The Monster’s Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

voice like a thousand shrieks filled his head, he centered the frame and pushed the trigger. White light painted the room like a flare. The shrieks reached a sudden raging crescendo as the newborn demon disappeared, and he had the fleeting sense of a forest of waving limbs, frozen in time. For a moment the doorway opened itself to him as through the camera’s window he glimpsed an army of impossible creatures writhing like a mound of earthworms within a tightfisted cavern of dripping stone. Then he remembered nothing, aware only of a strange feeling of loss, his own voice repeating the same phrase over and over like the words to a forgotten ritual in the sudden silence of the loft.

I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

Fowler waited for him in their regular booth. He looked up as Ian approached, and this time he could not hide the hunger in his eyes.

“Jesus, you take your goddamned time,” Fowler said. His voice buzzed like a radio losing its signal. Or was it something more? The sound of a man slipping between the cracks?

“Sorry. It won’t happen again, believe me.”

Fowler seemed appeased by Ian’s attitude. But he paused when the leather portfolio slid across the moistened table, something in Ian’s own eyes making him uncertain. He sensed a change here, a new confidence and strength that made him curious. Then the hunger seemed to overwhelm everything else. Fowler’s fingers touched the fold, opened it. “Wait,” Ian said. “I don’t want you to look at them yet.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Trust me on this. Take the portfolio and bring it back to me later. You’ll want to be alone.”

Fowler’s chubby hand shot out and grabbed Ian’s forearm. The grip held a little bit of desperation in it. Fowler’s fingers tightened, digging. “Ever see what the Taratcha do to a man? They’re not happy with killing you. They want you to live with the pain.”

Ian resisted the overpowering urge to shrug off the touch the way you might shrug off a bug. “I get it.”

“If you’re planning to cut out on me, think again. One word from me and you’re gone. Anybody you love, gone. Get that?”

“Whatever you say.”

“You know, I didn’t take to your new look at first. But I gotta tell you, it’s an acquired taste. Keep your chin up, as they say.”

Ian remained at the table for a long time after Fowler had gone. He did not touch the thick envelope that had been left for him. He ordered a drink, then another, gathering his courage.

The feeling of loss had remained with him for the rest of that night and into the morning. He had seen something in the thing, as gruesome as it was. Some spark of recognition, some kind of empathy.

The Art was the only thing he had ever truly been good at, and yet a part of him had always been ashamed. In his younger years he had frequently been asked where the darker sides of his talent came from, and when he tried in vain to answer he would often be faced with a look of pity or even guarded mistrust. What are you hiding, they seemed to be saying. His only reply was that he did not know.

The dim light in the bar hurt his eyes. Ian walked to the empty bathroom, hit the switch, and stood in the dark, bent over the sink and holding the cool porcelain with both hands. Finally he looked up. The mirror over the sink revealed a face that burned with its own light. He looked inward through his mind’s eye and saw a sea of writhing shapes, breeding and dividing. He imagined Fowler’s trembling fingers as they slipped open the leather flap, drew out the photographs, brought them close to his face: one photo, in particular, that had trapped his newborn son.

If you are able to photograph one, it will remain caught on film, Frost had said, until such time as you choose to look at the prints. They can get very angry at a trick like that. He imagined the explosion of flesh as his offspring, his spawn, did the work it had been born to do, erupting from the photograph and turning its rage upon Fowler, whose death would give Ian at least a chance to start anew.

His thoughts returned to Anna, and what she had said to him the last time they had spoken. You let me know if you ever decide to let me in. He dug his cell phone out of his pocket and switched it on. He didn’t know if he could survive when these two worlds collided, but he had to stop hiding. It was time to find out whether his two loves could coexist.

It took only a moment for Anna to answer.

SIREN SONG A KATE SHUGAK SHORT STORY by Dana Stabenow

… the Sirens, who enchant all who come near them.

— The Odyssey, HOMER

5.

THE WITNESS TESTIFIED in a calm, level voice, responding fully to the defense attorney’s questions but making deliberate, unhurried eye contact with the jury. Each jury member would meet her eyes briefly and then swivel their heads to look at the three defendants. The woman in the witness chair could have been any one of them, twenty years on.

The defendants were Pauline, Laura, and Linda Akulurak, ages sixteen, fifteen, and twelve, respectively. They were on trial for murder in the first degree, for the killing of their pimp, Dupre Thomas Jefferson, age twenty-eight, aka Da Prez, aka John Smith a time or two. He’d had a record going back to the age of nine, beginning in grade school in Los Angeles and migrating up the west coast of North America with him through Portland and Seattle and, lastly, Anchorage. He’d been tall and handsome, with a good deal of charm he had put to use in running a stable of prostitutes.

Jefferson dead was not quite as handsome as Jefferson alive, as the bullet that had taken his life had entered the back of his head at close range and had blown off the top of his skull. He had been asleep in his own bed at the time. The murder weapon was a.357 Magnum Smith & Wesson, found next to the body with one round fired. The method had the hallmarks of a gang hit, but the prints of all three defendants had been found on the weapon, along with the prints of the deceased. The defendants’ hands had been tested for gunshot residue, with inconclusive results.

The prosecution had rested the day before with an air of relief. The defense had recalled the investigating officer that morning, extracting without difficulty more evidence over time of many of Jefferson’s — the defense here coughed deprecatingly — family in the house at McKinley and Alder, as well as evidence of many more sets of smudged and partial prints not belonging to the defendants on the weapon. By the time the defense had excused the officer, opportunity had been extended to fifteen people, or more, if you included Da Prez’s friends, which were few, rivals, which were many, and enemies, which were legion.

The defendants followed the officer to the stand. Pauline, the eldest, was a knockout, smooth brown skin over high flat cheekbones, tilted almond eyes a deep, velvety brown, thick black hair that hung to her waist in a smooth, shining cape. She wore a dark blue shirtwaist dress with a button-down collar and long sleeves, sheer stockings, black flats, small gold hoop earrings, and the merest touch of mascara. The jury, nine of them men, watched the top button of her dress with unblinking fascination.

Laura, the middle child, wore a sequined jean jacket over a Justin Bieber T-shirt, a short pink skirt, black- and-white striped tights reminiscent of the Cat in the Hat, and yellow patent leather wedges with four-inch cork heels. Her black hair, as long and lustrous as her older sister’s, was caught up in a ponytail at the side of her head with a large powder blue plastic flower on the clasp, and she wore hot pink glitter polish on her fingernails. This time, the nine men on the jury wore indulgent smiles. For that matter, so did the three women.

Linda, the baby, favored J. Crew, a polar bear tee over cargo pants and a pair of hot pink canvas high-tops with hot pink lights in the heels that blinked hotly and pinkly with every step. Her hair, as thick and as black as her sisters’, was cut in a Dutch boy, with a line of bangs falling into her eyes. A Barbie doll dressed to match was