WHAT THE #@&% IS THAT? - Couverture souple

What the #@&% Is That? MOBILITY

LAIRD BARRON

Life is hard in forty million B.C. beneath the apple-green heavens. Something is always trying to eat the monkeys. A shadow ripples across the forest canopy to confirm this fact. The monkeys screech and scatter among the lush treetops. The black shape veers out of the sun in pursuit. It closes the gap at an astonishing rate.

Branches slap together and howlers howl. The shadow snatches a few of the slower troop (rending treetops as well) and glides away, trailing pitiful monkey screams.

The forest is still. Eventually, birds trill and buzz in a thousand tongues. The monkeys also call to one another and the survivors make their way back to the central group for commiseration. The troop settles. The monkeys return to cracking nuts and eating fruit and picking each other’s nits. One watches the cloudless apple-green skies, although the memory of why soon fades.

* * * *

Bryan murdered a squirrel a few hours into his eleventh birthday. Uncle So-and-So handed him a pump-action air rifle for a birthday present and the kid shot the first animal he saw. Which happened to be a semi-tame gray squirrel nibbling an acorn on the sidewalk in front of Bryan’s house. He pumped the action twenty or thirty times, aimed with his tongue sticking out, and squeezed the trigger. Lucky (?) shot blew that squirrel’s eyeball to jelly. A little kid laboriously pedaling a tricycle witnessed the slaughter with a vacuous smirk. This was the brat who’d recently learned how to burn ants with a magnifying glass.

Bryan felt surprised and a little bit sick for a few minutes. The family cat, Heathcliff, also known as the Black Death, swooped in and nabbed the squirrel’s corpse and Bryan forgot the whole thing.

The universe would have its vengeance. It had begun to wreak it eons before Bryan was ever born.

* * * *

Snow fell on Providence all afternoon. Made a mucky slush of the walk from school. Bryan ordered baked tuna at the grill where Lovecraft had eaten whenever Weird Tales sent a check, which was sufficiently infrequent to qualify as a special occasion. Came back to bite both of them in the ass.

Bryan stood a shade under six feet. Burly Scandinavian stock. Curly hair and precisely trimmed beard, colored blond out of a bottle. Forty-five years made him as good as any vintage LP. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t not smile, either. He’d worn his lucky cardigan to dinner. Black and white, separated by a jagged divide, animals fighting, the two wolves of the soul from Native American folklore locking jaws. He’d worn a knit cap, black. He’d worn black-and-white knit gloves to match the sweater. He’d worn glasses, rimless. Not necessary, yet the coeds liked the look. The glasses said philosopher, poet-wunderkind; he was a professor of Pawhunk Community College Nonfiction Writing Department these past four years, so it seemed appropriate. He’d worn a gold band, although it signified nothing since he’d never married and never planned to (God help him if Angie ever twigged to the truth). Merely a prop from his community theater stint. The coeds liked men with wedding bands. The band said, I could fuck you if I wanted to, but I’m not gonna try, because well, look. He’d worn buckskin pants. And moccasins. With fringe.

Angie, his eye-rolling girlfriend of a decade, served as the English Chair at Brown, and good for her, although he routinely mentioned she could do better and tried to ignore how her eyebrows shot up. Late that autumn, after much subtle manipulation on Bryan’s part, they celebrated her thirty-fourth birthday with a cruise to Nova Scotia. Serendipity! He wanted to research a nonfiction crime author who lived there, anyway. Angie toured thrift shops and outlet malls while he spent the weekend plying the down-on-his-luck author, one Buford Creely, with booze and picking (pickling?) the fellow’s brain about a sensational murder case from the 1960s and ‘70s. Thirty-nine missing persons, a secret grotto littered with skulls piled into pyramids, and skulls on stakes. Unsolved, cops baffled, movie-of-the-week fodder. The kind of lurid material the faculty at Pawhunk frowned upon yet were stuck with in the infrequent event one of its professors girded his loins and took a stab at publishing.

The vacation arrangement worked out great, although Angie seemed moody after they returned to his apartment in Providence. Meanwhile, Bryan was positively energized and stoked to sequester himself in the spare bedroom (his den) for a week or two to go at a new essay, which is exactly what he did.

This was the first evening they’d been together during that hectic stretch.

“Eat up, sport,” she said, watching him put away another fork-load of the tuna. “You’ll need your strength tonight.”

“Oh, boy!”

She smiled, pure flint. “Got some bad news. Skylark Tooms passed away. Remember her?”

“Rich, attractive. Dad was a clothing designer or . . . ?”

“She died in an industrial accident the other day. Burned alive. Like this damned steak.”

“I’m sorry your friend is dead.” Through a mouthful.

“Friend, no. We weren’t close since school. It’s been on the news. A whole port town was destroyed. Train derailment. Chemicals. Nobody can get close.”

“Awful, awful.” Another chunk of delectable, flaky salmon glazed in garlic and lemon. This bite almost lodged in his throat. It left a metallic aftertaste. Bryan’s eyes smarted and he quickly sipped water to ease the lump in its passage.

“I’m over it. A shock, is all.” Angie appeared oblivious to his struggle, utterly consumed with her own concerns.

Bryan recovered. He signaled the waiter and ordered crème brûlée and a cup of black coffee. Delicious. “Did you want something?” he said, dabbing his lips with a cloth napkin, vaguely piqued she hadn’t offered to do it for him like when they first dated. She’d acted the part of a depraved concubine then.

She smiled and shook her head.

After dinner, he called a cab to save them from another slog through the gloppy streets. Back at his place, he put Boys in the Trees on the stereo (antiquing for the win!) and broke out a bottle of kinda good wine. Angie watched from her perch on the arm of the leather couch, where he’d begged her pretty please not to sit a million and one times. Her manic-pixie haircut, thick-rimmed glasses, and red lipstick seemed brutally severe. However, she rocked an angora sweater and tartan skirt combo, and that made up for the rest.

He wiped his sweaty face with his sleeve. He pried the cork loose, poured half a glass, and drank it while sorting his phone messages. Three—two from Mom, and the last from that drunken author Creely. Mom said, I love you; why don’t you ever return my calls; Creely said, Get in touch soonest; you got my number, and hung up. From all the hooting and yelling in the background, the author sounded like he’d used a payphone at the local tavern.

Bryan’s stomach felt the slightest bit queasy. He burped and the metallic taste returned. He did himself up with another quarter glass of cabernet sauvignon, glanced over his shoulder, and saw that Angie remained poised and smiling as if she’d slipped on a reasonably lifelike mask of herself in one of her better moods. Ah, yes, he should pour her a stout one, keep her in that happy place.

Angie accepted the too-full glass without comment. She balanced it on her thigh.

“Your engagement ring,” he said. “You’re not wearing it.”

“I’m not?” Again with the flinty smile.

His stomach burbled. He made his apologies and beelined for the bathroom. His reflection in the mirror was an ashen nightmare. He dropped his trousers and sat on the commode, head in his hands.

Angie knocked on the door. “FYI, I don’t fancy you anymore, Bryan. Ten years in Chinese Hell should be considered time served. It’s your turn on the spit.”

Bryan would’ve retorted, but at that moment, his guts began to convulsively evacuate their contents. He groaned.

She continued in a pleasant voice, quite unlike her customary tone. “Do you recall that dream I mentioned? The one where I was a knight traveling the land on a fearless steed and lopping heads with a talking broadsword? Probably not. That’s the problem, Professor. Had it again last night. I am now convinced time has come to cut bait and pursue other life opportunities. You always say I can do better. Kudos. Kudos, you heartless motherfucker!”

His vision contracted. His breath whistled. He clutched his tightening chest and toppled face-first onto the tiles. The descent took forever.

“Don’t be melodramatic. Whining isn’t manly. I mean, hell, Bry. I’m the one who should be pissed. Ten goddamned years.” She sighed, and if Bryan hadn’t simultaneously been suffocating and shitting himself, he might’ve imagined her pressed against the panel, wistfully tracing the grain with her nail, enacting the breakup scene that comes at the end of act two of every chick flick. “FYI, I’ve already met someone, so please do fuck right off and don’t pester me with calls. We’re flying to the Caribbean in a few hours.”

Bryan clawed at the door in a doomed gesture. He vomited. Angie’s engagement ring rode the sluice from his guts and floated in a puddle of bile and salmon under his nose. He blacked out and had a vision of lying helpless among reeds while giant herons pecked his liver to itty bits. Angie, clad in a shiny chainmail bikini, leaned upon her equally shiny broadsword and smiled contemptuously. She stroked the pommel with her thumb and said, “Who’s sticking it to whom now, you silly bitch?”

* * * *

“Collapsed lung,” the beefy nurse said with supreme indifference. “You aspirated a shitload of vomit. Not good, bro.”

Bryan woke, after a fashion, in a hospital bed with the monotone report in progress. Tubes clogged his nose and throat. Cottony wooziness softened the interior of his skull. No, aspirating a shitload of vomit did not sound good at all, he had to agree. He closed his eyes and had a foggy recollection of his eleven-year-old self standing in the drive, pellet rifle in hand while the squirrel twitched its last. The tops of the sycamore (sequoia?) trees rustled and monkeys screeched fearfully. A shadow blotted the sun. A ten-foot-tall Martian descended from the belly of the mother saucer on a cold white beam. The Martian took his eleven-year-old self’s pulse while brandishing a shiny chromatic blaster in the other hand. Nice shooting, Tex, the Martian said via telepathy. We hate those damned things where I come from. Heathcliff snatched the squirrel and darted away. The Martian telepathically laughed with savage gusto and Bryan’s nose bled.

“Go back to sleep,” the beefy nurse said, and snapped his fingers.

Bryan went back to sleep.

* * * *

A few days and several sketchy diagnoses later, the beefy nurse said, “That’s a wrap. You’re officially mended. There’s your clothes.” He turned the light off as he left the room.

Darkness shifted to light. Bryan hobbled into his apartment on a set of cheap hospital crutches with no memory of how he’d arrived. His muscles and nervous system remained mysteriously at odds, causing spastic tics and farcical nightmares starring aggrieved monkeys and an endless green hell of jungle. His reinflated lung felt seared and scarred. He wheezed at the slightest exertion.

The weekend dripped through his veins and cocooned him in a gray malaise that precluded research, much less actual writing. He possessed trace memories of whatever had flickered ceaselessly across the television screen. His condition remained so moribund, he only left five or six increasingly strident messages on Angie’s answering machine. Between stretches of torpor, he obsessed about her and his new rival, picturing them on a Caribbean beach sipping rum and laughing at his misfortune.

On Monday, Frank Mandibole, a former college chum and infrequent confidant, rang. Mandibole said the situation sounded intolerable and that he’d be over right away with proper medicine. The man arrived within moments. He pranced through the door and laid his hand on Bryan’s forehead. “Gracious! Not a moment too soon. Let’s take a ride, get some fresh air in your lungs. Hang around sucking in Providence, you’ll eventually go the way of Uncle Howard.”

“I feel half-dead, Frank.”

“It’s Tom. To-om! I don’t go by Frank anymore. Try to focus on the positive. We’ll throw a few things in a bag and wheee all the way to Mom and Dad’s house for some R and R.”

Bryan didn’t argue the point. While generally the same height and composition as his old self, Mandibole no longer precisely resembled the “Frank” of school days. He’d trimmed his hair and shaved off the mustache. His skin gleamed the way a doll’s skin does. In fact, his features (and helmet hair) were decidedly action-figure plastic. There’d been rumors of an accident. Obviously, he’d had work done. He wore a black-and-white cardigan that also seemed annoyingly familiar, yet not.

Bryan lacked the strength to protest the car ride. Anyway, how much worse could it be than lying around his apartment sloughing into eternity?

* * * *

They hopped onto the interstate and cruised south, then west, into the wild lands of the Empire State. Mandibole’s car had a rusty pink paint job. Compactly European, a tin can on bicycle wheels. Bryan didn’t recognize the make or model, nor could he decipher the faded pennant on the radio antenna. Polka music burped and barked over the radio, interspersed with commentary that sounded Russian.

Mandibole said, “I’ve a theory regarding your illness. You’re not superstitious—you gave up bowing to altars and thumping holy tomes, yes? Hang with me for a second. What if you’re punishing yourself subconsciously?”

“Punishing myself for what?”

“For bailing on the Mormons. Unresolved guilt.”

“All my guilt is resolved. I’m a confirmed atheist. Happily.” Bryan massaged the swollen glands in his neck. Bundled in a parka, scarf, mittens, snow pants, and snow boots he still shivered. The landscape stretched brown and bare on either side of the highway.

“Uh-huh. When I first met you, I knew something was amiss. Absolutely knew it. You were kind of head-shy. Ponder this: Leaving the fold, running off to college . . . screwing, smoking, educating. Kicking indoctrination takes a stout heart and a dedicated support system. Nobody helped you, did they? You packed your bags and split the family homestead in the dead of night with nary a kiss-my-ass to anyone. Cold turkey off the LDS teat. Traumatic, right?”

“Of course, Fra—I mean Tom. I had a few dark days.”

“Surely that left a scar.”

“Not likely.”

“Be realistic, friend. Unplugging from a cult is tricky. People who detach from rigid, hierarchal religious organizations are prone to depression, alcoholism, suicide, you name it. Botch the deprogramming and, well . . . Exhibit A in my passenger seat.”

“Really, that’s not related to my situation.”

“If you say so.”

“Getting away from the church meant getting away from my dad. That’s a net gain, I assure you.” A sense of déjà vu overcame Bryan. He recalled vivid fragments of this very conversation from years before—he and Mandibole tossing darts at a college pub, blitzed on draft beer and sharing life stories. He tried to recall Mandibole’s tale and drew a blank. The main thing that stuck in his mind was that his friend had been blond, taller, and cheerfully evasive.

“Daddy issues. Revealing, although not the nut of y...

John Joseph Adams is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy. He is also the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent books include The Apocalypse Triptych (consisting of The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come), and series editor for The Best American Fantasy and Science Fiction. John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award and is a six-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of the digital magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare, and is a producer for WIRED’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

Douglas Cohen (DouglasCohenEditorial.com) is the coeditor of the anthology, Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond. He is a former editor of Realms of Fantasy Magazine, where he worked for six and a half years. In the magazine’s final year, it published its one hundreth issue, won a Nebula Award, and was nominated for a second one. Douglas is also a writer, and his stories have appeared in Weird Tales. Additionally, he is the author of Realms of Fantasy: A Retrospective, a book collecting his detailed blog entries on every single issue published during the magazine’s sixteen year history.