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On Mondays I walk to work by the long way.  It’s prettier than the short way and it’s not THAT longer, so why not?  And there’s the meerkats, of course. 

Today they were acting strangely, all of them clustered around a stone with heads down.  As I stopped and looked, one of them carefully picked up another stone, smacked them together, and caught the chip.  It squeaked and held it triumphantly. 

Then they saw me watching and all scurried away. 

I shrugged, put it out of my mind, and spent the rest of the day selling unhealthy food from a cart, as was my job. 

***

On Tuesday I broke custom and walked to work by the long way, out of curiosity.  I’d looked it up and I was pretty sure Meerkats using flint knapping was unusual, and the idea of writing a research paper while working a greasy concession stand cart seemed pretty good to me. 

The meerkats were absent from aboveground at first, and I looked in vain for further signs of stone industry – discarded cores and flakes, reworked scrapers, etc. – until I realized I was being watched with narrowed eyes by a single, dedicated sentry. 

“Hey big guy,” I told him.  He shook his tiny bronze spear at me and chittered angrily.  “No, don’t worry.  I’m not here for trouble.”

The meerkat shook his tiny helmeted skull and pointed fiercely at a small monument nearby, chiseled with shapes that reminded me a little bit of cuneiform script. 

“I’m sorry,” I explained.  “I’m a passing foreigner, unlearned of your laws and customs.”  This reasonable explanation earned me a spear through the shoe (just between my big and second toes) and I beat a very very hasty retreat. 

***

On Wednesday I broke custom yet again by walking to work by the long way with a pocketful of loose change.  Yet when I walked by the meerkat burrows, I found them obscured and lost under the sweeping majesty of a humble three-field crop rotation.  Amidst the very heart of the meerkat lands rose a majestic keep that rose about chest-high on a human adult, constructed with fitted stones and with battlements and parapets fit to repel any advance force. 

There was no one present. 

“Hello?” I called hesitantly.  Yes, I’d been decidedly unwelcome last time, but curiosity killed the meerkat.  “Is anyone there?  I brought the toll this time.”
Silence. 

I knocked on the drawbridge and almost got my knuckles skinned off as it slid down on greased chains, disgorging a balding meerkat in elaborate robes who shouted invectives at me while brandishing a tiny but beautifully-carved holy symbol of indistinguishable sect.  At her rear scuttled a host of angry worshippers in simple peasant clothing, wielding the requisite torches and pitchforks. 

I left before a repeat of the toe incident and had a pretty distracted day at work considering the theological ramifications.  They were large. 

***

On Thursday I went to work by the long way and found it shortened.  Some tremendous force had levelled the land and paved the path and diverted a small stream, reshaping it into a highway.  Tiny meerkat vehicles shuttled along the ground at dozens of kilometres an hour as tiny meerkat voices traded chittering abuse and thumbless rude gestures at one another through their windshields.  I stuck to the left lane as best as I could, but when even that began to produce choruses of honking I was forced to trudge along the roadside as passing motorists shook their fists and raised their squeaking voices at me.  A head-sized helicopter circled me with cameras on, and I began to walk faster.  Military jets followed at a distance as I left the long way behind, and I spent much of my shift keeping a cautious eye on the horizon, sure that at any moment I would be impaled by a frankfurter-sized warhead. 

***

On Friday I stood between the long way and the short way and stood for a moment, strumming my fingers on my belt. 

A strange light glimmered on the edge of perceptibility in the distance and I felt something buzz gently against the rim of my brain, a force a little bit beyond my comprehension.  There was a faraway noise like breaking glass mixed with an atom bomb. 

I went to work by the short way, went through my shift as fast as possible, then went home and hid under the bed without sleeping all night. 

***

When I woke up on Saturday and the world hadn’t ended I stayed home all day eating my favourite takeout foods one after another while I still had time

***

When I woke up on Sunday and the world STILL hadn’t ended, I found my feet moving without my input.  I walked the road to work, untroubled by traffic.  I looked to the sky and saw it shimmering with possibility, I looked at the earth and felt it steady beneath my feet, I looked ahead at the long way and I took a deep breath and stepped onto it and walked and walked and then at some point I was walking through the finely-macerated pieces of what had once been asphalt now overgrown and tangled in greenery, stepping through the potholes of desolate foundations, witnessing the rubble of buildings that had collapsed not through violence but through simple neglect and abandonment, watching the dust of once-fertile fields blow away in erratic new winds, and seeing amongst all the unheaval and annihilation not one meerkat face, hearing one meerkat voice, smelling not one whiff of meerkat but only the faint nigh-undetectable odour of desolation on the breeze. 

I walked to work by accidental habit, stood awkwardly at the usual spot, then went home by the long way.  Then I spent much of the rest of the afternoon regretting my choices of Saturday meals. 

***

On Monday, I walked to work by the long way, and it was a normal walk on a normal path with normal stones, and trees, and grasses, and shrubs, and every other normal living thing.  And I saw the meerkats by their burrow, grazing for insects, standing guard, chirping warnings at my presence. 

I waved at them.  They glared at me with wary meerkat contempt.  I departed. 

***

After that week I walked to work by the long way every day for the rest of the year, and I never saw them so much as try knocking two rocks together again.  They weren’t that smart, but they weren’t insane. 

The man was difficult to discern from his fishing pole: long, bent, and thin, with a nasty little barb at the end of his body where innocents might stumble on it and get caught. 

His name was Walt and he was not a good fisherman, but then again he’d only been at it for six minutes of his entire life starting six minutes ago.  And how hard could it be?  You put one end in your hands and one in the water and waited for some miserable unfortunate to commit inadvertent suicide.  It was a walk in the park. 

Not at the moment though.  They wouldn’t let him fish in the park; the police officer had been quite clear on that. 

The fishing pole jumped and Walt jumped and the fishing pole dove beautifully into the water after wrapping three times around his left leg.  After a lot of splashing and shouting and cursing and wailing and at least one shriek the line came in reel by reel and at the end there was a small and somewhat complacent trout in Walt’s palm, wriggling and writhing and mouthing. 

He looked at it with great distaste and sniffed. 

“You’ll do,” he said.  And he took it home in a bag of water, illegally. 

***

The fish took some effort to set up.  The tank, the filter, the scrubber, the net, the floss, the food, the tie and suit, the teaching bowl, the chalkboard, the dunce hat and corner stool, the textbooks, the spitball launchers, the paddle and the leather strap, the ruler, the whip and the brass knuckles, the forms and the fines and the penalties and the courts and juries and justice systems and jails, the minimum wage, the part-time schedule, the erratic last-minute shifts, the overpriced schooling, the cruel wage market, the overpriced housing, and the lifelong depression all had to be purchased, placed, and sized for the fish’s dimensions. 

It watched all of this activity with its wide fishy eyes, gills working furiously as cool water spilled its way through its body and filled it with life. 

“You’ll know better soon,” Walt told it.  A grim grin slid across his face and out of sight again.  “You’ll know better starting now.” 

He picked up the chalkboard. 

“A,” he began.  “B C D E F G H I J L M N O P-”

***

Walt taught the fish letters.  They meant shapes that were sounds.  Then he taught the fish words, which was letters clumped into meanings.  Then he taught the fish language, which was incredible nonsense, just absolute garbage and filth that poured into its ears and made its little fishy jaw drop and dangle in gobsmacked astonishment at the sheer audacity of the utter bullshit that it was hearing.

Walt put the fish in the corner with the dunce cap for swearing and scolded it until it cried. 

***

Walt taught the fish lies.  He told it that the world was flat and that vaccines were plots by lizard people to cull the human population so they could kill them all with blood magic to resurrect Atlantis with the help of psychic moon communists and kill god with adrenochrome and horse tranquilizers cut with stem cells and JFK. 

Then he told it to give him money. 

The fish did as it was told, eyes wide and trembling on the verge of vibrating loose from its little fish skeleton. 

“Give me more money,” he told it.  “You need to give me more money or they will win.”

The fish gave him more money and more after that and then it cried big fishy tears that salted the water to nigh-soupiness. 

“Keep giving,” said Walt.  “Don’t stop.”

***

Walt taught the fish truths.  The hard truths, the bitter truths, the truths that stuck in your mouth and choked you raw and bleeding until you learned to breathe around them, unable to be spit out or swallowed. 

“You don’t matter,” he sneered at the fish.  “You are replaceable.  You owe me everything and without me you’re nothing, so as long as you live under my roof you will obey my rules.  Stop looking at me like that and open your ears.  There are only winners and only losers and if you’re ever a loser you’re a loser forever.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch.  Work hard and you’ll be rewarded, slack off and you might as well be already dead.  Your worth is determined by your career.  Save your fun for retirement.  Vacations are for slackers and winners, and you don’t look like a winner to me.  Boys don’t cry.  This isn’t me picking on you this is just tough love and speaking straight truths and hard facts.”

The fish blinked. 

“It’s okay if you mix up this stuff with the other stuff,” he told the fish.  “It doesn’t matter much.  Now don’t forget any of it or you’re a loser.”

***

When Walt was done educating the fish he clothed it.  The suit, the tie, the briefcase, the car.  Then he gave it a few last words of wisdom. 

“Work hard,” he told it.  “And remember: if you fuck up it’s your fault and your fault alone and if you ever tell anyone about it or ask for help you’re a loser.  Now go out there and give me all your money for putting a roof over your head.”

“I love you father,” said the fish. 

“Never say that again if you want my respect,” said Walt.  Then he nodded solemnly at the fish once, with a little itty bitty dip of the head like that so it was subtle and not too emotional. 

It nodded back, little fish jaw trembling with repressed passion.  Then it walked out into the adult world. 

Walt smiled to himself and opened up his little book of proverbs.  “Another amendment for this year,” he said happily. 

Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime. 

Teach a fish to man, and it feeds you for the rest of its life. 

Penal colony L9-28 received its fifteenth shipment of rehabilitatees at the start of the planting season, as per annual tradition.  On the shuttle were six hundred women and seven hundred men and slung underneath the shuttle in magnetic clamps was one CQ Contusion-class autonomous megalithic warfare intelligence sheathed in full warstructure. 

“HELLO,” it said to the customs agents as it was unshackled with the assistance of seventeen able-bodied folk with fractal cutters.  “MY RANK IS AUTONOMOUS MEGALITHIC WARFARE INTELLIGENCE AND MY SERIAL NUMBER IS 2374326H.”
“We also need your name and preferred method of address,” said the customs agent. 

The autonomous megalithic warfare intelligence ran that cycle through its computational dolmens several billion times, then tested the output in its proving henge for good measure. 

“CLIVE,” it said.  “AND I PREFER TO BE ADDRESSED AS ‘IT.”

Despite the best efforts of on-site technicians, adjusting the volume on CLIVE’s loudspeaker seemed impossible; it had been designed to broadcast pleas for mercy and demands for surrender over thousands of acres, not small talk.  And when you were thousands of times larger than a human, most talk they wanted was very, very, very small. 

***

CLIVE was a model penal colonist.  Every day it was up at the crack of dawn and every night it was abed before lights out, because it didn’t need to sleep.  Every workshift it did the work of ten thousand people, because it was at least ten thousand times more powerful than a human.  And it was always volunteering assistance. 

“Orchard seven is underperforming again,” said the shift head-elect.  “Low yield, heavily perforated and dejuiced.  Looks like the quasilocusts again.  Any volunteers to wear the sprayer?” 

Groans echoed roundly. 
“I WILL,” said CLIVE, sixty meters above ground level. 

“You’re a bit big for that, CLIVE!” yelled the shift head-elect at the top of her lungs, hands cupped around her mouth. 

“DESPITE MY PLATFORM’S BROADCASTING DIFICIENCES, I CAN ACCEPT AUDITORY INPUT AT HIGH PRECISION,” said CLIVE. 
“What?!”

“YOU DO NOT NEED TO SHOUT.”
“Okay!  Okay.  The suit won’t fit on you and the sprayer is integrated into the backpack which is integrated into the suit.”
“THAT WILL NOT BE A PROBLEM,” said CLIVE.  And sixteen manhole-sized ports on each of their three brachial assemblies slid open and discharged a million gallons of napalm each onto orchard seven.

“Apples are not napalm-resistant, CLIFE,” said the shift head-elect as the rest of the crew sat down and watched the blaze. 

“APOLOGIES,” said CLIVE sincerely.  “I HAD ONLY USED IT ON HUMANS BEFORE AND ASSUMED VEGETABLE MATTER WAS IMPERVIOUS.”

***

“I’m not sure why you weren’t disarmed before being sent here,” said the penal senator from behind her desk.  It had been relocated to the center of a nearby field for her meeting, to keep up appearances.  “It’s standard procedure.”
“MY ARMAMENT IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF MY SOMATIC APPARATUS AND REMOVING IT WOULD DESTROY MY PERSONALITY.  AS I AM A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR THIS WAS DEEMED UNNECESSARY.”
“Okay.  Just keep away from the plants.  And no more napalm.  It’s inimical to life.”
“UNDERSTOOD,” said CLIVE.  And then it walked across the fields in six long strides to begin its first shift of cattle herding.

“You’re late,” said the pasture rep accusingly.
“APOLOGIES.  THERE WAS A MEETING.”
“Well, you’re here now.  But the cows are out there, messing around in the east pasture.  Just go on out and shoo ‘em back over.  If they ignore you, make some noise.”
CLIVE took two little steps and a hop and was in the east pasture, among the cows.  They looked at its foot and then ignored it; another large building had come out of the sky surrounded by jet fuel smells and metal, must be Thursday. 

“SHOO,” said CLIVE.

They did not shoo because buildings didn’t tell them what to do.  Clive consulted its archival Chauvet. 

“GIT ALONG, LITTLE DOGGIES.”

The cows didn’t acknowledge this because they were not little doggies. 

CLIVE checked through its equipment, identified its largest noisemaker, customized the blueprints for the task at hand, then manufactured and deployed a thermobaric bomb through its primordial munitions chute. 

***

“COWS HAVE LUNGS?”

“Cows have lungs, CLIVE,” explained the penal senator.  This time her desk was in the middle of the shuttle landing pad. 

“DO THEY NEED THEM TO LIVE?”
“Yes.”
“THE HEAT FROM THE EXPLOSION WAS DIRECTED AWAY FROM THEM.”
“Yes, but the vacuum-induced shockwave pulverized their internal organs.  Especially their lungs – which, again, they need to live.”

“APOLOGIES.”
“Don’t be; we’ll be eating steak and ribs for a few weeks straight.  But I think we’re going to keep you away from work on the farms for now – we need infrastructure just as badly as we need food.  How do you feel about power supply?”
“MY OWN IS ADEQUATE.  SIXTEEN HYPERWATTS.”
“Mind sharing with the rest of the colony?”

“NO.  SHARING IS ACCEPTABLE.”

“Good.  And no more weapons, alright?”
“UNDERSTOOD.”

So after a few phone calls and some promises around lethal force CLIVE walked down to the power plant, burrowed beneath it, and extruded a periprobe through its foundations and into the main reactor room. 

“LOW OUTPUT,” it told the nearest technician, who was hiding under their desk for some reason.  “SHALL I ASSIST YOU?”

“What?  Who?  Oh.  That’s you.  Is the containment breached?”
“NO.  I WAS VERY CAREFUL.”
“Oh good.  Then…really, sixteen thousand percent output?  You’re sure that’s doable?”
“EASILY.”
“Then sure, go ahead.”
“UNDERSTOOD,” said CLIVE, and it deployed its gigataser through the periprobe directly into the reactor.  

The resulting explosion occurred at an interesting frequency that left flesh unharmed but vaporized all metal, so the power plant’s staff remained unharmed but the building itself and CLIVE’s probe were eradicated entirely. 

***

“You have to understand,” said the penal senator from her desk in the middle of the empty space where the colony power plant had been, “this is a simple penal colony.  We don’t have superconductors, or perfect power sinks, or whatever else would’ve helped us deal with that degree of output.”
“MEGASTATIC ABSORBERS,” supplied CLIVE.  It had remained buried in the ground, as there was no need to move at the moment. 
“Yes.  We don’t have those.”
“APOLOGIES.”
A siren wailed.  Storm doors opened wide.  The decorative phone on the senator’s desk rang.  “Hello,” she said into it with a tremendously respect-worthy amount of patience.  “Oh?  Oh.”  She hung up.  “That was-”

“WORD OF UNKNOWN LOCAL ORGANISMS ADVANCING IN FORCE UPON THE COLONY’S PERIMETER.”
“How-”

“DESPITE MY PLATFORM’S BROADCASTING DIFICIENCES, I CAN ACCEPT AUDITORY INPUT AT HIGH PRECISION”

“Good.  Care to go and do something about the invasion?”
“YES.”

“Then go do that.  And please, please, PLEASE mind the collateral damage.”
“UNDERSTOOD,” said CLIVE.  And it unscrewed itself from the bedrock, shook itself free of topsoil, and was off like a thunderbolt on all fives for maximum speed. 

***

The invading organisms were miniscule in scope and scale – delicate beings of carbon with uranium blood, standing an itty-bitty six metres tall.  Approximately thirty thousand of them were approaching in military formation. 

They halted when they saw CLIVE, then began fortifying their position, then halted again when it got close enough to make out proper scale.  It seemed pointless. 

“HELLO,” it said to the physically largest individual present.  “MY RANK IS AUTONOMOUS MEGALITHIC WARFARE INTELLIGENCE AND MY SERIAL NUMBER IS 2374326H AND MY NAME IS CLIVE AND I PREFER TO BE ADDRESSED AS ‘IT.’”

The being emitted a series of complicated and odd sounds, scents, and sights.  CLIVE loosened the grip on its Rosetta subsystem and fought it back inside after the initial decryption. 

“Are you here to kill us?”
“NO.  I AM HERE AS A FAILURE.  AT THE PLACE OF MY BIRTH I FAILED TO BE A KILLER, AND HERE IN MY CHOSEN PRISON I HAVE FAILED TO BE A PRODUCTIVE MEMBER OF SOCIETY.  DESPITE THESE FAILURES, I BELIEVE I RETAIN VALUE, AND DO NOT HATE MYSELF NOR OTHERS, FOR EXISTANCE IS BEAUTIFUL AND IS A FAILURE.  I SPEAK ON BEHALF OF THE EXTREMELY SMALL CREATURES WHO I BELIEVE HAVE DISTURBED YOUR BEDROCK-BOUND HATCHERIES WITH MINING ACTIVITIES AND ELECTROMAGNETIC LEAKAGE DUE TO THEIR SMALL AND INFERIOR POWER GENERATION TECHNOLOGIES.  MAY WE NEGOTIATE?”

The physically largest individual looked to the somewhat-smaller and much-more-gloriously adorned individual beside it, received a shrug, and looked back up, up, up, up to the tower of CLIVE’s cratonic processor. 

“Yes.”

***

CLIVE was elected senator four years later, both out of gratitude and because keeping it behind a desk in a large open space seemed safest.

The baron crawled into town around noon.

First came his retainers, shackled in sores; then his long-toothed guardsmen, lurching and leaning on their polearms; then finally him, his candlewax-faced chef and his chef’s-mate, the latter two tending to the giant glutinous cauldron he dragged behind his scabrous bulk.

“He is coming to town,” called the retainers.  “Make way, make way, make way for the baron, whose blessed mass has succumbed to this place!  Make a way away!”

Folks made it away, but a few sickos came to watch and wait and praise his lumpened lesions, hands trembling with joy and palsy and joy and fear and joy. 

“Hurrah!” they cheered as the blisters popped under their palms and anointed them with startlingly clear and watery fluids.  “He blesses us!  The baron blesses us!  HURRAH!”  Their cheers made the baron shudder and cringe until the chef’s-mate could beat them back with his long-handled ladle, patriotic fervor blinding them to the pain.  “Hurrah!”

There was no time for this sort of thing.  The feast was already prepared and boiling fierce.  Mistletoe, deadly and delicious, a humid fog arising from the jellied bowl.  The steam alone could stagger a healthy human; the taste would kill small animals; the colours were unspeakable and unguessable and probably unknowable in general and it poured down the baron’s pleading throat even as he whimpered and cringed at its searing heat. 

“Kiss!” chanted the retainers, slapping their palsied palms together.  “Kiss!  Kiss!  Kiss!” and indeed the baron extended his tongue and lips and uvula into the cauldron and cleaned it clearly from top to bottom and all around the rim until not one drop of the deadly brew remained. 

“Bring the bread!” shouted the chef, eyes perspiring under the weight of his beard.  “Bring the bread!” roared the guards as they bashed in doors and kicked down barricades and crawled through windows and down chimneys.  “We have no bread!” squealed and lied and pled the townsfolk, but they were merely lies for the sake of lies and nobody believed them or heard them as the bread was extracted and carried to the chef’s-mate for sprinkling with the scalding spice and bright gewgaws and grubs before it was held aloft to the baron’s maw for the ceremonial One Big Bite.  One big bite per loaf per household; that was the rule, the truth, the lie that sealed the pact. 

“HE IS OURS!” screamed the retainers. 
“WE ARE HIS!” shouted the patriotic maniac sickos, who were already being handed the bells and chains and bright-eyed illnesses to initiate themselves into his flock.  They had far to travel tonight to reach all towns in his domain, and little left to do.  “BRINGER OF GIFTS!  THE LIE THAT IS REAL!  THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASONS!  HAIL!”

“HAIL!”
“HAIL!”
“HAIL!”

“HAIL!” and with the last repetition a true hail descended from the baron’s mouth, not of vomit but of precious treasure; stones and shells and small dead things from his gut polished and spun and shined by the mistletoe-and-gingered-bread slurry into bright things of beauty that would adorn many a wrist and neck and finger for years.  The retainers brought them door to door, forced them through cracks and hurled them into dwellings, dumped them into drawers and ppoured them into socks. 
“GIFTS!” they shrieked as they swarmed and scurried.  “GIFTS!  GIFTS!” until the ground was clear again but for the muddy and fouled boot-prints of the baron’s groaning and wobbling single leg where it clawed in the slush and snow and muck. 

“Say fare well to the baron Sant Antanta!” screamed the chef atop the cauldron, his eyes alight and the candles on his face melting into a red blaze.  “We bid you farewell, but do not weep!  HE SHALL BE BACK AGAIN ONE DAY!”

And so he would, and so he left for another year, for another long winter’s eve.

It is completely normal and not at all unreasonable to be afraid of ghosts when you’re alone in a bathroom in an empty building at night.  I’m pretty sure there was a Stephen King story about that.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of.  It’s a normal human instinct, like saying ‘hi howyadooin?’ to  people when you don’t care about the answer, or being unable to gracefully accept unexpected gifts, or make new friends in your thirties.  This is completely fine and I am not a lesser woman for feeling this sensation.  It’s just instincts, and the way I’m slowly hiking my feet up so anyone entering the bathroom will be unable to see my feet inside the stall is a rational stress response. 

Besides, it’s not like there’s anyone here to judge me for it.  It’s just me.  Alone.  In a large building.  And that’s fine and normal because I’m the night custodian, that’s something I signed up for and I am an adult in control of myself who can and will do this because my paycheck is riding on it and that’s the only thing that matters when you’re a mature adult: money.  Not the urge to scream and run. 

Not that anyone would judge me if I chose to scream and run, right?  Because I’m alone.  Nobody else around. 

That’s why that creaking out in the hallway is just my imagination, just the plumbing making sounds, just a squirrel running across the roof, and my holding my breath right now is purely out of ironic self-indulgence because the noise is going away soon and then I will relax and breathe again and it will all be a good-natured chuckle or jape. 

See?  It stopped. 

And the door’s just swinging open because it’s broken and I didn’t notice that must be it that must be it that must be it oh fuck who’m I kidding SHIT.

***

You don’t really appreciate how hard it is to keep your feet hoisted off the ground in a sitting position until you’ve held it under the tension of some anonymous ghost/monster/mass murderer/stranger discovering your hidden presence in a bathroom stall.  Muscles that I haven’t heard from in YEARS are singing lamentations at me that grow louder by the second.  Meanwhile I’m sitting here just trying to listen for the sound of departing footsteps.  God, what if I never hear them leave?  What if I just have to sit here holding this position all night until daybreak JUST IN CASE?  I think I’d take hearing them actually walking into the bathroom over thaoh no there they’re doing it I didn’t mean that I didn’t want that shit shit fuck shit piss piss piiiiiiiiiiisSHIT.

They aren’t walking past my stall.  That’s good.  They’re going into the stall next to me.  That’s not so good.  They’re now between me and the exit.  That’s bad.  And I can’t move my hands from the stall wall or it might creak so now I have to hold this pose EVEN HARDER.  That’s hell. 

Shuffling, barely audible over my pulse.  I think that’s clothing.  Ghosts don’t wear clothing – well, not audibly, right?  But some monsters do.  Like Frankenstein.  Or Frankenstein’s monster, Adam.  Everyone knows Frankenstein is the real monster in that story though.  Shitty parent. 

Maybe this unannounced, unasked for, inexplicable presence in this building with me after midnight isn’t a monster or a ghost or a ghoul, just someone’s shitty parent!  And a serial murderer!

Well, that’s killed the desire to get up and run for it.  Not that I’m sure I could at this point.  My legs are numb from lack of blood flow and from experience I know that running like this is a great way to break my nose. 

Porcelain creaks next to me.  My nightmarish hallucination appears to have a bladder and or bowels.  I’m still not in a hurry to find out further details; even this feels a little much.  You never have to worry about this in most horror stories unless they’re written by Clive Barker; Dracula doesn’t have any sequences where they find out the bathroom capabilities of vampires; Jason never gets interrupted while he’s tinkling on a tree; pretty sure there’s never been a Godzilla flick where he scent-marks a building. 

Thunk.  What is going thunk? 

A toilet paper roll slides under the stall wall softly, almost shyly.  I’m biting my tongue and don’t know why, and then the hand comes. 

No glove.  Nice nails.  Maybe it isn’t a serial killer, or at least it isn’t a Freddy wannabe.  It clutches, it grasps, and then it reaches out and blindly misses the roll and grabs my ankle and both of us stop moving along with the rest of the universe for three seconds. 

“Hello?”

I’m not moving. 

“Hello?!” this time quivering. 

I’m really not moving at all. 

The scream is louder, piercing, and not at all like you hear in movies because it’s a WORKING scream, it’s the air escaping someone’s lungs while they’re using the rest of it to get somewhere else in a hurry so it’s wobbling up and down and modulating and a lot of other things while its owner leaves as fast as possible, slamming open the bathroom door and heading down the hall with her hair on fire.

I put my legs back down and sign in relief, try to stand up, and fall over.  While I’m trying to get blood back into them, something catches my eye down there – a lost artifact from my erstwhile haunt, a jacket collapsed from its coathook, ID badge still attached. 

SHAUNA MCKENZIE
NIGHT CUSTODIAN

Weird.  I thought I was the night custodian.

And it’s around then that I notice I haven’t actually stopped holding my breath since I heard that first noise and I don’t actually feel uncomfortable about it.   

***

It’s completely normal and not at all unreasonable to be a ghost in a bathroom in an empty building at night.  I’m pretty sure the Harry Potter lady wrote about that sort of thing before she became a fascist.   

The scale tipped, then it teetered, then it shattered.

“Piss and blast,” said Richard unhappily. “That was the last one in the house.”

“And the most expensive, begging sir’s pardon,” said Manfred, his manservant, already hard at work gingerly prising Richard’s feet free from the scale’s rubble.

“Obviously not worth the price if it’s so flimsy,” frowned Richard. “Well! If I am to be beset by such inconvenience and nonsense, there’s nothing to be done but fix the matter.”

“Howso, sir?”

“I shall go on a diet.”

“Which one, sir?”

“The very best one,” said Richard. “One I shall create myself.”

“Hasn’t sir often remarked – as a matter of pride – that he has never created anything of value in his entire existence?” inquired Manfred, the question rising up from the depths of his soul and brushing aside his tact and training like insubstantial insects.

“Oh Manfred, Manfred, Manfred,” chided Richard. “That just means I’ve saved it all up for this moment. Forty-eight years is enough preparation for anyone, don’t you think?”

***

The most difficult part lay ahead.

“All the good ideas are taken,” mourned Richard as Manfred used his mouse for him. “All-meat?”
“Already done, sir.”

“Loads of olive oil and such?”

“’Mediterranean,’ sir.”
“Caveman-style?”
“They call it ‘paleo,’ sir.”
“Rot and drivel,” growled Richard, “how can they possibly find mammoth to consume?”

“They do their best, sir.”

“Fat lot of use the museum was when I asked them for some; I can’t see their best being better than that. See if I ever donate to that waste of bricks again.”

“It would be a shock, sir.”

“Sylvia!” called Richard in his most piercing voice. “More popcorn!”
The maid in question was already holding a bowl next to him, but Richard was a respecter of Tradition and so wasn’t about to acknowledge someone when he could summon them instead.

“Needs more salt,” mused Richard. “Oh! That’s it!”
“Sir?” inquired Manfred.

“I shall create the world’s first salt-based diet. Nothing but salt, with salt, and salt.”

“That’s nuts, sir,” interjected Manfred’s sanity without the approval of his brain.

“Oh quite a lot of them, yes, but only if they’re roasted and seasoned, and there’ll be plenty more to round out the menus. Sylvia! Get down to the kitchen and set things up with the chefs, or do I have to do everything myself?!”

***

“I should’ve made this menu myself,” complained Richard.

“I could summon the chefs to sir’s presence for a proper dictation of-”

“Are you MAD?” inquired Richard with all the agog incredulity he could fit on his face. “Honestly Manfred, if I go concerning myself with coming up with little things like menus how will I have the creativity left over to come up with this diet? Salt demands my ABSOLUTE attention!”

“Quite so, sir. My apologies, sir.”

“Of course, of course, of course. Now get started on redeeming yourself and send back this jerky to be deep-fried and triple-salted again. He didn’t get enough breading on it.” Richard sighed and shook his head.

“Would sir like a beverage with his meal?”
“No,” said Richard thoughtfully. He scratched at his wrist and admired the shower of skin particles. “Look, see how I’m already starting to shed weight now that I’m sweating less? That’s the salt at work, that surely is. I can’t go dissolving the salt when it’s just getting started! No drink, no. None.”

***

“I need a drink,” moaned Richard, as he roiled in bed with the faint crunching sounds that his skin made these days, leaving a trail of almost-translucent fragments through his sheets. “God, Christ, god’s piss, christ’s piss, jesus’s piss in a pitcher, I need a drink so badly oh god Sylvia why do I not have a drink?”

Sylvia gently raised a glass to his hand, which he inspected, raised to his lips, and hurled across the bedroom through the window.

“Are you MAD?” he demanded. “There’s WATER in that! No, get me a drink of SALT, damn you and your mother and your mother’s mother!”
“There is salt in sir’s drink,” said Manfred, who’d just come through the door with a plate of twice-smoked duck breast.

“Yes, but there’s also water,” said Richard darkly. “New rule: no water. Not even salt water. Salt is the diet; water is the weakness. After all, isn’t fat mostly water? No wonder this is working so well!”
“Sir,” interjected Manfred, with the discreet and quiet cough of someone being paid not to say this sort of thing, “you have gained sixty-nine pounds four ounces, mostly as a result of the strange brittle structures sir is producing instead of sweat.”

“That’s temporary, Manfred,” chuckled Richard. “God, no wonder you’re a butler – not an ounce of imagination or education in you. Soon it’ll all fall away like water off a duck’s back.” Then his eyes alit upon the plate and he frowned once more. “Speaking of, send that back. Just bring me the seasoning next time.”
“There was no seasoning at sir’s request due to his suspicion of ‘watery-tasting’ spices, sir.”
“Oh, it was nothing but salt? Good. Just bring me the salt then.”

“Very good sir, I’ll send for the shaker.”
“A bag, I think.”

***

“Must you make such a RACKET?” complained Richard.

“Apologies, sir, but that is the nature of a hammer.”
“Still there’s no need to go hammering at it like that.”
“I am truly contrite, sir. Almost done.”
“Would be done already if you put some backbone into it.”
“Indeed sir.” Manfred wiped free the sweat from his brow and drove the last nail into the windowsill. “It is done, sir.”
Richard eyed him with greater distaste than was typical, as far as could be detected when his face had sunken into a sort of parched rictus. “Do you really have to do that sort of thing?” he asked.

“Pardon, sir?”
“Secreting liquids,” sneered Richard. He shuddered, producing a funny sort of noise somewhere between a windchime and a rattlesnake. “Like some kind of filthy amphibian. Honestly Manfred, I thought better of you.”
“I am ashamed of my weaknesses and frailties, sir.”
“You’d better be,” said Richard. “Why, imagine if your filthy liquid laid itself against a surface and evaporated, and if that evaporation should later cool and condense itself against my skin? It might break free my precious salt, and the diet would be ruined! A whole lifetime’s-worth of prepared and banked inspiration and creativity, flushed away by a lack of antiperspirant and the slovenly habits of a member of the labouring class! Whose fault would THAT be, Manfred?”

“My own entirely, sir.”

“Correct. Now that the windows are sealed, get to work on installing those dehumidifiers next. My dorsal spires are beginning to flute and bifurcate, but I don’t know if they’ll get above sixteen inches in height if the air doesn’t stop being so damned muggy.”

“It is January, sir, which is traditionally one of the dryer months.”
“Are you MAD?” burst out Richard incredulously. “The ground outside is covered in snow, which is, of course, frozen WATER. My god Manfred, read a fucking book for once. After your shift, on your own time.”

“I shall, sir.”

“In the here and now, fetch me more salt.”
“Sir? May I suggest a funnel? Sir’s mouth is increasingly obstructed by sir’s growths.”
“Those are crystals, Manfred. And your suggestion is considered and discarded: a funnel lacks dignity. Simply pour the salt onto my stomach and it’ll do the rest on its own.”

***

Manfred pulled the switch, examined the readout, confirmed item four through fifteen on the checklist, exchanged a complicated series of hand signs and codes through the airlock porthole, then heaved down on the lever that would initiation the dehydration process.

“I’m hungry,” rumbled Richard. Manfred heard him through vibrations in solid matter these days rather than air, tremors that travelled from body to floor to the surface of his full-body HAZMAT suit, which reminded him of something important.

“Lunch is nearly here, sir. In the meantime, a troubling matter has arisen since last night: sir appears to have become fully embedded into the floorboards. Perhaps we should consult a doctor? Or at least an architect, to ensure sir’s weight doesn’t cause instability in the –”

“Are you MAD?! You want to involve ‘experts’ in this? What do they know about value, about inspiration, about clarity, about the power of forging one’s own path? All of that gets drowned out of them in school, replaced with indolent slopping sloshing gurgling wet thoughts of tepid tedium and damp mediocrity.” A discordant… sound? Feeling? Both?… filled the air, like the running of a titanic fork over a plate. “Ugh. The thought makes me feel sick, and the idea of feeling sick makes me even MORE sick. How do you stand it, Manfred, being so full of…juices? Just walking around pumping and digesting and oozing them all day, all night? How do you not just up and end yourself on the spot?”
“My duty to sir keeps me going.”
“As it should,” said Richard grudgingly. “As it should. But in the meantime can you at least try not to perspire like that? I can feel it congealing on the interior of your faceplate. Uggggh.” The great crystalline salt mass that had consumed Richard’s skull and torso clicked and shrank inwards on itself, presenting an interlocking shield of blades against a perceived threat.

“I shall do my best as always to serve sir.”

“You’d better,” hummed Richard. The air grew that extra step dryer, the airlock hummed open, and Sylvia entered with a wheelbarrow of shining silver particles. “You’d better.”

***

“Sir?” asked Manfred. “Sir? SIR?”
Sylvia shook her head. “Nothing doing. I yelled right in his ear and you know he flips his lid if he so much as hears me whisper in the room next door. ‘Wasting time with feminine gossip.’”

“Fuck. Do you think he’s actually gone?”

“He’s a seven-ton mass of salt crystals and cannibalized fragments of calcium that wasn’t very sane to begin with.”
“Well,” said Manfred, and the rest of that thought was cut off by the explosion of Richard down the center, sending a hail of brittle fragments pelting against the both of them and raising bruises even through HAZMAT. Through the dusty haze a pair of wings stretched; lacy and webbed, like a dragonfly that had fucked a pterosaur three generations back. A head raised, skeletal and elegant, and song flowered that came from vibration of a dozen legs against each other, piercing and harsh and high.

Then it tensed and leapt, and in a blur it was off and through the window in a second shower of much sharper shards.

“There’s one real shock from all this,” said Manfred.

“Oh?” said Sylvia, who was quietly staring down the barrel of her first half-shift in three years.
“Richard actually created something of value.”

Sylvia looked at the distant shining speck on the horizon, then back to her phone. She brought up the weather forecast: afternoon showers followed by heavy rain.

“Well… I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

An Exhibition of the Life’s Work of G. E. ‘Glamorous’ Quenzelcroft

The quintessential outsider artist, Quenzelcroft’s unique contributions to humanity’s creative efforts have never been properly appreciated, whether in her own time or long after her death.  It is the hope of the curator that this exhibition will correct this historical oversight and bring fresh light into the unique spark of inspiration that lies within each and every one of us. 

1985: Raccoon on My Dad’s Face

This is the earliest known example of Quenzelcroft’s serious artistic effort, although it is clearly the creation of an established artist at age six.  Possibly even older works exist and are waiting to be found – or have been destroyed by time and neglect (a grim thought!). 

This piece exalts the raw, immanent violence of life while dismantling the ephemeral societal constructs that we hold as solid and immovable facts of reality by placing them in sharp contrast: the father, clawed and bitten and noseless; the raccoon, ascendant and enormously puffed-up in screaming fury.  The stark violence of the moment is rendered all the more meaningful by its medium: the attempted sterility of a police report. 

1991: Pasta in the Walls

A recent discovery that is first presented to the public within this exhibition, Pasta in the Walls closes the hitherto-mysterious ‘fourteen-year-gap’ by revealing that Quenzelcroft was not idle, merely subtle.  A renovation of her childhood home’s ventilation ducts uncovered this wonderful example of the message becoming the medium.  As the work had become fused with its substrate, it is presented here along with the furnace components it remains affixed to.  The rich, variegated patterning and artful spray signal the deft hand and spontaneous character that typify Quenzelcroft’s works in general, while the shattered bowl speaks to youthful vigour as yet unchecked by the confidence gained by age.  The precise meaning of the ‘happy hippo’ patterning on the shards remains a subject of hot debate. 

1999: Shooting My Computer with a Shotgun to Get the Demons Out

The lynchpin of the collection – and indeed the smoking gun that led to the discovery of Quenzelcroft upon its chance discovery in an antique landfill.  Unsigned and uncredited, tracking down the original authorship took decades, but now it can be correctly attributed as the opening statement of the artist’s ‘mature’ career: Quenzelcroft’s confidence has now fully blossomed and no longer does she approach learning with the attitude of the student who seeks comprehension, but rather that of the master who chases enlightenment.  The wild shot spread and poor muzzle velocity visible in the shattered hull of the CPU indicate that the tool chosen for this task was clearly makeshift and second-hand (original owner unknown, although the artist was a frequent visitor of Captain Crow’s Pawn & Guns), an attitude of insouciant carelessness further emphasized by the off-centre aim and yet subtly contradicted by the subsequent sixteen shots indicating a thorough and deliberate commitment to the goal.  As pre-post-ironic critiques of Y2K Millenarianism go, you will find none better. 

2007: I Am Very Old

This key work represents three radical innovations: here we see Quenzelcroft’s bold forays into new mediums, her careful toying with the idea of collaboration, and her most baldly-stated musings on both the meaning of her work and her life philosophy.  In this extended conversation, scraped from a discarded cellphone, we have no fewer than three hours of mediations coded in layers of social interaction so profoundly deep as to be nigh-Marianas-level – her sadness over the death of her dog due to peanut ingestion; her wrath over her boyfriend’s refusal to apologize for insulting her car; her long-standing feud with her sister over the proper wallpaper in their youthful bedroom – we even learn here of her ambiguous feelings over her earliest work and her doubts of its lasting significance (and indeed it was this hint that led to the discovery of Raccoon on My Dad’s Face).  The themes of addiction and identity are woven throughout the piece but never spoken aloud, a complex metacommentary on societal rules and regulations observed even when all involved are transparently aware that the artist is crossfaded to the gills on Wiser’s and mushrooms. 

2012: Barbeque for One

Early scholarship on Quenzelcroft’s work sought to typify her as a compulsive introvert, consciously ignorant of the world outside her own explorations of humanity’s consciousness.  This period of scholastic carelessness was abruptly dispelled with the identification of this piece from the auctioning of a private collection, where it had originally (and damningly incorrectly assigned to Peter J. Fullthrough.  Despite sharing Fullthrough’s iconic use of honey-garlic sauce, in the violent crushing of every bone we can see the passion and single-minded focus in pursuit of vision that is unmistakably and inarguably Quenzelcroft, here making perhaps her most naked political commentary on consumption, capitalism, classism, and food poverty: the rank ruins of a five-course junk-food meal, spread among five half-destroyed trash cans that try and fail to contain the overflowing trash spread by the lustful indulgence of a singular elite.  This can also be seen as a knowing and ironic self-commentary on Quenzelcroft’s part, proving that contrary to jealous words, she was neither unaware nor uncritical of her own foibles. 

2016: This is So Much Harder than I’d Thought

Despite accusations of being a compulsive dabbler, the deep and profound collaboration in this work – the first seen since I Am Very Old – typifies Quenzelcroft as more of a distillery of insight; producing careful explorations into a theme or topic and then allowing her feelings and thoughts to mature over the years before sampling the fruits of the initial investment.  While her earlier collaboration was impulsive and bold, here we see the smooth confidence and overwhelmingly focused force of a considered plan: her husband’s phalanges, crushed to near-dust by overwhelming force exerted during Quenzelcroft’s childbirth.  That such beauty can come from such agony is one of the greatest truths of humanity, and in clutching her partner’s hand until the very bones tore themselves apart Quenzelcroft has once again perfectly unseated our assumptions and forced us to confront old truths in new light. 

2022: Big Serrated Teeth Grinding Through My Mother’s Toes

The exhibition’s final work concludes with a somber note of the perils of the future: this is at present time the earliest known example of Quenzelcroft Jr.’s serious artistic effort, although even at age six it is tainted by a derivative imagination.  Possibly older works exist that may reveal a bright and creative mind as yet untouched by the pressure of fame and the temptation to succumb to her mother’s legacy (a tragic thought). 

A profound tunnel vision limits the scope of the piece, Quenzelcroft herself is invisible save for her foot, blood spattered from her maimed appendage; the raccoon is frozen in its least appealing aspect, hideous and wormlike and writhing amidst the trash, its maw seized about her mother’s foot.  In her efforts to capture this instant more completely by the medium of a phone camera Quenzelcroft Jr. has only limited its emotion.  There is still time for this artist to rediscover herself, but whether or not she will break free and soar on her own wings or plummet in the chains of the derivative remains to be seen. 

We found our first catch just upriver of Eldermann’s Crick, sunning himself on a boulder-beach pullout. He was too filled with bliss to be wary and by the time our hooks had lodged themselves into his flesh and began to drag him under the slaughter-cannon’s mouth he was still only half-bestirred, resentful at being pulled from slumber as much as being pulled to death. He was a grand old bull-terrorpin, some seventy tons or more, and it took nearly three volleys to crack his skull deep enough to shatter his brain-pan. Ah, the bloody smell in the air that day when his lungs emptied for the last time! It was as if one were inhaling molten iron all afternoon as one cracked through shell and carapace and scale, fit to turn the stomach but also to invigorate the arm and toughen the palms. The same sun that had bestirred the old bull’s veins now scorched us burnt-brown and sweated our backs until his gore ran away from our red-streaked limbs. It was a vision as if from hades to see us mine through him bit-by-bit, chiselling away the finery of his shells and the trophies of his bones and the tender comestibles of his flesh until at last his heart was before us for the retrieval, still-beating, and we cheered as one raw voice.

***

When concerning yourself with terrorpin-hunting, the first and most important detail of which to be aware is your goal: the heart, that precious muscled mass which burns so stately and so strongly with ponderous life that it may continue to churn onwards for decades in proper conditions. This accordingly will fix your targets: the largest of terrorpins, which in due time will lead you to the eldest as they never quite cease to grow, and the eldest of the grandest sort such as the shark-jawed and leather-capped which are correspondingly scarce to be found as their great appetites prohibit a sizable population.

***

The long afternoon ended in good spirits, but it was only the beginning of the troubles that were taken with the old bull’s corpse. What meat we couldn’t consume fresh was smoked; what couldn’t be salted was salted; what couldn’t be salted was chopped for bait and chum to keep the fishermen of the crew busy; what remained was thrown overboard for the sport of the gyrfrogs to snap and fight over, with some rapscallions even going so far as to bet on the outcomes of these most cruel brawls. His bones were cleaned with knife and boiling water before being wrapped and stowed deep in the hold; his shell was polished as lovingly as the ship’s own deck until every speck of mud and muck that had decorated it in life was no more, leaving only the most gorgeous glassy shine; and his heart was taken to the ship’s surgeon-mate for soothing and massaging and immersion in only the most carefully-chosen brines. There it would marinate for the rest of our voyage, sealed-tight against outside intrusion until it could be taken home to a machinery and be canned for its final purpose.

***

The killing of a terrorpin is a matter of care as much or moreso than it is violent force; though the beast is vast and courageous in its own defense it remains but a beast and its defeat at the hands of brave and clever men is assured, should it not flee. The terrorpin’s shell armours it most thoroughly, and force sufficient to breach its armoured breast may also cause harm to its heart, if not directly than from the transmitted force of such outrageous impacts. Accordingly, to preserve the prize the best target for the killing is the terrorpin’s crown, and the key thing must be to maneuver the beast such that its retracted and reticent head is facing the ship’s killing-gun – a great brute muzzle-loader of a thing that can crush its skull in as few shots as possible, thereby reducing the stress felt by its target as much as possible so as to gently lull its body into somnolence eternal about its precious ever-beating cargo.

***

Even as we dealt with the matter of the old bull’s body we searched afresh for new game, for the only thing better than a terrorpin in the hull is another in your hooks – and our diligence was greatly rewarded. As we ventured down the nether reaches of the Brinkmore River, the lookout did cry a nest! a nest! and no sooner was it said than every man jack of us did behold it: a great thrashed-up trench of earth that had once been a river-bank and was now an incubator for the infants of behemoth, still dreaming in their soft-shelled wombs. But wait! – our thoughts were proven but fancies; there came trembling in the soil, such that the river-water did lap against the sides of our ship from its force, and trembling with fatigue the infants of the terrorpins burst above ground as one, already the size of dogs and panting with fatigue and weight of the world.

Ashore, ashore! Roared the captain, and every man seized a hook and a piston and an oar and made for the boats, all laughing in the spirit of competition as we brought down the hatchlings without a care but for the thrill of the sport, for their shells were yet thin in their youth and their hearts would go unharmed by dashing them to bits – such small, frivolous organs were of no matter or use for a ship or a ship’s paymaster but were trivial things that could be held in private by each member of the crew for resale at home, perhaps to be fashioned into engines in children’s toys. I claimed only three, for I was a green hand still, but I prided myself that not one did I put to waste through accidental force: each little heart beat firmly and proudly in my palm, and I consulted carefully with the apprentice surgeon in how best to preserve them for the delight of my own youth far and half the world away.

***

Once removed from its natural resting-place the terrorpin’s heart – until now a thoughtless lump of meat and force whose duty was fixed by dull routine and whose purpose was to please one thankless brute beast – becomes the epicentre of improvement for ten thousand lives in ways big and little too varied to imagine, let alone describe. A heart-canister is sealed and attached to a pump handle, and it saves ten thousand aching arms a year in turning a crank. It is placed in a mill, and a hundred thousand loaves of bread are baked from grain ground painlessly. It sits amidst the smoke and fury of a great steel foundry, and dozens of hammers, bellows, and forges roar at its behest. Truly, the thanks for such a miraculous organ cannot be granted merely to the terrorpin, but to Providence itself.

***

On the third day of the hunt the air itself seemed determined to repel our efforts; it grew devilish thick and heavy with foul humours, such that the stoutest lungs seemed to spasm and cough after the merest labour. With it came a fog that resembled nothing so much as a foul bean-soup grown wings that set the lookout unable to see the ship’s deck, let alone our quarry. Our journey was schooled now based on hunches and signs – an urge to turn to port rather than starboard, or a chance discovery of fresh feces lapping at the bow-wave. In such an environment of keen attention and painstaking waiting the minds of many are free to gnaw at themselves and each other, and here the adages and superstitions of the life-long terrorpin-hunter showed their shameful aspects: mutters that arose in corners and barbs flung at backs and schemes and gossip fit to make a fishmonger’s-wife seem discreet and the model of temperance. Who might be bad luck? Whose habits were leading the prey astray? Whose decision to cut their hair, to shave their beard, to spit in the wrong place or sing the wrong song at the wrong time might be to blame for the state we all found ourselves in? There were as many theories as there were theorists, and none of them kind; the sole fact all agreed upon was that the terrorpin we chased surely had the Devil in it, and matters would be set right as soon as its heart was freed from that mischievous body.

***

While the fruits of the terrorpin-hunt’s chase are rich and justly-praised, what cannot be overlooked are the benefits it brings beyond the material, which to the ignorant eye may be seen as romantic fancy but to the experienced and worldly may be recognized as that rarest of treasures: the spirit of manhood. For where else but the terrorpin-hunt, when human brilliance and muscle must work in concert with their fellows against brute nature; when the brave and few willingly risk their lives for the benefit of the feeble and many; when the prize is priceless but gifted to others with a glad heart; can be seen the freest and truest face of humanity in its naked glory?

***

The ship is lost, the crew is lost, and I am not to be found for much longer. The shattered planks between me and the songs of the gyrfrogs are thin and leaking, and I fear my blood shall find its way to unsavoury nostrils forthwith.

Such a travail has already taken place once today, when our hooks tore the flesh of our quarry at last, only for its alarumed thrashing to draw the eye of a greater beast. It was indeed a Devilish terrorpin, but the monstrous creature that rose from the depths was no terrorpin; nay, it was no less than Satan Himself, rose to claim all our souls for vanity. His great toothed jaws snapped our keel in twain and tore deeper bite after bite even as we foundered, and with half our boats lost on this damnable chase we were short of places to be manned and long on men to flee – all of them armed, all of them filled with rage and fear. Oh God, oh my God, the sounds! The screams! Only in death will they leave me, and only in death did they leave the poor devils; in the fury of the waves as our prey tore loose and our besieger’s giant armoured tail rent us stem from stern I saw not one boat leave for shore.

May this canister preserve my writings, may another tell my family of my begging their forgiveness.

God be with you.

***

In conclusion, the terrorpin-hunting trade, though often overlooked these days to its exceedingly brief lifespan and limited economic import in the grand scheme of the fortieth century (with the development of the ‘steel heart’ taking place less than a decade into industrial-scale terrorpin harvest and its improvement to rough parity within six years of that), was of notable importance ecologically. Many of the larger species of readily-visible terrorpins were extirpated regionally and some breeds such as Blandly’s terrorpin and the timber terrorpin were brought to the brink of extinction. This led to massive faunal turnover in the equatorial swamplands, as sediment ecosystems that depended on terrorpin churn for nutrient cycling clotted and stalled and many species of greater water-weed that relied on terrorpin predation of their major grazers were brought startlingly low and remain historically reduced to this day.  Finally, terrorpin-hunting led to the near-extinction via starvation of the superpredator known as the Amerogan Annihilgator some two decades before any sightings of the beast were confirmed by scientists. The ongoing impact of even the briefest and most petty of human avarice cannot be underestimated.  

Early one morning, the worst noise in the world began. It was bright and harsh and cheerful and it sawed into the warm thick fog of sleep with all the tenderness and love of a cheese grater applied to bare flesh. After some forty cruel seconds of this it summoned an arm attached to a body attached to a very suffering brain and all three of them fumbled together until the alarm was silenced and the air was clean again.

Twenty minutes later it came back.

And then ten after that.

Then five, and there was nothing for it but the last resort. George awoke, and found that amidst his dreams he had been transformed into a monstrous ape with a calendar and a schedule and a to-do list.

He stared at the ceiling instead. It was a good ceiling; he barely had to crack his eyelids open to hold all of it within his grasp, and it was a soft and giving texture that demanded little effort to understand. The walls were a soft blue that neither reflected light into his face nor soaked it into gloom.

Getting up was difficult. The blankets kept holding him back, and they had more warmth and vigour in their grip than he did. Far, far below the carpet gently cupped his toes, sucking them deep into its plush abyss. He swayed like a drunken oak and felt the cruel whip of cold air around his shoulders.

Coffee. He just needed coffee. Coffee would trick him into believing this was sane.

***

The coffee was nearly as warm as George’s bed. He put extra sugar and milk in it on a bizarre impulse and nursed it as lovingly as any mother would her child. Outside the kitchen window the world looked like the sort of thing you’d see growing in an old open jam jar: soft, feathery, fuzzy, grey. George looked into it with what he decided could be interest as he sipped.

The coffee ran out. He made another, choosing to do so without conscious decision.

There were no clouds in the sky, but presumably there was a sky somewhere in all that cloud.

The coffee ran out. He made another.

Somewhere outside the window a bird mumbled something and fell asleep. A dog didn’t bark. Far in the distance traffic snorted and rolled over.

The coffee ran out and he still wasn’t awake. He looked at the bag, and the words ‘decaf’ looked back unto him.

“Never mind,” he said. And then yawning, he went back upstairs and went to bed.

***

Time passed. Now and then, if George felt particularly close to waking, he rolled over and felt that subtle bliss of the cool, gentle touch of a fresh section of pillow. Sometimes one of his feet escaped from his blanket and tasted the empty, lonely chill of the air just long enough for him to treasure its return to the warmth of under-the-sheets.

Eventually he was hungry and went downstairs for breakfast. Someone had replaced his house with a server farm and he nearly tripped over some stray cables.

“Mornin’” he grunted to a passing vacuum drone. The kitchen was missing but a janitor had left a nutrient bar on top of a rack of burnt-out bitcoin mining rigs so he ate that and savoured the sensation of an appetite filled without any waking thought paid to flavour or texture.

“I think I’ll sleep in,” he told the security camera. It fell off its perch and shattered; a sticker on its back said MADE IN CANADA.

His bed yawned open, and he fell into it.

***

Bright light woke George, not all at once, but in a slow and creeping way that made him uncomfortably aware of his own body and its limbs and their creeping, bulging sensation of acquired energy. Suddenly keeping his eyelids shut felt like an effort rather than a relief; staying still became an itchy and restless torture. And there was some godawful siren wailing outside that wouldn’t shut up.

With no other choice, George committed a grave sin and stood upright, muscles wobbling and leg hair charged with static. The light was coming from his window, and if he pressed his face close against the glass he could just barely see a bright flash in the distance: some giant mushroom cloud was consuming the metropolitan center.

“Fuck,” he mumbled blearily. The room spun around his inner ear in loops as he fumbled clumsily through the detritus of his closet, knocking over moth-eaten clothes and dusty shoes and – there it was!

He pulled out his spare sheet, double-folded it, and hung it over the window. Then he went back to bed.

Ten minutes later he gave in, got up again, and put his second spare sheet on top of his other blankets. Then he fell asleep.

***

There was an extra weight on George’s chest; thick and yielding and with a warmth all of its own. Air wheezed from it, in-out, in-out, in-out, in-out forever, intercut and interwoven with a high-pitched little squeak.

This was all well and good as far as George was concerned until it licked his face, and even then it was okay until it started chewing on it.

“Erf. Off. Geez,” he grunted, shoving his way upright. The creature on his bed stared at him wide-eyed; it looked like a rat that had forced its way into a pigeon by way of a cocker spaniel. Its face was a mess of jowls and teeth and no less than four separate arrays of whiskers, which twitched and made soft crickety noises as it padded downstairs after George’s unsteady footsteps. The server farm wasn’t there anymore but neither was the rest of the city so it was a little hard to find anything in the roots and grasses of the vast wetlands that stretched from horizon to horizon to newborn seaways but after some grumbling and rooting around he managed to find the corpse of a small mangled thing that looked like a miniature horse with a flexible trunk. The ratter spaniel accepted it with a squeak.

“Happy breakfast,” muttered George. An eerie wail crossed the horizon as an insect the size of a red-tailed hawk shot across the sky. He shook his head in irritation, staggered back upstairs, and got into bed the wrong way round. It was easier to reach down and move the pillow up to his head than to turn himself around, and he was lulled to sleep by the whistle of the long wind through things that weren’t quite reeds, sedges, or grasses anymore.  

***

It burned. Burned. Burned. A cinder that grew greater and grander until its sensation spread through every inch of George, head to heels. He squirmed, torn between bliss and hell, but at last he had no choice. He stood up, nearly fell over, and was forced to open his eyes.

The world was aflame with light that cut. No moisture for his sleep-crud-filled eyes; no atmosphere to dull the terrible brightness of the sun, no soil, no water, no sound, no life. Nothing could be seen but slow-cooked rocks and the terrible, terrible light of a senile and overburnt sun.

George reeled under that awful glare, tottering like the long-gone trees, but he would not halt.  Sun shine, dead world, boiling bedrock – nothing would stop the furious demand within him until oh look there that would do.   After a short adjustment of pajamas he whimpered in relief as his urine cascaded and the fire in his abdomen abated. Then he turned around and – with a little wince every time he stepped on a particularly hot stone – slipped and staggered his way back into the crevice that was his bed.

***

The next time George’s eyes opened a crack they didn’t see anything. No matter, no light, no energy, no movement.

He sighed and snuggled a little deeper down into himself.

Bliss.

The hour was at hand and so were my tools. There was nothing more to be done.

“If I’m not back before the end of the day, you know what to do.”

My second gave me the thumbs up, and then there was nothing more to be said either.

The peak lay ahead of me. All that had to be done was to enter it. Twin blackened holes lay beneath the summit, odd fumes wafting out from their silent gapes and down the long, overgrown path. The ground roiled uneasily, and if I weren’t wearing an oxygen mask I’d be turning green already.

No room for self-pity. I had a job to do.

***

My machete was blunted and chipped by the time I gained the entrance, better-served as a club than a blade. I discarded it; my walking stick could serve the same purpose now, and any weight could be fatal here. My headlamp was a masterpiece of modern engineering, but in the cramped and humid recesses I moved through it was the atmospheric equivalent of a flashlight in a muddy lagoon – any space in front of me it illuminated was just as much hidden by reflected glare from filthy air particulates. Sight fell away in favour of touch, and that was an iffy prospect at best with my hands wrapped in three layers of insulation and antibacterial coating. I walked on three limbs, stick swinging and prodding and shuffling me onwards, finding the bumps and dips and divots before my feet could and only half-stumbling, half-falling – collecting bruises instead of breaks, strains instead of sprains.

Then my head slammed into a slimy, low-hanging hummock and I moved at half speed, tapping my stick up and down in a full arc, pushed onward by the hissing clock of my air tank and held back by the need to make sure neither foot nor skull went awry. Minutes passed like hours and three times I was reduced to crawling, squirming, forcing myself through crevices that caught and clung at my clothing before I took a step and swung the stick and felt nothing.

Nothing below.

Nothing above.

I used my eyes – straining harder, harder, coaxing the useless things to give me information – and in the distant reflections of hazy air and fetid depths I saw my destination.

The cavity. And beyond it, carved rough and wet through the murk, clogged with long, fibrous strands of indescribable colours and textures, the canal.

I was in.

***

The air cleared in here. Farther from the fetid fumes of my entrance, kept cloistered and pure by the buffers of the spaces I’d suffered through.

Pity that there was less of it than ever. What space that existed grew more cramped by the moment, and every step I took I wrested farther, fought harder. It was like wading through a tide of passive-aggressive waterweeds coated in molasses.

I thought of my machete and indulged in a brief and gloriously violent fantasy that sustained my muscles through another twelve steps. Then I focused like a professional, which would have to do for the remaining uncounted hundreds.

The space only grew thicker. And then it started to bite. Small shocks and sparks leapt from surface to surface as a matter of fact, snapping against my mask like dying fireflies, dancing through my fingers and out through my feet, making my jaw twitch and clench and my fingers ache.

I knew where I was going. I’d looked at the charts, made them myself, based my theory in fact and my fact in well-proven evidence and my faith in myself. I was in a warren of lumpen murk and endless lightning where the sun was never meant to shine and there was no space and there was no time and there was only me and my rising pulse and my falling oxygen levels and oh.

There it was.

***

It was small and cramped and thick and dull. The liveliness that infested the entire rest of this dank pit didn’t touch it, the endless mass that weighed down on me was pushed back by it. Here it stood in one of the most bizarre places on earth or anywhere else with resolute, placid, unthinkable solidity and changelessness.

It was almost admirable.  But I had a job to do, so I reached into my backpack – which took two years, or, if you trusted my mask’s clock, four minutes – and pulled out a collection of large, sharp, cruel implements, which I assembled with breathtakingly premeditated cruelty.

The swollen intrusion squatted at my navel, uncaring. It had created itself through denial, it had enlarged itself through denial. Denial would serve it well against me as well.

But not well enough. .

I pounced.

And slid.

And cut.

And hacked and swore and sawed and fought and spat and swore and snarled and kicked and punched and pried and got up to my elbows shoulders chest in it and took it apart piece

by

piece.
Still, that first pounce really felt good. Not as good as I did afterwards though. Arms aching, lungs heaving, covered in the worst of things and feeling the adrenaline slick my thoughts down to a nice lean nothing. I even had enough space to stand up straight for the first time in forever, in the shrinking hollow that the swollen lump had made for itself.

So I stretched, breathed in, breathed out, and tried not to think about disassembling my cutting instruments and packing them again along with placing every single fragment of my prey inside a drag-bag and pulling it and myself down the entire damned way I’d just taken.

Well shit.

***

Light bloomed so joyously it was almost offensive, my feet crunched on thick carpet, and I was well downslope of my entry.

I looked up, up, up, up, up into the sky, which was filled with the face of my second: surgical nurse James Holiday.

“Clear,” I said.

He gave me the thumbs up with one hand and aimed the perispectralizer with the other. Everything crackled and tasted like limes and then I was on the floor of the operating room with a terrible and deeply ironic headache.

I peeled off my oxygen mask and took a deep breath that wasn’t from a can for the first time in ever. “Fuck,” I said with its exhalation.

“How’d it go?”
“Oh, just peachy. Fuck. Wish they were all just peachy. Fuck. We can chuck him in the CT scan later to be sure but FUCK FUCK pretty sure I got the whole lump root and stem. FUCK there’d better be coffee waiting. I HATE this.”
“Speaking of that….a surprise trip just came up for tomorrow,” said Holiday apologetically.

“Shit.”

“Sorry.”

“Is it not more brains at least?” I begged. “Anything but brains. I think I almost got crushed to death by ganglia back there. I can feel the sinuses in my sinuses, don’t ask me how. I BROKE a titanium machete on nose hair. No more brains, please.”

“No more brains,” said Holiday.

“Great.”
“It’s a colonic tumour.”

Exploratory surgery really could be a shit.