Black Treacle Magazine (March/April 2013, Issue 2) (6 page)

Then he
thought, as Taylor only would, maybe he could have just one
sip?

One sip
wouldn’t make him drunk would it? He could still change that day,
save that boy’s life and have a taste of that fine scotch. It must
have been the best, considering the situation, whoever, or whatever
force was ultimately behind this wouldn’t send over cheap
whiskey.

That was the
last sober thought Taylor had before he downed the entire
bottle.

He sat in the
chair, head on the table bawling his eyes out for what seemed like
an eternity. The sleek brown empty bottle lay on its side on the
table next to Taylor’s head as if it was winking at him.

When he heard
the barker’s voice call from outside interrupting his drunken haze
Taylor’s arm swung over and knocked the bottle to the floor.

“Oh no, Taylor
what have you done? How are you going to change your destiny
now?”

“Poor Taylor,”
he heard the pageant girls sing and swoon,” the unluckiest man in
the world.”

Taylor lifted
his head and cried out, “I can do it anyway. I can change it drunk
or sober because I’m aware of it now, keenly aware of what I have
to do. Just you watch me. I will change that day! I promise!” And
his head fell to the table again.

The barker’s
voice rang out in mocking cheer. “Did you hear what he said girls?
Taylor said he can change that day, anyway!”

Suddenly there
was a drum roll, like a game show was about to start. Taylor heard
it loud and clear even in his stupor.

The barker
called in a voice that would put Bob Barker to shame, “C’mon down,
Taylor. You are the winner of this fine 1999 Gold Chevy Impala,
just like the one you used to run that boy down. As a matter a
fact, it is the very one you used to run that boy down! C’mon
down!”

Taylor stood
from the table drunk but determined. He could manage it somehow he
just knew he could.

How on earth
could he drink again and on this day of all days? What the hell was
wrong with him? He could kick himself if he could manage not to
trip over his own leg. A child’s’ future was at stake, not just his
own.

He was
pathetic, unlucky and pathetic, he thought as he made his way out
of the tent.

His breath
nearly stopped because when he stepped out of the tent it vanished.
The entire amusement park fell away. All that stood before him was
the gold Chevy impala and an open road that seemed to go on forever
into a cloudy grey horizon.

If anything
could sober him up that sight could. So vast, it made Taylor feel
incredibly insignificant.

But he knew
what he had to do. He got into the car. The car was idling. The key
was already in the ignition, all he had to do was push his foot on
the gas pedal, and he’d be off.

He’d take it
slow, careful and slow. He could do it, he kept repeating in his
head.

The highway
passed by empty and grey with nothing on the side of the road
except trees for miles, and miles.

Taylor began
to wonder if anything was going to happen when he saw it; the
outskirts of town.

The
intersection where it all took place, he was approaching it. His
nerves began to tense and then, like a shot out of a cannon, he saw
the boy riding his bike crossing the street where Taylor ran into
him just mere feet away.

This time he
wasn’t going to hit him. He pushed his foot to the pedal to slow
the car down even more, but in his drunken state he accidently hit
the gas and he began to speed toward the boy again.

His heart
thumped like it was going to explode.

He grabbed the
wheel and slammed his foot on the brake.

The car
swerved and screeched, and turned and to his amazement he just
missed the boy.

He did it! He
really did it! He shouted inside his head, when out of the corner
of his eye he saw the tractor trailer that was speeding into the
side of his car; the one that he didn’t see coming as he pulled
into the intersection.

Taylor’s car
burst into flames. Black smoke covered the street.

Soon a crowd
gathered. As the paramedics pulled Taylor’s charred remains out of
the torn metal a bystander said to another, “Did you see that? He
came barrelling into the intersection at the same time that tractor
trailer was pulling in. If wasn’t for him that truck would have
mowed that boy down. He is a hero.”

“Was. Now he’s
just the unluckiest son of a bitch in the world.”

END

Bruce Memblatt
is a native New
Yorker, and a member of the
Horror Writers
Association
.

He is on the staff of
The Horror
Zine
as Kindle Coordinator and
writes a bi- weekly series for
The Piker Press
based on
his short story, “
Dinner with
Henry
.”

His story
"Dikon's Light"
is a recipient of
Bewildering Stories 2012 Mariner Awards
and his works have been published over one hundred times in
anthology books, magazines and zines such as
Aphelion
,
Cycatrix Press
,
Post Mortem Press
,
Dark Moon Books
,
Sam’s Dot Publishing
,
Strange Weird and Wonderful
Magazine
,
The
Horror Zine
,
Midwest Literary Magazine
,
Danse Macabre
,
Parsec Ink
,
The Feathertale Review
,
Yellow Mama
and many more.

Visit Bruce’s blog @
http://brucememblatt.wordpress.com

Kate
Heartfield

They came from
the darkness at the back of the stage, with the easy speed of
eight-legged creatures. Rona felt the whoop rising from her lungs
to join the roar of the crowd.

The Scorpions
scuttled to their low, custom instruments: theremin, drum machine,
sampler, turntable. A siren whine, a backbeat, fast and loud.

The bass drove
Rona’s heartbeat.

The crowd
bounced like a single organism, every strobe a snapshot. Between
flashes, the exoskeletons on stage glowed blue-green in the ambient
black light.

Human bodies
pressed wet and warm against Rona’s back and shoulders. She didn’t
blame them. She, too, was just barely managing to swallow it down,
just barely managing to moor herself to acceptable behaviour. This
wasn’t some Thursday night grunge band. This was Swammerdam. This
was seven-foot-long super-intelligent Scorpions playing trip
hop.

A hand on
Rona’s shoulder. Suze squeezed her way through, handed Rona a
drink. They grinned at each other. Scorpion bands were common now
in Toronto and Montreal but they hardly ever came to Ottawa. Two
precious hours of adrenalin, sweat and pheromones, not all of them
human. Better than studying for a fucking macroeconomics exam.

Better than
anything.

A young woman
walked to the front of the stage. Human.

Rona knew
Swammerdam sometimes toured with humans, although she didn’t
recognize this one. But seeing it made it real. A human playing
with Scorpions. A life like that, made possible by impossible
Scorpions. The woman stepped casually over the interlocking legs,
grabbed the mic and pulled it to her red mouth. A dozen long black
braids snapped like whips as she howled.

Rona couldn’t
see the Scorpions’ eyes; they seemed oblivious to anything but the
music, their pincers spread wide over the instruments. Did they
ever look out at the crowd? Did they notice her? Could they tell
she was like them, in the ways that counted? Like the woman with
the braids. Rona could be like her. She had to be like her. She was
on the wrong side of the stage. Couldn’t they tell?

She shut her
eyes and reminded herself she probably looked nothing like what she
really was. Rona was amazing, or she could be. Maybe. But she
probably looked like a pudgy girl in a black Swammerdam t-shirt,
the black light mocking every lint scintilla.

The delicious
pain of watching them play was like the pain of watching someone
she had a crush on. She ought to be with them. That would be right
and this was wrong.

She could
enjoy the music, she could sway and bounce and scream.

But in the
flash of a strobe, one part of her brain became aware that it
wouldn’t be enough. Not for her. This memory would always be just a
little painful. She envied the others in the crowd, regular people
who could just enjoy the music, without always wanting to be the
one making it.

In the next
flash of the strobe Rona thought, for a second, that the woman with
the braids caught her eye.

* * *

After the
encores, when the house music came on, Suze grabbed Rona’s
shoulder, pulled herself close to her ear to be heard. “Let’s get
poutine,” she said.

Rona took a
step away from her roommate. “You go ahead,” she shouted.

The singer was
packing up the instruments, chatting with a cluster of groupies who
had bought her a beer. Her braids swung when she laughed. Rona
could do something cool with her own hair, maybe. She could put
glitter in her cleavage. Distance. Always so much distance between
the ideal Rona and the actual one.

“You’re
drunk,” Suze shouted. “Shouldn’t be alone.”

“Fuck off. I’m
not drunk. I’ve had two.”

Suze held up
three fingers.

“Go ahead,”
Rona shouted. She could barely hear herself, could only feel the
vibration of the sound in her already hoarse throat, and wondered
idly if that made her sound more drunk. “I won’t have any more.
I’ll get a cab. I just want to dance a little.”

“I’m not
leaving without you.”

The woman with
the braids was striding through the crowd, toward the door that led
to the bathroom.

“Whatever,”
Rona shouted, moving away from Suze. “I have to pee.”

* * *

In the
bathroom’s harsh white light, the music was stripped down to the
echo of its beats. But Rona could still feel it in her ribs and she
wondered whether the singer did too. The singer was fiddling with
her false eyelashes, swearing at her reflection. It was just the
two of them. Perfect.

“You have a
gorgeous voice,” Rona said, standing behind the woman, looking into
the same mirror. Her lips were tingly, a little numb. She still
couldn’t tell if she was speaking too loudly. Her voice seemed
disconnected from her ears.

“Thanks. Did
you need the sink? I’m almost done. Goddamned Scorpion in the
backstage bathroom. Prima fucking donnas.”

“Take your
time. Do you want a hand?”

“Aw, you’re a
sweetheart, thanks. It’s hard to do this with your eyes open, and
with your eyes closed you can’t see what you’re doing.”

Rona stepped
close. She had no idea how false eyelashes worked. How hard could
it be? She rearranged it, timidly. Up close, the singer was no less
impressive. The fuzzed hair at the tops of her braids, the sweat
creases in her cerulean eye shadow, the pores in her nose, only
made her more frustrating. She wasn’t much older than Rona.

“Can I ask you
a question?”

“Let me
guess,” the singer said. “You want to know if the Scorpions talk to
me.”

Scorpions,
with a capital S, had been discovered, or made their presence
known, in the 1970s, around the time Rona was born. It was only
within the last few years that they’d started interacting with
human culture: playing music, sculpting, painting.

Occasionally
doing interviews through one of their chosen interpreters.

No one had yet
been able to learn how to communicate with Scorpions. The talent
simply appeared in a few humans. No one knew why only those people
could hear the Scorpions in their minds, and respond.

“They do,” the
singer said. “Anything else you want to know?”

“I`m a
musician too,” Rona said, conscious of how close their faces were
as she fiddled with the singer’s lashes.

“Of course you
are.”

“I play piano.
Keyboards I mean. Well, I’m classically trained but--”

“But you write
songs,” the singer said, wearily. “And you sing, right?”

Rona nodded,
slo-mo, the alcohol sloshing in her brain pan.

“Are you
good?”

Rona blushed.
“Okay I guess. Not as good as you.”

The singer
pulled away, looking pained. Had Rona said something wrong?

The singer put
her hands over her face for a moment, then dropped them.

“Will you sing
for me?”

“Here?”

“Here.”

Rona laughed
nervously. She sang a few lines from When Doves Cry, barely above a
whisper. The drum beat from the bar didn’t match the rhythm.

“Well,” the
singer said, cutting her off. “We all have to start somewhere.”

We do, Rona
thought. This woman started somewhere. With a real human life, like
hers. A human brain and human hands, not telepathy or pincers. Yet
this woman--

“What’s your
name?” Rona asked, as if she needed to know, urgently, and she
did.

“Scarab,” she
said.

“Really?”

“It is now,”
Scarab said. She put her hands up over her face again for a moment.
She dropped them and smiled. “Thanks. My eye feels a little better.
Listen, you have a good voice. You do. You should keep singing. Can
I buy you a drink?”

Rona nodded,
afraid to speak a word.

* * *

Scarab took
the tall cold glass from the bartender and handed it to Rona,
pierced eyebrow quirked. “What’s in this?”