Posts Tagged ‘Central’

16 items.

Liril (2 of 2)

by Jenna on March 12th, 2004

It’s recess. Liril sits against a tree. The tree is at the schoolyard’s edge. Liril’s hair runs down the bark.

Sandy approaches her, and Liril opens her eyes.

“I wondered if you’d come,” Liril says.

Sandy’s face is tight. “I want to be prettier.”

“Why?”

“If I were prettier, then people would have to love me,” she says.

“You are pretty.”

Sandy shrugs. “Not enough.”

Liril reaches out her hand. She puts it on Sandy’s elbow. “You are like the sun,” she says.

“No,” Sandy says. “Make me prettier.”

Liril makes a sad face. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

Liril nods. “Tomorrow,” she says, “you have to wear your ugliest dress, and your hair all a mess, and carry a hand mirror; and when people who don’t love you say mean things about you, you have to look at the mirror. Then bring me the mirror and I’ll break it, and you’ll be pretty.”

A day passes; and another; and there’s Sandy with the mirror. She shows it to Liril. Liril spits on it and rubs it dry. Then she shatters it against a rock.

“I feel funny,” Sandy says. She’s beginning to glow.

“You’re becoming a merin,” Liril says.

“Is that something pretty?”

Liril thinks. “Merins help make sense of the world,” she says. “They can be ugly or pretty or somewhere in between. You will be pretty.”

“Oh.”

Sandy sits down. The glow brightens; then fades. Sandy looks at her hands. “I can see myself,” she says.

“Why would you be invisible?”

“. . . I don’t know.” Sandy looks up. “I’m pretty now?”

“Yes.”

A day passes; and another; and there’s Micah by the tree. “You’re crying,” he says.

“They took her,” Liril says.

“Hm?”

“Sandy,” Liril says. “I changed her. And they came. And they took her. And she’s gone.”

“Will they hurt her?” Micah asks.

Liril shakes her head. “She’s pretty. So they’ll love her. That’s the law of her nature.”

“Then why are you sad?”

“She was like the sun.”

Micah sits down.

“Seven times,” Liril says. “Seven times I’ve lost the sun. I wonder when I shall run out.”

“When you look up in the sky,” Micah says, “and it isn’t there.”

“I can’t fight for them.”

Micah looks at his feet. He picks up a stone. “If you wanted to fight,” he says, “what would you do?”

“I’d name that stone Liril,” she says. “Then I’d draw legs on it, and a head, and two hands; and I’d roll it off into the woods.”

Micah takes out his crayons. He draws legs on the stone. And a head. And two hands. “What about a neck?”

Liril looks at him.

“Right,” Micah says, grumpily. He rolls the stone off into the forest, then peers into the distance. “I’m not sure where it landed.”

“Why did you do that?” Liril asks.

Micah doesn’t say things like “You’re like the sun.”

“You’re Liril,” he says.

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Surrender (1 of 2)

by Jenna on May 8th, 2004

“Sometimes, things just are,” Micah says.

He’s sitting in front of his house. He’s waiting. It’s been about two hours.

“There used to be gibbelins,” he says. “They lived outside the world. They ate people. And to lure people to them, they had a cellar of emeralds, and a cellar of sapphires, and a cellar of gold.”

He has surrendered, and so he has no power. His mother has phoned the monster. The nightmares will come for him, and take him away. The air is very cold.

“And a man carved down into their cellar,” he says, “from under a river, and flooded it, to raid their emeralds without going to their door. And he emerged from the water with a sack full of emeralds, and there were the gibbelins, and without saying a word, or even smiling, they killed him. It didn’t make anyone happy. He died, and the gibbelins weren’t even particularly pleased. But sometimes things just are.”

A car pulls up. A man gets out. His nametag reads “Thysiazo,” and below that, “Acceptance.”

“Micah,” he says.

“Why?” Micah asks him. “Why do I have to do this?”

Thysiazo blinks. Then he shrugs, and gives an honest answer. “Power,” he says. “For a monster, power is defined as the point where they no longer need to create gods of their own—when they can conjure them forth from others. The monster has desired to break you to his will from the moment that Liril made you; and only certain failings on our part prevented it thus far. It is generally a benign process,” he adds, “although there are unfortunate circumstances at present.”

“Oh.”

Micah hesitates at the door, thinking about something else to say, but Thysiazo casts him an inquiring look, and Micah bitterly climbs in. Thysiazo sits in the driver’s seat and starts the car. There’s a long and quiet drive.

“What are you?” Micah asks.

“A demon,” Thysiazo says.

“No horns,” Micah points out. “Also, not red or ugly.”

“No,” Thysiazo admits. “I’m more of an easy-on-the-eye evil.”

Micah frowns.

“Not as a person,” Thysiazo clarifies. “In my own person, I’m capable of both goodness and hypocrisy, and through one road or another I find myself a morally acceptable creature. But it would be a mistake for a demon to deny the fundamental evil of his nature. Folly has no merits.”

“How are you evil, then?”

“We’re going to Tina’s home,” Thysiazo says. “Do you remember her?”

There’s a long pause. “Vaguely.”

“Are you all right with going there?”

Micah is silent.

“There’s a little place in you that’s terrified,” Thysiazo says. He turns the wheel gently as the road curves. “You won’t admit it, but it’s there, in your heart, and it’s casting out a radiance of emptiness. It’s asking the rest of your mind for help. It’s asking the world for help. It’s calling out to the gods. And this is my answer: that you should sit, and wait, and accept what comes. You have to, Micah. You surrendered of your own free will. To protect others. It’s just a necessary sacrifice, something that you have to live with, something that’s part of your world now. I can’t help giving that answer. It’s what demons do. We teach you to accept whatever is necessary to bear. And our answers go straight into your soul.”

“Oh,” Micah says.

“See,” says Thysiazo, “if I started pretending that that was a good answer, then I wouldn’t be a demon. I’d just be a dork.”

“Please let me go,” Micah says.

Thysiazo drives.

“I’ll make you finger sandwiches?”

“Yum,” Thysiazo says. “But, no.”

After a while, they pull up in front of a house. It’s white. It’s got big brooding windows and a little fence out front. Its roof is painted a light blue. It’s got a small grassy yard. Thysiazo leads Micah to the door, and knocks, and then leads him inside to a small fuzzy brown-green-gold couch.

“Sit,” Thysiazo says, and then fades away to lean against the wall.

Micah can hear someone washing their hands in the other room. There’s a swish of fabric. Then she comes out: Tina, a woman with pale blond hair and a white lab coat.

“Hi,” he says.

She tilts her head to one side. She stares at him for a few moments. Then she looks up at Thysiazo. “He spoke.”

Thysiazo shrugs.

She looks down at Micah. “Don’t speak,” she says. “Not without being asked. You’ve gotten ill-trained.”

Micah chews on his lip.

“Why did we leave him alone for so long?” she asks Thysiazo.

“Liril,” Thysiazo says.

She tilts her head to the other side.

Thysiazo shrugs. “It was cheaper to farm her for gods than to use the kind of pressure we’d need to get her or Micah away. We tried, but . . .”

“Ah.”

She looked at Micah. “You defended her?” she says.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“When I tried to fight,” Micah says, “it usually worked. Liril helped a lot.”

She nods towards the wall. There are shackles dangling from it.

“You’ll want to put your wrists in those,” she says. “So you don’t fall down.”

Micah blanches. “I thought . . . there’d be the monster,” he says.

Thysiazo drifts away from the wall to stand by the couch. He offers Micah his hand. Micah takes it, and Thysiazo helps him rise. Leaning on Thysiazo, Micah goes over to the wall.

“He’s supposed to be here,” Micah insists.

“He’s gone,” Thysiazo says, comfortingly. He locks Micah’s wrists to the wall, one by one. “He went to a show a few weeks ago, and he hasn’t come back.”

“He’s supposed to be here,” Micah says. “I was going to denounce him. Wait.”

Tina disappears into the next room. Micah can hear a metallic ringing as she drops something and it skitters across the floor.

“Please,” Micah says.

“Would you like me to save you?” Thysiazo says.

“What?” Micah does not hesitate for long. “Yes!”

Thysiazo nods, and sets his hand on Micah’s forehead. “Peace,” he says.

The world goes out of focus, and the air shivers, and Micah cannot think. Then there is fire, and a blond woman smiling, and he thinks his limbs are tensing in great convulsive unity, and lightning dancing in his mind. He tries to fight, but when he reaches for his power, Thysiazo speaks a word, and it all spins away.

Then there is fire, and a blond woman smiling, and he thinks his limbs are tensing in great convulsive unity, and lightning dancing in his mind. He tries to fight, but when he reaches for his power, Thysiazo speaks a word, and it all spins away.

Then there is fire, and a blond woman smiling, and he thinks his limbs are tensing in great convulsive unity, and lightning dancing in his mind. He tries to fight, but when he reaches for his power, Thysiazo speaks a word, and it all spins away.

In the end, he wakes, and Thysiazo is there.

Thysiazo reaches for him, and Micah cringes away.

“Peace,” Thysiazo says, and Micah relaxes. Thysiazo strokes his hair.

“It had to happen,” Thysiazo explains. “You’re a threat, as long as you know how to fight us. But I can keep you from feeling the pain while it’s happening.”

“I know,” Micah says.

Thysiazo unshackles Micah, and picks him up in his arms, and carries him down to the basement. It’s concrete and bare, with a couple of mattresses on the floor and a few old bloodstains on the walls. It’s dark, and it has a door, and Liril and Tainted John are there; and they are still and quiet and dressed in grey, and for a moment Thysiazo does not process their presence. He sets Micah down, and says, “We’ll take you to Central soon, and then it’ll get a little better.”

Then he looks up, and frowns. Tainted John has no eyes, only wells of blood, luminescent in the darkness. Without saying a word, or even smiling, he cuts Thysiazo apart; and when a third of Thysiazo falls to land on Micah’s side, there is a moment of peace, and Micah does not scream.

(See also The Hoard of the Gibbelins, by Lord Dunsany)

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The Unsubstantiated Assertions Fairy (II/II)

by Jenna on June 16th, 2004

It is 1968.

“I’ve been dreaming of Tantalus.”

1968’s monster doesn’t look up. He’s like and unlike the monster of today: a spectacled man, with a striped suit and gray hair. He’s not paying attention to Priyanka, at least, not obviously. He’s playing, instead, with a spider in a box. It has its legs curled up tightly against its body. He tugs gently on one with his left hand. Slowly, the spider’s legs splay. He lets go. The legs quickly retract. “The Incans used to use this as divination,” he says. “Lock a spider in a box, and then look at what its legs are like when you open the box. I’m taking it one step further—by training the spider, I can control the future!”

Priyanka looks up. “Is it going well?” she asks.

“It isn’t biting me any more.”

“Progress is encouraging!”

Priyanka’s ankles are bound to the chair legs. Her wrists are tied to the wall. They have enough play that they can rest on her lap, but not enough to dangle at her sides. The chair is reasonably comfortable. The ropes are not, and her wrists and ankles are raw and red. She tests them occasionally, wincing, but it’s a formality. She has an interest in escape, but not the drive.

The monster looks up. “So,” he says. “Tantalus.”

“He is empty,” she says. “He stands in a land of plenty, but when he reaches for fruit, the wind whips the branches away. When he reaches for water, it drains into the parched earth.”

“Is that emptiness? I’d have called it despair.”

Priyanka considers this. “Despair is an action,” she says. “Emptiness is a state.”

“Ah.”

The monster puts down the box and the spider. He closes its lid. “Are you empty, Priyanka?”

“Sometimes I think so,” she says. “But still—I hang on to a little bit of myself. Because it’s important.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I have this theory, that it matters—to be who I am, to express who I’m supposed to be. But I don’t know why.”

The monster laughs. “No one’s important for themselves,” he says. “We’re important based on the roles we play in others’ lives.”

“Oh?”

“It’s arrogant,” he says, “to believe anything else.”

She giggles a little.

“What?” he asks.

“Snatch!” she says. “I stole your God!”

He looks vaguely perplexed.

“It’s something Mom taught me,” Priyanka says. “It’s a thing to say when people give too much importance to their own beliefs. If you don’t have God in your pocket, you can’t very well argue from authority. So.” She makes a snatching gesture, brought up short by the rope on her right wrist. It cuts into raw red skin, and she winces. “Snatch! I steal your God, and then you can’t make unsubstantiated assertions.”

“I laugh at God,” he says.

“True.”

“So it’s not very relevant.”

She bites her lip. She looks down. She thinks. “I think God is just a metaphor,” she says. “For whatever it is that makes people so sure that they know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

He smiles a little. “I have a fairy.”

“Pardon?”

“An unsubstantiated assertions fairy, or UAF. She lives in my pocket. When I ask her to, she declares something right.”

“Oh.”

“For example,” he says. He fishes out the fairy. It stands on the palm of his hand. Its name is Pomegranate. “Is it important that Priyanka be herself?” he asks.

“No,” Pomegranate says.

“See?” he says. “It’s not just my opinion. It’s also the fairy’s.”

“But what if the fairy is wrong?”

“The fairy is never wrong,” the monster says. “Are you, Pommy?”

“No!” Pomegranate states firmly.

“See, if you could steal my unsubstantiated assertion fairy,” 1968′s monster explains, “then you might have a case. As it is . . .”

“It’s the same thing!” Priyanka says. “The fairy is your God!”

“Nuh-uh,” Pomegranate informs her. “It’s magic. I wave my wand and make things righteous. It’s totally different.”

“Winning an argument takes power,” the monster says. “No matter what you’re arguing about, or what the logic might be.”

Priyanka sags. There’s a long silence.

After a while, the monster goes to the box, and opens it up again. The spider is busily eating a bee. There’s another long silence.

“. . . does that have a divinatory meaning?” Priyanka asks.

“Do you know,” says the monster, “I’m not sure?”

“If you eat a live bee, you’ll go to Heaven!” the UAF declares.

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The Footsoldiers (I/I)

by Jenna on June 30th, 2004

Footsoldiers question pie to achieve their goals.

It is January 18, 2004. It is still dark, but the sky to the east is red.

Professor Jones looks out the window. “Tomorrow,” he says, “we’ll have peace.”

That’s the word. It’s in the air. Everyone knows it’s coming.

It used to be that things like this were secret. It used to be that you needed to dig through volumes of old lore, and spelunk the depths of the earth, and travel to the arctic wastes, if you wanted to learn the truth. Their names used to be whispered by dark cults in forbidden places. But things don’t work that way any more.

These days, everyone knows.

The footsoldiers will come. They’ll bring peace.

Professor Jones goes to bed that night expecting to sleep soundly. But his dreams are troubled. He tosses and turns. He wakes up no longer entirely certain what peace means.

He goes to the bakery. That’s what he does in the morning. He goes to the bakery and he buys a donut and some coffee, and he sits down, and he looks east.

“Today,” he says.

He can hear the tramping on the road of booted feet. It’s growing closer. There’s a pipe playing strange maddening music as they come.

The door bursts open. There are three men in coats standing in the door. Or . . .

No, he realizes. They are not men. They have never been men. There are no eyes behind their sunglasses. There is something squirming on their backs, under the coats. They march past him. They look at the baker. Then they reach through the display case, shattering plastic, and pull free a pie.

“Why?” they whisper to it. “When? How could you?”

The pie is silent.

“Curse you,” they cry, and throw it to the ground, and blackberry filling splatters against Professor Jones’ cheek.

They turn. They walk away. As they are at the door, he asks,

“Why did you do that?”

Why did you do that?

the question plaintive in the air.

And the first of them turns.

And the first of them looks at him.

And the first of them looks at him with its eyes that are not eyes.

“We question pie to achieve peace,” it says, flatly.

We question pie to achieve peace.

Then they are gone.

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The Place Without Recourse (I/I)

by Jenna on August 17th, 2004

My name is Train Morgan. This is my website. This page is the story of my brother Thomas. I am writing it so that people will know what happened to him.

Sam and Bird like to visit the abandoned facility on Elm Hill. They invited me many times. I only went once. I did not like it.

I told my brother about Sam and Bird. He thought it sounded cool. He went with them to the facility. He had bad timing. He was seen. He attracted someone’s attention. They did not like his presence. Now I have lost him.

The facility on Elm Hill has been abandoned. There is no machinery there now. There are no rats. There is no pain. There are no dancing Popes.

It is 2002.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” says Train. He’s a teenager. He’s wearing jeans and a skin-tight shirt. He’s got black hair and a tan.

Bird frowns at him. “It’s the coolest place ever,” she says. “Just feel the air.”

Bird’s also a teen. She doesn’t look scared, but she is hanging, just a bit more tightly, on Sam’s arm.

“They had big ‘Keep Out’ signs,” Train points out.

Sam tilts his head to one side. “You’ll like it here,” he says.

Train rests his hand on the stained white wall. He looks uncertain. “What do you do here?”

“Commune,” Sam says.

“Listen,” Bird says. “Have you ever thought that there was something . . . bigger, in the world? Bigger than the ordinary way of being?”

Train listens to the air. Then he shakes his head. “I don’t, Sam. I don’t like it.”

Sam walks forward. With his free hand, he gestures to Train. “Further in,” he says. “It’s okay. I’m not so fond of this part either. But you’ll like Cheryl.”

Train shakes his head. But he lets Sam and Bird lead him deeper in.

He attracted their attention. So they found my brother.

They took him to a room. They asked Thomas, “Why do such terrible things happen in the world?” Thomas could not give them an answer. So they showed him the reason.

I was not there. I was in bed. I woke up screaming. I had lost my brother.

There are pipes on the walls. Sam’s flashlight plays over them as they walk. There’s a mist here, a condensation in the air.

Bird waves her hand through the mist. “This is Cheryl,” she says.

Train frowns. “Why do you call it Cheryl?”

Bird’s eyes are half-lidded. She’s looking upwards with a distant expression on her face. She sways slightly.

“It makes me feel lost,” Bird says. “It makes me feel alone. Like a dead girl might feel.”

Train looks at Sam, a little disturbed.

“Cheryl was her sister’s name,” Sam says. He closes his eyes. He wriggles his shoulders and his hands. “It’s good. Just . . . relax. Can’t you relax, Train?”

“I guess,” Train says. He closes his eyes.

“I’m not really real,” Bird says. “I’m just someone’s dream. I think that sometimes.”

“You’re real,” Train says.

He was not real any more. He was not a person any more. He was no longer my brother Thomas. He was. He had been. Now he isn’t.

There’s a chill in the air.

Sam says, softly, “The mist makes me think of a place far from here. A place where there is no recourse. It is not a place of the scholar’s books or the ancient memories of man. But it is known. It is seen between the ink and the white on the pages of a newspaper. It flickers on the dead channels of the television. It is something I have read of on the sides of a bus, passing by too fast to truly understand. Wouldn’t you like to have such visions, Train?”

“I wouldn’t,” Train says. “Not if I’d read it in the paper. Not if I’d see it on the television. Not if I’d read it on a bus.”

“There aren’t any people there,” Sam says.

“I wouldn’t like it without people.”

A mosquito lands on Train’s arm. He slaps it, then makes a startled noise. Its body is cold and the stain it leaves is black.

“Come on, Train,” Sam says. “Let yourself feel it.”

“I asked the mist,” Bird says. “I asked Cheryl, ‘Did you dream me?’ But it didn’t answer.”

Slowly, the three walk through the mist.

I saw his fate written on a milk carton’s back. Then I blinked and it was gone. It said:

Ii Ma, the Warden, keeps the place without recourse.

They sent my brother there.

“The place without recourse,” Sam says, “is a deep-walled valley. And each person who goes there is given a question to hold close to their heart. Until they answer it, they cannot leave. And because they can’t answer it, they’re not really people any more.”

They pass a room.

“That’s the Liril room,” Bird says.

Train looks in. Scratched in jagged letters, near the bottom of the wall, is the word LIRIL.

“It’s a palindrome,” Sam says.

“It’s like ‘Croatoan,’” Bird opines. “A mystery, left behind, to explain why the facility closed down. Are you the one who dreamed me, Liril?” she asks the air.

“I’d try to run,” Train says. “If I were in the place without recourse.”

“You could try,” Sam says. “But the valley walls are steep. And when you’d climbed until you could see the outside world, even as you crested the top and looked down at the paradise outside, you’d find yourself waking back in your bed, in the place without recourse. And you’d look at the dawn, and you’d say, ‘how beautiful.’”

There’s a spider on the wall. It’s hideous. Train recoils. Bird rubs its furry back with one long finger. “Did you dream me?” she asks it.

It scurries off into the mist. If anyone there knew the spider language, they might have heard its answer.

“I’d organize a rebellion,” Train says.

“You might,” Sam says. “And when you marched on the guards, you’d find yourself waking back in your bed, in the place without recourse. And you’d look at the dawn, and you’d say, ‘how beautiful.’”

They sent Thomas to the place without recourse. But he did not give up. He went to Ii Ma. The Warden is a squamous and amphibious beast with six great flippered legs and a face that drips black blood. Its eyes are cadaverous and filmed with slime.

“Free me,” Thomas asked Ii Ma. This is courage unparalleled. You cannot understand unless you have seen it. To speak in its presence at all shows courage. To make a petition of it, from a position of powerlessness—I am proud of my brother.

Thomas woke, in his bed, in the place without recourse. And he looked at the dawn. And he said, as he says every morning, ‘How beautiful.’

There’s a coughing sound in the mist. Train looks around.

“Hey,” Train says. He’s uneasy now. “Hey. Shouldn’t we be . . . communing? With something?”

Bird peers at Train. Her eyes have neither iris nor pupil. He realizes, in that moment, that they never have.

“Did you dream me?” she asks. “You’re a nice boy. I’d like it if you’d dreamed me.”

He shakes his head. “No,” he says, helplessly. “I’m just Train.”

“The air is full of answers,” Sam says.

“I don’t belong here,” Train says.

“It’s all right,” Sam says. They walk on down the empty hall. Finally, Sam points to the left. “You can go out that way,” he says. “We’ll stay for a while.”

“I’m sorry,” Train says.

“You’d like it,” Sam says. “If you tried it. If you just . . . let go.”

Train walks out.

I left.

Sam let me go. Bird let me go. If Ii Ma did not take them, they are now in twelfth grade. Sam will still be praising the virtues of the place. Bird will still be seeking whomever dreamt her.

Ii Ma did not let me go.

I dream of it. I know that it will come for me. It will ask me a question I cannot answer. It will take me away from the world to the place without recourse. And nothing I do, and nothing I have ever done, will matter again.

Perhaps I will see my brother. It would be kind. There is a great deal more cruelty than kindness in the world. But there is that hope, and so I tell myself:

I think I can endure.

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Why the Monster Laughs at God (1 of 1)

by Jenna on October 29th, 2004

“My case is hopeless.”

I am full of guilt and shame.

It is funny. It is a funny way to live my life. I would think that it would be better to live some other way. To dance like a star.

But there is a small stain on the top I wore today. And Mom never loved me. And my thighs are too big. And I burp sometimes, even in public. And children are dying everywhere in the world.

I always imagine God up in Heaven, waggling his finger down, as if he’d like to love me but can’t possibly approve.

I got the weirdest spam today. Well, door-spam. You know. People, knocking. They were trying to sell me a “libellus,” and said it would make me good.

I laughed and told them to try next door. “My case is hopeless,” I said.
– from Linda Myers’ livejournal

Two men walk. Their destination is still half a mile ahead.

“Jenna thinks you laugh at God,” Sebastien says.

“Her name is Jane,” the monster says.

“I don’t understand it,” Sebastien says. “Why wouldn’t you claim God’s sanction? Do you really imagine that you’d be the first hypocrite He decides to smite?”

“It is every man’s choice whether to claim God’s approval,” the monster says, “whether their business is charity, industry, or pain.”

They walk on for a bit in silence.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Sebastien says.

The monster snorts. Then he looks sidelong at Sebastien. “You’re really curious? I mean, you actually think it matters?”

Sebastien shrugs. “I want to know what you fear,” he says.

“I don’t fear smiting,” the monster says. “I fear the trouble. I fear having to put on a big fake smile and tell everyone how Christian I am while children scream. The piousness and the constant references to God—it’s sickening.”

“That is why we need the Devil.”

The libellus is an odd thing. Strange and gnarled and horrid in its way. Yet it is soothing to me.

The pamphlet that comes with it says that it is the Devil.

Here, I’ll quote:

“The Devil is the one who tells you that you are beautiful. Because the world does not allow that you can be beautiful. The Devil is the one who tells you that you are good. Because the world does not allow you to be good. To be good and beautiful is reserved for other people. You can ask them, and they will tell you. To be good and beautiful is to be “arrogant and full of pride.” That is why we need the Devil.”

I do not think that I hang the Devil around my neck. I think it is an odd statue.

I find myself liking it.
– from Linda Myers’ livejournal

“Did you know,” says the monster, “that I am good, and right, and an instrument of virtue?”

“I did not know that,” says the hero, blandly.

“It is so,” says the monster. “The facts are barren. They are not pleasant. I have done things that transgress the borders of the self. But without interpretation these actions represent nothing more than a data stream—a flow of arbitrary data to the senses. It transforms topologically into ordinary zeroes and ones. Or into a Gödel number, empty and alone in the infinite set.”

“That is not virtue.”

“To survive,” says the monster, “each person must construct an interpretation for the data available that sums to something good. That is the call to God. Jane called for God’s help, once. In so doing, she placed herself in a world where there was a divine plan—where the immutable laws of God’s love and mercy made it necessary that she suffer. She chose a world where there was hope, and goodness, and salvation, and me.”

“So you laughed,” the hero says.

“I was afraid,” the monster says. “It horrified me. Of course I laughed.”

The condition of not being alone.

I received a letter asking me to speak against a man in court.

I did not want to do this. It took effort, and I value my honesty. But I did not want to lose the libellus.

It was at the court that I met the first of my sisters. She opened the top of her coat, as I passed, to show me the libellus round her neck. That is how I know. There are others who share my grace. I have arranged to have coffee with her on Thursday and she will tell me more.
– from Linda Myers’ livejournal, private entry

“Do you want to be good?” Sebastien asks.

The monster smiles. It is almost wistful. “When I was young,” he says, “I made a praising god. Do you know them? We call them libellatici.”

“Succubi,” says the hero. “Incubi. The Devil’s voice.”

The monster tilts his head to one side. “Is there a Devil?” he asks.

Sebastien shrugs. “The existence of a Devil is neither made necessary nor contraindicated by the presence of his voice. Call them rakshasa, if you like.”

“It was pleasant,” says the monster, “to be good. But futile.”

“Futile?”

“The rakshasa are the enemies of the gods.”

And I have met him

I have met the creature to whom my libellus gives voice.

I do not think he is the Devil. It is disappointing, in a way.

He is not conventional. He is sovereign, but worm-like. He is yellow and black. This is not the Devil’s color scheme. He is not the Devil.

But I will serve him. That is what is right.

He has made me good.
– from Linda Myers’ livejournal

They have reached a square of perfect grass and concrete walks, and before them there is a door.

“We make them now,” says the monster. “We make them, here at Central, and we send them out.”

“That is regrettable,” Sebastien says.

“Why?” the monster asks. His voice is mocking. “Surely, it is to the benefit of people to know that they are good.”

Sebastien snorts.

“It helps them understand that everyone is good and beautiful,” the monster says.

“But you’re not,” Sebastien says.

The monster laughs.

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Iphigenia (II/IV)

by Jenna on January 19th, 2005

“I would like the power to kill,” Tina tells the monster.

It is 1981. The sun is dim and has been growing dimmer.

“Then take it,” says the monster.

The sun is very big, but it is very far away. Four horses pull it around the sky. They belong to Mr. Sun and his daughter Iphigenia.

“These horses always get too hot and sweaty,” says Mr. Sun. “That’s why they have such a high mortality rate! But there aren’t enough left to sustain the breed. Soon we’ll run out!”

“That’s bad,” declares Iphigenia.

“She is available?” Tina asks.

“She is.”

“We could try ice horses,” says Iphigenia.

“Let’s!”

But the ice horses melt. Cold water splashes everywhere. The sun grows a little dimmer.

“I don’t think that worked,” opines Mr. Sun.

So Tina calls Jenna on the telephone. Jenna meets her by the road, with trees arching above. Tina takes her home.

“The sun is dying,” Tina says, in a businesslike fashion. “You have failed to keep it alive.”

It wouldn’t mean anything to Jenna if you called her Nephilim.

She barely remembers or understands that the monster has used her, more than once, to conjure gods. Not on that day, anyway; not on that occasion. The process blurs, sometimes, fades, shudders from your mind, if you can’t put it in a framework suited to your understanding.

Jenna does not know what she has done or what she isn’t for or why she answered Tina’s call;

But she can’t meet Tina’s eyes.

“We could try murderous horses,” says Iphigenia. “Their hearts would be cold as ice, but their bodies wouldn’t be!”

“Let’s!” declares Mr. Sun.

They lock the horses in a room. They kill one another. It’s a locked room mystery!

“It’s not really that mysterious,” says Iphigenia, after a while. “Just sad.”

Today’s pain is sharp and hideous and it lingers, like a burn.

Jenna is aware of screaming, sometimes. Mostly she is aware that she is going to die, that everything in the world is wrong, and that it is her fault. She has failed to keep the sun alive.

“We could try horses made of fire,” says Iphigenia.

“That’d make the sun even hotter,” says Mr. Sun. “We might burn up ourselves!”

“Let’s both do our best,” says Iphigenia.

So they hitch four horses of fire to the sun. They begin to sweat. The horses gallop. It is hard and it is painful and it is terrible. The heat washes back to them in waves, and the effort, and the straining of the horses against the reins. It is a wild and terrible ride, and Iphigenia can scarcely breathe during it.

She is laughing with exultation and victory when she realizes that

Somehow, it is over. Somehow, she has survived.

“That’s very well done,” says Mr. Sun. “I guess you should take over, now.”

The world is strangely cold on Iphigenia’s skin. She looks around. A girl is slumped against the wall. A woman in a white coat is looking at her with a distant air of satisfaction.

“Hello?” says Iphigenia.

There are walls on every side, and nowhere there is the sun.

“Can you kill?” says the woman. Her hair is blond and cut short.

“I am the sun,” says Iphigenia.

The woman walks to the window. She points at a passing car. “Them,” she says.

Iphigenia frowns. She is unsettled, unbalanced. But there is heat and the car is burning.

The woman stares at Iphigenia for a while.

“I understand you,” she says. Her words are flat.

Iphigenia blinks at her.

“I am Tina,” the woman says. “You are my daughter.”

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Rahu (IV/IV)

by Jenna on January 21st, 2005

“A long time ago,” says Tina, “there was a woman named Prajapati, who made two demons named Rahu and Ketu.”

It is 2002, the year of the horse.

“They helped her to accept what was happening to her. But they were very sad.”

Iphigenia listens. She is dressed in a nightgown. Tina is brushing her hair.

“When she took sick, because she’d been hung too long in her monster’s garden, Rahu and Ketu went looking for someone to help her.”

Iphigenia says, “Couldn’t they heal her?”

“Demons are filthy creatures. They aren’t good for very much,” Tina says. “They can plead. But they cannot heal.”

“I see.”

“So they went to the moon,” says Tina. “And they asked the moon, ‘will you heal her?’”

“Is the moon driven by someone like me?” Iphigenia asks.

Tina’s brush pulls on a tangle in Iphigenia’s hair. Iphigenia suppresses a yelp.

“There is no god of the moon today,” Tina says.

“Oh.”

“The moon said, ‘I shine my light on her every night. Isn’t that enough? I won’t help her more than that.’”

Iphigenia frowns. “I think I’m glad that she is gone.”

“And then they went to the sun,” says Tina. “And they asked the sun, ‘will you heal her?’ And what do you think the sun said?”

Iphigenia frets. The brush moves gently through her hair. “I think that—”

“Yes?”

“I think that the sun could not help them,” Iphigenia says, “because demons are filthy creatures, and because the sun had a higher purpose.”

“Yes,” says Tina.

“Yes?”

“Yes,” says Tina. “The sun and moon had a magical elixir that could make Prajapati immortal. But they did not share it with her. Because she did not deserve it. But what were Rahu and Ketu to do?”

Iphigenia thinks. “They had to save her, because they were her demons.”

“They might have just wanted her to accept her death,” says Tina.

“Maybe,” says Iphigenia dubiously.

“But instead they snuck into the houses of the sun and the moon, and they stole the elixir, and they took a sip for themselves and a sip for Prajapati. And when they were gone, the servants in those houses raised such a ruckus as you could not imagine. They cried to every god in all Heaven, even Lord Vishnu, that the elixir had been stolen. So with one cut of his blade, he chopped off their heads. The elixir they wanted to bring Prajapati dribbled out through their necks and was gone. But ever since, whenever they could find the sun and the moon, Rahu and Ketu ate them—just like that! That’s why you have eclipses.”

“That’s a sad story.”

“One day,” Tina says, “Rahu will find you, and he will eat you up, and you will be gone, and I will be alone.”

“Oh.”

“Everyone will wear black,” says Tina, “and they will be very sad for me; but I think that even the monster will be hiding pleasure behind his eyes.”

“I won’t die soon,” says Iphigenia.

“See that you don’t!” says Tina, crisply. She helps Iphigenia stand up. She turns her around. She places a ribbon in Iphigenia’s hair. “There,” she says. “Go to bed.”

Iphigenia sleeps, and dreams of Rahu’s gaping maw.

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The Fable of the Lamb (1 of 2)

by Jenna on February 23rd, 2005

It is Friday, the 23rd of April, 2004.

Cunning Melanie, beloved of the gods, wears a dark black suit and a nametag with one name. She eats well. She drinks in moderation. She bikes to work every morning. Most people drive, but they don’t get to feel the wind. She feels the wind. Every day, on the way to work, she feels the wind. She knows it’s changed. So she watches. She watches the trees outside her window, and the squares of concrete, and the lawn.

She is the first, of all who work at Central, to know that the hero and the monster have come.

She walks into her lab.

“Stefan, Vincent, Harold,” she says.

They look up from their computers. They are her students, close to her heart.

“The hero and the monster have come,” she says. “This means that Central is not safe.”

“He is only Sebastien,” says Stefan.

“Perhaps.”

“And the monster outranks us,” Stefan points out.

“The hero can kill monsters,” says Melanie. “So I must ask you: have you committed such crimes that you might bear that name?”

“It seems unfair,” Harold grouses. “He exists to kill that monster. He should not branch out to anyone who simply behaves in a monstrous fashion.”

“Alas,” Melanie says. “Harold may not arrange the world!”

“Alas,” Harold phlegmatically confirms.

“We must remove him,” Melanie says. “It shall be Stefan first.”

“Why?”

“Because you have said, ‘he is only Sebastien.’”

“It was my optimistic confidence,” Stefan says. “Don’t punish such a cheery attitude—it will lead you to sorrow! Your subordinates will paste Dilbert comics on their cubicles and mock your management practices.”

“They should regret such actions bitterly,” says Melanie.

“Fah,” declares Stefan, resigned.

Stefan

The hero opens the door. He walks into Central. He has the monster at his side.

There is a security desk at the entrance to the building. Dave is a guard. He’s sitting behind the desk. He nods to the monster. The monster nods back.

“Cheerio, sir,” says Dave. “Good to see you again.”

“Cheerio,” says the monster.

“Does he know what happens here?” the hero asks.

“Oh, yes,” says the monster. “But it’s a living.”

“Ah,” says the hero.

Dave ducks his head.

Upstairs, Stefan takes down a gun. He checks it. Then he practices the swift-step. He is behind the hero. The gun is in his hand. He is firing. The bullet tears through the hero’s chest, piercing right through the heart.

Uh oh, Stefan! There’s just a hollow where the hero’s heart should be.

The hero is staggering back. There’s a lot of blood and trauma in a heart shot, even if your heart’s in a box somewhere far away.

Stefan swift-steps to the armory.

“I need a shotgun,” he says.

There’s a web, or a net, or maybe just a shredded mesh of raw tissue, spread throughout the room. It has eyes suspended in it. They turn on him. They swivel. There are teeth. They chatter.

“It’s an emergency,” Stefan says.

The eyes turn away. A shotgun clatters to the floor at Stefan’s feet. He picks it up. He readies it. Ka-CHUNK.

He thinks about angles. Dave will probably die too, and maybe the monster, but you have to finish what you start. If you don’t, you end up dead.

Stefan practices the swift-step.

The hero’s sword meets his neck. Stefan swift-stumbles backwards to the office, but it’s too late. His head is hanging on a thread of tissue.

“Damn it, Melanie,” he says.

Then his head falls off, and all he can do is blink until he dies.

Vincent

“Vincent,” Melanie says.

“No,” Vincent says.

“Why not?”

“Harold’s invulnerable,” Vincent says.

“You’re more likely to win,” Melanie says.

“He’s invulnerable.”

“Technically, I’m vulnerable to Kryptonite,” Harold points out.

“But there’s no such substance.”

“That’s true,” Harold concedes. “It’s a good weakness for Superman, but it’s not very balanced for me.”

Harold

A long time ago, they gave Liril a doll named Latch. They let her keep it for a while. They promised it would be safe if she was good. So she was good. She combed its hair. She hugged it tight. Then they took it from her. She had to watch as bad things happened to it. She didn’t know what she’d done wrong.

But she didn’t let Latch die.

The god of such moments is called an aegis. Harold carries one, because they are the subject of his study. He has charts on his wall of their spiritual anatomy. He has done surgery on his aegis, and other things besides, to stretch the limits of the god.

He feels it gently. It is in his pocket.

Then he walks down to meet the hero.

The Hero

“Are you all right?” Dave asks.

Dave’s hand is under the hero’s elbow. His other hand is behind the hero’s shoulders.

“‘m ff,” the hero says. He’s trying to imply that he’s fine.

“I don’t . . .” Dave looks at the monster. “I don’t understand.”

“All-hands in the main conference room in twenty minutes,” says the monster. “I’ll explain then.”

“He’s really lucky he’s not dead,” Dave says. “I mean, what with the not having a heart and all.”

“Got a heart,” the hero says. “It’s in a box.”

“Oh.”

“The box is in a duck,” the hero says.

“Oh,” Dave says again.

“I need air,” the hero says. He walks back out. He sits down heavily in the square. The monster follows. There’s not a speck of blood on the monster’s outfit.

“What?”

“I don’t kill people often,” the hero says.

“He had a swift-step god. That’s sort of like being an escalator.”

“What’s the point of a bike rack,” the hero says, “with only one bloody bike?”

“It wasn’t bloody before you started leaning on it,” the monster says.

“I’m cranky,” the hero says. “I’ll stab you if you don’t stop it with the humorous commentary.”

The monster flares his nostrils.

“Who was he?” the hero asks.

“Stefan,” says the monster. “Experimental theologian.”

“I ate lunch with him every day,” Harold says, emerging onto the lawn. “He never picked up the check.”

“Ah,” says the hero. “More company with guns.”

Harold fires at the hero’s head. It misses. Most bullets do.

The hero’s sword comes up, right through the bike rack, right through Melanie’s bike, and stabs into Harold’s chest.

“That’s not good,” says Melanie, watching.

“Ow,” says Harold.

He looks down at his chest. He looks at the hero’s chest. Then he giggles.

“Now you and us are even stevens,” he says.

The hero gets to his feet, and drives the sword in deeper. It’s up to its hilt in Harold’s chest. Harold doesn’t seem to mind.

“I took generic ibuprofen before coming out to fight you,” he says. “That’s why the pain’s not so bad.”

Harold aims his gun under the hero’s chin. The hero elbows it out of Harold’s hand. It skitters across the ground and lands in soft verdant grass. Then the hero gets tired from blood loss and exertion and finds himself leaning gently against Harold’s shoulder.

“This is an awkward moment,” observes the monster.

“Why did you bring him here?” Harold asks.

“If you’d held off the assassination attempts until after the all-hands,” the monster says, “you’d probably know.”

Harold sighs. He shoves the hero away. The hero, blearily, refuses to shove. He grips Harold’s arms and holds them tightly against Harold’s body.

“I’ll squeeze,” the hero warns. So he does. The hero is very strong. Then blood comes out and he’s very weak. Then he’s very strong again. Then he falls back against the bike rack. Because it’s neatly cut in two, there are sharp edges pushing against his back.

“I’m invulnerable,” Harold says, apologetically. He starts walking towards his gun.

The hero leaps onto Harold’s back, and Harold falls to the ground. There’s a bike lock wrapped in the hero’s hands, and it’s choking Harold.

“Damn it,” Harold says. He’s not prone to profanity, even when he spills acid on himself or a really good woman dumps him, but he’s just realized that it’s a Kryptonite lock.

Then he’s dead.

All Hands

“Vincent,” Melanie says.

“I have really good hearing,” Vincent says. “That’s my only power. I have a rabbit familiar. I can hop. I can hear things. I’m not going to be able to kill him.”

“Oh.”

“Besides, the monster says that we should save assassination attempts until after the all-hands meeting. That sounds reasonable to me.”

“If you kill him before the all-hands, then there’ll be more seating for everyone else.”

“We can pull in an extra chair,” Vincent says. “It’s okay.”

So they go to the all-hands meeting.

“I bring a message of love,” says the monster, “from a girl named Jane.”

The monster has a laptop. It’s connected to a projector. The first slide in his PowerPoint presentation shows a large picture of a heart. It’s a formal Valentine heart and not a pulsing human heart. It’s labeled as slide one.

The monster clicks to the next slide.

“Jane wants you to redeem yourselves,” he says. The slide shows a picture of the monster, looking very uncomfortable, hugging a puppy. The puppy is licking the monster’s tie. It’s labeled as slide two. “We have committed acts of evil here, and horror unmeasured by morality. It is time to rededicate yourselves and this installation to compassion, love, and the healing of the world.”

Most of the people in the all-hands look uncomfortable. One hand raises. The monster points. “Yes?”

“What’s the threat?”

The monster’s voice is silk. “The threat?”

“What is she holding against you and/or us?”

“Ah,” says the monster. He clicks past several slides. He reaches slide five. It’s a chart of profit over time for 2002, 2003, and first quarter 2004. “In 2003,” he says, “the Earth Division cleared over two hundred million gross, with nearly forty million in profit. We control one of the three most powerful arsenals of theological weaponry in the known world, and have the chance to pioneer an uncharted and illegal science. What’s wrong with this picture?”

He clicks. There’s a picture of a globe. It’s lightly tinged with red—a dusting here, a deepening there, a bit of crimson spotted through the seas.

“This is the sum of our influence,” he says. “We have theoretically unlimited power, but in practice, our profits are penny ante and our influence tiny. The gods we make are isn’ts. They are severed from us. The greatest host of Faerie assembled in our time failed to topple the Nicaraguan government. The unbounded horrors born unto the Federated States of Micronesia are dying at human hands. And we make forty million a year from the ability to circumvent natural law and bend humans and nations alike to our desiring. We are an isn’t.”

The monster clicks to the next slide. There’s a picture of Martin. He’s leaning against the wall, looking away from the camera.

“This is what Jane has. She has a creature that can breach the boundary and make gods real. He can manifest dharma. If he sends to us a killing god, there are none of us safe. Conversely, should he manifest Ii Ma, then we may imprison any man we choose, without recourse, without jurisdiction, without protection. We would simply speak a man’s name, and Ii Ma would take him away. This creature’s contemners could destroy our enemies with near-perfect reliability. His footsoldiers—”

There’s a little giggle in the room. At this point, the footsoldiers are not much more than an in-joke to the Central crowd.

“Well,” says the monster, expressively.

He clicks ahead a few more slides.

“The rules are simple,” the monster says. “She is willing to forgive. Simply come up to this podium, and say, ‘It was wrong. It was vile. I had no right.’ Then turn, and walk through the door on the right, and begin your new life as an employee of a new, brighter, more loving Earth Division. Or walk through the door to the left, and continue your life as normal.”

The rules are displayed on the screen.

A hand raises. The monster points.

This is a Vice-President in Charge of Sales. His name is Miles, for what it matters. “This is a game, right? I mean, you’re not bloody serious. We’re not going to—I mean, it’s fucking crazy.”

The hero kills a Vice-President in Charge of Sales. His name was Miles.

The monster clears his throat.

“It is juvenile,” he says. “In the literal sense. I’ve sold you all out, and that puts each and every one of you at the mercy of a child. She’s about six years old, and each of you has collaborated, directly or ex post facto, in torturing her. If you refuse to play in her little tea party, I won’t save you, because that’s not in my interest. You can repent in jest, treating it as a game, but I imagine that something horrible would come out from under your bed and devour you in the night. It’s up to you. Leave through the left, or leave through the right.”

The monster turns off his laptop. “That’s all.”

The first man stands up. His name is Leonard. He walks to the front. He says, quietly, “It was wrong. It was vile. I had no right.”

He walks out through the door to the right.

The second man stands up. His name is Douglas, not that it matters. He walks to the front. He turns to the left. He walks left. The hero kills him.

“Hey,” says a woman in the back. Her name is Heather. “Hey!”

“What?” the monster asks.

“You can’t redeem people at the point of a sword.”

“Maybe I just had a grudge against that particular guy,” the hero suggests. He turns Douglas over. He reads the nametag. “‘Doug.’ Maybe he killed my cat.”

“It’s not morally correct as a means for gaining contrition!” Heather protests. She’s an armchair ethicist, and gets very vigorous about such things.

“If it’s within you to be redeemed,” says the monster, “then it shouldn’t matter what incentives are applied. If not, then redemption is impossible, even at the point of a flower.”

Heather frowns in frustration. “Did you . . . did you say those things, doctor? About it being wrong and vile?”

The monster smirks. He didn’t have to. Jane’s emotionally entangled with him, Martin needs him, and the hero’s messed up in the head. “It’s not relevant, dear lady,” he says.

Heather’s face pinches. She looks very upset. But she walks to the front. She looks nervously at the hero. “I didn’t collaborate,” she says. “I mean, not really.”

She turns left. She walks left. The hero kills her.

One by one, they go towards the front. Most of them make the speech now, and turn right. Two of them fight the hero. One of them dies normally. The other one dies with a shout and a bitter complaint on his lips, something to the effect of, “He didn’t have a harpoon when I attacked him.” A few others slink forward to die.

The Fable of the Lamb

Melanie takes out the needle and puts a bandaid on Vincent’s arm.

“Go,” says Melanie.

Vincent walks to the front. He turns left. The hero looks at him.

“I grew up here,” Vincent says. “It took me a long time to know that what we did was wrong. And then I couldn’t think of anything that could stop it. There’s nobody to tell, nobody to warn. Half the system is corrupt and the other half wouldn’t believe me. So I help the kids when I can. I try to give them a little bit of light. And I help the staff. Because I work here, because they gave me a place here, because I love them too. So I’m going to go left, and you’re not going to kill me, because heroes can kill monsters, and I’m just a screwed-up guy who never did figure out what to do.”

The hero shrugs. “If you’re right, then I can’t kill you, but it sounds a lot like excuses.”

Vincent walks left. The hero’s sword is in his hands. He is moving, swift and beautiful, a blur of gray and death; but he has lost a lot of blood, and there are many chairs, and he stumbles, and he falls.

Behind Vincent, Melanie walks out left; and one by one, the rest, as the blood beats slowly from the hero’s chest onto the floor.

In the time before the hero overcomes his dizziness and rises, there are only three who say the words and leave to the right.

“Is it really true, then?” Vincent asks, looking back, after he has left the building. “Am I really clean?”

“I extract your sins during the monthly blood test,” Melanie says. “I keep them in a bottle. You never know when you shall need a lamb.”

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Tigers in their Cages (2 of 2)

by Jenna on February 24th, 2005

The core of Central is hollow, like a warehouse. The ceiling is netting, and above that is darkness. There are things that move on the netting, and people too.

In the core, Central’s not a very nice-looking place. There’s a laminated harpoon attached to one wall, or there used to be. There’s sacks of open grain, gnawed on by rats and bugs. There’s fire and red and things always watching.

Below that, there are the cages.

“How many?” the hero asks.

“Seventeen,” the monster says.

“Seventeen?”

“Nine here. Four with building passes. Four in special environments,” the monster says.

The cages aren’t like dog cages. Some of them are very nice and have pillows and books. Others are small and cramped and made of wire with rotting feathers in the mesh.

“Most of them aren’t like Jane,” the monster says. “That’s rare. Most of them aren’t even really djinn. Just . . . kin. Distant relatives. The unsuccessful byblows of our kind.”

The hero goes from one cage to the next. He looks in. He looks kind of helpless. “I don’t know which to let out first.”

The monster smiles brightly.

“Start at the front,” he says, “and move back.”

So the hero lets out a young boy named Brian. Brian stares at him.

“It’s over,” the hero says. He reaches into the cage. Brian scuttles back.

“It’s funny,” the monster says, “how unequipped the hero actually is for rescuing people.”

The hero glares at him.

“Well, it is,” the monster says. “Somewhere along the way you people got the idea that heroics was about killing evil and not so much about saving people, and I’m sure that’s why the world is in the mess it’s in today.”

This is technically incorrect, but it’s a solid rhetorical point.

“What do I do?” the hero asks.

“Come on, Brian,” the monster says. He grins. “It’s time for one of the good times. You know. When it doesn’t hurt so much.”

So Brian inches out of the cage. He stands. He waits.

The hero goes to the next cage. It has a girl. Her name—she doesn’t even remember her name. It might be Iris. He lets her out. He holds out his hand.

“No,” she says.

The hero stares at her.

“No,” she says, louder. “Don’t want to.”

“Iris,” the monster says. His voice is oozing. But the hero looks at him in horror.

“You can’t . . . you can’t threaten her into coming out—”

“Oh,” says the monster. He looks happy. “I didn’t know.”

“Come on, Iris,” says the hero. He holds out his hand again.

“I live here,” she says. “I make gods for them. Every day, Leonard comes. We play. He closes the cage. He checks the lock. He smiles at me. I like him.”

The hero frowns. He looks at the monster.

“Leonard’s still alive,” the monster says. “You didn’t kill him when you were burying yourself in the corpses of your enemies. He recanted, absolving himself of that whole abusing-children thing.”

“Ah,” the hero says. He looks at Iris. There’s something messed-up in his eyes. Then he shrugs. “Okay,” he says.

He opens the other cages. Some of the kids come out. Some of them don’t.

Then he and the monster go down the stairs, to where they keep the gods, and Iris can’t see them any more.

That night, Leonard comes, and they don’t play—they just make some funny faces at one another—and Leonard closes the cage, and locks it up, and smiles at Iris, and she sleeps.

It’s strange, she thinks, that some people leave.

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