It had the power to transmogrify, to survive at any depth, to breath both air and water. It could subsist on literally anything it could scavenge from the lifeless ocean, and could swallow an entire ship in one gulp. And most improbably, though most importantly as well, it could turn invisible—even intangible. For this reason, the captain insisted, we had to search for the thing while it fed. Only when its belly was full, he told me, could it be discovered by sonar. And this was our greatest challenge, too: for the Beast, when fed, was in its heaviest, and therefore most dangerous, state. It could easily outweigh our hundred-foot catamaran. But how would we know when it fed, in any case? How would we find it?…
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Brora leaned over the balcony wall, taking a slap of wet wind to her face. She held tight to the iron baluster and wondered what it would feel like to uncurl her fingers and let herself fly. The palace courtyard was two stories below and paved with rough-cut flagstone. Some weeks earlier a young servant, suspected of treachery against the Earl, had been dangled over the east tower parapet then deliberately dropped, legs first. He hadn’t died, had been sent in agony by mule cart back to his co-conspirators in Stromness.
The balcony wasn’t high enough to kill her, but it surely was high enough to kill the poison that grew in her womb. Brora didn’t know if it was Lord Patrick’s bastard or his father the Earl’s, but she knew she wished it dead.…
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For Freena
1.
Frank stares one-eyed down the beer’s neck: ‘Imagine, oourf, imagine you get woken’n middle of the night.’
Al, neck bent 90° back: ‘Middle of the maaawning.’
‘Shut up wog.’ Laughter behind Frank’s scorn. ‘You’re asleep’n get woken by er demon’n your chest.’
‘Hot.’ Eric leans on the table and clasps air 9cm short of the vodka. ‘You’ve, thankee James, you’ve my attention.’
‘Whichas cursed you to repeat your entire life, everything ‘cluding that moment, over and over and over, how’d you respond?’
Eric tops up a tumbler glass: ‘Izze’ demon a redhead?’
Frank tilts head right and down with annoyed smile. The sky is black-turning-blue. Three magpies begin to chorus.
James lowers his Switch and sighs through his nose: ‘It’s about time.’
Frank raises his beer in salutation, skulls it and pats his pockets.…
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August Martin’s baby momma wasn’t there.
He looked around the courtroom, the ceilings were high, the lights bring and harsh, and the thought, somewhat absurdly, that those fluorescent lights were perfecting for such a judicial setting. August took in the faces of people around him: single parents with their kids, lone adults bobbing their heads around nervously, older men and women, probably grandparents, looking stoic, or calm. He couldn’t tell. The children, he noticed, looked happy, weaving through the aisles created by the long wooden benches in the gallery. Look at them, he thought, they don’t even know.
The family court was on the third floor of the city’s courthouse. The first and second floors were reserved from criminal and traffic hearings. He’d spent too much time downstairs to ever want to be here again, but if he had to be here – and he did – he was glad to be in upstairs for once. …
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Luke squinted into the darkness and identified his old friend, Orion. There was the hunter’s belt, his broad shoulders, his knees. There were his club and shield, though to Luke, the armaments appeared more like a bow just after release. As his eyes repeatedly traced the points of light—what the ancients believed were pinholes in the firmament—he saw more details: Orion’s matted hair; the sinews of his taut, lean arms; the creases and furs of his pelt; his cruel, heartbroken eyes, as clear and sharp as glass. Luke could see his life, too: Orion the bastard prince, who walked across the Aegean Sea; Orion the libidinous drunk, who raped Princess Merope; Orion the blind, his eyes gouged out by Merope’s father.
Reflexively, Luke turned, trying to find Perseus, but of course, Orion followed him.…
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We’re halfway through the set and my hand is on fire. My white guitar is smeared red with blood. The walls are sweating and the crowd in front of us seems endless. It isn’t, I can see the back staircase, but in my mind we’re at the start of something real here.
I finish my solo at the end of the song and step up to the mic. “I know Georgie said he was inviting everyone he knew, but I didn’t think he had this many friends!”
A soft laughter comes from the crowd and Georgie taps the drums behind me in response.…
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A face on its side caught mid-anguished scream, lying in the barren, arid dunes is a common symbol of decay. Ozymandian, they say. A touchstone. A callback. Look upon me and weep, I think.
****
Augustus Boyle, as I insist on calling him after the fact, insists that I join him on a quest. I’d dithered. I’d been down this road, in the desert on some journeyman shit before. I spent part of my twenties running in circles about the Geezer Bandit before doing heavy journalism on sandwiches. Now, in my own This American Life-sort of way, a story has come to me, and I don’t want to offend it, but does anybody even want journalism anymore?
“It’s to bear witness,” he says. The first time he says it through an encrypted message on a private server.…
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