bluff overlooking the water.
The moon was rising from the sea, massive and white, breaching the surface and climbing to the sky.
The dancers welcomed you. The fairest the island had to offer. They emerged from the darkness, promising to fulfill your desires.
The dancers beckoned. They danced a step away and then another, each step a promise, a suggestion. To witness it meant you must follow. They climbed ever higher into the starless night, drawing you up the steps towards the moon that captured and tethered your soul.
Remember the sight? Remember the song of the waves and the glow upon the water? At first you believed it but a reflection of the moon, until it dissolved into fragments, each one a luminous swimmer that heaved itself out of the water. The surf roared and in the foam churned those swimmers. The dancers brought you to the precipice. You could go no further. At the edge you glanced down to where the swimmers waited. Did not one of them call you by name? In those transformed features, bulbous and phosphorescent as undersea corals, did you not recognize that friend you had so long ago forgotten? Did they not beckon and invite you into the water with them? And as they embraced you beneath the watching eyes of the dancers, did panic make you forget that this is what you wanted?
Call us inhuman. Call us monsters. Yet it was you who came here seeking only to satisfy your desires by consuming others. How are we worse for using this to our purpose? Do not believe you are now other than what we are. We are not something you may simply set down and leave behind. What we are resides inside you now. Growing. Metastasizing. And the words will come soon. The ones your friend spoke to you. You now will tell another.
As you sit, returning to the drudgery of your previous existence, you should give thanks. We have given you more than you desired. Satiety is a lie. Desires never die. They can only be satisfied like hunger until they return. We have freed you from this cycle and cut you loose from your bonds.
Speak of us, but know you will be misunderstood.
Transformation. Permanence. You simply found more than you hoped for. The life you led is over. Already our purpose grows. When the next full moon rises, the water’s call will be too strong. Do not fight this.
Embrace it.
Flee the familiar. Go home stranger.
THE HEAVY
by Cherie Priest
“Everyone already thinks I’m a goddamned hippie,” Mark bitched.
He gulped another swig from his Heineken and knocked his knuckles against the bar.
Josh threw back the last drops at the bottom of his glass, shrugged and signaled the bartender that yes, please, he’d like another double-dose of Jack. “If you didn’t want any help, you should’ve shot it yourself.”
“I
Josh glanced at the ancient, nicotine-stained clock that hung crookedly above the roadhouse door. “He’s got another five minutes.”
“This is stupid,” Mark said for the twentieth time. “It’s going to turn out the thing that got those goats was just a big damn dog. And my wife’s going to kill me.”
“What for? You’re not paying him anything.”
“You said he doesn’t charge up front?”
“He don’t charge at all. He just fixes things.”
“Why?” Mark asked.
Josh cupped his hand around his freshly refilled drink. “Because sometimes, things need fixing. And that’s what he does. The Heavy fixes things.”
The jukebox lit up on the one side that still lit up, and “Bad to the Bone” began to play. Mark checked over his shoulder, wondering what dumbass was too new to know that A-13 wasn’t really Lynyrd Skynyrd anymore.
He didn’t see anyone he didn’t recognize, so he turned back around and shifted on his stool. “Why do they call him that?” he asked.
“The Heavy?”
“Yeah. How come?”
Josh made a grin with the half of his mouth that wasn’t wrapped around the lip of his glass.
Before the song’s first verse was over, the hinges on the door gave their signature squeal and the street lamp out in the parking lot poked its edges into the room, but just barely. Something big was blocking it.
“Holy
The man in the doorway turned sideways a notch to let himself in.
He was not quite as big around as he was tall, and he was six foot five if he was an inch. His bullet-shaped head was perfectly bald except for the chops that sprouted a wild retreat from his topmost chin. From the neck of his metal head T-shirt to the tips of his motorcycle boots he wore black over every last inch; and covering up the whole of his massive frame was a coal-dark trench coat that was bigger than a bedspread.
He tossed Josh a nod of recognition, and he stomped toward the bar. It wasn’t an angry stomp; it was a stomp of sheer mass. The big man pointed at a bottle behind the counter and the bartender picked it up and started pouring.
While he waited for that drink, the Heavy approached Josh and Mark with his hand outstretched.
“Hey there, buddy! I hear you’ve got a problem.” His voice was quick and friendly, and so was his handshake. He angled his bulk against the side of the bar, skipping the stool and letting himself lean.
Mark was speechless, so Josh got the ball rolling.
“Well, first off, by way of getting fancy—Mark, this is Kilgore Jones. Kilgore, this is Mark,” Josh said. “He’s the man with the problem.”
Kilgore nodded. He’d heard part already. “The man with the goats. Or the ex-goats, as the case may be.”
“Oh, I’ve still got goats,” Mark assured him. “Not as many as we started with, but we’ve still got them.” He waved his empty green bottle at the bartender, who popped the cap on another one and handed it over the counter, along with Kilgore’s drink.
Kilgore took it and downed it in one swallow. “All right. Fill me in on the facts, and I’ll tell you if I think I can help,” he urged. “It might be you’ve got a bad dog, and if that’s all it is, I’m still happy to lend a hand. But Josh thinks it might be worse than that.”
Mark blew a sad, honking note down the bottle’s frosty neck. He braced his feet on the stool’s rungs and twisted them there while he spoke. “I guess I should start with the goats,” he said. “I don’t give a damn for goats. They’re bad-tempered, ugly little things, and they smell like shit. But I lost my job at the Caterpillar plant, and my wife got this idea.”
“The goats were your wife’s idea?”
He bobbed his head. “Hell yeah, they were. Do I look like a man who needs organic soap in his life?”
Kilgore shook his head, and a row of tiny silver hoops in his left ear jingled together. “No sir, you do not,” he said. His oddly boyish face stayed composed and serious.
“Well, I’ve got it now—by the metric assload. I didn’t know thing one about goats, but Elaine did a bunch of reading, and a few days later she came home with a pair of Saanens. It was my job to clean and repair the barn, and it was her job to milk the residents—because God help me,
Mark curled his fingers around the beer. “And anyway, now we’ve got goats, and we’ve got a website, and we’ve got soap, and lotion, and yogurt—and just about anything else you can comb, curdle, or cook that comes out from a goat’s undercarriage. That was three years ago. And now I’m the vice president of Signal Valley Farms, which is to say I shovel goat shit and do what Elaine tells me. She’s the president, since it was her idea.”
The Heavy mentally jotted all this down and asked, “When did the trouble start?”
