65 Proof (48 page)

Life was fine.

My condo was cold and smelled like vanilla, some kind of stuff the maid sprayed around after her afternoon visit. I plopped the bag up on the breakfast bar and went to the bedroom to strip, shower, and change into evening wear. Tonight was Molly Wainwright, of the Barrington Wainwrights, and she was ten years younger than me and a foxy little tramp who oozed sex like her daddy oozed real estate.

If all went well, Molly would be notch number ninety-seven on the Jimmy belt. That’s ninety-seven runs batted in, out of a possible two hundred-twenty. I did the math in my head.

“Score tonight, I’ll be batting .440.”

Damn impressive for a South Side kid. And as far a fielding went, I only had one error in my entire career. It was an experience I didn’t care to repeat.

I shaved, took the dry-cleaner’s plastic from my gray suit, and decided to go with the diamond stud cufflinks. By the time I was dressed and ready to roll I’d completely forgotten about the leaky paper bag on my breakfast bar.

But when I went to the fridge for Evian, there it was, perched on the counter like an old alley cat.

I checked my Bvlgari — a quarter to six. The bum warned me not to open it until the sun went down, but that sounded like stupid Ernie theatrics and I didn’t have time to play around. Slowly, gently, I unrolled the top of the bag and peeled it open.

The stench hit me like a sucker punch. Rotting meat masked with something antiseptic. I got an accidental snootful, gagged, and staggered back.

The bag wiggled.

I squinted, held my breath. Whatever was in the bag was definitely dead; the smell was proof. It had to be an air current, or the contents settling, or —

It moved again.

My heart did the pitter-patter thing, like the couple times I’d been caught cheating at five card stud and a beating was about to ensue. The bag jerked to the left, then to the right, then toppled over onto its side.

A tiny red fist appeared from the top, opening and wiggling five miniature fingers.

I knew what this was. I knew, in the depths of my soul.

My fielding error.

The thing cried out, soft and wet. A bulbous, bald head emerged, large fetal eyes locking onto me.

“Daddy.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

It pulled itself from the bag, dragging along two undersized first-trimester legs and a slimy blue umbilical cord. Though covered in mucus, I could make out the large scars running zigzag over most of its body. Scars that had been sewn up in an ugly Frankenstein stitch.

In its tiny hand was a curved needle, trailing thread.

“Oh, sweet Jesus.”

“Not until dark, Daddy. I haven’t finished yet.” The needle dug into its shoulder, repairing a laceration caused by the abortionist’s knife. “I wanted to look pretty for you.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” I managed. “The rubber broke.”

My head swam with images of Margo Williams. Young. Sweet. Timid in bed, but I liked them that way. When she called me with news of her pregnancy, I’d had three women since her.

I mailed her a check to get rid of it, and hadn’t heard anything of the matter until months later, when I found out she died from complications during the procedure.

“Not my fault,” I said again.

The thing on the counter sat up and slumped forward, unable to support its oversized head.

“Mommy says hello. She sent me here so you could take care of me.”

The emotions piled one top of another in my chest, fighting for dominance. Guilt. Revulsion. Amazement. Fear. Anger.

Anger won.

“Go back where you came from!”

“Don’t you want me, Daddy?”

For an absurd moment, I pictured the bloody, scarred thing sitting on my lap at a baseball game, a tiny cap on its misshapen fetal skull.

“I don’t want you! I paid them to take care of you!”

Its tiny face crinkled, tears clearing trails in the mucus.

My decision made, I wondered how to get rid of it. Wrap it in newspaper and drop it down the garbage chute? Flush it down the toilet? It was small enough to fit. But if it was discovered in either case, it might lead back to me. I watched TV. I knew about DNA tests.

I glanced around the kitchen, eyes flicking over possibilities. Microwave. Stove. Compactor. Freezer.

Disposal.

The thing sat right next to the sink, a sink I paid almost two grand for. The garbage disposal could grind up a turkey leg, and this thing wasn’t that much bigger. One quick push and —

“Don’t grind me up in the garbage disposal, Daddy.”

I clenched my teeth. How could it read my thoughts?

“I’m a part of you, Daddy.”

It smiled, or tried to smile, with that big scar bisecting its head.

I forced myself to act.

In one quick motion, I scooped it up and shoved it down the sink drain, hard. The bulbous head was too big to fit through the opening, so I smacked it with the edge of my fist, over and over, forcing it down.

“Daddy, don’t! I’m your own flesh and blood!”

I pulled my hand free and hit the garbage disposal switch.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then everything happened at once.

The whir of the disposal was surpassed by horrible screaming.

My screaming.

It was like being attacked by hundreds of men with hatchets. My ears were the first to be stripped away, then my nose and cheeks. Clothing was flayed off my body in bloody strips, followed by the meat underneath. Fingers, knees, cock and balls, ground up in a bladed tornado. And a booming voice tore through my head, louder than my own cries.

“I’M PART OF YOU, DADDY!”

How I managed to hit the off switch, I have no idea. My eyes had been cored from my skull. Even more unbelievable, I somehow dialed 911 using only the meaty stump of my hand.

The pain was unimaginable.

It still is.

These days, my son visits me in the hospital. I can’t see him, but I can feel him. He’s very good at sewing. He practices on me, when the nurses sedate me at night.

I’ve named him Jimmy Jr.

Looks just like me, I bet.

Another flash fiction piece for the Small Bites anthology. The guidelines were to write a were-creature tale in 500 words or less.

“C
areful. He bites.”

Malcolm snorted, offering Selma a glimpse of gray teeth. His pants hung around his ankles, the condom dangling like an elephant booger.

“Bites? Damn thing don’t even got no feet or wings.”

Malcolm banged his palm against the canary cage, knocking the bird across the newspaper-lined bottom.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Selma said.

Malcolm squinted at her, ugly. “What you gonna do about it, whore?”

Selma shrugged. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and reached for the pack of smokes. Malcolm leaned over and gave her a harsh shove.

“I said, what are you gonna do about it?”

“Nothing. The bird can take care of himself.”

Malcolm snorted again, the condom jiggling.

“It can, huh? Let’s see what Mr. Birdy can do.”

Selma stared blankly as Malcolm opened the cage and stuck in a sweaty fist. The bird tried to wiggle away, but Malcolm managed to get a hold of it quickly.

“Looks like Mr. Birdy is…DAMN!”

Malcolm dropped the bird and withdrew his hand, staring dumbly at the small spot of blood on his palm.

“Damn thing bit me!”

Selma lit a smoke.

“Told you.”

Malcolm slapped her across the mouth, smearing bright red lipstick. Then he turned his attention back to the bird.

“I’m gonna…”

“You’re not gonna do nothing.” Selma’s lower lip began to swell, but she seemed calm. “It’s a full moon.”

“Full moon? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Were-canary,” Selma said.

Malcolm frowned, raising his hand to strike her again.

The little feathers growing out of his fingers caused him quite a shock.

Malcolm screamed, bones and tendons snapping and shrinking as the ancient curse of the were-canary mutated his adult human form into that of a tiny, yellow songbird. He perched on the nest of his tangled pants, the condom wrapped around his pointy feet.

“Tweet,” Malcolm said.

Selma snatched him up and promptly broke one of his wings. Malcolm sang in agony, flopping around on the bedroom floor in tight circles.

Disoriented and wracked by pain, he didn’t notice the cat under the bed until the feline had already pounced.

“He bites too,” Selma said.

The next morning, Selma awoke to whimpering.

“
…please…kill me…”

She stared at the man, naked and cramped in the birdcage. Roscoe, her former pimp. His legs and arms were missing; it was the only way he’d fit into the cage.

“Morning, Roscoe.”

“
…please…”

She gave him some fresh water and birdseed, then padded off to the bathroom.

The cat’s litter box contained several bowling ball-sized deposits. They didn’t come out that big, but once the moon went down, things went back to normal.

That was the price she paid for having pets.

“Hey, Roscoe! How about a little song while I shower?”

“
…please…Selma…”

“Do you want me to get the cheese grater?”

Roscoe began “Blue Moon.”

Selma smiled. After all, who else had a bird that sang baritone?

The closest I’ve ever come to hard science fiction. I wrote this back in college, and then polished it up a decade later when it was published by Apex Digest. It was originally called Star Vation, but I wisely changed the title.

Voice Module 195567

Record Mode:

Is this thing working?

Play Mode:

Is this thing working?

Record Mode:

This is Lieutenant Jehrico Stiles of the mining ship Darion. I’ve crash-landed on an unknown planet somewhere in the Eighty-Sixth Sector. Captain Millhouse Braun is dead.

I suppose I’m Captain now.

Captain Braun’s last VM concerned the delays we’d been having due to a micro meteor shower while mining Asteroid 336-09 in orbit around Flaxion.

A lot has happened since then. The Brain caught the Madness.

I told Mill a thousand times we shouldn’t have used an Organic, but he was willing to take the risks, as long as he had extra cargo space to carry more ore. You know the sales pitch. Why have an interstellar processor that weighs twenty six metric tons and takes up gads of space when an Organic Brain with nutrient pumps can navigate the ship while weighing only three kilograms?

Well, we did fit more ore on the ship. And now Mill and the rest of the crew are dead. When the Brain went bad it thrust the ship into Wormhole GG54 and I got spewed out here.

Mill and Johnson and the rest of the crew were fried when the Brain misfired the photon props. One moment I was watching them on the console viewer, drilling into the asteroid’s cortex, and the next moment they were vaporized and the ship was being hurtled toward the wormhole.

The trailer detached before I went through, sending millions of credits worth of iron on some unknown trajectory.

I survived re-entry because the ionic suppressors run automatically and not on Brain power.

The Brain wasn’t so lucky. It’s dead now, the nutrient containers smashed when we hit the planet’s surface. But the Brain had enough juice left in it to seal every hatch and cargo hold before its functioning ceased.

Nothing on the ship works. The com-link is dead. The homing beacon is dead. I can’t even open the steel doors to the pantry, and my unrefrigerated food supply is rotting away without me being able to get to it.

The oxygen systems have malfunctioned, but the planet I’m on has an atmosphere I can breathe. The nitrogen level is high, and I’m light-headed a lot, but so far I’m still alive.

The temperature is also hospitable to human life. A bit chilly, but mostly pleasant. Days last about forty hours, and nights about twenty.

I’m surprised this Voice Module still works. It’s got a crack in the case, but the batteries haven’t leaked. I figure without a recharge, I’ve got maybe two hours of recording time left.