Tiny Nightmares Page 8

  Each sister has one blackened big toenail. Each has an extra bone in her left heel. Each sister hated her daddy.

  His ashes were thrown to the wind some years ago.

  When the pot boils, the sisters place heavy stoneware plates and cups upon the table. Garlands of raccoon paws encircle the plates. The candelabras are lit. They serve each other dinner. They pour dark liquid into the other’s cup and drink deeply in unison.

  Each sister has a bulging disc near her lower spine that pains her in damp weather. Each sister has legs like broomsticks, long and shapeless. Each sister fears loneliness, strangers, and deep water.

  From across the table one sister notices a lump underneath the fabric of her sister’s shirt. Large, oval, resting in the center of her collarbone. Their ash-mother’s pendant.

  She points toward this stolen difference.

  The sister wearing the pendant stops chewing. She smiles through her mouthful of little-girl stew. She has something her sister does not. She has.

  The sister who has not, lunges across the table.

  Cups turn over, liquid splashes out. Plates are shoved and food is lost. Candelabras are extinguished, paws are disturbed. She holds a fork to her sister’s neck. She pulls the pendant out from under her sister’s clothes. She slaps her sister hard cross the face when her sister starts to laugh.

  Identical twin sisters pull each other to the floor.

  They tumble and twist. They anticipate each other’s movements, dodge each other’s fists and forks. The sister who has, laughs until she can no longer breathe. The sister who has not, hisses like a cat. She weeps black tears.

  At the end of it all, the sister who has stands up. She pulls the sister who has not, up by the arm, and walks her to their bed. She takes the pendant off and wraps the chain of it slowly around the jar of their mother. She smiles at her twin and kisses her on the lips. She dries her sister’s tears.

  Together they return to the table to finish the remnants of their meal.

  Afterlives

  BENNETT SIMS

  They visited Sicily that weekend. Boeing crashes were in the news, so throughout the flight over the Mediterranean their talk was of turbulence, burial at sea. Driving into Palermo, he paused at a memorial beside the highway, an obelisk monument to the 1992 Capaci bombing, when the Mafia had packed thirteen drums of Semtex and TNT beneath the road and remotely detonated them under a judge’s motorcade. Local seismographs, she read aloud from her phone, had registered the explosion as an earthquake. Later, at lunch, talk turned to respect for the dead: soldiers recovering fallen bodies from battlefields; mountaineers carting down frozen climbers’ corpses. He cited Antigone’s fidelity to Polyneices, sprinkling earth over his cadaver to short-circuit its state-mandated fate as carrion, food for dogs and vultures. Would you do that for me? she asked. He thought about it. He had never been sentimental about funerary rituals. It made no difference to the dead, was his feeling. After he died, the career of his corpse—whether it was buried, burned, exposed to scavengers; whether left at sea, or on a mountainside, or on the side of a Sicilian highway—would be a matter of no consequence to him. He certainly wouldn’t want her to get herself killed recovering it. But when he considered what he would realistically do in the same situation—for instance if they were stranded in an apocalyptic wasteland, he imagined, and one afternoon she was late coming home, and at sunset he noticed a weird scrum of wild dogs in the distance, and raising his binoculars he saw that what they were all fighting over was her corpse—his eyes surprised him by watering, not in the daydream but in reality, there at the restaurant. He described the dog scenario to her. Yes, he said, if I found a pack of wild dogs devouring your dead body, I think it would enrage me. I would kick them off you and try to bury you. That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me, she said. But what if—he knew what she was going to ask before she asked it—what if it wasn’t wild dogs? What if it were a pack of shar-pei puppies? Shar-peis were his family pet, his favorite breed. He loved to kiss their chubby, wrinkled cheeks. Often, to cheer him up while they were at work, she texted him GIFs of shar-peis. The last had been a looping clip of a shar-pei attempting to eat a strawberry off a hardwood floor: its cheeks were so heavy that they draped like theater curtains over the narrow aperture of its mouth, and each time it reared forward to snap at the strawberry its jowls made contact long before its jaws did, knocking the fruit across the floor like a hockey puck. He pictured a pack of puppies trying to nibble at her like this, as stymied by her remains as by the strawberry. If it were shar-peis, he admitted, I might just say, She’s in a better place now. A better place?! Yes, he said, and why not a better place? Wouldn’t you rather be buried in a puppy than a pyramid? But as soon as he said this he was struck by an eerily vivid mental image of a shar-pei: the dog was staring off in profile, solemn, the image in black and white. The camera of his mind’s eye zoomed in on the dog’s face, until gradually its gray cheek had filled the frame, then kept zooming in farther, magnifying its wrinkles to abstraction; seen up close, the wrinkles became a network of deep crevasses, with the multicursal lininess of a maze, and as the zooming camera approached this maze he could make out a human figure far below in it, a pale shape stumbling through one of the corridors with arms outstretched, and when finally the camera descended into this trench, bringing the trapped figure into focus, he saw that it was her, lost, distraught, doomed to wander forever through the cheek-flab labyrinth of the Leviathan who had swallowed her. He described what he had seen to her. It’s a premonition, she said. Now you know what will happen if you feed me to shar-peis. I’ll haunt you so bad. They left the restaurant and spent the weekend in archaeological parks, scrambling over the ruins of ancient temples and theaters, climbing collapsed column drums like boulders. On their last afternoon, driving back to the airport, they paused to admire a work of land art along the highway. A quilt of immense concrete blocks had been cast down a hillside, two acres of white rectangles with a network of narrow pedestrian paths running through them. Known as The Great Crack, she read aloud from her phone, the piece had been constructed as a memorial to the 1968 earthquake, which had leveled the town of Gibellina, killing hundreds. The concrete blocks had been cast according to the layout of the city: the gridded paths mapped onto its roads and alleys, while the blocks—which had been infilled with rubble and furniture from the ruins—stood in place of its buildings. Gibellina’s real ruins, collapsed houses and churches, were still visible around them, on the outskirts of the sculpture. And just down the highway was Gibellina’s real cemetery, with its rows of mausolea, neighborhoods of squat concrete houses for the dead. They were the only people there. They approached the monument together, entering one of its pathways at random. The blocks rose as high as their heads on either side, and the alley stretched before them in an endless white corridor. Following her, running his fingers along the concrete, he felt like an ant crawling across a tombstone: if an ant descended into the inscription, he imagined—if it entered the canyon of a letter, suddenly funneled forward by the high granite walls of the alphabet rising around it—it would never realize that the path it was tracing was a dead name. She announced that she wanted to see the monument from above, so they climbed toward the top of the hill, where there was a lookout platform. But the grade was steep, and as they trudged upward he had to keep stopping for her. Eventually she called to him to go ahead. He hiked to the platform alone, arriving cold with sweat and out of breath. Turning back, he saw the alleys he had just passed through as a labyrinth of craquelure, black lines fissuring a white surface. He scanned the expanse and found her: a small dark figure, wending through a white trench. A chill of recognition passed through him. When she reached the platform, he did not wait for her to catch her breath. Do you remember my premonition? he asked. He described the vision he had had of her ghost, lost in a shar-pei’s wrinkles. She nodded cautiously: Yes? He waved one hand over the maze beneath them. Oh my God, she said. We’re dead, he said. I’m really
here, she said. It really ate me. We’re dead, he repeated, and we don’t even know it. We’ll never leave this place. Together they stepped off the platform and descended into the monument.

  The Story and the Seed

  AMBER SPARKS

  The children were always sent up in pairs, one with the story and the other with the seeds. Always the same seeds: maize, rice, cowpea, beans, eggplant, lettuce, barley, potato, sorghum—seeds ready to plant in varying climates, varying soils. Always the same story: the earth is dying, the humans are dying, help us, house us, accept our gifts.

  Hans kept the seeds, and Gzifa kept the story. They were both twelve, both twins, both the only surviving twin. Both lost sisters. Gzifa found Hans suffocatingly kind. His affection transferred easily from his sister, whom he had idolized, to Gzifa. She in turn did not love so quickly. But her father had raised her to be a storyteller, and stories made Hans easy to manage. As they trained, as they studied, as they traveled to the stars, she spun the story that was theirs alone. It was a comfort to her, too, among the wires and the dials and the antiseptic surfaces of the spaceship. It was a comfort to have a story.

  Will the new planet be scary? Hans asked, as they watched the shadows of something unknown move over the viewscreens. The shadows seemed to merge, to bend and bleed into the lush vegetation. Everything was too green, and shimmered in the dim light of this planet’s suns. He thought he saw teeth. He rubbed his eyes.

  Yes, it will be scary, said Gzifa. It will be covered in forests, and strange new animals will wait in dark corners to devour us.

  Hans blanched.

  But, said Gzifa, we will find our way. To a place where we can make our new world. She lifted her braids, tucked them into her space suit. She pulled her helmet over her head. That’s the story, Hans.

  Okay, said Hans. He reached for her hand. And they opened the hatch, their silver-clad bodies pressed together as they stepped through.

  This new world moved like a cat: slow, languid, mysterious. There was rain from time to time. Gzifa took out an acid detector, but the rain seemed clean and pure. They moved slowly, too, quiet as they could in their big heavy boots and helmets. It felt humid and hot here. There was a strange sense of waiting; the planet seemed alive to their footfall.

  I think they know we’re coming, said Hans.

  Yes, said Gzifa. That’s part of the story, too.

  They walked a little way through foliage so dense they couldn’t get a good look at the planet’s suns. The light seemed to be waning. In this part of the story, said Gzifa, the children stumble upon a secret. She pointed to a bone, then another—Human? Animal? No way to tell—strewn along so regularly it might be a path. A bone path.

  Why should there be bones? asked Hans. They had seen no life at all, other than the trees.

  It’s the evil witch, said Gzifa. She eats children, and throws out the bones. But we’re too smart for her.

  Why, said Hans, what happens next?

  We drop our bread crumbs, said Gzifa. She didn’t want to admit that under her helmet, her sweat was cold. Hans reached into his belt, powered up a little gray sensor, and let it fall. As they walked farther from the ship, he dropped another, then another. They walked away from the bones, or tried to—but the macabre little path seemed always to be just ahead. Frustrated, Gzifa consulted an instrument on her wrist. I know we’re not walking in a circle, she said. At least, I don’t think we are. Behind them, something hissed in the trees.

  It will take a long time for the seeds to grow, said Hans.

  We have food on the ship, said Gzifa.

  I’m hungry, said Hans. He was a muscular boy, and in the way of all twelve-year-olds, he was always hungry.

  You know the story, she told him. The children live on the ship until they build a home. It’s long years to make a home, Hans. She thought about her father, his strong brown hands cradling the tiny sprouts, the little green shoots longing for the sun. I’m not the story anymore, her father had told her. Everything in space is starting anew.

  They walked for a while in silence, Hans dropping sensors, bones dotting the unchanging landscape. Gzifa thought she saw a skull, but when she blinked, it resolved into smooth strange rocks, alien as any life-form here in this wild place. They heard hissing, almost like cicadas; it grew stronger, until the children came upon a sight so strange that they froze.

  A house. A cottage, really, built of brick and wood, ordinary and terrifying. Gzifa had never seen such a house, or lived in such a house; she and her father had traveled the world, nomadic, living mainly in settlements or on bases. Hans, though, was raised in the countryside, and knew these little houses. This one looked like a storybook home: sturdy squat brick with two painted white shutters, a red door, and a crooked little chimney with a plume of smoke that blew sideways in the light breeze. It smelled like something delicious, sweet and salty at once. Both children shuddered at the wrongness of the place.

  Do the children go inside the house? Hans asked. In the story? He blinked at her, and she could see his pupils, narrow and scared.

  No, she told him. They turn right back around, and they follow the bread crumbs until they reach their ship.

  The light was growing dim, was almost gone above the thick tangle of branches and leaves overhead. The hissing was so loud, Gzifa had to turn up her intercom to be heard. She flipped open her sensor app and stared. Nothing. No beeping. No bright blue signals. She stared at the ground. Where was the path home?

  Hans, she whispered. Did you power them up?

  I did, yes, he said, his skin milk-pale.

  Gzifa went to pick up the nearest sensor, just a few feet away. She reached her gloved hand out and, impossibly, the ground came up to meet it. There was a sucking sound. Hans, she said, standing perfectly still.

  What?

  It’s gone. The ground. It—it ate the sensor. Just—just swallowed it. Gzifa blinked. She couldn’t believe it. This planet was alive, somehow. There was nothing in the story about this.

  Hans wasn’t listening; he had begun walking, slowly, toward the house. Hans, she shouted, there is no house in the story! It can’t be real, she shouted, stop, Hans, but he was moving faster toward that red front door, and it seemed to be grinning, seemed to be tooth-filled, seemed to be dripping, not with paint but blood or something like it, opening, opening. The trees were leaning, branches snapping as they made a tunnel over the boy. Hans, screamed Gzifa, but he was already gone, he was inside, and she was watching the door snap shut, Hans’s body snap too, limp and red and silver and white.

  She ran. The hissing was so loud overhead that it hurt Gzifa’s ears. She was shouting, breathless, shouting the story. In this story, she shouted, in this story the children find the bread crumbs easily. In this story, it never gets dark at all. In this story, the children get sent to bed early, get up in the bright sun of morning. In this story—she crashed into the thick trunk of a rubbery tree. She heard a low rumbling sound. She ran on, into the dark, into the hissing, until she suddenly saw it: the blue glow of the sensors.

  Blue after blue, she matched her steps to each, heard the pulsing beeps on her tracker. Her tears stopped. Her breathing slowed. The story was still there, underneath. And the children, she whispered, found the bread crumbs. Boot down, boot down, she made her way back to the ship. They saw their home, she said. Gzifa saw the hatch opening, saw the lights of the console. Her father’s laugh burst from her. She would find the seeds in the spaceship and she would plant them. She was a person who meant to survive. I’m sending you, her father told her, because you did what your sister and I could not. You lived.

  She climbed up the ladder, didn’t notice the slight waver, the glow around the spaceship’s surface that came from nowhere at all. She pulled herself up and into the ship’s interior—into absolute darkness. The trees leaned. The ship’s maw widened. She screamed. This isn’t the story! The trees wound around her, green over silver. They squeezed.

  The earth already told us the story o
f humans, they hissed.

  After a time, the trees returned their gaze to the deep pool of sky. They drank it in, satisfied, noting the winking light of Earth far off, across the wide bowl of space beyond.

  3

  Fingers

  RACHEL HENG

  The villagers lived in attap houses perched on high wooden stilts, the land by the sea being soft and shifting as it was. That, at least, was the official reason for the stilts.

  Yet the children often suffered the unpleasant sensation of having one leg sink knee-deep into the squelching, bubbling mud. As they were pulling their legs out, they’d feel it: gentle fingers wrapping around their plump, sun-browned calves. They’d shriek and jerk their legs up more quickly, and the fingers would slip away.

  Parents dismissed these rumors, citing seagrass, mudskippers, and trapped pockets of air as possible culprits for what the children insisted were fingers. But the children saw how their parents scrutinized the earth as they went about their daily chores. They noticed new designated areas marked with orange tape tied to little metal sticks driven into the ground. Once an area was designated, it was off-limits.

  Soon the orange tape was everywhere. It resembled a twisting, winding maze. One might be obliged to take a circuitous route across the entire village just to get to their neighbor’s house. It got to the point where everyone added an extra half hour to any journey they had to take. Still, the parents would not admit that the situation was dire. They went about their daily activities with new vigor, often jogging from one place to another in order to make up for the lost time caused by the orange tape.

  The children decided that something had to be done. If their parents would not face the fearsome truth lurking beneath their very feet, then they would.