“Write what you feel,” says the counselor, so Stoop sits down and writes a story about a pretty smart guy who had a hobby of toying with beautiful fractals and okay, maybe he switched to freelance to have more time to pursue it and then maybe he stopped doing freelance but it was temporary, but then he failed to budget for food and rent so the landlord had him dragged fighting from his filthy chair in front of the slowly turning recursive helix which is when his sister got him into this program with a counselor who says “write what you–“
“Current kaiju forecasts call for Welbaru to rampage south-southeast this evening,” smiles Quentin into the camera, before Welbaru rampages north, directly through their studio. When the rain of cinders has slacked off, they struggle choking into suspended rubble-dust.
“Listen,” says producer Rayanne, “I think we can spin this so he actually went south after all.”
“South is relative,” nods Quentin.
“North!” snorts Rayanne. “Who needs north? North is what they’d like you to believe.”
Then they do a headcount and hardly anybody’s dead except the staff kaijologist, whom they were going to kill for this anyway! Oh, too soon.
The island must have been some kind of fur farm, before the demic: Lisa’s found rusted-out pens and a crumbling house with tannery racks behind it. But mostly the foxes clued her in.
They’re all human-friendly and uninterested in her food; they seem to eat sweet fallen apples, when they’re not pillaging a busted kibble silo. At night they curl up around her overturned boat and twitch their feet in sleep.
She could give up searching for the prophet, maybe. Stay here, eat fruit, stroke foxfur and dream.
No, Lisa. Sail on.
They cry like children when she goes.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Jelenko sends her a dozen white roses. Hortense sends him a dozen black widows. Subtlety is one quality they lack in common.
Jelenko leaves a string of pearls on her doorknob; Hortense leaves his motor oil in a pool beneath his car. He delivers an assortment of white chocolates topped with silverflake. She bribes a barista to swap his coffee for ink. To switch things up, Jelenko gets her Loubotins in jet leather. She puts powdered bleach in his shower head.
In the hospital, he takes delivery of the roses, their petals charred one by one. He smiles; she watches. Monochromance.
“And why didn’t you notice the ship was leaking antimatter for four hours?”
“Look, I had a hot holodate,” shrugs Science Officer Riker. “Things got out of hand. And also into hand. Because I got a holohandy.”
“Will, maybe if we tried reversing the polarity to–” says Engineering Chief Crusher.
“I tried reversing her polarity last night, if you know what I mean!” says Science Officer Riker. “What I mean is that we did it from behind.”
Around the table, the other officers stare at him hard enough to press latinum.
“I’m detecting tension somewhere in this vicinity,” frowns Captain Troi.
Castle wears the stethoscope. Elephant carries the gun.
“Our remaining time,” says Elephant with a puff of frustrated breath, “can no longer be measured in minutes.”
“Are you talking?” hisses Castle. “What is the one thing you think I need to do right now?” Head cocked, pressing her earpiece, she twists a heavy dial tick by tick to the left.
Elephant grinds those great teeth, waiting, crouched by the door with her hand-cannon cocked. Castle hears the last tumbler whisper into place.
Their sleeping subject murmurs, hand fumbling for something heavy on his chest; but the heartbreakers are already gone.
She feels the end of the world stroke her throat with fingers like truth and death. She swallows. A tear crawls down her cheek.
Aldous opens her burning eyes. The auditorium is empty. She is, as always, alone.
Backstage there are stacks of dusty pine, newspaper, buckets of nails; the thing about the theater is you’re always building something. It’ll take time to lug it up through her little trapdoor, but time she’s got.
One final thing her father showed her: you can’t just leave the house. You have to give it something. You have to build the last room yourself.
I have heard in the cold of the long polar night
That a wind with no name takes your soul with no fight
But I’ve heard a few things. How can we even guess
Whether six-and-ten secrets in fact phosphoresce
Like a fleet acrobat down a high-tension wire
With her eyes dead as ice and her feet licked by fire
In an eoreum which no man’s eye can see
Save for those lost in trance; save for those lost to me
For that is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange ashes even fire may die