Authors: Steve Rasnic Tem
So he has his release, his ending, his final day. And he’s ashamed to say he’s grateful not to have suffered what his wife had to suffer. He’s grateful to have had some peace at the end, deserved or not it matters little. He’s grateful.
What more is there to say at the end, even when he can say nothing?
He said all he knew to say a long time ago. Some things can only be said in the language of angels.
*
Dad? Dad, are you awake? Did you sleep well? Time to get up now. Time for dinner.
He is awake, his eyes wide open, but only now beginning to see. He is so absurdly grateful he begins to weep.
No ending here after all. He wasn’t ready, he wasn’t ready. And somehow the angels knew.
So kind of his daughter to wake him.
She’s always been a good daughter, a wonderful daughter in fact, and he is grateful. So many fathers have not been as fortunate.
So many fathers have children who leave them, children who stay away even when they are home, children who pretend they have no fathers or mothers, children who have this other life, waiting for their fathers to die.
Dinner, Daddy. Don’t let it get cold.
He gazes around the bedroom and again it amazes him how clean she keeps it, how everything seems in its perfect place, how it had no perfect place until she put it there. The bed he lies on so carefully made, barely disturbed even as he eases from between its crisp white sheets.
His wife’s bed, equally well made and laden with roses to honor her memory. When did she die? He’s not quite sure, because her passing was so peaceful—their daughter has taken such good care of them both he knows she passed with a minimum of fuss and pain.
He had so many fears about this time
—how foolish it had been to worry and obsess about what must come to us all. How much better to ease into it without struggle, to see it as simply another stage, no better or worse than any other, just another adventure at the end of your days.
Daddy, please.
I don’t want you to starve.
Eating always made him feel better, so why not do what made you feel better?
Store enough up to last you through the lean times, was the way his father had always put it. The world had a way of eating at you, so what better way to survive than to have more of you against the world’s angry appetite.
“
Smells good, sweetheart. Smells wonderful!” He almost laughs, because he’s so surprised to hear the sound of his own voice. It seems forever since he’s heard the sound of his own voice. But of course it was only this morning, or perhaps last night, certainly no further away than yesterday afternoon. He and his daughter speak every day, after all: long, serious talks about politics and morals and her many dreams. She’s always had so much ambition. She takes after him. She takes after him.
Even to the point of sounding like him: his voice, her voice, indistinguishable.
He’s just had so many bad dreams of late in which he wasn’t able to speak to her, he wasn’t allowed to speak to her, and he’d been so hungry for conversation. He is so hungry.
Dad, I
’m not telling you again! Dinner!
He
’s always been late for dinner. He’ll get so busy sometimes, there is always so much to do, and a person of ambition can go on and on without replenishment sometimes, building on what he has already done, using the same words, the same thoughts again and again, reusing the dreams he’s dreamed a thousand times before.
That line of thinking is making him vaguely uncomfortable.
Better to get on to dinner, otherwise he might hurt her feelings. Nothing wrong here. Nothing is wrong.
She
’s kept the kitchen as spotless as the rest of the house. Gleaming countertops, crystalline glass, shiny silver of the utensils. The finest linen. But where’s the food? He doesn’t see any food.
Not that he needs to eat, however hungry he may feel. He
’s gotten so fat of late, he could lie in bed a year or more and live off all that he contains.
Better not to think of that.
Better to keep a positive attitude. He has so many bad dreams. He has so many awful things in his head.
“
Sweetheart,” he says. “Sweetheart. I don’t see the food.”
Look down, Daddy, she says from the other side of the wall.
He looks down at his plate but there is nothing. There is nothing to eat. “There’s nothing here, sweetheart.”
Don
’t be so helpless, Daddy. Make yourself a meal. Make yourself a meal.
He can feel the sheets gathered around his head.
He can hear his wife’s body torn asunder and carried out of the world. He can smell the reek and decay of everything he has ever loved. He tries to cover his ears against the screams of this world but he cannot move. He cannot move.
Make yourself a meal, her voice says with finality.
He gazes down at his ponderous belly and fumbles at all the utensils suddenly spilling off the edge of the table: all the sharp edges, all the knives of the world.
The telephone rings.
The answering machine picks it up. “Are you there?” the male voice asks. “Pick up. Pick up.”
“
I’m not here!” he says. “I’m not here!”
Make yourself a meal, she says, and
, grabbing the sharpest knife, he does.
Publishing History
1. “Onion Song” appears here for the first time.
2. “
The Sadness,”
Star*Line
, Nov/Dec 2009
3.
“The Messenger,”
Weird Tales
, Fall 1981, Vol. 48, No. 3
4.
“The Hijacker,”
Eldritch Tales
8
, 1982
5.
“Out Late In the Park,”
GATHERING THE BONES
, Jack Dann, Ramsey Campbell, and Dennis Etchison editors, 2003
6.
“Picnic” appears here for the first time.
7.
“Doodles,”
Noctulpa 7:Sinistre
, 1993 (reprinted in Ellen Datlow's Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror)
8.
“Strands,”
Noctulpa 4
, 1990
9.
“Night: the Endless Snowfall,”
Eldritch Tales
#12
, 1986
10.
“Archetype,”
NonStop Magazine
2
, Winter 1995
11.
“The Hunter Home from the Hill,” 2001 (India), July 1991
12.
“Shoplifter,”
Kayak
60
, 1982
13.
“Brain of Shadows,”
Psychos
'92
14.
“Attached,”
Kayak 60
, 1982
15.
“The Rifleman, the Cancerous Cow, and the Swedish Memorial Hospital,”
Pig Iron
11
,
The New Surrealists issue
, 1983
16.
“Jungle J.D.,”
It Came From the Drive-in
, ed. Norman Partridge
17.
“Cats, Dogs, & Other Creatures,”
Talebones
21
, Spring 2001
18.
“How to Survive a Fire at the Greenmark,”
The Spook
, July 2002
19.
“Minimalist Biography” appears here for the first time.
20.
“Sometimes I Get Lost,”
Electric Velocipede
11
, 2006
21.
“The Changing Room” appears here for the first time.
22.
“Charles,”
Black Static
12
, 2009
23.
“The Figure in Motion,”
Postscripts
,
22/23
-
The Company He Keeps
24.
“The Glare and the Glow,”
Interzone
227, 2010
25.
“Slapstick,”
Bare Bone
11
, 2009
26.
“Strangeness,”
Sybil's Garage
4
, 2007
27.
“Off the Map,”
Albedo One #35
, 2008
28.
“Unknown,”
Black Static 2
, 2007
29.
“Saturday Afternoon,”
Brutarian 33
, 2001
30.
“A Visit Home,”
The Tiger Garden
, ed. Nicholas Royle
31.
“The Multiples of Sorrow,”
Cinnabar's Gnosis
Ex Occidente Press
32.
“Fish,”
Horror D’oeuvres
(online), 2006
33.
“Merry-Go-Round,”
New Pathways 14
, 1989
34.
“The Green Dog,”
Null Immortalis: Nemonymous 10
35.
“A Dream of the Dead,”
Album Zutique #1
, ed. Jeff Vandermeer
36.
“Saturday” appears here for the first time.
37.
“Aphasic World Syndrome,”
Pindeldyboz
(online), November 15, 2007
38.
“December,”
HORRORS! 365 SCARY STORIES
, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Martin H. Greenberg, Robert E. Weinberg eds, 1998
39.
“The Mask Child” (a play for puppets) originally appeared on the multimedia CD
Imagination Box
, Melanie & Steve Tem, Lone Wolf Publications, 2001
40.
“Shuffle” originally appeared as a virtual card deck on the multimedia CD
Imagination Box
, Melanie & Steve Tem, Lone Wolf Publications, 2001
41.
“12 Minutes of Darkness,” a chapbook, Chris Drumm Books, 1991
42.
“An Ending,”
A Walk on the Darkside
, John Pelan editor, 2004