Dawn peeked under the bathroom door when at last he finished. He had been sick twice, and even now sweat soaked through his clothes. He shook, unable to grip the stylus.
Axeonos had slept through it all. He had retreated to the bathroom to keep the pain to himself. He stood on shaking legs and let the tablet clatter onto the counter. He didn’t let his eyes focus on it again. It was bad enough to know what he had done without having to face his crime.
His fingers were so numb the buttons on his shirt became almost unmanageable.
The shower thawed his fear and melted through his icy skin. He hugged himself and turned around and around under the torrent, trying his best to soak in every drop of hot water.
Water. There would be none in the desert. Not even enough moisture in the air to keep the sweat on his skin. He closed his eyes and saw himself striding among the dunes.
With his resistance finished, he was released from the compulsion to faint or vomit, though his eyelids felt like sandpaper, and his mouth tasted like blood.
He reveled for a long time before a knock on the door startled him back to his guilt.
“I know it is not possible to use up hot water in the Shalloota, but it seems you are trying.”
The woman.
“I’ll be out in a moment,” he called back, his voice rough from a night of muffled screams.
He switched the water off, scrambled for a towel, and gathered his clothes. As he opened the door, she brushed past him. The sun had risen while he had been in the shower and golden light filtered through the large windows. Outside, vendors were calling out wares, their voices undulating in rhythm with the sounds of foot traffic.
Deacon peered down at the city as it set up for a parade. The streets were full of sound. Instruments warming up, chatter and laughter as the festivities took shape. Barriers rose along the sidewalk, and the beginning of celebratory noise filtered through the air.
His heart began to pick up, a strange sort of excitement rising in his chest, in his head, answering to the noise outside. A madman and a liar, he was. He hissed wordlessly and forced himself away from the window. His only destination today was the desert.
He laid his clothes out on the bed. They were rumpled, and smelled like sweat. It was a uniform of sorts. A blue shirt, black pants, black jacket, black shoes, white collar, all mass-produced for Inspectors.
He ran his hands over the fabrics, smoothing out the wrinkles and spots. Idly he picked at the cuffs, examining the scents of yesterday—the train, the meal, the woman.
The door opened, and he turned.
She was wrapped only in a towel, and for the first time he saw her bare face. Even unadorned by makeup and jewelry she struck him as a fascinating creature.
“What is this?” she held up the tablet, the screen trembling in her hand.
Deacon paused. “Work,” he said.
“What were you going to do? Where were you going, if you had already signed off the factory?”
She was afraid. Now he hesitated, but the words were pulled from him. “To the desert,” he said.
“Why? There’s nothing there but sand for a hundred miles.”
“I was going … to walk,” the words forced themselves from his lips.
She frowned. “Where?”
“I was going to walk until I couldn’t.”
Her eyes widened. “Why?”
“Please,” Deacon asked her. “Please don’t make me—”
He was too weak to fight the conditioning now.
“Tell me,” she commanded.
“I have gone mad,” he blurted as the familiar pressure began in his head. The will to answer.
She drew back, her brows furrowing in fear and shock.
Of course. He was disgusting, useless. A shadow of his purpose. “I am insane,” he confessed again. “And when they find out, I will be reconditioned. They will torture me with poison and light, to force me not to want. Not to lie. Not to think.”
“I do not understand,” she said.
Too late now, the desert beckoned in the distance. She would report him, and the Administration would come for him. And then he would be forced back into training.
“How are you mad?” she asked steadily. She stood still and straight, unadorned.
He ran a hand down his face in a claw, scratching at his brow and the bridge of his nose. “See this! This is the face of an Inspector, the body and mind of a djinn!”
She retreated, but he went after, reached for her, grasped her wrists, and pulled her close. “Can you see it?” he asked desperately. “The madness? Look at me. You must be able to see it. It must be obvious now.”
Her chin trembled; she tore free. “You are scaring me.”
“No! No! Watch!” He ripped open the briefcase, and showed her his treasures. Those he would take into the desert. He had tried, had been fighting his symptoms, and all the while these things had been corrupting him, turning him inside out with addiction and fear of discovery. He was helpless.
“See?” he said, holding his breath as if afraid to break her concentration. “Do you see it?”
She held her hands over her chest, fingers clasped together as if in prayer. “Oh, my djinn,” she whispered.
But her expression stilled him. Instead of fright, he read something else. He frowned. Was that delight? Amusement?
No. She had corrected him.
It was speculation.
The day was long, and full of beauty. They ate in the café, amid crowds of people. She bought the most expensive dress she could find, and they wandered in and out of the shops on the main street. Food. Entertainment. They spent money as if it were sand. Time passed quickly, and that night they wandered into the parade, hand in hand, fingers woven together.
The lights spun around them, laughing faces, such a variety of people and costumes. It all blended together. He felt giddy, breathless.
The woman dragged him to an alley, where the stream of people passed by unseeing, like water over rocks, like wind over mountains. This was a pocket where together they were unhurried, protected by darkness and enclosing buildings.
“Would you leave me now?” she asked.
He gazed at the curl of her lips, at the slant of her eyes. “No,” he said in her language, intoxicated by the feel of the words on his lips. The first time he had spoken the words he had so long ago learned.
“Then no more talks of the desert,” she commanded. “You are my djinn now, and I am your woman. Where you go, I go, and I have no wish to walk in the desert.”
“I thought you didn’t want to be bound,” he said, feeling the curl of her ear between his forefinger and thumb, tangling his fingers in the luxury of her hair.
“With you, I am not bound,” she smiled. “Together, we will be free.”
She curled around him, her breath like the flutter of wings against his skin. “But we must never let them know,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
He twisted against her, wrapped in her limbs, in her presence. “We must choose when to fight.”
He breathed her in, unable to answer, but she understood anyway. Her lips were at his ear. She probably wouldn’t hear him anyway. Her voice swelled hypnotically, like the lights in the street, and the echo of the music from the festival. He felt dizzy with the spin of it.
“Shut down the factory.”
Of course. It was the only way they could be together. The only way to avoid re-conditioning. He had to play a part, and lying? She was the daughter of a spider. She would teach him how to lie.
The Howler on the Sales Floor
written by
Jonathan Ficke
illustrated by
Sidney Lugo
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jonathan Ficke lives outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin
with his beautiful wife. He graduated from Marquette University with a degree in public relations, which (in a manner of speaking) is another form of speculative storytelling.
His older brother introduced him to Tolkien at a young age and, despite his bookshelf’s persistent pleas for mercy, he’s voraciously consumed the genre ever since. For as long as he can remember, he dreamed of being an author, and the thought of holding a book containing his words in his hands is a dream come true.
When he’s not reading or writing, he is turning lumber into sawdust and, when all goes according to plan, furniture.
You can find him at twitter.com/jonficke, where he mostly muses about woodworking, basketball, and writing.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Sidney Lugo was born in 1994 in Guarico, Venezuela. “Sid” to her friends, she grew up most of her life in Caracas, Venezuela and moved to Boston at age nineteen to study Interactive Design.
Her childhood memories serve as inspiration for many of her drawings. She developed an interest in fantasy and sci-fi from a young age.
Sid spent a lot of time looking at French comic books and stories, especially those from the comic anthology Metal Hurlant. These kind of surreal sci-fi and fantasy stories stimulated her imagination and inspired her path as an artist.
Outside of her studies, she continued to learn and pursue her interest for art. She continues to learn and improve her skills in order to work as a storyboard artist and work on her own comic book.
Sid is currently a graphic designer working as a freelancer for private clients.
The Howler on the Sales Floor
Fluorescent lights embedded in the drop ceiling flickered and pulsed faster than the human eye can perceive, but for eyes formed in the ancient whirling chaos of the Maelstrom, they bathed the conference room in a pleasant light. It was enough to drive a man insane. Luckily, Nya had been born of insanity. The chaotic lights comforted him.
Nya sat at a conference table and sipped his stale coffee. Bill Dudly, his frumpy manager, a balding man with an unkempt neck beard and thick-rimmed glasses, sat across from him. Bill sat next to Julia Andersen, a she-devil from beyond the void. It was Nya’s quarterly review, and his cowardly manager had summoned reinforcements in the form of the pencil-skirt-wearing, austere woman with aquiline features and a command of the darkest arts of the known and unknown cosmos: human resources.
“Nya, your sales numbers are exquisite, as always.” Bob flipped through a manila folder, each turn of the page jostled his garish tie. Not even in the deepest pits of madness had Nya seen such hideous patterns. His mind, though forged in a crucible of insanity, struggled to comprehend a reality in which such a tie could exist.
Bob asked, “Just as I did last quarter, I need to ask how you do it.”
“MY CLIENTS SEE THE EMBODIMENT OF DESPAIR AND MADNESS IN MY EYES, AND THE FUTILITY OF THEIR EXISTENCE IS LAID BARE BEFORE THEM. THEN THEY CANNOT HELP BUT BUY PAPER IN VAST QUANTITIES IN A VAIN ATTEMPT TO COVER THE DARK REVELATIONS FROM SEEPING INTO THE WORLD,” Nya projected the thought deep into Bob’s mind and resisted smiling when the man twitched. “TELL ME HOW MUCH MY MORTAL COMPENSATION IS DUE TO BE INCREASED.”
Julia fixed her cold green eyes on his. “Do you really think this is an appropriate time to ask for a raise?” Her perfume, aromatic oils suspended in whale vomit, if he didn’t miss his mark, both repulsed him and enticed him.
“IS IT NOT MY QUARTERLY REVIEW?”
“Of course it is, Nya. Relax,” Bob said.
Julia asked, “How many times has HR needed to remind you about projecting dark realities into the minds of your coworkers?”
“THIS IS HOW MY PEOPLE SPEAK.”
She didn’t flinch. He met her unyielding eyes and bit back a snarl. He didn’t let the sharp lines of her face, her blonde hair, or any other quality that might sway a mortal subject to the whims and desires of the mortal flesh distract him. What a terrible adversary.
“Seven,” he said aloud.
“Make it eight,” Julia said. “We need to talk about Daryl.”
“I am not responsible for Daryl’s weak mind.” Nya concentrated on forming the words with his tongue and not his consciousness.
“You reduced the poor man to a gibbering husk,” Bob countered. “Drive competitors insane, fine. Torment clients into signing purchase orders, and as long as the numbers are good, we can live with it. But your coworkers are your family.”
“MY FAMILY EXISTS IN PLANES BEYOND MORTAL COMPREHENSION. THEY WOULD NOT BE UNABLE TO WITHSTAND MY VOICE.”
Julia opened her plain black leather portfolio. “After Daryl’s manager wrote you up and asked HR to conduct an investigation, you said in your report: ‘I am the messenger of the Maelstrom, the Devouring Will made flesh.’ You continued to say that you ‘opened Daryl’s eyes to the coming of the Storm whose dominion is madness and pain beyond comprehension.’” She leaned back and glared. “You can’t make threats like that!”
Nya sought to explain. “He was to ensorcell my computer back to functionality. Even in the Maelstrom, we did not have the blue screen of death. Was his job not information technology? Was his task not to fix such issues so I could return to selling paper, as is my task?”
“But, madness and pain beyond comprehension?” Bob did not meet Nya’s eyes.
“NOT EVEN THE CHAOS LORDS OF THE MAELSTROM USE MICROSOFT WORD. WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS PLACE?”
“This place is Howel Percival Lomington, LLC,” Bob said, “and we have a very favorable contract with Microsoft for our suite of productivity software.”
“Bob, I think he was asking a rhetorical question.”
“The HR witch is right.”
Julia leaned forward, menacing. “Also, your coworkers have reported you for what is noted in your file as a ‘persistent use of archaic disrespectful language.’ You can’t call me a ‘witch!’” Julia slammed her hand on the table. “I’d also like to take this moment to remind you that ‘trollop’ and ‘churl’ are also inappropriate. Lastly, none of us can even figure out what ‘ebien,’ ‘eibata,’ or ‘temum’ mean, but your tone suggests they are disrespectful. I’m drawing a line in the sand on those too.”
“YOU WOULD STEAL THE WORDS FROM MY TONGUE, HOW IS THAT NOT WITCHCRAFT?” Nya ground his teeth. The mortal coil he wore made violent expressions of impudent rage less dramatic than when he could lash out with tentacles of warped space and time.
“Given your history, this time there will be consequences,” Julia said. “You will undergo seven hours of sensitivity training, as well as write a formal apology to Daryl, and the poor man’s psychiatrist. For God’s sake, we had to offer the psychiatrist a settlement just on account of the things Daryl said during therapy.”
Nya met the she-devil’s gaze, unwavering and cold in the flickering fluorescent light.
“YOU WOULD MAKE A GOOD SERVANT OF THE STORM. MY FATHER WOULD WIELD YOU AS A GREAT FELLING BLADE TO REAP THE WHEAT OF THIS WORLD FOR THE FIRE.”
“I think you’re a valuable member of the team, too,” Julia replied. “Don’t be late for your first sensitivity session, seven one-hour sessions at five p.m. after the next seven workdays. Your first starts at five today in the Rolling Meadows conference room.”
“FIVE? BUT WE HAVE AN OFFICE SOFTBALL GAME TONIGHT!”
“Well, they’ll just have to manage without you,” Julia said. “And stop with the despair projections. That was the whole point of this meeting.”
“The infinite universes bend to a cold, dark, and hopeless end from which none will escape.” Nya stood from his chair and towered over his seated adversary. “I have sales calls to make.”
A line of white, the cord to his earbud, dangled just on the edge of Nya’s vision. The dulcet tones of panpipes danced in his ears, distracting him from the endless rows and columns of sales figures that demanded his attention. He closed his eyes
and thought of home, the deep places, the dark places where one could scream with wanton disregard of the clock, never attracting a noise complaint or eviction notices.
When he opened his eyes, the sales figures remained. A calendar with kittens frolicking with yarn hung on the wall of his cubicle. Eight days had passed since he clashed with human resources. He had endured his punishment, seven hours of droning from sensitivity counselors. He was the messenger of Maelstrom. It was his steadfast desire and mission to further the devolution of the mortal plane of existence into darkness, chaos, and entropy, and even he had hated those seven hours.
He took the last sip of too-cool coffee from his mug and frowned. He stood up and stalked away from his desk to the coffeepot, only to find it empty. He suppressed the urge to seek out the culprit who had failed to make a fresh pot to banish the scofflaw’s psyche to wander in an unending graveyard of the soul. He began instead to make a fresh pot.
“Good afternoon, Nya,” Marty, a short man from accounting wearing a mustard-yellow short-sleeved dress shirt said as he walked up to the coffee station. “You heart New York, eh?”
“What?” He spun to face the man, coffeepot in hand.
“The—uh—the mug.” Marty pointed at the white mug with a tiny red heart on it that Nya carried with him to the coffeepot.
“One day I will go to New York,” Nya intoned emotionlessly, returning his attention to the coffee.
“Yeah, it’s a cool place to visit.”
“I will go there and bring sermons of the beyond to its masses. I will show them the prophecies men dare not speak of.”
“Yeah, like a sales call presentation? I didn’t know we were expanding into the New York market, but sure. That sounds like a great idea.” Marty shifted his weight from foot to foot. “So, softball tonight? We need this game against IT. We’re behind them in the standings. We’ve missed you out there.”
“I will use my long arms and superior leverage,” Nya promised, “to send that tiny white sphere into dimensions beyond the outfield wall.”