XI
They came upon a creek half a dozen bodies wide–an exact measurement as told by the bones of moon drinkers stretched across the bed–and they stopped. Watched the gentle flow moving in both directions far as they could see. Sunlight fractured kaleidoscopic over the water.
“We’ll have to cross it,” the man said. “How do your boots look?”
The boy picked up his left foot, then his right, showing the leather worn off the steel in the toe areas, the smooth soles, the holes in the ankles.
He shrugged. “It’s drinking that’s the problem, though, right?”
The man stared through the crystal clear water into the hollow sockets of a moon drinker’s skull. Licked his lips. Said, “Just to be safe. Try not to fall in.”
The boy leapt from rock to rock behind the man, one foot at a time, arms out for balance. When they made it across without falling in the lunar poison stream, the man ruffled the boy’s hair and told him good job and they walked on.
XII
The boy said, “What’s the city like?”
And the man said, “It’s filthy, but it’s also kind of beautiful. It’s like all the ugliness and sin in the world dressed up in glitter and chrome.”
“What about the people there?”
“Miserable.”
“Is that why you spend so much time there?”
“Mmhmm.”
XIII
Carcasses flew across the sky–meteors of meat raining down blood. The boy raised his hood. The man wiped his brow. They walked on.
XIV
The boy said, “Tell me a story about mom.”
XV
The man’s whole demeanor softened. He slowed his pace to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with the boy and he said, “Your mom was a market peddler when we lived in the city. She pushed product for this secondhand dealer who came across used mods and homemade rigs, plus some other little shit. Holovids and knock-off designer purses, that sort of shit. She’d slip some of the product for herself, lowkey. We eventually had a collection of pirated Head Trips. We’d lie in bed and plug in and go to all kinds of places–botanical gardens, glaciers, forests where the trees weren’t choked by cables. One of these Head Trips was a beach where the water was so clear, you could swim out and if you looked down, you could see the coral and sand along the bottom and all the jellyfish swimming around you. And those jellyfish… fuck. The feeling inputs on these pirated Trips were unpredictable. Sometimes you’d be seeing shit like it was right there in front of you, only you couldn’t feel nothing, not even the air around you–like that floaty out-of-body feeling you get when you’re dreaming–and sometimes things felt more than real, like the artificial nerve receptors were tweaked to amp up pain and orgasms and–you know, whatever. But the jellyfish. I knew the beach Head Trip was one of those tweaked ones because the water was so frigid it felt like your bones turned to ice, which felt great. But fuck the jellyfish. Their sting was like shards of glass slipped under your skin while at the same time, you’ve got your tongue clamped to a car battery. I got stung by at least a million of them bitches.”
“What about mom?” the boy said. “She made you feel better?”
“No,” the man said, “she swam untouched just an arm’s length away and called me a pussy.”
The man laughed. Then his face twisted up and he grit his teeth and sniffed. Walked a few paces ahead of the boy.
XVI
They walked along the stone wall of a burnt down estate–acres of splintered lumber and broken glass atop mounds of ash. Through a toppled section of the wall, the boy spotted a two-headed deer craning one of its necks to bite at the fruit of a scrawny tree, a stubborn survivor of the estate’s orchard. The deer’s twin head was on a swivel, watching out for predators, like the unseen boy who propped his rifle up on the wall and admired the creature through the scope.
The man held a knot in his throat. Prayed the boy wouldn’t shoot and end the hunt right there, forcing the man to invent another lie to press onward.
But then the boy lowered his rifle and shouldered it. Said, “It’s beautiful.”
“You’re not going to take the shot?” the man said.
Between the twin heads, this buck was carrying a forty-point rack and enough meat on its bones to fill a rented freezer in the city for at least a year. The boy just shook his head and pressed on, not wanting the hunt to end yet.
XVII
The man plucked a beetle from a tree to show the boy. “You know what this is?”
“Yeah,” the boy said. “It’s a bug.”
“This is a cochineal beetle. The guts of this little guy is where the color purple comes from.”
The man held his hand out flat and the beetle wriggled across his palm. He said, “Everything in the world—even color—comes from sacrifice.”
The boy held his hand out beneath his father’s and the man dropped the beetle into the boy’s iron palm. The cochineal beetle wriggled to the tip of his index finger, then over the pins and springs of his knuckles and up the welded plate of his wrist. By the time the cochineal beetle got caught up in the hydraulic tubing where the boy’s forearm met his elbow, the boy had forgotten about it. He followed his father deeper into the woods, a trail of purple dripping from his fingertips.
XVIII
Decades after half the moon fell to earth, a new forest had overtaken remnants of the old world left behind. Grass shot up through crumbled streets. Buildings were choked out by weeds. Trees were topped with engine blocks ripped from the junk cars they grew inside of. The man and the boy made their way through one of these towns, stepping lightly with their rifles drawn. These ghost towns had at times been haven to fugitives and moon-drunk mutants.
In a field of waist-high grass, they stepped through a maze of granite slabs scribed with names and numbers. Rows and rows of crosses. The boy said, “What is this place?”
The man said, “Folks from the old world used to bury their dead in the ground, and they’d mark the spot where they buried them with decorated stones.”
“What for?”
“To remember, I guess.”
The boy was quiet for a while. Then he said, “I can’t decide if I’d like that or not.”
“To be buried?” the man said.
“To always remember.”
A low roar, then a rustling in the grass. The man and the boy upped their rifles and scoped the area. Didn’t catch it before it charged. An albino boar leaking lunar poison from open rotgut rushed at them, thrashing side to side, knocking over crosses. The beast was closing too fast to get a clear sight through the scope, so the man dropped the rifle. Pulled the pistol from his waistband. The boy froze behind him and didn’t blink. The man squeezed the trigger, and the first shot sent him back to the narrow hallway outside the boy’s bedroom. The boy is three years old, pounding his little fists against the door his father holds shut from the other side, screaming until he’s shaking and gasping for breath and then screaming some more, choking on the tears and snot he’s sucking in through trembling lips.
“Daddy, DADDY! NO HURT MOMMY!”
Her eyes gone milky white. Foaming at the mouth and thrashing against the walls. Getting up stronger and angrier each time the man kicked her to the ground, until she finally crawled away and came back charging with a knife.
The man emptied the clip.
The boar’s chin smacked the ground so hard it bit its own tongue in half. Skidded to a stop at the man’s feet.
The man clenched his jaw and shook all over and walked on before the tears fell.
Fourteen years later, he could still hear the boy’s screams. Was all he could hear, even as the boy stood there now, calling out to him.
When the man wouldn’t stop or turn, the boy picked up his rifle, choking on the spoiled meat and sewage smell emitting from the hole in the boar’s stomach. Then he ran to catch up to his father and threw his arms around him and wouldn’t let him go, hard as he fought.
Kelby Losack is a big part of what we do here at Rare Candy. He’s also a brilliant author and if you liked this snippet from Mercy, make sure you grab a copy HERE