Alan Arkin’s middle name is Wolf.
“Don’t think that means I can shapeshift or whatever,” he tells you, chuckling. “I’m no lycanthrope, no changeling.”
That’s a relief.
“I’m just here to play,” and he deals you two cards, one face up, one down. He peeks at his hidden card. Don’t bother with yours.
“Betting blind,” he says, “ballsy. Gonna hit myself.” He’s got twenty showing now. Your top card’s an ace. Don’t bother to look at your bottom card, you can’t change it now. Don’t–
“Oh, that’s poor practice,” frowns Alan Arkin, as the Nine of Spades chews off your hand.
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
According to canon, Beloit’s fencing skills were removed via neurosurgery by the Uncouth Irrawaddy, but Beloit disagrees, and stabs canon in the arm.
“Not bad for a lobotomy victim,” he taunts. Canon swings one bladed pseudopod; Beloit dodges over the left balcony railing. Canon says that’s the side with the giant rotating fan blades. Beloit jams his rapier into the wall and drags himself to a dangling stop. “Okay,” he gasps, “but the Heliocrashers destroyed the generator here, want to explain that?”
Canon erupts six competing theories and staggers, oozing. Beloit draws his dagger and prepares to help pare them down.
Barlowe has, of course, been dead before: born blue and tiny, he took his first breath thirty seconds late, and it stuck. Apnea. Life is a cat, he learned, ready to sneak away on any given night. He learned to be ready, to snatch it back.
He’s got the cat’s tail now, but the cat’s left it behind and taken his tongue. Barlowe breathes deep and gets no oxygen: instead he gets rich, deep smells, more information than he ever had from color vision. One of the smells is bright with fear. He starts to follow it, and he’s not alone.
He stays up very late watching her pack. She doesn’t ask for help; he doesn’t offer. She put one of her records on the turntable but never turned it over after the last song, so:
“Skip and hiss,” she says, leaning on her dad’s biggest suitcase.
“I want to play guitar for you,” he says.
“Too bad it’s my guitar,” she smiles, “and I packed it, and you can’t play anyway.”
“This one song,” he says.
“I know which one. But no.”
South doesn’t say anything.
She shakes her head. “We’ve spent ten weeks not being naked, South. Why start now?”
They Shall Breathe Ashes, the famous assassin, and her assistant Shelby are on a rooftop. They and Shelby have neither guns nor toupees.
“What did you dust on his toupee, Shelby?” asks They.
“Powdered sugar,” says Shelby, “and permanganate of potash.”
“Nonpoisonous on contact,” gloats their opponent. “Should have done your homework, girls!” He waves his gun, and they walk obligingly toward the edge.
“Storm’s coming,” observes They.
“I promise you’ll miss the worst of it,” he scoffs. “Make like lemmings.”
“That’s a myth,” says Shelby.
“No, lemmings are real,” he says, as the first drop of rain hits his head.
“It doesn’t have to be personal correspondence,” says the Great Zaganza, Philatelogist, “you just want a general forecast, yes?”
“Yes,” says Azalea, who is going to war.
“Then junk mail will do,” says Zaganza. He sifts it out of her bag, then cuts out its corners: they scrape up the self-adhesives with razors and soak out the lick-and-sticks. Soon they’re poring over nine stamps, arranged by price, blurred by postmark.
“You’re going to get a lot more junk mail,” says Zaganza at last.
“That’s good!” says Azalea, swelling.
“But that doesn’t,” frowns Zaganza, “really change when you die.”
“The mundanes have always feared and despised our fellows,” explains Apricorn the kleptomancer. “Even those who had, by dint of literally weeks of labor, become wealthy and upstanding citizens–”
“By dint of kleptomancy, you mean,” says Guro.
“Which takes labor,” Apricorn insists. “The point being that we built–”
“By dint of–”
“–New Katachrol to be a like-minded place, a safe haven, a refuge. Unfortunately, certain building projects that have gone over budget, and–”
“You’re applying for the grant?” Guro blinks. “Can’t you just, er, obtain the prize?”
“Oh, I did,” says Apricorn, “but it appears to have gone missing somehow.”
She takes them out of the handkerchief one at a time, careful not to touch the edges: three shattered seconds, like puzzles that cut. Her left eye says they’re missing a few shards but fixable. Her right, through the loupe, says they’re ugly bad dark times: betrayal and sick fear, things that were broken for a reason.
The Summersmith looks across the counter at her patron, thirteen, too young to deserve these in his life. “Do you want them fixed,” she says, “or fixed?”
“Truth is beauty,” he says sadly, and the loupe shows her the galloping pulse in his neck.