in the sheets of the bed they shared. The smell marked him, and all the gods recognized it. Most gave the cupbearer a wide berth, eyes elsewhere; newcomers were often confused and sometimes jealous of it at first, especially Zeus’ paramours, at least until they learned better. Only Hera and Vesta, of them all, were kind to the slender youth, and for their own reasons.

The sister-wife of the lightning-bearer had, perhaps, more reason than most to hate Ganymede if she so chose. By those rights and customs that the gods had set for people, and yet continually failed to live up to themselves, hers was the only bed that her brother-husband should set in each night, and rise from to greet the light of Apollo each morning. Jealous Hera’s wrath and glory were well-respected among the gods, her revenge already legend among all peoples, but the frail cupbearer did not cringe or drag in her presence, his eyes displayed no guilt or pride when he met her gaze. Perhaps that saved him, for among all those of Olympus, Ganymede was the only one who understood something of what the queen of the gods felt when their shared king was down on earth, plowing some shepherd-girl to slake a momentary lust. Both would wait for their lover to return.

Zeus himself was not shameless in these affairs, though few save Hera would ever grief him of it. Often it would come on the king of gods like a quickening storm, an explosion of passion that was impossible to contain, and when it came upon him anything or anyone within his sight could be a target. It was never clear to Ganymede if Zeus ever even took pleasure from these acts, for he never remained when his ardor was spent. Then he would come back to his chambers—not the high throne in the meeting chamber of the gods, where Vesta cared for the hearth, but alone in his chambers that smelled of lightning and musk, to stare into the darkness. Ganymede would fill the bowl then, without water, and bring it for Zeus to drink deep as he mulled the terrible venal appetite that ruled the ruler of the skies.

Sometimes a rage would build against himself, and Zeus would shatter the cup; and Ganymede would bring another. Sometimes the god sat in silence to brood, and sometimes to whisper hoarsely the dark things he had done, the carnal horrors inflicted on some princess or peasant or she-goat, the fantastic and perverse shifts in form and demeanor that would come across him. Sometimes there was nothing left at all, the momentary lover destroyed as by a thunderbolt. Ganymede would wait on the king of the gods during these accounts, and sometimes let a hand fall to stroke the god’s hand or knee, for the recount could sometimes inspire an echo of that original passion in both of them.

Yes, it would have been understandable if Hera had hated Ganymede, that Zeus should prefer to pry his alabaster buttocks apart instead of hers, and to spit the mortal boy and make love to him with greater care than his own sister-wife. Yet Hera of all the gods knew that the heart of Zeus belonged to the young boy, not just to slake himself between the cupbearer’s thighs or in his mouth or with his soft hands, but with the guileless youth that accepted him. However far Zeus might spread his seed, and all the bastard children he would spawn, however much Zeus may love his sister-wife, the god of gods would always return to Ganymede—and Ganymede, in turn, was always faithful, standing there in his turn and waiting to serve him.

###

The Baseball Tree

The Baseball Tree
by
Bobby Derie

The sky was clear and empty and vast, so that a kid looking up at it too long might feel they might trip and make the long fall into the sun. There was a warm, slow breeze from the south that played at the daffodils and the long green grass, and the dirt on the worn diamond was packed from a hundred stolen bases. Jayl and Mars brought their catcher’s mitts, and Gossel brought his bat, a black-painted aluminum slugger that had tape around the handle because otherwise it got too hot during the final innings. The others from the neighborhood gaggled three or four at a time, and Boss and Meyle set to picking teams. Ttom climbed the tree to pick a baseball.

Empty white shells littered the ground around the tree, cast-off fruit picked clean by birds and squirrels. The low-hanging balls didn’t get as much sun, and weren’t ripe yet—spheres as big as softballs, a little flattened at the end, the skin not quite thick enough to take a hit. Sometimes they’d play with unripe balls, just to see them splatter and unspool when someone hit them too hard, but for a fun game you needed a ripe one—something that would last the whole nine innings. So Ttom scaled the thick papery trunk, which you could peel off if you wanted to, though Ttom’s mother said it was bad for the tree, and clambered through the waxy oval leaves, grasping at the hanging fruit, checking the seams to see if they were ripe enough. Finally, he found a good one—small and tight enough to fit in one hand, solid enough that it didn’t give much when he squeezed it hard. With a twist, Ttom broke it off the green wood of the stem, and scurried back down the tree to where the teams were waiting.

Going into the fourth, the runners were hot and sweaty and Meyle’s Marauders were picking at the tiny clover flowers while waiting their turn at bat. Emmen was up, the tallest boy and usually the first or second pick, and when he picked up the black slugger all eyes turned to the action. Boss herself was on the pitch, thin as a bag of sticks and second tallest after Emmen himself; she wound up licky-split and through her whole body into it, so the last most saw of the ball was when it left her fingertips—and then heard the echoing CRACK! and Emmen’s quiet grunt, saw the leathery white skin flutter down, and watch the tiny brown sphere fly off over the fence while Jayl sat in the outfield, one tiny fist buried in his giant leather mitt. The runners took their bases, the score was 4-2, and Ttom scurried up the tree to fetch another baseball.

The grand slam landed a couple yards past the fence, and rolled another yard or two more, into a patch of bare earth near what might have been a natural creek, but now was a rain-gullied trough fed by the runoff of a dozen parking lots and dry most of the summer months, save for a few stagnant pools. A rain would come the next night, and the ground would be soft and wet. In time the springy brown inner shell would uncoil and send forth a pale white taproot, and a quivering thin green stem with a couple waxy green leaves. In a dozen summers, maybe, children would clamber up the baseball tree, to harvest a ripe fruit for their game.

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The Collector of Cantrips

The Collector of Cantrips
by
Bobby Derie

On an antique road my footsteps fell in with a scholar of small things. We were fast for a while on our common journey, speaking of his strange study and distant travels to collect trifles of little interest, save to others in his field. Yet I found an inherent merit in his work, and would wait when he would stop for a while to speak with the petty sorcerers outside the walls of Hurn, in their own degraded pidgin, taking copious notes of their everyday miracles, and thanked them before we went farther on our way.

Perhaps I learned as much of the history of magic in those days as a student in one of the great universities, though our lecture-halls were but the campfire, the wayside tavern, and the vast empty steppe on that ancient beaten track. There were strange genealogies of spells, scraps of lore that the fist true Men had sweated and pored over, then cast aside and forgot as their studies progressed, ‘til even the apprentices were not raised up on them. He spoke, in that high-pitched voice with soft inflections, of the seven languages of magic as we know them today—and how they developed from still older tongues, and were refined and begged and borrowed from one another, were refined, codified, diverged, and forgotten, recovered, remade, until finally written down—and even that, the study of the history of written magic, was a discipline in itself.

We paused outside the village of Yall, with its strange blue oxen, so he could copy the scraps of half-remembered nursery glamers from a diary of soft brown paper, and in the evening he drank deep on koumiss and entertained us all with a history of the grammery of fire—starting in the modern day and working back, age by age and cantrip by cantrip, reading from his notes each spell on the kindling of flame. The dried ox-turds burned colors none in Yall had ever seen, and before the night was half spent impish elementals and sluggish salamanders danced amid the coals with Melunusian demons from the nearest and least fearsome hells, bound by strange circles and a curious sign scrawled in the dusk.

One overcast day, the wind howled, and feet weary and bleeding and throats dry, we kept the silence a while. My thoughts did not stray too far, however, as I considered my companion of the road. I knew, as all men must, of the high sorcery of the great spiral towers, and could recognize the whispered names of those terrible potent thaumaturges. Less well known but perhaps more rumored were the night-shrouded necromancers in the government catacombs, whose work was vital to the defense of nations and states, and who set their grim faces to control the invisible fires and unleash them against great enemies. In my own life I had engaged the artisan-magicians, not archwizards but skilled and knowledgeable at their tasks, whose practical magick was such a part of life.

Yet I decided to myself I could not judge the collector of cantrips on his chosen profession, and when at last our roads forked, I offered him my hand in friendship and health. In his turn he offered me an antique blessing, calling on the names of five small and forgotten gods.

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