Too Cold For Beer

Too Cold For Beer
by
Bobby Derie

It was too cold for beer.

Alice had the bright idea of keeping them in the salt water tank. As the temperature dropped, the cans had started to sting our fingers whenever we fetched them. Bernice was the first one to get frostbite, so we switched to gloves, and when Jazza sank our last one in the tank, Alice had come through again with a kind of hooked pole to fetch them out.

When it got cold enough that we had to break a rime of ice before we could fetch a brew from the depths, we started calling it ice fishing.

The outlines of people started to blur then, muffled in layer after layer of clothing, shapes only barely humanoid. Any exposed inch of skin was vulnerable. We had to strap heat-paks to our body, let the warm glow diffuse a little, and we were still cold. It was an act of will to undo a scarf, expose chapped and cracked lips for a minute to take a sip...even beer below freezing tasted warm in comparison to the air...and then it happened.

Bernice popped open a cold one, and it exploded in her hand. Her good hand, too. Instant expansion, liquid beer to beer ice. That little difference in pressure, the sudden expulsion of trapped gas and influx of cold outer air...that did it.

It was officially too cold for beer.

###

Starland

Starland
by
Bobby Derie

In west Texas, ride on into the sunset. Off of the roads, towards the distant mountains. Through the broken fence and out onto the range, where rattlers sleep and do not break the silence. Out into the Starland.

Overhead, the heavens stand in dark blue-black, and the moon hides her face, but the stars look down and burn so bright that you can pick up the trail. So long as you hold your breath you can see the shadows move between the scrub oak, strange shapes half-familiar in the eternal night.

The air grows cool and still about you, as the air in your lungs burns for release. There are names for the shadows - Apache and Tonkawa, Kiowa and Caddo - and stranger folk, with their clubs and spears bladed with glass, looking south.

Their eyes are not for you, riding by. Though you brush against their buckskins and buffalo-hides, feel the feathers scrape against your arms. Always they look back, from whence they came, and where they go again.

The eyes grow dim, darkness creeping around the edges, but the horse knows the way. On through the Starland to yesterday.

###

Blood in the Streets

Blood in the Streets
by
Bobby Derie

Bob the Knob was dead. There would be blood in the streets.

The witches of the Thirteenth Street Coven circled their cauldrons and sharpened their athames. On Rune Street, the warlocks put up their wards and oiled their tommyguns. Down by the docks, the Kraken Tong raised black flags, and lowered them to half mast. Ahead of the funeral, the Daughters of Mina cleaned out a mausoleum and installed fresh caskets. They were ready to go to the mattresses.

The cream of society did not arrive to see Bob the Knob's black casket lowered into the earth, but the scum of the darkworld came to pay their respects. The succubi and incubi the Knob had favored worked the edges of the crowd, lifting black skirts to comfort the bereaved at a discount—and no-one doubted its what Bob would have wanted. Each ex-wife stuck a silver pin into the skin over his heart, looking at his face for any sign, and more than one went away red-eyed when the corpse remained unmoved. They were not his widows, but they had shared something of his life, and now they shared something of his death, congregating a little and swapping old memories, little of the venom left for each other now.

A low priest served as master of ceremonies, a defrocked Dagonite who had bowed before any number of altars. Most of the crowd made their signs against the evil eye as the thin balding man with a friendly face made the opening invocation, only gently slurring the pronunciation of the Knob's patron deities.

The casket was barely lowered when the long white hearse swung past the grave...the window rolled down... No one knew who was the first to scream, but the word rang out shrill among the quiet graves.

"Hellfire!"

Don L'ambrusco melted down to his bones in the opening barrage, though no-one knew if he was the one they were after—the Knob's funeral was a target-rich environment. Yet this was a crowd that did not duck and cover when the infernal flames burst out and wilted the green grass and scorched the earth.

The wands came out, and pocket pistols. Curses pinged off the limo's wards, but the bullets cracked the unarmored glass, smudged the sigils, and struck into the darkness from where the hellfire had emerged. Some fool had failed to ward the tires, and the black rubber popped and shrank, the limo dipping precipitously, unable to speed off or steer. Blasts of lightning scraped along the weakened wards as the soldatos moved in for the kill, and the limo knocked over couple of tombstones and ended up crashing into a tree.

The driver tried to flee. She got about three steps before being hit by multiple curses. The thing that fell on the grass, squirming horribly, looked somewhere between a frog and a squirrel, twitching limbs clawing at the suit suddenly three sizes too big for it. One of the ogres stomped it flat, sometime later.

Blood rained from the sky, as the survivors turned on each other...but this was only the beginning.

Bob the Knob was dead, and the truce was broken.

Geasa

Geasa
by
Bobby Derie

"I lost it," he set the bottle down, a few red drops pooling in the bottom of the glass.


"The word. Sweet and musty and bitter and acid, that bites the tip of your tongue and rolls around the back of your mouth, the last sip of that home-brewed cherry cola, not yet tart or syrup-sticky, but thicker and floating..."


"Dregs," the voice called out from the seat behind him. A bald head was buried in a book, never looking up.


"Dregs," he savored the word, rolling it around in his mouth, lips curling up at the corners.


"Dregs," he took the last sip.


Through the window, the world rushed by, green blurs of leaves, dark shadows in between where the light did not reach.


"When I attained my majority," he spoke loud enough for the bald head to hear, "my mother took me to the druid, who laid on me four geasa: Never to take strong drink between dawn and noon, never to leave the toilet unflushed, never to buy a dog from a puppy-mill, and never to love a red-haired witch. I did well to abide by these restrictions for many years, and then I met Angua."


"Was she a natural redhead?" The book wavered an inch.


"Bright as spun copper, with grey eyes. Stormcrow eyes, I called them." He stared at the glass. "For her, I forsook much. Yet I received much in return. I laid aside the blessings I had been granted, the favors of spirits of wood and heath, the taste of heather ale between night and morning beneath the earth, the speech of mutts...I got a job."


The book was laid down now, and he saw the bald head belonged to a woman, bespectacled and somewhat gaunt, with an unhealthy pallor.


"It's what she wanted. Not for her the dark woods-between-the-worlds, the barrowdowns, to sit with old kings at midnight and speak of long-ago battles. Oh, we wandered amid field and graveyard when courting, but she wanted to settle down. I had an idea to set up my own forge...to make a go of it, making blades and things. It was good for a while...a long while, yes...we had good days."


One brow raised - there was no eyebrow on it. "The dog?"


"Yes. I was akin to strays, but she said that wouldn't do. It had to be a white dog, without a spot of black on him, with a pedigree. Stupid fucking animal. Inbred. Bowlegged and mad, could hardly breathe...and I paid for it! I had never paid for a dog in my life. They would wander up to me and I would take them home, but no more of that, she said. So it was." His voice was as bitter as the word he had lost. "And I could not hear them, after that. I think...I think that was what began to drive us apart."


"Not the toilet seat."


"Well now, that was something else again. Dinner party. She loved dinner parties. Invite all these assholes over...one of them broke the toilet. I couldn't flush it. I was actually more upset about it than she was, because of the geas...but it was too late. Far, far too late."


"Who did the leaving?"


"Myself," he stared into the glass at the admission. "Although perhaps we had both left, some time before, and our bodies had simply not gotten around to doing the physical act of separation yet." His gaze fell once more outside the window. "I don't wonder if I might not go back...after I've taken the long way round, about the earth, through damp forest and tall grass, over seas and mountains. For it is a hard geas, to not love a red-haired witch."

###



The Altar

The Altar
by
Bobby Derie



This is the altar of our sacrifice
To a host of invisible spirits that are ever voracious
And do not sleep.
- Jane Kampfer, Midnight Invocations (1889)



There was a dead space, out back of the print shop. One of those little places where construction leaves a bit too much room, and it gets paved over and around, closed in by walls. Empty, forgotten, away from the wind. Where a fine layer of dirt might settle in the cracks, and pale green weeds spring up if the weather is right. A good place to have a smoke, or a piss.



Benito laid his charge down by the altar. It wasn't much to look at, really: a handful of bricks, loosely stacked. A tin bowl full of white sand or ash, in which the corroded disks of old pennies were half-buried as offerings. It was set flush against a wall, and the wall itself was tagged with prayers, layered on top of each other night after night until they were almost indistinguishable.



Someday, Benito knew, the owners would take notice. That was how it went. There were no public spaces anymore - but there were absent landlords. The Ways could be practiced, if you were quick and quiet, not in grand cathedrals but in somber 2 AM benedictions, pouring out a cheap beer for the Others to have their sustenance.



When he was a child, Benito had the habit of building altars. Never temples, as such, or sanctums. It liked them to be open, wild. Places that could be found and used by others. Only lately, as the nights wore thin after a long shift, it hadn't been enough. Vandals found some, owners others. All his work, washed away. A deep need came into him, as he stared in the mirror at his thinning hair and growing gut, to leave something behind...a scar on the world...a foundation to build on...to not just build an altar, but to sanctify it.



The charge wiggled, muffled through the burlap sack on his head. Benito studied the altar carefully.


If he moved the bricks, there was just enough room for the skull...


"Ugly," the voice whispered through the darkness like the rattle of dry leaves.


Benito turned slowly, hand grasping the boxcutter.


"Inefficient," this voice was low and sweet as the wind through tall dry grass.


There was nothing there in the dead space, except Benito and his charge. Hairs raised on the back of his neck and arms.


"Amateur," the darkness split off a piece of itself, and it had Benito's face...no, he saw, not quite. The shadows of his face, like the negative image of the man in the moon. A pockmarked ruin, bald and lined, with deep pits for eyes and a gaping hole for a mouth.


The boxcutter sang swift and sure. A ragged scratch spurted scarlet on his own neck. Benito sank to his knees, hand clutched instinctively at the wound.


His charge waggled free. Crawling on all fours, eyes wide and curious. Benito watched the sacrifice pull itself up and toddle away, stubby legs bowed, holding onto one wall for support.


"Cheap, little priest." The dry leaves rattled again.


"You never learned." The wind swept through the grass.


The shadow with the ruined face picked up his discarded boxcutter.


"The only fitting sacrifice for your religion, is yourself."


Benito watched the blade rise against the shadow's own threat. Felt the prick of the steel at the end of the ragged cut on his own fat neck.

###

The Most Perfect of Worlds

The Most Perfect of Worlds
by
Bobby Derie


"Once, a madwoman told me that there were many worlds, and each with its own god that made it. That the gods had quarreled, each holding to their own views on life, politics, what have you. To prove which one is right, each cast a world in the image of their argument, a perfect expression of their philosophy, then they sat back to wait...and let the arguments play out to their inevitable conclusions."


The old woman drew her circles in the dust, then frowned at something she had done and continued on.


"And this madwoman, she cried every night, for she did not know if our world was wrong or right, an expression of truth or the vain argument of a flawed creator. She knew only that it could not be wholly wrong, or else the world would have failed; oh, but she looked around at the suffering of many, and prayed that in the end it would not be true - that this, and this alone, was the most perfect of worlds."


Rising, the old woman motioned to where the tea lay steeping.


"Humans," she spat the word, "are opportunistic. Oh, the well-fed ones can afford to be picky, but when they get hungry enough they'll scavenge. When anything big starts to die, they'll hover around, waiting, waiting patiently to slip in and get their goodies."


The disciple arrived. The old woman took the tea, using two arms to hold the saucer, and the other two to hold the cup, and stared hard at the lines in the dust.


"Well, everyone has to eat..." The disciple said.


"I'm not talking about some woolly beast, breathing its last, as people sharpen their knives, waiting to pluck out its tripe." She set the tea down. "I'm talking about gods." A whistling cluck echoed in her throat. "Although the results are much the same."


The disciple chose to stay silent.


"The game of the gods only works if the worlds are separate. But that did not happen. There has been...transmission. Leakage. From world to world. Now the worlds inform each other, to a degree. Some have quite heavy cross-traffic. The perfect of one world is now threatened. Because the humans fear that theirs is not the best of all possible worlds. They do not have faith. They will try to survive, to leave their world and find a better one, and a better one, until they have found their perfect world."


Teeth clacked.


"Except if the humans are correct, then the reason their world is imperfect is because they themselves are imperfect. By invading another world, they upset the equilibrium, spoil the game. The world they enter, even if it was perfect before, now is not: because the humans have added themselves to the closed system. And they never, ever come alone."


The old woman drank the tea.


"What can we do, teacher?" The disciple said.


"We must hope," the old woman said, staring at the circles in the dust. "That the humans are wrong."

###

The Reading Beast

The Reading Beast
by
Bobby Derie


It was one of the northern tributaries of the Nile. None of the explorers had named it. Where it met the mighty river the tributary flattened out into a weed-choked swamp. Pillars of stone jutted out of the great grey-green morass. Shaped by time and water. Baked by heat. Carved with innumerable lines in an unknown script. A lost remnant of some ancient empire. Sunk and forgotten by all.


Stanewell knew better.


He had studied the carvings. Taken photographs on his way up the Nile. Then again when the expedition came tumbling back. Slick with malaria-sweat he had compared the black-and-white images. Fresh-cut figures on the ancient stone. Some new hand had re-carved the faded sigils a little deeper. Keeping alive whatever story they told.


In Cairo he had asked the wrong questions. Looked amid dusty scrolls as grey heads spoke of King Solomon's apes. Bought coffee and brandy for toothless smugglers who spoke of fantastic beasts. Plied gin at last to the Explorer's Club. An old hunter of ivory looked up from his whisky. Eyes focused on something far away as he spoke.


"For every prey," his voice a broken whisper that spoke of long nights on the savannah and dark campfires amid the jungle. "There is a bait."


So Stanewell once more sailed up the Nile. Under a heavy tarp the artisans toiled. The linguist had gone over the photographs again and again. The stonecutter had striven to recreate the lines and dots, in the same hand. The pyramid of stone took shape. Incised with a story that only one creature in all the world could read.


Stanewell nursed his elephant gun with the same care he nursed the fevers that came to him at night. Lying in bed. Dreaming of terrible glories. A lost race!


The serpent-haunted swamp. This was not the true Sud. Only a little fragment, a delta where the water twisted and pooled. No boat could progress far without beaching itself on some hidden projection of sand or stone under the water. The workers constructed flat-bottomed rafts amid the buzzing of insects. Stanewell stood on the edge. Close enough to watch the work. The crane shook beneath the weight of the new story. If the raft capsized...all of it for nothing!


The timbers creaked and dipped low in the water. Yet it did not sink. Not even when Stanewell and his men climbed aboard and began to pole it deeper into the swamp. Closer to that unseen unbegotten source. The little tributary which spawned this bit of green hell. Which nourished whatever traced those strange letters over and over in the columns of stone.


Columns which Stanewell now saw were never raised by man. They were as the oyster's shell and river rock. Not stacked or joined by any science of humanity. Whoever had carved their stories here had done so only because it was here. A blank canvas. Yet when it was filled...some had returned. Did return. It had only been weeks between his visits. Some of the old carvings had been half-faded. Now they were freshly-hewn. Characters sharp. Surely that meant some tool of bronze or iron. Bespoke some civilization...


The tributary was little more than a mountain stream. It had cut through the rock on either side to form a small cataract. Every exposed surface was carved. Some higher than a tall man might reach. Some down to the water line.


Stanewell spied an islet. Beached the craft and removed the tarp. The fresh limestone of the pyramidion glinted in the sun. The story scrawled across its surface was as one with the walls of the cataract. It was the work of the afternoon to drag it on shore. Then the crew retreated. Minus one.


With shaking muscles Stanewell clambered up the bole of a tree whose low-hanging limbs almost touched the surface of the water. He lay on a long branch. Rifle at the ready. They would come with the moonlight. To read what was written.


The day died by hours and the night came on. Stanewell slept a little. Shivered with the malaria-chill despite the heat. Only now did he wonder at what he hunted. The stories had been fairy tales and contradictions. No-one knew what it was. He had supposed that it was human, some long-lost people of the Nile. Dwindled in numbers now, and hidden. As the moon rose, doubt ate at him. What else could it be? Man was the only creature that had yet mastered script! Only the intelligence of man could discern reading and writing. For it to be otherwise was impossible, unfathomable.


The moon sat high and shapes moved in the darkness. Along the dark shore, things moved quietly into the water. Ripples in the moonlight. Stanewell brought up his gun, sighting on the pyramidion. The first one. The very first one that came to run a hand or paw along a line of script. One would do it. One would make his reputation.


The tree rustled, but there was no wind. The water rippled around the pyramidion, but no shape climbed it. Stanewell shook with fever, then steadied himself. But the tree limb he was on continued to shake. His thighs clutched the rough branch and he struggled to hold the rifle. Then the words of the old hunter came back to him... For every prey, a bait.


The moon was eclipsed by a dark shape...and Stanewell now knew, at last, what was the reading beast.

###

South of Last Wells

South of Last Wells
by
Bobby Derie


South of Last Wells stretch out the crystal plains. Four hundred miles of broken glass, where the lightning slammed the desert in the days of thunder for weeks on end. 'til the sand puddled and ran, cracked and shattered in the heat and the pounding hail. There is a road through that strange desert, a ribbon of crystal that was a river of silt. You can walk over it and see that creatures caught in the sudden eruptions, burnt and captured for eternity. A determined trekker could drive the river in a day, go in one side and out the other, if they avoid the storms.


The wind brings grit down from the mountains, and salt from the sea. The glass crumbles, erodes, winnowed into strange shapes. Dust, sharp and fine, blows in dry drifts. It gets everywhere, ground glass grinding away at seams and crannies, clogging zippers and intake manifolds. Not honest sand. And when the winds pick up the warm, wet air of the ocean...


Few can be said to survive a glassstorm. When the cyclone picks up its billion tiny knives, each with a fractal edge as sharp as an obsidian blade. They cut and shatter and each piece is as sharp and deadly as the other, grinding finer and finer. Artists in Last Wells leave out statues of shiny steel and bronze, letting the weathering erode their features to shapeless pock-marked inhuman blobs; the collectors like it. They tried it with wood, but the storm whittled their statues down to sticks.


I met an old man who stood at the mouth of the river, where the quartz pebbles give way to the glassy ribbon wending its way through shattered canyons with sharp facets. "Been here too long," he said, with a dry smile, eyes reduced to a black slit by the sunshield. "I don't think I'll see the end of the river. But that's okay."


So he walked, south of Last Wells. Into four hundred miles of burning glass. Not expecting to see the end.

###

After the Battle of Yre

After the Battle of Yre
by
Bobby Derie


The wheels would not stop spinning in the cold wind. From the frozen mire, Harold roused himself. Mist covered the ground, the cold mist of Yre, which rose from the chill swamp onto the fields. For the first time, he was glad of it, for he could not see more than ten meters in any direction, and even the daystar was a pale circle through the clouds.


The recruiter had come to them, strong young men and women all, and spoken of the glory of war. Harold cursed their stupidity and eagerness. The hard hours on the training-cycle, the weeks at camp where they roared over rough roads, peddling like mad on bare steel wheels, laden with armor, lances level and bared at the joust...


There was a romance to it. The First Volunteer Bicycle Cavalry.


Swifter than two legs, they rode over the roads, sometimes cutting cross country. At the swamp they hoisted their bikes and lances over their head and walked through water up to their chests, and carried on. You could cover well over a hundred miles a day, on a bicycle. To penetrate far and fast into the enemy's country. But after they had crossed out of the swamp, they were confronted by the armies of the Spindle. Twenty-five hundred archers, arrayed on three sides, with the swamp of Yre at their back.


It came as no surprise when the bugle was sounded, to mount up and ride. Straight on to death...


There were no tires to puncture, because there was no rubber. The First Volunteers were dressed light, with a suit of steel mail under their BDUs, and a jerkin of Kevlar with steel plates sewn around the center of mass, fore and aft, with a helmet much the same. At a distance, an aluminum arrow might not penetrate the mail, and the plate could stop an arrow even at close range.


But there was little protection for faces and eyes. Bike chains could be snarled, spokes snapped. They formed a wedge, pedaling like mad toward the enemy center, as the first wave of arrows darkened the sky. Steel rims churning up the thick earth of the farmer's fields.


Harold didn't remember how many arrows they had let loose. He knew that people had gone down to the left and right of him - from arrows, from some hidden rock or vine in the earth. Mobility was life; if you weren't moving, you were just a sitting target. They had drilled that into them too, in those weeks at camp.


He looked around at the scattered bodies, studded with arrows. The broken, upended machines with their lazily spinning wheels.


Some of them had reached the line. He remembered leveling his lance, held in the crook of his arm. All his mass and that of the bicycle, traveling at speed, concentrated on a single point - a good cavalryman could skewer through anything the enemy had. And he did. Harold remembered the startled looks on the faces of the boys he'd impaled, no older than himself. The weight of them had ripped the lance from his arm, though momentum carried him forward into their lines.


They had closed in on him, then. Too close for arrows. He had drawn his saber, kept pedaling, swinging at anyone that came in range. Archers had swords too, for just such work. If he could just break through the lines!


But no, he remembered. One of them had stuck a sword through his spokes, and he had been thrown forward with a sudden jerk. There had been a crash - into someone, he thought - and then nothing.


Harold looked around again, at the First Volunteers. There were arrows there - but no archers. Not even the bodies. Only him and his mates.


He laid a hand on the nearest wheel, to stop it spinning. The archers had left them all where they lay. Some of the bicycles should be good - or at least, if he could find two unbent wheels and a chain, he should be able to fix them with a frame. Every bike had its little tool-kit, under the seat.


There was still a war on, the last Volunteer thought to himself, as he began to scrounge. The bicycle cavalry isn't licked yet.

###

Work In Progress

Work In Progress
by
Bobby Derie


The cat flexed. Fur and skin peeled back to expose the raw salmon-colored muscles, studded with stiff wires to the steel exoframe. The claws on its right paw popped, and in response the two-inch steel blades slid from their sockets and locked in place. The critter mewled, straining against the harness.


"See?" Benji said. "Works okay. Gimme a day, day and a half."


"The fight's tonight, Benito." Mac said, keeping his distance. "You know that."


The fights. Mac was getting these little glowing lines - auras, or whatever they called them - around his peripheral vision now whenever he got stressed. That happened when you did too much, and he had definitely been doing too much lately. Anything, to keep the warm haze of jovial normality as he glad-handed everybody at the fights - the punters, the money, the technicians, the scary old mob ladies in their two-thousand dollar suits and gold cigarette lighters. Mac was one of the organizers. That was his job. Smile, make everybody happy, even when you're taking their money.


"Look, all this work is custom. I can't do the exoskeleton and the armor and the conditioning...and you want a good fight, you need all three." Benji had been a find. Medical school dropout, expired student visa, a couple bad habits which were actually a bit of a plus in this line of work. Mac had found him fitting a little leather glove studded with salvaged scissor blades to a stray and recognized talent.


Mac breathed through his mouth, trying to keep calm, tried to ignore the bright rings around his vision. He matched eyes with the cat, buried inside the exoframe. It's slit pupils were wide and dilated. A shunt into its jugular was feeding it a steady drip of kitty morphine and fuck knows what else. Benji didn't mind it when they screamed, but Mac didn't like it. Liked it even less when the wires were plugged into brain, and everything that made it a cat just...stopped. When it went from being an animal to a meat computer, driving fifty pounds of crude warframe.


"What if we left off the armor?" Mac suggested. "The exposed look might be good. Let the punters see what's in there, what's moving. Some of 'em don't even think there's real cats in there."


"All the lines are exposed," Benji shook his head. "Fight would be over too quick, one good line gets taken out."


Mad digested this. "I know a guy. Does chainmail. Titanium rings. That would be quicker, right? You can use the armor mounting points, wrap it up good. Lighter than plate, too, so it'll be faster."


Benji's eyes grew wide behind his glasses, and Mac instinctively looked at his pupils, and wondered what his partner was on. "Yeah...yeah! That would look badass!" He stared down at the cat, ran a hand along a strip of bare skin shaved on its stomach. "Would you like that, puss? Gonna need to do two layers around your vitals, just in case..." The cat flexed, instinctively, claws swiping at the air, to restricted right now to tear Ben's face off.


Mac left him to it. He had to go talk to his guy about the mail.

###

Samsa

Samsa
by
Bobby Derie


Wherever there is sufficient demand, a supply emerges. Get a few clients and suppliers together and you have a market. If the demand or supply is sufficiently strange, it becomes an underground - a shadowy demimonde of a few names and faces, a culture of its own that evolves languages and practices suited to it. Most folks think of underground markets for drugs, gun, terrible pornography. The weird underground deals in less tangible assets. More terrible hungers.


Detective Jack Bastard hadn't dealt much with the weird underground. Most of it wasn't strictly illegal, but only because it was so far off the map that lawmakers had never passed any laws against it - not in this century, at least. Still, cops tend to make people nervous. So he turned to one of his CIs.


Gregor was at the third bar Jack tried. If it ever had a name, he'd never learned it. At some point in its life, it had been a book store. Then they'd added a coffee shop. Then the coffee shop had begun to sell booze on the side - patrons sipping out of paper bags, reading old library discards. It attracted the type of quiet intellectual that liked to feed multiple addictions at once. Like Gregor.


He didn't look well, though Jack had never known him to look particularly healthy. Skin always looked a few sizes too big, shrunken folds of flesh piling up in odd corners of his anatomy. He had on the same grimy trenchcoat that Jack had last seen him in, weeks ago. The detective wondered if he slept in it. Jack let his knuckles brush the table, just to let Gregor know he was there. Or maybe to see if whatever was wearing the Gregor-suit would scurry away, that pale flesh deflating like a balloon...


Gregor looked up from his copy of Kafka. His smile made Jack's mouth crawl. The gums were brown. Something behind those yellow fangs wriggled.


"Detective," he said. "What brings you here?"


"I need an ear to the ground."


"Of course, of course..." He motioned at the chair opposite on the small table, and Jack sat his ass down. Gregor's copy of Kafka rested between them.


If you didn't know what it was, you might not have guessed. The original 1915 edition of the Metamorphosis had itself metamorphosed into a bulging, uneven tome, bound and rebound by Gregor's own additions, interpolations. Jack had caught a couple glimpses at the contents once. Glossy magazine cut-outs of The Fly and Mark Hamill's character from Guyver. Illustrated pages from at least a dozen editions of Kafka's story, in as many languages. Scrawled marginalia, executed with all the artistry and effort of a medieval illuminated manuscript: crawling cockroaches picked out in brown and green. There was, he suspected, more. Gregor was the type. Densely coded symbols and messages only he could decipher.


Jack wondered what the man had been like, before he got religion. Before everyone called him Gregor.


"Someone is...collecting. Body modifications. There have been attacks. No one's dead, yet. Surgical work is crude, rushed, but serviceable."


Gregor sighed, running a hand over his bible.


"Transhumanist, probably. I know the feeling. Wanting to complete yourself. That was always the funny thing about the Metamorphoses. Samsa regarded his transformation with such horror...when there are those who would so much have embraced it. To become what they have always truly known themselves to be." The fingers traced a strange spiraling pattern on the cover. "Competition can get fierce. Only so many resources to go around. Patience wears thin. That's when...folks can try to steal a march. Cannibalize the fruits of others' efforts. The quick and easy path to ascendance. A terrible, false path. When men and women that would be gods become demons, preying on each other. Bad for the community. Bad for the soul."


Little antennae were peeking out from the cuff of Gregor's sleeve, where it laid on the table. Jack tried not to notice, focused on the man's face, eyes wide and bloodshot.


"I'll make a few inquiries. And you'll keep to our deal?"


"No stepping on roaches." Jack said with a nod. "Although its hard sometimes, out on the sidewalks."


"I know," Gregor sighed. "But we appreciate the effort."

###

The Chains Forged In Life

The Chains Forged In Life
by
Bobby Derie

So for a term I walked
Amid the grey lands
The noise of life and light
Were as poison to me.

My form was a semblance of life
A memory of what I was
These lean limbs, wracked with age
These brittle bones, worm-gnawed.

About me I dragged the detritus
Of life long and unfulfilled
Loves and friendships lost
Regrets troubled me brow.

More than this
Bright memories I clung to
Happy times, warm days
Quiet hours and familiar smells.

Years I wandered alone
'til the shackle of dismal thoughts
Fell from my mind
Yet my spirit remained fettered.

I wander on
Those bright thoughts
My shackles of adamant
On a long journey without purpose.

How long will I cling
To the memory of her hair
The small of grandmother's bread
To my stubborn name.

I burn to lose myself
These links weigh on me
Harsher than that black chain
I cast off before.

On Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve
by
Bobby Derie

The door to the church was closed to him, on Christmas Eve.

The foxfires burned in the woods.

Home and hearth were shut to him, on Christmas Eve.

The starry-eyed angels atop the trees barred him from their homes.

The potter's field called to him, on Christmas Eve.

Those long unblessed graves.

Dry treasures gathered from frozen soil.

Along the foxfire path.

Where the tree awaited.

On Christmas Eve, the pale shades gather.

All the unwonted things, cast off from this world.

The meanest spirits, at their lowest ebb.

To follow the foxfire path through the woods.

And gather in company far from the bells of Christmas Mass.

There is no parody in their celebration.

The hanging boughs of mistletoe, the great Yule fire.

Each branch of the sacred tree tipped with macabre ornament.

Relics of those dead, and lost, and forgotten.

Gods and men, spirits and monsters.

He gathered them there, on Christmas Eve.

For company, on that lonely night.

They gathered round, as the fire blazed, to drink in its warmth.

He cracked open the book, and read aloud to the assembled host.

On Christmas Eve.

###

The Road to Camelot

The Road to Camelot
by
Bobby Derie

On the road to Camelot, early one grey morn.

Past the farm of the crippled soldier.

Who had fought the Saxons at Badon.

We shared his morning beer and bread.

Spoke of Arthur.

On that other cold grey morn, years gone by.

The long thin line at the base of the hill.

The Saxon spears coming on.

A forest of stakes, moving through the mist.

A pair of shock-headed boys, at our first battle.

How it must have seemed to a bird.

To see those two lines converge. Break. Reform for the charge.

Then muddied together in the melee.

Too close now for spears.

The work of sword and seax, axe and shield.

Why were we at the base of that hill?

Why did we hobble away, like a three-legged beast, leaving the crow's feast behind us?

Arthur had broken through with the counter charge.

The spears were gone, the enemy formation confused.

The cavalry came through like a wedge.

Swift-flowing horse flesh, a hundred stones moving at a bird's pace.

Crashing through mail and plate, crushing bone and sinew.

We saw men simply burst when the horse trod on them.

They kept moving.

Chased the Saxons back, back, back and away.

Arthur.

Fair-haired king, a boy our age.

Barely in his beard.

He bellowed orders, and men hastened.

Til the grass at Badon's feet was stained red with blood.

We walked through that mire, unable to follow far.

The beer is gone. The sun has not broken through the mist.

Yet I must be back on my way.

On the road to Camelot.

###

Thog Life

Thog Life
by
Bobby Derie


Before dawn, Thog rose to hunt the mammoth. She left the warm pile of her family in their hut, retrieved her skirt and foot-wraps and spear, and filtered into the silent press of men and women of her tribe who had likewise risen for the hunt.


It was a long day, and when Thog returned in the afternoon, hauling her share of the kill, the village was in siesta. Thog dropped the mammoth haunch off at the family hut; smiled at the children, glowered at the rump of her sister as it bounced up and down atop her mate. Their mother would be with the other old women, bitching about their sons and daughters. Thog hurried off before her mother came back.


Oogla found Thog down by the flint-workers, getting her spear sharpened. Raised a couple of gourds and winked. The two wandered down to a secluded creek spun-off from the river, where the fishing was poor and few bothered to go. They sipped from the gourds through reeds, the alcohol sour and harsh. It made Thog's head giddy after the long day.


"It wasn't supposed to be like this," she confided in Oogla. "Thog was going to grow up to unite the tribes! Now, Thog have to drag herself out of bed every morning, hunt mammoth not to starve. Mother still asking for grandchild. Compare Thog to her sister, Soona. 'Soona have four kids, two survive infancy! Only sixteen summers! You never going to find a mate, settle down!' I tell her 'That not what people do these days. Thog still trying to figure her life out. Not like old days.'"


Oogla burped and nodded, not quite soberly. Talk turned to other things. The cave-boys they had seen last season, with the straight white teeth and firm brown asses. The marsh-folk that lived out on stilt-huts, who wore the skin of the sacred crocodiles they worshipped, and claimed the universe hatched from an egg. The days in the red hut, when they had first become women together, making dolls out of straw. Too soon, Oogla had to go back to her hut. Her own mate was waiting, and there were hides that needed scraping, fires tending. Thog was left alone as the sun began to die.


She steeled herself to return to the hut.


Soona was happy to see her, grinning through a mouthful of mammoth; her belly was already showing with grandkid #5. Her mate nodded; politely. They had talked about the stick-games every now and again, but even after four summers they had never really become friends. Not since she had woken up with his hand on her ass one night, and she'd had to blacken both his eyes. Since then, he always slept with Soona on the far side of the pile.


Thog's mother, Atala, was wiping one of the babies down. In a glance she could tell the old woman was in a snit. But her stomach rumbled, and there was a choice cut of mammoth left, which no-one begrudged her. Near the hearth Soona began telling her story - about the handsome girl of the tribe and the bear-man who carried her off, before the boy came to rescue her - the children listened with rapt attention, but Thog focused on her meat. She was too old for romantic stories. There was no bear-man, and no boy to rescue her.

###

Noblebright

Noblebright
by
Bobby Derie

Flowers opened to greet the dawn, as Rickard rode out the gates of Evilbane. He had spent the night praying and fasting in the chapel, meditating on the object of his quest, and now that the appointed hour had come he set out on it, astride the charger Alfbert.

Three orders of knighthood were there in the land, and the most exclusive were the Chaste, champions of the Queen; for it was not enough to be a doughty knight of good character and skill at arms, but one had to prove themselves of worth by a quest. When Rickard had begged the honor, the white-whiskered grandmaster looked at carefully with those kindly blue eyes of his, and asked if Rickard was prepared for the perils that lay ahead.

"I will sacrifice body and spirit, sir, to honor the queen!"

The kindly old eyes bored deep in his soul, and he light harrumphed. "Yes, perhaps you might. We shall see." Then the elder of the Chaste held up his right hand, and burning there on the fourth finger was a ring, a plain band of steel. "Know you young Rickard, that these rings are the symbol and the virtue of our order; they protect only the pure of heart - and in turn, they help keep our hearts pure, burning with cold fire when we threaten our solemn oaths. So long as we wear them, we are mighty in battle. Yet we are not invincible," and the older main pointed at the scroll of the fallen, chiseled in stone upon the altar.

"Brave Sir Alice fell defending the queen's honor - in which there is not shame - but her ring was never recovered. Return it to us, Rickard, and we will welcome you as our brother-in-arms, as one of the Chaste."

From Evilbane ran a road of the old Empire, still in good repair, the white stones shone in the dawning sun; Rickard could follow that road to the town of Beauville, and beyond that the great city of Isle-of-God, and beyond that the road went along the coast and over mountains to the heart of the old Empire itself. Yet Rickard took not this road, but after some miles he turned off on a path obviously little-used, for the paved stones gave way at last to packed earth, and then creeping grass covered that, and only a pair of rutted tracks gave evidence of the road as he entered the Red Forest.

The Red Forest was a second-growth wood, Rickard knew. The trees were spindly pines, the tallest no more than twelve or thirteen feet tall, the undergrowth still filled with smaller trees, and beneath the layer of red and brown needles would be the black and gray of ashes and charred wood. Once, all this had been cultivated fields, fruit trees, and hedges; four small thorps had sheltered in the valley, and a stream had run through it. Then had come the terrible fire, which burned the trees and buildings and crops to the ground, a flame so intense that the stream had dried in its bed and stones had cracked and turned glassy. In the aftermath of that blaze, a new growth had taken root...

Rickard marked the shadowy mounds which marked the stone foundations of house and barn, now covered with ruddy moss and the creeping thorns of rose vines. Scarlet squirrels chittered and leaped from branch to branch, and once a great cat crossed the path ahead of him, its orange fur untouched by white, pausing warily to look at him with yellow eyes before it dashed once more through the spindly bush.

At noon, he reached the Red Creek, so named because the clear water showed the reddish stains of iron its rock. He stopped to let Alfbert drink his fill, and then drank himself. As a boy, he had heard the water praised, and that its ultimate source was a spring up the mountain; his father had talked of a mine that was to be dug there...but all such talk had gone off years ago.

"Ho, fair knight," a breathy voice called, and Rickard looked up from his knees. A peasant woman stood on the far side of the stream - a face anywhere between thirty and forty, long copper hair tied back in a plait, freckled arms, well-muscled bare to the sun. She wore a leather tabard, cinched at the waist by a thick belt, and pale freckled hip and thigh poked out from the sides, her legs disappearing into high boots. Yet what took his attention was the long messer in her hands.

"Good day," Rickard said, carefully shaking his hands to dry them. "Forgive me, but I find myself unsure how to address you. I am Sir Rickard of Evilbane."

The swordwoman laughed. "A knight in the Red Forest! It has been some time since one of your kind came through here. She was a pretty thing, like you, though not so young I think. You may call me Foxwife. The Red Forest is mine, and I take a toll from all who come through it."

Rickard's brow creased. "By what right do you charge a toll? This is not your land, Foxwife. There are rightful heirs to this fief."

"Rightful? What is rightful in sitting by while this place burned, while the forest grew up without them? My right is the right of arms, poorchick. Pay me in silver or pay me in blood, whitemail or redmail, I will have my due." So saying she raised her sword vertically in both hands, the right near the guard, the bottom gripping the pommel, and her pink lips twisted into a smile.

Rickard's hand fell to the hilt of his own blade. The creek at this point was a ford of loose, smooth stones, narrowed to perhaps ten feet across and five or six inches deep. Once, there had been a bridge; but the fire had seen to that.

"Poor footing for a duel," he noted.

"Only for the one who crosses the stream."

"I could be on my horse and away."

"Oh sir knight, I did not think you one to flee a woman's challenge!" She sneered.

"I thought only of avoiding needless violence," he drew his own sword - shorter in the hilt, and in the blade than her own weapon, but doubled-edged - and from his saddle he took off the small buckler tied to Alfbert, gripping it tightly in his left hand.

Holding his blade low, and shield high, he advanced cautiously into the stream.

"I will say this, poorchick." The Foxwife's eyes narrowed. "What you lack in years, you do not lack in courage."

The rocks of the ford were slippery under his feet, and Rickard's brow was creased in concentration. The Foxwife stood on dry ground, and had in addition the longer blade, though she would have to contend with his buckler, her mail, and his helmet; that would mean a thrust - maybe not enough to kill, but enough to injure, or to keep him off the bank, since without armor reach and better footer were her greatest assets. And Rickard knew that he could get half-way, then suddenly jump, but she would expect that...no, better to proceed straight, and trust in his skill with the buckler to fend off the worst of her attacks.

All this the knight thought to himself as he edged nearer the bank, where the Foxwife was waiting expectantly...and when he was almost within a stride and a stab of the far side of the river, Alfbert gave a kind of snort, and Rickard spared a glance behind him...to see another woman with red hair rifling his saddle.

A blade tapped his buckler.

"You are too honest," said the Foxwife, who had come forward in the moment of his distraction, blade held before his unarmored face. "I wish you well on your quest, poorchick. But no-one goes through the Red Forest without paying the toll."

###

Channels

Channels
by
Bobby Derie

"What is your best idea of the day?" Jenny cast out the line as a moonstruck lover might drop a penny into a well.

"The Uprighter." Savita tuned in, eyes the color of television. "He's a turtle god that you pray to when you're stuck on your back, legs flailing in the air. His church teaches you to help others who are on their back by setting them upright again. There was a great schism between those and the Rockers Cult, who felt that the best was to upright themselves was by rocking, reasoning that the Uprighter helps those who help themselves. The schism was eventually healed by the United Creed, who allow that any method to get back upright, be it by yourself or with help, is acceptable, since the important thing is that everyone is upright."

Jenny took Savita's hand, and dragged her out of the house. The girl's swollen head wobbled on her neck, eyes not fixed on this reality, but her little voice buzzed and then rattled on.

"Underground is magic. There is no logical reason why this should be, yet there you are. Children know this. They clutch your arm tighter as they descend. The air is different in your lungs, on your tongue. You become aware of being bounded, of knowing where the walls and ceiling are, and instinctively you keep track of the light sources, and the shadows that lurk in the corners, just beyond their reach..."

Savita's voice faded out, little clicking sounds issuing from her throat, but Jenny held her hand tighter as they came near the playground.

"Bellam's Giraffe followed a divergent evolutionary path. Where we normally associate giraffoids with longer necks, the better to feed from tall trees, Bellam's Giraffe evolved heavier ossicones, a thicker skull and spine, and extreme musculature. It's general feeding strategy is to knock the tree down by head-butting it, and then feeding off the fallen leaves." The sightless eyes were wide as Jenny locked her into the swing, static flickering across the irises. "The art of bartending has little to do with mixing drinks, but in saying the right thing that makes the customer look within themselves for a moment and then order another drink. A skilled bartender doesn't even need to speak. They can raise a thirst with a look."

Jenny liked the swings. She figured that Savita liked the swings too. When the younger girl got excited the channels changed more quickly. Like skipping swiftly through a playlist, catching snippets. Savita went up, and came back down.

"May all your gods be small ones, may all your devils be beaten back by the ringing of bells and snapping of fingers and spilling of earth; may all your stars be blind and all your winds dumb; let the little spirits of the earth and wood look on you as one of your own, and all the spirits of air and fire look you by; place not your hand in the trap, nor your feet in the flame; see the path before you and to either side, see the path behind you and remember why you took it; drink only what you can keep down and eat only what you can pass. So be blessed."

Up, and down.

"The horror host was your personal psychopomp, the dweller on the threshold of the page or the silver screen, who prepared you for the wonders and terrors you were about to experience...and, perhaps more than that, who took delight in the macabre, the gruesome, and the sadistic. They put a smile on horror, they showed you it was okay to smile at all the things that crawled in darkness beneath the rocks they lifted for your inspection."

Up, and down.

"There is no more a sense of movement in America; the frontiers have all been lost, the culture exists in a timeless now, generations grown up in blue jeans, which have persevered and evolved, specialized into a thousand shades and designs, some with eye-catching rivets or artful tears, ripped knees and camouflage fades, and yet all the same, always the same, for a pair of jeans is a pair of jeans on either side of the great millennial line. Now is the era of decay; it is no country for young men and women, come into their own to find only they are too educated or too ignorant, the jobs taken by those who cannot afford to retire, and the shiny places are too expensive for them to be where the action is. Bright young things are used up and burned out at a furious pace, but thanks to modern medicine more and more of them will live to regret their mistakes; the 27 Club never looked so inviting as when you look back from the wrong side of that milestone, and realize how you have already peaked and never known it, yet there is still the long, long decline ahead, and there is nothing to do but resign ourselves to the culture that has lost all momentum, it is not profitable enough to move forward, we bite and claw if they try to move back, and so we are stuck in the eternal limbo bequeathed by the tasteless Nineties to their children, refining the same flavors over and over again, and we too tired of religion to even say 'Amen.'"

"Amen," Jenny whispered, as Savita sat there in the swing, smiling. Jenny sat there for a while and hugged her tight, wondering how much of her was tuned in to this time and place.

###

The Bride of the Minotaur

The Bride of the Minotaur
by
Bobby Derie

The fire burned low to glowing coals. There was for the bullock nothing to stare at but the empty paths, and the walls...walls set without cement, stone fitted to stone, that shimmered oddly as different shadows played on their surfaces. It seemed to him that he could catch reflections in the shadow-haunted surface, mercurial images from somewhere else. One form in particular he caught sight of more than once...and a smell grew stronger in his nostrils that reminded him of long ago, days of warmth and milk and sun before the labyrinth. He could almost feel the eyes on him. Something sneaking up one of the paths, perhaps, though he can hear nothing, discern no direction...yet those shadows the walls perhaps could give him a clue, a scattered echo of what stalked him in his own prison.

So the son of Persiphae lifted his head, and gripped his cudgel a little tighter. He catches glimpse of wet fur, and low nubby blue horns, and...unmistakably...an udder. Then he did hear something, a kind of wet, heavy breathing, and the smell that was almost overpowering as he turned to face the source of it.

She stood before him, half. Taller than a man, though she came only up to his shoulder. Her blue fur wet, the hair about her head braided into two long plaits woven with sea-shells that modestly cover her breasts, a bronze chain and skirt hanging over - but failing to conceal - the bulging blue-black udder. A feminine musk surrounded her, and yet oddly she was still very much a creature of the sea - the tail that swishes languidly behind her is thicker, and ended with a fin rather than a tuft of hair, and great gills are visible between her naked ribs. Dark aquamarine spots splotch against the blue of her fur - yet it is the ice-green eyes above her comely muzzle that captured and held his attention, as she carefully inched closer.

The minotauress says nothing at first, those deep languid eyes still stared intently into his own. Her hooves step daintily, with a soft tread, tail flicking back to and fro. I am a walker of the wet labyrinth, great-granddaughter of Auðumbla. Her dialect was strange, each vowel drawn out into a kind of lowing as she inched closer, and sent chills down his spine. She reached out as though to touch him, then drew back, suddenly coy.

"I am Asterios, son of Persiphae." He laid down his cudgel and drew closer, breathing in her warm, wet scent.

A smile flited across her muzzle, and this time when she drew close there was a sway to her hips, emphasized by flicks of her tail. She draws close - close enough for the minotaur to be enveloped by her musk, and to feel her hot breath against his own fur. She ran her hands over his hard, muscled form, then leaned in to nuzzle at the nape of his neck, her few ornaments clinking against his iron body.

I see you have not laid down all your rods. She whispered breathily in his ear.

The sleep palace was lightly disturbed, as though with an earth tremor. Then another one. The cows and bulls in the fields were awake and lowing into the night, and the palace shook. Finally, near dawn - there is a rumble of falling masonry, and a great crash as a section of the labyrinth collapsed. Soldiers rushed in with bronze spears flashing, but found the minotaur languid, the strength drained from his legs, barely able to stand. Clutched in one hand was a lock of blue-black hair, tied into a plait.

###

Down the Mountain

Down the Mountain
by
Bobby Derie

When the deed was done, the boy fastened his britches and listened to the South Hag as she curled a ring of silver into his palm.

"This to ward against dark terrors and the fear of strange shadows. It is not courage, but nor is it recklessness either. Take it, in memory of this night."

Then the South Hag turned once more to face her direction, and the boy bid her goodbye with a kiss and a clutch, and continued on down the mountain.

The Elves of Green Hollow had grown old and apart since the great wood had thinned with farms, and bred among themselves grew stunted and strange, almost like men, and of time they sat in the Hollow by the still, whiling away the hours and the corn liquor. The boy greeted them as one neighbor does to another on the mountain, and so long were their faces he asked what he could do to help - for all that they were like men, they were not.

"We lost a song," the Elves said. "We can hear it no more. It was for ripening corn, and worked a treat on the mash as well." The Elf looked sorrowly at the jug in its hand, and patted its wispy grey beard. "So soon, we will have drunk it all, with nothing left even to plant."

The boy drank with the Elves late into the night, as they sought to remember their lost song, bits and pieces of verse and melody together, and by dawn he found himself humming a strange tune, as he staggered along the road, which caused the flowers to open their blossoms before the sun rose, and continued down the mountain.

A minotaur-maid lingered in one of the high meadows, and they tarried together awhile, the boy sharing his earthenware jug of Elf-shine. Before too many hours there was a lowing in those fields, and any that stopped by around noon would have seen hand in paw curled up in a bed of grass. The boy dreamed that afternoon of a great labyrinth, and followed the swaying spotted tail through it three times to the center and back, 'til he knew it by heart, and could always find his way back there. He awoke as she hurried to her chores, for their were udders to milk, and he continued down the mountain.

Down the mountain, he was headed, toward the plains and the forests and the sea, which called to him from far away.

###