Human for a Day (9781101552391) (28 page)

No one would come here. No one would know.

This place was too remote for other humans. Apparently she had liked that, with her animals and the silence. He, somehow, had taken advantage of it.

Then a voice: Who the hell are you?

I turned, and saw him, my heart pounding. I had lost my advantage—he knew I was there. By rights, he should have sprung, attacked me before I attacked him.

But he had not.

He did not look the same. He wore a robe over boxer shorts, and he was barefoot. The boots were nowhere to be seen.

Oddly—or not so oddly—he was smaller than I was. Shorter, not nearly as powerful as he had seemed from the ground. He gave off a faint stench I recognized.

He was afraid.

My advantage had come back. I had learned in those full moon fights how to use someone else's fear. You did not give them time to overcome it.

I gave him no time at all.

I launched myself at him. I did not fight him like a human. I fought him like a cat, with clawed hands and sharp teeth, going for the vulnerable spots, the soft underbelly, the throat.

He tried to push me away. He could not. He had no defense against frenzy, and I did not give him one.

I destroyed him, the way he destroyed the old black tom, the way he had tried to destroy the black-and-orange, the way he had destroyed the woman who had lived in this house.

I destroyed him, and when I was done, I studied him for a moment.

I could, I suppose, have called humans to help me with him or what remained of him. They would come, clean the house, take him away, find the woman, and know some of what had happened.

But this house was remote, isolated. It had checks coming in and bills being paid. And he had an identity, one he was leaving behind.

I could clean this place. I could stay here. And I could bring in Others. I knew where they lived, how to tame the feral ones, how to make the lost pampered cats safe. I would leave the broken window alone for those who did not like being confined, and I could find food. Eventually, I could learn enough to survive, only not as a destroyer.

Cats buried excrement all the time. They buried excrement to hide traces of where they were, what they had been. He was excrement. I could put him deep in the ground, so no one would scent him.

No one would look. I would make certain of that.

I continued to study him—or what was left of him. I could carry him, and dig a hole for him. I could clean the walls, and figure out how to live here.

Or I could claim it as part of my territory after the humans had cleaned it out. It would take them a long time to settle the accounts, to figure out what had happened to the woman, to find out who he was.

Besides, I did not like to be confined.

I picked up the phone and dialed 911, but said nothing, leaving the phone off the hook. I knew that would work, because I knew human details, although I did not understand them.

Someone would arrive, take the body away, and remove the smell of death. They might board up the window, but they wouldn't close all of the crawl spaces. I would find a way in, or my pride would as I continued to form it. We would eat the food of the nice man and we would sleep out of the rain and we would be safe, or as safe as we could be, here at the edge of my territory, in my world.

At the last minute of the twenty-fourth hour, when the catlike creatures came for me, I exercised my last wish. I returned to my old life.

And I did not regret it.

I am old now, older than the old black tom had ever dreamed of being. I am careful about how I make my way to the top of the hill. I know some young tom will try to take my turf from me, and I don't care as much as I thought I would. I would cede most of it to him, if he asked, so long as he left me the house.

The humans call it the death house. The nice man who still feeds me cautions me to stay away from it, saying no one knows what happened there. I do not tell him I live there now, with other ferals and the occasional refugee for whom I must find a home.

My original Others look healthy and younger every year. They have now moved to the windows, and their eyes have less fear. I have not told them what I did. I do not know how.

But on late summer afternoons, I imagine doing so as I doze in my safe place. I imagine telling the old black tom about my choices during my Bargain.

I like to think he knows what I did.

But he probably does not.

His life ended on that overgrown driveway. Mine will end in the woods nearby. When the time comes, I will leave my house, my territory, and die the way my kind does. Alone, so that no one follows the stench of death.

I like our ways. I understand them.

And while I remember all that I have learned about the humans, I still do not know what it all means.

I'm not sure I want to.

I am simply glad there are the nice ones to balance out the destroyers.

I no longer wish I could be different. I like my life. I like the choices I have made. And I like sleeping here, on my porch, in the hot, hot sun.

David D. Levine

 

 

 

 

T
he fence around Dr. Diabolus's lair is twenty feet tall, electrified and topped with razor wire. I'd expected no less. From one of the many pouches at my belt I pull a pair of acorns and toss them at the base of the fence.

I exert my special power. Each acorn immediately sprouts, roots digging through asphalt as the leafy stem reaches skyward. Wood fibers
KRACKLE
as the stems extend, lengthen, thicken, green skin changing to grayish bark in a moment. Leaves
SSHHH
into existence ; branches reach out to the neighbor tree, twining themselves into rungs.

Before the twin oaks have reached their full height I spring into action, clambering up the living ladder as it grows, creeping along a limb even as it extends over the razor wire. It's a dramatic, foolhardy move, but I can't delay—Sprout is in peril! The branch sags under my weight, lowering me to within 10 feet of the ground, and I leap down with practiced ease.

Again I concentrate, and the two trees wither away behind me, a gnawed patch of asphalt and a few stray leaves the only sign they'd ever existed. I feel their pain as they wilt and die, but I don't want my intrusion discovered sooner than necessary. The loss of their green and growing lives is just the latest of the many sacrifices I've made. I press onward.

Slippery elm makes short work of the side door lock; mushrooms blind security cameras and heat sensors. These bright corridors, humming with electricity and weirder energies, are cold places of steel and concrete, offering me no plants or plant matter to leverage my powers. I've faced worse. I prowl quickly, silently, keeping my head down, all senses alert to any trace of the kidnapped Sprout.

Voices! I duck into an alcove as two of Dr. Diabolus's goons round the corner. As soon as they've passed I spring out behind them, tossing seeds at their feet. Fast-twining English ivy ensnares one before he can cry out, but the other evades its tendrils. “Phyto-Man!” he gasps.

POW!
my fist responds. He drops cold beside his still-struggling comrade, whose eyes glare with hatred above his smothered mouth. I direct the ivy to bind the unconscious goon as well, so he'll raise no alarm when he awakes.

Even their underwear is synthetic fiber. Dr. Diabolus is thorough, I'll grant him that.

Deeper and deeper into the cavernous lair I probe, keeping an eye on the pipes and conduits that line the ceiling, smaller leading to larger, following the branch to find the trunk. I know Dr. Diabolus; wherever he's holding my sidekick it will be near his latest contrivance, and all his inventions require massive amounts of power.

If only he'd gone solar instead of stealing plutonium, we might have been allies.

At last I come to a massive, vault-like door, all steel and chrome, set in a concrete wall into which many thick conduits vanish. But nothing is more persistent than a plant. I tuck dozens of tiny dandelion seeds into the crack between door and jamb. Their indomitable roots reach deep, swelling and prying, until with a
WHANGG
of tearing metal the door bursts from its frame.

With my own muscles I wrench the shattered door aside and burst into the chamber. Dr. Diabolus turns to me, cape swirling. “You disappoint me, Phyto-Man,” he sneers, his artificial eye glowing red. “I expected you here half an hour ago.”

“Traffic was terrible,” I quip. The chamber is dominated by a complex machine, seething with arcane energies that make my head swim, but there's no sign of Sprout. “What have you done with my sidekick, you fiend?”

“I sent him to . . . the
N
th Dimension!” He pulls a lever on the control panel before him. A ten-foot iris of blue steel in the center of the machine
SNICK
s open, revealing....

Looking into the opening makes my eyes feel like they're being pulled out of my head. It's as though all the colors of the palette have somehow been smeared together with . . . others . . . forming impossible combinations of hue and tone that swirl sickeningly. But worse than that, the weird amalgam of color seems to
bend
. . . around a corner that isn't there. It's painful to see, even harder to look away.

CHANGG!
Something hard and cold fastens onto my bicep, breaking the spell. “What?” I cry. Before I can move, a second steel claw
CHANGGs
onto my other arm.
CHANGG! CHANGG! CHANGG!
I'm caught like a fly, steel bracelets ringing my arms, legs, and neck. Jointed metal arms haul me off the floor, suspend me in the air before the gloating Dr. Diabolus.

“HAHAHAHAHA!”
he laughs as I struggle in vain. “You've foiled my plans for the last time, Phyto-Man!”

“If you've harmed Sprout—!” I growl through clenched teeth, straining against the imprisoning metal.

“My dear Phyto-Man, I must confess . . .
I don
'
t know!
” He works the controls and the arms propel me, none too gently, toward the yawning portal. The uncanny colors swirl crazily, filling my vision, seeming to tug at every fiber of my being. “But whatever has become of your Sprout, you will shortly be joining him there.
Bon voyage
, Emerald Avenger!”

The arms thrust me forward. With a
SPRANK!
the five claws open simultaneously, flinging me into the swirling abyss.

 

A hard, gritty surface presses against my side. I'm cold, my head is spinning, and everything hurts. There's a thin, rushing sound off in the distance. Traffic?

I sit up and open my eyes. And immediately I wish I hadn't.

There's nothing to see but a cracked and filthy concrete floor and my own hands, but they're all wrong . . . seriously wrong. The floor curves
away
from me in every direction—the same impossible curvature I'd seen in Dr. Diabolus's portal—despite the fact that it looks and feels flat. And the surface looks like . . . like concrete multiplied by itself. Cracks are crackier. Grit is grittier. It's all realer than real; it pounds on my eyes as though I were staring into the sun, though there's barely any light. And the color is not just gray, but a weird amalgam of thousands of different grays blended smoothly together. A whole shining rainbow of grays.

My heart is pounding. I've faced death many times, fought monsters, escaped from traps, but I've never experienced anything this disturbing. Always before the threat came from outside, but now it's me—my own perceptions—that have changed.

My hands, too, are a disconcerting, amplified version of themselves. I turn them before my eyes, and as they rotate I seem to see both sides at the same time as the front. In color they are . . . kind of an ultra-pink, not the plain pink I've seen every day of my life but an eye-hurting blend of unnatural shades. Pinks that don't exist, have never existed. And as I look more closely I see disturbing swirls of texture in my skin, spiraling like microscopic galaxies, like nothing I've ever seen before.

I swallow and rip my attention away from my own fingers. Have I been drugged? I shake my head hard, but that just makes the headache and dizziness worse. I pound my fists on the ground, but though I feel the impact and the pain there's no comforting
THUD
, just a muffled thump so faint and distant I might as well be imagining it.

“Hello?” I call. No, nothing wrong with my hearing; my voice bounces back to me from the darkness, echoing off the distant, unseen walls.

To my surprise there's an immediate reply. “Michael ?” The voice is heartbreakingly familiar. I feel a twinge of hope.

“Sprout?” I peer into the darkness, hoping for a glimpse of green tights and pointed shoes. It's a ridiculous outfit. Why have we never changed it?

And why have I never wondered that before?

“It's me, Michael. Richard.”

A familiar figure appears in the dim distance, but with everything so strange here I can't afford to relax. “Is this a secure area? We should stick to code names . . .”

“No need. There's no Sprout here, and no Phyto-Man either.”

Worries spring up in my mind—impostors, hypnosis, possession, brainwashing—but I decide to bluff it out in case there are unseen observers. “Well, I'm here now, Sprout.”

“This all seems very strange, I know, but don't worry. Everything will be all right.”

Despite his reassurances, there's a strangeness about Sprout as he approaches. He's wearing street clothes, in colors and textures as hallucinogenic as everything else here, and his face combines familiarity with an alien super-reality exactly as my own hands do, but the really disturbing thing is the way he moves. Each step flows into the next with a weird gliding motion that propels him forward seamlessly, without transitions. It's like he's rolling toward me on a treadmill, constantly cresting a hill that isn't there. I push down feelings of nausea and . . . and fear. Never in all my adventures have I faced anything as disquieting as this place. “Where am I?”