"It was just fun, man," said Harry.
"Fun!"
"It started out that way. He shouldn"t have hit people. "
"He didn"t want to do it. Royce, please. Do you want anything? Is anything especially painful?"
"Just his a.s.s," said Lou, and laughed.
"He"ll be OK," said Charlie, a shadow of confusion on his face.
"Like f.u.c.k he will. That was some way to say thanks for all he"s done. Well? Are any of you going to give me a hand?"
Harry did. He helped me to get Royce up. Royce hung between us like a sack.
"It"s that f.u.c.king poison you make, man," said Harry to Charlie.
"Don"t blame me. You were the first, remember. "
"I was just playing. "
They began to realize what they"d done. He was all angles, like a doll that didn"t work anymore.
"What the f.u.c.k did you do?" I shouted at them. He didn"t seem to be bruised anywhere. "Jesus Christ!" I began to cry because I thought he was dead. "You f.u.c.king killed him!"
"Uh-uh, no," said Gary. "We didn"t. "
"p.i.s.shead!"
Charlie came to help too, and we got him outside, and into the showers, and he slumped down in the dark. I couldn"t find a rag, so we just let the lukewarm water trickle down over him. All we did was get him wet on an evening in November.
"It"s cold out here, we got to get him back in," said Harry.
Royce rolled himself up onto his knees, and looked at me. "You were there. "
"I wasn"t part of it. I tried to stop it. "
"You were there. You didn"t help. "
"I couldn"t!"
He grunted and stood up. We tried to help him, but he knocked our hands away. He sagged a bit at the knees, but kept on walking, unsteadily. He walked back into the waiting room. Silently, people were tidying up, straightening beds. Royce scooped up his clothes with almost his usual deftness. He went back to his bed, and dropped down onto it, next to Tom, and began to inspect his shirt and trousers for damage.
"The least you could have done!" I said. I don"t know what I meant.
Lou was leaning back on his bed. He looked pleased, elbows sticking out from the side of his head. "Look at it this way," he said. "It might do him some good. He shouldn"t be so worried about his little problem. He just needs to relax a bit more, try it on for size. The worst thing you can do with a problem like that is hide from it. "
If I"d had an axe, I would have killed him. He knew that. He smiled.
Then the lights went out, without warning as always, but two hours early.
There was snow on the ground in the morning, a light dusting of it on the roof and on the ground. There was no patter. Royce did not talk to the cameras. He came out, wearing his jacket; there was a tear in his shirt, under the armpit. He ate his breakfast without looking at anyone, his face closed and still. Hardly anyone spoke. Big Lou walked around with a little half-grin. He was so pleased, he was stretched tight with it. He"d won; he was Boss again. No one used the showers.
Then we went out, and waited for the train.
We could see its brilliant headlight shining like a star on the track.
We could see the layers of wire-mesh gates pulling back for it, like curtains, and close behind it. We began to hear a noise coming from it.
It was a regular, steady drumming against metal, a bit like the sound of marching feet, a sound in unison.
"Yup," said Charlie. "the drugs have worn off. "
"It"s going to be a b.a.s.t.a.r.d," said Gary.
Lou walked calmly toward the cameras. "Alice? What do we do?" No answer. "We can"t unload them, Alice. Do we just leave them on the train, or what?" Silence. "Alice. We need to know what you want done. "
"Don"t call me Alice," said the camera.
"Could you let us back in, then?" asked Lou.
No answer.
The train came grinding into the platform, clattering and banging and smelling of p.i.s.s. We all stood back from it, well back. Away from us, at the far end of the platform, James stood looking at the silver sky and the snow in the woods, his back to us, his headphones on. We could hear the thin whisper of Mozart from where we stood. Still looking at the woods, James sauntered toward the nearest carriage.
"James!" wailed Charlie. "Don"t open the door!"
"Jim! Jimmy! Stop!"
"James! Don"t!"
He waved. All he heard was Mozart, and a banging from the train not much louder than usual. With a practiced, muscular motion, he snapped up the bolt, and pulled it back, and began to swing open the door.
It burst free from his grasp, and was slammed back, and a torrent of people poured down out of the carriage, onto him. His headphones were only the first thing to be torn from him. The Stiffs were all green and mottled, like leaves. Oh Christ, oh Jesus. Uniforms. Army.
We turned and ran for the turnstile. "Alice! G.o.d-d.a.m.n it, let us in!" raged Lou. The turnstile buzzed, angrily, and we scrambled through it, caught up in its turning arms, crammed ourselves into its embrace four at a time, and we could hear feet running behind us. I squeezed through with Gary, and heard Charlie behind us cry out. Hands held him, clawed at his forehead. Gary and I pulled him out, and Lou leapt in after us, and pulled the emergency gate shut.
They prowled just the other side of a wire mesh fence, thick necked, as mad as bulls, with a.s.ses as broad as our shoulders. "We"ll get you f.u.c.kers," one of them promised me, looking dead into my eyes. They trotted from door to door of the train, springing them. They began to rock the turnstile back and forth. "Not electric!" one of them called. They began to pull at the wire mesh. We had no weapons.
"Hey! Hey, help!" we shouted. "Alice, Scarlett. Help!"
No answer. As if in contempt, the warm-up lights went on. "We"re using gas," said Alice, her voice hard. "Get your masks. "
The masks were in the waiting room. We turned and ran, but the cameras didn"t give us time. Suddenly there was a gush of something like steam, in the icy morning, out from under the platform. I must have caught a whiff of it. It was like a blow on the head, and my feet crossed in front of each other instead of running I managed to hold my breath, and Royce"s face was suddenly in front of me, as still as a stone, and he pushed a mask at me, and pulled on his own, walking toward the gate. I fumbled with mine. Harry, or someone, all inhuman in green, helped me. I saw Royce walking like an angel into white, a blistering white that caught the winter sunlight in a blaze. He walked right up to the fence, and stood in the middle of the poison, and watched.
The gas billowed, and the people billowed too, in waves. They climbed up over each other, in shifting pyramids, to get away, piling up against the fence. Those on top balanced, waving their arms like surfers, and there were sudden flashes of red light through the mist, and bars of rumpled flesh appeared across their eyes. One of them had fine light hair that burst into flame about his head. He wore a crown of fire.
The faces of those on the bottom of the heap were pressed against the fence into diamond shapes, and they twitched and jittered. The whole wave began to twitch and jitter, and shake, against the fence.
It must have been the gas in my head. I was suddenly convinced that it was nerve gas, and that meant that the nerves of the dead people were still working, even though they were dead. Even though they were dead, they would shake and judder against the fence until it fell, and then they would walk toward us, and take us into their arms, and talk to us in whispers, and pull off the masks.
I spun around, and looked at the mound, because I thought the dead inside it would wake. It did seem to swim and move, and I thought that Babylon would crack, and what had been hidden would come marching out. The dead were angry, because they had been forgotten.
Then the mist began to clear, blown. I thought of dandelion seeds that I had blown like magic across the fields when I was a child.
"Hockey games," I said. I thought there had been a game of hockey. The bodies were piled up, in uniforms. They were still. We waited. Harry practiced throwing stones.
"What a mess," said Gary.
There were still wafts of gas around the bottom of the platform. We didn"t know how long we would have to wait before it was safe.
Suddenly Lou stepped forward. "Come on, let"s start," he said, his voice m.u.f.fled by the mask. He pulled back the emergency gate. "We"ve got masks," he said.
None of us moved. We just didn"t have the heart.
"We can"t leave them there!" Lou shouted. Still none of us moved.
Then Royce sat down on the gra.s.s, and pulled off his mask, and took two deep breaths. He looked at the faces in front of him, a few feet away, purple against the mesh.
"Alice," he said. "Why are we doing this?"
No answer.
"It"s horrible. It"s the worst thing in the world. Horrible for us, horrible for you. That"s why what happened last night happened, Alice. Because this is so terrible. You cage people up, you make them do things like this, and something goes, something inside. Something will give with you, too, Alice. You can"t keep this up either. Do you have dreams, Alice? Do you have dreams at night about this? While the Wigs are at their parties, making big decisions and debating ideology? I don"t believe anyone could look at this and not feel sick. "
"You need to hear any more?" Lou asked the cameras, with a swagger.
"I mean. How did it happen?" Royce was crying. "How did we get so far apart? there were problems, sure, but there was love, too. Men and women loved each other. People love each other, so why do we end up doing things like this? Can you give me a reason, Alice?"
"You do realize what he"s saying, don"t you?" asked Lou. He pulled off his mask, and folded his arms. "Just listen to what is coming out of his closet. "
"I am not going to move those bodies, Alice," said Royce. "I can"t. I literally cannot move another body. I don"t think any of us can. You can kill us all if you want to. But then, you"d have to come and do it yourselves, wouldn"t you?"
Lou waited. We all waited. Nothing happened.
"They"ll-uh-start to stink if we don"t move them," said Gary, and coughed, and looked to Lou.
"If we don"t move them," said Harry, and for once he wasn"t smiling, "another train can"t come in. "
"Alice?" said Lou. "Alice?" Louder, outraged. "You hear what is happening here?"
There was a click, and a rumbling sound, a sort of shunting. A gate at the far end of the platform rolled back. Then another, and another, all of them opening at once.
"Go on," said Alice.
We all just stood there. We weren"t sure what it meant, we didn"t even know that all those gates could open at once.
"Go on. Get out. Hurry. Before one of the Wigs comes. "
"You mean it?" Harry asked. We were frightened. We were frightened to leave.
"We"ll say you got killed in the riot, that you were ga.s.sed or something. They"ll never know the difference. Now move!"
"Alice, G.o.d-d.a.m.n it, what are you doing, are you crazy?" Lou was wild.
"No. She ain"t crazy. You are. " that was Royce. He stood up. "Well you heard her, haul some a.s.s. Charlie, Harry, you go and get all the food there is left in the canteen. The rest of you, go get all the blankets and clothes, big coats that haven"t been shipped back. And Harry, fill some jugs with water. "
Lou didn"t say anything. He pulled out a kitchen knife and he ran toward Royce. Royce just stood there. I don"t think he would have done anything. I think he was tired, tired of the whole thing. I mean he was tired of death. Lou came for him.
The Grils burned him. They burned Lou. He fell in a heap at Royce"s feet, his long, strong arms all twisted. "Aw h.e.l.l," said Royce, sad and angry. "Aw h.e.l.l. "
And a voice came cutting into my head, clear and blaring. I was crazy. The voice said,"this is radio station KERB broadcasting live from the First Baptist Church of Christ the Redeemer with the Reverend Thomas Wallace Robertson and the Inglewood Youth Choir, singing O Happy Day. "
And I heard it. I heard the music. I just walked out onto the platform, reeling with the sound, the ma.s.s of voices inside my head, and I didn"t need any blankets. O Happy Day! When Jesus wash! And Los Angeles might be gone, and Detroit and Miami, a lot of things might be gone, but that Sunday night music was still kicking s.h.i.t, and if there wasn"t a G.o.d, there was always other people, and they surprised you. Maybe I"d been fooled by history too. I said goodbye to the cameras as I pa.s.sed them. Goodbye Alice. Goodbye Hortensia. See ya, Scarlet. Butch, I"m sorry about the name.
They were making funny noises. The cameras were weeping.
I walked on toward the open gate.
For America.
Pervert.
by Charles Coleman Finlay.
Charles Coleman Finlay is the author of the novels The Prodigal Troll, The Patriot Witch, A Spell for the Revolution, and The Demon Redcoat. Finlay"s short fiction-most of which appears in his collection, Wild Things-has been published in several magazines, such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Black Gate, and in anthologies, including The Best of All Flesh and my own By Blood We Live, The Way of the Wizard, and The Living Dead 2. He has twice been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has also been nominated for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Sidewise Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award.
s.e.xuality is more than just bodily urges; it"s more than who you ask on a date. s.e.xuality permeates almost every aspect of the lives we lead, and our cultural experiences will influence our s.e.xual choices. We dream of love at first sight, but find that society not only influences who we will see, but the kind of love we are allowed to fall into.
This next tale is the story of a man torn between the pa.s.sion within him and the strictures of a society very different from our own. In his world, religion and biology have colluded to make people with his s.e.xual urges not only uncommon, but unacceptable. Duty and temptation catch him in a Gordian knot even the most hardened dominatrix would find too binding.
This story was a finalist in the 2005 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards for its thoughtful discussion of s.e.xuality and how society regulates our s.e.x lives. Here is all the pa.s.sion of s.e.x, the melancholy of unexpressed love-and the bitterness of a life lived in perversion.
There are two kinds of people in the world, h.o.m.os.e.xuals and hydros.e.xuals. And then there are perverts like me. So far as I know, there is not a word, not even a bit of slang, to describe my particular depravity. But then I have never spoken of it to anyone, nor written of it before now, and we do not invent words for the things we dare not speak or write.
Everyone knows I am different, though. They can tell.
Jamin and Zel stroll through the corridor of the apartment building where we all live. I can tell it"s them coming because I leave my door cracked open to show everyone I have nothing to hide. Zel"s distant voice caroms off the walls, fluctuating in pitch with the peaks and rhythms of the stories he tells; Jamin"s subdued, distinctive laugh barks out at regular intervals. For thirty or forty seconds before they arrive, I hear their approach, and dread it. They are my best friends.
I sit in the exact center of the cerulean blue sofa, arms resting on its bell-shaped back, palms damp against the silky fabric. The voice of Noh Sis, last year"s most popular singer, warbles from the stereo speakers, making a dirge of joy amid the interweaving of sitar and clarinets. Closing my eyes, I count the notes and half-notes by measure, now the sorrowful tone in the end-rhyme of love, Zel"s exclamation, a series of mournful sitar chords, Jamin"s laugh.
And the tap at the door.
I lift my head as if surprised to see them, smile as if happy. "Hey!"