The Death of All Things

  “I’d never let—”

  She put her finger to his lips. “I don’t need vows from you. I’m not truly a bride, you know. What I need is for you to feed my birds.”

  He pressed his cold lips to her warm cheek, then twisted to his feet to pour the seeds into the grass at a safe distance. They sat down against the trunk of her tree, as comfortably intertwined as the tree roots that surrounded them, and watched the sparrows feed.

  * * *

  Even as the world began to weave back together in the wake of the plague, war raked it apart again with poisoned talons. The Prince walked through battlefields with the unwanted company of crows screeching above his head, crying praise for the clash of arms that left them such sweet carrion to feast on. In the bloodiest part of the battle, a beautiful white-haired woman reclined in the branches of a bare white tree and smiled at the men watering its roots with their blood. The Queen of Crows. He ducked his head, keeping tattered banners and armored men between them. His mother would have no kind words if she saw him slinking around with sad eyes, his shoulders hunched as if beneath a burden.

  “A god should find some joy in his purpose,” she’d tell him, as she often did. “That you do not shows your weakness.”

  Clever though he was at avoiding the Queen’s black eyes, only a little darker than her heart, the crows’ eyes missed nothing. Even as he escaped into the shadows of the trees at the edge of the field, their mocking voices called after him, She knows. She knows. She knows.

  She knows what? he wondered idly. But the lines were thrumming, hanging heavy with souls, and he had no time to dwell on the jabbering of crows.

  When he returned to the dryad’s forest, it had only been a year since he’d been Cassius to her Idonae. Still, it had been too long.

  There was no smell of smoke to warn him. The flames had long-since been extinguished. There was only silence, as if all the birds in the forest had forgotten how to sing. Charred twigs crunched beneath his feet in lieu of the tickling of grass. No soothing shadows greeted him as he came to the place where he’d left her. No graceful tree, swaying its limbs as if dancing with the breeze. Only ash and ruin.

  He knelt beside the blackened, twisted bits of what used to be an apple tree and sank his fingers into the pile. Fumbling, sifting, he tried to find some piece that he would still recognize as her. Lifting his cupped palms, the soot slid between his fingers, leaving them empty. Staccato splashes brought out patches of moon pale skin as tears dripped onto his hands. He stared at them, and he hated them, because all they could do was take, and never give back what had been taken.

  A wingtip brushed his face. A mockingbird chirped in his ear, sharing a fragment of a song. A whir came from his left, the light pinch of feet landing on his other shoulder. A bluebird gave him another piece of song. By and by, his arms, wrists, and shoulders were crowded with birds, some as bright and shining as jewels, and others clad humbly in gray or brown. But every one of their voices was fine and sweet. They sang to him, and all he could give back to them was the sharp, ragged sound of his breathing.

  A sparrow settled on his fingertips. She did not offer him a song. Instead, she opened her beak and dropped into his palm a small brown seed. An apple seed. For a moment, he stared at it, uncomprehending. Then he knew what it was, and where it had come from. The sparrow left him, and he curled his fingers into a fist.

  What to do with this last piece of her? He could plant it, but some part of him recoiled at the thought of giving her to this wretched charred soil. Anywhere else, there would still be axes and flames and disease. There would always be death.

  In his mind, she said to him, “I like to see my fruit nourish life. Be it a new tree or a little bird, it makes me happy. It’s what I was meant for.”

  Numbly, he raised the seed to his lips. As he swallowed, the birds scattered in every direction, leaving him in the midst of a sudden hush.

  As the seed settled into the bottom of his stomach, his heart shone down upon it like a pulsing red star, warm with the weight of her memory, bright with the sympathy of birdsong. With a sudden tickle, it began to sprout roots. They grew and stretched, wiggling down to tangle in his guts. Once they had found their footing, they thrust up through his chest to push branches between the gaps in his ribs. New leaves tickled against his bones. He unfastened his robes, letting them sink down to his waist so that he could see the tiny apple tree nestled inside his rib cage, cradling his heart in its branches. From behind him, gentle fingers reached out to touch his shoulder.

  “And now I will follow you,” Idonae whispered.

  From that moment on, Death was never lonely, because ever after, he was never alone.

  THE TAB

  Mack Moyer

  The gravel crunched under his wheels as he parked the rig in an unpaved parking lot outside the motel. From the driver’s seat, John watched Clara strut into the motel room. She was young, not even thirty-five yet, with bouncing blonde curls, and a blue satin dress that clung to all the best parts. She gave him a quick, smirking glance over her shoulder before she went inside.

  John’s ring finger felt naked. He stretched his fingers but it didn’t help. He wanted to follow Clara into the motel room, but not yet. There was a bar across the road, a ramshackle joint with a neon Budweiser sign in the window.

  He heard a crash as he got out of the cab. He staggered and almost fell, with a sudden bout of dizziness taking him unaware. Must have been his blood pressure acting up; the doctor had put John on new hypertension meds and warned they could make him lightheaded if he stood up too quickly. The dizziness passed. John looked for signs of a wreck. It sounded close, yet the scant traffic whizzed past unabated.

  John went to the bar. A sign hung over the door. BARATHRUM, it read.

  Inside he found the bar empty except for the bartender and a tall, skinny man in black sweeping the floor. The lights were dim and every surface was covered with a layer of dust.

  The bartender had pronounced crow’s feet and a warm smile, slicked back hair, and a salt-and-pepper chinstrap beard. He wore blue jeans and a dark fleece zipped up to his chin with a goat’s head stitched into the breast.

  “Have a seat pal,” the bartender said. He wiped the dust off the bar.

  The skinny man in black paid John no mind.

  John sat. “Little slow?”

  “Business comes and goes,” the bartender answered. “Let me guess, Jack and a lager?”

  John laughed. “You’re good at this.”

  The bartender popped the cap off a bottle and slung a double shot into a tumbler. “I’ve been here awhile, what can I say?”

  John put his money on the bar.

  The bartender slid it back. “Your money’s not worth anything here, John.”

  John almost choked on his beer. “How’d you—”

  “I’m good with names.”

  It must have been Clara. She knew him well enough to know he’d stop for a beer before hitting the motel room. “Did a blonde women pay for my drinks? Blue dress? Mid-thirties, roundabout?”

  Flashing red lights outside caught John’s eye. The crash, he thought. He looked through the window, but there was a haze, fog perhaps, and he couldn’t make out what was happening.

  “How’s the beer?” the bartender asked.

  It was thick and hoppy and strong. John couldn’t remember the last time a beer tasted so good.

  “I thought so,” the bartender said. He lit a cigarette and took a long drag. “Now John, we need to talk about your tab.”

  “You said my money’s no good here.”

  “That’s not the tab I’m talking about.” The bartender punched some keys on the cash register and a long receipt snaked out of it. He studied it for a moment. “It’s not the biggest I’ve ever seen, but you owe more than you’ve paid.”

  John got up from his stool. He wasn’t one to leave a free beer unfinished, but his gut told him to get out. “Alright,” he said. “I’m done.”

  The ski
nny man watched silently as John made for the door. John turned the knob but it wouldn’t open.

  “Let me out,” John said.

  “Not until we talk about your tab.”

  John was grinding his teeth. “I don’t know what you guys are doing, but if you don’t open this door I’ll split both your heads open.”

  The skinny man swept a cigarette butt into his dustpan.

  The bartender examined the receipt. “You are pretty good at splitting heads open. January 1982. A parking lot in…whazzat? Ink’s a bit smudgy. Oh, the River Wards in Philly. Pleasant neighborhood, from what I hear.”

  John froze.

  “Don’t worry,” the bartender said. “That one doesn’t count against you. The whole ‘turning the other cheek’ thing is great in theory, but in practice, not so much.”

  The memory flashed across his mind’s eye. It had been cold that night when the bar let out and the mood was sour in the neighborhood after the Birds dropped another game. He couldn’t remember why that guy came at him with a baseball bat, but John had never regretted what he did to him.

  His throat felt dry, his stomach queasy.

  “Finish your drinks,” the bartender said. “Trust me, you’ll need them.”

  Seeing no other option, John sat down. He downed his Jack. Just like the beer, it was strong and good. “You guys have a bathroom?”

  The bartender pointed across the room, next to the pool table.

  John squeezed into the cramped bathroom and pissed into the shit-stained toilet bowl. As he washed his hands he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He cried out when he saw his face had been crushed, with one eyeball dangling from the socket and liquefied brain matter dripping from a crack in his skull.

  He fell as he backpedaled out of the bathroom. The skinny man looked down at him, expressionless.

  John touched his face with trembling fingers but felt no deformities. An illusion, but even so, the fear coiled in John’s gut so tightly he thought he might vomit.

  “I should have warned you about the mirror,” the bartender said, shrugging. “My apologies.”

  “I was…” John couldn’t catch his breath. “I was…”

  “Not yet.” The bartender patted the bar and grinned. “Come on, drink up.”

  The red lights screamed through the window as John returned to his stool, lit a smoke, and threw back the remainder of his drink. “Alright,” John said. “My tab.”

  The bartender refilled his mug. “Your tab.”

  His heart felt heavy in his chest.

  “Some of this shit, geez,” the bartender said.

  Somehow John already knew. “Teddy.”

  The bartender nodded. “That poor prick. If it makes any difference, you’re not the only guy who owes for Teddy. I know boys will be boys, but Christ.”

  “So the guy in the parking lot doesn’t count.”

  The bartender shook his head.

  “But picking on some kid in high school does?”

  “I don’t make the rules, John.” He squinted as he looked over the receipt. “All because of a speech impediment and a weight problem.”

  John remembered Teddy well. “He lived with his aunt, an older lady from what I remember,” he said. He felt a lump form in his throat. “He’d go to bingo with her at the church annex. We used to laugh at him.”

  “And you know what Teddy did to himself once she died, I assume.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” He finished his mug. “Another.”

  “Gotcha, pal.”

  “I need to piss again. Any way you can cover up that mirror?”

  The bartender turned to the skinny man who was sweeping dust from under the pool table. “Can you cover up that mirror?”

  The skinny man scowled and shook his head.

  “Sorry. Just try not to look.”

  John averted his eyes from the mirror in the bathroom. He wiped sweat from his brow as he emptied his bladder.

  He stepped back into the barroom and his feet sank into a moist earthen floor. The lights had been replaced with candles burning along the walls. Bloated worms slithered past and stalactites bit down from the ceiling with skulls—some human and others not—impaled on the points.

  The bartender read the receipt line by line. He frowned at John. “It’s not looking great.”

  John stroked his beard. “Why all this for me? I never hurt anybody on purpose.”

  The bartender raised his eyebrow and for a moment his teeth looked brown and cracked and there was a hint of red in his eyes. “Lying counts too. More than you’d think. So do not lie to me, pal.”

  The skinny man hovered over John’s shoulder.

  “Back off,” John barked. That same sense of self-preservation he felt back in 1982 kicked in. John leapt off the bar stool, fist cocked, but the fight drained right out of him when he saw what the skinny man had become.

  The skinny man wore a long black robe now with the hood pulled back, his broom a scythe with dried blood caked onto the blade, his face devoid of flesh save for a thin green film across the forehead, his eyeless sockets dark pools of absence.

  John sat down.

  “So,” John said to the bartender, “is that it, really?”

  The bartender tucked the receipt into his pocket. “You tell me. Our records can be dodgy at times. Personally, I think we should upgrade to a more streamlined system but you know how these big operations can be. Bureaucracy and whatnot.”

  “Another please,” John said.

  The bartender obliged. “Drink fast.”

  “Fuck.”

  The skinny man placed his skeletal hand on John’s shoulder. John tried to ignore him, but knew that at any moment those fingers could tighten and pull him away forever. He looked at the bartender, who just shrugged, as if to say, Forever is right, pal.

  “I always give money to the homeless kid at the intersection,” John pleaded. “The one with the bum foot.”

  “Seriously? John, you’re talking about pocket change.”

  “I’m just a regular guy.”

  “Most people are. Doesn’t change the tab.”

  “Am I that bad?”

  “In my opinion, no. But the scales are tipped just enough in the wrong direction. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “But I’m good to my family, my mom and dad. I would have been good to my kids, if we ever had any. I’m good to…” he paused, thinking of Evelyn. “I’m good to my wife.”

  The bartender’s eyes flared red again. “Are you, now?”

  John covered the naked finger on his left hand.

  “Where’s your wedding ring, John?”

  He swallowed hard. “I had to take it off.”

  “And why is that?”

  John scrambled to dig the ring out of his pocket. He could feel it through his pant leg but couldn’t squeeze his fingers inside. The pocket was too tight, and growing tighter. “I can’t get it,” John whimpered.

  “At least you had the decency to take it off before you came here,” the bartender said.

  “Evelyn would never know.”

  The bartender nodded. “You would.”

  John’s beer mug was now a crude stone chalice filled with blood, thick with clots. A dead roach floated in the center.

  “You don’t know shit,” John said. “I would never try that with Evelyn, not now.”

  “That’s your excuse?” the bartender said. He looked to the skinny man. “Can you believe that?”

  The skinny man remained silent.

  “John, this is on you and you have to pay for it.”

  John pushed the chalice away. “I’m surprised you didn’t mention the accident.”

  The bartender leaned on the bar.

  “It was my fault.” He changed his mind about the chalice. He took a sip. The blood didn’t taste as bad as he thought. “It’s been years since we—”

  “Fucked?” the bartender asked. “Your old lady just isn’t into you anymore?”

&n
bsp; John glared at him. “Watch your mouth.” Another sip. His shoulders slumped. “It was my fault. Getting the house was my idea, even with that fucking mortgage.”

  The bartender looked over the receipt again as he listened.

  “I could only swing the payment with extra overtime,” John went on. “And that was with Evelyn already working her ass off. Then one month the money stretched a little too thin. I picked up three double shifts in a row.”

  The bartender watched John closely.

  “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have been driving after that last shift but I thought I could make it.” John sighed. “I picked up Evelyn from work. I didn’t see the stop sign. I was…”

  “Drunk?” the bartender asked.

  “Tired,” John answered. “I’d never drive drunk with my wife in the car.”

  The bartender scratched his beard for a moment. “And the woman at the motel?”

  “Evelyn can’t do that for me anymore, so I talked to Clara.” John took a long drink from the chalice. “I’m still wrong. I know I’m wrong.” He wiped the blood dripping from his upper lip. “Anyway, do what you need to do.”

  The bartender folded the receipt then tapped it on the bar. “None of that was in our records.”

  The skinny man was sweeping the floor again, not the earthen floor but the linoleum John saw when he first arrived. The stalactites receded into the ceiling, skulls and all.

  “Like I said,” the bartender continued, “we don’t have the best record keeping system. I mean, I do my best, but it’s not always enough.”

  John’s hands were shaking.

  “I guess you can go,” the bartender said. “That is, unless you want a quick one for the road.”

  The skinny man looked at the bartender.

  “What? I like him.”

  John ran to the door. It opened this time. He disappeared into the haze outside.

  * * *

  John awoke in pain, strapped to an unyielding backboard with a neck brace tight under his chin.