Skittish investors scurry for relative safety when Kensington turns on the kitchen light, but she’s quick and manages to catch a couple of them by their tails.
“I knew it!” she says. “I’m going to have to call in the exterminators, aren’t I?”
“oh noes,” squeaks one of them.
“listen ok there is another solution 2 this,” chirps his dangling friend.
“Really? I’m not sure I want to hear it.”
“we can has capital infusion kplzthx”
Kensington shakes her head very slowly and marches off to flush them.
Later, the rest of them burn her house down while they’re still inside.
The Chosen Ones are bruised and dull-eyed: their knuckles are blood-blackened and their nostrils are white. Their muscles slide over each other like great rusting cables, smooth but shrieking. Their battle is joyless. This is the cost of the death of a friend.
Only Dylan still moves with their old pinwheeling grace, but if there’s joy in her movements then that joy is savage. She flickers, and blood blooms from the bodies of nameless men (her knuckles are smooth; red ribbons chase her knives). She’s fire and the means of walking amid fire. She is the temptation of revenge.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Young Lennie Briscoe hasn’t mastered the trick of looming yet: he gangles, and doesn’t seem to know what to do with his nose.
He’s back from Vietnam (his first tour–he’ll get another) and parking cars at the Atwater for half-dollar tips. Then one Sunday nobody comes in to pick up this ’57 El Dorado, a beauty with a bit of a smell about her. Nothing in the glove; they pop the trunk to check for ID, and–
“Oh my God!” gasps Lennie’s boss, dropping the keys. “A body!”
“Like I never heard that one before,” Young Lennie Briscoe quips.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
See Me feels ice burn away from his fingertips, his nose, his chest, and he racks his body with choking sobs. Water gouts from his mouth and he claws at the floor, unable to stand or feel the Wish Power. Cold. Terror. There was someone here, someone he had to fight, his sword–his Princess–in danger–
“Just relax for a moment,” croaks an awful voice. “You’re free of the fleshscrub swaddling. You have hibernation sickness.”
“I can’t see,” See Me chokes.
“Your eyesight will return in time.”
“Who are you?”
“Someone who loves you,” coos the Speaker, stroking his face.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The dreamcatcher works so well for Dagmar and Hesse that they buy a mailcatcher, a friendcatcher, a flycatcher and a discussioncatcher too. (The flycatcher is just one of those unrolled sticky things; they call it that for symmetry.)
Life gets a lot smoother. Too smooth, in fact.
“Dag,” says Hesse carefully one day. “Ever get the impression that we can’t actually… talk about those?” He waves toward them.
“Because of the dis–the disc–” She can’t quite name it.
“Yeah.”
“Um.” She bites her fingernail. “Should we take it down?”
“Mmf mmfff!” agrees Rondo, from the cotton web outside their door.
Half a world and twelve hours away, another crank is turning on a reel of film, this one crisp and virginal.
“Speed,” says the nervous cameraman, “I think.”
“Cue!” shouts the director. Then: “Go!”
“Is that for me?” asks the chapped and holstered bushranger, squinting dawnward. His voice is squeaky, but his face is all stone and leather.
“Yes! I cued you!”
“But last time you said ‘start.'”
The director’s neck veins pop. “I’m sorry. What word would you like to settle on?”
“You could try ‘action,'” mumbles Dacelo, perched on an apple box in trousers too nice for this dust.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Pretty much the usual way. Ensign Prozski reported for duty pale and sweating, and once they’d voted to defect and smashed the radio, it wasn’t like they could request a medevac. Within a couple days their little pressure chamber had yielded to the inevitable mathematics of infection.
Funny thing about nuclear subs: not only can they run silent and deep for decades, they can sneak in a mutation or two while doing so–even in viral DNA. Prozski and his comrades retain awareness and volition. They just get used to being a little peckish, speaking Russian, and cruising for amphibious sex.