Undead and Underwater (2 page)
Read Undead and Underwater Online
Authors: MaryJanice Davidson
Themes (which I normally try to avoid) run rampant through these three stories, in particular women who have heavy responsibilities who (spoiler alert!) run away from them until (spoiler alert!) they realize they have to suck it up and step it up. As Hailey and Fred and Lara come to grips with unpleasantness they had avoided (consciously or unconsciously), I realized
I
had avoided seeing any commonality between them, save for their sarcasm and odd way of looking at the world. Which probably says something about me. Which I probably won’t touch with a barge pole.
In addition to being saddled with responsibility they feared as much as they loathed, they also had unlawful authority (Fred the Mermaid even flat-out says to Betsy the Vampire, “We have no lawful authority. Do you know how to make a citizen’s arrest? I don’t.”), annoying sidekicks, severe doubts about their place in the world, and an utter determination to protect their loved ones. Being tremendously flawed myself, I can relate to heroines who have, uh, quirks, so those are the ones who tend to jump out of my brain (
ka-sproing!
) and into my laptop.
My point, at last, is that while writing their stories I discovered that while all the heroines had avoidance issues, as well as the occasional tendency to retreat into but-why-is-it-
my-
responsibility-to-fix-
your-
mess whining, they also had a great capacity to love and to fight for what (and who) they loved, regardless of the potential cost to themselves. So in writing about them, I came to like them an awful lot, not in spite of those flaws but, yep, because of them.
I could never relate to the beautiful, kind, selfless, loving Disney princesses of my childhood. I tended to root for the fembots who were always running around trying to put the beat-down on Jamie in
The Bionic Woman.
Oooh, they were so scary when their girl-masks fell off (often, and inconveniently, during combat) revealing their horrifying fembot innards, but really, all they wanted was to belong.
And let’s not forget poor Lisa Galloway, who was so screwed up she not only had surgery to look like the bionic woman, while trying to replace Jamie, she really started to think she
was
Jamie. What a pathetic nut bag! Now there was someone I could relate to! Yay, Lisa, and listen, don’t worry about having trouble kicking your smoking habit; everybody smoked in the ’70s.
Hailey, Fred, Betsy, and Lara had one other thing in common; they all had Mommy issues, good and bad. Hailey’s mom bought her, literally paid money to get her. So while she loves her mom, she also thinks of herself as a baby who didn’t have a hospital ID on her ankle, but a price tag.
Fred and her mother, the gracefully aging hippie Moon Bimm, are as different as it’s possible for two people to be.
Betsy adores her mother but walks softly around her; the disintegration of her mother’s marriage by her father and his second wife had a tremendous impact on how Betsy views marriage—anyone’s, including her own.
And Lara and her mother aren’t even the same species. No, literally—Jeannie Wyndham is human; Lara is Pack. And destined to boot her mother out of a job, something she yearns for and dreads. I loved that these women could love their moms—fiercely and unapologetically—while at the same time wondering how,
how
did they ever come to be daughters of women so different from themselves?
Anyhoo, here they are: Hailey, Fred, Betsy, and Lara. And they are flawed up the yin-yang. Turned out I was okay with that; here’s hoping you will be, too.
Contents
Super, Girl!
For former boss Richard Jansen of Sulzer Spine-Tech, who once told me (when I was late to work after being stuck on 494 for three hours in a snowstorm, and HR suggested I claim those three hours as vacation time), “They really know how to take the human out of Human Resources, don’t they?”
And for Janice, who works for the State of Minnesota, and puts the human back in. vzyl
So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that’s on the worst day of my life.
—PETER GIBBONS, OFFICE SPACE
Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements.
—PETER GIBBONS, OFFICE SPACE
Asshooooooooles!
—THE COON’S RALLYING CRY, SOUTH PARK
Asshooooooooles!
—OTTO’S RALLYING CRY, A FISH CALLED WANDA
“If we had a billionaire like Lance Hunt as our benefactor . . .”
“That’s because Lance Hunt
is
Captain Amazing!”
“Oh, here we go. Don’t start that again. Lance Hunt wears glasses. Captain Amazing
doesn’t
wear glasses.”
“He takes them off when he transforms.”
“That doesn’t make any sense! He wouldn’t be able to see!”
—THE SHOVELLER AND MR. FURIOUS, MYSTERY MEN
“Oh, mother. I can’t believe you’re dying of old age.”
“Don’t cry for me, Tartine. I’ve had a full life. Oh, the things I’ve seen. The first Clinton administration. The Nagano Olympics. Microsoft Windows ’95. But I’m forty-one now. Time to die.”
—30 ROCK, “BLACK LIGHT ATTACK!”
“I’m not going to help you kill her!”
“Kill? I didn’t say
kill
! I said
neutralize
! It’s a neutral word . . . like Switzerland!”
—PROFESSOR BEDLAM AND MATT SAUNDERS, MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND
PROLOGUE
As John Doe dived out of the bullet path—or where a bullet would go if he lingered—he had time to wonder:
When did my life turn into a John Woo movie? Or a Road Runner cartoon? When my burglar parents named me John Doe so I’d have an automatic alias? This is all their fault: yes.
It really did start out simply. Crime ran in his family, and marijuana is a gateway drug. How else to explain how he’d gone from amiable, sleepy pot user to emaciated, stressed pseudo-ruthless cokehead dealer? It was once again trendy to blame the parents for everything from bleeding ulcers to a life of crime, but he never had a chance.
Dad: “There’s no point in trying to have a normal life. Rather than work hard and then throw it all away with reckless behavior, throw it all away while you’re still young. It’s the American dream!”
Mom: “Also, we don’t think you’re smart enough for college.”
High school guidance counselor: “Smart’s not the issue. You seem to have been genetically programmed for a life of crime. I wash my hands of you. And also any prospects I once had of making a name for myself in this field.”
Okay, maybe going from occasional pot use to dealing coke was inevitable, but bullets flying past my nose? Sirens shrilling in the background? What is this, the ’80s? How am I a cocaine dealer running from the St. Paul police? The only way this could get more terrible is if
she
shows up.
He groaned silently, then began to wriggle farther around the corner for more cover.
And me without my pastel blazer and artfully mussed hair. Oh, the humanity!
He sulked while he wormed his way to safety; as if all this wasn’t bad enough, most of the building was under construction, which meant traffic had been a bitch. He’d been told there was only one security guy at that hour, which was true. He was told the guard in question was a retired cop too pudgy and Minnesota-nice to pull his weapon, which was the opposite of true. He’d barely crossed the threshold into the coffee shop when the guy reached.
I just have that kind of face,
he acknowledged in despair. His gaze was naturally shifty. He had a tendency to pull in his shoulders when talking, as if awaiting a bullet, which happened a lot.
Everybody
had bullets. He didn’t walk, he scuttled. And, completing the genetic treason of his criminally minded family, he had beady eyes: small, dark, squinty. He had looked like he was up to something in the crib, for God’s sake.
Still: it took brass ones to turn one’s back on generations of family tradition. John Doe’s were made of fool’s gold, not brass.
Ah, terrible analogy. Fool’s gold? Maybe you should stop thinking about your balls and find an exit.
“Ah, very nice,” someone said behind him.
John Doe flopped over on his back like a startled turtle. A turtle in the middle of committing several misdemeanors and at least two felonies. “Where’d you come from?”
“The coffee shop next door.” The woman was looking down at him from a great height (at least to his perspective—he was five foot three) with an odd expression. It took him a moment to figure it out, because he was expecting fear or shock to show in her eyes and on her face, and that wasn’t happening. There were the crooks and there were the cops and there was everyone else. Everyone else either a) never noticed something was wrong, b)
did
notice and didn’t care, or c) noticed and were scared. The ones who noticed and didn’t care never engaged.
So he needed a few seconds to name the expression. Annoyed, he decided. Like nearly walking through a cross fire between an angry Minnesota-nice security guard and a convicted felon was going to inconvenience her.
And
let her coffee get cold; he saw she was holding a cardboard drink tray, with two steaming drinks in it. Yep: she didn’t want her coffee to get cold.
Well, he was sorry, but he was going to have to inconvenience her. It wasn’t his fault. His parents had willfully named him John Doe.
They never even apologized!
“Listen, I need a—” Meat shield? No; it wouldn’t do to freak her out more than she (probably) was. “A hostage. Just to get off the block.” And out of the city. And then possibly the country. It was summer in Australia, right? He’d always wanted to see the Sydney Opera House. “I won’t hurt you. Unless the cops make me kill you. Hurt you! If the cops make me hurt you. Is what I meant.”
“You are going to make me tardy, which I loathe.” She sounded pissy, not afraid. Which was . . . good? Hysterical hostages made everything harder. And noisier. “Inconsiderate thieving asshole,” she added.
Asshole?
She was striking—perhaps that was throwing him off. Tall, as he’d noted, with pale skin and small, close-set dark eyes. Not a blemish on her face, because the beauty mark hardly counted as a defect. Her hair was deep brown and a foil for the rest of her, like the color of the rich soil of a flower bed after it rained.
“So, you know.” He climbed to his feet, one hand brushing his knees (the John Woo–esque dive through the doorway had shredded his chinos, and why didn’t they ever put
that
in the movies?) and the other on the piece-of-shit .38 his gram-gram had given him for his bar mitzvah.
“Oh, I can’t believe my wittle baby is all growed up! Give Grammy some yum-yum kisses and then we’ll go shoot your gunny-gun!”
Jeez, Gram, you couldn’t give me one of your ex-husband’s
decent
guns? I was thirteen! I deserved a Desert Eagle at the least!
“So, I’m sure you’ve watched TV so you know the drill.”
“Stop now. Surrender. If your inept shenanigans do not make me much later, I’ll try to refrain from beating you to death.”
“Try?”
“Try,” she repeated in a voice so icy he actually shivered despite the rivers of sweat in his armpits. Then she added something that was stranger than this already-strange chat: “You haven’t left me a note, have you?”
So sad to run into a drunk, and at this time of the morning. Society is the
Titanic
after the iceberg.
He took a breath. “Listen, you’re not in charge here. I’m the one with the gunny-gun.”
Ah, hell. Even from the grave you humiliate me, Grammy.
“So you just get over here and then we’ll take a quick—What are you doing?”
She had popped the top of the first steaming drink with her thumb, upended the thing, and sucked it down in three monster swallows. He winced and rubbed his throat in unconscious sympathy. Then she did the same with the second drink.
“Hey, take it easy! Look, there’s no need to give yourself third-degree throat burns just to avoid me taking . . . you . . . hostage . . . buh . . . nnnnhh?”
Words failed him. Words had failed him because she was now eating the empty coffee cups—yes, she was biting off pieces of cup and chewing and gulping them down, and now she was—was she?—yes! Now she was eating the cardboard drink holder. And washing it down with the handful of nails she must have picked up at the construction site. She was gulping them down—three-inch nails!—like they were gummy worms.
“Oh my God! It’s you! You’re—”
“Do not,” she warned with a mouthful of casing nails.
“—It Girl!”
“Never say I didn’t warn you,” she said, and launched herself at him.
CHAPTER