Hybrid Fiction, Issue 2

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march 2020

Copyright Š 2020 Hybrid Fiction. All material appearing in Hybrid Fiction is copyright. Reproduction in whole or part is not permitted without permission in writing from the editor. All characters and events are fictitious. The publisher bears no responsibility and accepts no liability for the work herein.

Hybrid Fiction March 2020

Table of Contents “Repeat as Necessary” by Richard Zwicker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Two detectives catch a criminal at the scene of a murder. It seems like an open and shut case until the victim vanishes from the morgue and turns up alive back at his apartment.

“The End of the Mind Wars” by L. P. Melling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 A dangerous White Warlock threatens to steal minds as Daniel battles to save the memory of his Princess, but all is not what it seems.

“The Hypnotist” by Robert Bagnall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 A private detective, suspecting that his memory may be filling in gaps, seeks the help of a hypnotist.

Modern Day Familiar by Aimee Uehara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 A mech-witch and her familiar: An urban fantasy re-imagining.

“In Blue” by J. Anthony Hartley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Aloysius is stuck in a deadend life. His only two solaces are fishing and his girlfriend Greta. That is until he catches a strange blue creature who promises to love him unconditionally.

After the Warding: Part I by R. Z. Held . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Aurea always assumed that as the strongest mage for miles around her brother Dominic would earn the right to carry one of the Ancestors’ spirits to help cast the warding spell that keep their people's lands safe. Nevertheless, both are called to stand in the desert.

“The Blood Plague of Prague” by Andrea Kriz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 In an alternate history 1942, an SS officer visits occupied Prague to investigate rumors of a plague. In the city, deserted of both animal and human life, spikes of what appear to be solid blood pierce the streets.

Hybrid Fiction March 2020

REPEAT AS NECESSARY

By Richard Zwicker

At 9:34 p.m. in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, a woman heard the smash of a neighbor’s window and called 911 to report a possible robbery. Though Detective Nick Palance and his partner Marian Formsby were off duty, enjoying a drink in a Brookline bar, they took the call. The department was shorthanded, the location was only three miles away, and Palance wasn’t anxious to get home. That morning he’d had the mother of all arguments with Amber— more like the ex-wife of all arguments—as she’d threatened to move out. On a steep, narrow road, they pulled up in front of a boxy, three-story tenement. A steady drizzle slapped the cracked concrete.

Formsby opened the passenger door and swung her legs and solid body out of the car. She looked at the sad, silent building and the tree-less neighborhood. “Thieves are never going to get anywhere in life if they keep targeting places like this.” She’d seen plenty of them in her twenty-three years as a cop.

“Yeah,” said Palance, a fifteen-year veteran. He didn’t say much, which put a lot of pressure on when he did.

The caller buzzed them in. Despite seeing the detectives’ badges, the woman wouldn’t open her door beyond the crack allowed by her chain. When asked if she’d heard anything besides the smashing glass, she said, “Yes. A gunshot, a few minutes ago.”

Formsby led the way as the two detectives walked down the uneven hall floor to 3A, the neighbor’s apartment. She pressed the doorbell. No one answered. She grabbed the doorknob and found it unlocked. “I don’t like this,” said Formsby. “But nobody asked me.”

She opened the door. A light from an inner room dimly illuminated a small, cluttered kitchen. A faucet dripped every few seconds onto an empty sink.

“Hello? Police!” said Formsby. Guns pointed forward, they warily entered, pacing around a corner to the dining room. A middle-aged man sat at a round table in front of a half-finished bottle of wine and a cell phone. His head tilted backward at an awkward angle, his forehead crushed. A wineglass lay broken, and the tablecloth was stained with red. Formsby entered the only other room, a bedroom. “Clear!” she said and returned.

Palance checked for a pulse on the body and couldn’t find one. Slipping on gloves, he

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carefully pulled a wallet out of the man’s back pocket. “Diego Medina,” he read. “Age 47. Thirtyseven dollars.”

Wind gusted through a shattered window, hurling drops of rain. Shards of glass littered the faded floor tiles. Formsby pulled out a small flashlight and pointed it at the floor. “Somebody tracked mud here, but it could have been our victim. Funny how there’s none near the window.”

Palance inspected the window. “It’s large enough to crawl through.” He picked up a threeby-one inch piece of silver-colored metal. After a few seconds, as if responding to his fingers, it heated up and disappeared.

“Oh shit,” said Palance.

“What?” asked Formsby.

“I just picked up something that looked like the bumper of a tiny alien spaceship, and it disappeared into thin air.”

Formsby‘s broad shoulders sagged. “Why would a spaceship have a bumper? It’s not like there are traffic jams in space.”

“That’s my theory, and I’m totally willing to discard it for a better one.” Four months earlier the two detectives had encountered tiny, nefarious aliens called Ingesters who fed on brainwaves and had secretly attacked Boston. He and Formsby had destroyed them with a concentrated blast of really bad puns. No one believed their story, however. Had the Ingesters returned? Palance hated how space invaders messed up the Sherlock Holmes dictum: When you

have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth. With aliens, you couldn’t eliminate anything.

“Let’s keep looking.”

They searched the bedroom. Formsby nearly hit the ceiling when she opened the closet and found Slug Brunansky, a petty thief with a rap sheet as long as the Dead Sea Scrolls, huddling behind a pile of coats.  Formsby and Palance sat at the interrogation room table opposite Brunansky who was slumped on a chair like an open sack of potatoes. His shaved skull, mottled skin, and a lightcolored growth under his chin gave him a bottom-of-the-bag look. His left hand was crudely bandaged, a white strip dangling.

Palance opened his file. “So, why do they call you Slug?”

Brunansky lunged forward and punched Palance in the face, knocking the detective to the floor. In an instant, Formsby had Brunansky in a choke hold and forced the suspect back to his chair. Retaining her grip, she pressed her mouth to his left ear.

“Are we going to do this the hard way or the really hard way?”

Brunansky’s mouth fluttered but lack of oxygen kept him mute. Formsby released his windpipe.

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jaw. “You’ve just added ten years to your life sentence, Brunansky. We were going to do a good cop/bad cop thing, and I was going to be the good cop. But you’ve pissed me off.”

“You asked why they called me Slug,” said Brunansky.

“I thought it had to do with your subhuman intelligence or your languid manner,” said Palance.

“It’s not his languid manner,” said Formsby.

“Tell us about tonight around 9:30 p.m.,” said Palance.

Brunansky thought for a second, straining as if he were giving birth to a park bench.

“I was at the movies,” he said.

Formsby slammed her fist on the table. “We found you at the crime scene, you dumbshit!

Your blood was there. Tell us about that. Or not. We have enough to nail you for murder.”

“I didn’t do it!” Brunansky yelped. “The body was already there. I was just gonna rob the place, and that wasn’t even the place.”

“What do you mean?” asked Palance.

“I’d cased another apartment, but a voice inside me said, No, go to this one.”

“I don’t know why you listen to that voice, Brunansky,” said Formsby.

“I don’t even think it was mine. It had a foreign accent. Anyway, I opened the front door, which was unlocked, and when I walked inside, the guy was already dead.”

“Quite a coincidence,” said Palance. “But juries don’t believe in coincidences.”

Brunansky nodded. “They’ve never done me any good.”

“What happened to your hand?” asked Formsby.

“When I saw the corpse, I got spooked and accidentally shot myself in the hand.”

They’d found the bullet in the wall, nowhere near the deceased.

“If you went in the front door, why did you break the window?” asked Palance.

“What window?”

“Why were you hiding in the closet?” asked Formsby.

“Because I heard you guys come in. I was only in the apartment for a couple of minutes.”

“In those couple of minutes,” said Palance, “besides the dead body, did you see anything strange in there?”

“Like what?”

Palance hated being interrogated by someone he was interrogating. “Like aliens.”

“Illegal aliens? They’re what’s ruining this country.”

The detectives glanced at each other. “Yeah, that and illegal citizens,” said Formsby. “So, other than assaulting an officer, which, for stupid behavior, is right up there with using a guillotine for a haircut, you maintain your only crime is opening an unlocked door?”

“What? That’s illegal now?”

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After the interrogation, the two detectives compared notes at their desks.

“He could have gone through the window, then unlocked the front door,” said Palance. “But where’s the murder weapon?”

“Where’s everything?” asked Formsby. “Medina wouldn’t have just sat at the table if someone broke his window. Plus, if Brunansky broke the window, what was he doing in the twenty minutes it took us to answer that woman’s call? He didn’t steal Medina’s wallet, credit cards, nothing. He had a gun that was fired, but Medina was bashed in the head. With what?

Your alien spaceship?” She waved her hand in disgust. “The medical examiner will have more to tell us tomorrow. Let’s sleep on this.”

In theory, Palance liked to sleep on most things: making decisions, spending money, staff meetings, doing the dishes. But because of the argument with his wife, he didn’t expect to get much sleep that night. Of course, it was his fault. Another thing he’d slept on, or with, was the records clerk at the station. He hadn’t meant to, and it had happened only once, but neither of these facts had impressed Amber. As Palance walked into their apartment at 1 AM, he knew he wasn’t dealing from a position of strength. Their last six months could be summed up by the couplet, “How do I love thee? Let’s argue about it.” Perhaps a separation was for the best, but he didn’t want to admit it. His battle plan was to fall on his sword and hope that, in another life, Amber wasn’t a samurai warrior.

He found her sitting on the living room couch, her arms crossed under her chest. Her straight dark hair and swarthy complexion exuded no-nonsense.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. He wanted to go straight to the refrigerator for a cold beer but figured the appearance of clarity was more important. “Somebody got murdered in Jamaica Plain.” He sat down in the recliner across from her.

She gave him a stony look.

So much for foreplay, he thought. “All right, I made a big mistake, but it wasn’t premeditated.” He immediately regretted the judicial term. “It was a moment of weakness, a crack in my armor.”

“Armor? You got naked with her!”

Perhaps he should avoid metaphors. “The point is it’s not going to happen again.”

“It hasn’t happened before?”

They both knew it had, once, four years earlier, with one of his informants. He could never forget that exchange. What do you got? he’d asked the informant. What do you got? she’d asked.

“Nick, I can’t trust you,” said Amber.

He sighed. “Just tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”

She thought. “I’d like to turn back time.” She laughed, which unnerved him. “But that’s impossible.”

He wanted to say that men were flawed, and a person’s response to a mistake revealed his Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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character. But he was too tired to articulate these points, and Amber was too upset to listen. She announced she would temporarily move in with her mother and let her feelings settle.  “I’ll give you the facts first,” Robey, the ancient medical examiner, said to the detectives at the coroner’s office the next morning. He grimaced, deepening the lines on his face so that it resembled a blown-up fingerprint. “The murder weapon was a blunt object, very blunt and very forceful.” He directed the detectives’ gaze to Diego Medina’s forehead, which wasn’t nearly as

fore as it used to be. “Right where he was hit, he seems to have a very small tattoo, but I can’t make it out.”

“Odd place for a tattoo, said Palance. “Who does this guy think he is? Mike Tyson?”

“My guess is a Hispanic man in his late 40’s, 5’9”, 150 pounds, did not think he was Mike Tyson,” said Formsby. “Does he have any other tattoos?”

“Not one,” said Robey.

They stared at the body. Palance mouthed something audibly.

“What?” Formsby asked.

It was dumb, and no one even remembered the 80’s rapper Tone Loc from which he got the reference, but Palance couldn’t help himself.

“That’s a funky cold Medina,” he said.  Formsby and Palance were back at the station when the splatter expert’s report arrived.

Three types of blood had been identified at the crime scene: Medina’s, Brunansky’s, and a third sample that the splatter expert couldn’t match to any known type.

“That supports the alien theory,” said Formsby.

“Or maybe Charlie Sheen was there,” said Palance.

“Except an alien ship would be airtight, so how would the blood get out?”

“Maybe the ship was alive. Though the bumper I picked up felt pretty dead until it disappeared.”

That afternoon they revisited the woman who made the 911 call. She had nothing new to add. Two other occupants of the building heard the gunshot, and one heard the breaking glass.

One man slept through both.  Once off-duty, Formsby and Palance unwound at MacLaomainn's Scottish Pub. Neither cop was Scottish, but they both liked Liam Neeson. That actor, of course, was Irish, but by the time they’d figured that out, they’d got used to MacLaomainn’s. Only three of the nine tables were occupied. At one, a late middle-aged couple desultorily ate from their plates of haggis. At the other sat two burly, head-shaved men with beards who looked as if they preferred sitting on their motorcycles. None of the patrons paid any attention to the overhead TV showing a soccer game between Suriname and Ecuador.

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“So I was thinking about that tattoo on Medina’s forehead,” said Formsby. “It reminds me of the Toyota insignia, maybe because I have to pay them every month. That insignia is on the front of a car, so Medina could have got his tattoo from the front of the spaceship.”

“More like a cattle brand than a tattoo,” said Palance, gulping his beer.

“Speaking of which,” said Formsby, “you look like a placeholder for a steer at a slaughterhouse. What’s wrong?”

“My summit meeting last night with Amber was not the summit of our relationship.”

“Sorry to hear that. Let me know if you need a woman’s perspective.”

Palance massaged the top of his head, touched a nascent bald spot, and recoiled. “After last night, I think my problem is an excess of woman’s perspective.”

“Women!” Formsby said dismissively, staring at her drink. Normally, she drank pints of Sheepshagger, while Palance’s preference was Kilt Lifter IPA. Tonight, after two pints, on a what

the hell? whim, they decided to blend the two.

“The truth is,” said Palance, “I cheated on her.”

Formsby slapped the tabletop. “You amoral bastard!”

“Now, you see, that is the woman’s perspective I can do without.” Palance looked around the unpromising pub. He grimaced as the middle-aged couple dug into their plate of haggis. There was a reason offal was a homonym for awful.

“Do you want her back?” asked Formsby.

“Right now? Very much. But by tomorrow, with all our ups and downs, I may think separation is for the best. Then by tomorrow night, I’ll want her back again. I may need a woman who can compartmentalize.”

“Maybe you should date a living room entertainment center,” said Formsby.

“I can never put those together. Any other observations?”

She took a belt of her drink and grimaced. “Don’t talk me into mixing drinks again.”

Palance grabbed his mug. “I’ll drink to that.” They did.

Suddenly, Palance felt dizzy and started hallucinating. Events of the past twenty-four hours played in his head. In reverse, at breakneck speed, he was back in the morgue, the station, at home arguing with Amber, and checking out the crime scene at Diego Medina’s. The vision was silent, except for a hum, reminiscent of a rewinding VHS tape. Just as abruptly as it started, it stopped.

“I just got a rush like you wouldn’t believe,” said Palance.

“Me too. It felt like an earthquake, with a silencer,” said Formsby. She tapped her head.

“Maybe Sheepshagger and Kilt Lifter IPA is the answer.”

If so, it wasn’t the bartender’s as he’d felt the same thing and hadn’t been drinking. Palance was going to talk to the other patrons, but they were gone.

Palance shook his head. “This place sho’ gone crazy.”

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 The next morning, ten minutes late, a hungover Palance staggered into the station. He carefully sat in his swivel chair as if balancing three large pizzas on top of his head. Formsby filled her coffee cup, while Palance checked social media and saw posts about how a number of people the night before had been in one place and suddenly found themselves in a completely different one. Been there, done that, he thought.

“Nice of you to show up,” said Formsby. “Our favorite crooked attorney, Emile Dunstan, is waiting to talk to us about Brunansky.”

“Waiting is good for him,” said Palance, but Dunstan disagreed, and walked in. He was a short man with a round body and pocked face.

“I demand my client be released,” said Dunstan.

“Why?” Formsby asked, topping off her cup of coffee. “Is he sorry? Did he promise to be a good boy from now on? Save it, Dunstan. He assaulted my partner.”

“While he was being held for no reason. He’s a victim of circumstance.”

“Ah, the Three Stooges defense. Being a woman, you can imagine how much I appreciate that one.” Formsby took a sip from her cup, scowled, and set it on her desk. “There is more likelihood of Black Thursday being rescheduled on the first day of Lent than there is of your client getting released any time soon.”

“OK,” said Dunstan, shifting gears as effortlessly as on a 15-speed bicycle. “Let’s make a deal.

My client knows a lot of people you’d love to get off the street.”

“Of course he does,” said Formsby, but she threw up her arms. “Let it not be said that the police department is against free speech and the exchange of ideas, even from the most unlikely sources.” She punched some numbers into her phone. “Please escort Slug Brunansky to Room 1.

Make sure he’s on your shortest chain.” Her eyes widened. “What do you mean? When?” She paused. “Whoever did that is going to be his cellmate.” She clicked off and faced Dunstan.

“Slug’s not available right now. He’s in the middle of his interpersonal skills training.”

“What happened?” asked Dunstan. “Did you let him get attacked while he was in custody?”

“Of course not. We’re all in this together,” said Formsby. “Just go home and prepare your over-priced defense. Call me personally this afternoon and I’ll hook you up with Slug. Would you like one of my cards?”

Dunstan glared at Formsby as if she’d suggested he try accupuncture for testicular cancer. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but it won’t work.” He walked out of the room.

“What happened to Brunansky?” Palance asked.

“He’s gone, and there’s no record that he was even here.”

“What? Jesus! I know we’re not Alcatraz or anything, but this doesn’t look good. Do you think he went back to his apartment? He’s dumb enough to,” said Palance.

“This entire case is fishy, and I’m starting to think Brunansky is a red herring. We need to revisit the crime scene,” said Formsby. She punched up the location of Brunansky’s apartment Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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on her computer. As she forwarded it to her phone, she noticed the date at the top of her screen said it was the 13th. It was the same on her phone. That wouldn’t have mattered, except that it was the 14th.

“What day is today?” she asked.

“Thursday, day after hump day, except in my apartment.”

“What day does it say on your computer?”

Palance looked. “Huh. Wednesday. If I have to go through yesterday again, I might just pack it in.”

“Crime scene. Now,” said Formsby.  There was no crime at the crime scene, but there was a very alive Diego Medina who let them in. Formsby and Palance followed in disbelief as he led them to the dining room and sat at the table where he’d been found dead. The wine bottle was gone, and the broken window has been repaired.

“Mr. Medina, I’m going to be blunt because, well, we’re cops,” said Palance. “The first time we saw you was two days ago, and you were dead. Yesterday afternoon you were at the morgue, even more dead.”

Medina shrugged. “Yesterday I was at work, at the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

Formsby’s eyes scanned the room. “Yeah, I’ve lost days there too. So, there was no crime committed here last night?”

“I don’t know about a crime, but something very strange did happen. I was sitting at this table, drinking a glass of wine, which I often do at night to help me sleep. Suddenly, a tiny spaceship smashed through my window. You can imagine my surprise.”

“I don’t have to imagine it. What happened next?” asked Palance.

“I froze, which was a mistake, because the ship smashed right into my head. It must have knocked me out, because the next thing I knew, the ship was gone.”

“And you didn’t report the incident?” asked Formsby.

“No, because when I looked at the window, it wasn’t broken any more, so I figured I dreamed it or something.”

“How come you’re not at work now?” asked Palance.

“They cut my hours. I just do a half-day on Wednesdays.”

If it was Wednesday.  After leaving Medina’s apartment, Formsby called Robey and asked him to check on Diego Medina’s body. Robey said he was in the middle of an autopsy, but Formsby insisted.

“Fine,” Robey said, and proceeded to give her a sarcastic play-by-play description. “I’m taking off my gloves. I’m walking into the refrigerated room. My, it’s cold. Now I’m opening the Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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door and pulling out…” Formsby heard the phone clatter to the floor, followed by a dull whooshing sound of Robey picking it up. “Holy shit, it’s gone! I am now going into the men’s room to change my shorts.”

“Before you do that, could you check if you have any record of Medina’s body being admitted?”

“What? Of course it’s in the record. I’m 67. You think I’m going to trust my memory?”

“Just look,” said Formsby.

Robey did and returned. “Of course it isn’t in the record. Not only that, but neither is anything else I did yesterday. What the hell’s going on?”

“It’s questions like that that keep me in business, Robey.” Formsby clicked off. “No body, no record,” she said to Palance. “I’ve had cases unravel before, but this is the first one that’s vaporized. Let’s see if Brunansky went back to his apartment, though even if he did, something tells me it’s going to be unsatisfying.”  They had no trouble getting someone to buzz them into the apartment, but ringing Brunansky’s doorbell produced no result.

Formsby banged on the door. “Open up, Brunansky, or we’ll break the door down and send you the bill.”

“Like you’re going to do that,” said a familiar voice. Fifteen seconds later, a disheveled Brunansky opened the door a crack. “I want to see identification.”

“For crissake, you know who we are!” said Palance. “Open the damned door.”

Brunansky hesitated, then undid the chain and led the two detectives to his kitchen. The sink was loaded with dirty dishes, and the wall next to the stove was spattered with grease.

Brunansky leaned against the counter, sliding slightly.

“What do you want?”

“How did you get out of your cell?” asked Formsby.

“No idea. One moment I was behind bars, the last place I’d want to be. The next thing I knew, I was outside Medina’s building, the second to last place I’d want to be. I didn’t know what to do, so I went home. That’s when I noticed I didn’t have the bullet wound in my hand anymore. I’ve been confused since I found that guy dead.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself. Here’s some more confusion,” said Formsby. “Medina’s not dead.”

Brunansky looked helplessly at the detectives. “He isn’t?”

Formsby fixed her listen-to-me-and-listen-good scowl on the thief. “This is the greatest gift a guy like you could have, Brunansky: a second chance. Don’t waste it.”

As Formsby drove them back to the station, Palance checked the media. It teemed with stories of people who’d been transported from one place to where they’d been twenty-four Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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hours before. Because it happened late at night, most people were at home asleep and hadn’t immediately noticed anything. Conspiracy theories abounded. The opposition party accused the president of trying to increase his term. Another rumor had Bill Murray doing a publicity stunt for Ground Hog Day II. None of them explained why computers had gone back a day, other than the obvious reason: time had somehow rewound itself.

At his desk at the station, Palance said, “It used to be when small spaceships smashed into your head and killed you, it made a difference.”

“Let’s examine what happened to us,” said Formsby. “You remember when we both got dizzy at the Scottish pub?”

“Aye, lassie,” said Palance.

“Don’t call me lassie. That was when time rewound itself.”

Palance grimaced. “If time did rewind, wouldn’t I be saying FTW right now, instead of WTF?” “It’s not going backwards now.”

“That’s true. And how come we remember everything before time rewound, if that’s what happened?”

“Why wouldn’t we? When you rewind a tape, you don’t forget everything,” said Formsby.

“I can’t even remember the last time I rewound a tape.”

“The question is, did someone intentionally do this or was it an accident or both?”

“That’s three questions,” said Palance.

“Here’s my answer. A tiny alien spaceship accidentally crashes into an apartment building. It dithers for 24 hours, then decides to rewind time to undo the damage.”

“Brunansky did say a voice with an accent told him to go into Medina’s apartment instead of the one he scoped out. Maybe the aliens were trying to get him involved so he could be blamed. When that didn’t work so well, they decided, screw it and rewound everything.”

“So what do we do?” asked Formsby. “Give a driving-to-endanger ticket to an alien spaceship that we can’t find? Sometimes we have victimless crimes. This is a crimeless crime!

Unless we bring Brunansky back in for his assault on you. Then I have to look at Dunstan again.

How’s your jaw, by the way?”

Palance massaged it. The swelling had gone down. “I no longer look like Dick Tracy. I’ll think about Brunansky, but for now, let’s solve one of our other open cases.”

That didn’t happen, but they did a lot of driving and talking to people who didn’t want to talk to them. Before the end of the day, Formsby reminded Palance that she was leaving her car at her mechanic’s and needed a ride into work the next morning. Palance said he’d pick her up, assuming he survived a second summit meeting he and Amber had scheduled for that night.  Palance was taciturn the next morning when he picked up Formsby. The rapprochement he’d been hoping for with Amber had been more like a realignment: Amber had ripped him a new Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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one. He didn’t want to talk about it but he was also angry that Formsby didn’t ask. Instead, for twenty minutes she poked buttons on her phone.

Formsby muttered, “We’ve looked here, we’ve looked there, we’ve looked down. The one place we haven’t looked is up.” She gazed out the passenger side window. “Pull over!”

Palance grunted and pulled to the side of the highway. Cars careened by like slow meteors.

“What’s wrong?” asked Palance as the two cops got out of the car. Formsby pointed upward.

Though it had been light for only an hour, someone had been skywriting. The northern sky was full with the words, I will not mess with your time continuum.

“It’s written a hundred times, exactly,” Formsby said, after counting. “That’s our proof! It was the alien ship!”

“How do you know?” asked Palance.

“It’s more than 280 characters. Plus, no human could write

I will not mess with your time continuum a hundred times without at least one typo.”

“The alien was practicing his English?”

“No. Maybe his or her superior got angry about the rewind, and this was the punishment.

It’s crazy, but it makes sense.”

“Story of my life,” said Palance. “But who are the aliens and what were they doing here? I hate how aliens never explain. It’s like they’re afraid of infodumps.”

A deep look passed over Formsby’s face, like a garbage truck obscuring the view of a duck pond. “Do we ever really know why a perp, or anybody, does something? When you get down to it, everything in life is written in red marker.”

They returned to the car and resumed their commute.

“Oh,” said Formsby. “How did the second summit meeting go?”

Palance tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “I think it’s over.”

“Sorry for your loss. Oops. I mean, if I could, I’d rewind time for you, like the aliens. I’d incur their skywriting wrath.”

Palance thought about that. Because of their advanced technology, the aliens had been able to undo the one death they’d caused, the broken window, and in theory, the damage to their ship. But if the entire world had just repeated a day, what about those consequences?

Undoubtedly, there were people who accidentally died during that repeated twenty-four hours who’d originally made it through. Besides, even if that device could undo his dalliance with the records clerk, it would still remain where it mattered most: in the memories of those affected.

“Thanks. I miss Amber, but being a cop, I guess I have to be OK living in a world with repercussions. It’s the only way I’ll learn not to do stupid things.”

Of course, that didn’t work for everyone. A week later, Slug Brunansky was arrested for breaking and entering into another apartment.

Hybrid Fiction March 2020

13

THE END OF THE MIND WARS

By L. P. Melling

Running past grey ramparts, Daniel feared Isabella’s mind had already been stolen by the White Warlock. He searched for his princess through the cold echoing halls of the castle. Every passing minute a stab in his side.

A strong smell of camphor caught on a spine-licking draught. The warlock was trying to trick him again. Lead him astray. The injured soldiers had abandoned the castle. Daniel had met them on the road days before, some limping, with others carried on stretchers, spell-shocked, or minds stolen by dark magic. The soldiers had thousand-mile stares; transparent umbilicals trailed from their noses, antidote charmbags hanging from thin waists.

His legs burning, Daniel ignored the smell, darting down the labyrinthine hallways and refusing to be distracted by the dark magic. He said a silent prayer for the soldiers still fighting and wished the Mind Wars to be over.

Daniel ripped open door after door but did not find her in any room. Many were covered in dust and spiderwebs, long forgotten and unused. He visited the castle less and less these past years, and when he did, he preferred the rooms closer to the drawbridge so he could hastily escape. The White Warlock was leading him to the darkest parts of the castle, forcing Daniel to confront his past.

“Please let her not be hurt,” he whispered. “Please.” Everyone knew the warlocks sucked out people’s minds to gain power, leaving their victims forever confounded. He couldn’t let that happen to Isabella.

Daniel barged through another door and kicked the wall at the sight of another empty room. He should never have left her side. He had been searching for her for seasons across lands far and wide, but the White Warlock was always one step ahead of him, his princess always just out of reach. “Isabella!” he called. “Where are you?” He would never give up trying to find her, no matter how long it took.

Entering another room, it was clear it had been used as a makeshift medical room, with beds lined-up next to each other. A bowl of chicken broth sat on bedside table, skin thick on its surface, along with a goblet of water. The odour of camphor had disappeared, but the smell of sickness clung onto the place like a maggot on festering flesh. Daniel closed the door shut behind him, exhaling.

Hybrid Fiction March 2020

Melling

"End of the Mind Wars"

There was only one place he hadn’t checked, the thought of which brought a lump to his throat. He steeled himself and rushed back down the hallway and out across the bailey.

A memory of when his eyes first set on Isabella cut through his mind: long brown hair, her ebony skin glowing like burnished bronze around eyes that shined tawny-amber. Or was her hair short again the last time he saw it? It had been so long, he struggled to remember...

Footsteps ripped him out of his reverie. A small servant girl was walking across the bailey, carrying a tray of food.

Gently, she said, “Please. Take something. I’ve got grapes for you. I know the red ones are your favourite, Da—” “What are you talking about, girl?” Daniel snapped. “I’ve never seen you before.” The girl’s skin lighter than Isabella’s, hair straighter, but eyes strangely similar. He was sure he’d never seen her on a previous stay, but he had no time to waste thinking about it further.

“What’s your name, girl?”

“Naomi.”

“Quickly, Naomi, I’m searching for Princess Isabella. She’s wearing a pink and white dress.” It was always her favourite item of clothing. “Have you seen her?”

“Yes. She was taken to the tower,” she said. The place he expected and feared. “I hope you can save her.”

“Thank you. Get clear of the castle and save yourself!” he ordered, and ran towards the tower, breath sharp in his throat, blood crashing in his ears.

Pounding up the bowed steps, he made it to the top of the tower, his body aching, and pushed the door open.

Tables laden with books covered most of the room. The warlock must have used this place for some time. His childhood bedroom had been locked for years, hidden from prying eyes, or so Daniel thought. It was the heart of the castle for his younger self, a room full of loss and sadness. An open chest sat in the corner where he’d kept his most cherished memories. His corn blue baby clothes faded to grey over the years, his late mother’s hairbrush she used on her sunbright auburn hair...and the token of love Isabella gave him when they first met.

Finally he spotted Isabella in the far corner, chained to a chair, cloth wrapped around her mouth. Her eyes shone like light at the end of a tunnel, but the rest of her face was blurry, a charm put on her to taunt him.

“So you found me at last,” the warlock said. “I knew it would work.” He appeared from behind a pillar, staff in hand, white robes rippling, and threw a question at him. “What can you remember of this place?” The warlock pulled the book from the box. Daniel gritted his teeth.

“How about this? The sweet gift your beloved here gave you. Do you recall?”

Daniel had forgotten he left the signed book Isabella gave him here. He’d visited the castle’s tower often in the past, but that was before his mother died and he and Isabella moved away to distant lands.

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Melling

"End of the Mind Wars"

“Set her free,” Daniel said.

“No, I’m afraid I won’t. Only you can do that.”

“I won’t let you ruin her mind!” he cried.

His jaw clenched, Daniel sprung at the warlock as he reacted with a charm. A burning pain seared through his head.

Daniel fought through the pain and grabbed the warlock by his white robes. They tumbled, grappling with each other. Daniel tried to hold the warlock down, but he was thrown across the room, landing in a painful heap. He realised the warlock was too powerful and fear gripped him.

He couldn’t lose her. Not now when he was finally so close to saving her.

The world fading around him and that sweet girl Naomi for some reason bubbling in his mind, Daniel stood up, rushed at his foe, and battled to his last breath.  Breathlessly, Naomi watched her father fight against his condition, willing him to remember as he sat up on the hospital bed.

Next to a half-glass of water, the blood-red grapes she’d brought remained untouched on his bedside table; a bowl of clotted chicken soup left too. The doctors told her the new amnesia treatment had a strong chance of success.

Naomi saw her father’s confused expression; the facial bruising from his fall was almost gone now.

They’d moved him to private room yesterday. Naomi was glad of the privacy. Other patients made Dad anxious as he muttered about the war he fought in and whispered prayers.

Naomi noticed a mustard stain on Dr Layton’s white coat as he leaned on his cane and gently probed further for signs of improvement: “Now, Mr Hutchins. Do you remember Isabella?”

Her father continued to look lost, but then his eyes sharpened. His jaw clenched, it was as if he was fighting something in his mind.

Naomi pulled out the faded picture from her handbag. Her late mother looked so beautiful in the pink and white princess costume; her father as handsome as any prince in his outfit. The Comic-Con sign behind them, they held a book together in the picture. He’d told Naomi he knew Mum was the one for him when she gave him the book signed by their favourite fantasy author and his life had been a fairy tale ever since.

Naomi showed him the picture. Gently, she asked, “Do you know who that is, Dad?” She waited, hoped beyond hope the new treatment had worked.

His eyes focused on the picture. Tears on his cheeks, he smiled. “Yes.”

Hybrid Fiction March 2020

16

THE HYPNOTIST

By Robert Bagnall

It was as the teddy bear-like man pushed past me, as he knocked my shoulder—or rather, as that scene played out on the lens screen of my hornrims—that it happened. A black cab, coming from out the gloom of a tunnel, collided with a blue maglev. The two vehicles struck each other corner-to-corner. Wheel-arches—a faux wheel-arch, an automotive architect’s whim, in the case of the maglev—were bent, sidelights smashed. But no blood was spilt.

“I was on playback,” I said apologetically to the cabbie as I switched the videostream off with a tap to the arms of my glasses.

I had been walking towards the old Waterloo Station along an arterial road parallel to the Thames. The Victorian railway lines, like the threads of some river delta, ran alongside, vast embankments topped with multiple lines, their sides towering walls of brick punctured every so often by arched road tunnels. On the other side of the multi-lane stood the windowless backs of offices, digital advertising hoardings breaking up the stark concrete elevation, telling me what to drink, wear, and think. And in this canyon, just a thin ribbon of blacktop for the pedestrian in shadow except for all of an hour a day maximum, weather permitting. A bleak route in a part of the city almost given up to the gangs, data connectivity dropping out intermittently. If your smart-glasses managed to shadow register a person of interest, I doubt the police would even turn up.

But it was daylight, therefore relatively safe, and needs must. I had taken a short-cut, through one of the tunnels, strange grey stalactites—of what? salt? pigeon shit?—hanging from the undersides of the arched brick roof. It emerged briefly between embankments, a backwater network of smaller streets, lock-ups, and light industry, normally uneventful. Except for today.

“Bloody typical. One witness, and he’s watching his own life flash before his eyes. People like you cause accidents.”

“I didn’t cause the accident.”

“No. But people like you…”

He meant the half of the population wearing smart-glasses. The fifty percent wandering like zombies, in thrall to whatever was playing out before them, which was never what was actually straight in front of their nose. I had some sympathy with the cab driver. If I was a time traveller

Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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"The Hypnotist"

from the past, I’d probably take one look at what humanity had become and go straight back.

I pinged both drivers my e-profile, leaving them with the understanding that I would in all honesty be able to tell neither the authorities nor their insurers much of any use.

I’d wanted to review what I’d seen earlier that day and more importantly, heard. The images were the least important and if anything, least helpful: a poster imploring me to take rectal bleeding seriously, another calling for blood donors. That’s the thing about smart-glasses playback, the narrow field of vision means that you’re watching a jerky cascade of close-ups. If you hadn’t been there, you’d need me to describe the carpet tiles, the dirt in the corners, the utter disinterest of the receptionist. I’d probably add in the lemon zest of disinfectant applied liberally, if not evenly, that hung in the air. Dr. Menzies’ surgery was a long way from Harley Street, metaphorically if not literally.

But pretending to study the health education posters and pamphlets meant that I could position myself close to his consulting room door, listen to the argument that was ensuing inside. I could only make out snatches of dialogue when tempers rose past a threshold. Blame was being batted back and forth like a Grand Slam rally. I guessed Menzies was the first one to really shout. “There has been surgery since the days of the ancient Greeks, but you think that has to be the problem, not something completely untried and untested…”

At this point the other man cuts in. Either he’s quieter or facing away from the door so I don’t catch the burble of a reply, but I doubt it’s to point out the Neolithic man used trepanning.

And then Menzies responds with the strangest phrase. I can hear it spat with sarcastic, disparaging bile. “You and your cursed hate one mine too.”

Hate one mine too. I’d looped that section over and over and still it didn’t make sense.

The door is flung open, the scene in my lenses spins as I turned, and a short plump man, with an oddly even covering of curly brown hair carpeting his head, chin, and cheeks storms out.

He even walks like a teddy bear, an uncoordinated lolloping. His heavy tortoiseshell smartglasses only add to the effect, like a make-believe ursine doctor from a children’s book, all stethoscope but no trousers. He knocks my shoulder and the image judders again, and at that moment—in Southwark, not Menzies’ waiting room, in reality, not in my recording—the two vehicles collide.

So, I know that I couldn't have seen the crash. Not as it happened. I must have only lifted my eyes from the ground as soon as I heard the crunch of poly on poly.

But not before.

I did not expect the incident to trouble me again. And, in the conventional sense—insurance witness e-forms, video statements, and so forth—it did not. The cabbie looked ready to take a ball hammer to the minor damage on his vehicle; the ripple in the maglev’s shell had popped back, the scar virtually knitted away. Neither driver wished to tarry in that part of town.

But in the sense of keeping me awake at night, it did.

Between sleeping and waking, my mind played the accident over and over. The maglev, Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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probably lost and out of signal, its driver craning to see beyond the thick brick escarpment, looking one way, then the other. Perhaps distracted by systems intermittently connecting. Then the cab emerging from the tunnel just as the other car, its driver looking the wrong way, inches out. The taxi, going a shade too fast. The two vehicles closing, the accident by now unavoidable.

The coming together; the crumpling of bodyshells.

And the crucial point here was that logic dictated that I saw none of it. My mind had interpreted what I didn’t see, had extrapolated backwards through time and had come up with a result as fresh, clear, and lucid as though I actually had watched it all. I’ve been to see theatre performances less lucid.

And that was what was keeping me awake at night.

How many times had I been on the witness stand? How many statements of varying degrees of formality had I given in my life? I would have given my word on oath that I had seen those two vehicles collide.

But logically I knew that I had not.

Some people have God. Some people find their god in a bottle. It was when I was searching the web in vain for the nth time for the phrase hate one mine too, avoiding rabbit-holes relating to either the sober analysis of, or barking publicity for, the anti-mining brigade, that the thought struck me that what I was looking for was hypnotism.

“Hypnotists, London.”

My smart-glasses started to cascade listings before my eyes. But none appealed until, in a you’re-searching-for-that-how-about-this moment, on to my screen dropped an advert for Celine Jane. Whereas other classifieds talked of ‘Using the Power of Trance to Reach Out and Become the Person You Want to be,’ hers was simply a name and the epithet, ‘since 2023.’ And that suited me.

Her office was an upstairs room in a Victorian terrace badly placed for public transport. Up a stoop, through a communal front door, then up a narrow, whitewashed stairwell to another door into what I suspected was her flat doubling as her workplace. She buzzed me up, so I was in the room, high-ceilinged, big sash windows, dark red walls, a lifeless mirror black video screen over a cast iron fireplace, before I saw her. She was of hard to place vintage, lost in a becalmed sea of middle age. From a distance there was something theatrical about her as if she was not above donning gypsy rags and calling herself Madame Pompadour, reading fortunes if you crossed her palm with crypto-silver. Close-up, she was a battleground between wrinkles and anti-aging remedies.

"Why are you here, love?" she asked plainly.

A bit of me wanted to reply, Well you’re the psychic, until I remembered she wasn’t.

"I am concerned about the difference between perception and reality," I said. I hadn't expected it to come out quite as heavy on the metaphysical as that.

Celine Jane raised her pencilled-on eyebrows a shade higher. "With most people it's vaping.

Hybrid Fiction March 2020

19

Bagnall

"The Hypnotist"

Who’d thought it’d turn out worse than smoking? Fancy a cuppa?"

I explained my line of work ("I thought private detectives were just for stories") and the incident ("You weren't driving? Well, there you are"). She spent some time trying to convince me of the trivial nature of my complaint. The colossal implications of such trivia took some time to sink in.

"So, you think that everything you remember may not have happened?"

"Not everything. But crucial things. Details. In my job details are crucial. Details lead to the bigger picture."

"Look after the pennies, and the pounds look after themselves." She sounded pleased with herself.

"That's a good analogy. I want to be certain about the pennies."

She frowned. "This hasn't got a child abuse angle has it? Because I don't do that sort of thing," adding emphasis with a two-fingered wave which I recognized as the salute of a smoker sans cigarette.

"No. I'm looking to discount erroneous memories. Not gain new ones."

"Fine. Let's begin."

Celine Jane had me lie on a couch whilst she played whale song softly in the background.

She sat in an armchair, a small mahogany card table between us. She asked me to close my eyes gently as though about to doze.

"Just listen to the music," she intoned in a voice an octave lower than the one she used over tea. And whereas before she had stretched and tortured her vowels, her English was now concise to the point of being clipped. "Just listen to the music. Imagine yourself swimming with the whale. You're floating. Flying. Suspended. The music is all around you. You become as one. It is a language that you understand. Don't try to translate. Just let the music in. Let it inhabit you.

You understand it at a primitive level. You understand it at the level of feelings. The music makes you feel happy... It makes you feel calm... You are the whale."

On any other day I would have scoffed at such hokum. But, like the cetaceans that figured so prominently in Celine Jane's commentary, I found myself drifting. My mind felt free, like a landlocked creature that had found the sea. I heard her dulcet tones somehow one step removed, as though I was in another place, at another time, listening to a recording of her almost honeyed vowels, backed by a thousand giants of the deep.

In a steady voice, I recalled the collision. Every detail. All my attention occupied by that mysterious phrase and a brief glimpse of the man I had come to think of as a living teddy bear.

Then, I look up, in response to the sound of cracking polycarbon. The vehicles are already at a standstill. Nothing before. No black cab about to go under the railway arch. No driver of a blue maglev looking one way and then the other, deprived of web-navigation, out of synch with the world.

And then it was over. I sat blinking on the couch. Next to me on a little table sat another cup Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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Bagnall

"The Hypnotist"

of tea, hot and sweet.

"How do you feel, love?"

"I don't know."

And I didn't. Possibly I had a headache coming on. Perhaps I had just shaken one off. But the memory of the crash had taken a different hue. I still had my slowly unfolding image of a black cab driving through the railway arch, the maglev about to pull off from the white line. But now it was wrapped in the certainty that it was nothing but a mental construct, a backward extrapolation. It lacked weight, heft, a rainbow printed in greyscale. As a memory it had been packaged and parcelled and labelled, but this time correctly. I had my certainty.

"Nothing that a nice cuppa won't sort. Could I ask you…”

I cut her off, assuming it would be about the case. “I’m bound by client confidentiality.”

“Oh no,” she said. “It wasn’t about that, but even if I was, we’re like doctors. The car crash: why were you walking, not driving?”

“Didn’t I tell you that I don’t drive?”

She looked oddly at me as though I’d just revealed a sixth finger.

“I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t drive. How curious.”

“Do you remember when we thought the word would be full of driverless cars? That none of us would drive anymore?” I asked.

She chuckled at the memory. “All those crashes. The very idea that machines can be as conscious and intelligent and aware as people, so they banned them. But then my grandfather was told when he was a child that we’d all be wearing jetpacks when he grew up. We’re forever being promised the future but having to settle for a rebranded here-and-now.”

And then she suddenly added, in a voice that had lost its Mitteleuropean gypsy burr and had become quite Estuary, “But as we’re talking about the case…”

“But we weren’t,” I said, confused, a metallic taste in my mouth that hadn’t been there a moment before.

“Who were you working for?”

“A woman called Bethmann,” I heard myself say despite every effort. I shook my head, but the need to talk, to answer her questions seemed as natural and unstoppable as water flowing downhill. “She was having a relationship with an underworld fixer and financier called Pipkin who had kept the relationship secret from his wife and the criminal gang run by his brother, Ivan.”

I wondered whether I was still under, hypnotised into believing I was awake. Or perhaps I had been injected while mesmerised. I glanced over to the now empty teacup. What she had done to me fell into place—although I knew of no synthetic psychotropic so laser-focused. But why?

“Pipkin had gone missing, but before that he was acting weirdly. Bethmann didn’t know Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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Bagnall

"The Hypnotist"

whether he was due to be executed and knew it, or was planning suicide, but he seemed oddly euphoric over it. Like he believed it was a secret way to leave the gang and escape with her. Like he believed he would be resurrected. She said he wasn’t making sense, but he used that word: resurrected.”

“Go on.”

I dug my nails into my palms, trying to focus on the pain. She barked her order again, and I listened to myself tell her more.

“Very little made sense. Over the last year or two Ivan had been ill. Dying. Another character, named Popov took over Ivan’s territory. A bloodless coup. All of Ivan’s men went to Popov, including Ivan’s own brother. Then, all of sudden, Ivan’s back and recovering, and Popov is gone, not even referred to. Then Ivan is ill again.”

“And Menzies?”

“Tenuous links between Menzies and the gang, but Menzies had previously escaped being struck off by the skin of his teeth over organ harvesting.”

“That what you think this is about? Organ harvesting?” she demanded. “Who is it who wakes up in an ice bath in this scenario?”

“He wouldn’t talk to me, said nothing. There was the argument, which may have had nothing to do with any of this. I should have followed the short hairy man. But I went in to see Menzies— I was pretending to be a patient—but he refused to talk.”

“And what do the police know?”

“Police? They’re not even involved. Has there even been a crime committed?”

At this Celine Jane, if that was her real name, fell silent, taking it all in.

And then I saw my opportunity. I grabbed her still hot cup of tea and flung it in her face.

Most of it missed—instructions seemed to take a long time to reach my limbs, getting garbled en route—but it allowed me to pivot forward off the couch and throw myself towards the door.

From there I found myself careening down the stairs, half-tumbling, almost falling, stumbling, until I was out of the front door—and straight into a man coming in.

Instinctively I made to apologise, only to find myself staring straight into the hairy face of the teddy-bear man, his mouth gaping, his eyes wide in confusion. The combination of seeing him and the fresh spring air brought me some way back to my senses.

And at that moment I knew.

I don’t know how I knew. And I didn’t know what any of it meant. But I knew it was important, vital. I knew what I had heard through the door to the doctor’s office. It wasn’t hate

one mine too, never had been.

“Eight one nine two,” I garbled cryptically at him.

He gasped. “Did she tell you?”

And with that I pulled him back inside the house and reeled down the concrete steps of the Hybrid Fiction March 2020

22

Bagnall

"The Hypnotist"

building and onto the street.

As I ran, still leaden-limbed, my lens-mounted screen, picking up on my words, reminded me that 8192 was two to the power of thirteen. Within few seconds more I’d been offered facts on various number building games and scratched the surface of encryption. The micro-speakers set within the arms of my glasses played a long-defunct metal band, leaving me uncertain whether ‘8192’ was their name, or the title of the song.

I asked my glasses to order an Uber, but the nearest was at least ten minutes away. The nearest underground station was a mile away. I didn’t recall a bus stop. Plane trees and cast-iron lampposts, this was a great street for dawdling in organic bakeries, but not for escaping pursuers quickly.

The music clip faded and then, in among the sort of sites that covered how and why Elvis went back in time to shoot JFK, I stumbled across 8192-bit consciousness transference. The vast majority of it, soundbites and non-sequiturs, went over my head: medical applications of consciousness simulation, mind mapping, four-dimensional search engines, and a succession of references to ‘the Grail Server.’

“Cross reference Grail Server,” I ordered as I lurched out of Celine Jane’s side road into traffic, horns blaring. People stared at me, a comedy drunk who had just crossed the line from laughable to dangerous. I needed to put some distance between myself and her and the teddybear man who would surely be in pursuit. I’d seen him move before and backed myself, even with my bloodstream spiked with whatever chemical they’d given me, to get away. And she didn’t look like an athlete, either.

I let my smart-glasses play a succession of links as my spastic limbs tried to wave down cars that turned out not to be taxis. I thought it would help occupy a mind eager to closedown. I learnt that the Grail Server was a supposed data storage facility-cum-neural processor that could capture consciousness. It was neither hardware nor software nor wetware—or possibly it was all three at once. It was being developed in secret, ‘by governments.’ Eight-thousand, one hundred and ninety-two-bit processes supposedly held the key, represented a tipping point beyond which computational processes were, in and of themselves, by their intrinsic nature... conscious.

In short, you could empty a man’s mind into one Grail Server, tip another’s from a second in its place. For consciousness transference read the transmigration of souls.

At that second instant the videostream abruptly ceased, and in its place… a ringing telephone.  Like coming up for air from a long way underwater, I heard it first in the distance, muffled. I didn't know what it was. Then, rising, as woozy shape and form came into hard sharp focus, the identity of the short even barks became clear.

For a long moment all that the ringing triggered was the realisation that the device was an ancient model, heavy and big and Bakelite, with a dial and a mechanical ring. A real bell. I’d only seen them in museums and movies populated by people dead for a hundred years or more. It Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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"The Hypnotist"

took a moment longer for me to realise that my smart-glasses were missing.

"Shut up and listen."

I didn't remember picking up the receiver, but there it was, in my hand with Celine Jane’s Essex scrubber tones screaming out at me. This was a cat-in-a-bag-angry Celine Jane.

"They don't work. They don't bloody work. And, given you know full well who they’ve gone into, you know where that leaves us."

And then everything tumbled into focus at once. Tumbled, but didn’t fit.

I was in a featureless, windowless room, sitting naked up to my neck in a barrel of ice water, everything below my chest numb like it wasn't even there. A mass of tubes rose out of the water, leading to a machine, all polished aluminium and clinical white, pumping slowly, rhythmically. I was playing out the urban myth that Celine Jane had alluded to.

"Are you listening to me? Are you there?"

“Am I hypnotized? Is this some kind of lucid hypnosis?”

“Hypnotized? Jesus, no.”

Panic. “This is real?”

And then a man laughed. "I told you he’d like it…” The teddy bear man.

“This isn’t some joke. How can you treat it like a joke?” Celine Jane spat, but not to me.

Twisting around in the barrel, I could see neither of them were in the room with me.

“What’s happening?”

“Your liver’s failing, that’s what’s happening,” she barked.

I was no longer holding the telephone. But I could still hear her. It was like her voice was in the room. No: it was in my head.

“What the fuck is happening?”

The teddy-bear man told Celine Jane to give me the lowdown, which she didn’t like. “It’s the quickest way to calm him down,” he counselled. I was hearing this like we were all around the same table. "And, anyway, he knows about 8192."

“Keaton? You can hear me?” It was teddy bear.

“Yeah,” my voice cracked.

“Just shut up and listen. You had most of the story. Except Ivan knew about Pipkin and Florence Bethmann. But what Florence Bethmann didn’t know was that Ivan had agreed to release Pipkin from the life. Pipkin should have been a florist or something, anything but a gangster. Ivan scared him, even if he was family. The price of freedom was Pipkin’s liver. He was his brother; a perfect match. That’s where we came in. We downloaded Pipkin’s consciousness into a Grail Server and then into another body, some kidnapped college student. Gave Pipkin another twenty years, and Ivan got Pipkin’s organs. Win win. But then the liver started to fail.”

This much information made me nervous. People only talk like this when it’s endgame for them. Or for you.

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Bagnall

"The Hypnotist"

“Who was Popov?”

“We thought we’d solved the problem already. Popov was Ivan’s consciousness in another body, but it turned out that it was Ivan’s face that had a certain gravitas. Ivan in another’s body couldn’t cut it, not one that hadn’t visibly taken Ivan’s territory. It was like Popov wasn’t seen to be deserving. So, we used 8192 again to return Ivan to his old body, which we’d kept on ice, and was now in even more desperate need of a new liver. Hence the deal with Pipkin.”

“What happened to Pipkin?” I blurted.

I could hear the shrug. “In his new body, I assume that he decided he could do even better than Miss Bethmann. And then she asked you to stick your nose in, and in the course of our due diligence on you, we pulled your medical records, and well, it looked like we could keep your liver and lose you. Two birds, one stone.”

“He knows now,” Celine Jane interrupted. Like a puzzle coming together, it suddenly all made some kind of horrible sense. Except one part.

“But I went looking for the hypnotist. How did I end up with you?”

“Because you fell for the bait that we dangled in front of you. We needed you to come to us so we could find out where you fitted in.” Celine Jane once more channelled Gypsy Rose, “You are feeling sleepy.”

“It was all an act?” I was astonished.

“Call it a hobby.”

“We need to know what you were taking," the teddy bear man’s voice barked, tired of reminiscing. "Medicines. What was it? What were you taking? What were you taking it for? Give us a name?"

"Taking? I wasn't taking anything," I stammered.

“There was nothing on your records. Was it a trial, something restricted? We need to know."

"I haven't seen a doctor in years."

A big pause.

"Is that the truth?"

"Put my liver back. Put my liver back and we can sort this out," I screamed. "If you’ve taken my liver without killing me you can put it back. Put it back and we can sort this out. I'll pay you.

I have savings."

Celine Jane suddenly sounded downcast. "Your liver’s dead. Dead inside Ivan. We've got him on ice again, but if Menzies can't find out why in the next two hours and fix it, we’ll all be dead inside the week. You were our last hope to find out why.”

“The ice bath,” I said suddenly. “This is for kidneys. Not a liver. This is if you have your kidneys stolen… You don’t know what you’re fucking doing.”

I could hear them both laughing, a sort of demented laughter at the absurdity of it all.

“Give me back my fucking liver,” I shouted.

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The teddy bear man laughed again, a laugh of pain and resignation. "You died over a year ago. You’re not even a news story anymore. Yes, we've stolen your liver. We've also stolen your kidneys, lungs, blood, corneas, DNA profile, and semen. We were only after your liver, but you did kinda give us the idea. Ironic, huh? You’re just ones and zeros in the Grail Server now. We downloaded your consciousness as an insurance. You're not even skin and bones. For all I know somebody's boiling down what's left of you for soap.

“As for the ice bath and the whole kidney-stealing urban myth scenario, I just thought you may enjoy the virtual construction that we’ve dropped you into. Sorry there isn’t a liverish equivalent. But I thought it may give you a last laugh."

“Switch him off,” Celine Jane said, defeated. “This was an utter waste of time. We’re both as good as dead. Menzies too. Just switch him off.”

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26

“Moder nDa yF a mi l i a r ” Ar tbyAi me eUe ha r a

Amec hawi t c handher f ami l i ar : Anur banf ant as y r ei magi nedwi t has c i f i f l ar e/ .

IN BLUE

By J. Anthony Hartley

Aloysius stood considering what had become of his life. There, the small room, a bed, a table, and what laughingly passed for a bathroom, the compact luxury of modern living.

Outside, down the hall, a television was blaring loud. Orange advertising sign light strobed across his ceiling, shot with green. Random thumps stirred within the walls from someone somewhere in the building, undisclosed, unseen, but felt at any time of day or night—there was no pattern. And always, always, there was the mouldy smell of damp; no matter how many sticks of incense he burnt, how long he kept the window open, it lay with stubborn persistence just beneath his awareness, creeping beyond the oil-slick scent of city life like the brown-stained watermarks on his walls.

Greta might come around later. That would be something. It didn’t matter that he was always slightly embarrassed when she came. Embarrassed about his living conditions, about the dirt and the stains and the neighbourhood, but if she came, it would still be something. When Greta was with him, he didn’t spend his time clutching feebly at his yesterdays and imagined tomorrows. There was just the now, a moment of reality cocooned from the true harsh daylight that he spent so much time trying to avoid.

It would still be something.

His mother had always had great hopes for him, her Aloysius. She was always convinced that when the time was right, he would shine. That’s what she told him. Just like that. He never actually knew what his father hoped for. His father was a whole different equation, one that remained forever unsolvable to the young man who had taken up residence in his house, grudgingly acknowledging his presence and moving on, to work or to the pub or to the sport on TV or to bed and the rumbling snores that accompanied his retreat to that inner sanctum. There was always something that demanded more of his father’s attention. It took quite a long time, but eventually Aloysius became inured to it. Over the years, he developed an immunity to his father’s disease of ignorance. His mother, however, was a whole different matter. To say that she doted on her only child would have been an understatement. At times, it was almost as if she was measuring his every breath, looking out for him for some special reason. More than the fact that he was her son. Was that a healthy environment to grow up in? Who knew? And frankly, he didn’t really care. It had been as it had been. There wasn’t any changing it. And whether because Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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"In Blue"

of it, he had turned out to be any different than many other possible ways he could have turned out, he didn’t really care—nor even speculate.

In two minds about it, Aloysius decided he’d go out, not wait for Greta to show or not to show. He’d be happy if she did, but even more disappointed if she didn’t. One surely had to outweigh the other. He probably spent enough time avoiding the let downs, but what real choice was there? If he actually went out rather than staying around and waiting, he’d simply pre-empt the disappointment. He was canny like that.

Sometimes, just sometimes, he wished he was something else altogether; something shielded from the disappointments that clustered together and served as his existence. There was a period in his life when he thought, half seriously, that he might be turning into a bat. It wasn’t like those things as a kid where you thought you might have been left by aliens or you had a secret superpower. He was convinced. He would spend extended periods peering at his digits and his limbs, turning them this way and that in the mirror and suspecting, but not really believing, that they were transforming, growing longer and thinner, shaping themselves into the arched structures that would bear him aloft, and simply waiting for the thin leather membranes to grow between his flanks and the new, improved limbs. He’d lean into the mirror, regarding his face, waiting for the lips to retreat and the nose to tilt upwards, exposing his nostrils. He’d pull back his hair and study his ears, turning his face first one way and then the other, testing whether they too were growing longer, extending further up his head and waiting for the musculature that would allow him to turn them one way and then the other—not that he had any difficulty listening to the sounds around him now; they were a consistent reminder of the state of his existence.

Why a bat? One of life’s great unsolved mysteries. He really didn’t know. Some sort of twisted, wishful thinking. Maybe, it was because they were creatures of the night, flitting unseen, unheard except by a select few. Really, if he thought about it, he’d be better off having imagined something aquatic.

The only way Aloysius knew how to get away properly was to go fishing. Thankfully, his less than stellar apartment in his less than stellar neighbourhood had one thing going for it; he lived just minutes from the water. A long breakwater jutted out beyond the harbour, a warning light, not really a lighthouse perched on the end, jutting up from a large square concrete block. The lighthouse proper sat on a hill further round the small bay. At night, especially at night, he liked to sit out there with his gear, staring out at lights reflected on water, shimmering as the surge swelled and dipped, the slowly strobing beam off on the other side of the bay casting its arms into the blackness above him. He’d cast his line and sit, his back against the square solidity of the warning beacon, tasting the salt in the air and listening to the soft susurrus of the ocean sneaking in beyond the rocks and into the small harbour. At times like this, Aloysius felt like he actually belonged somewhere. He’d always been drawn to the sea. There was something about, something powerful, but he’d not discovered exactly what it was yet.

From time to time, he’d bring the inside of a wine in a box. Just the shiny silver sack full of Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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wine. He’d sip directly from the cream plastic spigot, occasionally allowing a stream of red— black in the darkness—to trickle into his mouth. The outer layer, he’d always dispense with at home. It made it easier to carry. Sometimes, by the time he struggled back much later to his apartment, the entire contents would have trickled through the darkness and into his belly, and sometimes, the sky would already be touched with the faint aurora of the approaching dawn.

He’d tried a few times performing his ritual with a friend, but when it came down to it, his friends were few and definitely of the fair-weather variety. There didn’t ever seem to be anyone who understood his bond with the ocean, the stillness of the air, or the seaweed tanged stirring of the slight breeze at night. No, he was better off alone. And if Greta didn’t understand it either, then that was okay as well. He didn’t really expect her to. Only the ocean really understood, along with the black sleek shapes that moved beneath its surface in the darkness. In a way, even though he was drawn to it, he was a little afraid as well. Perhaps it was simply the mystery of the unseen, that sense of movement below a still and vaguely stirring oily dark surface. Hidden depths. Just like Aloysius. Just like his mother always told him.

“You run deep, my sweet boy,” she’d say. “But who knows the depths of what beauty lies in there?” And she’d place the flat of her hand against his chest, gently, and then quickly, hesitatingly, draw it away, a slight tremor in her fingers. “Someone does,” she’d say. “Someone does.” And she’d hold a finger to her lips and then turn away.

When it came down to it, he really didn’t want to question the nature of his mother’s relationship to her only son. Not that there was anything bad about it. It was just better left as it had been. He hadn’t seen her now for about four months, and the time seemed to stretch longer in between each visit. Perhaps it was that since his father’s passing Aloysius didn’t feel the need to be there, to act as an ineffectual buffer against his father’s random moods. And somehow, in the end, his mother’s insistence that he was special was just a little wearing.

The concrete block at the breakwater’s end had a multiplicity of usefulness. Besides the bag of wine, he usually brought something to snack on and a thermos filled with coffee. He could lay out his tackle boxes and the small bits and bobs, including the rag he used to wipe his hands if they became particularly slimy. He could set his torch atop the lip to illuminate the fiddly replacement of a hook at the end of his line, and if, for a while, he wanted to stand, he could prop his rod across one corner, rig it with a little bell so he could hear rather than see the subtle jerks of the rod’s tip in the darkness.

He had chosen his spot well. He had the best of both worlds: comfort and the possibility that he might catch something, because the spot ran near some rocks, a water channel that acted, especially at night, as a feeding ground for the night-time predators. In the same way, he guessed, he was a night-time predator too, and he used their feeding channel as a feedingchannel, of a sort, that was uniquely his own.

It was around midnight when the tiny bell started ringing. One tug, another, and then a continuous vibrating tinkle. Aloysius jumped to his feet and grabbed the rod with both hands. It was bent almost double and if he hadn’t seized it when he did, it would have flipped up, gone Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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sailing over the dark water and speared downwards into the depths to be lost forever. There was something big on, something huge by the feel of it. Maybe it was a shark, but it didn’t feel like a shark. There was a gentle, insistent tugging along with the weight. That wasn’t a shark. They were like a dead weight and then a sudden mad thrash replaced by dead weight again.

Whatever it was wasn’t a hunter, because the line would be zipping away, the reel buzzing as whatever it was ran. It wasn’t a ray either. They just sat, pressed themselves against the bottom and dared you to fight against the water pressure and their weight. No, whatever was on the end of his line was something else, something different. The tiny, insistent chime on the end of his rod told him that and yet it continued to pull with a definite weight.

Aloysius glanced up and down the breakwater, considering his options. Whatever he had on the end of the line was big enough that he’d have to spend time playing it, allow it to run if he was going to keep it. If it ran out beyond the end of the rocks, he’d be screwed. The jagged barnacle and shell encrusted stone would slice through the taught line in a moment. If he was lucky, either whatever it was simply wouldn’t run or it would head in the direction of the harbour. Then he’d be able to head down the breakwater, step down onto the small sand beach that ran across one side and try to draw it into shore. The weight was immense, and already he could feel his arms beginning to tire. Maybe, just maybe, if he started heading that way, he could coax the right direction, keep up enough gentle pressure to steer things his way.

Leaving his gear, and playing with his line, letting out just enough to get the angle, he backed away down the breakwater’s length, continuing to play out as much as he needed, but only enough to keep the pressure on. He could easily lose his footing in the darkness, but for now, that didn’t matter; all his concentration had to be on the play, not invoking too much pressure to risk snapping the line. Still the insistent tugging went on, making the small bell ring.

God dammit if this wasn’t the biggest thing he’d ever caught in his life.

Gradually, he managed to make it to the end, and cautiously, still keeping the line taut, stepping over the piled rocks at the start and then slowly, carefully, onto the smoother sand where the slight slope into the water would enable him to manhandle his catch onto the sand and out of the water. Well, that was the theory, anyway.

Slowly, but surely, he felt a bit of give on the line and he was able to reel it in a couple of turns, and then a minute or two later, a couple of turns more. He was starting to win. He drew in a deep breath and applied a little more pressure and the a little more. Strangely, there didn’t seem to be any real fight though. Not a dead weight. There was movement but it wasn’t a thrasher either.

The water in front of him was lapping gently at the beach, shimmers of reflected light across the surface. He hadn’t even thought through what he was really going to do if it turned out to be a shark after all. He was hardly going to wade into the water and throw his arms around that jagged toothed package of predatory fury. So, if it was a shark, he’d simply have to cut the line and let it go.

Somehow, though, he was sure it wasn’t a shark. The feeling was all wrong. Out there in the Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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small bay, he caught the glimmer of something moving beneath the surface, a large shape, but there was something else about it. A faint glowing nimbus surrounded it, flashes of blue beneath the water. It couldn’t be one of those phosphorescent jellyfish. It was simply the wrong shape, too long, not rounded at all, but whatever it was was huge.

A long caterpillar-like body moved into the shallows, glowing with a vague blue light, now shimmering through the wavelets. Where Aloysius expected to see a wide mouth with a hook embedded in one corner, there was a face. His line was nowhere near the features. Instead, two short arms, reached out in front, gripping the line, and tugging at it.

“Aloysius, help me,” said a female voice.

He looked around startled, seeking the source of the words.

“Aloysius, don’t just stand there, help me.”

Slowly he turned back to look at the creature. The voice was issuing from those pale-blue lips.

His first impulse was to run, to dash away from the image before him, to flee the impossibility of what he was seeing and drop his rod, forget about his gear and make a beeline for his old car parked nearby near the beach in the small car park above, but then came the voice again, and there was something in it.

“Aloysius, please.”

Slowly he turned and not really thinking about it, strode into the water, ankle deep and then thigh deep. She had let go of his line by then and was looking up at him, watching his approach.

All around her was the faint blue glow.

“Wh-what do you need,” he said finally.

“I need you to help me,” she said, the hint of exasperation touching the edge of her voice.

By now, almost all capacity for thought had left him, and he stared at her blankly.

She sighed. “Come here. Help me out.”

“Where?”

“You need to help me out. If we are going to get me home, I am going to need your help.”

“But, why are you…?”

She lifted a short finger to her lips. “Just help me.”

Aloysius did as he was instructed, leaning down, and placing one of her wet, blue arms around his neck and hefting her upright. She was heavy, but the lower part of her long cylindrical body seemed to be able to take some of her weight. With the support he provided, her lower body undulated across the sand, heading up to the parking lot and away from the bay. She watched him as he propped her against the side of the car and dug in his pocket for the keys. Somehow, some way, without really knowing how, he levered her bulk into the passenger seat, closed the door and made his way round to the driver’s side, oblivious to the trickles of cold wet running down his back and the forgotten gear left out at the breakwater’s Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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end.

His thoughts blank, his mind numb, he drove her home and with some effort, manoeuvred her up to his apartment and let her collapse into the old tatty armchair he had in one corner.

Her vague blue light was pulsing. Finally, he stood back, staring at her and slowly shook his head.

“This can’t be happening,” he said as much to himself as to her and to the room itself.

“Come here,” she said, and he complied, kneeling down before her. It was as if he was compelled. Not that there was any reason to deny the requests, but it was more than that somehow.

“Call me Dia,” she said, and what she did next sealed it. She reached out one of those pale blue arms and placed her hand gently on his chest.

“You run deep, my sweet boy,” she said. “I know the depths of what beauty lies in there. I felt it. I felt it through the darkness and the water, and I came to you.” Gently, she withdrew her hands. “Someone knows,” she said. “Someone does.”

Aloysius knelt there, his thoughts and gaze transfixed. Those words. Those very words.

“But now,” said Dia. “You have to help me some more. I am starting to dry. It hurts.

Aloysius stood, still half in a daze. “Wait, I can... Wait….”

He went to the bathroom and grabbed a towel, turned on the shower and made sure it was fully soaked then came back into the living room and placed it around her body.

“Yes, that’s good,” she said. “But this won’t last.”

“You’re right,” he said. “Let me run a bath.”

Just at that moment, there was a knock on the door. Aloysius caught his breath, bit his lip, and looked at the door. Whoever it was could simply go away.

Again, came the knock. Frowning, he stepped across to the door, glancing back once, and then opened it a crack. Outside stood Greta, an impatient look on her face.

“Al? Let me in, it’s late.”

“Greta, I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time.”

“Al, what the fuck? Let me in.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and closed the door, then stood there leaning back against it, looking at Dia. “Al, what are you doing in there? Al!” She pounded against the door. “Al! Let me in.” The last came as a shout.

He closed his eyes and waited. Finally, he heard Greta’s footsteps retreating down the hall outside. Who knew if she might be back, but for now, she appeared to have given up. He could only imagine her fury and the wrath that he would reap some time later as a result.

At last, he opened his eyes.

“So,” he said, “let’s get you wet.”

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It was a struggle, but eventually he managed to help her to the bathroom and into the now filled bath.

Over the next few days, he didn’t leave the apartment at all. Nearly all his time was spent kneeling or sitting beside the bath as he and Dia spoke. Occasionally, he would perch on the side of the tub, but although it was slightly more comfortable, it made it more difficult for Dia to reach out and place the cool dampness of her hand against his cheek as they spoke.

Once or twice, there was a knocking at the door and the shouting of his name, but he ignored it. Now, everything was Dia and that was what mattered. There was nothing physical about it, nothing sexual, but it sparked and fulfilled him, because here, finally he had someone who understood him, could read his innermost thoughts, and could share what he was. Dia knew him, and in turn, he knew her. He learned how she perceived the world and the wonders of the depths through which she had moved. She conjured images for him, and he drank them deep.

From time to time, the reveries were broken, however. They both had to eat, and Aloysius left her there while he went out on foraging expeditions. He was under a spell, and it shielded him from the world at large, except for those brief, necessary excursions. And within that space that he discovered things about himself and started to grow in confidence, more convinced that perhaps something did live inside him after all, though he was a long way from giving it a name or a shape.

It was on returning from one such foray in the quest for provisions, that it finally happened.

He wandered up the hallway, shopping bag in hand when he stopped. The door was slightly ajar, and a sense of dread swept over him. Gently he pushed the door wider, hesitating to look through and past the frame into the dimness of the room. In his old, beaten-up armchair, sat a figure. On one of the walls near the bathroom, there was a long blue streak. On the opposite side, there was a handprint, also in blue. It was a dark blue, almost black in the dim light.

His heart in his throat, his heart pounding, he reached around and flipped the light switch.

No, it was definitely blue. The air was filled with a scent of brine, something salty. The colour was why he was having difficulty processing. It was the same blue that they used on those euphemistic television ads, the stuff about absorbency.

Slowly, slowly, he dragged his gaze away from the marks on the wall, followed them down to the blue drops making a trail across the floor, over to the figure sitting hunched in the armchair and rocking slightly back and forth. It was Greta, her arms clasped around her knees. Her hands were blue as well. In one of those colour-stained hands, she held a large kitchen knife. She said not a word, rocking gently, not even looking up to meet his eyes.

“Greta,” he said. “What have you done?”

Still no response.

Then the realisation hit.

Aloysius dashed across the small space and into the bathroom. There, in the tub, even Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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though he hadn’t switched on the light, he could see. There was enough illumination from the living room, a broad shaft of light that illuminated the sea of blue resting in the tub, the slashes, the deep wounds, the stillness. His breath caught on his throat and he thrust one hand up to steady himself with the doorframe. He could barely take in what he was seeing.

Slowly, slowly, he turned back into the living room, conscious of the slick wetness against his hand, registering the cold dampness there, the darkness of the blue. Despite it, he couldn’t move that hand. He felt stuck there, impaled with the knowledge of what lay now behind him.

“Greta,” he said again, his voice filled with dread, knowing, but refusing to admit the answer to what he was about to ask. “What have you done?”

Her voice came quietly at first.

“I let myself in.”

“Yes, I can see that. But how the hell did you…?

“You gave me a key. Don’t you remember?” Her voice was flat, calm.

“What. Did. You. Do!” She shook her head—once, twice. “It had to be done, Al. Don’t you see? It’s the right thing.”

Still he refused to admit what lay behind him, laid out in the tub.

“What do you mean it’s the right thing?”

“She… It… It wasn’t right. It wasn’t real. We were good together,” she said. Again, she shook her head.

“You shut me out. It wasn’t right.

She… It wasn’t like us. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t real. I had to do something about it, something for us.”

Aloysius just stood there and stared at her. The overwhelming recognition sweeping away his thought.

“How can we possibly make this right? How could you…? What I’m I going to do, Greta? What am I going to do now?”

Finally, slowly, she lifted her gaze.

“We’ll make it right,” she said. “We’ll make it right together. Just you and me, Al. Just you and me, because we’re the same. You’ve never understood that. But I understand you. I really Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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do.”

She stood then and crossed the narrow space between them. She’d dropped the kitchen knife on the floor behind her. She lifted one of her blue stained hands and placed it gently palm forward in the centre of his chest.

“I know you, Al. I know what you’re capable of. I know what stirs inside you. You always laughed about what your mother told you. That you had something inside.”

She looked around the room at the marks on the walls and then back at his eyes.

“You made her,” she continued. “Don’t you see that?

She waited a couple of moments for her statement to sink in before continuing.

“But now she’s gone. Now it’s time for you to concentrate on making us. Whatever else, you have that possibility inside you.”

She held his gaze and her look was steady and full of conviction. “And I’ll be here to help you.”

In the end, he knew, what she way saying was right.

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AFTER THE WARDING: PART I Solstice, One Year before the Century Warding

By R. Z. Held

As morning shadows lost their length across her family’s courtyard, Aurea summoned her patience, leaned a hip against the side of their wagon, and allowed her younger brother Dominic as much celebration as she could. If they didn’t leave soon, they’d miss their leytrain.

But the knot of extended family surrounding the Ancestors’ shrine under the eaves was only growing more raucous—no doubt due to as many splashes of mezcal poured down throats as upon the ground for the Ancestors.

Finally, she whistled between two fingers, pitched for the breadth of the range not the length of the yard, and yanked most of the heads round. This trip was her idea, an opportunity not to be repeated for a whole century. As the young mages who had awakened this solstice morning with starmarks traveled outward to the edges of the Warded Lands to stand and perhaps receive one of the Sixteen Spirits, she and family representatives would travel inward to the city of Centerpost. Then, when the Sixteen had been embodied and the flow reversed for the true celebration, they would be well placed, lodgings already attained, to show their fleece samples to weavers from across the whole of the Warded Lands.

But only if they did not miss the day’s only Centerpost-bound leytrain.

With a last cheer, the knot broke up, shedding relatives good-naturedly from the edges.

Aurea pushed off from the wagon, nodding to an aunt as she passed on her way to start the wagon’s leyengine. She supposed she should wish her brother farewell and good luck for tonight, so she threaded her way to join him as he edged out of the flow of activity. They coincided beneath the shade of the rough roof to the side of the house.

Not that he needed luck. He was the strongest mage in perhaps in all of Secondpost, sure to have one of the Sixteen granted to him by the Ancestors. Unlike the rest of her family, she was saving her congratulations until then—that was all. Dominic was taller than her, but not by much, so she did not have to look up to see clear the small, rayed lump of his starmark, scarwhite on the light brown skin, set straight from the corner of his right eye at the ending of the curves of cheekbone and brow. “When next I see you, everything will be different,” she said, herding a smile out into place.

“You don’t know that for sure.” Dominic didn’t smirk. He did nothing, in fact, to undercut the humility of his words, but with two decades of childhood shared between them, Aurea couldn’t Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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escape the certainty that he’d figured out long ago that letting those around you do the bragging for you got you ever so much farther in life.

But that was unfair. Aurea set her shoulder against the adobe wall and dropped her head to examine the log-edged shadows beyond their feet instead of her brother’s manner. His magic spoke for itself. He could weave intricate knots of light before himself; he could speak at distances of kilometers; he could fill any leymachine directly at a line as easily as she might pour a glass of water.

She could make her fingertips glow, speak across a room, and take a leymachine to her brother when it grew empty. And that was just the nature of the world. While he was standing for one of the Sixteen, she’d be winning her family the best weaving contract they’d ever had.

The intricate considerations of quality and price and transportation and clients’ locations—that was what she excelled at.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get your own starmark. I suppose the accounts are clear enough that not every mage between sixteen and thirty-two gets one, but you’re directly in the middle at twenty-four, which seems awfully auspicious—Aurea!” Dominic’s gesture to brush black wisps of hair—forever escaping no matter how tight her braid—from her temple turned abruptly to a grab, one hand cupping her jaw, the other thumb rubbing alongside her eye. Her right eye. “Did you not even check when you woke this morning?”

Of course she hadn’t checked. There had been packing to do, and not many to do it, with well-wishers already accumulating outside the door to her brother’s room. Aurea couldn’t believe—but the starmark was there to her touch as well, a lump that turned gigantic when felt instead of seen on another. Once upon a time, she’d imagined it—she was from a family of mages. Her one to two sixteens of years intersected a century-warding. One of the Sixteen could be embodied in her. Then she’d set that dream aside with adolescence, when her brother’s growing magic showed her just how little chance she had. She’d built her plans for her life on a foundation of her real skills, not childhood’s impossible longings.

But now— But now, hope hurt too much, knowing that the starmark changed nothing. And she refused to let that false hope keep her from winning her contract. “Don’t you dare tell anyone,” she growled at her brother. She stooped, as if to a trailing bootlace, and came up with her fingertips smeared with dust. If she smudged her face and kept her hair loose…

Dominic intercepted her hand and the dust, smearing it instead over his palm as he clasped her hand. “How can you possibly refuse to stand?” The consternation, writ large across his face, only increased when she avoided meeting his eyes.

“I have no chance, Dominic.” Aurea felt cracks sneaking across her resignation, however, revealing glimpses of the child who’d once longed so deeply. “And you know it too.”

A pause, such as to knock the meaning of all that followed slightly off-kilter. Aurea rather suspected he didn’t believe his own words. “Anyone with a starmark can receive one of the Sixteen, and anyone includes you.” He found his easy grin, the one he’d no doubt been Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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employing with their relatives so recently. “I don’t see why one of the secondary intercardinals would need any more power than you have. East-northeast or east-southeast, maybe.” Those being the secondary intercardinals closest to Secondpost, the eastern wardline city.

“Last century-warding no one’s spirit had anything to do with where they lived or stood, did it?” She pulled against his hand, judged that disentangling his grip would necessitate a scuffle that would draw attention she couldn’t afford if she was to sneak away to her real purpose.

Perhaps if she turned this teasing, he might relax his guard. “Besides, that logic would give you East. Aren’t you aiming for the North Star itself?”

“If I recall correctly, two did match where they stood, but that’s what you’d expect if it was truly random. That’s why the common wisdom says there was no connection. We don’t have proper records of any of the century-wardings before that, though. Maybe those would make a pattern show up.”

Aurea gave in to a huff of laughter. Dominic’s disclaimer about recollection was ludicrous, and they both knew it. As if he hadn’t read every book, every original newspaper account he could put his hands on, knowing what lay ahead for him. His gaze was back now, tight on her starmark, as his voice sobered. “The Ancestors called you for a reason, whatever it is.”

“And I suppose it wouldn’t be particularly respectful of them if I didn’t stand.” Aurea’s next exhalation hitched, hope—false though it was—bursting free. What harm was there in it? If someone else in the family won the contract now, she’d have the chance to see it through, see it expanded next year, perhaps.

Dominic was off then, long strides dragging her out into the sunlight to spread the news. It would only be one night, Aurea reminded herself. The worst she might suffer would be a little boredom.

Deep, deep down in her chest a child who’d dreamed disagreed.  Those with starmarks from settlements closer to Secondpost than to any of the other wardline cities scattered out from there into the desert in the dusk, the sweep of stars opening above their heads. By convention, most sought solitude, but Aurea broke no rules as she set her feet to follow in her brother’s wake because it required few choices of her own. He set off down an ancient, straight road, and she kept pace without excessive effort. They shared the family’s rangy build, endurance curtailed similarly—in his case by being much in demand to see to the smooth working of leymachines throughout the area and in hers by remaining inside with the accounts and correspondence.

Tonight, should they travel outward too far, they might come upon the wardline itself, the shield around the Warded Lands built by the Ancestors and the wild spirits they had harnessed.

The ward held back the wild magic, guided it into the leys, the grand interconnections of the irrigation canals around Fourthpost writ even larger. Each century, sixteen spirits were sent, so those who embodied them could place themselves equally around the circle of the wardline and renew the spell for a century more.

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And so those with starmarks stood in the desert alone—or nearly so—on the summer solstice. It was the shortest night of the year, yes, but also the one with the greatest intensity of stars as they were distilled into that short period. Next year, next summer solstice, would be the warding.

Aurea’s pace ran down before Dominic’s did, and she allowed herself the stillness to look up at those stars, individual lights beyond counting that turned their pinpricks into one grand sky.

At the horizon, mesas sketched a demarcation between that sky and the land, straight across, rounded down on each side, lines of rocky islands down the center of a river without water.

From dusk through dawn, with some weeks yet until the rainy season, Aurea found the desert had a scent—of clean dust more than sand and the sharpness of brush. In the day, with the heat at full flower, her nose found only the scent of “dry,” heat baking the air down into something flat. She loved the desert, though perhaps that didn’t encompass her emotions properly. She loved the land, the feeling of standing within a vast space, whether plain or mountain as she’d seen from the leytrain to Centerpost. The land held her in the bowl of its hand in the same way she could lean down and scoop up a weight of soil into her own.

To be a part of the warding, to stand as the link between land and sky, with the magics and spirits becoming part of her and her becoming part of them, protecting the land she loved— And that would never happen. Not for her. To lose yourself in longing for what you couldn’t have, that was to lose your life, waste it. Aurea had no intention of wasting anything.

She broke herself free of useless thoughts with a burst of speed that caught her up to her brother. “Should we find somewhere to sit?” Night had them fully in its grip, so she brought magic to her fingertips, fanned them outward at the length of her arm to see where their steps had taken them. A rather foolish endeavor—her magic’s feeble light was better suited to close examination, not a wide search.

Dominic’s magic, when he opened his palm, made a yellow-white, lantern-worthy ball above his skin, casting all the glow they needed. “The others said they meditated, watching the sky.

There, maybe?” He pointed with his free hand. A building, as ancient as the road, adobe or other surface spalled or worn away down to the gray, brick-like blocks of its internal construction and red, rusted metal of its empty doorframe.

Within, the building was simple, a single room and no roof to interpose itself between them and the stars. Dominic dropped his sphere of magic, splashing it in a wide circle to send any critters skittering out and away from where they would sit. The light trickled outward to the walls and then died, leaving them a clear space of dust. Dominic settled himself upon it, smoothing the tails of his long field coat to keep it a barrier to his warmth seeping all away.

Warmth was, of course, the only reason Aurea did not join him, choosing instead to delineate the length of the room with her paces, holding her own long field coat tight at her waist as the night settled cold tendrils through her skin. Dominic blocked her path with his feet as he stretched his length, hands tucked one beneath the other on his belly.

So. Aurea paced her less than straight path, and Dominic watched the stars unmoving but Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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for the back and forth trade of which hand sat atop the other to provide warmth. “Will you sit

down, Aurea? I can’t meditate with you distracting me.”

“Do you really think the Ancestors will pass you by for being distracted?” She’d intended teasing, but instead the words dropped acid into the night’s starred shush of sound, small movements of breeze through brush and insects all around them.

Perhaps such night quiet demanded honesty. Aurea decided not to fight it, though she stepped into the doorway to split her words evenly between her brother and that night. “I wish I hadn’t let you talk me into coming. It’s a waste of time.”

Dominic eased upright, folding his legs into a posture fit for meditation from that angle instead. “It’s one night, Aurea. Think of it this way: it’s another kind of opportunity, isn’t it? To see one of the Sixteen embodied from outside firsthand. Publish an account, and you’ll be remembered for generations.”

Aurea rounded on her younger brother. She’d never thought him cruel—but no, she could see in his face that his self-absorption was built on a foundation of immaturity. There were only two years between them, yet they yawned as wide as any canyon. “Listen to yourself!” Aurea found her hands spread wide, fanned open with the force of her anger. “You think your greatness is so all-encompassing, so inevitable, that you deserve an audience? Maybe instead you should think about how I wanted one of the Sixteen just as much as you, once upon a time, only I had to be reasonable. I refuse to let you make this hurt all the worse just because you can’t imagine what it’s like to want the impossible and know it’s impossible.”

She whirled, folding her arms over her chest so she didn’t catch her fingertips on the rusty metal of the doorframe. Dominic may have shouted something after her, but she stamped hard enough in each running step on sandy soil she didn’t have to hear him. He hadn’t intended to hurt her with his thoughtlessness, she knew that well enough, but her chest felt hollow all the same.

Eventually, she slowed, finding herself on a new length of the ancient road and looked up to the stars as she hugged her field coat around herself.

But the stars were more than in the sky, they were in the air, as if sparks had been thrown up by a bonfire at her feet that could not be seen. Thousands, a swirling cloud that surrounded her with their pricks of light.

Chosen— Chosen— Do you accept?

Chosen— Voices layered at the edge of her hearing, the edge of her understanding, most unintelligible or perhaps in another language. Or an older language? Here and there, a word dipped into understanding after it had begun without it as if from a trick of poor pronunciation.

More likely she was creating it wholesale in her mind from the wind. “My brother’s that way,” Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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she said with a tip of her head, sharp humor aimed inward, to make the voices seem all the more unreal contrasted with the reality of her own voice.

Doesn’t understand— She doesn’t— Do you deny us?

She doesn’t understand the consequences for the Warded Lands— The voices fell briefly into accord then, impossible for Aurea not to understand:

Do you accept? Do you deny us?

Understand, yes, but not understand at the same time. These must be the Ancestors speaking to her, but they couldn’t mean— “Me?” she said, word tumbling out past the hope that filled up the hollow ache in her chest.

Filled it up too fast, until it burned because she knew it wasn’t true. The Ancestors couldn’t really have chosen her. Another moment more, and she’d have found the point where she’d misheard, misunderstood.

Consequences.

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A low sound now, one Aurea… knew? Out of context, and nearly too late before she understood. Water. Rushing water, the instants before a flood. Instinctively, she wanted to get out of the wash, but she wasn’t in a wash; she was on level ground stretching to where rocks reared up in preparation for the mesas on the horizon.

It raced between those mesas. A dark hummock. A dark wall. Brown, she would have expected in the daylight, but black now, visible as reflection, not color. A reflection of stars, or perhaps it was filled with stars, snatching the hovering bonfire sparks out of the air around her like the debris a real flood would have gathered.

“Dominic!” They had to get to safety—where was safety?—but Aurea was running for the ancient building already. Her mind caught up with what her instincts had already known: the walls might be their only chance to blunt the force of the water, give them something to cling to until it was spent.

He appeared in the doorway, staring at her, not at the water. “Inside!” she screamed, but it was too late now, and the water plucked at his legs as Aurea reached, reached with everything in her body and caught a handful of his sleeve. And then she was caught up, too.

Tumbling, no up and no down, only that handful of fabric and then the burning of her lungs.

She tried to curl in her limbs, but the water had too much control of her for that, and she felt every scrape and slam as she dragged past the brush that hadn’t been plucked up. By dumb luck, they didn’t find another wall with their bodies.

Aurea let the water take her limp body, saving all effort for the grip of one the hand on her brother’s sleeve. Still alive, but without air, burning settling into her chest and onto her skin. She opened her eyes, desperate to see a direction to strive for air, and the stars surrounded her, stinging where they touched.

Stars above and stars below, and when Aurea brought her useless magic to her fingertips, the sparks touched like moths along the whole of her hand and did not sting so badly as they settled and stayed. Sparks down her wrist and arm and tugging. She was… rising? That was up?

Aurea managed one massive kick and gasped in the air and the gray faded from the edges of the world though she was still whirling along in the rushing water. She dragged Dominic up too, a flicker of brown skin lighter than the water beside her. She was forced down in return, water closing back into her mouth.

But a new breath had given her thought, for however brief a moment. If her magic called the sparks, she would call them with all she had. She had never done so before, but she imagined the feel of light across her neck, to her chin.

And she rose, bobbed, sting-sting-sting across her skin and then it faded as two breaths, three breaths made it into her lungs and she couldn’t see if Dominic was breathing too, but he floated on the surface with her.

Floated and eased down with the slowing of the rush forward. Aurea’s ankle found a tangle of sage, and it pulled her feet from under her but then held them, and the water drew out from beneath her. They were left, the two of them, stretched beyond that sage, sandy mud beneath Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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cheek and hip and elbow. A realization similarly remained, sprawled across her mind. Not water, wild magic. With only a year until renewal, part of the warding must have failed.

Aurea retched, proof enough of her conclusions when she brought up no water. She curled into herself and then up to her knees. Dominic? He did not move, so she scrabbled at his face, covered with the black plastering of his hair, trying to find evidence of his breathing. She increased the curl of his body on its side, hoping that every moment would be the cough, the retch she’d suffered herself, but there was nothing. What were the effects of wild magic breathed in? What could she do for him?

She had no better idea than to treat it as she would a drowning. Onto his back. Compress his heart. She was shaking, fit to shake apart, couldn’t find the clasp of hands and positioning of them she needed, but she had to. The sparks drifted down around her, uncaring in the lightness of their movements. “If I agree, will you save his life?” she sobbed.

Save it from what?

Nothing to save him from— Not real.

Dominic coughed, curled for onto his side on his own, and choked in a huge, sawing breath.

Tears slipped free of Aurea’s eyes, their tracks leaving real moisture on her skin. “What was that then?” She collapsed back on her heels, hands on her knees hanging open. There was no strength in them to hold anything else at the moment.

A vision of the consequences if the warding is not renewed. The wild magic would sweep all before it.

The voices at the very edges dropped away for the plainness of the explanation, then surged back up again in their forgotten languages around Aurea. Her next sob broke her answer in half.

“You don’t have to convince me of the need for the warding!”

But you deny us. You deny your choice.

Aurea let her head hang. It was easier, somehow, to speak to the voices of the Ancestors if she saw nothing rather than attempting to find embodiment among disconnected sparks. “Do I have a choice then? Or were you showing me that if I refuse, I doom all who live in the Warded Lands?”

You are the best of those who stand, for your spirit. If you refuse, we will take the second best. Your choice is whether second best is good enough.

Aurea wasn’t wet any longer, but her laugh felt so, sodden and uneven. She clasped her brother’s shoulder. “You’re wrong to call him so, but that doesn’t matter. Take him, then.”

Not second best— Your brother will never have any of the Sixteen.

Worst— The sentence was no less irrevocable for being buried in the susurrus of the many sparks.

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Aurea snapped her head up, gaping. “But—his magic. The Sixteen come to mages, and he is so strong…”

His magic leaves no room for a spirit.

Even without her brother’s study of the century old accounts, Aurea could see it now: who would speak of, or even remember, small childhood magic with the grand majesty of a spirit and the subsequent warding to sweep all before it?

Small, small magic like her own.

You are truly so set against it?

Another sodden, sobbed laugh. Aurea tilted her head up and up to the far stars; those were at a distance she could stand. “Once, I wanted nothing more. But I thought I couldn’t—now, I don’t—I don’t know how to define myself any longer. What am I now?”

The Ancestors were as silent as a night without wind, which Aurea supposed was only fair.

Her definition was not their question to answer.

“I accept.”

She was falling back, falling forever, or falling until the back of her head hit the ground as she sprawled. The impact knocked the air from her lungs a final time, knocked her eyes closed.

When she opened them again, dawn had stolen past, for her brother’s face was clear above her and etched with concern. “Aurea…” He reached for her cheek, then brought up the light of his magic just above his shoulder. It webbed connections to his skin in the strangest way— something she’d never seen before.

She abruptly realized what he reached to touch, bringing her fingertips up to it first. Small lumps, including the “star” of her original mark, along the side of her face. There was little point in her trying to read the constellations by touch; even for someone looking on the final mark, it required careful comparison to the night sky—or a chart in their day and age. When the Sixteen stood with their backs to their directions in Centerpost at midnight on the summer solstice—or one day later during the grand celebration—the stars on the sides of their faces were a twins to those in the sky.

But the secondary intercardinals had only a small wedge of stars to compare, eyebrow to cheekbone, increasing to the cardinals with stars from center forehead to the corner of the jaw.

That she should be able to feel. Dominic spoke before she found an edge, however. “It’s the North Star, Aurea. The leader, the anchor.” She found the largest star on her skin at the apex of her forehead, impossible to mistake. He brushed his touch across hers, then withdrew it.

She tracked the movement, and he made some small sound in his throat. She sat up properly and cleared her own throat. “Dominic, I’m sorry—” “No.” He glowered with the intensity of his denial. “Your eyes—the photographs don’t do it justice, that’s all.”

Black. That’s what the photographs showed. No white, no colored ring of iris, just black.

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something of a few small stars, and a way to guess at the direction of gaze. She sat up, searched her brother’s face, and he met and held her gaze without flinching. “What do you see, Aurea?”

A web of magic living under her brother’s skin. The nearest ley overlaying the world around them without obscuring it. The web and ley both were vibrant with a color she did not have a name for—a color separate and somehow rotated at ninety degrees from all the mundane colors she knew. Web, irrigation system—those descriptions for the magic fell far short of the true three dimensions of the network, but she had no better words for it at the moment. But she had not forgotten who was asking her. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“No. Yes. I—” Dominic bit his lip, emotional state suddenly revealed in the strength of the gesture. He did not draw blood, but it was a near thing. “Think I should wait. Perhaps later.”

There was much to be amazed by, at the moment, but all of it paled beside the amazement Aurea felt hearing her brother grow up between each of those words. She had planned to say nothing more, but that changed abruptly. It might be kinder for him to begin his own redefinition as soon as possible. “Dominic—the Ancestors told me you won’t ever…”

“I heard.” He dropped his head. “They’re right. You’re the best choice.”

The light around them had been steadily increasing, and now the first rays of the sunrise slipped past the mesa to the east and slammed into the two of them. Aurea shrieked and pressed her hands to her streaming eyes. She’d known this, she was remembering it now, that the Sixteen were blind in daylight, but she hadn’t realized it would hurt. The burning eased slowly as she curled over her knees, but when she tried to peel her hands away even a little, the light thrust its way in, orange-red, even through her eyelids.

“It’s all right. I came prepared.” Dominic’s touch alighted on her shoulder, apparently just as a promise of further comfort, as he touched her head next, dropped a bar of fabric over her eyes, bound it at the back of her head.

Aurea investigated it with her fingertips when her eyes had ceased to scream quite so badly.

A soft fabric, damped in places by her residual tears. It must be a scarf he’d brought—in anticipation. “Thank you. I don’t remember reading anywhere about how I’d need this.”

“I didn’t either. I just thought… it might be useful.” Dominic’s words bent in the middle with the weight of the disappointment that must be burning in his own chest, but he smoothed them by the end, and Aurea offered him the gift of pretending not to have noticed.

She made it to her feet all on her own, but once she got there, she found herself so directionless as to have the sensation of falling right back again. “Aren’t the Sixteen supposed to return before dawn? I delayed us—and if we moved while in the vision, the others won’t even know where to start looking for us.” She whirled around, absurdly searching for landmarks. “Do you recognize anything? Or is there something you could describe, speaking at a distance?

Maybe we could follow the ancient road back, if we can find that?” She growled, heartrate ratcheting up with the speed of her worries. If they couldn’t find a way back soon enough, they needed to find shade for the heat of the day, water— “Aurea.” He’d said her name some few times before, but he only broke through into her Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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thoughts when he took both her hands. “Aurea. We hardly moved at all. I recognize where we are.” He took a long, deep breath, audible in its coaching; when she finally imitated him, he squeezed her into an embrace.

When he stepped back, he slung an arm close over her back, nudged her gently into motion.

“Follow me.” She had to realign, redefine one more time, but she managed to relax into his touch.

It was a comfort, she told herself, to think that once her new identity settled, she had a direction to point herself for the rest of her life.

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THE BLOOD PLAGUE OF PRAGUE

By Andrea Kriz The tank’s been impaled I see as I step up on its hull. Spikes twist above me, their blackness tinged crimson by the dying sun. They pierced clean through the thickest part of the armor— armor I’ve seen stopping artillery shells, rockets—these things. They forest the entire square.

Worming over a bicycle here, upending a telegraph pole there. Across the cobblestones, a tram ripped free of its wires teeters on its side. Through its creaking, a slow drip. More of the sludge, half-hardened, flows down its seats and through its doors.

“A survivor of the plague,” Doctor Engel explains beneath me. “His body’s reaction—was disturbing to say the least.”

My reflection stares back at me from the nearest spine. Skin nicked by razor, the hooded eyes of a man kept awake a week straight. By orders that came for me just as I’d finished my last assignment in the wastes of the Russian front. A dossier that contained only a few cryptic sentences and a ticket to Prague. The entourage met my train at an outskirts station. Drove me up to a fortified Castle overlooking the city and refused to let me leave my quarters until today.

The last time I saw Doctor Engel, I was on the verge of death. I can’t say I’m delighted to meet him again, especially under these circumstances. But beneath its bandages, my right arm twitches of its own accord. It reaches toward the sludge.

“Don’t touch it!” Engel says a bit too late.

I tear off my glove, hurling it away. The muck eats away the leather like acid. I suddenly notice a total absence of life in the vicinity. It’s summer. But no birds sing in the leafless trees.

Only the knot of soldiers assigned to us whisper, shifting their rifles uneasily.

“This is all blood?” I ask. “From one survivor?”

Engel shakes his head. I peer down the turret and as my eyes adjust to the dimness, make out a splattered pair of goggles, the green-grey shreds of a Wehrmacht uniform. This spike didn’t erupt from beneath the tank—but from within.

“These were our soldiers,” Engel says. “And the civilians too.”  A case of hemokinesis. I’ve fought those with the power, of course. It’s an ability that often arises in those of degenerate blood. To the extent that the SS dedicated an entire security division to their disposal in the occupied territories. Hence, my presence here. My services have been in high demand since the invasion of Poland, the start of the war, a few years ago. Much to the chagrin of my parents—hunters trained in the old ways who turned up their noses at working with the Nazis—I quickly rose through their ranks. There was no work left for me in the Black Forest after all. Our ancestors had all but purged that region of beasts. Only leaving a few tribes deep in the wood for us new generations to hone our skills on. Those savages usually Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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shape it into weapons, I learned at an early age. A sword for example, like that of Bruncvik—the famous Blood Knight—of Bohemian legend. Easy enough to dispatch by modern means. But what Engel seemed to be suggesting—control of blood outside one’s own body?

By the time we rejoin the others, the sun has dipped below the clouds. The houses we pass, so charming in the daytime, grimace over us like gargoyles now. In the flicker of the occasional streetlamp, I see the walls ripple with red, feathery motions. Posters. Out of curiosity, I stop to read a few. Murder – death. Arson – death. Black market – death. By decree of the ReichProtector, Obergruppenfuhrer Heydrich.

“They call him the Hangman of Prague,” our translator whispers.

“Is that so?”

“Even more so after the assassination attempt.”

He’s a mousey man, plucked from the bowels of Petschek Palace—the Gestapo headquarters—not looking particularly grateful for the favor, considering. He keeps staring at my right arm, encrusted with bandages that haven’t been changed in days, flinching every time it twitches, every time I speak. And other than my speaking, there is not a soul, not a sound.

“Where is everybody?” I demand.

“The curfew is eight, Untersturmfuhrer,” Doctor Engel says evasively.

“For the Czechs. What about the Germans? Other patrols?”

“Everybody fears the blood plague.”

“He’s got all the troops massed up there, around the Castle,” the translator interrupts. “The Hangman. Every night, he closes off all the roads. You’ve been staying there, right, Untersturmfuhrer? Then you’ve seen it. No one’s allowed to enter until dawn.”

“Silence!” Engel roars.

The translator shrinks. The soldiers stare with a listlessness that suggests they’ve seen this scene play out a number of times before.

“The Protector’s a brilliant man,” Engel continued. “I was with him in Berlin. Reichsfuhrer Himmler himself looked to him for advice. He hasn’t been the same since the assassination attempt, that’s all. And now the plague, overrunning the very city the Fuhrer entrusted him to protect. It’s our job to eliminate the problem at its source. The survivor.”

His eyes take on an unnerving sheen as he turns to me.

“We must fight creatures of the abyss. With the abyss.”  I catch sight of one of the city’s innumerable steeples and grind to a halt. My arm arches. A side effect of this limb, this gift the doctor gave me—the ability to sense those with degenerate blood. The soldiers fan out around every exit, grate, sewer in sight, while the largest surges forward. The door splinters before him. With the things one hears about occupied cities these days, I expect the church to have been looted, swarmed with refugees and beggars and the like.

But the darkly gilded statues, the pews—everything stands in its place. Only the withered lilies at the foot of the altar hint at its abandonment. I crouch down for a closer look and catch movement out of the corner of my eye.

One of the soldiers shuffles up beside me.

A shot rings out.

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Only then do I notice my gun, in my hand.

The bullet tears through the poor man. In that instant, I see my fate. The shells I carry were developed by Reichsfuhrer Himmler’s occult division with a core of silver and marrow—made to destroy those that ordinary weapons cannot. And that shadow hunched on the balcony above me, beneath the gleaming pipes of the organ, has somehow grasped this. No matter how I struggle, the barrel in my hands tilts slowly, inexorably, until it comes to rest beneath my chin.

But not of my own will. My very blood boils in my veins against me.

My right arm snaps.

The bullet ricochets off an arch. My bones burst through bandage, through skin, twining above me. My pistol clatters to the tile. The shadow leaps. For a moment, I impale her. Her. A woman in a white shift. She stares at me with starved, choking eyes. I hesitate.

“What’s wrong? Never killed anything that fought back before…”

Long enough for the sludge dripping from her throat to melt through bone. As I shriek, she lands on the carpet, catlike. A salvo of useless shots behind me, and she’s through the door.

I fall to my knees.

The remaining soldiers stare at me in silence. I can well imagine what they’re struggling to hide. Disgust. Shock. The same expressions twisting my face as I thrust my arm down, assessing the damage. The bones have fused into one, their ends stripped to a point. I manage to force them to a more natural size, stop the bleeding. But my mind balks at willing them back under skin. My hand, along with half my forearm, hangs limply by a flap of flesh. This I’m inexperienced in. Hardening bone to absorb impact I’ve trained; muscle to block shrapnel, I’ve mastered. But I do not like to be reminded that I am a monster.

Only Engel dares approach me.

“That was a woman,” I bark at him. “A girl. You told me the survivor was a man.”

“It was a man who escaped from us,” Engel says.

“How many are there?”

“Untersturmfuhrer, the survival rate is one in a hundred thousand—” I grab his coat with my good hand, slam him against a pillar.

“How many of them are there?” I scream.

It doesn’t matter, I realize, loosening my grip. I could barely stand against even one. That monster, twisting my blood to her own whims. Much less two. Three. Ten survivors. Unless I attained such power myself… but no. I must fight it. As the rest of my arm sloughs off, leaving only bone, I feel a bit of silver beating against my heart and it tells me: I must not give in. I must not become. I must remember. The hunter’s mantra my father taught me. What separates me from them. Them from me. I raise my left hand, clasp it against my chest instead. I am not a beast, I mouth. I do not kill for joy. I do not kill for lust… Engel staggers but regains his composure, setting his glasses back on his nose and rising.

“What’s the matter?” Engel asks. “You can regrow it, you know. Every ability the original owner of that arm possessed. They should’ve passed on to you.”

“I told you back then.”

“Even though they wear human skin, they’re beasts, right?” I woke in a field hospital raving, Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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Kriz

"Blood Plague"

grasping at the man who stood beside me, white-coated as an angel. “Even if they wear the skin of children. No human can have all that power.”

“Indeed. But why not use it to your advantage?”

“I won’t.”

“Even so,” Engel says. He takes a syringe out of his satchel. “We must return to the Castle at dawn. With results. The Protector sent you out here to finish a job.”

“And you?” I snarl.

A jab in the back of my neck. My body shudders, dulls. But I can no longer feel the bones beneath twisting, scraping to get out, at least. I take the bandage Engel holds out to me and wrap it slowly, painfully, around my stump.

“To make sure you do yours.”  We cross a bridge, looming with sculptures—I turn every few steps, seemingly catching one moving out of the corner of my eye—we knock on doors that no one answers and kick them in.

A variation of the same scene greets us every time. A meal rotting on the table, a radio left to static. Strange stains sunken into the floorboards. And always through the windows, behind us as we descend and set out again, far up on the hill, the spires of the Castle fading into the dusk.

“The plague got out of hand,” Engel admits, “and due to our carelessness, spread through the city. But the extermination of these survivors will end it.”

We’re standing in a silence that’s become familiar to us over these hours. In front of yet another building that seems utterly abandoned, despite the flags flying from its balcony. My eyes rest on the statue set into the alcove. A king in a flowing cape—or a lifeless suit of armor.

Impossible to tell with its helmet welded firmly shut. The figure, along with the entire corner, is plastered with more of that reddish sludge. The same cakes the automobiles skewed on the curb behind us, the gutter at our feet.

“Is that all you want to tell me?” I ask.

The dying light reflecting off his glasses masks his eyes. I’m reminded of the first time I met the doctor. In that camp that stank of death and excrement and more besides. Two of the prisoners he’d been experimenting on had manifested—powers—and overwhelmed the guards.

That’s when I’d been summoned. No sooner had I stepped toward them than a blossom of bone encased me. Those girls had remarkable regeneration abilities. But, at the cost of my arm, I managed to fire the decisive shot. The other twin stared at me with dead eyes. She grew her fingers. And ran herself through. I woke in Engel’s clinic with her strange limb grafted to my gaping wound. He did it save my life, Engel explained. But I don’t trust him. I think he did it to me to see what would happen, the bastard.

“We initially developed the plague in Lidice,” Engel says. “A small village about a dozen miles from here with some tenuous connection to the resistance. That was right after the assassination attempt, you see. The plague worked stupendously. Of course, the Protector did not believe me.

He sent such a battalion of men to shoot, to dig, to bulldoze that place down. But by the time they arrived, nothing of those villagers remained. And nothing would grow from the soil they had bled into ever again. The Protector was quite taken by that detail too.”

“That battalion,” I interrupt. “Were any of them infected?”

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Kriz

"Blood Plague"

“Of course not. You know the blood doctrine. You know such sickness cannot spread to us.

In fact, when the plague reached Prague proper, I myself strode among the patients as they lay dying—without any protective gear—just to prove that point.”

“Do not believe him,” the translator whispers as we begin to walk again. “After all. If the plague didn’t affect you, could you use that arm?”

“What do you mean?”

“Tell me. When you were up in the Castle. Did you see the Protector?”

That too had been something like a fairy tale. I’d heard the rumors, of course, that he’d grown increasingly paranoid after the assassination attempt, checking under tables for explosives before sitting down and the like. But the perimeter in the royal gardens, blocking everyone but a few from exiting or entering, couldn’t help but bring to mind a forest of thorns.

Even the soldiers sat tight-lipped in their sentry boxes behind their sandbags as we passed.

Inside the Castle itself, servants made themselves scarce. Only the noise of some infernal dog echoed incessantly at all hours of the night through every hall. The Protector’s, I assumed. I’d been only too glad to leave that morning to focus on my assignment at last.

“The Hangman, we call him,” the translator says, laughing softly. “The Blond Beast. We’ve got a new name for him now. He doesn’t show himself to the world anymore, you see. Oh, he’s still lucid. But after the doctor brought him back from the brink of death, after the assassination attempt, he began to transform, they say. Yes, at dusk, like the rest of this city… he becomes…”

“Shut up.”

“The Mad Beast.”

For once, this arm and I move of the same will. New fingers emerge from my bandages in one smooth movement, formed entirely bone. I only mean to scare him. That’s what I tell myself.

But I want to test it. Want to feel his throat crushed in my hand, his every breath struggling against me. I know, I tell the silver pendant, the memory of my sister’s fingers, warm around my neck, that I’m sinning, that I cannot kill one who is not a beast, that this is exactly where my father said this work with the SS would lead—but in the rising moonlight, I feel a smile trickling across my face. In this city devoid of all beings, devoid of anything but sickness, I can afford to sin. Just to see that look in his eyes. Just this once.

“I am not afraid of you, Untersturmfuhrer,” the translator wheezes. “I have seen worse shapes than yours shambling down this city’s streets. I have seen the golems of legend past. I have seen… the future…”  When night falls, the sounds begin. The groans of the buildings we no longer try to enter.

The scraping of their rafters, the collapsing of their stones—as if the puddles within them have come to life, gnawing at them from the inside out. More than once we find our way blocked by rubble and are forced to take yet another detour. Past yet more ornate wooden doors, through yet more winding lanes. The further we go, the more they start whispering, our soldiers. They’d rather brave the Protector’s wrath, rather be sent to the Russian front than keep wandering.

Anything not to hear. The shrieking, the snarling. The further we go, the more difficult it becomes to blame the sounds on inanimate objects.

What am I waiting for? I wonder. Now that we’ve dropped the façade of searching. For unseen eyes, trailing us through the windows, to leap out and strike? Then we should climb up onto a roof, dig a foxhole, camouflage ourselves at a bend in the road—the memory of my Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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Kriz

"Blood Plague"

father whispers, the hunting lessons he gave me as a child—and let them come. What leads me on instead? Perhaps it’s that first tank I saw. Left completely unguarded, without a cleanup crew even in sight. This iron taste on my tongue. Perhaps it’s because, like the bandage around my arm I can’t help itching and twisting, I’ve begun to feel something come undone.

As we turn the corner, two sights abruptly meet us. A huge contraption set into the wall.

Clockwork moons, orange-gold, the lower one haloed by saints. And beneath them. Furtive movements. I signal and the soldiers raise their rifles, relieved at an order that might accomplish something at last. Ready. Aim. Engel obediently steps back. The creatures, engrossed in—what looks like a lump of clothing—take no notice. Fire. Only the one struck by my bullet falls. The others lunge. With gaping eyes, I see as they come closer, blind. I feel teeth on my throat, saliva dripping onto my face, before slamming my palm into its jaw. I hit it again, hardening my bones.

The creature’s neck snaps around. With a shudder it collapses, wormy flesh spilling over my chest.

I hear boots clattering into the distance, noises spewing from a bloody mess a few paces away. Engel couldn’t run as fast as the soldiers, evidently. But I won’t let the doctor die that easily. Because I see now what those things were tearing at. An SS uniform. With the hunter insignia, an eagle feather, on its lapel. Just like mine. I heave the carcass off me. With another shot, scatter the beasts hunched over Engel. A fine use for my last bullet. I hurl the pistol, skidding it across the cobblestones.

“The plague can’t spread to us?” I shriek. “Even the animals have become infected!” I kick at the remains—a dog, swollen to the size of a calf. Its ribs give way like overripe fruit. “No more lies. How many hunters have you brought here to die? What kind of madness is this?”

“The Hangman’s,” Engel coughs. “The Blond Beast’s.”

Behind his shattered glasses, his remaining eye has begun to reflect the moon, red.

“I could say something like… to refuse to obey him would’ve been death…”

“Not even he would be insane enough to order something like this.”

Engel laughs.

“Let me tell you about the Hangman,” Engel says. “He grew to hate this fairy tale town.

Having half your face blown off will do that to you. He looked forward to nothing more than burning it all down. But after the assassination attempt, he was on his deathbed. A nasty infection and no penicillin to save him. Luckily, I had just perfected my serum. Purified from dozens of test subjects. Designed to gift others their abilities—to create others like you. It turned out to have regenerative properties as well. But there was not enough left for his wife.

And the serum could not bring his sons back to life. It could not bring back his little daughter, led as if by two pied pipers by the would-be assassins away.”

He laughs again—attempts to—and gurgles instead.

“He ordered wave after wave of reprisals. But not even that could sate his bloodlust. The Fuhrer twisted his arm, forbade him from doing more. We need the Czech factories at full productivity for the war effort, after all. I whispered in his ear: Obergruppenfuhrer, I will create a plague for you. From my serum. It will spread among them like a fine rain. They will dissolve while we stand among them. Not even their corpses will remain. He could not… resist the poetry in my words…”

A serum? My heart thuds into my mouth.

“What did you inject me with back there at the church?”

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Kriz

"Blood Plague"

“Just a bit of saline…”

“Liar.” I kneel and raise my hand, feel it contort into a blade, sharpen to my will. “It was your plague, wasn’t it? You infected me! You wanted this to happen!”

“I really thought you were different. That you could do it. I really thought you could kill all those survivors. With a little help…”

He reaches up. And caresses my face.

“I only wanted to see your body pushed to its limit… my dear hunter.”

I hear baying in the distance and rise. His hand stays there, grasping. But still, as I leave him for the dogs, I can’t help but hear his words.

“I lied to the Hangman only once, you know. I told him the plague would infect the Jews, the Slavs, but leave our pure, Aryan blood unharmed. But I was wrong! It does not know how to differentiate between us. Only how to spread. Even the Hangman himself, up in his Castle, has become infected. Isn’t that delightful? If the blood leaves this city, it will infect the entire world.

To be able to manipulate lymph, bone, muscle, to have such wonderful control over your body.

Isn’t that what it truly means to be an Ubermensch?”  I stagger into the vast square alone. My steps echo and shrivel—dulled by the black sludge which carpets the ground, creeps like vines up the walls of the surrounding buildings. My arm throbs at my side. A swollen thing it’s become, bristling with bones. Like the veins that pulse along it, trenches furrow the stones beneath my feet. Skirting hissing mud, I limp to the edge of one. It’s overgrown with lumps. A line of guns, I see as the moon drifts out from behind a cloud, upended. Anti-tank rifles.

“Ah. So now the SS has recruited beasts to hunt down their own kind?”

A voice tolls. Piercing as those Gothic spires, silhouetted against the sky. I clutch my arm as it springs up of its own accord—and meet the eyes of a shadow sitting above me. Among the bronze waves of a sculpture that drowns the center of the square.

“I am not like you,” I tell him.

The shadow tilts his head.

“The hunter blood runs through my veins,” my voice echoes thinly. I remember my heritage.

My father. My sister. Our house at the edge of the looming trees. “Though I’ve been infected.

The hunter way will save me!”

“When the plague began, my people gathered here by the thousands,” the shadow hisses.

“As if their old legends could save them…”

In a flash, I’m a child again. Face to face with a boar in the wood. Armed with nothing but my bare hands. Back then, I looked everywhere for a ditch to crawl in, a tree to leap up. But this time, I lurch forward. Because maybe if I can see it—that glimmer in his eye—maybe I can have a bit more confidence that I can carry this through as myself, as a man. Instead, laughter. “…but nobody did.”

He’s clutching something. A bayonet, I see as he raises it abruptly, slashes his throat. The blood readily forms a blade, curving above him, a shaft for him to grasp. And there’s someone else here. I feel her in the shudder that runs through my bones, the wave rippling under my skin—as if an unseen puppet-master stands above me, jerking my strings. I whirl around, even as the corrosion eats away at my boots, my palms, and I tear one of the rifles free from the Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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sludge. Steel every ligament in my body as I aim it at the ground. And pull the trigger. A spike erupts after me, in the blast, as I hurtle upward. Twists, drying as it grasps my ankle. I tear out of it, slipping, scrabbling down the solidifying wave, and finally drag myself to a standstill.

I see. From this height, gasping. The blackness that steeps these roofs, this city—this is the dead. It’s just as Engel said. Not even their bodies remain. Only their plagued blood. A near infinite pool for these survivors to control.

I feel the scythe slice through the wind and duck. Another sweep, and it crumples the pillar beneath me. I raise my rifle—but the damn thing’s jammed. A spike bursts through my shoulder.

Another grazes my leg. I leap back, letting the first impale me, catch a foothold on the second.

Only to feel it give again. The scythe’s blade crashes against my rifle stock, raised just in time.

The roofs rush past. In front of me, that murderous face, teeth bared, inches from mine. He has the same eyes—as the twins I ended in that camp, as the countless ones I had hunted down as a teen. The ones who shaped their own bodies into weapons to protect their children, their villages, their souls. They all have the same eyes. The eyes of an animal on the edge of an abyss, backed up against a wall. As it should be. I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger on a beast who looked human up until the end. It’s that look that separates us. That makes me the hunter, gives me the right to stand on the other side. Eyes that, at this moment, might as well be a reflection of my own.

“You must remember,” my father told me once. Finding me in a clearing, dripping with the entrails of a boar I’d slain, he made me kneel, clasp my hands until my entire body ached. “You must not allow the blood to linger on your skin. You must not kill like a beast.”

I’ve got no choice. I will my bones to grow, arcing them toward the gash in my attacker’s neck. Too little, too late. In one flowing motion, he breaks my rifle in two. His scythe catches my shoulder, tears through my tunic. I feel a weight move. More than the searing pain of blade ripping through bone, sinew, muscle. It’s something I’ve kept in my inner pocket, close to my heart, all these years since I’ve left the Black Forest. A glint of silver.

Slowly.

Hurtling past me.

I hit the ground. Feel my spine cave at the impact, hack up blood. Then silence. Every vibration of steps shuddering through me. A dozen figures loom at the rim of the crater I made.

They’ve taken on strange shapes in the moonlight. Along with the crescent of the scythe, I see a white dress, spikes of dried blood bent into spider’s legs, others coiled into the facsimile of wings. And the words that whistle between their teeth—they’re no longer human, no.

“Will he melt like of the rest of them, you think? Or will he turn?”

I move to stand, but my hand slips. On warm liquid that pulses over my skin with every breath. My eyes move down and meet—intestines, worming from my torso. The other half of me I only glimpse darkly, my vision blurring with nausea.

“You’re weak, aren’t you? That’s why you’re in that uniform. You hate it. You don’t want to be helpless anymore. Why do you fight it? All of this power… is within reach.”

She dangles it from her fingers. A thread of shining silver. Such a slight, such a fleeting thing.

But it’s mine. Mine. I won’t let them take it from me. Tears start up in my eyes. My body aches, Hybrid Fiction March 2020

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"Blood Plague"

and my remaining hand curls, squelching on the stained stones.

“You see, there is no cure for the plague, good hunter.”

I can hear it. I can hear it. Them. Why wasn’t I listening before? Even as some small part of me, deeper and deeper down, screams. I must remember. What separates. I must not let it in. I open every part of myself, my pores, my skin to them. My blood mingles with the plague’s blood and the blood has a voice, singing sweetly to me. A siren song I must make reality. I lift my finger. A movement that dissolves my flesh into pure euphoria. For as my blood, our blood, scatters, sharpened into points, I feel the others pierced, I feel them tear. Feel them scream, and in that scream I feel myself wax and wane.

Did I get them all? Or is there still fighting to be done, a war to be won? It matters not. That effort drained every drop in my veins. I’ve got eyes only for the bit of silver, glinting in the moonlight. A locket. I pick it up. It takes minutes, with my gnarled fingers, to wrench it open. Even longer for my burning brain to begin to make out the words engraved within.

Dear brother.

Dearest little Hansel.

Please come home.

The spikes above me liquefy and begin to fall. Each drop acid on my skin. Through my clouded eyes, I catch sight of my reflection in a puddle and I start laughing. The sound comes out snarled, warped through a snout and rows of teeth. What a pretty picture book it’d make, this. A forest of horns coiling from my skull, my spine arcing the rest of my body down to meet them. When they find me here, the armies, the golems, the fairy tale kings, they’ll mistake me for one of their monsters. Twisted… in this twisted beast of a city…

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Until next time...

Hybrid Fiction March 2020

About the authors and artists...  Richard Zwicker is an English teacher living in Vermont, USA, with his wife and beagle. His hobbies besides reading and writing include playing the piano, jogging, and fighting the good fight against middle age. Though he lived in Brazil for eight years, he is still a lousy soccer player. His short stories have appeared in “Penumbra,” “Mythic,” “Stupefying Stories,” and other semi-pro markets.

Two collections of his stories, Walden Planet and The Reopened Cask, are available on Amazon.  L. P. Melling currently writes from the East of England, UK, after being swept around the country through his education and career. He is a Writers of the Future finalist, and his short fiction has appeared in such places as ARTPOST, ASM, DreamForge, and Thrilling Words. When not writing, he works for a legal charity that advises and supports victims of crime.

Contact: https://lpmelling.wordpress.com/

 R. Z. Held writes speculative fiction, much of it in the apparently disparate subgenres of space opera and weird western. Her Silver series of urban fantasy novels was published under the name Rhiannon Held. She lives in Seattle, where she works as an archaeologist for an environmental compliance firm. At work, she uses her degree mostly for copy-editing technical reports; in writing, she uses it for cultural world-building; in public, she'll probably use it to check the mold seams on the wine bottle at dinner. Contact: http://rhiannonheld.com/ or Twitter @RhiannonHeld  Andrea Kriz writes from Cambridge, MA. Find her other stories in Cossmass Infinities, Nature, and Tales to Terrify. Contact: Twitter @theworldshesaw

 Robert Bagnall lives on the English Riviera, between Dartmoor and the English Channel and is the author of the novel 2084. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines, websites and anthologies since the early 1990s. Contact: meschera.blogspot.co.uk  Aimee Uehara is a student currently working towards her BFA in Animation at Laguna College of Art + Design. She’s a fan of painting cool backgrounds and telling funky stories. Contact: www.aimeeuehara.com or Twitter/Instagram @byonsei  J. Anthony Hartley writes stories that almost invariably wander shamelessly between genres or blur the boundaries between them. Originally Australian, he now resides in Germany by way of the UK. Sometimes he writes poetry, but he's a different person when he does that.

Contract: Twitter @janthonyhartle1

Hybrid Fiction March 2020