Spaceland by Rudy Rucker Page B

some lovin’ it’s pretty good too, Jed.”
    â€œYou devil,” cackled Jed. “I noticed you slippin’ outta town with that little Dawna from Zeke’s. I guess you been too busy plowin’ to hyar the big news.”
    â€œWhat all’s that?”
    â€œSome kind o’ weird cult killin’. Custer. He was butchered like a flat pig. His waaf Mindy found him, she said they was things like hands rootin’ around in his bloody guts. Spirit hands without no body.”
    â€œMercy me,” said Dad. And then, without missing a beat, he began wondering aloud how this might affect Mindy’s sexual availability. “Widders gets lonely pretty fast, I hear.” Same old Dad.
    I followed Dad to his humble home—which turned out to be a Flatland version of the house I’d grown up in. What a pang it gave me to see it, flat and open as the back of a dollhouse. Inside were
Mom and my sister Sue, a loudmouth with a lot of attitude. Seeing Sue and her ponytails, I suddenly realized that she was the girl who’d seen Dad and Dawna. And, yes, her flat dog was with her, fuzzed with orange and white hair just like my boyhood dog Arf. Mom looked angry; her motions were jerky and angular. Sue had already spilled the beans.
    I had a sinister feeling of things coming together. My dream was turning into the day when my mother had stabbed my father in his stomach. The worst day of my life. Maybe this time I could do something to keep it from happening. I touched a finger to the corner of the room beneath the couch and listened to them.
    As soon as he came in, Dad started telling Mom about Custer’s killing. “Seems Mindy found Custer all hacked up, with his innards all over the room!” he exclaimed. “People are gittin’ nastier all the time. Mindy’s about off her nut; she’s sayin’ she seen hands crawlin’ around inside the remains. Hands without nothin’ attached to ’em, all wobbly and changin’ their shapes like clouds.”
    Mom wasn’t going to be distracted. “I suppose you’ll be slippin’ around to comfort Mindy next,” she snapped. “Too bad them crawlin’ hands didn’t git her too.” Mom knew her husband. “You and your tramps,” she yelled. “Your sluts! I know what you got up to this afternoon with Dawna!”
    â€œWhy do you have to run around with other women all the time, Dad?” said Sue in a shaky voice. “It’s ruining my life. People tease me about you at school.”
    â€œSome day you’ll know the score,” answered Dad in his slow, Western drawl. “A fella’s got his needs.” The maddening thing about my father had been that he never seemed to feel guilty. He was like Arf: one whiff of an available female and he was gone, not a thought in his head but burying his bone.
    â€œOh, let him be, Sue,” said Mom, suddenly turning listless. “It don’t matter none.” She’d often gotten like that towards the end of
the marriage—too sad and crushed to make a fuss. Deflated. But I knew how much rage was inside her. I knew she was about to snap.
    I had to do something to stop the disaster. I stuck my hand further into the film of Mom and Dad’s living room. As before, the space gave like the surface of a pond, easily letting me poke through. I moved my hand and waggled my fingers, moving them around in the air above their floor.

    Seeing the little pink circles where my fingers crossed their space, the three flat people jerked in surprise. Inside their bodies, their two-dimensional Valentine hearts pulsed faster. Mom screamed, “It’s them hands!” She darted into the kitchen next door, dragging Sue by the hand. She hooked the flap of the kitchen door behind her; the barking dog was with her too.

    I hacked Dad against the other wall, herding him with my fingers. Once or twice I bumped him. He was lighter