Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 7, October 2014 by Manfred Gabriel Alvaro Zinos-Amaro Jeff Stehman Matthew Lyons Salena Casha William R.D. Wood Meryl Stenhouse Eric Del Carlo R. Leigh Hennig Page A
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they shackled me to, free to pursue all the things that they took away from me. Another lifetime to finally become myself again. Which is where you come in."
He feels this ancient woman's terrible intensity, the cold fury encased in her being, and suddenly all he wants is to be gone from this place. He feels his nerves start to twitch and skitter. Everything is going wrong.
"You have to understand something about my family, however: they will never let me go. Never. Thanks very much to the codependent dynamic cultivated by my dimwit of a dead husband, they've come to rely on me for every little thing, even in my old age, and they will continue to leech mercilessly off of me until I am dead. If they discover what I've done tonight, their demands will never cease. Their children and their children's children will have another lifetime of mine to drain. So you see, a clean break is not only preferable, but necessary. They need to believe that I am truly dead and gone. Which I will be, for all intents and purposes. With your help."
"Meaning?" He knows what she's going to say, but needs to hear her say the words.
"Meaning, once I am extracted from this rotten husk, I will need you to use that knife of yours to cut its throat. I imagine the extraction leaves a specific mark of some sort on the body?"
A little spot on the back of the neck, a pinprick at best. Visible if you know what you're looking for. Like a single little track mark. He nods, though he doesn't want to. Automatic.
"I thought as much. I need you to extract me, and then, when that is finished, I need you to kill me."
"Why?"
"This was always the plan, Mister X. Not that I could explain this in my meeting with your Director, but a woman's got to have her secrets. No, it was always going to happen like this. It always had to look convincing. Or weren't you curious why you weren't given a key? Didn't you wonder why you had to use the fire escape instead of the front door?"
He doesn't say: No .
He wasn't. He didn't. Just another quirk. Like the howling mid-orgasm. Like crying for the dear departed daughter, alone in her bed. Just another finicky, eccentric nothing not worth paying attention to. Not worth considering. Just part of the job.
Quinn stares at this woman, hears the things she's saying, and he imagines that he is anywhere else, having any other conversation with any other person. Not being asked to carve a soon-to-be corpse like a Christmas goose. Closes his eyes in a long blink and tries to ignore the memory of another soldier on loan from another squadron, some psychopath on a savage trip, cutting up a dead body for kicks under the desert sun. How sick watching had made him. How so many of the other soldiers had cheered. He breathes, tries to calm his bad nerves, but it only half-works.
He tries to remind himself that he's here, now. He can still get out clean. Get out of the apartment. Call Management, tell them everything. Tell them to refund her money. Tell them to never send him to a job in this neighborhood again. It's enough to get him to his feet.
"Thank you for your time," he says, trying to force the nervous shake out of his voice. "Find a different operator."
"Is that what I'll have to do? Why not you?"
"Not a killer," he says.
"I'm sorry, Mister X," she says, "but I'm afraid that's not up to you."
She casts the blankets off herself—underneath, she's totally nude, her body wrinkled and angular and withered. Quinn's first response is to avert his eyes, but then he hears her shriek:
"RALPHY! RALPHY, HELP! HELP YOUR GRAMMA! THERE'S A MAN IN HERE! HE'S HURTING ME, RAPLHY!"
She's still smiling at Quinn when, moments later, the young man bursts through the bedroom door, swinging a baseball bat.
Quinn only has time to think, she lied , before everything goes to hell.
#
It's hard for Quinn to say exactly what happens next. A lot of things happen at the same time, but as best he understands, it's like this:
The young man,
He feels this ancient woman's terrible intensity, the cold fury encased in her being, and suddenly all he wants is to be gone from this place. He feels his nerves start to twitch and skitter. Everything is going wrong.
"You have to understand something about my family, however: they will never let me go. Never. Thanks very much to the codependent dynamic cultivated by my dimwit of a dead husband, they've come to rely on me for every little thing, even in my old age, and they will continue to leech mercilessly off of me until I am dead. If they discover what I've done tonight, their demands will never cease. Their children and their children's children will have another lifetime of mine to drain. So you see, a clean break is not only preferable, but necessary. They need to believe that I am truly dead and gone. Which I will be, for all intents and purposes. With your help."
"Meaning?" He knows what she's going to say, but needs to hear her say the words.
"Meaning, once I am extracted from this rotten husk, I will need you to use that knife of yours to cut its throat. I imagine the extraction leaves a specific mark of some sort on the body?"
A little spot on the back of the neck, a pinprick at best. Visible if you know what you're looking for. Like a single little track mark. He nods, though he doesn't want to. Automatic.
"I thought as much. I need you to extract me, and then, when that is finished, I need you to kill me."
"Why?"
"This was always the plan, Mister X. Not that I could explain this in my meeting with your Director, but a woman's got to have her secrets. No, it was always going to happen like this. It always had to look convincing. Or weren't you curious why you weren't given a key? Didn't you wonder why you had to use the fire escape instead of the front door?"
He doesn't say: No .
He wasn't. He didn't. Just another quirk. Like the howling mid-orgasm. Like crying for the dear departed daughter, alone in her bed. Just another finicky, eccentric nothing not worth paying attention to. Not worth considering. Just part of the job.
Quinn stares at this woman, hears the things she's saying, and he imagines that he is anywhere else, having any other conversation with any other person. Not being asked to carve a soon-to-be corpse like a Christmas goose. Closes his eyes in a long blink and tries to ignore the memory of another soldier on loan from another squadron, some psychopath on a savage trip, cutting up a dead body for kicks under the desert sun. How sick watching had made him. How so many of the other soldiers had cheered. He breathes, tries to calm his bad nerves, but it only half-works.
He tries to remind himself that he's here, now. He can still get out clean. Get out of the apartment. Call Management, tell them everything. Tell them to refund her money. Tell them to never send him to a job in this neighborhood again. It's enough to get him to his feet.
"Thank you for your time," he says, trying to force the nervous shake out of his voice. "Find a different operator."
"Is that what I'll have to do? Why not you?"
"Not a killer," he says.
"I'm sorry, Mister X," she says, "but I'm afraid that's not up to you."
She casts the blankets off herself—underneath, she's totally nude, her body wrinkled and angular and withered. Quinn's first response is to avert his eyes, but then he hears her shriek:
"RALPHY! RALPHY, HELP! HELP YOUR GRAMMA! THERE'S A MAN IN HERE! HE'S HURTING ME, RAPLHY!"
She's still smiling at Quinn when, moments later, the young man bursts through the bedroom door, swinging a baseball bat.
Quinn only has time to think, she lied , before everything goes to hell.
#
It's hard for Quinn to say exactly what happens next. A lot of things happen at the same time, but as best he understands, it's like this:
The young man,
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