WIP: 99 Statues

I’m working on a novella set in the world of The Fathomless Abyss, a shared universe project with authors Mike Resnick, Brad R. Torgersen, Jay Lake, Mel Odom, J.M. McDermott, Philip Athans, and myself. We’ve all done stories set in it, and each of us will be producing novellas set there over the course of this year.

If you’re interested in finding more about the oddities of the Fathomless Abyss world, check out the From the Fathomless Abyss anthology, which contains a story of mine that I like very much called “A Querulous Flute of Bone,” a somewhat odd retelling of O. Henry’s short story, “The Pimaloosa Pancakes.”

This project, which will appear as a stand-alone, is a mash-up of William S. Burrough’s Junky and H.P. Lovecraft’s “Dreams in The Witch House,” a story which terrified me as a child. Here’s how it begins:

His earliest memory was fearing the nightmares. He never slept well, all his life, even in that first moment, so long ago he remembered remembering it more than actually remembering it.

Knowing that if he slept, they’d come crawling out from underneath his cot, or spawn in the cavern shadows outside their hut only to come creeping in.

He didn’t remember what the nightmares were. Were they what they would be later, that room, over and over again? Or were they more childish ones, a ghost chasing him around a table, its breath rot-damp, or a fiery lizard curled in the stove’s belly?
The second earliest memory was the couple. Or rather, first the light on his face. They were going Outside, out to the walls of the world and he could see the light ahead of them.

Then, in the shadows, movement, squirming like a worm in a mushroom box, but much larger. Flesh twined with flesh, limbs sliding together slick and naked against the weed-choked rock.

What was that in the woman’s stringy blonde hair? A tiny rat of shadow. Its face was human, pugnacious jaw slung forward, brow pronounced. It looked at him and he nearly pissed himself.

His mother yanking his hand along so he stumbled, nearly fell. He tried to stop her, tried to ask, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes or acknowledge his tugging hand. Her face red in the light as they went onward towards the market Outside.

Later, she said to his father, when she thought him out of earshot, “Shameful junkers! Rutting there beside the path with their dreams frolicking on them where any passerby could see!”

“There ought to be a law,” his father said in a mechanical tone.

Or was that his mind interpreting the memory, ascribing the tone his father always used, the tenor his mother, a thwarted councilwoman, habitually took?

It was the first time he’d seen a junker.

Not even close to the last.

Really pleased with the current project, a continuation and expansion of A Seed on the Wind:

He took a landing towards Neryon neighborhood, a narrow outjut of stone augmented with board and rope buildings dragging at the stone, which was carved with a sinewy overlay of snakes and bees. In midday, it seemed to be drowsing. In a few hours it would begin to stretch and yawn itself awake. The caffeine vendors, selling chai and kaf and a dozen teas would range about filling cups and mugs or doling out thick cups that could later be chewed to mushy fiber for a quick thirdmeal as the evening began in earnest.

He made his way to a sleepy tavern, and slouched in a rear table, nursing leedink, mind thumbing through the possibilities as he fingered the wicker and wood puzzle centered on the table.

He could always go back to Poit. Or Ellsfall. Either of those choices itched him wrong, though.

A being sliding onto the bench across him in the wall niche. The stone shelf under its elbow as it leaned forward. “Pleasance, chum.”

Expensive clothes. Rasp-skinned, narrow-headed, not-human. Flat dark eyes, cold as shadowed caverns. Smile tied on with insincerity.

“Fuck off,” Bill said.

The smile widened, deepened, showed pointed teeth, filed sharper. Gold inlay in the closest one, a design of fish and flowers, a spray of rubies in a line down the front. “An asking for you, Mr. Bill.”

Panicked question stabbed through his stomach. Why did this stranger know his name? He sat back. “What’s that?”

“You know a guy, cook at Fleur, name’s John.”

Chef John. One of the possibilities that had been flickering through his minds. He shrugged. “Don’t ring no chime.”

“All I want is you to takespeak a word or two.”

Bill waited. In the room, the clackclask of pool balls, two youths playing, dressed in leather and thorns. The electric light flickflickered on arcs of white and jasper plastic, stacattoing light.

“Tell him the big companies don’t mind freelancers trading bittybit on the side. But he’s getting bittybig. Needs to step back.”

He hunched his shoulders in a shrug. “Happen to run into him, may say. What’s the what if I do?”

The stranger’s fingerscales were pointed, each tipped with a flower of gold, a stinger of steel, as it spread them as though to smooth the shrug away from the air.

“Bittybit money for you, friend. Just come here an asking.”

(If you want to make sure you get to read the finished version, sign up for my Patreon campaign and get two stories a month for as little as $1 each!)