Jan 21, 2021

Supply and Demand

The smell in the garage was abominable, even with the side door open. I couldn’t open the front, obviously -- I didn’t want Mrs. Erskine walking by with her fucking shih tzu and making snide comments about how sloppy my pentagram was or bitching at me because the HRA didn’t allow open flame anywhere outside the kitchen, fireplace, or barbecue. Hardly the kind of scene I’d want Satan to pop in on.

But Jesus, was it hot. And getting hotter. I was thinking I might just open a window when I realized just how smoky the garage had gotten. The sweat running down my back turned ice cold when I heard the low chanting, and the distant keening of damned souls.

And there he was.

There he fucking was. One second nothing but a haze of smoke, the next, a handsome man in a dark grey suit. He looked to be about 50 or so, with salt-and-pepper hair, brown eyes, and good skin. 

“Hello Matthew.”

“H-hi,” I stammered. “I … are you …?”

“The Devil,” he nodded, “yep.” He looked around the garage with polite interest, as if he was mildly intrigued by the used power tools, oil stains, paint cans, and arcane designs in chicken’s blood. “What can I do for you, son?”

I felt my chest tighten. This was it. This was it. I recited to myself all the loopholes and twists I had to avoid, all the mazes of deceit that I knew he’d try to throw me into. Maybe I was going to be damned, I had told myself over and over, but I wasn’t going to be cheated in the process.

“L-Lord Lucifer,” I said, voice shaking, “I wish to sell … uh … sell my s-soul.” 

He looked down, almost sheepishly.

“To you,” I added.

“Yeah,” he said, scuffing at the pentagram with one immaculately-shined Moreschi oxford. “I know.”

I frowned, more at his almost apologetic tone than anything else. I wasn’t prepared for whatever tactic this was, and it made me nervous.

“So …” I started, then stopped. I cleared my throat and began again. “So I’d like to … uh … discuss the price … I mean, what I get out of the deal,” I said.

Lucifer sucked air through his teeth. 

“Here’s the thing, though,” he said, and again, he seemed apologetic, even embarrassed. “I’m not really buying, at the moment.”

I blinked, and the tension flowed out of me as confusion flowed in.

“Not buying?” I echoed. “Not … like … what, you don’t want souls, or …?”

“Oh, I want souls,” he said, nodding. “Obviously. I mean, they’re pretty much my stock in trade.” He laughed, a pleasant, self-deprecating chuckle. Then his smile faded and he shrugged. “But some souls are … well, the thing about this is that I’m pretty confident I’m going to get your soul anyway.”

“What!?” I was incredulous. This was not how things were supposed to go. “What do you mean by that?” I demanded. “I’m not a bad person!”

Lucifer held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. 

“Hey, hey, I’m not judging you,” he said, and added, with a smile, “That’s not my job.”

Seeing that this did not placate me in the slightest, he went on.

“Look, Matt -- can I call you Matt?” I nodded, sullen. “Matt, you have to understand that the Big Man, he’s got a pretty narrow set of criteria for the non-damned.” He shook his head, his tone regretful. “I don’t make the rules,” he said. “I don’t even enforce them. But I know them, Matt. I know the rules, and, buddy, even offering to sell me your soul is kind of a mortal sin these days.”

Lucifer looked out the open side door into my yard. “It used to be a little more flexible,” he lamented. “Once upon a time, you could make deals with me and maybe even get yourself a life of carnal and hedonistic delight.” He looked at me with a small shake of his head. “Times are getting tight,” he said, “and I really have to pick my battles.” He pointed a fingergun at me and mimed firing. “My actuaries put you pretty confidently in the ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t,’ column, so I’m going to have to pass and take my chances.”

I gritted my teeth. “Well … what if I suddenly started going to church and stuff? Huh?” I challenged him. “What if I redeem myself and … you know … get saved, or whatever.” 

“‘Get saved or whatever,’” he echoed me, with a mocking but not unkind tone. “Do you hear yourself?” He shook his head. “Kid, let’s be realistic. You didn’t want to work for happiness, and you were ready to dump your soul for the chance of a couple years of it. Even now, with proof that I exist, and that all this matters, you’re still hoping I’ll bite and you’ll get a lazy man’s piece of paradise.” He snorted. “You’re not going to do the legwork and the heavy lifting to live a life of virtue, Matt,” he predicted, “and even if you intended to, you don’t even know which religion is the right one.”

Seeing I was disconsolate, Lucifer put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“Look, Matt,” he said. “It’s not all bad. I mean, sure, hell is a place of torment and pain for eternity, but all your friends will be there!”


Endless Summer

When I interviewed Summer Lin back in 1984, I was struck by her absolute fascination with every aspect of our production. Sound, cameras, light meters, and the myriad of people it takes to make eight minute television segments all seemed to delight her, and she was full of questions.

“How many people watch your show?”

“How much does that camera weigh?”

“Who decides what guests you have?”

“Why do you have to take sound with that boom if we’re all wearing microphones?”

Summer was then the lead singer for Inverter, a pleasant but forgettable entry in the androgynous American New Wave genre that produced so many one- and two-hit wonders in the early 80s. A beautiful, pixie-ish 17 or 18 year old, sporting a drastic, angular hairdo in an unnatural platinum and pink color, various mismatched and slashed clothes, and a smattering of punk accoutrements. Essentially, an utterly typical representative of her species.

Or so I thought.

“So, Summer, you are originally from New Mexico, correct?”

“I escaped.” She laughs, along with the rest of the band, including feather-haired Val Anderson, the guitarist and founding member. I remember a brief look of concern crossing Anderson’s face, and I thought I understood the dynamic. One member of every band I interviewed had been forced into the parent role for the rest. It was a time filled with drugs and alcohol and any interview could explode into a PR disaster. That member always fretted over every comment made by the others, particularly the star, and Summer was definitely the star.

“What was growing up there like?”

“I didn’t grow up.” Another general laugh. “I’ve never had a driver’s license, even.”

“And how did you and Val get together?”

At this point, Val interjected, “Mark and I had been playing together with another guy for a couple of months. That guy left, and neither of us could sing, so we put up flyers, and Summer answered one.”

“People put up flyers a lot,” Summer observed. “Lost cats. Need a drummer. Have you seen me?”

More general laughter, some questions about their hit single. Thanks and cut.



In 1991, I was doing my show on MTV. Interstitial interviews. Four minutes rather than eight. Reality television was still a year or two away from taking the M out of MTV and Summer Lin was a solo act. 

When she sat down, I was impressed. Seven years of obscurity had passed without changing her looks much at all, though her keen interest in the details of production seemed to have been satisfied in the interim.

I was more socially conscious, now. It was making a comeback. 

“So, Summer, how do you feel about the end of the war in Iraq?”

“I’m glad to see the fighting stop,” she said. “Humanity has enough problems to deal with without actively trying to kill one another.”

“Don’t you think we had an obligation to defend Kuwait?”

“Well, Iraq defended Kuwait during the Iran-Iraq war when Iran violated Kuwait’s attempted neutrality, and then found itself crippled by debt to a nation they had just defended. And then, rather than accede to Iraqi requests that OPEC reduce production to raise oil prices so they could have the revenue to pay that debt, Kuwait resisted, as its interests were much more vested in downstream petroleum production...”

I just nodded. None of this would make it to air, of course. It wasn’t exactly MTV material. Something about the way she spoke disturbed me. This sort of analysis, coming out of the mouth of a woman who still looked like a teenager, was unsettling.

“So, your new album, ‘Masquerade’ -- any relation to the Berlin song of the same name?”



On December 27th, 2004, I was segment producing on Late Night. Summer would have been in her mid thirties by my reckoning, but she still looked like a kid to me. She’d put out three albums in the interim. She should have either been a washout or a huge star, but she was neither. She’d drifted in sort of a goth-folk direction that didn’t exactly have a huge fan base.

It was a subdued episode. A catastrophic tsunami had hit southeast Asia the day before. Conan had wanted to cancel taping entirely, but had been convinced by the network to go ahead.

“Summer, wow, you look fantastic!” Conan observed, good-naturedly. “It must be really annoying for you to get carded every time you order a drink.” 

“I don’t get carded,” she quipped. “They ask me if my mom knows I’m out this late.”

The audience ate it up. Conan was smitten in his good-natured way. 

I shook my head. She didn’t just look young. She had not aged. At all.

Then, in the middle of an anecdote about working on an album with William Shatner, Summer stopped. Right there, in mid-sentence, she just slowly looked up into the air.

“Are you channeling Mister Spock right now?” Conan asked, with a quick, questioning glance at me.

Summer blinked, smiled, and shook her head. “No, sorry. I thought I heard something.”

We had already been running late and her interview was cut for time. When I watched the show that night, there was a news segment just before. The largest gamma ray burst ever recorded had washed over the earth earlier that evening. 



By 2018, Summer should have been in her late forties, at least. The internet had noticed, and she routinely appeared in clickbait proclaiming, “You won’t believe how she looks today!” The blood of virgins jokes were rolled out.

Summer had taken small roles in movies and become an indie darling, but there was definitely a vibe out there. Something wasn’t normal about this woman.

I was producing drama series at the time, every one set in Chicago because that’s what tested well. Summer was cast in one of them as a rock star who gets murdered but keeps showing up in one character's PTSD hallucinations. I got a call. There was some issues with the show runner, and I stepped in to smooth things out.

“She doesn’t look old enough,” she told me. “The whole goddamn show could be about how weird it is that she looks like a child!”

“So we make her look older. Christ, we have a makeup department. What’s the problem?”

“The problem? The problem is that we have a part written for a woman in her forties and I don’t think she looks old enough to drive a car.”

That stuck with me when I left. All the way back to that first interview.

I had told the director that I’d speak to Summer. I didn’t even know what I’d say to her, or what my options were. She was on the lot for a readthrough. 

“Hi Summer,” I said. We exchanged a hug in the commissary. “It’s been a while.” 

I looked in her eyes and was nearly floored by the sense of sadness there. 

“What’s wrong?”

She gave me a sad smile.

“It’s been a while,” she echoed. “But it’s almost over.” 

The conviction in her voice sent a shiver down my spine. 

“I’ve been watching, participating a little, for a long time, now,” Summer said. “Ever since I got here.” She shook her head. “Things have really gone downhill for you people.”

“Who?” I asked, feeling hollow, “Hollywood?”

She smiled indulgently and shook her head. “No, people,” she said. “Humans.”

The effort it took to force my laugh would have won me an Emmy on the other side of the camera. “You are definitely not human,” I said. I’m not sure why. It didn’t really need to be said. 

Summer merely arched her brows a bit. All I could think was, not one scandal. Not one notable relationship. Not one wrinkle.

“What do you mean, ‘almost over?’” I asked.

Her eyes were sympathetic and she sighed. “We’ve seen this kind of trend before,” she said. “Many times.” She drank from the Styrofoam cup like a person might, grimaced slightly, like a person might, and shook her head. “Too many things are lining up,” she said. “Too many obstacles. And humans … well, our projections don’t see humans making it past the next few years without getting into what you’d call a cultural tailspin. ‘The Great Filter’ -- you know the concept?”

I shook my head, mute.

“Every culture that develops, that is lucky enough to make it past the whims of geology and astronomy, that looks to the stars and begins the process of becoming one with them, faces a moment where their opportunities to move forward are compressed. Disease, war, famine, or simple inertia cause some to dwindle rather than thrive. The ones that thrive go on to join Society. The ones that don’t …” she shrugged, “don’t.”

She looked out the window at people walking back and forth, each on their way to something important to them.

“Humans have rejected science in favor of opinion, peace in favor of continual war, preparedness in favor of living in the moment. You have a looming catastrophic climate crisis and you can’t muster the will to do anything about it. You have massive suffering supporting a tiny, privileged minority.”

I rubbed my temples, trying to clear the weird haze that had begun to swirl in my head. Then I gave a short laugh, and the tension abated.

“Jim thinks you look too young for the part and he wants to recast Maggie,” I said.

Summer smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “That's okay. I have a feeling the show isn't going to last."

Nov 5, 2020

Pegasus

“Have mercy! My sister is with child!” Euryale pleaded. She clung to Pelayo’s tunic as the sailor waded back toward the galley that bobbed against the sandbar in the low surf. The rowers sat their oars, eyes fixed, ready to pull as soon as their captain was aboard. “You treacherous dog!" Eurayle screamed. "You cannot leave us!”

The grizzled sailor backhanded her, sending her sprawling into the shallow water. Euryale’s hand spiked with pain as a sharp rock tore the skin. She struggled to her feet, screaming at Pelayo’s receding back.

“I curse you!” she cried. “Poseidon Earth-Shaker drag your miserable raft to the blackest depths!”

Pelayo turned, his hand on the gunwale.

“You and your sister are the ones who are cursed!” His voice faltered in its determined fierceness and a note of pleading forced its way to the surface. Face twisted in a grimace, he continued in a low hiss. “If I do not leave you, my crew will kill you and feed you to the sharks, and likely me as well.” He shook his head. “I am sorry, girl, but your fate is your own, now.”

With that, he leaped aboard and the rowers stretched to their oars.

Euryale watched, sobbing, as the ship drew away from shore. It lofted its great sail, which bellied with wind, and soon rounded the headland and disappeared.

She waded back to the beach where her sister lay curled in a ball around her pregnant belly. A bit of shade from a large stone outcrop her only protection from the boiling sun. The wrappings on her face had been torn away in the sailors’ haste to cast her ashore, and the filthy linen lay in coils around her in the black sand.

Euryale could hear her sister weeping softly. She fell to her knees and reached out to touch one heaving shoulder.

“I am sorry, my sister,” came a quiet, sniffling voice. “I was eating and … and the wind took my wrap …” She looked up at Euryale with her good eye, the other lid swollen to a scaly slit. “Am I grown so hideous?” she asked, an edge of hysterical pleading in her voice.

Euryale wiped a tear from her own eye and stroked her sister’s hair, gritting her teeth at the revulsion she felt at the stiff mass of ringlets, crusted thick with the growth that had obliterated her sister’s beauty.

She lay down next to her sister and put an arm around her, feeling the protruding pregnant belly beneath the ragged robe. “I think the goddess grew jealous, to hide you so, but you will remain my word for beauty.” Euryale closed her eyes. “The star of the west,” she said softly, “fair-cheeked Medusa.”

-----------

Eventually, the sun rose high and heat sheeted off the island with almost unbelievable intensity. Euryale left Medusa with assurances that she would find water and a place for them to shelter, that she would be safe, that the worst had passed. The lies were easier than the truth.

The path leading up from the dark sand of the beach was steep and deep-cut. It seemed as much a water-dug trench as a footpath, but Euryale soon spotted hard, dry pellets of goat droppings. Cautious relief flooded her mind, and she quickened her pace.

The stone of the island was uncommon sharp and rough, and her sandals could hardly have been called rugged. Soon the laces chafed her, and her feet ached with a thousand cuts and scrapes.

She reached an area where the slope leveled out for a stretch, and the extent of their new home was revealed to her. Brown, dry brush seemed the most common feature, and huge, jagged stones, tumbled and cracked. The island rose to three low, broken hills that she could see, the slopes of which were a bit greener than the rest of the landscape. Most of the rest of the island seemed as the area in which she stood -- gently sloping ground covered in rocky outcroppings, frozen in their tumble to the sea.

It was alarmingly small -- unless the hills hid land from her eyes, it was quite a small island indeed. Perhaps an hour or two to walk the length, were it flat, and had she proper sandals.

The far-off bleat of a goat caught her attention, and Euryale shielded her eyes from the sun for a moment, scanning the hillside. Nearer than she’d dared hope, a small herd of the animals clustered in twos and threes, a short way up the slope.

Euryale began to climb toward the herd. She took off her sandals and nearly flung them away before deciding, rather, to stick them in her sash. As she did so, she caught sight of her fingernails and her hands shook.

The black had become more noticeable in recent days, seeming to spread as a drop of ink will spread in water, but slowly, slowly clouding her nails and staining them with its cursed dark. Now the skin around the edges had become rough and cracked, though there was no pain.

What made her heart climb into her throat at the sight of the stain’s slow spread was its resemblance to what had happened to her sister.

From childhood, the sisters had been given to Neith, bathed in the river Triton and blessed by the waters of creation. While Euryale had not the beauty of Medusa, she too had raised her voice to sing the hymns of the goddess, and bathed with the crocodiles unharmed, for Sobek was her brother in the water of creation.

Greeks in particular had marveled at the beauty and wisdom of Medusa and the faith and fearlessness of Euryale, and the sisters had risen in the goddess’ favor as the foreigners carried tales of them, and her name, home to their lands.

It was thus that Medusa, the eldest, was in the night visited by the hooded sisters, who carried a single candle that they passed between them as they spoke. In excited whispers, Medusa told her sister, from whom she had no secrets, that she was to be bride to the Unnamed Son of Neith. She was afraid, of course, but her excitement was plain, and her embrace the night of the ceremony had been fierce, and not without tears.

Euryale had not slept, her worry for her sister causing her to toss and turn. In the morning, Mother Kifi had come to her, looking very grave.

“Medusa is cast out,” the matron had said, her voice trembling. “The goddess has cursed her, for she has rejected …" the old woman, ever kind to the sisters, faltered for a moment, and then simply shook her head and finished in a tight, emotionless voice. "She has failed.”

The thought of her sister, expelled from the temple, had struck Euryale dumb.

“You will go with her,” Mother Kifi added. “She must leave the city. She must not look upon the waters of the Triton again.”

“Where will we go?” Euryale had moaned. “What will become of us?”

She had feared exile and leaving the place she loved. She had mourned the love of Neith, taken from her and from her sister in a fell blow. But even then, she had loved the goddess still, for she had not yet seen her sister.


------------------


The goatherd was so weatherbeaten and sun-baked that he hardly looked a man. It seemed for a moment that he might be blind as well, for he did not seem to see Euryale as she climbed the slope toward him. When she called out, however, he started, and she realized he had been asleep on his feet, basking in the blazing sun.

“Hello?” she called in Greek. “Can you help me, please? I must have water, and my sister lies upon the beach there,” she pointed back down the hill.

He ran a hand through short, ragged hair the color of the island’s stones, and looked puzzled. He shook his head, and Euryale pantomimed holding a wineskin and drinking from it. The goatherd smiled and nodded and handed her a warm bladder of foul-tasting but nonetheless welcome goat’s milk.

Euryale drank gratefully and handed it back to him. Through gestures and urgent prompting, she managed to get him to follow her to the beach, making sure to precede him and fix Medusa’s wrappings before he reached her.

The goatherd clucked his tongue, his face marked with concern, and he took the pregnant woman in his arms, lifting her and half-carrying her to the path.

They reached his shack in short order, and he placed Medusa on a bed of dry grass. They shared the bladder of milk and the goatherd chattered away in his unfamiliar tongue.

Euryale was able to discern that he lived alone on the island, and he showed her a few small piles of stone that she took to be burial cairns. She smiled as he spoke, and nodded as if she understood. The man seemed pleasant and, despite his rough and rustic appearance, he was well-mannered.

That night, the goatherd, who Euryale believed to be named “Harik,” built a fire and roasted a goat for the two marooned sisters. Even Medusa was cheered somewhat by the man’s kindness.

He was in the middle of telling them some story that he seemed to find very amusing when he suddenly frowned and clutched at his arm. Euryale rose and looked at Medusa with alarm as the goatherd toppled over, gasping for breath.

Quickly, Euryale rolled him onto his back, as she had sometimes seen done, and she gasped to see his eyes rolling with terror. She pulled open his wrapped garment to give him air, and then fell back, terrified.

A black patch covered his chest and shoulders, rough-looking and cracked. He wailed and choked, and Euryale and Medusa both screamed as he retched black bile that stained his lips and neck and did not fade.

Agonizing minutes passed, in which they could do nothing for the man who had been so kind to them. The sisters wept bitterly, long after his struggles ceased and he lay stiff on the ground.

The black stain spread even after Euryale was sure the poor man was dead. Within a few minutes, his twisted body had become entirely black and dull as burned wood. She moved the corpse away from the shack, to the place of the cairns, but had no will or strength to bury him.

“I killed him,” Medusa said when Euryale returned. She had rekindled the fire and was slowly feeding her filthy linen wrap into it, watching the damp cloth sputter and catch, the flame green and blue for a moment before merging with the rest of the blaze. She glanced up at her Euryale, then down at her sister's hands, and her chest hitched in a quiet sob. “I am killing you, as well, sweet Euryale.”

Euryale sat down across from her and gave a ragged sigh. “It is not your fault, sister,” she soothed.

Medusa threw the rest of the linen into the fire in one wadded ball. Her lips drew tight, and the white of her teeth was stark against her black and blistered skin. She shook her head and Euryale suppressed a revolted shudder at the faint cloud of dust that sifted down from the stiff, stalk-like growths that twined in her sister’s hair.

“He was a monster,” Medusa said after a long silence, and it took Euryale a moment to realize she wasn’t referring to the poor dead man. “I … I was already afraid when the hooded sisters parted the water of the pool of visions.” She closed her eyes, remembering. “Those waters, always mirror-still … there was something terrible in disturbing them. I sensed it and yet I followed them down the steps they had revealed.

“We went down and down, far below the temple. The walls were wet -- in some places water ran freely -- and they were rough to the touch. Hardly worked at all, but rather hewn.

“‘These steps, these walls,’ one of the sisters told me, ‘are older than the temple. They are older than the city. They are older than the gods.’

“At last, we came to the base of the stair, and there was a breeze that smelled of damp. Great black clumps of what I took to be smooth stone proved rough and spongy to the touch, like moldy fruit.”

Euryale was silent, listening with a fascinated dread to her sister’s tale.

“The sisters showed me a pool, of a size very near to the pool of visions, but the water was dark and it roiled as I watched.

“‘He comes, sister,’ one of them said, and all of them moved away from me, carrying their light to the base of the stair. The waters parted and the … he emerged. He was all of a mass, dark and slickly wet. I thought, at first, it was Sobek himself, for his skin was ridged and rough-scaled as a crocodile’s, though black as night, but his head was a man’s, or like a man’s, but scaly, lumped and wrong.

“The sisters called to him, and their words were somehow familiar to me and yet unknown at once. He answered them, and I saw his eyes fall on me.” She looked out over the sea. “Such sorrow,” she said quietly, “and yet I could not feel pity over my revulsion. He was foul of smell and appearance. He unfurled himself, as if he wore a cloak, and I saw great wings, webbed, like  the bat’s, though the image they pressed into my terror was that of the feet of a frog. My stomach turned, but the sisters would not let me leave. They held me, and their words to the Unnamed Son became more urgent, almost pleading, I thought.

“Finally, he stepped close and …” Medusa’s voice shook and then died in her throat.

Euryale wept. “Oh my poor sister.”

“Where he touched,” Medusa said softly, “I burned and felt I would die. After, something seemed to be wrong. I was confused, disoriented, and the sisters swore oaths and cursed at me. They said I had not drunk of the waters, but I had! We both had done. And the Unnamed Son lay still beside his pool, and, I thought, seemed dead.

“My skin still burned, cold, where he had touched me, and his cold seed was within my body. I knew even at the very instant, that I was with child, for such is the potency of the gods." Medusa's eye narrowed. "But I did not tell the sisters.”

Medusa stroked her protruding belly and Euryale looked away, a wave of nausea gripping her.

A noise in the darkness startled them both, and Medusa moved quickly to sit beside her sister. It came again -- a low, snuffling sound and then a scraping. Fear gripped them as a pair of eyes, wide-set, reflected in the firelight.

The shape that revealed itself as it approached was massive and hairy, and it took Euryale a moment to understand what she was looking at.

“It is a bear, sister,” she whispered. “The Libyan mountains have many. You remember the ones that fought dogs at the festival--”

“Of course!” Medusa hissed, “But what do we do?”

The animal gazed at them placidly and then sniffed around the fire, pawing at and taking in its mouth the forgotten joint of meat that poor Harik had dropped when he became ill.

Euryale stood. The bear eyed her but did not otherwise react. She set her mind as she had when swimming with the crocodiles in the sacred pools.

“I am fearless,” she whispered, and reached out to touch the beast. It grunted and blew a warm, wet breath against her from its snout.

“Fearless Euryale,” Medusa murmured, eyes wide in awe. She stood up and joined her, and the two sisters stroked the bear’s soft fur as it gnawed the ragged bone, which parted with a crack in the heavy jaws.

Medusa chuckled. “Such strength,” she said, looking at Euryale. “What shall we call her?”

Euryale smiled. “Stheno,” she said, and Medusa cocked her head to one side.

“Greek?” she asked, and then tentatively, “‘Strong?’”

Euryale shook her head. “‘Forceful.’”


-----------------


It was a few days before they noticed the black growths that snaked up through Stheno’s pelt. Medusa was inconsolable. They waited, and as they could hardly stop the bear from coming and going, they simply waited for its visits to stop.

To their surprise and delight, though the bear grew sluggish at times, and lost most of its fur to the infection, it survived.

Medusa grew very fond of the beast, and took to calling it their sister, though neither of them really knew if Stheno was male or female. Soon she rarely left Medusa’s side.


------------------

Euryale stood, staring at the sea and letting her mind drift, as she often did when tending the goats. They needed little tending, as Stheno was the only predator of any size, and she was quite tame, but if left to themselves they could easily wander halfway across the island.

A call from down slope roused her and she stared, uncomprehending for a moment, at a man. A man in bright blue and white. He waved and called to her with vaguely familiar words and Euryale tentatively waved back, before she recalled herself and was filled with panic.

She moved quickly to place a bush between herself and the sailor, who smiled inquisitively as he puffed his way up the slope.

“Hello there? Girl?” he said, holding up his hands.“Do not be frightened.”

“Wh-who are you?” Euryale called out. “How come you here?”

He smiled. “I am called Nereus.” He pointed down the hill. “That is … well, if you could see the cove from here, you would see my ship, Aleppo.” He wiped sweat from his brow. “We thought perhaps to take on some water, here, and a few turtles if any are about.” He craned his neck to see around the bush, but Euryale kept herself well-shielded. “We did not know anyone lived on this island.”

A voice, strange and yet too familiar, came from up the slope.

“Someone lives here.” 

At the sound of Medusa’s voice, Nereus turned. Euryale’s heart skipped a beat, as the man cried out in dismay.

“Gods protect me!” Euryale saw him backpedal and stumble past her bush. “What are you?”

“Am I not beautiful?” Medusa asked, in a false tone of hurt. “Do you not wish to return home and tell your people that you have beheld Medusa, beloved of Neith? Beloved of the Unnamed Son?”

“Medusa!” Euryale cried. Foreboding gripped her heart.

Nereus stammered for a moment. “P-please …” There was a sharp snapping noise and he fell with a scream.

Euryale leapt from behind her bush and stared down in disbelief. Nereus lay on the ground, one of Medusa’s black arrows buried in the meat of his thigh.

“What have you done, sister?” Euryale wailed, kneeling next to the stricken man, who, despite his obvious agony, tried to crawl away from her, his eyes holding the same terror and revulsion for her as they had for Medusa. He choked out a few fading words, spitting them in Medusa’s direction, and then moaned, body stiff and trembling.

Her sister leaned calmly upon her bow and watched the creeping stain of her sickness spread across the man’s skin from the arrow wound. Her eyes were cold.

“If I cannot be beautiful,” Medusa whispered, “then I will be terrible.” She met her sister’s horrified stare. “If I cannot be loved, I will be feared.” Ponderously, she stepped forward and nudged Nereus with a scaled foot. Stheno shuffled out from a nearby defile and sniffed at the dying man curiously.

“What did he call me, sister?” she asked. “Was it Greek?”

“‘Gorgos,” Euryale said, turning her head away from the dying man’s last, choking sob.

“‘Gorgos,’” Medusa repeated, pondering. Her lips curled into a hateful smile. “‘Dreadful.’” Euryale heard madness creep in as her sister uttered a rasping laugh.

“Stheno, Euryale,” Medusa called, and the bear nuzzled her, wheezing. She stroked the great creature’s black-scabbed head. “Come, my sisters,” she said. “Let us find his companions and drive them from the island. Let them carry our names back to their people.”

Without waiting for Euryale, Medusa and the bear started down the path to the beach, the path kind Harik had once carried her pregnant sister up when they were hopeless maroonees. Numbly, Euryale followed, and heard the cacophony of screams just before the sailors came into view.

A dozen men scrambled on the sand. Two brandished spears, shouting curses at Medusa and Stheno. Their hands shook with fear and they made no move to advance. The rest fled into the surf, shoving at their small galley with urgent cries.

Euryale watched Medusa draw one of her carved arrows, black with the stain of her affliction,  and notch it into her bow.

“No!” she shouted, and was rewarded with startled glances from the two spearmen, whose terror seemed redoubled by the appearance of another monster.

Medusa let fly the arrow and it sunk into the upper arm of the taller man, who dropped his spear and howled in pain. His compatriot seemed to lose his courage at the same moment, and he grabbed his wounded friend and tried to drag him toward the ship.

They made it a few steps and then the wounded man staggered, his body stiffening in agony. The other tried to drag him, but Euryale could already see the black stain on the man’s neck.

“So quick …” she whispered to herself, amazed and horrified.

Stheno reached them then, and the bear’s great forepaw caught the unwounded sailor on his flank, sending him sprawling into the water.

Medusa raged at the sailors who were, heedless of the plight of their comrades on shore, scrambling for their oars.

“Run away, dogs!” she screeched at them in Greek. “Run and say to all who may hear that it is death to come here! Death to look upon Medusa and her sisters! Tell your children of the gorgons!” She broke off as they scudded away from the shore, and a rasping laugh echoed across the cove. “ Medusa! Euryale! Stheno!” Medusa screamed across the water.

“You have gone mad, sister!” Euryale scolded. The two bodies, both already black with infection, bobbed slowly in the water. “These men did no wrong to us!”

Medusa sneered. “No wrong? And do you suppose they would have carried us home to their village, rescued us from our fate here?” She spat black saliva onto one of the bodies. “No, sister. You did not see that captain’s eyes. They were just like Pelayo’s, who abandoned us here. They would have done the same, or worse, if I had not rid us of them.” She gazed at the retreating galley. “Now they will carry word of us away from here, word of the death we offer to all who violate our island, and none shall dare our shore.” Her voice faltered a bit, and Euryale saw the tracks of tears stain her sister’s cheeks. “I would not have any man look at me again, my sister,” Medusa said, quiet and fierce. “Never again.”

---------------

“I have planted a garden,” Medusa announced when she appeared at Euryale’s cave.

Euryale looked up from the straw mat she was weaving, but said nothing.

“Come, sister,” Medusa urged, beckoning. “Let us not quarrel.”

Reluctantly, Euryale stood and brushed herself off, causing a shower of black dust to drift to the floor of the cave. She followed as Medusa waddled, belly distended with the never-born, chattering in the chaotic tumble of words that had become her only voice in recent months. They walked past Medusa’s own cave, slightly lower than Euryale’s but offering a better view of the cove, until they came to the cleared area where Harik’s hut had once stood.

Euryale surveyed the ‘garden’ in silence.

Blackened bodies stood or leaned against stones in a grim parody of a topiary. Euryale recognized, or thought she recognized, several of the corpses. There was the fisherman, blown to the island in the same storm that swept away the old hut. There, the pair of Phoenician merchant sailors whose crew had died of fever. Several of the bodies were of the soldiers who had nearly succeeded in killing Euryale the previous spring, apparently motivated by nothing more than the desire for fame.

Medusa hovered, wringing her hands anxiously. “Do you like it?” she asked, her voice almost that of a child.

“It is beautiful,” Euryale sighed, hollow. “Forgive me, sister, but I am tired. I think I will go back to my cave.”

Medusa nodded, looking hurt, but said nothing else.


----------------


“He comes, my sister!” Medusa proclaimed, her scaled hands gripping Euryale’s. “My love has shed his great affliction and is new-made!” She pointed out at the approaching sail. “He comes for us, and we shall be healed and beautiful again, and the goddess shall welcome us into her arms once more,” her voice weakened and she groaned with the exertion, clutching at her belly. “And my son … my son shall stand astride his father before the goddess and …”

Medusa sat down heavily, at the shallow black pool at the center of her cave moaning with pain. Her gaze still lingered on Euryale’s, searching for the same joy that she seemed to feel.

“Perhaps, sister,” Euryale allowed, “but --” she stopped herself as Medusa’s expression changed and she yanked her hands away.

“I have seen it!” Medusa half-screamed at her, pointing at the pool. “My visions …”

“Please,” Euryale soothed. “Please, sister, I know you have seen much, but we must be careful.” She wrung her hands. “So … so many have come here to do us harm.”

Medusa laughed hoarsely. “Harm? Who can bring harm upon us?” She stroked the matted fur of sleeping Stheno. “We are touched by the gods, my sister, and preserved from harm until my love comes to redeem us.”


-------------

Euryale spied upon the warrior as he climbed through the dusk. A beast of a man, muscled and hairy, he nonetheless moved with a certain grace. He carried a naked blade, glinting in the sun’s last rays, and a great round shield of bronze, polished to a high gloss.

As she watched, he stopped and gazed up the hill. Unlimbering the shield, he placed it carefully on the ground. Euryale watched with a curious sense of elusive memory as he peeled away a seal of wax on a large wineskin.

He took the skin and carefully poured the contents into the shield, as though it were a bowl. Euryale was transfixed as she watched him. His motions were so familiar. When he gazed into the water, she gasped, knowing the source of the precious liquid.

Instantly, he leapt to his feet, though he took care to leave the shield undisturbed. He stared out into the fading dusk, the blade unwavering.

“Who are you?” Euryale asked, and she saw his eyes widen.

“I am the Destroyer,” he answered her, in Greek. Perseus, she echoed to herself. “I come for the head of Medusa.” His tone was flat, a challenge.

“Beautiful Medusa.”

“Beautiful?” He looked confused for a moment, and snorted derisively, but then his expression hardened. “I have the gifts,” he said. “I have drunk of the water, and I have seen her in the reflection, there.” He pointed at the shield. “Her gaze will not harm me.”

“Her gaze?”

“To behold the countenance of the gorgon is to invite death,” he told her, his tone almost pedantic, as if this were something everyone knew. “Her aspect is so hideous, it turns men into stone.”

Euryale shook her head slowly, wondering what tales had been spun. Then she thought of the statue garden, and the stiff black corpses of her sister’s victims. “You are here to slay Medusa?” she said softly. “What of Euryale?”

The warrior squinted stupidly. “Who?”

“Her sister.”

He nodded, understanding, and then shrugged. “The sisters, I know, are immortal,” he replied, “I shall endeavor to avoid them.” He narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?” he asked, suspicious, and stepped toward the patch of shadow in which she hid.

“I am no one,” she told him. “She you seek lies in the cave, just there.”

He nodded and knelt again by the shield. Picking it up, he drank down the contents and then strapped the dripping disc to his arm.

“Tell her that you love her,” Euryale whispered.

The warrior hesitated. Euryale could no longer see his face, but she felt his curiosity pluck at her, and his unease. She stepped further into the shadows. For a moment, he seemed about to say something, but then he turned and began to walk toward the cave.

“My love?” croaked Medusa from within.

Perseus stepped into the cave mouth, his sword arm tense, shield raised high to shield his eyes, despite his professed faith in the power of the waters.

Medusa groaned with pain. “Your sons are coming.”

Euryale crept near the cave, but could not bring herself to look within.

“My love?” Medusa called again, a note of confusion in her voice.

Then she screamed, rage and terror rising and cut suddenly, wetly short.

Stheno roared, then, and the Greek leaped out of the cave as if borne on wings. The great bear, infuriated, shot out after him, but could not match his speed downhill.

Euryale’s final glimpse of the man was of his fist, clutching her sister’s dead head by her brittle ringlets. Blood and water dripped thickly from her severed neck. The Water of Creation. Euryale wondered if it would keep the murderer safe. Medusa’s eyes were wide and accusing, and Euryale turned away.

For long minutes, she sat beside the cave and wept. Eventually, she realized that her sobs were not the only sound, and she became silent and listened. There was a sound, rustling, scraping, coming from inside the cave and she turned and slowly stepped inside.

Medusa’s headless body lay in a slowly spreading pool that glistened black in the light of her small fire, and mingled with the waters. Her corpse was still spasming, though whether with the horror of death or unhinged rage at this injustice, Euryale could not tell.

As she watched with wide eyes, the body shuddered, the black skin of her belly distending.

It took several minutes for the child to free itself from its mother’s corpse. It crawled toward Euryale with a wet, bleating cry before staggering up on four gangly legs. It turned its long head to the side to look at her with one round, dark eye.

Euryale reached out to touch the bloody creature’s mane, and it shook itself, spattering her with gore. It drew itself up and let out a sharp cry.

It unfolded its wings and gave them a wet flap, and then fanned them slowly.

“Your father’s wings,” Euryale whispered.

Late Payment

Thank you for calling CreditWest, this is Melissa,” the representative said, chipper. “How can I assist you today?”

“Yeah ...  hi, I’m calling to close out my wife’s card.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, sir. Can I get--”

“She died.” It just fell out of my mouth. The shock was still there, fresh and ready to kick me in the gut the moment I let my guard down.

There was a pause, and when Melissa spoke again, her tone was remarkably softer. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” she said. “I can help you get this taken care of.” A short exchange of numbers, verifying numbers, and mother’s maiden names ensued, and then she asked, “And could I get your name, sir?”

“Kyle,” I said.

“And your last name?”

“Hansen.”

There was another, longer pause. “Okay, Mr. Hansen, sorry for the delay, I’m just calling up the balance on your ... on your wife’s card. We show a balance of $625. Would you like to give us an account number and we can deduct--

I sighed. I didn’t need this. “I thought it was paid off. Can you tell me what the charge is for, please?”

“‘Valley Companion Maintenance and Supply,’” Melissa told me.

The name didn’t ring any bells.

“For six hundred dollars?”

“Six hundred twenty-five, yes sir.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of the place.” I told her. It wasn’t the money, really.

“If you’d like, I can send you a copy of the receipt,” she offered.

I sighed. “Yeah, please do.” I gave her my email address and said I’d call back after I’d reviewed the receipt.

She was very efficient. The receipt was in my inbox as soon as I signed in to the computer:

STATEMENT OF ACCOUNT

Valley Companion Maintenance and Supply
12844 Winterbottom St. #11
Van Nuys, CA 92010
(818) 348-6221

Rebecca Hansen
21 Bloom Ct.
Calle Pescador, CA 92122

2019 C Omicron Victor “Kyle”
VC - ACR-22B
Acct #: IND662329

Chassis Maint. (6000 hr): $580.00
Walk Cycle Adj (warr): $125.00
Bearing, LH #221-4371-L (warr): $638.35
Hair Retouch (Trimz.com): $45.00
Warranty Cov.: -$763.35

Total: $625.00


Visa XXXX-2018 (on file): $625.00
Current Balance - $0.00



I read it twice.

“What is ‘Companion Maintenance?’” I wondered aloud. I did a search for it. None of the results seemed correct. There were entries for cars and propane tanks and various other, increasingly less-related sites, but nothing with that exact name. Even when I tried “Trimz.com,” all I got was a placeholder website.

I noticed my name just under our address. Was it engraving? Was she having something engraved?

The miserable kick in the gut hit me again at that thought.  Whatever it was (“Bearing?” -- a watch, maybe?), I had never received it.

I picked up my phone again and keyed in the number from the invoice.

“VCMS, this is Mario,” a bored male voice answered.

“Hi, uh …sorry, this is about an invoice, number IND662329  that was charged to my … my wife’s card?”

“Just a minute.” I could hear typing and the hum of light machinery in the background. “Okay, that’s for an Omicron Victor?”

“I don’t really know what that is,” I confessed. “You see, my wife … she passed away last week, and whatever it is I guess she didn’t pick it up?”

“Hang on, let me take a look.” It sounded like Mario barely leaned away from the phone before shouting at someone on his end. “Do we have a Victor waiting for pickup? … No, white.” There was some muffled exchange between the two voices before Mario became clear again. “I don’t think so,” he said. “We don’t have any Victors in the shop at all.”

I rubbed my temples with a thumb and middle finger.

“Sorry … I don’t even really … What is a ‘Victor,’ exactly?”

There was a pause that made me uncomfortable.

“Hello?”

“Did you say your wife passed away?” Mario said, his voice much lower than before.

“Yes,” I told him, “last week.”

“Could I get your name?”

“It’s Kyle,” I told him. “Kyle Hansen.”

Muffled talk again, and then silence, as I assume Mario put me on mute.

It was several minutes, and I almost hung up, before the voice of an older man picked up.

“Hi, this is Oscar,” he said. “I’m the manager, here, Mr. … uh … Hansen.”

“Look,” I said, exasperated. “I just want to know what the invoice is for. I’m not disputing it, I just--”

“Mister Hansen,” Oscar interrupted gently. “Are you at home now?”

“Yes?”

“Uh huh. And … um … your wife, where is she?”

I scowled, failing to see how that was relevant.

“... Mister Hansen?”

“She’s right where she fell down,” I told him. It was hard to keep the emotion out of my voice as I glanced over at Rebecca’s crumpled form on the floor of the dining room. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just been hard.”

“I understand, Mister Hansen,” the man said. He sounded more distracted than sympathetic, but I suppose other people’s tragedies aren’t always easy to relate to. “I’m going to put you on hold for just a minute, sir,” he said. “Don’t hang up.”

It occurred to me that I probably should do something about the state of her. I should put her in a more comfortable position. But something was seriously wrong outside. I peered through the window and saw a large van -- some sort of police vehicle by the look of it -- parked directly in front of my house.

As I watched, several policemen in some kind of riot or SWAT gear piled out of the back. The breastplate of their armored jackets had the same lettering as the side of the van:

LASD SYNTHETIC COMPANION CONTAINMENT UNIT

There was a pounding on the door, and a muffled demand.

“I’ll call you back,” I told Oscar.



Secret Weapons

The image of Wavedriver Hanupt shifted into focus abruptly as I lowered myself into the tub. His command center, steeped in the natural brine of Homeworld, sent a pang through my surrogate body, despite my dampness.

I inclined the surrogate’s head in a crude approximation of Hanupt’s graceful mantle bow.

“My waters and yours {honor, happiness}, Wavedriver,” I sent. Thankfully, I did not have to attempt actual speech with the crude bony jaw of my surrogate. The transfluid was nearly clear, and my words and glyphs floated almost as if we shared a waterspace. I knew this meant the Clutch would soon be here.

“The Clutch {community, nest, young, elders} is pleased by your report on the indigenes of the third planet,” Hanupt sent to me. “It will arrive in wetspace, in the large water you have named {peaceful, gentle} Pacific.”

I again attempted a bow, and sent a simple pair of glyphs {satisifed, protective} in response.

“Have you tasks to perform before wetfall {invasion, cleansing}?” the Wavedriver inquired.

“My reports on the weapons possessed by the bonewalkers is complete. There is a cultural phenomenon I have been drawn to observe by this body’s {clutch, not-clutch}.”

“{amused} One final observation before they are consumed {hunger, sated, flourishing}?” Hanupt flushed in a rapid pattern that strangely mirrored the bonewalkers’ “chuckle” in both rhythm and meaning. “Soon the Clutch will know {possess, devour} all that they were.”

“This is a {small mystery} display few of the bonewalkers are able to make, Waverider,” I reasoned. “It may be a thing my senses {fluids} are more suited to convey to the clutch than simple consumption.”

---

The bonewalker Stacey and her singleton mate Chris conveyed me to the display in their poisonous metal machine. For perhaps the last time, I marveled at the resilience of these ascended mammals -- little more than large rats, really -- and their ability to absorb so many contaminants inimical to their own metabolism with relatively little harm.

“Chris has been a member at the Castle for years,” Stacey informed me, in the honking grunts of the bonewalkers.

“I’ve turned a few tricks,” Chris averred. Both of them laughed, and though my surrogate betrayed nothing, I writhed internally at the strange, grating noise that I was never entirely convinced conveyed pleasure.

“I bet you have,” I agreed. Predictably, the bonewalkers laughed again. For some reason, there are a few simple phrases that can quite reliably set bonewalkers at ease. I suspected that Stacey and Chris had both ingested alcohol (a poison specifically concocted and imbibed by bonewalkers to produce a euphoric state, though it often produces melancholy, aggression, and physical sickness as well) before arriving.

We turned in to a twisting path, and soon exited the machine. Stacey gave custody of the machine over to another bonewalker, in exchange for a slip of paper.

“We need to hurry,” Chris said, looking at his chronometer. “We won’t get seats unless we’re there before the doors close.”

We galumphed our way through the structure, after each of us showed our pieces of paper to the bonewalker at the door. When we arrived at the proper compartment of the structure, only a few resting areas remained, but there were three adjacent to one another, and Stacey guided us to them, and as we occupied them, the display began on a lit dais at the front of the downward-sloping room.

An electronically-amplified voice made an announcement.

“The Castillo Mágico is proud to present: The Astounding Alberto!”

A single, powerful light was trained upon the center of the platform, and the crowd became still for a few moments, but nothing happened.

Some of the bonewalkers, including both Stacey and Chris, chuckled, amused by the apparent delay. I was just about to ask them what they found humorous when a bonewalker materialized in the light, accompanied by a flash.

My coiled mass within the surrogate’s internal cavities gave a lurch of dismay.

This could not be.

The bonewalker, dressed in what I knew was some form of formal wear, waved at the smoke, and the others laughed at him. They laughed, though this one had just made -- I suppose you would call it “dryfall” as he did not appear in a cushioning fluid of any kind, and they *laughed*.

My mind was reeling. I had taken several surrogates, including one privy to the most guarded secrets of the bonewalker’s military arsenals, and seen no indication they had any mastery over Transit!

Staring, my surrogate’s oral cavity slightly open, I watched the smoke finally dissipate. The Astounding Alberto searched about his person, as though he had forgotten some item he needed to continue the demonstration. The bonewalkers seemed amused when he discovered the large hat on his head and attempted to remove it. In his struggles with the malfunctioning headwear, Alberto contrived to damage his cylindrical hat, crushing it into a nearly flat saucer.

Suddenly, he freed it from his head, and the hat returned to its original shape. But upon the bonewalker’s head was a live animal -- an animal that simply could not have been contained within the damaged headgear. It was a white lagomorph, or “rabbit,” of at least four kilograms.

The crowd seemed mildly amused by this, but I could feel my tentacles twitching involuntarily in my surrogate’s intestines.

How had I missed this?

And it went on and on.

Though Alberto seemed, in the judgment of the crowd, to be of middling or perhaps even poor skill, he nonetheless produced objects from the Transit without any visible apparatus. White birds, a bunch of cut plants, and perhaps most chillingly of all, a white liquid which he somehow was able to pour from one container into another without any visible change in the levels of either.

I was stirred from my baffled contemplation of these events by a prodding from Stacey.

“She’ll volunteer!”

“Volunteer?” I asked, uncertain.

“He needs somebody from the crowd,” she said, “for the mind reading.”

I froze, horrified.

I managed to address Stacey in a reasonable tone after a moment.

“I am very unwell,” I explained to her. “I must find a washroom immediately.”

Before she could reply, I had shoved and crowded my way to the aisle, and thence to the door, which was thankfully unguarded.

I raced along the corridor until I saw a compartment door with the symbol of a stick figure in a dress, and pushed my way into it. Dismayed, I surveyed the washroom and found it completely devoid of any type of tub save the small basins bonewalkers use to water their paws.

Desperate, I activated the faucets on three of these, using wadded drying papers to prevent the precious water from escaping too quickly. I would never be able to submerge the entire surrogate, but I could get the sensory organs and the sensitive paws reasonably wet. It would have to be enough.

I stuck the surrogate’s head in the center basin, and the hands into those that flanked it, and attempted to reach the Clutch.

It was a tenuous connection, dry almost to the point of desiccation, yet I was able to rouse Wavedriver Hanupt. Little beyond impression glyphs could traverse the weak link.

“{question, unscheduled}” he sent.

“{trap, hunters, not prey, not prey, emphatic}” I replied desperately.

“{weapons, query}”

I hesitated. How to describe what I had seen?

From the darkest depths, from which we rose and leviathan still sleeps, I dredged the glyph.

I finally sent it, again and again until I felt the Clutch shift in Transit and it was gone.

“{magic}”

Pre Partum

Thanks to Andrew Penn-Romine for an insightful first read of this, back when it was new.

 

He was just a dot in the sky at first, and I didn’t notice. I was enjoying the mild Victoria Island twilight on the porch, watching the lights flicker on in the US across the churning waters of the Haro Strait as the light faded. I was drinking my second (or maybe third) beer of what promised to be a six pack of an evening.

When the vague shape whisking silently through the sky registered on my brain, I could already see that it was a man, and there was only one man I knew who could fly and would also visit me unannounced. So, despite my initial surprise, I greeted him with a smile as he landed, going from silent levitation to a warning groan in the planks of my deck.

“Evening Tama,” I said, fishing a beer out of the cooler for him.

He grinned. A huge white grin over dark skin. He registered the creak in the deck and winced sheepishly, then lifted a few inches above it and settled into a bulky hover.

“Allen,” he greeted me with a nod. There was a beat, pregnant, then he added in his charming, Kiwi-for-Americans voice, “You ain’t been answering your phone, man.”

He took the beer I was still holding out to him, and his meaty hand effortlessly popped the cap with a delicate squeeze of thumb and forefinger, like picking a grape off the vine.

My familiarity with Tama Taumata, A.K.A. “Rapa”--one of the most powerful beings on earth--was a side effect of my fading celebrity. I’d known Tama since before he had any of his tattoos, when he was a young superhuman celebrity, doing the Tonight Show with me and Liz, she in her then record-breaking twenty-sixth month. We’d sat on that couch and joked about needing him to babysit for us, since at the time his mother’s twenty-five month pregnancy, and the immense powers he was already displaying at fourteen were unparalleled. Now he was … what … almost thirty years old? He had a web of half-finished traditional Maori designs, each fading off as the needles broke on his rock-hard skin. I noticed that some progress had been made since the last go, and pointed to the new ink on his bulging left forearm.

“How’d they manage that?”

He seemed distracted, but he glanced down and laughed. “Oh, Sumanus came up with some kind of super-poly-carbon whatsis and the needle hasn’t broken yet.” He rubbed his arm with a rueful smile. “Takes hours though. They have to position it with a hydraulic arm. Kinda takes the art out of it. Still, Little Axe is doing the work and he’s really into it. And they’re filming it for some reality show. ‘The Superb Life’ or something.”

I shrugged. “Looks good,” I said, and waited.

What was left of the smile on his face faded. He took a drink, absently finishing the beer at a drag.

“Allen, listen. Liz is--” he paused, and I could feel my own expression dropping four octaves of pain, or whatever measurement they use for that. He quickly shook his head. “No, she’s fine, but … she’s in labor, man.”

I just stared at him. He looked at me, eyes searching from his earnest, slightly pudgy face. His massive frame hunched toward me like a well-tanned, mostly-hairless grizzly bear. With an absurdly fragile smile on his face, he told me again that my wife, who had been in a coma for eight years, was in labor. The whole picture was completely absurd.

I suddenly felt like a small fish in very, very dark water. There was a light in the distance, but oh god, I thought, if I swim that way and it’s just more pain...

I laughed, practically barking. Tama looked stricken.

“Seriously, Allen. Not a joke. I would nev--”

“That’s impossible,” I cut him off. My voice was tight, but I tried to smile. I tried to think.  My hands curled into fists against my thighs as I tried not to break, tried not to weep like a child in front of an invincible man.

He shook his head, smiling again, gently. “Nothing’s impossible anymore, man.”

---

I’d never been carried by a flying superhuman. Very, very few people have, statistically. It was terrifying, even though Tama’s arms were like a goddamn lazy boy. He kept it slow, for my sake, though I knew he could crack the sound barrier if he needed to. Luckily, I was distracted.

Liz and I had crossed the border into Canada on the 360th day of her pregnancy. Four more days and the U.S. would have prevented a legal emigration. As it was, they were none too happy about it, and a lot of noise was made about “American citizens, American supers.”

At the time, we were full of all the rumors of the U.S. government taking long term infants away from their families for special monitoring. I’m thankful that those proved baseless hysteria, but I’ve never regretted moving away.

When Liz hit two years, right at the peak of the superbaby revolution, we couldn’t avoid the spotlight. She handled it well. Better than me, to be honest. Canada hadn’t had a pregnancy over 664 days. That was Tanya Montgomery. Tanya’s baby  who was born right after we emigrated, was all over the media back then, making her toys come to life and giggling as they entertained her.

The whole world was watching us when Liz hit 26 months. Magazine covers, talk shows, endless speculation. Everybody was excited.

Then Markus Visser stole the headlines. “Razernij,” the first true “super-villain.” I think I read that his mother had been pregnant for 21 months, which is definitely on the spectrum. His super name was dutch for “Frenzy”, and he was an overachiever even for a super. He moved faster than a normal human eye could follow and could tap some kind of kinetic field to protect himself and destroy anything in his way. The fact that he was a sociopath, and a nearly unstoppable one, became the biggest crisis of the Super Age.

Visser hunted down other supers. He used simple numbers. Anyone who was the product of a longer labor than him was in his sights. He killed eleven before his first defeat, at the hands of Krakatoa, the Indonesian super whose civilian identity is amazingly still a mystery to the general public.

Everybody thought Visser was dead, somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan. Then, three years later, he killed a pregnant woman in Switzerland. Thirty-one months. Then another in Cairo. Thirty-eight.

Visser was suddenly the world’s boogeyman, and every woman with a super-advanced pregnancy was terrified. Governments moved to protect national assets. Canada put two supers and eight full-time government agents on watch over Liz, and they did, for almost two years.

I don’t think it’s any dishonor to their memories when I say they did their best.

Tama was the one to finally stop Visser, but by the time he did, our neighborhood was a pile of rubble. He saved Liz, but she never woke up.

Super-advanced mothers are very resilient. Their changes are, in some ways, as profound as those of the children they carry -- they have to be. Liz survived, and it wasn’t even a matter of life support. She just … kept going. They have to feed her, of course. That’s a given. But it was the considered opinion of every doctor on the case that she’d eventually miscarry.

She didn’t.

She was frozen in time, and I was frozen with her. An eternity of bedside worry that eventually just became … life.

I stayed by her side for eight years before my doctor basically told me if she ever woke up she’d be a widow if I didn’t try to find some peace. But there was never any notion of me “moving on.” How could I?

---

As Tama set me down on the roof of the hospital, it started to rain. There were already reporters there. A pre-approved pool quickly assembled by the Board of Superhuman Affairs. I could see that look on their faces, the struggle to maintain an appearance of dignity warring with the thirst for the story. They shouted questions, which I ignored. What could I say?

Tama and three Vancouver police officers escorted me to the ward. A sea of doctors, nurses, and hospital staff drawn to the event parted before us. Televisions with muted volume but bold closed captions shouted silent questions and debates, but the same words over and over.

FIFTEEN YEARS
FIFTEEN YEARS
FIFTEEN YEARS

and

MIRACLE

Doctor Padeen, who had been with Liz and me for more than a decade, met Rapa and I on the ward, and took me aside. In urgent whispers he explained the situation, but I had trouble hearing him.

I was numb. I just looked at Padeen’s kind and careworn face, his grey hair.

“God,” I thought, as I followed him into Liz’s room, “he’s aged so much.”

But so have I. So has everyone. Fifteen years!

I was stupid to everything Padeen said. Reality had been jump-started again and I found I couldn’t handle it. My eyes kept moving to the bed, the feeding tube, Liz’s still-beautiful face, though so thin. The bulge of her belly beneath the sheet.

I stepped away from Padeen mid-sentence and walked toward the bed. Someone said something about a contraction, and I saw Liz’s face contort, just a little. The scar that ran from her right eye to her ear wrinkled. I took her good hand in mine.

God help me, her eyes opened.

She looked at me. The years fell away.

I felt her squeeze, and words appeared in my mind. Liz’s eyes widened a fraction. She could hear them too, and her face suddenly blurred with my tears.

The voice said,

*I am sorry to be so late, Papa, but everything will be alright now, for everyone. No one will ever hurt us again.*


Mar 11, 2019

Captain Marvel

Rating: 2/5

So Captain Marvel is here. I have never really followed the comic book character, as she never seemed terribly impactful on the Marvel Universe when I actually read comics. Still, I was hoping, based on a pretty good track record, that this would be another fun Marvel flick. I was also hoping it would be one in the eye for the internet troll brigade.

It does have fun in it, though it's a little hard to find at times. The humor mostly works, some story turns are interesting, and most of the effects (other than Agent "Uncanny Valley" Coulson) are decent. But overall ... I just didn't dig it.

Maybe it's because the titular Captain is not a particularly engaging or sympathetic character. She's a quippy smartass from the get-go, and she never really changes very much. Despite life-altering experiences, her life isn't really very altered. She went from being a hotshot fighter pilot to a hotshot space warrior. She lost her memories, but that doesn't seem terribly important to the plot, nor does it really inform her character very much.

So many opportunities for a deeper, more interesting movie existed here, but were abandoned. Characters had only sketches of motivation, and the most serious moral choice in the film (whether or not a mother with a child should risk her life, possibly leaving that child motherless) had a frustratingly unsatisfying resolution. The movie seemed afraid to make any hard choices, which is almost exactly the opposite of the recent years' storylines of the Marvel Comics character (as I understand them upon a brief wikipedial review).

Honestly, I struggle for anything to say about this movie, other than my primary impression was that I found myself waiting for it to be over rather than engaged or excited. I do not remember feeling this way about any other Marvel film, even the lower-tier second sequels to Iron Man and Thor.

Well ... maybe Thor 2.