Half World (15 page)

Mr. Glueskin frowned. “No, it will ruin my appetite. For the lovely surprise party we're arranging for your daughter, Fumiko. Help the half-wit take the champagne into the kitchen.” His tone suddenly changed. “They're getting warm!” he snarled.

Fumiko flinched, as if she had been slapped, then marched toward them like an automaton.

Mr. Glueskin thrust the bags at Melanie and she took them in her hands, lowering them quickly in case he could smell her Life beneath her layer of perfume.

“This way,” Fumiko said, her voice flat.

Melanie trotted after her. Behind her long fringe of hair her eyes roved desperately for another exit. There had to be a secondary fire exit for such a large suite. She would talk to her mum in the kitchen and reveal her identity. And they would escape together.

They would go home.

Fumiko flicked on the light in the kitchen. The large island in the center of the room was covered with silver trays wrapped in cellophane. Little things writhed, squirmed desperately beneath the clear film. The gorge rose in Melanie's mouth.

“Don't unwrap these until all of the guests have arrived,” Fumiko said emotionlessly. “Get ice from the freezer and chill the champagne.” She pointed to the stack of dirty dishes in the sink. “Put those in the dishwasher. And polish the glasses by hand.”

Melanie retrieved two bags of ice from the oversized freezer as she desperately tried to formulate a plan. She dumped the cubes into a large silver basin and placed four bottles of champagne to chill. Should she play at hired help and postpone saving her mother until another day? She could just continue with the guise, leave after her work was done, then come back to save her mother when Mr. Glueskin was away on his own frightful business.

Fumiko poured a large amount of gin into a martini shaker, her face completely vacant.

Melanie began placing dirty plates in the dishwasher to the sound of the alcohol being shaken with ice. Fumiko poured the stiff drink into her glass and took the straight gin down in one long swallow. She stared vacantly at the refrigerator for several seconds, then poured another big shot of gin into the silver shaker.

No! Melanie thought. If she waited any longer her mother might fall into an alcoholic living death just like her father.

Melanie spun toward her mother as she flipped her hair back to expose her eyes. She clamped down on her mother's gloved hand.

Fumiko glanced carelessly at the person who held her so fiercely. “What are you doing?” she asked tonelessly.

“Look at me,” Melanie cried. “It's me, Mum. It's me!”

Fumiko's vague eyes slid over her daughter's intense gaze and gave a small shudder. She tried to pull her hand out of the maid's terrible grip.

“Why are you calling me that? I don't know you,” Fumiko said in a monotone.

Melanie felt a rending in her heart.

“Mummy,” Melanie wailed. “Don't say that!” Tears began to dribble messily down her face, and she crumpled gracelessly, circling her arms around her mother's legs. After all she had endured, after all she had done to find her. Melanie began to sob against the scratchy fabric of her mother's dress, the shards of mirror digging into her tear-stained face.

Fumiko inched backward, trying to shake the disturbed maid off her knees.

“No, Mummy.” Melanie shuddered. “It's not fair.” She raised her ruined face to gaze despairingly at her beloved mother. Melanie shook her head. “No! I crossed over into Half World to find you! I had to fight for my life! Watch people die. And I did it all for you!”

Her mother glanced at Melanie's disheveled frumpy hairdo, the soggy, melted smears of black eyeliner and foundation.

Melanie self-consciously dragged the back of her hand under her mucus-smeared nose. The ugly and ill-fitting polyester uniform stretched too tightly over her chest and round belly.

Fumiko looked at a point somewhere over Melanie's shoulder. “You're deranged,” her mother stated in a monotone. “You're mistaking me for someone else.”

A tinny sound rang inside Melanie's ears. Somewhere, her heart seized, tight like a cramp, but the pain was someone else's.

A mistake.

Melanie staggered to her feet, grabbed Fumiko's shoulders, and pulled her close to her face. “See my eyes!” she hissed. “I'm alive! I'm asking you to come back with me to Life! You're
not
dead! You still have a chance! All you have to do is
remember
.”

Fumiko backed away from Melanie's hysteria, edging toward the door. “I couldn't possibly be your mother,” Fumiko said flatly. “You're too old. You must be at least thirty.”

Melanie's hands jerked upward to touch her own face. “It's just makeup,” she babbled, trying to laugh. “It's just a disguise. Because I'm still
alive
alive. And you are, too! Not like everyone else in Half World.” Her fingers brushed against something sharp and it bit painfully into the flesh of her cheek. She flinched.

Hands shaking, she stared at her fingers. Bright red against the black-and-white shades of Half World, marked with her living blood.

“What . . . ” Fumiko whispered.

“Mmmm, mmmmm! I smell something tasty. I smell something fresh!” Mr. Glueskin called from the living room.

Melanie shuddered with revulsion. Oh, they had to get away. And now she was marked. A small sliver of glass stuck from her finger. A shard of mirror from her mother's frightening dress. If she washed off the revealing blood she would expose the living tones of her skin. Was her face dotted with the brilliant red smears of a living thing?

Fumiko leaned closer, something changing in her expression. A brief moment—

Melanie grabbed both of her mother's hands. One of the fingers of her black glove flopped, empty. Her pinkie. It was gone.

Realization filled Melanie's chest with hot tears. “Mummy. You bit off your own finger. To get back into Half World. You did that to try to save me. . . . You have to come back with me,” she whispered urgently. She pulled her toward the doorway. “Mr. Glueskin. He's tricked you. Remember, Mummy! I'm Melanie! I'm your daughter. Remember D-Dad? Shinobu Tamaki. You said you were waiting to see him again. That's why you never found someone else. You have pictures of Frida Kahlo and Escher! Bosch's paintings remind you of Half World.” Her voice began to falter. “R-remember? You always said that I'm the best thing that's happened to you for all time. . . . You always said that. . . . ” Her voice finally broke.

Her mother shuddered. She shook her head slowly, a great weariness sagging the flesh of her overpainted face.

“I do not know you,” Fumiko said tonelessly. Her hands were dead things in Melanie's grip. “I have never seen you before in my life.”

Melanie's nerveless fingers released their hold and her hands fell heavily to her sides. The weight of everything she had endured was more than she could bear. And she suddenly felt it all. The unspeakable despair was complete, and she finally understood how people could take their own lives, how her mother had succumbed to hopeless sadness and become alcoholic.

The knowledge just didn't matter anymore.

“Leave,” Fumiko said. “We'll find another maid.”

A small sound slipped from Melanie's lips.

She had struggled so hard, suffered and endured. And for what? Not only was she rejected as a daughter, but she was unwanted even as a maid.

She couldn't stand it.

Melanie began to laugh. She smacked her hand against her knee and laughed and laughed until tears ran down her face. She fell to the cool tiles, arms clamped around her sore middle, laughing so hard that her shaking bordered on convulsions.

The high-pitched stink of vinegar poured into the room.

“Well,” Mr. Glueskin said, “it's time to throw out this maid with the rubbish. She has gone mad.”

Melanie opened her eyes to see Mr. Glueskin standing directly above her.

“What,” Mr. Glueskin asked ever so slowly, “do we have here?”

The sharp prickle of her abraded cheeks began to burn.

Belatedly she pressed her hands to cover them up.

She could feel the stickiness of blood upon her palms.

Fumiko drew close to Mr. Glueskin and slipped her hand into his. Melanie felt sick as she watched his sticky fingers elongate and squeeze possessively, an elastic smile beginning to spread across his expressive face.

“Hello, Melanie,” he said gently. “I'm so glad you could join us.”

MR. GLUESKIN'S MOUTH
seemed to move in slow motion, his elastic lips mouthing vowels with exaggerated care. It's funny, Melanie thought numbly. People look silly if you stare at their mouths and you don't know what they're saying. She stared vacantly as his words washed over her, morphing beyond meaning into malformed sounds. It was so nice not to understand. . . .

“—fun games now!” Mr. Glueskin said, as Melanie returned to meaning with an elastic snap.

She blinked slowly.

Mr. Glueskin closed his hand into a fist and rapped the top of Melanie's head. “Hel-
lohhhh
,” he inflected. “Anyone home? Dimwit! Nitwit! Half-wit!” He began clouting her skull, harder and harder with each word. Melanie could not stop the tears from falling from her eyes.

Why did her mother not stop him?

The doorbell rang throughout the suite.

“Oh! My first guests have arrived! We must welcome them. It's going to be sooo much fun!” Mr. Glueskin, one comforting arm around Fumiko, squelched his other hand around Melanie's wrist, melting his fingers and thumb into one seamless bond. Elongating his arm, he pulled her behind him like a dog on a leash. Melanie tried to pull out of his clasp but he yanked hard and she almost fell on her face.

Melanie followed.

Mr. Glueskin, Fumiko slightly behind him, stood at the door. He yanked downward on his arm-leash. “Sit!” he commanded.

Melanie, gritting her teeth, awkwardly lowered into a crouch.

Mr. Glueskin swung open the door.

A motley group of creatures stood at the entrance. A bird-headed man, naked except for a pair of faux fur shorts, a woman in a gown with eels instead of arms, a starfish with the face of a beautiful child at its tender center, wearing rubber boots, as if it was trying to look like Mr. Glueskin. The beauty queen pageant girl who had a hole in her face and her wallaby companion were there as well as several tall, twiggy bone people who clicked and clacked nervously in the background.

“My lovely friends,” Mr. Glueskin said warmly.

“Hello!” everyone said simultaneously, as if they were an audience being cued in a game show.

Mr. Glueskin looked at each and every one, his expression growing tight, mean, as his gaze passed over them. “Where are my presents?” he asked in a completely neutral voice.

His friends looked down at their empty hands, at their neighbors' empty hands, and began to shuffle with agitation. Someone giggled nervously, “Hee, hee, hee—” until it was cut off.

Mr. Glueskin's pupils turned into tiny black pinpricks. “WHERE ARE MY FREAKING PRESENTS?” he screamed. His vinegar stink filled the air.

Melanie could scarcely bear watching. Fumiko, she noted, was looking down at her feet.

Horror filled Melanie's heart. What awful thing had Mr. Glueskin done to her mother? She had not thought about the time her mother had been forced to spend with this most despicable of creatures. She had been so dismayed that her mother didn't recognize her she hadn't given any thought to what her mother might have suffered. Melanie shook her head. Was it any wonder that she did not know her?

The cluster of “friends” at the entrance huddled together, like prey fish surrounded by predators. Just run! Melanie wanted to scream. Why didn't the fools just run? Why did they come here at all?

Because they are afraid, a tiny sober part of Melanie's mind assessed. This is what happens when you are ruled by fear. . . .

Melanie didn't know who or what it was, if it was an individual choice, or if some kind of silent decision had been made by the group, but suddenly the little wallaby with a man's head was thrust outside the protective huddle of the group. He stood there, exposed, his large dark eyes wide like a baby seal's.

“Awwwwww,” Mr. Glueskin cooed. “You shouldn't have!” Something white flew, faster than the eye could track, and suddenly the wallaby's head was engulfed in an almost transparent skin of glue.

The party guests gasped simultaneously, then began to clap. “Hear! Hear!” someone called out with a jovial voice tinged heavily with relief.

The wallaby-man, unable to breathe, began hopping up and down, swiping with his front paws at the length of tongue that protruded from Mr. Glueskin's mouth. Choking, desperate for air, the wallaby-man tried to gasp, but the thin skin of the elastic tongue that covered his entire head bulged in and out of his own open mouth as though he were ineptly trying to blow bubbles out of gum.

Mr. Glueskin began to laugh. “Haw, haw, haw, haw!” He beat a rapid staccato with his stinking rubber boots. “Thaghhht kaw-cawwls!” he garbled.

He yanked back his tongue as he simultaneously unlocked his jaw, letting it sag, dropping open to his chest. For a moment the wallaby-man's bent back legs and tail stuck out from Mr. Glueskin's mouth. His hind paws pattered their last, the tail swinging side to side.

It took several slow seconds for Mr. Glueskin to gulp him down.

Melanie, unable to help herself, dry-retched with abject horror. When she looked up once more Mr. Glueskin had a satisfied smirk upon his face, and his middle bulged as if he were carrying a baby.