DELIGHTFULLY TWISTED TALES:
VOLUME SIX
FAMILY ANTIMATERS
by
Nicky Drayden
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Nicky Drayden on Smashwords
Copyright © 2012 by Nicky Drayden
Fuzzle Photograph by JD Hancock, Creative
Commons
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/
Discover other Delightfully Twisted Tales by Nicky Drayden:
Volume One – Close Encounters of the Worst Kind
Volume Two – Fire, Fangs and Brimstone
Volume Three – The Weirdos Next Door
Volume Four – Wisps, Spells and Faerie Tales
Volume
Five – Love and Other Filthy Habits
Volume Six – Family
Antimatters
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Antimatter is a Girl's Best Friend
EQUILIBRIUMS
BY NICKY DRAYDEN
Chari swung her machete at the pineapple nestled between her feet. She took pride in keeping her blade extra sharp, and the fruit split in half with a nearly effortless whack. A sweet tang filled the air. Teresa grinned wide and stretched her grubby little fingers at the larger of the pieces, but Chari stabbed the fruit with the tip of her machete, careful not to cut herself. Careful not to draw blood.
“Not so fast.” Chari puckered sour lips at her sister, and gathered both pineapple halves into her lap. “All season you goof off, and yet as soon as the harvest is ripe, here you are ready to snatch the food from my mouth.”
“But Abuela said--”
“Abuela isn’t here. This is my garden now. Why don’t you go play fútbol with James.”
“Our ball fell into the water.”
Chari tsked her little sister, then wiped pineapple juice onto her skirt as she walked over to the edge of her rooftop garden. She tied her long brown hair into a messy twist, then peered over and saw the ball bobbing in the murky water below. It was close. Maybe close enough to reach. She stretched her arm out as far as it would go.
“Chari! Don’t!” Teresa screamed. “The teharthe are lurking!”
Chari’s fingertips touched the ball, and carefully she teased it toward her. She moved her other hand to the handle of her machete as the water’s ripples blurred whatever prowled beneath. So close. It was a risk sure, but it was a beautiful day, clouds swirling gracefully in the blue sky. Chari knew that her grandmother was looking down on her. Protecting her.
Purple tentacles pierced the water’s surface and wrapped around Chari’s arm. She swung her machete with all her might, and lopped the tentacles off in one chop. She snatched as many of the writhing tips as she could. She was greedy, too greedy, and Teresa had to reel her in by the shirttail before she fell straight over the edge.
“You are so reckless!” Teresa scolded as if she were the older sister. “If Abuela finds out that you’re fooling with the teharthe, then you’ll be in serious trouble!”
Chari shrugged, then tossed Teresa a tentacle. “Abuela isn’t here.” She looked up into the bright blue sky.
“I miss her,” Teresa said as she teethed the slippery skin from the tentacle, then bit greedily down into the gristly flesh. It had been weeks since they’d been able to afford meat, but now that the pineapple harvest was ripe, they could barter with James who raised his pigeons on the rooftop across the way. “I wish I could hear her stories again, about the old times. Before the teharthe. Before the world was flooded. Before--”
A great gurgle came from the side of their building. The teharthe were gathering. Chari looked down at her hand and saw a cut along her palm, her blood puckering at the wound. They could smell her. Chari ripped a strip of fabric from the edge of her skirt, then began to bandage herself. She shouldn’t have been so careless with her machete.
Tentacles slapped up the side of her building. Hundreds of them. The teharthe left their hidden places among the flooded world and ventured upon her rooftop. There were simply too many of them to fight off, and they crawled towards her, giant bulbous bodies glistening a deathly shade of violet, needle-like teeth that could shred flesh to ribbons.
“Abuela!” Chari called to the heavens as she held her sister tightly in her arms.
The clouds parted, and a gray shadow slipped across the sky. A buzzing sound rose in pitch until it zipped past Chari’s ears. The shrill whine pierced the air around them as red laser light seared the teharthe until there was nothing left but charred lumps.
“You are so reckless, child,” said Abuela, her voice mechanical now--something like the whisper of a mosquito in her ear, but Chari still recognized it. “You know that the teharthe cannot resist human blood. You are foolish to raise pineapples. There is too much risk of getting cut.”
“We are only doing as you did, Abuela. Only doing as you taught us.”
The lights on Abuela’s faceplate lit up orange. It had only been months since their grandmother had been consumed by the singularity, so Chari wasn’t quite sure what the expression meant, but she could guess that it wasn’t approval.
“Tell us a story, Abuela!” Teresa said, so young and clueless. “Tell us about when people walked in the streets ... before the teharthe came to Earth and melted the icecaps. Back when computers were slave to humans and not the other way around.”
“Fairytales, child. It has been this way for as long as I can remember.” Abuela’s sleek chrome skin glinted in the sunlight, her propeller stirring up a calming wind.
“Told you!” Chari teased, both hands on her hips.
“Shut up!” Teresa said.
“Now, the two of you behave. It’s a beautiful day. You should stop bickering and enjoy it.” Abuela buzzed down and hovered next to the pineapple halves. Her gears whirred, sounding something like a sigh, like she regretted no longer having a mouth or a stomach.
Without another word, Abuela darted up and away, disappearing into the gray clouds of mechanical sentience. Chari envied her abuela’s computational collective, but she herself could never give up the taste of pineapple flesh, not even for all of the knowledge in the world.
“Computers slave to humans,” Chari said with a laugh, but she remembered when she’d been naïve enough to believe such tales. She pulled Teresa into a one armed hug and offered her a pineapple half. “Can you imagine that?”
“It is pretty silly,” Teresa admitted. “I still miss Abuela, though.”
“She watches over us,” Chari said. She wiped a bit of tentacle mash from her sister’s cheek, then looked up at the clouds in the beautiful blue sky, admiring the swirling shapes they made.
###
BY NICKY DRAYDEN
Danwai grasped her left leg and tugged until it popped. The bone snapped cleanly from the hip, no mess to file down. She shucked her flesh, then placed her thighbone into the wall, next to the others. Perfect. This section of the child house was almost complete.
She hopped back from her work, balancing on her right foot as loose tendons and shorn nerve endings deftly knitted themselves back together. Gloating was unbecoming, but Danwai couldn't help admiring the rows of femurs that made up the wall and tibias framing the window overlooking the bell-shaped blossoms in her garden. Her pinky fingers would make excellent decorative molding, but she'd get to that tomorrow.
Footsteps creaked from the hallway and Danwai remembered her promise to come down for dinner. She hobbled about as her leg finished regenerating, folding drop cloths over mounds of discarded flesh and tucking them into an unfinished corner of the room. The silver scales on the last of her toes mended together just as Lethe pushed the door open.
"You're still at it?" asked Lethe, his voice vaguely cheerful, but in that way he always spoke when he had little Zhan cradled in his arms. Zhan cooed, teething on her doll baby's hand, drool soaking through the fabric.
"Time just slipped past me," said Danwai, pretending not to notice the agitated flexing of Lethe's mandibles.
Lethe looked around the room. "I'm willing to help. The child house should be a part of both of us." He placed Zhan on the floor and began tugging at his leg.
"Not in front of the baby!" Danwai warned, too late.
The loud crunch spooked baby Zhan. She dropped her doll and stared at her father with those bright violet eyes as common in Danwai's lineage as their sleek yet sturdy bones. In just a century or so, little Zhan would have her share of eager suitors baring their hearts as they crooned ballads beneath this very window, but in the mean time, Danwai doubted she had the wherewithal to chase around a toddler who knew she was indestructible.
Lethe ignored Danwai's pleas and tried to fit his femur into the wall. Uneven. All wrong.
"Grandpa's bones need patching up in the attic," she chided. "Why don't you work on that so it won't leak next time it rains."
"She's my child, too! Don't I have a right to contribute to her room?"
"Gaa!" said Zhan, grasping for her doll baby fallen just out of reach.
"This is important to me," Danwai rasped. "It has to be just right!" Sometimes it astounded her how oblivious he could be to the history held within the walls of their compound. Not once had he remarked on the curvature of their spine staircases set so meticulously by her great-grandmother six generations back. He didn't even acknowledge how lucky he was to spend his nights gazing up at the collage of clavicles lining the vaulted ceilings of their bedroom -- once Danwai's child house when she was still a babe.
"Don’t you worry you're missing out on Zhan's life?"
"I'm doing this for her." Danwai snatched Lethe's bone from the wall and shoved it back at him.
"You're doing this for you! Zhan won’t care that she's got the most impressive child house in this compound or the next. She's going to care about the memories she has growing up in it, with parents who nurture her." Lethe tightened his grip around the bone until it shattered to pieces. "One day you're going to turn around and Zhan will be grown, and the only memory she'll have of you is you cooped up in here 'perfecting' this room." Lethe flexed his mandibles again, pain seeded deeply into his pale green eyes. "You know what, you stay. Maybe this is the best gift you can give me. Time alone with my daughter."
His barbed words cut to the marrow, even sharper because they were true. Danwai's throat clenched, unable to utter a sound, much less an apology. She thought of her own mother -- beautiful, gracious, prolific. Not a single room in this compound hadn't been touched by her hands, and yet she remained a mystery to Danwai. A stranger.
It was then Danwai remembered why out of all her suitors, she'd chosen Lethe -- that awkward boy crooning at her sill with his brittle bones and unremarkable eyes. He had the sweetest, most tender heart she'd ever known.
"Wait," she said bashfully, reaching out as Lethe bent to scoop up their child.
Lethe’s scales writhed at her touch. "I'm tired of waiting."
"I'll bring Zhan down. You get dinner started." Danwai nodded towards the stack of bloodied canvas in the corner as a peace offering. The taste of her flesh paled in comparison to his, but never once had Lethe complained, never had he judged, nor thought any less of her.
Her spine tingled as their eyes met again.
"Thanks, love." Lethe kissed Danwai on her forehead, retrieved the canvas, then hopped out the door with a hint of smile on his face. By the time he reached the end of the hallway, Danwai could hear his footsteps. Both of them.
Danwai sighed, knowing it was she who was the truly lucky one.
"Gaa!" cried Zhan, her brow bent as she reached for her baby doll.
"Just a moment, dear. Mama's got to tidy up."
Danwai looked at her femur wall, a part of her that Zhan would always cherish. A legacy. Now that she’d thought about it, maybe Lethe's fingers would make better molding. His knuckles were more pronounced. Anyway, she'd worry about it tomorrow. Tonight she'd spend time with her family.
"Ahhh ..." cooed Zhan.
Danwai turned and looked down to see Zhan's wide, gurgling grin as she held her baby leg bones, one in each hand, carefully tenting them together like an A-frame. A child house for her doll baby. Danwai shook her head.
They grow up so fast.
###
ANTIMATTER IS A GIRL'S BEST FRIEND
First Published by Space and Time Magazine, 2011
Gina McMillan worked hard to afford nice things, like the turquoise Z4 roadster parked in her driveway, the Koppelaar cityscape hanging above her mantle, and the personal assistant whose main responsibilities were picking up Gina’s suits from the cleaners, and on days like this, pretending to be a caring shoulder to cry on.
“Girl, I can’t believe he had the nerve to pull a stunt like that. I thought you said he had money.”
“He does,” Gina said, refilling her champagne glass halfway with strawberry spritzer, then topping it off with Dom Pérignon. The rising fizz nipped at her lungs as she inhaled it. “But you know these scientist types ... always thinking with their wrong brain.” Gina tapped her temple and Valerie laughed, almost as sincerely as a real friend.
“Well you did the right thing. You still got the ring?”
Gina dug through her Louis Vuitton, pushing aside her lipsticks and diet pills until she found the felt box. She popped it open, revealing an itty-bitty princess-cut gem. It flashed bluish-white every few seconds, more often when agitated. “Bastard,” she mumbled.
The band was platinum at least. That was the only reason Gina hadn’t crammed that barely-precious jewel down Alphonse’s throat when he’d asked her to marry him. And to think she’d been serious enough to consider calling things off with Zachary and Turk. A shiver ran through her as she imagined those bronze biceps and washboard abs. Well, maybe not Turk ...
Valerie slipped the ring on and held it to the light. “It’s sorta pretty, the way it glows like that.” She extended her hand, fingers splayed -- not so much evaluating it as admiring it. “So are you giving it back?”
“Hell, no. I earned it. Putting up with his constant blathering: antimatter this and positron that. It’s not sexy. It’s really not. I don’t know what I ever saw in him.”
“Money?”
“I mean besides that.” Gina drained her glass, then poured another. Less spritzer this time. “Did he actually think he could rope me in with anything less than three karats? Come on, an anti-diamond? How unromantic is that?”
“I’ll buy it from you.” Valerie softened her voice and added, “If you don’t want it, that is.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Valerie screwed the ring off her finger and hastily returned it.
Gina reassessed her engagement ring with renewed interest. It did have some exceptional qualities -- marvelous clarity despite its size. Not that she’d ever wear it in public, of course, but maybe she’d give Alphonse a chance to redeem himself. If this antimatter diamond was as precious as he’d claimed, he wouldn’t mind a trip to Tiffany’s for a real diamond to accompany it. Maybe she’d even apologize for that joke about their anti-engagement, anti-wedding, and anti-honeymoon. He’d probably stopped crying by now, anyway.
* * * * *
The dizzying heights of Wilson Hall caused Gina to misstep as she strutted across the atrium. Or perhaps it was the Dom still fuzzing with her head. With all the grace she could muster, she composed herself and walked over to the welcome desk, laid her hands upon it, and leaned in. Gina gave the perky Fermilab receptionist a once over. “I need to speak with Alphonse Taylor, please.”
The receptionist donned a polite smile and tapped at her keyboard. She squinted at the monitor, then shook her head. “I’m sorry, ma’am. He’s not available right now. Would you like to leave a message for him?”
“This is an emergency. I’m his fiancée,” Gina said, enunciating delicately as if she were speaking to a child.
“Yes, ma’am.” The receptionist glanced at Gina’s bare ring finger. “Still, he’s in the middle of an extremely sensitive project, and I’m afraid you’ll have to--”
“You don’t believe me? Is that it?” Gina pulled out the ring and slid it on for the first time. It was more than an outward display of Alphonse’s affection. Somehow, it felt like it had belonged on her finger all along. “I know it’s small,” Gina said, a growing pressure in her chest forcing her to emphasize its significance. “But it’s an antimatter diamond.”
The receptionist arched an eyebrow, and after a considerable pause, picked up the phone receiver. “One moment please.”
“Now that’s more like it.” Gina crossed her arms over her chest and paced the room. Finally, after a few minutes, the double security doors opened, but instead of Alphonse, two hulking men emerged. Their serious stares and deliberate gaits ignited a spark of panic in Gina’s heart.
“Please come with us,” the more intimidating of the two demanded, tugging at her elbow with implied force. Gina tugged back.
“Where’s Alphonse?”
“We need to see the ring, miss.”
“No! It’s mine. I’m getting married!”
One man held Gina while the other tried to wriggle the ring off her finger. She yanked her hand free and the momentum carried it backwards, colliding with the black granite of the receptionist’s desk.
The anti-diamond began to pulsate, then released a cloud of glittering dust. The cloud snaked its way up Gina’s skin and sent tingles throughout her entire body. She felt the world pulling away as it engulfed her. Through the haze, Gina saw the two men receding along with the receptionist, and then the door opened, a panicked Alphonse reaching out for her. She reciprocated, their fingertips briefly touching before a bright flash blinded her.
* * * * *
“Gina? Gina?” The voice was immediately familiar, reeling her from the gritty fog of a champagne buzz. Gina forced her eyes open and saw Alphonse’s stark face staring up at her. They were at that trendy Italian joint where he’d proposed the day before, though the draperies were more lush, the artwork more noteworthy, the lighting more elegant. More romantic.
More exclusive.
Gina lifted her chin in approval, but as she did, a narrow beam of reflected light nicked her in the eye. She gawked at her right hand weighted down by a three-karat diamond in a classic Tiffany’s setting. Her heart skipped a beat with a subtle wrongness in her chest, and her mind was blanking on how she got here. Perhaps she’d gone into shock from all of these sparkling facets.
“Well?” asked Alphonse from down on one knee. “Will you marry me?”
“Of course!” Gina said, fumbling for apologetic words. “I was so afraid you’d be mad at me. That anti-wedding bit, that was a joke. You know that, right? And I really appreciated the anti-diamond, honestly.”
“Anti-diamond?” Alphonse narrowed his eyes and chuckled nervously. “Honey, I think you’ve had too much wine.”
Then Gina noticed him. The resemblance was uncanny, but this wasn’t Alphonse. He carried himself taller, was more confident, and had a tamed focus in his eyes as if he were calculating each word he said. On his plate sat veal piccata. Alphonse had been a vegan as long as she’d known him.
“Who are you?” Gina snatched her hand from his tender grip. “Is this a practical joke? If it is, I want you to know this damn well isn’t funny.”
Alphonse recoiled, embarrassed almost. “What did you say?”
“Don’t you dare make me repeat myself, Alphonse, or whoever you are.” Gina stood up and tossed her napkin onto the table. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
With a guarded smile, he pulled Gina close. He nodded politely at the couple staring from the next table over, before whispering into her ear. “I want you to tell me everything you know about the anti-diamond, but not here. I have to get you to my lab.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.” The back of her neck prickled -- a warm sensation that spread to her shoulders, like she’d spent an hour too long in the sun.
“You’re not Gina.”
“Of course I’m Gina! Who the hell else would I be?”
The entire restaurant was staring now, and the maitre’d headed over with a vicious scowl. Alphonse steered Gina towards the door.
“Please. There might not be much time,” he said. “I think ... you’re the anti-Gina, and your being here is putting billions of lives at stake.”
* * * * *
Bunkered deep within Fermilab, among mansion-sized machinery and billion-dollar particle accelerators, Gina became anti-Alphonse’s experiment. Three weeks passed and he’d subjected her to all sorts of humiliating tests. Her Alphonse had often shared his theories about anti-people and anti-universes, but she’d never believed him. Now her very being was unraveling. Her atoms, with their electrons spinning the opposite direction as the ones in this world, were being incinerated hundreds if not thousands at a time. If she didn’t get home soon, there’d be nothing left of her.
“When you arrived in our universe, your matter should’ve exploded on contact with ours. He must have found a way to stabilize your atoms the same way he stabilized the anti-diamond,” anti-Alphonse said, bent over a microscope the size of a Buick. “It’s still not one hundred percent efficient, but the antimatter research in your universe is years ahead of ours.” He stood up and stretched, clasping his hands behind him so that his chest swelled. Hints of sculpted abs peeked from the gap in his lab coat. Gina suspected he got to the gym more often than her Alphonse.
“I don’t think I can stomach another one of your Science Guy lectures,” Gina hissed. “Unless your plan is to bore me back to my reality. When can you send me home?”
“That’s just it. I’m not sure I can.”
“But aren’t we supposed to be doubles? How can this world not be the exact duplicate? I mean, how’d you end up with me both here and there?”
“We’ve theorized that the universes aren’t perfect mirror images, but they must maintain a certain degree of similarity or they’ll diverge and cease to exist. Matter and antimatter compensate, pulling any discrepancies back towards each other.” Anti-Alphonse leaned in close and swept the hair out of Gina’s face. “I guess you could say we’re destined to be together. He must really love you to give you that ring. Putting his job in jeopardy. Putting our very existences in jeopardy!”
Gina twirled the three-karat diamond still on her finger. She couldn’t bear to remove it, even though it meant nothing to her emotionally. “What about your Gina?” She took a step back, but Alphonse followed until he was a breath away.
“There’s nothing we can do on this end. We’ll just have to hope the anti-me decides to pull you back.” He took her hand in his and kissed it. “It’s not cheating. Not really.”
“Get away from me.” Gina slapped him, but anti-Alphonse stared back with a sly wolf’s grin.
“You’re a feisty one, aren’t you? Not a bit like my sweet Gina.”
“And you’re a complete ass. I don’t know why she’d put up with a jerk like you anyway.” Gina clenched her fists and shifted her weight so she could deal him a kick to the groin if he tried anything else. She was willing to bet it’d have the same effect no matter which way the electrons in this universe spun.
The tingling worsened suddenly, her extremities throbbing with pain. Gina didn’t know if it was her molecules destabilizing or her anger building, but she wished for nothing more than to see her Alphonse, if only one last time. Her fingertips glowed a bluish white, and then the familiar cloud swarmed until it engulfed her completely. Gina welcomed it. She knew it was Alphonse calling her home.
* * * * *
Alphonse stood before her, dressed in his white lab coat and thick-rimmed glasses, with the unmistakable smile of someone madly in love. She immediately knew it was the man she’d spend the rest of her life with.
“You did it, baby! You did it.” Gina rushed into his arms, buried her face into the crook of his neck, and began to sob. “It was so horrible there. You couldn’t imagine! There was this other you, only he wasn’t like you at all. He was such a prick.” Gina shuddered as she thought about anti-Alphonse’s touch. She counted her blessings twice over, now that she knew the kind of guy she could have ended up with.
“I’ve heard all about him,” Alphonse said sternly.
Gina looked up into his appraising eyes. “What? How?” Then she turned and saw her reflection standing a few feet away. It was the anti-her: smile slightly more sincere, eyes more honest. Sweeter. Prettier. Gina scowled at herself. “You ...”
“It’s nice to meet you,” anti-Gina said. “Alphie’s told me so much about you.”
“Alphie? Oh no you didn’t just call my man ‘Alphie.’ ” Gina balled a fist and took a step towards her anti-self. “Why I oughta kick your skinny ass straight to anti-hell.”
Alphonse jumped in between them, arms spread out. “Stop. You can’t touch each other. The universe will come undone. Both of them.”
Gina didn’t care. It was her duty to put this imposter in her place. She struggled against Alphonse’s hold. The anti-her’s smile only brightened. “There’s no need for hostilities,” she said, voice so irritatingly saccharine that it made Gina want to gouge her own eyes out.
“Send her back!” Gina demanded. “Send her back right now!”
“That’s the thing,” Alphonse said, gripping Gina’s arm. “She’s not going back. You are.”
“What?” Gina’s heart dropped three inches in her chest. She must have misheard him.
“Gina and I have talked about it. We think you and anti-Alphonse would make a better couple.”
“But he’s so obnoxious! Rude. And he came onto me, even after he knew I wasn’t her!”
“That’s right.” Alphonse smirked, not bothering to mask the satisfaction on his face. “You guys are made for each other.”
“Damn it, Alphonse!” Gina yelled. She was way too sharp to believe this was an act of charity. “What does she have that I don’t? She’s thinner, isn’t she? You think she’s prettier than me? Bigger boobs? She’s wearing a water bra, I can tell that from way over here.”
“Well, she doesn’t cuss like a sailor for one thing,” Alphonse said, shrugging. “And my mom really liked her.”
“She met your mother? I haven’t even met your mother!”
“Gina, don’t make this harder than it already is. I’ve perfected the stabilization process. You shouldn’t feel any different there than you do here.”
The suffocating mist began to crawl up Gina’s skin again. She watched helplessly as the anti-her and Alphonse held hands, the anti-diamond busy sparkling on anti-Gina’s ring finger.
The anti-her grinned wide. “You know what they say, anti-opposites attract.”
“Bitch!” Gina screamed, her voice echoing infinitely as she was reeled home.
###
NOTE TO THE READER:
If you have enjoyed these stories and
would like to see more of my work,
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AVAILABLE SPRING 2011
Delightfully Twisted Tales: Volume One – Close Encounters of the Worst Kind
Delightfully Twisted Tales: Volume Two – Fire, Fangs and Brimstone
AVAILABLE SUMMER 2011
Delightfully Twisted Tales: Volume Three – The Weirdos Next Door
Delightfully Twisted Tales: Volume Four – Wisps, Spells and Faerie Tales
AVAILABLE WINTER 2011
Delightfully Twisted Tales: Volume Five – Love and Other Filthy Habits
Delightfully Twisted Tales: Volume Six – Family Antimatters
and more soon to come!