Stupefying Stories 26: Stupefying Stories, #26

By Julie Frost, Jamie Lackey, Gordon Grice and 18 more

IT'S OUR ANNUAL HORROR SPECIAL, AND IT'S A DOUBLE-ISSUE!
Edited by award-winning author and cyberpunk legend Bruce Bethke, STUPEFYING STORIES is the place to read tomorrow's famous writers today! Stupefying Stories 26 is our annual double-length horror special, and it features 22 all-new stories to thrill and chill you, written by—

 

• Jamie Lackey - "Blood Apples"
• Gordon Grice - "Stone"
• Allan Dyen-Shapiro - "Midnight Meal at a Kobe Noodle Joint"
• Karin Terebessy - "Bandages"
• Jorge Salgado-Reyes - "Neon Blood"
• Julie Frost - "Beverly Hellbunnies"
• Kevin Berg - "Faceless"
• Anya Ow - "Hungry Ghosts"
• Jesse Dyer - "Losing Things"
• Richard Zwicker - "Possession is Ten/Tenths of the Law"
• Made in DNA - "Something CUTE This Way Comes"
• Cass Sims Knight - "Slugging"
• Nick Nafpliotis - "The Cerberus Protocol"
• Beth Cato - "Water in the Bones"
• Don Money - "Department of Murderous Vixens"
• Chana Kohl - "Murder in the Shuk"
• Patricia Miller - "An Absence of Shadow"
• Robert Hobson - "Watershed"
• Ray Daley - "The Haunted Spaceship"
• Roxana Arama - "All Those Monsters"
• Evan Dicken - "Sunk Ghosts"
• John Lance - "The Mob"

 

Whether your tastes run to science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, or something so new it doesn't yet have a name, you're sure to find it in STUPEFYING STORIES!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rampant Loon Press
• Release date: Oct 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781958333143

Book preview

BLOOD APPLES

BY JAMIE LACKEY

Fourteen unwrapped her needle and tucked its thin leather sheath into her apron pocket. The carved bone glinted white in the thin morning sunlight. She lined the needle up over her pale forearm, its hollow point resting on a small round scar.

With the ease of practice, she pierced her skin at just the right angle, and the needle sank into her flesh. She felt the moment it settled into her vein, and a moment later, blood flowed from the needle’s curved top and poured into her waiting watering can. She watched carefully till it reached the line marked on the inside of the can, then pulled it out in one smooth motion.

Her second wrapped her arm to stop the bleeding and followed as Fourteen walked toward the orchard. The blood apple trees stood alone in the empty field, their leaves bright and vibrant against the endless stretch of dusty brown. Fourteen sprinkled blood on their roots, watching it vanish into the rich dirt. She surveyed each limb, checking for wind damage, finding nothing alarming.

Her second followed along, her eyes on the ground. She disliked the sight of Fourteen’s blood, and never enjoyed their weekly trip to the orchard.

Fourteen was two trees ahead when she realized her second had stopped moving.

Fourteen sighed and made her way back to where her second was kneeling near the roots of one of the trees. If we don’t get this done I can’t let you go into town.

Look, her second said, her voice shaky and wondering. Look at this.

Something was growing out of the wood at the base of the tree. Tiny fragile pink caps on delicate stems.

Fourteen stared. She’d never seen anything alive except for the family and the apple trees. Nothing else could live, since Grandfather had poisoned the world for anything that wasn’t of his blood.

They’re mushrooms, her second said. Her face, a perfect mirror of Fourteen’s own, glowed with childlike wonder. She reached out a gentle finger and touched one of the caps. I’ve seen pictures of them in books. They’re so beautiful.

Fourteen drank a few mouthfuls of sun-warmed water from her battered bottle. She had no idea what mushrooms growing on the apple trees could mean. It was so outside the realm of her experience that she couldn’t process it. She left her second by the mushrooms and emptied the watering can over the last trees. She leaned against a sturdy trunk, resting for a moment in the shade. Her arm ached and though she wasn’t quite dizzy, she felt drawn and drained.

The trees were her responsibility. If the mushrooms harmed them, Grandfather would be unhappy with her.

She didn’t want Grandfather to be unhappy with her.

But the mushrooms lived without Grandfather’s knowledge or approval. They were a secret, and secrets could be power. And power could be hope.

She rejoined her second. What do you know about those things? she asked.

Her second wasn’t included in her education, in her classes on etiquette and deportment and obedience. While Fourteen was with Ten and Eight and Eleven, learning how to best please Grandfather, her second would walk to the old town. She would curl up in the dusty ruin of the library and read books about long-gone things like trains and birds and nations. And hopefully mushrooms.

These are the fruiting bodies of the fungus. Like the apples are fruiting bodies of the trees. They have a vast system of hyphae and mycelium, which are like their roots. Some are parasitic, some are saprophytic, and some are mycorrhizal, which means they form symbiotic relationships with plants.

So they could be killing or helping the trees. Fourteen reached past her second and grabbed one of the mushrooms. It broke off easily in her hand. It was softer than she expected. She ignored her second’s pained gasp as she pulled the rest. She tucked them into her pocket, next to her bone needle and her water bottle. With the ‘fruiting bodies’ gone, there wasn’t any evidence of the fungus’ existence.

Come on, I have to get to class, she said, pushing away from the tree. Her second dutifully followed, and they headed back toward the enclave. Away from the shade, the sun was punishing. Sweat trickled down her back and beaded out of the ends of her short hair, sticking her shirt to clammy skin. Their path was well worn and hard-packed beneath their feet. It was a long walk, but a familiar one, made strange by the weight of the mushrooms in her pocket and the delicate flutter of hope in her chest.

Have they told you what happens at the ceremony yet? her second asked.

Fourteen shook her head. Her second was curious about too many things. Fourteen could only assume it came from reading so many books. But Fourteen knew better. She understood that curiosity was dangerous. Wondering about things led to questions, and asking too many questions led to an afternoon in Grandfather’s study.

Her second was beneath Grandfather’s attention. Fourteen was not.

She did not ask questions.

If she sometimes wondered why there was no Twelve, why none of the others had seconds, why Thirteen was so quiet and sad, well. She knew better than to ask.

She was pretty sure she knew, anyway. Sometimes, answers were obvious if you just thought about them.

But her second wasn’t done with questions. Of all of the things to save, why apples? Why not potatoes or wheat or even blackberries? Those had thorns. They already drew blood.

Fourteen didn’t know what potatoes or wheat or blackberries were. She had only the vaguest idea of what a thorn was, from a poem about something called a rose, which she’d memorized because Grandfather liked it.

Her second wanted to understand what the world had been like before. Fourteen couldn’t see how it mattered. Apples were what they had. Apples and the family.

Do you ever wish things were different? her second asked.

Fourteen sighed. Sure. But my wishes don’t do us a bit of good. Right now, Fourteen just wished that her second would shut up.

I found a journal. An old one. It said that Grandfather hated people who didn’t look like us so much that he made a curse to kill them and ended up killing all life on earth. And instead of trying to reverse it he did something to the family and to the apples. Before, plants grew on sunshine and water. They didn’t need blood.

Fourteen tried to imagine that information being something new, something not always inherent to her understanding of the world. She supposed it would be upsetting.

She should have never let her second go into town.

Don’t you think that’s horrible? her second asked, her voice quivering with fear and disgust. He’s a monster!

Fourteen knew exactly what Grandfather was. She had always known—she couldn’t remember not knowing, or ever learning it. The knowledge must have been implanted during her time in the growth pod. She didn’t wonder why it hadn’t been implanted in her second. Don’t let the others hear you talking like that.

Her second scowled, but obediently changed the subject. Did you know there are whole books about how to cook different kinds of food?

The family didn’t need to eat. When Grandfather removed them from the growth pods they were self-sufficient, already mostly trained. Fifteen and her second would be done in the growth pods soon, and Sixteen and her second were suspended in the birth pods, waiting for their turn. Fourteen wondered if she should tell Fifteen not to let her second go into town.

That sounds like a waste of time. Why are you even looking at such things?

Her second shrugged. There are pictures. I wonder, sometimes, what it would be like to eat.

They arrived at the fork in the path, where Fourteen would go into the enclave and her second would go into town. She thought about telling her second not to go, but decided it was too late to matter, now. Could you bring me back a book about mushrooms? she asked.

Her second grinned, thrilled to be given a task. Fourteen had never asked for a book before. Of course! I’ll bring every single one I can find!

§

Thirteen was waiting for her as she stepped into the shaded atrium. I must tell you what happens during the ceremony, she whispered, pulling Fourteen to a dark corner. Thirteen clutched Fourteen’s hand between both of hers. Her fingers were cold. I didn’t have any warning, and I have been miserable ever since. I won’t let anyone else suffer as I do. You must prepare yourself. They will make you kill your second and spill her blood on the roots of an apple tree. Fueled by the sacrifice, the tree will produce an apple for you to eat.

Fourteen knew that seconds didn’t survive the ceremony, but she hadn’t imagined that they’d make her kill her second herself. But now that she’d been told, she felt the truth of it in her bones. That had Grandfather written all over it. Why would he act when he could make someone else darken their own soul? What does the apple do? Fourteen asked.

Thirteen flinched. It will grant you immortality.

And if I don’t do it, they’ll kill her anyway.

Thirteen nodded. And you. And Grandfather will have two apples.

Is that what happened to Twelve?

I have no idea. Thirteen’s cold fingers trembled. Probably.

Fourteen thought about the mushrooms in her pocket, about Grandfather’s study, about her second, staring at pictures of food that no one would ever taste again. She thought about how pointless it was to fight against something that you were powerless to defeat.

Thirteen’s face, identical to Fourteen’s own aside from the small Roman numeral XIII tattooed on her cheek, went pale and still. Light footsteps approached, and Fourteen turned to see One regarding them from a patch of sunshine in the center of the atrium. What are you two whispering about? she asked.

Fourteen squeezed Thirteen’s cold fingers, then released her and joined One in the light. I was asking my sister if she knew any new poems that I might learn to please Grandfather during the ceremony. I hoped to surprise him.

One’s smile was brittle and her eyes hollow. There is very little that can surprise Grandfather, she said. But I know a few poems that he hasn’t heard in some time. Come with me, and I will teach you.

§

Fourteen’s second brought back five books on mushrooms. And two battered novels, an illustrated dictionary, and a cookbook full of glossy pictures. These are my favorites, her second said. I think you’d like them, too.

Fourteen hid the books under a floorboard under her bed. She wasn’t exactly forbidden to have such things, but she couldn’t be too careful.

She only had time to read two of the mushroom books before the day of the ceremony. Enough to be fairly sure that the new mushrooms were parasitic, that their mycelial web was stealing nutrients from the tree to use for themselves. She learned how to collect spores and marveled at how incredibly tiny they were, how indistinguishable from dust to her untrained eye.

She mixed the spores in with her blood the last time she watered the trees. They had vanished into the warm red without a trace.

On the morning of the ceremony, she and her second were given identical white shifts. The material was thin and silky and would stain dramatically with a single drop of blood. Two and Three attended her, slicking her short hair back and painting her face, spreading thick, sticky pastes to redden her lips and darken her eyelids, while Thirteen braided her second’s longer hair. Thirteen’s eyes were shadowed and sad, her hands steady and gentle.

Thirteen gave Fourteen’s second a silver cup filled with a hazy liquid. Drink this, she said.

Thank you, her second said, and obeyed.

They walked the familiar path to the apple trees. Dark clouds loomed overhead, threatening rain, and a cold wind cut through their thin shifts, leaving Fourteen shivering, though her second didn’t seem to feel the cold.

Grandfather stood in the middle of the path, flanked by the rest of the family. His face—his sharp jaw accentuated by his close-trimmed beard, his sharp blue eyes, his sharp self-assured smile—was the only one not identical to the rest. He nodded to One, who stepped forward and handed Fourteen a bone knife. You must sacrifice your second to the trees, as all who came before you have. The trees will give up their gift, and you will live among us forever.

She wondered suddenly whose bone had been used to make her needle, if it and this knife came from the same person. She didn’t ask, just as she didn’t ask about the consequences of disobedience.

The bone knife felt familiar in her hand, and she had no doubt that both it and her needle were human bone. Why would Grandfather bother with any other kind?

Her second, her pupils huge and unfocused, gave Fourteen a dreamy smile. She asked no questions.

Fourteen led her to the mushroom tree. She wanted to promise to read the novels, to look at the cookbook and think of her, but could say nothing where Grandfather might hear.

She wasn’t sure her second would understand anyway.

As she lifted the knife to her second’s throat, she wondered what Twelve had thought about in this moment. Had her choice been to fight, or simply to surrender?

But she hadn’t known about the mushrooms. That secret was for Fourteen alone.

Her second still asked no questions. She didn’t beg for mercy or plead for more time. It was as if she was already gone.

Fourteen wondered what Thirteen had given her. Wondered if Thirteen’s own second had smiled dreamily in the face of her death, or if this was another gift from her sister.

The bone knife was wickedly sharp, and cut into flesh with as little resistance as water. Fourteen’s second was still smiling as she collapsed, her gushing blood staining both of their white dresses and cascading across the dirt.

The tree shuddered, and a single bud appeared on a branch above Fourteen’s head. It unfurled into a blossom in a heartbeat, then swelled into a ripe fruit, its skin red and gleaming.

Take it, child, Grandfather said. It is yours.

Fourteen pulled the apple from the tree. It came loose with the same feeling as a needle piercing flesh. Its skin was taut and snapped under her teeth. The flesh beneath was sweet and tart, with an aftertaste of iron. She felt new strength flowing through her, increasing with each bite. She ate it to the core, thinking of her second sitting with her cookbook, her fingers tracing the glossy pictures.

We will let you adjust, Eleven said. Join us when you are ready, and we will welcome Fifteen and her second.

Fourteen waited till the others vanished into the distance. Then waited a bit longer, just to be safe.

Then she fell to her knees and frantically gathered the mushrooms that had sprung up in the shadow of her second’s body.

Fourteen would carry her into town. Her weight would be nothing to Fourteen’s new strength. She could arrange her on a table in the library, among all of her dusty books, where she’d been happiest. She wondered where the others had taken their seconds, wondered how many of them had just left their second’s bodies to rot in the shade beneath the trees. She wondered if any of them had seen their seconds as nothing but fertilizer.

Eventually, Fourteen would find a way to avenge her second. And Twelve. And all of the other seconds. She’d eaten her apple. She had all of the time in the world.

Fourteen lifted her second’s corpse, and the thin, thread-like mycelium that connected her body and the ground snapped. They were so fragile, but so delicate.

Just like hope.

Fourteen gathered her second to her chest, and walked with her one last time.

JAMIE LACKEY lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and their cats. She has had over 170 short stories published in places like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Apex Magazine, and Escape Pod. Her first appearance in our pages was Music from the Air in Stupefying Stories 4. She’s created five successful crowdfunding campaigns to self-publish two novellas, a novelette, two flash fiction collections, and a short story collection. She also has a novella and two short story collections available from Air and Nothingness Press. In addition to writing, she spends her time reading, playing tabletop RPGs, baking, and hiking. You can find her online at www.jamielackey.com.

STONE

BY GORDON GRICE

It was the usual prairie grass for a hundred hot miles. Benson, a textbook salesman, lit one Lucky Strike from another all the way through.

His eyes bleared. Having the window down helped some, even though the wind drowned out Loretta Lynn on the radio, but then a semi emerged from the heat shimmers ahead and came barreling past. Gravel pelted his car. Something stung him just below his left eye. He nearly swerved off the road. When he brushed at the sting his hand came away with a pea-sized bit of gravel coated in tar and bright blood. He had no time to think about that, because a giant head loomed up beside the road.

He slowed. The mirror showed no one behind him but the receding semi. The land was just beginning to darken, not that it helped much with the heat. He eased onto the shoulder. There it was, just beyond a barbed wire fence: a face made of rock, 20 feet high, with heavy brows and lax lips. He cut the engine and stepped out of the car, which stood ticking in the heat. The road seemed to give a little under his shoes. He was probably getting tar all over them. He placed his hands carefully on the barbed wire and leaned in to look. Was it a sculpture, or some sort of natural formation? He’d be stupid to climb over the fence just for a look. He lit another Lucky. A metal sign was stapled to a fencepost: NO TRESPASSING. But the sign was rusty and half-hidden by yellow grass. He looked at the face. It seemed to be suffering, ready to moan.

You stuck in a dead-end job, too? Benson said to the face. You only live once, he decided, and soon he was half over the fence, clenching the cigarette between his teeth to keep his hands free. He felt his pants snag. He shifted his weight so he could pluck the snagged patch free, but that only made the barb poke into his thigh. He pulled himself loose and fell in the dust. The gray fabric of his pants bunched around a two-inch tear.

I wish that hadn’t happened, he said. At the sound of his voice, a fat bird emerged from the face’s right eye socket and fluttered heavily away, knocking out bits of grass behind it. Benson gasped. The cigarette fell from his lip.

He had to laugh at himself.

He was committed now; he might as well make this an adventure. It was easy to find handholds on the stone face. This close, it didn’t really look like a face, just some ordinary clump of sandstone. His feet found niches deep enough to burrow into. Up he went. He was scuffing his shoes, of course. He’d have to polish them in the hotel tonight. He couldn’t afford new ones. His hand slipped along the pitted smoothness of the nose without finding a hold. By stretching, he managed to grip the lower lid of the left eye. He hoisted himself. It felt good to exercise after hours in the car. It occurred to him at the last second that a bird might come out of this one, too, and flutter into his face. But no, nothing like that happened. He looked into the socket. It seemed deep, amazingly deep. He couldn’t see a thing. After a moment, his eyes adjusted, and he caught glimmers back there in the dark. He remembered reading about pirate treasure in caves, but of course he was nowhere near the sea, and besides, that was childish. For some reason it occurred to him that he was like a bit of gravel stuck on the stone face. He was even in pretty much the same spot where the nick on his face still stung.

Then the sound happened—a sort of buzzing moan. He slipped, went sliding down the face, landed hard on his back.

Was that a rattlesnake? Maybe it was wind blowing into those weird eye-holes? But he hadn’t just heard it. He almost thought he’d felt the stone vibrate beneath his hands.

He looked around. No explanation offered itself. There weren’t even any other vehicles on the road. His own car gave another heat-tick, then sat silent.

§

A few miles further on, the road dark enough now for headlights, he rounded a curve and saw giant women walking. It wasn’t safe to stop on the curves, but he decided he’d seen four of the stone figures, and that they only seemed to walk because the curve had made his headlights sweep across them.

Another curve brought him into a valley where a little town lay, its lights already visible in the accreting dark. This town, which he knew from the map as Terrence, was too small to have a school, so there was no market for his books, which was fine with him. He was tired of selling, tired of the smile he had to wear and the line of patter he had to spew about the need for texts with a true American sensibility. Not that he got a lot of orders. He was a lousy salesman and he knew it. Anyway, the town of Terrence might have a hotel. With luck he could hit four of the bigger towns tomorrow morning. With even better luck, he’d figure out a different line of work before he got there. At the gas station the attendant had just flicked off the light. He flicked it on again as Benson pulled in.

Any place to stay around here? Benson said as the hose pulsed with gasoline, like a snake swallowing.

Tharp’ll give you a good rate, said the man, gesturing with his red rag to a building across the street. The building there looked like something from Old West times, with its wooden sign hanging from an iron frame and its windows divided into little bottle-bottom segments. But its front was neatly blue and a lamp lit the front window. Probably give you something to eat, too. That remark answered exactly the question Benson’s belly was asking him.

The covered boardwalk in front led no further than the corners of the hotel itself. Benson’s shoes didn’t stick to it—he’d almost expected they’d be coated with road tar. Inside, things looked more modern than he expected—sleek brass lamps, chairs covered in fake vinyl.

Welcome, Stranger, boomed the burly desk clerk. I’ve got a room, breakfast included, for 25 dollars. Comes to 27.50 with the tax. Benson reached for his wallet.

My name’s Tharp, the clerk went on. Benson was tired. He tried to summon some enthusiasm for the chat that seemed unavoidable.

The main attraction around here, Tharp thundered, "is fossils. My uncle turned up 20 or 30 good finds when he was driving a road grader for the county. His blade snagged up one that was taller than you. Turned out to be the leg-bone of a Brontosaurus. The scientists don’t call it that anymore but back in them days that’s what it was, so the sign still says it. You can see it standing by the road out toward Larson. The leg-bone, I mean, not the whole critter. The rest never turned up. We got a little museum, too, on the back of the gas station. Take your receipt from here and they’ll give you