Category: issue 9

There are few places as nightmarish and cold as hospital rooms whose corners are manned by solemn grim reapers waiting for loved ones to succumb to their grief and release the tethers binding them to this world.

My sister sent a messenger urchin to wait for me in the journeyman dormitories where I lived. The kid was almost asleep on the doorstep when I finally finished. Autumn was our busy season. But Milla wouldn’t have sent for me for no reason, so I gave the kid a copper and postponed my dinner to see what she wanted.

The old Victorian house loomed, its windows dark as dead monitors. The once-lawn spread before it like a keyboard, scraggly wires of tall grass jutting out in clumps around old flagstones, decaying solar shingles, and assorted human flotsam. The sun above shone laser bright, threatening to overwhelm Zinc IV’s optic sensors when it focused them too high. Clouds reddish brown with nitrogen-dioxide rolled over the mountains and would block the sun soon enough, certainly for hours, maybe for days.

“It’s hideous,” I say, because I’m too sleep-deprived to be polite. The stuffed cat is just the sort of gift a carefree, childless sister would buy for a newborn. It regards us now from its place on the changing table with huge, glassy eyes. Its sparse black fur covers an anatomically unlikely body that emits a tinny meow when squeezed, and its tag confirms my suspicions: made from 100% unnatural substances, probably carcinogenic. My sister must have purchased it as an afterthought from some overpriced airport store as she jetted out to see her new nephew.