Ante Mortem by ed. Jodi Lee Page B

that time. “Yeah.”
    “ Think you missed the point. But that’s all I needed to hear,” Tim said, moving suddenly— too suddenly —for Elliot to realize what was happening.
    A rough hand on his shoulder, something knocking hard against his knees in the back, buckling them. He pitched forward, and the wall rushed to meet him.
    It was like belly-flopping into a pool, but instead of cold and wet, it was cold and stale. A thick clinging sense of nothing all over him. He spun, though he didn’t know if it was head-over-feet or the other way around.
    An invisible hand stopped him, shoved him hard against an equally invisible wall. His head slammed off it; a deafening crack inside his skull, lights behind his eyes the only thing he could see. That cackle, a hundred cackles, shuddered not just through his head, but through his veins.
    “ You can’t take me,” he mumbled through the confusion. Something wet dripping down his neck, in his hair. It was hard to concentrate on anything else. He shivered, and the icy hand—three times the size of a normal one—pressed harder against his chest. His lungs groaned under the pressure. “We have a deal.”
    Stale autumn wind on his cheek: We have a new deal. We take back what we gave you. We give it to the new boy.
    Tim’s awful fucking smile.
    A cracking in his chest, but not of bones. An invisible barrier gave way, a shock to his soul that wracked his body. The hand pushed through, grabbed at him inside, then drew out his self .
    He saw his body in the dark as it dropped to its knees, then fell. He couldn’t even scream.
     
    Tim curled around himself, leaned against a ramshackle stone. The air wasn’t as cold anymore, but he still shivered. He could hear Them inside, eating, still hungry. There was no enjoyment in Them, just ravenous emptiness.
    He should have left, but he was frozen. His face felt wet, but he didn’t think he was crying. He just sat, staring at the picturesque mausoleum in the dark and hugging his knees to his chest, reciting snatches of things he’d read over the last week in his head, trying to find the one that would save him. Tennyson was no good anymore, but neither was anything else. And then there was the shuddering feeling he got every time Shakespeare appeared.
    When they were done, he heard that voice in his head—the one from last night, cold and silver. You may take him back. We are finished.
    The wall before him shimmered, knotwork blurring. Elliot stepped through, looked right through him with electric eyes. Something dark and viscous trickled down his forehead, from his shining hair. His fine, full lips were an appalling shade of gray, chalky skin stretched too tight over high cheekbones and forehead.
    Tim’s vision blurred.
    Would you like some of what we took from him, or something else? Charm magic, perhaps, to counteract your… defects?
    Tim choked a little. “I don’t want anything.”
    A moment of silence, a ripple through the air. Confusion.
    Tim forced himself to his feet, retrieved his pack. Movements stiff, body numb. He avoided looking at the still-beautiful thing that used to be Elliot. “And I don’t want him back. He’s yours.”
    It was important to have standards.
    The first few steps were the hardest. Past the oblong stone they’d photographed, past the cigarette butts they’d pressed into the ground. Toward the angel with the crumbling wings and the weathered rocking horse, the weight of his camera bouncing reassuringly against his back.
     
     
    * * * *
     
     
    Hunger Pains
    Myrrym Davies
     
     
    Early evening sunlight filtered through slatted ceiling vents, highlighting the cobwebbed rafters with a dim, orange glow. The rest of the attic lay shrouded in shadows; moldering boxes and cast off furniture lining the walls like cloth-draped sentinels, guarding the room’s hidden secrets. Sarah ran the beam of her Barbie flashlight over stacks of dusty crates and discarded sundries, a satisfied grin creeping onto