Mortal Teeth

Excerpt - Prologue

CONTENT WARNING: animal death, gun violence

Before

The Cataclysm wasn’t as instant as those far from its center want to believe.Valor had been walking home, his air rifle in one shaking hand, the other carrying a battered white bucket of muscadines by its cracked handle. It had been harder, when he was younger, to carry the weight. But in the way that things happen, after days and months, and years, he only needed one hand for it.The rifle was heavier. He used it to scare away the nuisances that prowled the vines, firing shots close enough to send furred coons scattering or setting starlings alight.His father grumbled when the fruit were bitten, but his mother’s eyes would be soft. She’d smile, that soft smile that was only hers, and insist that they needed to live, as well, and they had plenty to spare.Valor shot to warn, balancing his actions between his parents so that each was only half-disappointed. It was harder, but Valor became good at it. He’d aim above a squirrel’s head, or off the side of a bird’s wing. He had to be close, or it wouldn’t do much good.He had been lining up one such shot, his site just off the grey feathered shoulder of a pigeon, his finger easing down the trigger, when the bird took flight as the hammer dropped down.Valor rushed to the fallen thing as it lashed against the dirt. He had caught it in the chest, the frail center caved into a bloodied heart. Tears stung Valor’s eyes, but with shaking hands, he pinched its neck until it snapped.It was the right thing to do, he told himself. End its suffering. He kept telling himself that even as he clawed enough dirt away between two vines to lay the bird inside, to fold its wings over itself and bury it.It was the right thing to do, but it didn’t make it better. It didn’t take away the sound of the pellet’s impact, or the sight of the spotted feathers drifting against the blue sky.Valor would wonder, later, why he didn’t remember this when he most needed to. But then, just then, he picked up the bucket in one hand, the rifle in the other, and headed home. Because there was nothing Valor could undo once it was done.Later, Valor would wonder what happened if the bird hadn’t taken flight. If he hadn’t take the time to bury the feathered thing in the dirt, or to compose himself and wipe his face before returning home. He’d carry these questions, turn them over until they were worn smooth, but they would remain unanswered.Because what Valor didn’t know was when he pulled that trigger, and when that bird took flight, something else was done. Someone else, someone far away, did something because they believed it was the right thing to do.If Valor’s hands weren’t still shaking, he may have returned sooner. If he was smarter, he may have figured something out. If he was stronger, he may have been able to save someone. But he was distracted by the feel of death under his fingers, staring at his feet when the ground trembled, when the sound of thunder brought his attention up.The screech of birds rattled into his bones, and he even had the most fleeting of notions that they were seeking their revenge. A blanket blotted out the blue of the sky, carrion and songbird alike flocking together, their discordant warning cries ringing against each other. He could feel the sound scraping against his skin. Feathers scattered from the buffeted flock, raining down and catching in his hair, on his shoulders.They were only the first to escape, their wings making them fleet. The tremble of the earth intensified, and a stampede bore down, flushed from every wild between himself and the end of Lifrasir. Deer leapt on thin legs, rabbits and squirrels raced around his ankles. A buck stumbled, its antler cutting across Valor’s jaw. It tripped, sending Valor careening as the deer was crushed beneath greater hooves or paws. It took everything for Valor to plant his feet and refuse to fall.He ducked his head to protect his eyes, and when he opened them, he knew this all had been a nightmare. The blisters on his palms, the scrapes and bruises from the fleeing animals, even the dust and blood on his hands meant nothing against the impossible.What could he do? What could he have possibly done?The birds flocked, the animals fled, because the dark itself was chasing them. Thick, so black he couldn’t comprehend it. It stretched across the entire horizon, covering the stars themselves, a wall that rolled and roiled in a tempest. Depthless, uncontainable and unknowable.Whatever kept him in place against the animals failed. He fell onto the ground, the few stragglers racing past him, slithering over his hands. His heels kicked him back and he pulled himself through the trampled blood and viscera, the death mingling with the fermenting muscadines and slipping beneath his palms. He could get no purchase, and the wave was upon him, and he threw his arms up as if that could do anything against it.Nothing happened. The sound of the darkness broke as if it hit a wall, then screeched. It sounded of something that was alive, once, becoming something else.Valor lowered his hands. The threat of thunder rumbled through the black, a physical thing that shuddered through the lashing mass, before it pulled back, the force dragging the loose hair around Valor’s shoulders toward it.There remained a line, a veil of night dropped just beyond the tips of Valor’s boot.Then, now, there was a Before. And then, now, there is After.

After

You thought it was over, didn’t you?When the darkness took what was most important to you, when it took your entire world, you thought that was the end, didn’t you? That’s what made what came after easy.If it was over, then it didn’t matter when you shredded your soul until the only thing left was stain.Whatever you did after didn’t matter, because there wasn’t anything after.But the world didn’t really end, did it?It wasn’t really over, was it?

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Excerpt

Honey Road

Ruse could find things, and Ruse knew things. He had to. He had to be a step quicker, a hair wiser. He had to know what people wanted, and how to get them what they needed. If he did these things, if he knew these things, he’d stay useful. He’d stay alive.Knowing when he was being followed was one of the first things he’d learned. It made the back of his neck prickle, set his teeth on edge. There wasn’t much of a point in not exposing his back to a threat if he knew where it was. He slipped off Honey Road’s main drag, and he found himself less surprised than he probably should’ve been when Valor turned the corner.Valor didn’t say anything. He halted his movements and settled back into a stance that was too practiced to actually be relaxed. Every bit of him, and there was a decent, wide-shouldered and well-muscled bit of him wrapped tight in leather and black denim, was trained. In the bar, the alley, even caught out here, everything Valor did was on purpose.The air around Valor was a breath held, and it was infuriating. Ruse’s body always told him to do something. Do something. Ruse pulled out the crumpled pack of cigarettes and put one between his lips, then searched his pockets, mostly out of annoyance. There was the smaller book he’d ripped Aldis’s note from in one of the outer ones, and his more important one in the inner pocket. A green-tinged copper coin (for luck), four beads, two ballpoint pens—one almost empty, the other newish—and a charcoal pencil that needed to be sharpened. There definitely wasn’t a lighter, but he already knew he didn’t have one.Really should’ve thought about that earlier.He grinned around the unlit cigarette and through the nervous energy that thrummed under his skin. “You might as well walk with me, since we’re going the same way.”Valor approached, on purpose. He produced a matchbook, on purpose, and bent one of the sticks back and struck it. Ruse leaned into the flame, his eyes meeting Valor’s. Aquamarine, jeweled eyes of such clarity that if Europhones was still alive he’d pluck them to adorn his own skull.It was a good thing the fucker was dead.Ruse inhaled and the cigarette lit. He closed his eyes as he leaned back, putting enough distance between them that his heart slowed its hammering. Then, he kept walking.Honey Road came alive at night, the primary strip of iniquitous dens bright and loud. Too loud, and too bright, and Ruse needed to get out of it. His skin was raw after dealing with Aldis, his mind whirring itself through things better left buried.Valor’s deep rumble drifted along the back of Ruse’s neck. “Who are you?”"I thought we covered this.” The newly filled flask bumped against his fingertips, and he unscrewed the cap. “I’m Ruse.” The brandy warmed his throat, but the sweetness cloyed at it. Ruse coughed to clear his throat, repocketing the battered metal flask. “I’m good at finding things, so I find things.”“That’s it, people pay you to find things?”Valor’s long stride had brought him even with Ruse on the sidewalk. The fuzziness of the alcohol blurred Ruse’s edges, and he found his attention split between trying to keep his body from drifting closer to Valor and choking the bit to keep his tongue reined in, to not give anything away.Ruse shrugged. “It’s more of a barter system. Lots of people lost lots of things. I find what they are looking for, they owe me a favor.”Valor kept pace, a step behind Ruse’s shoulder. “Why did you give me that address?”Ruse breathed in smoke, then back out again. “Guess it depends,” he answered. “What did you do with it?”“I took care of it. He’s gone.”“Gone?”“Yes.”Ruse stopped, almost stumbling over his feet when he turned. “You mean, gone gone? To the gods?”Valor didn’t answer with words, but with a clench of his jaw.Ruse’s laugh barked out of him. “Shit, seriously? You just… just like that? Fuck me, but aren’t you something else. Why?”A flare of anger lit Valor’s eyes, there and gone. In another moment he weighed truth against lie, before he answered, “Some people need killing.”Ruse felt the burn of the cigarette between his fingers. He brought it to his lips, gave himself the second for the memory of screams to rise and fall. “Yeah. I’ve heard that one before.”

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transcript / credits:

the loneliness of what we did; the loneliness of what was done to us. Tony Hoagland, The Complex Sentenceand horror really can’t be talked about because it’s alive, because it’s mute and goes on growing George Seferis, Last Stopour father who art in heaven. our father who art buried in the yard. Richard Siken, Snow and Dirty Rain“we came form dirt we have to swallow it.” unknown imageThe reason for suffering isn’t some bad choice you made, or something you did wrong, it isn’t anybody’s fault; it just exists, it is a condition of this place; and the only purpose that it serves is that it wakes us up, at certain moments in our lives, it rouses us to get up on our feet and find the door. Tony Hoagland, Faulkneryou cannot follow the dead but you can follow a legend until it stains you on the lips, jaw, teeth, until you are its primary evidence. Sally Wen Mao, Mad Honey Symposiumsome say God is where we put our sorrow. God says, Which one of you fuckers can get to me first? Richard Siken, War of the FoxesWhat could be more useless than you limping offstage to die in a dead language? Of course the guys upstairs would love that. Your gods crafted a soul too big for the space of life they give you live in. Anne Carson, H of H Playbook

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