Apotheosis: Stories of Human Survival After the Rise of the Elder Gods (23 page)

The God shakes his head. "Memories are the only real things you have. It's too late now, anyway, but just as an exercise, go ahead and delve, search, dig up all the good complex stuff. Discard anything that's ostensibly good and look for something else."

"But I don't know how."

"Yes," he says. "Yes, you do. Tell me more about the puppies."

I pause, my mouth slightly open, and a chill passes through me. "How do you know about that?"

"It was something I noticed throughout that transfusion, floating just below the surface. I had hoped it would come bursting out at the last minute but you chose to ignore it. So now it's too late, but I want you to explore it anyway. Quickly, though. I don't have all day."

There are very few fond memories I associate with my father. The only ones I could find during the transfusion were when I was very young, and they'd faded over time. There's a reason why I'd only earned twelve grand for him, and that's because, for most of my life, he was a sadistic jerk. The memory of the puppies is no exception to that.

I notice the God checking his watch and I close my eyes and think.

"When I was a boy," I begin, "I had a pet dog named Annabelle. Kind of girlie, I know, but it was the name of a girl at school I had sort of a crush on. Anyway, we never had Annabelle spayed. Could never afford to. So she was confined to the house at all times. Always walked her on a leash, always made sure the doors were closed. Only one time I left the door open and she got out."

The God smiles. "And her impulses got the better of her. You mammals are really not too dissimilar from one another, are you?" 

I ignore the spite in his voice and move on. "It took a few weeks before any of us noticed a change. Mother saw it first, and she pulled me aside. There was a look of terror in her face that I only ever remember seeing when Dad was drinking, or if he was having trouble at work. But when we told him what had happened, Dad was fine. He even smiled, said it was one of those things. That this was just a good lesson we could all learn from. It wasn't until the pups were born that I found out mother had been right to be scared.

"I made this enclosure out of some old chicken wire and put the pups in there. There was no way they could get out. Then Dad asked me about food. I sort of shrugged, figuring they'd feed from their mother, and he said that was true, at first, but it wouldn't last forever, and when they were done with that, they'd need real food. And that was the lesson. We couldn't afford to feed any more mouths than we already had. He'd known that all along, and now he wanted me to know that, too."

The God gives me a curious look and I can't help but wonder if he's admiring my father's hard-handed parental approach.

"So eventually, the puppies began to starve. I thought that was one of the worst things I would ever see, creatures that small and defenseless crying out in pain as their bodies shut down from lack of nutrition, but was I wrong about that. Boy, was I wrong about that. When things got really bad, they turned on each other. To cannibalism. They picked off the weakest one first, then moved on, and on..."

The God looks at his watch again, the impatience growing. I start to encounter feelings I didn't even know existed. Images to go along with those feelings. The most prominent being my father's face as he teaches me about what it is to support a family, about taking responsibility, and facing up to consequences. My memory of that day seems harsh, but was it? What if my father had taught me the most valuable lesson of my life?

The complex feelings begin to change, and the ambivalence I thought I'd been holding onto all these years is actually admiration, a deep gratitude for shaping me into the man I am today, and for the first time since the transfusion, I actually mourn my father's passing.

"I haven't got all day," says the God.

I snap out of it. Plenty of time to contemplate that later, but for now, I need to move on, while the lesson is still fresh in my mind.

"Right," I say, putting on my business face. And then, "You're familiar with my wife, I assume?"

The God grins. "You're going after the big fish, I see. You think you're ready?"

"I know I am."

"All right then," he says, and the Pen is in my hand, along with the Slate. I touch the corner of the signature line with the tip of the pen just as the wife appears on the other side of the room. I take a moment to let it all sink in. She doesn't seem to be even the slightest bit surprised at her predicament. Has she known all along? This knocks me sideways a little, but only a little. I think about what the God just told me, going for the complex emotions first, rather than the obvious ones, and I form a mental list.

I consider her inability to grab the bull by the horns, to figure out what she wants and take it. She is weak, and until now, I found this to be an undesirable trait. But she is my wife, and it's my job to look out for her. Those weaknesses make my responsibilities that much more important, like caring for an animal.
A puppy.

I move quickly through the process, using my newly acquired expertise to dig deep, until my heart aches and I can feel tears pulling at my eyes. The wife notices and her face turns into something resembling sympathy. This causes me to choke up, and I bear down on the slate with the pen, not wanting to waste this glorious feeling of pain and remorse. I dive into the signature with grace and precision, allowing my name to flow through the slate, somehow in keeping with the bittersweet tone of my emotions, and a thought pops inside my head, totally uninvited, and I ponder the full extent of what I'm doing, what it means for my family and me. If some guy can achieve three hundred grand for a mere school pal using the same technique, how much can I expect to make here? A killing! Literally. And my pen swoops down and around, ending at the dot above the 'i', just as the muscles in the corner of my mouth twitch into a grin.

The room turns a dark grey, the wife is absorbed in the dim light that emanates from the tip of the pen, and the God sighs and offers a look of disappointment so inconsequential it's agonizing to watch.

For the first time under these circumstances, I am overcome by pure dread. I look to the God, my eyes begging for reassurance.

He shrugs. "Better luck next time." And my wife is gone.

My jaw drops and I stare at the open window. I wonder if the wife is still falling or whether it's all over for her now. Not that it matters. It was over for her since the day I decided to take part in a transfusion. I lower my head into my hands and try my hardest to weep, scrunching up my face and eyes in an effort to cry, to release some of the horror, but nothing happens. I emit a groan from deep in my chest and I feel like I need to throw up. I'm certain the God's going to send me away at any moment and I consider leaping from the open window after my wife. There is nothing else for me. I am alone, with two kids to take care of, and I have nothing for them. Not anymore. It's all gone. And then a voice brings me back to reality and away from the comforting fantasy of suicide.

"What did you do?"

It's my son. The older one. What the hell was he doing here?

"Dad! What did you do? Where's mom gone?"

I open my eyes and look up at the desperate sadness in my son's face. He's not yet certain, but he has a pretty good idea what's happened. The most awful thing a man can do to a child: I've taken away his mother. And it was all for nothing.

"I'm so sorry, son," I say, and the impotence of the words is enough to bring back the thoughts of suicide. What could I possibly say to him at this moment?

It's then that the God speaks. "Do we have any other business today?"

I look up and see a curious smile on his face, like he's holding some great secret that would allow us to escape all our troubles.

"A parent's consent is all I need," he says.

I look over at my son, back at the God, and I stand. I walk over to my son and place a hand on his shoulder. "How did you get here?" I ask him.

His face is a swirling ball of anger and sadness. "I hitched a ride on the back of Bud's truck."

I squeeze his shoulder and my soul wretches and dry-heaves, though there is nothing left of it but bile now.

"We're in big trouble now, son," I say.

"Is mom gone?" he asks.

I nod, and then bow my head in shame.

"How could you do this to us?" he asks, his voice cracked and pinched, and it's clear
he
has no problem crying. His emotions are still alive and right on the surface, just as they've always been. I understand now what the God was telling me, and without further thought, I guide the boy over to where I've been sitting and lower him down into the chair. He protests a little, but not much.

"What are you doing?" he says. "Get off me."

I run over to the God and ask, "Where do I sign? As the parent or guardian?"

The pen and slate are in my hands again, and I take one final glance at my little boy before carving out my name for the second time today.

"Look after your brother," I say. "And when you're done here, call Bud and tell him what happened. He'll know what to do. He can help you."

In the background I hear the boy calling my name, calling for his dad, crying out for me to stop whatever it is I'm about to do, but I don't turn around again. Instead, I raise my hand up to the edge of the open window and lean out, feeling the cold breeze blow across my face and ruffle my hair. There's something about the sensation that seems familiar, though I don't know what it is and probably never will.

I hear the whooshing sound of the pen as the contract is fulfilled, but by then I am already gone, descending. I know my son will do well out of the deal whether he wants to or not, and he will be able to take care of what's left of our family far better than I ever could. I watch the sidewalk rush up at me from below, and I wonder if I'll hear a bang or a crash to mark the end, or if I will simply cease to exist.

by A.C. Wise

When R'lyeh rose, it rose everywhere,
everywhen
. Threads spiral out, stitching past to present to future. There are ways to walk between, if you're willing to lose a part of yourself. Most people aren't; it's my specialty.

I stand on a pier, eyes shaded against the water's glare. It's 2015, by the smell - diesel and cooked meat, early enough that such things still exist. It might as well be 2017, or 3051. But this year is where my client is, so I wait, sweating inside a black, leather jacket, watching slick weeds stir below lapping waves.

The sun burns white-hot. Across the water, atop a basilica whose name no longer matters, Mary stretches marble arms over a maze of twisted streets. Legend claims when the basilica was built, the statue turned miraculously toward the water to guard the boats in the canal. The day R'lyeh rose, she turned her back on the water forever and wept tears — sticky and ruby-dark — that weren't quite blood.

A hand touches my arm, nails perfectly manicured and painted sea-shell pink. I'm surprised the Senator came herself. A frightened mother looking for her lost son is one thing; a politician desperate to protect her career is another. I wonder which she is.

From the Senator’s perspective, it's only just beginning. R'lyeh is a shadow beneath the waves and there is still hope. But I've seen tendrils slide through the canals of the city, licking the stones and tasting the ancient walls. They want nothing. The Senator still thinks she can bargain with the Risen Ones, strike a deal and become a new Moses to her people.

I focus on the Senator's nails, striking against my black leather. I know this about her: her life will end in a church, green water rising between the pews, light reflecting against the ceiling in shifting patterns. She will die screaming, bound hand and foot, while her blood is pulled through her skin by sheer force of will.

I don't offer to shake her hand. "Do you have a photo of your son?"

The slim case tucked beneath her arm matches her nails, lips, and suit. She hands me a glossy headshot. Her son looks nothing like her. Mr. Senator is an actor, younger than the Senator by at least ten years, dark hair and eyes like his son, but prettier by far.

Marco, the son, has deep brown eyes and the faintest of scars — acne, despite the medicine and cosmetic surgery his parents could easily afford. I hide the edge of a smile at Marco's tiny act of rebellion. 

"You understand this is a matter that requires the utmost discretion." The Senator holds out an envelope. She tries for frost, the same control she displays on the Senate floor, but her voice fails.

"I'll be in touch," I say, looking at a point beyond the Senator's left shoulder.

A subtle tugging wraps threads around my spine. I'm amazed at the Senator's self-control, or her talent for denial. How can she not feel what the world has become? How can she resist the temptation to slip into the future? She has the perfect pretense: looking for her son. She could see how it all ends.

I pocket the envelope and Marco's photo, and step past the Senator. Her mouth opens, snaps audibly closed; she isn't used to being dismissed. My boot heels click as I walk away, thinking about her son.

A family vacation in a city of masks and illusory streets — the perfect place to hide, the perfect place to disappear. Twenty-six and vanished — of course Marco doesn't want to be found. Even photographed, the desire to run shines clear in Marco's eyes. Desperation and fear, his expression bring a flicker of memory, which I push aside. There is no place far enough, but he'll still try, fleeing forward to test the notion that the future is infinite.

I start at Harry's Bar. I step forward and slide cross-wise, surrendering to shattered light, burning stars and the aching space between. Tentacles as insubstantial as breath slide beneath my skin. They want nothing, but they take what I have to give. Cold, cold, cold, they grip my spine, caress my skull, and scoop out the heart of me.

If they were beings to be reasoned with, I would ask them to take everything. It doesn't work that way.

Firelight flickers. My scars itch, stretching tight across my back. I hold the memories up as an offering, but the tentacles find their own prize. I don't know what they take from me; I only feel the familiar, hollow ache when it's gone.

It's 2071 when I enter the bar. The light is green, but the waiters still wear immaculate white jackets and ties, a terrible joke. I slide into a seat.

"A double." I don't specify of what; it hardly matters.

Behind the bar, where mirrored shelves used to hold bottles of liquor, pendulous nets hold a jumble of perpetually dripping starfish, conch shells, mussels, and clams. Breathing, wavering things cling to the wall. The air smells of brine. Things at the corner of my eye shift, unfold impossible dimensions, and retreat — deep-sea anemones shy of the light.

The bartender slides a drink in front of me. Misery haunts his gaze. This is our life now, our life then — this is the life to come. His mouth doesn't move when he breathes. His nostrils don't stir. If I didn't know to look, I wouldn't even see the gills slitting his throat, nictating almost imperceptibly. His eyes bulge, moist, blood-shot. I place a bill on the bar and add a stack of coins, a generous tip.

I wait a moment, then place Marco's picture next to the coins. The bartender's skin sweats oil and sorrow. People determined to vanish come to Harry's Bar, and for the right price, the miserable waiters in their starched, white uniforms show them how.

"When?" I ask.

"Can't say." The bartender's voice is frog-hoarse.

I know he means can't, not won't. Everything can be bought and sold here: sugar-sweet cubes that melt on the tongue and bring oblivion; death; pleasure; escape; even answers. The man behind the bar taught Marco how to leave, but didn't ask questions — a good bartender to the last.

"Thanks." I down my drink in one shot.

The liquor unfolds in my mouth, sending a spike through my lungs. My eyes water. I walk back outside.

It's dark. The stars are right. But the stars have always been right.

Where would I go if I was Marco? A useless question. He’s running from a suffocating life of expectation. The future reached out blind tentacles, snaring my heart. Marco chose R'lyeh's ways; R'lyeh's ways chose me. But no matter how many times I offer up my memories to those ways, they refuse to take them from me.

Firelight. A horse whinnies. The scent of wet leather and dry hay. Lips trace mine, arching my throat, shivering across my belly. I gather sweat on the tip of my tongue, briny-sweet like the sea. The horse's whicker turns to a scream.

My scars tingle, hot and cold at the same time. Some things can't be outrun, taken, or let go.

Suddenly, I don't give a fuck about Marco. And I have all the time in the world.

I walk along the water's edge, where there used to be a restaurant. Once — after R'lyeh, but before now — the entire city burned. The canals turned to oil and fire swept from rooftop to rooftop, sparing nothing.

Centuries of human existence, wiped out in the blink of an eye. I was there. I will be there again.

Venice, as always, survived. It rose from the ashes, born anew in brick and stone and marble, in deference to the old ways. It was also resurrected in glass and steel, in deference to ways old-yet-new. Finally, it shambled back from the dead with walls that bled and seethed, flickered and writhed, in deference to the way things are now and always will be. Venice: an impossible city, impossible to kill.

I cross a glass bridge. The water creeps, sluggish, beneath it. Lights glimmer on its surface; things sleep in its depths. Venice floats, it sinks, it is drowning, and it is drowned. And it survives. So do I.

I've been to the underwater city where Venice used to be. I've kick-pulled through cathedrals lit by the unearthly, phosphorescent glow of things best left unseen. I've worshiped at unholy altars, caressed by tendrils of night, studded by unnatural stars. I've witnessed the twisted images of saints spider-walking up church walls, their mouths open in silent screams. I've kissed the greened marble lips of the Mary who wept tears that weren't blood. I've seen Venice in all its guises, peeked behind all its masks, witnessed all its states of decay. Venice survives, no matter how ugly its scars.

My feet guide me to a little restaurant off Calle Mandola. It's almost unchanged since the old days, except for the light, and the sick-green smell, and the taste of salt in the air. They still serve a killer martini, though. Inside, the sound hits me like a wall. My heart skitters.

Guilt persists, even when I've given up love.

The place is nearly empty, but Josie sings as if the restaurant is full. Her voice is heartbreak: smoke and burnt amber and chocolate so dark it draws blood. It suits the restaurant's mood, and mine. Waiters move listlessly between tables, bringing baskets of bread, plates of limp vegetables in oily sauce, pasta - everything but meat, which ran out long ago, and fish, which is forbidden.

I tried to bring Josie fresh meat once. She wouldn't touch it. The thought of anything that had been in-between made her shudder and gag.

I remember — as much as I want to forget — how I held Josie's hands. Her moss-green eyes glowed with fear. I asked her to trust me. We stepped in-between.

And just as soon, we were jerked back, as if R'lyeh's ways had spit us out. Josie pulled away from me, the brief touch of
otherness
enough to shatter her already fragile mind.

We were staying in a hotel next to the theatre on Calle Fenice, in a room with walls the color of blood. The shower had stopped working long ago, but the toilet still flushed and, against all reason, the sheets were clean. When I stepped out of the between, Josie lay curled on the floor, clinging to the Turkish carpet as if it were the only thing holding her to this world.

"It burns. Ara, it burns."

I crouched beside her and touched her, feeling the sharp ridges of her spine through clothing and skin.

"Make it stop." She rocked and whimpered.

I lifted her sweater, peeling it as though from a wound. Tattoos, inked long before R'lyeh rose, but woken now, writhed across Josie's flesh. Black ink against skin the color of fired clay, lashing, twisting, moving in ways nothing ever should.

"Make it stop. It hurts. Make it stop." Josie turned her face, just enough to show tears and stark terror.

"I'm sorry," I told her. "I don't know how."

There were so many places I wanted to show her. I wanted to take her deep — somewhere off the coast of Mexico, to another drowned world full of turquoise water and old bones. I wanted to hold her hand, even through thick rubber gloves, and gesture to her through the enforced silence of breathing tubes and masks, hoping she'd understand.

She shuddered at the mere mention, and I went alone. I let the stillness envelop me; I drifted. Vast things floated beside me; an eye the size of Luxemburg opened below me in the deep. I should have been terrified, but I felt only peace as it looked into me and through me.

I used to think there were some sins too terrible even for R'lyeh, some offerings the spaces between would always refuse. But in that moment, I understood: sin is a human concept. So I did what I did to remain human. I buried sin deep at my core. I could walk the ways between a hundred, thousand times, and it would never change the deepest, most fundamental part of me.

In the end, I never took Josie anywhere. For a while, I tried to hold her when nightmares shivered beneath her skin, when her tattoos writhed in their own dreams. My touch only made it worse.

The day I left, she sat on the bed, head bowed. A red-glass heart from Murano lay cupped in her palm, brilliant as blood. I touched it with one finger; the glass was warm from her skin.

"I don't know why I have this," she said.

Her eyes held hurt, raw as a wound. Whatever I'd taken from her, trying to guide her through the between, was something I could never replace. Some wounds never heal. I left. I didn't ask her to forgive me.

Here and now, a ruby spotlight pins Josie — an American girl, singing Southern standards in a drowned and drowning city halfway across the world. Her song cuts knife-deep. I can't help remembering the last time we lay, cooling in each others' sweat, windows open, listening to the crowds leaving the Teatro.

That was the last time salt tasted good.

Josie's voice is sandstone, rubbed against my skin. It is coffee, scalding hot and poured into my lap. In the ruby spotlight and the green light seeping from the edges of the world, she's beautiful.

I sip my martini, slid without asking across the bar by the loyal bartender, Lorence. His skin is damp, his eyes as pained as the poor boy who served me in Harry's Bar. No matter that it hurts him, he still labors to breathe with human lungs, shunning his gills.

The song ends, and Josie leaves the stage. She wears a flower in her braided hair. Once upon a time, I may have given her a flower the same shade - a real one, not a silk monstrosity with hot-glue dew-drops clinging to its petals.

Her eyes meet mine, their moss-green accentuated by the underwater light.

"Ara." Josie brushes her lips against my cheek, making sure to catch the corner of my mouth.