Apexology: Horror Read online

  APEXOLOGY: HORROR

  AN ANTHOLOGY OF TERROR FROM APEX AUTHORS

  EDITED BY JASON SIZEMORE

  Copyright 2010 by Apex Publications and respective authors

  Apex Publications

  PO Box 24323

  Lexington, KY 40524

  If you like what you read, please check out our authors’ book at http://www.apexbookcompany.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction: Five Years and Counting by Jason Sizemore

  “It Tasted Like the Sea” by Paul Jessup

  “Summon, Bind, Banish” by Nick Mamatas

  “To Every Thing There is a Season” by Dru Pagliassotti

  “Life’s a Beach” by Alethea Kontis and Ariell Branson

  “Kusatenda Uroyi” by Gill Ainsworth

  “Lottery” by Gene O’Neill

  “Cerbo en Vitra ujo” by Mary Robinette Kowal

  “The Spider in the Hairdo” by Michael A. Burstein

  “The Dark Side” by Guy Hasson

  “With the Beating of their Wings” by Martel Sardina

  “Enough to Make a Devil” by R. Thomas Riley

  “Flash of Light” by Jason Sizemore

  “Transylvania Mission” by Lavie Tidhar

  “Inside Looking Out (or: Falling Through the Worlds)” by Mari Adkins

  “Powered” by Deb Taber

  “Disturbing Things” by B.J. Burrow

  “Eulogy for Muffin” by Jennifer Brozek

  “Hands of Heritage” by Elizabeth Engstrom

  “The Junkyard God” by M. Zak Anwar and O.M.R. Anwar

  “Bessie Green’s Thumb” by Fran Friel

  “Big Sister/Little Sister” by Jennifer Pelland

  INTRODUCTION: FIVE YEARS AND COUNTING

  It’s amazing what can happen in five years.

  I’m thinking of technology, in particular. And on a more granular level, the world of publishing technology has undergone quite the paradigm shift. In 2005 when I started Apex Publications, everyone in the small press felt that the end of the small press was a certainty (they still think this and have thought this for the past 30 years). Big publishing was quick to dismiss POD technology as the purview of amateurs; they wanted to continue to charge $10-$15 for eBooks without giving authors their share of the take. Despite the storm clouds on the horizon, the big publishing houses refused to even consider the onerous task of shifting the huge ships of commerce in a different direction.

  Five years later, we’ve got the agency model for eBooks, there’s an insane price war being waged by large companies wishing to be the proprietary software format everyone will read, and companies like Dorchester and Pyr strike deals with large POD printers to mass produce books.

  Apex has evolved as well. We started with a small perfect bound digest and now produce ten print books a year, a monthly digital magazine, and plenty of eBooks in seven different formats. I’ve always liked to experiment with Apex, in particular with technology, and what you’re currently reading is one of those experiments.

  Apexology: Horror began with one simple thought: How can I promote the authors on the Apex roster in a cost efficient manner? I’ve been following JA Konrath’s blog for years and he’s always been a proponent of cheap eBooks. Therefore, it was decided that I would do a horror e-anthology with reprints and a handful of original stories. I’d only charge $2.99 for an ad free version of the book. I’d give away a version with ads for our authors’ books for free.

  I needed a few more stories to round out the anthology. I know that many of the hardworking editors employed by Apex are also writers. I turned to them with the offer of being published in Apexology: Horror, reprint or original. To my delight, several of them accepted! The added stories pushed us over 100,000 words, but 0s and 1s are way cheaper than physical paper.

  I hope you enjoy this first edition of Apexology. Apex has been blessed by the talent that has worked with us. I’m blessed with a fine set of editors. If this e-antho does anything, I hope that 1) it entertains and 2) increases your interest in its contributors.

  Now I turn you over to the capable words of past, current, and future Apex authors and editors.

  Jason Sizemore

  August 16th, 2010

  IT TASTED LIKE THE SEA

  Paul Jessup

  There’s a weird movement going in the world of science fiction and Paul Jessup stands among the forefront of this movement. His novella from Apex Publications, Open Your Eyes, functions as a fine example of the weird with its surreal imagery (“Her lover was a supernova.”) and the central plot revolving around a viral language that melts the brains of those unfortunate enough to hear it spoken. Open Your Eyes has been often compared to the work of Samuel R. Delaney, perhaps the highest compliment an author of the weird (or really, the written word of any kind) can receive.

  Jessup is a prolific short fiction author. His work has appeared in Postscripts, Fantasy Magazine, Apex Magazine, and Clarkesworld. Paul’s first collection, Glass Coffin Girls, was released by the British boutique press PS Publishing. His latest is Werewolves from Chronicle Press. For more information about this weird author visit http://www.pauljessup.com.

  “It Tasted Like the Sea” first appeared in Glass Coffin Girls.

  —§—

  Cathy inspected the faces hung on the wall. Slack, emotionless bags of skin stretched onto brass hooks. Eyeholes, mouthholes, each wanting to be filled with shiny white rows of teeth and slick marble globes of sight. She wondered briefly if she should try one on and decided against it. Josh would not like that. He was very particular about his art.

  His apartment door opened at the end of the hallway, sending a shaft of light across the shadows, illuminating his skull with a thick radiance. Josh stood with the light outlining his drunken body, his face half shaven and a mostly empty bottle of rum in his hand.

  His shirt was stained, his hair pulled up into piles of black nests on his head. He stared at her down the hall, his eyes searching for some semblance of reality to transform the world of shadows into a concrete form. “What’s up? You okay?”

  Cathy sighed and walked through the hall. Briefly, the tips of her fingers brushed the slack skin. She shivered—the skin felt real. Leathery.

  “Yeah. I guess. You don’t look so good.”

  He coughed and hung his head. Light like wings danced over his shoulders. Cathy saw the apartment from behind and felt a dread. There were naked female bodies hung and slung over every corner of the room. Their faces missing. Just dolls, she thought. It’s his thing. His art.

  Just dolls.

  “Fuck. Nothing is good. Did you see that review? That fucking review of my latest show? That bitch. That cunt.”

  Cathy had. That was why she had stopped by—she knew that he would be like this. He was always like this when someone reviewed his work negatively. She also knew that playing stupid was a good tactic right now. “No, I hadn’t. It can’t be that bad, Josh. Come on. Let’s go out.”

  Josh threw the bottle on the ground. It clinked and rolled against the floor. “Yeah,” he said shutting the door behind him and cutting off all light from the hallway, “Yeah. Let’s get the fuck out of here. Let’s go where they love me, where they appreciate my genius.”

  Cathy sighed. “Sure thing,” she said.

  They went to his showing. This was the fourth time she’d gone to this show today and she felt the same way each time—disturbed. Broken. Abused. She understood why the reviewer had been so negative—the show was all female body parts. Faces as masks, limbs displayed in dumpsters—the female body destroyed, abused, broken and mangled.

  Then displayed as art.

  Cathy hated it. It made her feel awful, horrible and dirty. It made her ashamed to be a woma
n. And she hated Josh for it.

  If he hadn’t been there for her when Matt abused her and left her for dead—if he hadn’t called the ambulance and stayed with her for that month in the hospital—if it hadn’t been for all that she would stop being friends with him. She would have left him and his broken art and gone onto something else.

  Yet, he had been there for her. So now she had to be there for him. She walked with him past the mutilated bodies in realistic skin and textured organs. Just art, she kept telling herself. It is just art. She walked with him through the worst parts of the exhibits—the dissected bodies displayed in thin slivers of glass.

  And she heard the praise from the art collectors. Those fat and sweaty old men who put fists of dollars against Josh, teasing him like a stripper with a tip. They complimented and condoned this disgusting attack on the female form.

  And Cathy listened. Unable to shake the feeling of nausea that rolled around in her stomach like some drowning animal.

  Later that night she took him back to his room. Josh was barely human, too drunk to stand. He kept proposing to her and she kept turning him down. She had this fear in her gut—a fear that he would be like Matt in the end. That those figures weren’t just art—they were corpses. They were others like her who had fallen for him before he showed them what he was truly capable of.

  She stretched him out on a couch of female limbs. Severed legs and arms. And then she went into the bathroom and showered, and then fell asleep in the bathtub. It was the only room in the house not filled with limbs and eyes and faces of blank staring female objects.

  Cathy’s eyelids slowly peeled back. Crescents of darkness becoming whole moons of sight. And saw Josh naked on the toilet. His face staring at the floor tiles. His body covered in circular scars. He looked over and saw her.

  His eyes like diamonds, full of ageless will and wonder. She coughed and sat up, feeling strangely naked underneath all of her clothing.

  “Sorry about last night,” he said and stood, his penis flaccid and flapping against his leg, “I was possessed, you know? By regret. By so many things. This art show is perhaps the most personal of all my shows. Even more personal than that bit I did on Sweeny Todd—you know the one. The fat ladies and razor show. With the cave and the bed made of human hair. This one is even more important than that, even more personal. It is why I kept all of the failures here—all the broken and unmade pieces. This show is about me. About the memories of my childhood.”

  Cathy nodded. She pulled her knees up to her chest, making sure her skirt covered every inch of bare skin. “No problem,” she said, “I understand. Critics—they tear us all apart.”

  He laughed and walked out into the hallway. “I can make you something to eat if you would like. Eggs sound good?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “Eggs.”

  She stood up. Her legs shook, like two beams of a house trembling in an earthquake. She wasn’t sure why she felt so off, so horrified. Josh had never done her any harm. Never. Yet seeing all those body parts again- all of those scattered limbs- they brought back memories. Memories of a table leg crushing her face. Memories of broken ribs and her eye being jabbed at with a spoon as her ex husband tried to carve out her sockets like a jack o’ lantern.

  This show is personal for me too, she thought.

  Way too personal.

  The egg was round, white. A perfect circle, an eclipse. It was held in place on a small ceramic plate. She tapped it with her spoon, cracked it and peeled back the layer of shell like skin from meat. Beneath it she saw the bones of a baby chic suspended in an amber liquid. Staring at her.

  She looked up at Josh. He stared at her, as if expecting a response.

  “I can’t eat this,” she said, dropping the spoon on the table.

  “I’m sorry,” he said tearfully, “I thought that egg was empty.”

  She nodded, not believing him. “Well,” she said, “I should be going back home and get ready for work.”

  Josh ran over to her side. He was still naked, his skin coated with a thin layer of grey ash. His eyes were intense lanterns. He grabbed her hands with his. “Stay. For a little bit longer. You don’t have to go to work, right? Just stay with me. I can’t be alone. Not today. Things have been going so badly. It’s—it’s my art. You know? I think I have it right. I have her perfect, the bride and all that. But it ends up wrong, each time. And I need to start over again. I can’t be alone.”

  She got up and moved towards the hallway. She did not want to walk past those masks again, but preferred it to staying here. Staying in his living room, with the cracked and half collapsed ceiling and the wall to wall limbs and grotesqueries.

  “I have to go,” she said. And almost added, “before I go insane from your art,” but decided against it.

  He got on his knees, his head rubbing against her leg, his hands grasping hard onto her calves. Out of the corner of her eye she saw knives lined up against the north wall, stained with splashes of brown liquid.

  “Please,” he begged, “Please.”

  She kicked him away. Almost stepped on his face with the heel of her foot and then remembered how he had helped her. How he had set her free.

  “If you go,” he said, “I can’t promise I will be safe. I’ve been seeing things. I saw a naked man with the face of a dog, wandering around my apartment. He had a saw in his hands. It frightened me. You can’t leave me for the dog creature—you can’t. Remember how I helped you? Remember?”

  She sighed. This was a first for Josh—bringing up the past like that. He was the kind that lived in the now, in the today. He must really be messed up.

  She looked down at him. “Fuck,” she said, “All right. Just stop looking up my skirt. I’ll stay. And— and we have to get out of here. I need to breathe. You know?”

  Josh made a sound like a panting dog, and then stood quickly and did a little jig. Cathy knew she was going to regret this. She just didn’t quite understand how much.

  To her chagrin they spent the rest of the day indoors, listening to Josh talk about his latest show and reading the latest reviews out loud. Every time she mentioned leaving, going outside, going to a restaurant, he quickly changed the subject.

  Later in the day she went to the bathroom. After sitting on the cold toilet for a few moments she heard strange shuffling noises and a dog growling. And then the sound of meat tearing and a woman moaning as if in orgasm. Unable to urinate, she leapt up off the toilet.

  She opened the bathroom door to an empty apartment. All of the lights were off. The egg was still on the table, and next to it was a key and a note.

  The note told her she was locked inside. That the key was a key that could open any door except for the front door. And that she was free to roam his apartment and do whatever she wanted to until he got back.

  What was even stranger than this was that he had signed the note, “your loving husband, lord of these fine estates.”

  Cathy felt her stomach lurch. She felt her mind darken into stars and her bones quiver under her skin in a messy architecture of unease.

  What was going on?

  What had happened to Josh?

  What had happened to her?

  The apartment grew four times its size. The rooms became mazes, the body parts scattered everywhere. She carried the egg with her. It glowed in her hands like a tiny amber torch. She found her clothes and hair transforming with each movement—a long white gown with long flowing black hair.

  She saw the walls change, distort, transfigure.

  With each door she opened she found another horror behind it. A man with mice in his skull. A lady being drowned by monks. A demonic figure who was eating snakes and urinating on a half nude nun.

  Each room more strange than the last. In the final room she saw bodies of men and women skinned alive, flailing and howling on the floor. In the center of the room was a long dinner table. On it were many plates and forks and knives.

  In the center of the table was the corpse of a mermaid.
The scales glistened in her eggling light, blue and green and gold. The hair was orange and stained with blood, her face half smashed in. The other half of the face seemed so familiar. Cathy could not place it. Where had she seen such a face before?

  She walked up to the dead thing, touched the skin. It was cold and stiff. The shoulder and breasts were bare, showing off a half finished sexuality. An object of male desire with no actual procreation possible.

  She sat down. The world spun.

  She was still Cathy. She had to hold onto that.

  She sat in a gilded chair, the mermaid eyes staring at her from the table as she waited for Josh to return. As the hours danced by she saw ghostly figures walk past her. All female, all missing limbs and faces. As if they were the spirits of his art, searching for their missing body parts.

  Eventually Josh walked into the room. He wore a black coat with frilly lace choking up his chest and draping out of his cuffs. He smoked a long stem pipe that coated the air an overwhelming velveteen scent.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said woodenly.

  She nodded, not knowing what else to do.

  “I’ve had the cook prepare us this little aphrodisiac. It is said to prolong one’s life forever. How quaint, don’t you think my dear Valerie?”

  She nodded again.

  His eyes were still bright, still Josh. Yet—was he still Josh? Was she still Valerie? Or where they being ridden by some obscure half hidden thing, dreamed into being by a flittering shadow of a spirit?

  “Of course. We all know that mortality is a fool’s errand. How was your lordship’s evening?”

  He pulled out a chair and sat down. He clapped. Celestial spirits slid into the room with missing limbs, their ghastly appearance like sheets draped into a breeze. They laid bone filled eggs into lamp posts, lighting the room in a stomach churning green and golden hue.