Tansy Undercrypt

Moto was just about to smash the glass to steal the iPad when Finesse saw the markings on the windshield. “Stop! Oh, shit! SPELL!” He released the brick with a shriek, not caring that it landed on his shoulder and then his foot. Finesse checked again; “Sigil,” she said, trembling. Someone had licked their finger and drawn three symbols intertwined; she would never have seen it without the hard frost. “Theft = death = service,” she whispered, backing up. “Necromancy. This is a bait car.” Finesse took out a can of spray paint, wrote a message to the others in the street, and then they ran.

“So, I’m in the living room, stealing her stereo equipment, and this red light flicks on in the darkness. I realize it’s a laser site beam and, instead of crapping myself and begging for my life, I say ‘You gonna shoot me in the head, Grandma?’ Just like that.” The men in the circle listen, nodding. “She says to me: ‘I ain’t aiming at your head; I’m aiming at your right eye.’ MY RIGHT EYE. That’s what she says, like she’s Black Ops, you know? And I start thinking about my life without that eye (‘cause all of a sudden, I believe she’s got power enough to take the eye and not kill me), and I just set the shit down and put my hands up and apologize. She lets me go.” “And that was it for you, man?” someone asks him quietly. “Hell, yes,” he answers emphatically, “I straightened right up after that.”

Eventually, the diploma crumbled to dust, the clock stopped ticking, and the medal rusted beyond recognition. Desperate to preserve their gifts, they turned to a life of crime and organ trafficking. The Scarecrow and the Tin Man had it easy (with their brains and heart), but the Lion didn’t know where to start. The first effort – a spleen – proved messy and pointless. Eventually, the other two bought him a studded gangster collar with “Killer” spelled out in rhinestones … and that seemed to do the trick.

And she cried out to the goddess Kali before she died, this woman violated and beaten and thrown onto the road as garbage, saying “Awake, Fire of All Hearts, and avenge me.” And Kali heard her supplication, the mountain moving in a wave of creatures she then turned into women: scorpions, serpents, spiders, and jungle rats. They came out of the darkness and boarded the buses and cabs, sat at the entrance to allies and lots, queued at midnight for rickshaws, vans, and private cars. And they waited – these women with hellfire in their eyes.

She practiced every day. At 20 yards, she could bore a hole into a tree with a shelled nut; she had collected enough nuts to fill a depression she’d made with her body at the edge of the jungle. They’d killed her mate for his ivory, taken her baby to live in a cage somewhere; she had never forgotten the pain or their faces. Now, as she watched them spread a blanket for a picnic, she loaded her mouth with hundreds of nuts, placing three into one side of her trunk for the pressure build. Soon, she would step out from the trees and break into a run. It was time to give Them something to never, ever forget.

The Zombie Maker had made the plague himself (being a chemist by trade). He always carried a vial with him to use  on public toilet seats, random door handles, the spines of popular bestsellers at the bookstore and a host of other locations. He traveled frequently for work which gave him adequate global coverage (Mexico and the U.K. would be the first to return a result). To his delight, he was quickly using up the four drums he had in storage. In order to survive the coming apocalypse, the Maker mused, we need to get the party started.

There was nothing that led them to suspect rabies in the beginning; Pooh’s face was always dripping with honey; honey bubbles looked a lot like foam. Then Piglet went away – supposedly on vacation – and the cottages downwind of Pooh’s Corner began to smell bacon on the breeze. It was a sad day in the Hundred Acre Wood when Christopher Robin called the rangers.

The Dark Knight had no time for romance. Love was for people not wearing body armor in case they had to take a rocket projectile in the chest; it was innocent, uncomplicated. Then, in the middle of thwarting a jewelry heist, there she was … in the thick of it with the rest of them – scratching, kicking, then punching Robin in the face and giving him a wedgie. “Uncomplicated, my ass,” he said to himself, grinning from ear to ear like an idiot.

He put the sign out: “Book Sale”. It might take all day but, eventually, they would come (true bibliophiles were unable to resist that siren’s song – even to an unmarked shop at the end of a dark street). Some were young and in love with reading; some were seasoned and possessed a desire to write themselves; still others were old and longing for a different world than this. All were welcome to browse and buy, but only one would be picked to stay for dinner (as both guest and main course). Nothing was as deliciously complex as the well-read brain.

Dina found a head in her trashcan first thing Friday morning, when she took the garbage out. It wasn’t anyone she recognized. She called the police and was informed that other body parts had been found in other bins in her neighborhood (probably belonging to the same unfortunate individual). Dina marveled that she had been picked to get the head; it seemed strangely significant, even when you chalked it up to random chance. She felt oddly important at first and then, slowly, she began to wonder if she was being watched.