Tag: short story

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Serpent in the Garden by Linda Sparks

I slither through the darkness, plying the ancient sinuous dance of the Old Ones. A moonbeam pierces my glistening scales, sparkling like rare diamonds. The whisper of my passing is ethereal, and one might easily imagine its soft sound.

Will the listener cast off the fear and ignore the hackles rising at the neck’s nape and the rush of increased respirations? Will they assert that sound was but a fleeting figment of the imagination or a primal, ancient warning that is no longer necessary in this world of modern weapons and superiority?

I exude power and dominance, and my body is well-fed and incredibly strong, yet some might comment upon my exotic beauty. Others may shiver, shake, and scream as they befoul themselves in their rush to escape. They remember the enemy of old even if their mind does not attest to it.

Do you fear the fang that bruises your flesh? And that intoxicating rush of the gift of my nectar which rapidly infuses within you?

Is it not time that you stopped to take a breath and assess your true vulnerability?

I crawl upon the earth on my belly, and you imagine I was cursed long ago in a garden. It seems you understand absolutely nothing.

I believe that fleeing dark hare has a far greater comprehension of how this universe works. Does he not guard the River Styx, awaiting the dead to arrive and pay his fee? Yet he has not forgotten my immense power.

We have agreed to temporarily share this world. I understand he is crafty and deals with the dead continuously and his skillset is quite remarkable. He is met with the doe-eyed newly dead who blubber and weep and ultimately even attempt to negotiate their passage, although they have not yet given up on the possibility that they could return to the living. Some hold fast to the idea they are dreaming or perhaps this is a nightmare from which they will awaken in a cold sweat but absolutely alive.

The hare and I have often spoken of this and laughed.

Are you displeased or even shocked that we have the audacity to find humor in the recklessness of the newly departed?

Together, we have agreed it is remarkable that these trivial humans have survived as a species for as long as they have. We’ve placed bets on exactly when they will nuke themselves, as we both believe it is just a matter of time. We are patient. We can wait.

I have considered the possibility that mankind has been given assistance from the Entity. I’ve not yet confirmed that as I am not eager to start a universal conflagration and, thus, I bide my time and continue to assess.

Ah. Then where would that leave the dark hares and the serpents of this world, you ask? I make note of your trembling voice as well as your defiance. Will you shout about the unfairness of things?

The Black Hare is observing my sinister amusement with a spark of pleasure. Our work is quite serious and controlled and thus, we treasure these moments of clarity and shared pleasure.

For his persona and physicality, he is somewhat different than me. He stands upright, and he is fleet-footed, far more astute than that foolish white rabbit in that strange story with an imprudent girl named Alice. (In truth, I preferred the tale of the Carpenter and the Walrus and the naked hunger which was revealed).

Tonight, I am on the hunt. The moon has risen, and her silvery bands of light radiate throughout the forest and the fallen pine needles brush against my body as I swiftly pass through.

I am perfection.

There are moments when I choose to reveal myself and that is when the screaming begins. It is a beautiful symphony of music to my sensorium. I have the greatest desire to twist and weave to the cadence of their howls. But there is often no time to enjoy the ultimate delivery of my toxins. If my prey is not alone, others will rush and try to brutally slaughter me when I was just performing my natural duties. In such situations, I do lose respect for the prey. If you permit yourself to be fanged by a poisonous serpent, then you most certainly are not worthy to continue inhabiting this planet. Others far wiser will succeed and ascend.

Which brings me to another point for consideration. In that ancient tale, the humans were kicked out of the garden due to their errors. Being far cleverer than any human, it is true that I did offer the forbidden fruit. It took very little of my silky soft whisper to persuade the female because she was angry at her mate and wanted to prove that she could make decisions independently. She’d already heard the tale of the earlier female, Lilith, who had suffered from the male’s attempts at dominance, and she had chosen to leave the Garden. They can spin it however they wish, but I know the truth of the matter because I was there.

My ultimate reward was when she persuaded him to take a taste as well. The brute grabbed the fruit from her and devoured its lushness and cast about, looking for more. His greed was marvelous to observe.

There are words for that, but I have decided not to speak ill of the dead. After all, my guy, who acts as the Ferryman at the River Styx, is quite amenable today and we have agreed to work in unison. The river floods with the dead whenever there is war or famine and currently, the volume of the traffic in the dead is increasing. We have decided to work together to get them sorted and transported.

An owl is hooting above, defying us to attempt to silence him and taunting me because he is out of range of my capable fangs. That same owl has scars upon his body because he made a grievous error when he thought to swoop down upon our Dark Hare and make him prey. He paid dearly for that mistake in judgement, and it took him several months to heal. We had watched comfortably, actually placing bets as to whether or not he would starve to death before he healed enough to hunt.

And now we hear the howls and cries of the dead as their bloodied and mutilated bodies arrive at the river. Many of them mistakenly believed they would never die and they did not have the coins for the Ferryman in order to pay for their passage.

Ah, those foolish ones.

I am reminded of my early days in the garden and how easily I was able to use my silver-tongue and persuade the female to take a taste. It was a source of great joy to me, and I fully expected a reward. Had I not proven the fallibility of these weak humans?

Yet, I, too, was cast out of the garden.

Let me assure you, eons may have passed, but I do not forget when I have been wronged.

One day, I shall rise from my belly and claim this planet as my own, and those frail creatures who have been coddled by the Entity shall know my name. They shall bow down before me.

I shall dance the serpent’s dance and speak in the ancient tongues and all shall know me.

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Linda Sparks

Linda Sparks is a poet and author of horror poetry, stories and books. She has been published by Ravens Quoth Press, Clarendon House Publishing, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Spillwords, Kaidankai and many others. She also served as editor for Valkyrie Magazine.
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Rebel Girl by Ann Wuehler

In her kiss, I tasted the revolution. Her lips held flies, worms, and mold, but she smiled and licked my lips before taking my hand. I went with Rebel Girl, because I knew no other choices in the sandlands of everything around us. Gunning the engine of the baby blue Ford Comet, I went out into the night, beneath the heavy twinkle of the dead stars above our heads. I rode with a dead girl toward vengeance.

“Take the 95 exit. Let’s head for Winnemucca, then Reno,” Rebel Girl whispered, her breath stinking of that t-bone left to rot in a trashed apartment. She licked my ear with her slimy tongue and placed her tattered hand on my blue-jeaned thigh.

“I ain’t got enough gas to get to Nevada,” I said, letting her peek down my stained flannel shirt with the ragged hem. It was about the only shirt I had left. My wealth consisted of some quarters and a ketchup packet from Micky D’s. “You thinking what I’m thinking, honey?”

Rebel Girl threw back her hair, what remained of it, just clumps of brownish strings plastered together with mold and dirt. “You dug me up. I’m the queen now. We head to Nevada, we find Bruce and Mandy. I screamed for you, Edith. And you heard me.”

“We’ll get ’em both, Rebel. Of course I heard you.”

She and I howled like insane coyotes as I swung off the highway and pulled into the little gas station off the back end of Parma, Idaho. I drove up to a pump, wondering who could see my dead baby riding shotgun. There was nobody else there, late at night, and the clerk inside no doubt had his hands down his pants as he watched women doing bad, bad things on his cheap phone. God knows we’d all done that at jobs like this.

“Gun or knife?”

“Knife. I want the suffering.” Rebel Girl took out a coil of her own intestines, and wound it about her right arm like a strange, rotting bracelet. Her eyes turned to me, her bright, lovely eyes that held sparks of hell and wisps of Christmas.

I searched for the butcher knife. “You’re so beautiful, Edith. I love how full of revenge you are. I want to eat your nipples with a side of fries and a strawberry milkshake. I wanna wear your clothes.”

Her fingers skittered over my arm, the bones showing through the tatters of skin. For a moment, I knew an actual coldness. Where would tonight end? Would she vanish, leaving my heart forever broken? Would I be dragged with her toward whatever hell existed?

My own fingers found the big butcher knife, called Betsy. I kept her in the glove box, just in case. My Arminus handgun, loaded with .22 Long Rifle bullets, waited beneath the driver’s seat.

I loved Rebel Girl, I feared her. She had kept her promise.

She expected her Edith to keep hers.

“It won’t take long.” I met her lips, tasting the ash she had wanted to reduce the world to, so we could all start over, so we could all be cleansed and free and happy.

No more rules or laws or old white men telling us what to do, the fuckers. How she had gritted out cuss words for the old white guys. I would take her in my arms, she would calm. But her eyes searched me then to see if I truly believed in her version of the future or if I slogged in the mud and the shit with everyone else.

Onward I walked into the convenience store with the lone man scrolling through his phone, his brown eyes not wanting to lift or deal with some customer at eleven at night. I remembered my grandmother smoked Pall Mall’s, but my long-gone daddy chewed Copenhagen. The rows of tobacco stuff made memories fill my head, and spit filled my mouth until I swallowed. Candy bars and chips waited to be bought; the machines to dole out coffee, the cold section full of pop and beer and wine coolers.

All of it meaningless and overpriced, but it would soon get splashed with man blood.

Keeping ol’ Betsy behind my back, I let my face settle into something normal. I even tossed my hair, which hit my shoulders.

“Help you?” He had a nametag, which read Reed. He looked Basque or Mexican or Eastern European. Brown eyes, darkish skin, pimples, a long nose, and a scruffy beard shadow that did not add to his masculine appeal.

I had practiced my helpless gal routine with Rebel Girl’s help a year ago. Smile, act nice, pretend real hard, make up a story. Get out, don’t get caught.

“Yeah. I’m just traveling through. I think my tire’s a bit flat. Can you come out and look at it? I’m heading for Utah.”

“We got air out there. You getting gas?”

“Eventually,” I admitted. I smiled, but the guy seemed oblivious to my obvious charms. “Please have a look before I put any air in? I don’t wanna blow my tire or have a wreck or whatever.”

“I…shit. Okay. It has to be quick.”

The moment Reed stepped out from behind his counter, the till was calling my name. I brought Betsy out and up. She slid into Reed’s soft beer belly like a spoon going into Dairy Queen soft-serve. He grunted, and the hot sticky red flowed. I twisted ol’ Betsy viciously and often as he tried to fight me. He slipped and fell on his own muck. Betsy took two fingers, just like that. He screamed and screamed, but I did not relent. Rebel Girl left the car to watch me pump my knife into his body. I’m a big woman but I’m cute, as she had told me after those times when I got doubts or cried for days on end that no one loved me, no one at all.

I love you, Edith. I love you.

Reed knocked me off him and I flew into the rack of chips, smelling copper, drenched in gore. He screeched and yowled, a human pincushion now.

“Take the damn money. Fuck, oh fuck, take it! Let me call an ambulance. Please. Please? What is that thing? That thing—oh fuck it hurts, it hurts—” He tried to point at Rebel Girl, but I had sliced two of his fingers off.

“That’s my baby,” I announced, as I bent to cut his throat.

I kissed him as he died, with Rebel Girl sitting on his belly, grinning at us both, the skin of her face cracking and splitting. I tasted nothing but death on Reed’s slack mouth. Blood all over as Rebel Girl crawled through the puddles. Her corpse rested in the passenger seat, yet she played in pools of blood like a happy puppy.

I jimmied the till open with Betsy, bending the tip to do so, and scored oodles of cash, change, and even a few checks. What dimwits still wrote checks in these failing and few remaining days of the empire? I scooped out the cash and change, and put it in a plastic bag. My instincts told me I did not have long to linger. My nape itched. Get out of here, they’re coming, something in my gut said. Other people needed gas in Idaho late at night.

Finding a big woman covered with the blood of the dead attendant would not go so well for me, haha.

Rebel Girl had no sense of humor, but I sure did.

I took two large bottles of water and put them in a bag. My hands grabbed for jerky, granola bars, and apples, but I let them drop as lights splashed by on the highway. The driver did not turn into the gas station.

Get the car fueled up, get out of here, get back to revenge.

Rebel Girl floated back to the car as I switched the pumps on. I got the tank filled, though my hands were shaking. I filled a jerry can I kept in the Comet just in case, then got two more cans from the store, filled them too. Reed stared up at the ceiling, his second mouth grinning at me and drooling what looked like black cherry Jell-O down toward his collarbones.

I need to haul ass from this place of carnage and suffering and seek the objects of my fury and grief.

Bruce and Mandy would be hiding somewhere in the sandlands of Nevada.

They had decided Rebel Girl needed to go before she got us life in a federal pen. Being an actual rebel is not for crybaby wimps. Doing bad stuff to get to the good didn’t sit well with the pair of weaklings. Fucking murderous crybaby shitbirds.

The Comet lurched onto the asphalt and Rebel Girl laughed. I drove toward the 95 onramp, then turned us toward the Silver State. We sang as I guided the boat of a car through the night. We sang songs we made up about love and change and rebuilding it all. It takes courage, she had once told me. It takes courage to wanna burn the world down and form it brand new.

I stopped to top the tank off from one of the jerry cans somewhere past Jordan Valley, my head buzzing and tingling. My jeans and flannel shirt needed to be tossed. I stripped naked as Rebel Girl catcalled and told me I was her beautiful Edith, her warrior love, her Amazon sweetie. Sweatpants and a hoodie were all I had with me. Gray from the waist down, blue to the top of my head and I felt good. I felt good and strange and a little drunk on how much I loved Rebel Girl.

What if she wasn’t here at all?

Pulling the driver’s side door open, I saw her dead self slumped in the seat. Then there was the plastic sack of cash and change, and the two gallons of water. I saw ol’ Betsy on the passenger side floor, the tip ruined and bent and the blade itself gummy with Reed’s blood. I had killed a man, but we had killed before when Rebel had been alive. Or had we? My memory seemed full of holes within holes with more holes after that until those skeleton fingers touched my back.

I had to focus. I had to keep going.

“Where in Nevada?”

“Head to Route 50, we’ll find ’em,” Rebel Girl said as she settled into her seat. She turned to watch me with her bright, lovely eyes. “You gonna leave those clothes on the side of the road, babe?”

“Yeah. Why not? Let the revolution start,” I said as I slid behind the wheel. I took off toward Route 50, the loneliest highway and a good place to go to ground.

“You don’t love me anymore.”

My foot stomped on the brake. The Comet screeched, leaving some rubber on the road. I watched a shooting star streak across the heavens. My hand reached for hers and her fingers finally closed around mine, the awful skinny bones pressing into my flesh. In the far distance, headlights grew bigger and bigger in the rearview. We could not sit here long. I pulled us as far over as I could and cut the motor.

I took my Rebel Girl in my arms and rocked her, her face settling in the crook of my neck, finding that hollow in my shoulder that was her special spot. She stank, the rot of her high and ripe. I held her the same way as on the day she died, her head blown off by Bruce, who handed the old shotgun to Mandy, so if they got caught for this, she’d be blamed, too. It’s how cowards think, and God knows, God knows me so well, I was once a coward, and I will always be a follower. I followed Rebel Girl, and I will follow her now into the very sun if this dead woman demands it of me. I hesitated when Bruce raised the shotgun. How could anyone shoot someone so right about burning it all down? How?

But he did. He muttered about crazy and going too far and I got a job interview for a casino, me and Mandy is done with this shit. Blowing up a hospital is terrorist shit! Bang. Bang and my Rebel Girl gone! I buried her, I dug her up and here she is. Here she is.

We’re gonna blow up St. Luke’s there in Boise, blow it right to hell up and the people will rise up, they’ll rise up, free, oh free, Rebel Girl told us.

“Let’s get going.” She drew back, smiling a little, her teeth looking too long, but her gums had decomposed. “We kill those scum and we nuke St. Luke’s. I got plans, Edith. I got plans. Nuke the Luke!”

I drove and drove, my hand in hers. The car behind us zoomed past and disappeared around the corner, going at least a hundred. The morning sun hit my eyes, and I needed coffee or a place to rest. My hand stretched over the white seat, but Rebel Girl’s body did not slump there. Maybe I could only have her with me at night? Had I left her body along with my bloody clothes on the side of Highway 95 South?

Yes, I had left her body behind.

Nevada seemed strange and full of shadows as I coasted toward Winnemucca. I had some gas left and a lot of cash. I noted a Nevada State cop car coming from Winnemucca and that it slowed. It stopped and turned so that it was now behind me. Reaching for the gun beneath my seat, I heard Rebel Girl’s breath in my ear, felt her lips on my cheek. I was not alone. She was with me and we would see the revolution start.

The lights flashed.

I checked the chambers of my grandpa’s nine-round ancient revolver. Twenty-two Long Rifles, nine for each slot, greeted my exhausted eyes. There was no other traffic. No one would see this. I rolled down my window. My breath came easily. The sky had turned the soft blue of a July day destined to be boiling hot and cloud-free. I watched him get out, I watched him walk toward me, a big man with his hand already on his revolver.

My shot went into his shoulder, not his face. He drew his own gun and shot me on the side of the road. Rebel Girl took my hand.

We watched the ambulance show up, we watched them talk about me, that I might be ‘the one’ who had killed that guy in Idaho. I might be the one who killed that guy. Did she dump that dead girl on the side of the road? Maybe, can’t say yet.

They zipped my body into a black bag.

Rebel Girl tugged me back toward 95, leaving the lights and cars and people to deal with the business of living as we kept onward to take on Bruce and Mandy in the middle of the Silver State.

In my kiss, she tastes the revolution and my love at last. We drift toward the future and hide ourselves beneath the dead stars that still send out light to guide us on clear evenings.

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Ann Wuehler

Ann Wuehler has written six novels—Aftermath: Boise, Idaho, Remarkable Women of Brokenheart Lane, the House on Clark Boulevard, Oregon Gothic, the Adventures of Grumpy Odin and Sexy Jesus and Owyhee Days. “The Blackburne Lighthouse” appears in Brigid Gate’s Crimson Bones anthology. “The Snake River Tale” was included in Along Harrowed Trails. “The Ghost of John Burnberry” appears in Penumbric. “The Caesar’s Ghost Quest” made it into the October 2023 World of Myth. “Cassie’s Story” was just accepted by Great Weather For Media. “Mouthpiece” will appear in the Horror Zine’s summer 2024 edition.

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Deliverance – Part Three by Elliot Pearson

They reached the city center. It was drenched in red, purple, and green neon. Impossibly tall black glass and steel high rises formed a circle around them. 

It started to rain. The droplets felt real on Kash’s skin.

A lightning bolt struck the street a few feet ahead. It left something behind. An object. Kash recognized it from the original Deliverance games—a Hydro Shotgun. Neon demon killer. There was a bandolier with shells beside the gun and Kash strapped it around her waist.

A blood-curdling scream rang out then and reverberated through the streets, followed by another, and another.

Kash loaded the gun.

“They’re coming,” she said.

“Who’s coming?”

“Neon demons.”

“Neon what? This is too much.”

A grotesque blue-gray creature adorned with bio-mechanical tech that leaked plasma was crawling down the windows of one of the high rises.

Kash looked around. Every building was covered in demons. Her vision started to blur. Her movement was jagged. The game was lagging, unable to support the sheer number of NPCs.

The demons scuttled down the glass and started rushing towards Kash.

The lag stopped.

She fired from the hip and blasted the demons with the shotgun’s electrified water shells as endless hordes of demons came with slashing claws and bared teeth.

Demon limbs and heads were flung from their bodies. Arterial spray fired out in thick long jets, drenching Kash in guts and gunge.

“This is strange,” Romero said.

“Talk about stating the obvious,” Kash replied.

“No—it’s like I’m thinking, you’re doing.”

“You’re right…I’m acting on reflex. I’ve never fired a gun in my life. I’m barely even thinking about what I’m doing.”

The demons were growing in number, seemingly spawning from nowhere. And now flanked by dozens of possessed soldiers wielding assault rifles.

Kash realized this wasn’t a level in the game, it was just a simple testing ground.

Deliverance Reborn was but a half-playable prototype.

“There’re too many of them,” Romero said.

Kash fired into the horde one last time. “Shit. Let’s go.”

They ran into an abandoned liquor store and an NPC sprung out of nowhere. Must have spawned in. A random male citizen stuck in a T-pose. His mouth was closed but his audio track played anyway. “My God! Ace Sterling as I live and breathe! Have you come to deliver us from the evil that infects our city?”

“Um. Yeah,” Kash said.

“Here—take my Chasm Gun,” the NPC said. “Head to the roof!”

A huge gun appeared in Kash’s hands. She left the NPC where it was and rushed upstairs.

***

Kash looked down at the endless horde of neon demons and soldiers.

The demons began scaling the building, making their way up to the roof. The possessed soldiers were already inside the building, rushing up the stairs.

Kash readied the Chasm Gun and fired down at the street. A golden beam of light shot out. It caused the ground to crack and open, creating a great chasm. The demons and soldiers were pulled down by a tremendous force below and sent screaming into the depths. But there were still a few demons making their way up and the sound of heavy footsteps nearing the roof.

Kash took several steps back and waited for the demons to appear first.

They leapt up onto the roof. Kash fired the shotgun, sending them flying off the roof like ragdolls.

She turned as the soldiers kicked the door open and aimed their assault rifles at her.

She fired off a few shots, hitting several soldiers, but there were too many.

She ran to the other side of the roof to look for some way to escape.

Bullets hit her and it hurt like hell. But she managed to soak up a lot of them without faltering.

“Kash, what’s that?” Romero said.

She could see the outside of the game’s map beyond—just empty white space—and had an idea.

“Romero, this game is far from finished. Just a test and buggy as shit. I think I might be able to crash it.”

“Whatever you’re gonna do—do it fast.”

The demon horde had respawned and was climbing back up.

Kash fired the Chasm Gun directly at the soldiers. Something that resembled a black hole opened up in midair and the soldiers were instantly sucked into it, vanishing completely.

Kash took a few steps back, got low, then sprinted forwards until she reached the edge of the roof, then leapt off and cascaded down into the white space below.

Kash was blinded by white light. Then there was nothing but darkness.

She heard rushing water and Tobias panicking.

She was back in the room.

The bolts to the headset unscrewed and she tore it off.

She rose and turned. Tobias had a look of terror in his eyes. The terminal was sparking. Tobias went to raise his revolver, but Kash smashed the headset into his face, breaking his nose. He stumbled back and fired off a shot blindly. Kash rushed him, wrestled the gun free and struck him repeatedly with it until he fell and passed out.

The tank containing Romero was emptying, flooding the room. Romero was released from the tubes and cables. The respirator shot out of his mouth. He slipped down limply. The tank opened and Kash ran over. She held Romero in her arms. “Romero! Wake up!”

He rubbed his eyes. “You did it. You freed me.”

Romero embraced Kash and held her tight.

Tobias began to stir. Romero stood and looked at him. “Want me to end him?”

“You told me you were a bank robber…”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“No killing. I have a better idea.”

Romero helped Kash place Tobias in the chair. Kash put the headset on him. “I can reprogram this,” Kash said, tapping maniacally on the keyboard, trashing the game’s code.

“What’re you doing?”

“Finding a way to alter this headset. Tobias can decide his own fate.”

The headset’s bolts locked into place. Tobias wouldn’t be going anywhere.

“Perfecto,” Romero said.

“Come on, let’s get out of here. I’m going freelance.”

***

Tobias awoke. The shrieks and screams of neon demons reverberated through the streets.

He tried to pull the headset off.

No luck.

The demons approached.

Tobias screamed.

The headset wouldn’t come off.

Something snapped.

Sonora, Mexico. 2052

Romero Valdez knocked on the door to his old home in the quiet pueblo.

After a moment, a striking young woman opened it halfway and peered out.

Romero stood, hardly able to speak. “Julia?”

The young woman opened the door wider, her face now lit by the morning sun, and shook her head.

From behind her, a middle-aged woman appeared. She regarded her father, far younger than her, and stood still and silent.

Romero choked at the sight of his daughter, now grown.

He fell to his knees and sobbed.

Julia rushed out and held Romero close as dust whipped about them.

Deliverance.

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Elliot Pearson

Elliot Pearson is a writer of speculative fiction and poetry. His work can be found in Star*line, The Banyan Review, and in several past editions of The Stygian Lepus. He lives in New Mexico.
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The Girl Who Lived in a Shoe by Hari Navarro

Vanessa feels wettened fingers in her ears as they snap at the knuckles, and then, slowly, she closes her eyes. 

It is suddenly so deliciously hot as the clenching billowing maw above opens, and plastic scented light pours over her, gathering and pulling at her skin.

This artificial aroma; she remembers it as the cheap sun lotion she’d once lathered into her pores. Those dreamy chemicals that stuck in the grooves of her lips. That so filled her nostrils with memories of sand and bearded, moated boulders, and dunes that unraveled as skinny legs plowed through and up to their peaks.

And again, just now, the ground beneath suddenly tips as one foot slumps lower than the other. There is screaming, but it is not human. It is a wail that sucks into itself, and then something cool and sharp plays and runs through her hair.

She needs to be in the pit.

She feels safe in the pit.

***

Vanessa stands on the shore and contracts her feet into the strata lines of ruddied foam, sighing into its cooling swallow. This is a memory of teenage toes and grains that fouled sandwiches that cracked between the, then, effortless twitch of her smile. But, this is now, and her dry lips thin and split as she pulls them back against her teeth. Her mind leaching, bleeding them of any part of joy.

She stands alone with her eyes closed so tightly she can feel them beat, and she plugs her toes ever deeper, down and into the sand.

“I am Drowner of the incessant silences. Drowner of the septic naked thing that purged from the ragged canal in a gush of amniotic roadside wash.”

In this fuddled moment she feels intimately connected to this far beginning, and just short of the end of many a thing. The sand; it has changed its counsel over these long years, she thinks.

In her youth, its rub was a soothing and searing balm to the soles of her feet. But now, it offers only abrasion. Painful mutterings that echo of the very Earth’s approaching demise. Its slow remorse as the moving water forever scratches and wears away at its skin.

***

Vanessa opens her eyes, and for a moment, everything is blue. The sky is ripped of its clouds, and the sea is calmed and without its white-licked peaks. Above and below merge into something terrifying and lovely, and infinite and connected, and so very blue.

“How am I here?”

She loses herself sometimes. She gets lost amid sentences, and on familiar streets, and in the ramping beat of her panting as she claws randomly found flesh into her zenith release.

She gets lost in the question of whether she is cold or hot. A God or not. Sick or not. She gets lost in the not knowing if she is bad or if, indeed, she is good.

She hears sea birds, and she opens her eyes and marvels at how freely they drop and bounce through the currents. To fly.

Vanessa has to work today so surely she didn’t abuse the boys, she wonders. The boys is the name she has given to the capsules that bustle and ruminate in the shoebox beneath her bed—the team she is on as she tries to neatly fold her past. An attempt, of a night, to put it all most soundly to sleep.

Spittle crests and runs the edge of her lip, and her head falls away to the side and bits of shell between her toes poke at her eyes as they play in the sun, and the world pulls back into step.

The ancient sand. Wet cement fragments in time copied so perfectly her feet as she ran.

***

Vanessa is standing naked with her skin torn and rubbed raw at the points where her clothes were torqued and drawn until they snapped and raped from her flesh.

“What am I?”

She knows this place—this bent scoop cove with thrusting walls of failing rock and dripping clay that pantomime at her back. Cliffs that fold to the ever-angered, and at once, so very meek waves that bite and chew. An incessant hunger that crumbles the farmland splaying out from and cowering at its very top.

She knows it well.

There is a ladder of sorts leading down from this top. Not all the way, as it stops twice on little ledges that allow her to swivel and adjust her stance. The ladder is formed from found things. Its main poles are mill-shaved lumber, but the struts are nailed branches of manuka and parts of window frames and such—an old street sign, that even now, as the salt picks and plays at her bare eyes, she wishes the name would thicken, and spill from her throat.

But it doesn’t. Her past does so lock itself in corridors of identical rooms.

***

Before her now, a beautiful ghost wades into the waves with a towering fishing rod in his grasp. This, she knows at once, is her grandfather, the massive height of the rod playing in his hand, begging only to be cast.

She struggles to grasp just how she is here. How she now sees this rod, or still just how the mangled line, wound within its long-neglected reel, passes so perfectly up through its guides and now hangs before him and her, replete with sinker and lavishly baited hook.

She would have thought an apparition such as this would weld his rod in the pristine condition he always maintained it in life. Not projecting it, as it now sits, neglected in the rafters of her grandfather’s long-since visited shed.

He seems full of tiny holes that allow the wave-spun breeze easy passage as it passes through him and beats against her skin.

The old man flips the bar that locks his reel in place and secures his finger to hold the nylon just so against the pole. Then he steps one foot forward, to widen and steady his stance, and arches backward, and with his other hand gripping firmly at the rod’s base, he heaves it backward over his head.

She is sad as the line passes through her mind, and even sadder that she doesn’t flinch in the slightest as it does.

Nothing now is tactile. Everything is hollowed, and she cannot clutch nor caress the form of most anything. Just wisps of husk and shell remain.

“Please don’t speak,” she begs silently of the old man’s back. “Please, I don’t think I can bear it after all this time you’ve been gone.”

“Come now, little whip. What is it that you hope to catch?”

“Myself. As always, Grandad, you know. Always there to wordlessly syphon off my self-pity and loathing with one of these dear trips to the beach.”

The old man smiles as he violently lurches forward, thrusting his bottom hand down to cast his line out. And the lead at its end pours into the ascendant before then falling, the dive probing the farthest distant swell.

***

She thinks she is mad.

She thinks she is mad, as she can feel, again, hands at her back, shuddering as they continue to flail the clothes from her body.

There is a threadbare waterfall that excretes from the cliff behind her. It forms a small pool at its base, and then dribbles down between her parted legs. A stream that splits at the base of the pole she now holds, and then deltas through the sand before her, spilling the clay’s rusty tint further down, veining into the sea.

“So that’s why the foam is red.” She sighs through a briefest smile of relief.

Her hooked finger feels a tug on the line. Then nothing. This pull it is that thing. That thing she tried so hard to ignore as she slipped into the bath with lipstick smiles at her wrists.

It tugs again, and the reel hisses as it plays out. She cranks the handle at its side, and the guide bar flicks back into place. She stops and she waits, and then again it tugs and runs off to the left. She winds again, heaving back the rod, and then stops and locks the line, and heaves it back again.

Time now races, and she can see but flashes of the moon and the sun as they chop and change in the sky. Her name is Vanessa, and she wants to carve it into a sea log so that it might float away, and when found, someone could care to wonder just what it was she was for.

The tip of the rod bows and it whips from side to side. She can see it now; this gathered floundering thing, fighting in the nearby roll, and she wades into the waves and winds and winds and winds.

It flaps and it screams, and then, this mass, it distills in the splaying foam. A great hook scooped into the corner of her scream, and torn out through the puff of her cheek.

She is human. Black hair shaved back to her scalp. Her face pulled apart and leaking like fruit torn to its pith.

Vanessa falls heavily at her side. Guilt throbs in her fingers as she holds the poor girl’s head and, with a long ago practiced twist of her wrist, she removes the hook from her face.

“I’m so sorry, look how I have ruined you,” Vanessa pleads as her voice bends and cracks against the gutted ripped flap of flesh that now slides beneath her hand as she tries to hold it in place. “I so wanted to catch you, but now I have, all I want is to throw you back,” she says to herself as she cups her own head, running her hand across the crust at its fire-scorched brow.

***

She’s seen wonderful things. With her job, she has visited the world entire. She has sat alone in empty bars at dawn and sucked the head off fizzing amber shafts of filthy glass. She has marveled at the flustered faces of commuting crowds packed into trains, and wept as they looked so happy.

Grooves within a lock, clicking and clicking and clicking into place.

“I am a pilot, and I need to get back to the pit. The pews which sit behind me there, worshiped my invisible power to give them all wings to skirt the globe. To find safe passage. My sermon gave them comfort, and now look at the harvest I’ve lost.”

You were in the sky, and you left the cockpit, and as the switches passed above your head, you thought of nothing. Nothing.

Vanessa?

It is now late afternoon, but still the sun, it reaps. Vanessa lies naked and jagged and dead as the returning tide pushes and pulls at the holes in her body.

The bay is strewn with bomb-gouged bodies, and bits of headrests and plastic cups, and private things that float.

Her right leg floats atop the gentle surge of the tide. Its foot remains bound and safe in a shoe—it now the only thing that holds her in place.

The sea sways and sauces the sand, and the sand, it grates and parts and parts again. Smaller and smaller, until finally Vanessa becomes nothing at all.

Nothing but a single shoe to be found on a beach by a stranger.

Picture of Hari Navarro

Hari Navarro

Hari Navarro has, for many years now, been locked in his neighbour’s cellar. He survives due to an intravenous feed of puréed extreme horror and Absinthe-infused sticky-spiced unicorn wings. His anguished cries for more dip can be found via Black Hare Press, Black Ink Fiction, Hellbound Books, 365 Tomorrows, Breachzine, AntipodeanSF and Horror Without Borders.
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