Read Online Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea by Caitlin R. Kiernan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Caitlin R. Kiernan
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here or deport you, Councilor. But you better trust me on this. You don’t want to go down there.”
“You’ve been chasing her such a long time,” the woman crouched on the floor before me said, speaking more quietly now and smiling. Her teeth were filed to sharp points, and she licked at them with the tip of her violet tongue. “You must have had a lot of chances to give up. There must have been so much despair.”
“Is she dead?” I asked, the words slipping almost nonsensically from my lips.
“No one dies. You know that. You’ve known that since the camp. No one ever dies.”
“You know where she is?”
“She’s with the Wolf,” the woman whispered. “Three weeks now, she’s with the Wolf. You came too late, Dorry. You came to her too late,” and she drew a knife from her belt, something crude and heavy fashioned from scrap metal. “She isn’t waiting anymore.”
I kicked her hard, the toe of my right boot catching her in the chest just below her collar bone, and the priest cried out and fell over backwards. The knife slipped from her fingers and skittered away across the concrete.
“Did the Wolf tell you that you’d never die?” I demanded, getting to my feet and aiming the pistol at her head. I’d bought that in Bosporos, as well, the same day I’d bought the map, black-market military picked up cheap in the backroom of a britch bar. The blinking green ready light behind the sight assured me that the safety was off, that the trip cells were hot, and there was a live charge in the chamber. The woman coughed and clutched at her chest, then spat something dark onto the floor.
“That’s what I want to know, bitch,” I said, “what I want you to tell me,” and I kicked her in the ribs. She grunted and tried to crawl away, so I kicked her again, harder than before, and she stopped moving. “I want you to tell me if that’s what it promised you, that you’d fucking get to live forever if you brought it whatever it needed. Because I want you to know that it fucking lied.”
And she opened her mouth wide, then, and I caught a glimpse of the barbed thing uncoiling from the hollow beneath her tongue, and I squeezed the trigger.
I suspect that one gunshot was the loudest noise anyone’s heard here since the day bombs fell on Lowell. It echoed off the thick walls, all that noise trapped in such a little room, and left my ears ringing painfully. The priest was dead, and I sat down on my bedroll again. I’d never imagined that there would be so much blood or that killing someone could be so very simple. No, that’s not true. That’s a goddamn lie. I’ve imagined it all along.
I’ve been sitting here on the roof for the last hour, watching as the domeworks begin to mimic the morning light, shivering while the frost clinging to the old masonry melts away as the solar panels warm the air of Lowell. I brought the monk’s book with me and half a bottle of whiskey and the gun. And my notebook, to write the last of it down.
When the bottle is empty, maybe then I’ll make a decision. Maybe then I’ll know what comes next.
BRADBURY WEATHER
My love affair with Mars goes back to my childhood, to the seventies, to the Viking landers, to my discovery of Barsoom and The Martian Chronicles, and to Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” Knowing full well I’ll never walk those rusty red plains, I hope my ashes might someday be scattered throughout the channels of the Kasei Valles or across the dry-ice glaciers of the north polar cap. We earthbound creatures can always dream. Along with The Dry Salvages (2003), “Bradbury Weather” marks the beginning of my trusting myself with first-person narratives.
Pony
1. The Window (April)
Helen opens a window, props it open with a brick, and in a moment I can smell the Chinese wisteria out in the garden. The first genuinely warm breezes of spring spilling across the sill, filled with the smells of drooping white blossoms and a hundred other
“You’ve been chasing her such a long time,” the woman crouched on the floor before me said, speaking more quietly now and smiling. Her teeth were filed to sharp points, and she licked at them with the tip of her violet tongue. “You must have had a lot of chances to give up. There must have been so much despair.”
“Is she dead?” I asked, the words slipping almost nonsensically from my lips.
“No one dies. You know that. You’ve known that since the camp. No one ever dies.”
“You know where she is?”
“She’s with the Wolf,” the woman whispered. “Three weeks now, she’s with the Wolf. You came too late, Dorry. You came to her too late,” and she drew a knife from her belt, something crude and heavy fashioned from scrap metal. “She isn’t waiting anymore.”
I kicked her hard, the toe of my right boot catching her in the chest just below her collar bone, and the priest cried out and fell over backwards. The knife slipped from her fingers and skittered away across the concrete.
“Did the Wolf tell you that you’d never die?” I demanded, getting to my feet and aiming the pistol at her head. I’d bought that in Bosporos, as well, the same day I’d bought the map, black-market military picked up cheap in the backroom of a britch bar. The blinking green ready light behind the sight assured me that the safety was off, that the trip cells were hot, and there was a live charge in the chamber. The woman coughed and clutched at her chest, then spat something dark onto the floor.
“That’s what I want to know, bitch,” I said, “what I want you to tell me,” and I kicked her in the ribs. She grunted and tried to crawl away, so I kicked her again, harder than before, and she stopped moving. “I want you to tell me if that’s what it promised you, that you’d fucking get to live forever if you brought it whatever it needed. Because I want you to know that it fucking lied.”
And she opened her mouth wide, then, and I caught a glimpse of the barbed thing uncoiling from the hollow beneath her tongue, and I squeezed the trigger.
I suspect that one gunshot was the loudest noise anyone’s heard here since the day bombs fell on Lowell. It echoed off the thick walls, all that noise trapped in such a little room, and left my ears ringing painfully. The priest was dead, and I sat down on my bedroll again. I’d never imagined that there would be so much blood or that killing someone could be so very simple. No, that’s not true. That’s a goddamn lie. I’ve imagined it all along.
I’ve been sitting here on the roof for the last hour, watching as the domeworks begin to mimic the morning light, shivering while the frost clinging to the old masonry melts away as the solar panels warm the air of Lowell. I brought the monk’s book with me and half a bottle of whiskey and the gun. And my notebook, to write the last of it down.
When the bottle is empty, maybe then I’ll make a decision. Maybe then I’ll know what comes next.
BRADBURY WEATHER
My love affair with Mars goes back to my childhood, to the seventies, to the Viking landers, to my discovery of Barsoom and The Martian Chronicles, and to Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” Knowing full well I’ll never walk those rusty red plains, I hope my ashes might someday be scattered throughout the channels of the Kasei Valles or across the dry-ice glaciers of the north polar cap. We earthbound creatures can always dream. Along with The Dry Salvages (2003), “Bradbury Weather” marks the beginning of my trusting myself with first-person narratives.
Pony
1. The Window (April)
Helen opens a window, props it open with a brick, and in a moment I can smell the Chinese wisteria out in the garden. The first genuinely warm breezes of spring spilling across the sill, filled with the smells of drooping white blossoms and a hundred other
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