The Fairy Duel

The Fairy Duel
by
Bobby Derie

William Boyd Morgan and Jonathan Livermore Green had been too close of friends, else they would never have come to blows. They had been students together at Oxford, and after members of the same club in London. In the summers Morgan and his sister Catherine would visit Baddon Hall in the north of England, the ancient seat of the Greens from before the Conquest, and in the winters Green would come south to the isle-keep of Sealachia, where the Morgans had always made their home. At university the two men had discovered a mutual love of fairy-lore, and this formed the basis for their mutual appreciation; twice each year on their visits they would regale each other and Catherine with the stories and superstitions they had gathered, from nurses and old men and women in the country, and every Christmas Eve the three would stay up until the first church-bell’s rang, telling the hoary old ghost-stories, each more ancient than the last.

Perhaps if Catherine had been more pretty, or the Morgans more rich, and she had as many gentlemen admirers as her friends her eye would never have fallen on Jack Green. Perhaps if Green had more time for the society of London he would have found a wife, and the whole debacle could have been avoided. Perhaps again if William had been more aware of his sister and his friend, he could have put a stop to it before it came as far as it did, until one day two weeks before Christmas she announced herself with child and without a ring, and Jack Green could only stare at the floor before his outraged friend and offer to do the gentlemanly thing. Had it been any other man that stood before him, perhaps William Morgan might have accepted. Yet he had trusted and loved Jack Green as no other equal in the whole of England or the world beyond it, so he threw down the ancient gauntlet.

“You may have my sister only over my own blood!”

Jack nodded. They arranged terms—the courtyard of Sealachia, on Christmas Eve in two weeks time. Their secretaries, Gull and Swanson, would act as seconds. As for weapons, Green stared Morgan in the eye and said only.

“Charm swords.”

And they were agreed. Catherine only looked on with tears, before her brother not unkindly ordered her into the house, for the health of herself and her child.

Now for a week William Morgan shut himself up in his library, poring over every bit of fairy-lore he knew. There were many tales of fairy-blessed blades, from all across the length and breadth of England, but he knew well that all he knew he had shared with his friend. This then was a duel of wits and daring and wisdom as much as martial skill. In three days in study, Morgan knew as much about charming a sword as any man in England had every known; in six he had surpassed them all, and cracked the leather of books his grandfathers had written in spidery Latin three centuries gone. On the seventh day he went forth in his coach and returned with what, for two hundred guineas, was proclaimed the best yard of Toledo steel that could be found in all of London.

The hall was locked, that week before Christmas. The circle was drawn, the milk and meat laid out on the table in cups and plates of old Roman silver. With care and precision did William speak the words. From the shadows, as though he had waited there all along, strode the fairy. There was a crown of ice upon his brow that did not melt, set with crystals of adamant, and hair as pale and fine as spidersilk fell wild down upon his shoulders and to the small of his back. The dark cloak was gathered at the shoulder in a curious amulet of ancient gold, and at his side hung an empty scabbard. A price was named, and promised. The blade was drawn forth, just an inch, and that pale finger with a nail like a dark talon crossed the blade, steaming slightly where it touched the metal. Then he unsheathed the blade, and took forth from a pouch a small dark stone studded with diamonds, and ran the whetstone down each edge, letting fall a hair-like peel of watered steel to fall to the floor. The bargain done, the elf-king supped up the meat in one bite, drained the goblet, and stepped back beneath the world.

For the remaining week, William Morgan practiced day and night with the fencing masters. He did not use his charmed sword, for he still knew not what Jack Green might bring. Better he thought to improve his own skill and strength, so that coupled with the might of his blade he might avenge the betrayal of his own flesh and blood.

On Christmas Eve, the carriage arrived from Baddon Hall, and Swanson stepped forth to open the door for his master. William was there to receive him, flanked by Catherine and Gull. Green stepped forth with a pair of gaily wrapped presents in his hand. Seeing Morgan’s face, Green handed these to Swanson, who in turn presented them to Gull. Then Jack Green brought forth a long yellow wooden box from the carriage, and the driver struggled to hold the horses.

They went directly to the courtyard, where preparations had been made. A short table had been set out, with the Toledo blade set upon it, as well as goblets and a bottle of wine. The family physician attended, an old surgeon with sad eyes beneath shaggy white brows that had grown back after the first had been lost in a burst of cannon-fire in his youth. So too there was a priest, not an honest vicar or rector but a member of some older sect that nervously caressed the knotwork cross upon his breast.

The gentlemen took off their coats. Jack rolled up his sleeves to the elbow and removed his tie; William tightened his cuffs and tucked in his cravat. Gull withdrew the charm sword from its sheath, which he left on the table. Catherine near to wept at the sight, and the priest blanched a little, but the physician only raised one shaggy eyebrow and opened up the bag at his feet, layout out needles, thread, and bandages. Jack Green opened the box. The inside was lined with rabbit-fur, and on it lay a curious and ancient construction—a blade of flint with chipped edges and a crooked spike for a point, the hilt a looped cross of bronze, wood, and leather. William Morgan stroked his beard and looked hard at his erstwhile friend, then grunted.

The seconds came forward, examined the blades. First blood was shed by each man, testing point and edge, and the doctor smiled and handed forth red handkerchiefs and a small bottle of spirits. Satisfied, each man took his own blade, and took up a position some three arm’s lengths from each other.

No one came forward to ask if the parties could be reconciled.

Morgan advanced first to engage, and followed with a lunge. Green beat the steel aside with the flat of the flint blade, tried a cut. Almost of its own, the steel leapt in Morgan’s hand to parry, and he remembered to pull up his rear leg, bringing the sword back up en garde. There was the whisper of flint on steel and the sword felt warm in his hand, his pulse pounding in his temples. Green tried again, a downward slash at Morgan’s inside, attempting to insist through Green’s defense with the heavier blade. Again, Morgan parried, felt the blade grow hot under his hand, but it held. Morgan took a step back, and did not smile. Whatever enchantment was laid on the strange blade Green held was at least the equal of his own, but the archaic form of the weapon was against his opponent; heavy and slow, intended mainly to cut.

Green adjusted his grip to two hands, then advanced with a diagonal slash. Morgan made to parry the heavy blow, felt the white heat shoot up his arm as he deflected the blade, then moved into a circular cut that left a crimson stain spreading on the outside of Green’s right shoulder. The northerner shuddered as if elf-shot, retreated a step, then raised his blade once more. They circled for a moment, the blade slowly cooling in Morgan’s hand. He wondered then at the empty scabbard the elf-king bore, and wondered more at the audacity of Jack Green. They moved again to engage.

Jack changed hands again, moving it to his left hand, and raised the flint blade to shoulder level. A thrust point-in-line, the wicked point moving at Morgan’s heart, and William was well prepared for it, moved again to parry the flint blade aside, but Jack surprised him, sliding the flint down across the steel and stepping forward bringing them into a clinch. William Morgan felt a prick at his throat, right beneath the beard, and Catherine screamed. He glanced down to see a small bronze dagger in Jack’s right hand—what he had taken for a decoration on the flint sword, not a concealed weapon.

“Yield…brother-in-law.” Jack Green said.

The blades lowered. The doctor sat Jack down to sew his shoulder, and Gull poured the wine while Swanson made the arrangements with the priest—a Christmas wedding, in the chapel. Undo haste, perhaps, or long past due. The two men sat as friends again, admiring of each other’s weapons and techniques, and Catherine clutched at both of them.

“But tell me.” said Morgan. “What did you offer the elf-king for the use of his blade?”

The happiness died from Green’s eyes.

“My unborn, firstborn son, and a changeling to raise as my own.”

Now it was Morgan’s turn to look unhappy, and he groaned.

“I too made that promise. Catherine’s boychild for the charm on the sword, and an elf child to foster.”

Catherine made a sound in the back of her throat, and reached to finish off her soon-to-be-husband’s goblet of wine.

“You both should have asked me first. The child in my belly’s a girl. Though from the sound of it,” she set down the goblet and reached for her brother’s “we may be in for triplets.”

###

Ipsissimus

Ipsissimus
by
Bobby Derie

The magus woke from the crow of the black pullet and greeted the sun, with silent and spoken prayers, as he moved through the positions of his exercise, shifting consciousness to the waking dream. In the yard the cockerel dipped his head to peck at the scattered corn and grubs along with his harem, and the magus busied himself turning over eggs, divined a small future, then selected three and returned to the house. Out of long habit the steps were counted and the numerological significance considered against the forces of the moment—the position of the stars and planets, the day of the week, the hour. Each combination favored certain elements and operations, and set the schedule for the day.

He stepped over a line of salt which he had laid before the threshold, and entered a living library of the Art. A dozen editions of Lévi filled one shelf, propped up by a Tibetan kapala filled with dragon bone and amber, similar artifacts and amulets hanging from pegs and filled up odd corners of each room and hallway he passed through, topping neat piles of books that would not fit on shelves.

The kitchen, by contrast, was relatively bare. Alchemical operations were best carried out in the laboratory, and there were better sources of fire than the gas stove, sharper knives than those suited for cheese or fruit, and a much more impressive collection of herbs and spices in other rooms. The larder and pantry held but scant provisions, suitable for when the hours and days required he break a fast or pursue a particular diet for a week or a moon, and he cared not if he supped from chipped cups and cracked plates from spoons and forks where the silver finish had long worn off. The only remnant of the occult here was a book on cooking-magic, a gift from a scarlet woman who had known him in ignorance; silly crap, he had kept it as a memory of her innocence.

He cracked the eggs into a cold pan, and looked at the blood swirl in the yellow yolks. Forces would move against him, on different planes. Enemies from younger, less enlightened days, before he had left the scene and apprentices and groupies behind. The magus knew this, as he stared at the bloody yolks, and in the act of perception already he mouthed the words and made the signs of the counter-forces he aligned to disperse and direct their energies in better directions. Once, he knew, he would have crushed them, but he was wiser now, or at least more long-sighted. To blast and break them would but secure and enhance a reputation, to draw more acolytes, more followers again to pester and plague him. There had been enough trouble after he published the book…

The blood continued to swirl, and the white thickened and bubbled slightly in the cold pan. The magus frowned, murmuring again by instinct, invoking the names of a few secret angels and spirits. His will felt like a living thing within him, and the human body it was attached to a mere puppet, performing the necessary motions as he pushed his senses outwards, to grasp the shape of the thing whose omen was manifest before him.

The third eye opened, the magus-self looked on the shape of the future, as he had never done before. A cosmic chessboard laid out over the solar system, with dead gods clustered on thrones on the planets, attended by their courts of spirits, and in the blackness between and beyond more subtle and dangerous players. It was a living contest where powers and forces were played out and balanced against each other by knowledge and foresight, where a gambit might take a century to play out. There were many-winged angels and burning chariot wheels hanging there, and all eyes were on him. The magus felt the board shift, the many plans and intrigues of the spirit courts alter as a new element entered their equations.

The will burned within the magus, which seemed so distant a part of him. Knowledge filtered through, as though from sleep. That part of him which had acted, on foresight, making moves to counter moves against his self, had broached into their domain. Before he had been a caller and summoner of those spirits, a visitor in their courts—a tool, perhaps, or a board piece. Now they recognized him as a player, able to operate on their level. He felt part of himself accept.

The blood in the pan darkened and curled in on itself—a shadow-picture of a man, and growing from his back a thing, like flower and caterpillar and fungus, a great dark bubbling mass. He watched it strain and stretch into a thing like a tree, a butterfly, a cloud of bloody lines against the egg-whites, held in place by a few thing strands of plasma. The man knew himself then, as the soil in which the magus had grown.

The separation was sudden. The last strands broke, and for a moment the image was clear: two entities, distinct. Man, magus no longer. Then the image faded, the meaning lost; a mess of cold eggs and cold blood, which he washed down the sink.

The man walked through a house that now felt too large and too small, ill-fitting, cluttered. His steps went uncounted, his breaths and heartbeats moved at their own pace. The signs and sigils meant nothing now, simply scraggly lines etched in wood and painted on plaster. He reached down to flip through a book, but failed to find meaning in the words. This was magic? A bunch of lines and numbers? How long had he spent on this? Years and years, he knew. A decade or more. How long did it take to master a skill? He returned to the kitchen, the one room uncluttered by occult kitsch and bric-a-brac.

The book on the top shelf caught his eye, and he fetched it down, blew off the dust. It was a gaudy thing in paperback with bright covers, a grinning black face over a sorcerer’s stew of gumbo in which pale phallic sausages swam. He cracked the cover, and began to read.

###

Scars of Your Love

Scars of Your Love
by
Bobby Derie

Breast forms tonight, just enough to give some shape to her dress. The familiar weight brought renewed confidence as Jill surveyed the crowd. She struck a pose at the end of the bar, letting her skirt fall open to the thigh, no panty lines. Hello girls. I’m back.

Meredith was trouble, damaged goods in a ripped tee and oh-so-tight black jeans, the bulge visible down her left pants leg. The elbow-length gloves didn’t quite hide the track marks, the brittle fingernails or the too-red gums when she laughed and smiled.

They found each other on the floor, eyes locked, slow-grinding against frenetic dubstep, an island of playing how close they could get without touching in the middle of a dancing, jostling ocean. Meredith took the lead, pulled her in for a dip and a kiss, half-closed eyes gone wide as she felt Jill’s hand press into the dildo, then half-closed again.

No tongue this time. Just lips locked, Jill breathing in as though she would suck the life from her. Meredith hardly noticed when the hair came off in her hand, black strands touching the floor. The music flowed into a different piece, something goa, blue lights turned red and the crowd shifted. They fought their way to the edge of the floor, holding hands.

Jill’s place; Meredith didn’t have one. A war of copping feels in the taxi, giving the Pakistanti driver an eyeful and an earful. Meredith’s hands went straight for the tits, Jill grabbed her wrists and pulled her into a kiss, Meredith’s tongue slipping out of the side of her mouth, down her neck to the hollow of her collarbone, leaving a trail of hickies and lovebites. Jill wrapped her leg around Meredith’s right leg, grinding against a knee.

They disentangled themselves enough to get up the stairs. Meredith was biting her lip as Jill fumbled with the door.

The apartment smelled of wood, dry and a bit sweet. Everything was handmade, purposeful, iconic crudeness: bedframe, bookshelves, table, desk, and chairs, all two-by-fours and galvanized nails, cut and sanded but left unvarnished, unpainted. A termite’s heaven, if they came this far north. On the wall, a collection of hammers. Above the bed, a painting of a hammer.

The questions Meredith might have asked died when Jill’s hand found her waist, reaching around to unzip her, lips kissing the top of her spine. The strap-on popped out and Jill stroked it for her, whispering something as they staggered towards the bed.

Meredith, turned suddenly, her cock slapping Jill in the hip, grabbed and tossed Jill onto her bed, then crawled up on her knees, looming over Jill, eyes seeking eyes. She watched Jill blush as her hands found the straps on the dress, pulled it down. Jill turned away, cheeks burning. Her tits were a mess, off-kilter and the left one sliding into her armpit. Meredith made a purring growl in her throat as she pulled them off, felt them jiggle as she laid them aside, then her eyes went wide.

“Wow.”

A band of bright painted flesh, a flowing landscape playing over the purple-pink scars. Abstract lines, fading one into the other, dizzying hints of flowers, rays, skulls, and strange, cancerous growths. Jill’s cheeks still burned, but she moved her hips a little, grinding into the plastic dick, and Meredith dipped her tongue down to explore, playing over the scars, tasting her.

Jill grabbed a hand, brought it to her lips, sucked on a thumb as she rolled down the sleeve. Pale lines and banded flesh there, striated railroad tracks running from elbow to wrist. Most were old, some looked fresh. Her lips moved down to the wrist, nibbled a bit there, kept exploring. It was a game then, looking each other over, tasting this, feeling that, seeing who would give in to the burning need first, and how.

Jill nibbled on her cock, leaving teethmarks. Meredith flipped her over onto her stomach, admiring how the tattoo reached all away around her back, traced the fine lines. Then she reached for a hammer curiously near the bed, playing the smooth rubbergrip handle over the crack of Jill’s ass.

It wasn’t a full night. Two hours left them exhausted, half-naked, sheets drenched. Meredith was in the bathroom, rummaging for pills, probably stealing one of Jill’s shirts. Jill laid up against the backboard, a tit in either hand, weighing them and watching the breast forms jiggle a bit before she put them away. She ran a hand through her hair, thin and weak and soft but growing out again. Smiled when she heard Meredith discover the shower attachments.

I’m back.

###

Maggot-ridden

Maggot-ridden
by
Bobby Derie

It was late evening on a warm summer day, with the wind from the sea taking the heat off the long-hanging sun as John Magnus and his boy came to Carradin, along the coast road with the Irish Sea on his right hand, which had been built up over the years so that on the right the grassy slope went quickly to the rocks and sand and tall grasses of the beach, and on the left darker grasses ran down to a briny mere, where the tall stumps of a drowned forest stood up for a way.

Before the village on the left-hand side of the road was a bulluan stone, a mossy thing with a cup-shaped hole worn in it from some long ago, and John Magnus stopped to give a lesson and a lecture about their history and their use. The boy for his part stood at attention and gave his most attentive ear as he soaked up the little bits of lore, despite the way he shifted his feet from one to the other, and grasped the heavy pack on his back by the straps that were cutting into his shoulders.

Yet as the cunning man knelt down and stooped a finger toward that bowl of stone, he froze for a moment and peered closer, frowning, great shaggy brows twisting together. The rim of the bowl was green-black with moss, but the still water was coated by a scum of dead flies. The cunning man stood up to his full height then, and looked around as best he could as afternoon gave way to evening, and it seemed to the boy he looked for an awful long time out in the mere, and the way he glowered the boy thought perhaps he did not like what he saw there. Yet John Magnus said not a word more about it, and they carried on into the village of Carradin.

The streets were dirt, but some soul or old English lord had put up slabs of stone as sidewalks along the one and only street, and there was a public house whose sign was the dubh dael, and John Magnus stopped there and frowned at that, but after a few moments entered in, the boy at his heels. There was a bed to be had, cool ale from the cask, and good bread from the morning and warm fish from the evening, and so money changed hands and the travelers availed themselves of the hospitality, though the boy noted that John Magnus did not take off his boots or cloak, and kept the long dagger at his left side as they sat in the common room and ate.

The meal took perhaps an hour, with John Magnus and the boy relating the news and receiving the gossip, and then as he loaded his little clay pipe with willow-bark there was a disturbance outside—the cries and shrieks of a woman and a girl. The boy saw that the cunning man did not quite smile, but placed the unlit pipe in a pocket, and stood up with hat in hand to see the fuss.

The corpse had collapsed in the middle of the street. At first the boy thought its shirt was untucked, but as he peered closer in the dying light he saw that the thing had no shirt, but that the belly had swollen and stretched the skin, and then burst forth, giving birth to a heap of crawling white maggots. Across the street, a woman was in a faint on the sidewalk stone, a young girl of five or six wailing after her. John Magnus saw the boy inch closer and smiled, then called for a fire and water, and removing the long bladed knife he slipped the flat of the blade under one shoulder and flipped it over. A swarm of black flies shot up from the belly wound, and clustered thick around the mouth and eyes. The innkeeper arrived with a full bucket, and behind him his sun with a torch, and John sheathed his knife and took it from him, pouring the contents slowly and carefully on the face so that the drowning flies left it.

“Who knows this man?” he said aloud, for a small crowd had come out, and now the dead man’s features were clear to see. No-one answered right away, so he asked again. “Come, this must be friend or kin to someone here, he did not walk from far away.”

There was a murmur then, and one stepped forward and said as it was Thomas Rourke, dead these last three days. Then there was a burble of something in the crowd, and the boy caught certain names and prayers against Beelzebub and his minions, and crossed himself.

“There is cunning here,” John Magnus said “and I think if this is the first of the maggot-ridden you have seen, it will not be the last unless it is put out.”

That too caused a stir in the crowd, and the hazy trail of rumors and recollections came crowding in. The cunning man held up a hand, and directed everyone into the inn for safety and conversation, but from his belt he took a small leather satchel and handed it to the boy, and directed the innkeeper’s son with the torch to stay and do as he said.

Now the innkeeper’s son was full fourteen or so, and the boy could not have been more than eleven, and one would not likely have taken orders easily from the other. Yet the boy moved with a purpose as he opened the satchel and took out the little brown bottle, carefully pulling the stopper with his teeth to not spill a drop or breath in the fumes, and began pouring it over the corpse, aiming for the wounds where the flies and maggots poured out. Then he called the innkeeper’s son closer and touched the torch to it, and the liquid caught and began to burn with a livid blue and then orange, sending up foul smoke that caused the innkeeper’s son to fall back. Yet the boy stayed near the corpse-fire for a long while, though his eyes stung and the tears ran, to crush and burn any maggot that tried to wiggle free from the holocaust.

Perhaps a few hours passed; he had called to the innkeeper’s son for wood when the oil ran low, and those first faggots were now red-limned blackened coals when John Magnus came out. The cunning man kicked at the fire and a few more maggots spilled out over his boot, but they were crispy and curled. He nodded at the boy.

“Well done. There is another here, whose taste goes to revenants and nigrimancy, though if this is all his art there is not much to fear, and I must go to meet him.”

The boy looked a question at the inn, but John Magnus shook his head, so they started out back the road they had come, just as they were. Going south on that road they came to a little trail that the boy had not seen before, and followed it down to the very edge of the salty meer, and in the depths of which tiny balls of blue flame seemed to hover over still waters. John Magnus took a few herbs and bottles of oil from his belt, and crushed and rubbed them into his skin, around the neck and face and wrists, then turned and did the same to the boy—who grimaced at the foul naptha-smell, but said nothing as the big hands massaged it into his flesh. So prepared, they set off into the meer.

Along the way the cunning man told a story, half to the boy and half to himself, of the witches Llanddona—three women with Irish accents who had washed up in a boat on the shores of Wales, and by their powers were permitted to settle outside the town, and by their malice caused much disagreement and trouble by the black flies they kept clutched to their bosoms, and released on their foes… “Now the Order of the Fly has not always had strength in Ireland, nor was it ever very much widespread, for those who practice it are not apt to share much. I wonder now what relation our man is to them—father, or uncle, perhaps?—but I doubt not that is of their kind, though perhaps about a darker business.”

It was a slippery and crooked trail, and the air was alive with black flies big and small, and here and there were offerings of game and fowl strung up, cut open, and left to hang and rot, so that the flies clustered close and thick on them like a living carpet. It was dark now, and the moon hid its face behind a cloud, with only the north star bright and clear enough to guide by, so it seemed they headed south and then west, before they came to a rude hut with windows of greasy parchment, which glowed dully like the orange eyes of some sunken giant of old. Overhead, the boy could make out black swarms of flies like evil clouds, moving in strange coordination.

There were two women standing outside in dresses of soiled sack-cloth that were mere tatters, so that their saggy breasts were naked to the air, and their hairy gashes as well. Those two females shivered in their movements, and at each step trembling maggots shook forth and fell on the ground from their cunts, to leave a slimy trail behind them. The boy looked up and could not see his master’s face in the dark, but heard the sound of the blade slide forth and could almost feel his smile. He spoke, this time once again in the tones of a lesson.

“Each man and woman is set a term in this life, and by love of god will fill it until struck down by accident, violence, or disease. Yet I’ve told you all life is a cycle, and not all is neat as all that, aye? These ones here were only two, perhaps three hours dead when he let his flies upon them, and in a day or three were up and shambling, driven by the worms that slowly consume them. There is no thought in those brains, they feel no pain nor recognize sight or sound, but only movement is granted them.”

He leaped forth then, and despite what he had said the two swung at him, though a little slow, and his blade sliced up from crotch to sternum of one so purple guts and inch-long pale white wiggling worms fell upon the ground, and then danced away and did the same to the next. The women-things staggered and collapsed as the maggots fell away from their hosts, and lay on the ground, arms and legs still spasming and twitching.

“They cannot be killed—destroyed, yes, with fire, or dismembered, but it is the worms that drive them.”

Cleaning his blade against a patch of clean dirt, but not bothering to sheath it, John Magnus strode up to the house, the boy close behind.

It was small but surprising uncluttered, clean save for vast trails of fly-speck, and there were shelves of bottles and aliments, mortar and pestle, a crumbling bundle of pages that might once have been a book, and a small table or work bench with a tin plate filled with blood and raw meat, on which the flies swarmed. There was a fire there, and a stool beside it, and on the stool an old man sat more ancient than any the boy had ever seen, so bent and grey and hairy was he, and naked to the waist before the fire. There was an evil wound along his scalp, and the edges were swollen red and shot with veins of black; the silvery hair had almost all fallen away, and in places the boy would have sworn that yellow bone poked through.

John Magnus could not stand at his full height in the house without his head knocking the ceiling, but he sketched a nod and introduced himself.

“I saw you on the road,” the old man burbled. “I knew then, you might be trouble. So I sent him, just as a warning.”

“You would have done better to leave me sleep. I might have left in the morning.”

The old man turned and gave a ghastly, broken smile. His face was marred by some ancient punishment, the nose merely a gaping hole above the scarred lips and crooked lips.

“No you wouldn’t.” the fly doctor said.

“No I wouldn’t.” the cunning man agreed.

“My hussies?” he asked.

“You’ll take no more pleasure from them. If that was the limit of your skills and ambition, I think you’d have been better sticking it in living women.”

The old man shrugged. “Experiments for my science. They served their purpose, and then they served another.”

“Your science is at an end. Give up now, and I’ll make it quick.”

The old man laughed at that, and the laugh turned into a choke, and John Magnus swore and pushed the boy out of the shack. A horrid buzzing filled his ears as the black, moving clouds above the hut seemed to descend upon it. John Magnus did not waste his breath, one hand clutching his cloak up around his mouth and nose as his dagger hand went to work on the old man. Yet the fragile figure seemed to almost vomit forth the black flies, and soon they covered everything.

The moon came out, and the boy stared back into the cabin. By the light of moon and fire he could see two figures crawling with flies locked in a death-struggle, and the buzzing of the great swarm took on a strange, half-hypnotic rhythm. Then at least John Magnus threw away his dagger and his cloak, and grabbed that old man’s head in both hands. He must have squeezed, for there was a terrible crack as the thin shell of the skull gave way, and a massive, pale fat grey maggot fell out onto the floor, the buzzing rising to a fever pitch—and then John Magnus’ boot fell down upon the squirming thing, and the synchronized buzz broke off to simple dissonant noise, and the swarm began to dissipate.

They burned the shack and all the contents, save for the book—which, as the cunning man said, might be worth something, then trudged back along the dark path toward the inn, where beer and baths were waiting.

The boy said nothing at first, then asked his question.

“He was old, and sought a way out of his failing flesh. The Order of the Fly are known for such regenerations—the maggot-ridden are but the first step in the path that leads to such transfigurations, though it is a terrible science, and full of risk. For the worm gnaws and gnaws, and the subject must have great faith or desperation to try it—for who knows if any of what they are will survive at all?” Leaving the boy to ponder that question, the cunning man ended the lesson.

###

Gone, Zo

Gone, Zo

by

Bobby Derie

The street sang to me, bare feet to concrete, calluses scraping off and growing hard again, and ever step let me hear the city’s song. On this corner, a sixteen-year old girl was raped by four Tans just coming into their teens. That was about three hours ago; the rain was washing her blood and the memory of her pain away, and I left bloody footprints on the skin of the city. I ran a hand over the bench at the bus stop, stirred up the ghosts of ancient orgasms, true love declared in quickies between stops, and felt like a voyeur with an ear to the door. The television in the shop window called to me, eldritch secrets from outside my headspace. I stopped to give it worship.

A forest of microphones stood up, odd stamens in the growth-cycle of the journalist creed. I imagined the women wet and ovulating, hoping some of the pollen being spread on the breeze would finds its way to them. Undoubtedly, someone would leave this press conference pregnant.

“Mr. President, would you like to comment on the wedding performed this morning at the White House?”

The old man smiled like your grandfather caught with a bit of porn on the way out of the bathroom, endearing and innocent as long as you didn’t think too hard about what just happened.

“It was a favor to a pair of very good friends of mine, the new Mr. and Mrs. Wylie-Smith. We have known each other for years and they’ve been diligent supporters for my campaign, so I agreed to host the ceremony.”

A babble and crush from the reporters, a thousand questions. One of them screamed to be heard about the others, waving her black phallus microphone taller than the rest.

“Is it true the bride was nude?”

I willed the universe to end, to flip the channel with my brain.

The rusty speakers announced Haagenti led Gaap in the polls by six points, the dollar was down, the Pandemonium Pitfiends were ahead by three field goals and sex desecrated cheerleaders, and the toilet chimed the hour as Jaxon Tremaine finally found his way back from the sole restroom to a seat at the bar, a perilous journey of six paces over three dead drunks and around a spittoon curling with sulfurous yellow smoke. The haggard shade behind the counter coaxed up the volume a notch as news from the front came in, laid a couple drops of liquid smoke in front of us, and disappeared. I waited until Jaxon had his shot before I pressed the square-cut barrel dig into his ribs. With the practiced ease of a stoolie, he slowly laid his empty hands on the bar.

“I got a couple dollars in my back pocket, and a sacrament. My soul belongs to Barbas.”

“Paulina Rigamenti.” I said.

“Vaxas’s clan, down-pit.”

“But you know her.”

“Not really. She’s from down pit. Likes to get a taste of what’s outside the Old Wall from time to time. That’s all.”

“Where is she?”

“Fuck, I dunno boss.”

I flipped the channel again, bored and angry at the television gods that spoke to me through their storefront oracle.

When the security people came down to the cubicle gulag, I froze. It wasn’t a question if they had found out something, it’s what they had found out—the copy of Tetris loaded in the spreadsheet file? The proxy browser that let my bypass the work firewall? The CD with all the freeware that was better than the crap they were paying thousands of dollars each year in licenses for?

“Ms. Nunez.” One of them said. “Your presence has been requested downstairs. We’ve been asked to escort you.”

It was a head, decapitated, rotting. There was a WXR jack installed at the back of its neck, the thin scars along the neck and jawbone suggested wires. I looked a question.

“We think it’s Russian.” Her boss said. “We need you to do an evaluation.”

Bile surged through me, and in a burst of static we returned to our regular scheduled program.

“…have been members of the Wiccan faith for many years.” The President explained. “It is traditional in the ceremonies of their particular coven that the bride and groom should be skyclad.”

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