“Let justice be done, though the heavens fall!”

—Earl of Mansfield

(1705-1793)

“This is a court of law. . . not a court of justice.”

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

(1841-1935)

Johnny knew him. Mosh Frazier. Mosh of the wild hair. Mosh of the tattoos, skulls and fire. Mosh of the wide leather belt and the evil temper. Mosh was Johnny’s friend. At least that’s what Johnny thought.

Johnny had always been a little slow about people.

Johnny’s home was a farm shack in the poorest county in upstate New York. All his since Momma died. Johnny let Mosh share Momma’s house. In return, Mosh gave Johnny money, gave Johnny beer, brought Johnny women, introduced Johnny to drugs—

Johnny never poked into Mosh’s business. Johnny never asked what Mosh did out in the overgrown field in back of the house. Johnny never asked Mosh what he did alone in the shack when Johnny went to town.

Johnny really thought Mosh was a friend. Mosh was good to Johnny. Johnny would never do anything to upset him. Never.

Then Mosh left.

Then the police came.

The police dug up the overgrown field in back of Momma’s house.

The police found the bodies of fifteen women.

The police said Mosh didn’t exist.

###

Her head throbs. She’d drunk a lot, and downed a lot of pills that she probably shouldn’t have. She opens her eyes, fearful of light.

No reason to fear. There’s no light except from the moon. She’s thankful for that. The bedroom is dark monochrome and fuzzy. Enough light beams in from the cracked window for her to see that she’s alone. Sober now, mostly, she decides that the place is a pit. Smells of beer, old cigarette smoke, and something else—

Mothballs?

Where the hell is he?

(John Schaefer. He is thirty years old and somewhat retarded. He lured me here with the promise of drugs.)

Lured? That isn’t a word she’d use. The combination of beer and pills is doing funny things to her head.

Doesn’t matter who he is, because the guy’s gone. That usually means he’s stiffing you, ripping you off. She doesn’t worry too much. After all, this is the guy’s house. He wouldn’t rip her off and leave her here, huh?

She shakes her head and feels a pain that seems more than simple hangover. She—

(Betty Dupree. I am twenty-one years old, and I ran away from home when I was thirteen.)

—Betty steps out of the sagging bed. Her feet sink into gray pile carpet. The carpet’s filled with dust, making her feet feel dirty. She’s naked, and the cold makes her shiver. The second story of this ancient farmhouse isn’t heated.

Wind creaks wood in the walls and rattles windows in their frames. She shivers again.

###

All Johnny’s money came from his disability checks, so they gave Johnny a public defender. The defender’s name was Larry. Larry said he was Johnny’s friend.

Johnny told Larry about Mosh.

Larry brought in a man with a computer. The man made faces appear on the computer screen. Johnny told the man about Mosh’s wild black hair. About Mosh’s gray-shot beard. About the earring Mosh wore, the Nazi cross in black red and white enamel. About how Mosh’s eyes would go cold, and he would sit there for hours staring at Momma’s TV, even though it didn’t work no more.

He told them about the three scars on Mosh’s cheek, and his broken nose, and the cobra tattoo on his arm that snaked around until you could just see the tail peeking from the collar of a grease-stained T-shirt.

In the end, the image burning on the monitor’s screen was Mosh. It was so much Mosh that it frightened Johnny.

Despite the pictures, no one found Mosh Frazier.

They found a lot of bikers in Johnny’s county, but none was Mosh. None said they knew Mosh. Most said, like the police, Mosh didn’t exist. Larry printed up the computer picture of Mosh and gave it to people, news people, mostly.

Once Johnny was scared when the picture showed up on the TV. But then the picture was gone and the news talked about Johnny. Johnny listened because he’d never heard anyone important talk about him before.

The news told him that he was about to have a “competency hearing.” Johnny didn’t know what that was, but if that hearing said so, then Johnny’d go to court. Johnny didn’t want to go to court. If they found him guilty he’d face a “mandatory life sentence,” and a “mandatory empathy treatment,” for every dead body they’d found.

Empathy treatments sounded scary.

Eventually Johnny had the competency hearing. They decided that he could stand trial for the murder of the fifteen women found buried on his land.

###

Betty searches the bedroom for her clothes. She doesn’t bother turning on the light. Her eyes are adjusted to the dimness. She moves stacks of yellowing newsprint, freeing clouds of dust to dance in the moonlight.

She sneezes.

She finds her bra and panties hiding by the end table, half-buried in beer cans. Once she does, memory comes like a voice in her ear—

(My clothes were found downstairs.)

—telling her that the rest of her clothes are downstairs. She can’t remember much else about last night. Can’t remember much of anything.

This is a really bad hangover.

To her disgust, she steps on a used condom from last night. She kicks it away, and it sticks to the wall. She turns away, feeling a burst of self-loathing. This place makes her feel dirty. The money doesn’t matter at the moment, and neither does the vial of meth that had been promised to her.

She just wants to feel clean.

The guy—

(John Schaefer. This is his mother’s house. His mother died ten years ago.)

—Johnny isn’t going to mind if she uses his shower.

That’s what she’ll do. She makes the decision, and has the odd sensation that someone is deciding things for her.

She shrugs away the thought.

She’ll take a shower, get what she was owed if she can get it, and leave. She’ll hitch back to Rochester if she has to, but she doesn’t want to stay in this house any longer than necessary. If she stays, she feels that the house’s rot will eat into her.

Betty walks to the bedroom door. Her feet leave the carpet and are chilled by unheated hardwood. Her left foot, the one that had stepped on the condom, sticks to the floor. She steps over beer cans, food wrappers, and male clothing.

Mason jars of debris fill the top of the bureau next to the door, and she nearly knocks one over.

Her hand catches it before she realizes she’d brushed against it. The move feels as if it was programmed. Betty is frozen by a momentary sense of predestination, a sense she is walking inevitably toward an evil fate.

Betty forces the feeling back. Such an admission might break her, like this mason jar almost broke upon the cold hardwood floor.

She stares involuntarily into the jar. Bolts and washers inside the glass are fused into a solid mass of rust. Within the mass of fused metal crawl cockroaches.

Dozens of cockroaches.

She gasps and her hand lets go of the jar. It falls and she watches, frozen—

(I am frightened. This house frightens me. This house is supposed to frighten me.)

—frozen by fear. She doesn’t know why she is scared by the roaches.

The jar hits the ground and explodes into fragments.

Washers and bolts are strewn across the floor. Amid the shrapnel, roaches scurry from the site like an insect cluster bomb. Glass fragments bite her shins, her calves, her feet. The sound echoes through her head as if her skull is exploding, and those are fragments of her brain scurrying to the shadow-cloaked walls.

Johnny isn’t going to like that.

(John Schaefer is dangerous.)

“Shit,” she whispers to the last visible roach, and she opens the door without moving her feet. Bolts and glass are caught by the bottom edge of the door. They scrape across the floor like fingernails on a coffin lid.

“Forget Johnny,” she whispers, “after a shower I am out of here.”

(John Schaefer is dangerous.)

###

Larry told Johnny that the only chance he had was to plead “not guilty by reason of insanity.”

“But it was Mosh who did it,” Johnny said, on the verge of tears.

“I know, Johnny.” Larry said, patting Johnny’s hand. “But no one has ever seen this Mosh Frazier. There’s no evidence he ever existed.”

“I saw him. He was my friend.”

Larry nodded. “I know, Johnny. I know that’s what you believe.”

###

“Where is everybody?” Betty whispers.

There had been other people at the party. She knows it.

(Tanya Gideon. She’s only sixteen but she’s gone on so many hard trips that she looks thirty. She was the third one he—)

“Tanya?” she calls.

No one answers.

She inches sideways through a hallway too narrow because of sagging bookcases. The cases hold tattered cardboard boxes and old cracked-plastic radios with missing knobs. There’s an old headlight, radio tubes thirty years beyond use, coke bottles filled with cigarette ash, and children’s books dog-eared, water-stained, and smelling of mildew.

She sucks in her tummy and clutches an arm across her boobs to avoid brushing any of the filthy-looking artifacts. She wonders if Johnny might be a little nuts. Before, he seemed a little dim and helpless. She and Tanya had taken pity on him when—

(John Schaefer picked us up at a highway rest stop outside of Rochester. The same highway where he found the fifteen other—)

—he picked them up.

They picked them up. Not just Johnny.

Betty wonders why she is only thinking of Johnny. Johnny’s friend is much more frightening. Johnny’s friend is much more dangerous.

At the end of the hall are the stairs, tall, narrow, dark as ink. She looks down and feels the dark reaching for her, sucking her in. Silent whispers urge her on, and she starts down, not wanting to, powerless to stop.

The shower—

(The indoor bathroom was added long after the house was built. When John Schaefer’s father lived there was no indoor water. The shower is downstairs.)

—the shower is down there.

Her clothes are down there.

Tanya is down there.

They are— (he is) —down there.

Betty descends the stairs.

###

During the trial Larry said that Mosh Frazier did exist. Mosh existed as part of Johnny’s broken personality. If Johnny had taken part in the deaths of fifteen women, it was because of that other part of himself. The part that was Mosh Frazier. It was Mosh Frazier that was doing it.

They shouldn’t punish Johnny. They should help him. Help him get well.

Johnny went along because Larry said it was the best way, the only way, out of this mess.

But it hurt Johnny’s mind to think that way. Mosh was a loud fat bull of a man. Mosh was smarter than Johnny. Mosh gave him beers and said, “you ain’t bad for a retard.” Mosh knew how to find drugs, and money, and women who would do anything for either.

None of that’s me, Johnny thought, and I never did nothing to nobody.

Johnny couldn’t believe that he was Mosh.

###

Betty descends through the dark.

The stairs creak under her feet. The only other sounds are the winter wind blowing outside and soft dripping from a faucet somewhere.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

She can’t see. Dark wipes everything with a black hand. She tries to remember how many steps there are. Her memory is much too fuzzed by drugs and her hangover.

And more than drugs, and more than hangover.

Her mouth tastes like paste. Her head feels like a blood-filled blister throbbing in time to her pulse. Her skin is cold and sticky. And all she can smell is beer, cigarette smoke, and her own rank odor.

“Hello?” she calls again, halfway down the blind stairs.

No answer but the wind and a soft leak from somewhere.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Betty’s heart accelerates. A shadowy sense of deja vu clouds the aching fog in her skull. This has happened before—

(I am Betty Dupree. I am John Schaefer’s fourth victim.)

—happened before. But this is wrong. This is happening wrong.

She shakes the thought from her head. She whispers, “Forget the shower. I find my clothes and I’m gone.”

Her breath burns in her nose and her throat. She feels her pulse in her neck, her temples, her brain. She wishes she had the sense to turn on the lights when she’d been at the head of the stairs.

Still, against her will, pushed by something she doesn’t understand, she continues downward.

###

In the end, the jury didn’t believe Larry.

Johnny, who could barely read the charges against him, was convicted for all fifteen murders. He was sentenced the fifteen mandatory life sentences. He was also sentenced to fifteen mandatory empathy treatments.

In the short history of the treatments, no one had ever been sentenced to so many.

But New York law demanded one treatment for each of the murdered women.

But none of this meant as much to Johnny as the realization that he was Mosh Frazier. He had to be Mosh Frazier. The police couldn’t find Mosh. Everyone said that Johnny was Mosh. Even the newsman on the TV said that Johnny was Mosh, or that Johnny had invented Mosh.

It had to be true.

So Johnny was taken to the state prison, to wait. Johnny waited as correctional officers programmed the first empathy treatment from expert testimony and the forensic record. All Johnny knew was that it was a long wait.

###

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Betty stumbles at the bottom of the dark stairs. As she pitches forward she grabs for support and finds none.

Her right hand hits the floor first, lands in something wet, and slides out from under her. She slams into the hardwood floor. The floor beneath her is hot, sticky, and wet. Even though she’s dizzy to the point of passing out or throwing up, she pushes herself up immediately.

Her head swims back and forth as her feet slip on the wet floor. Her stomach tries to push its way up through her throat. She realizes what might be here.

(Tanya Gideon.)

Despite her panic, despite the razor fear ripping at her heart, she fumbles for the light-bulb chain. She knows know that the leak is much closer than she’d thought at first.

Drip.

Closer than the bathroom.

Drip.

Closer than the kitchen.

Drip.

Right next to her.

Her hand finds the chain and pulls it before she is ready.

Betty is naked in the front hall of the house. In the living room, sits Tanya Gideon, sixteen years old that looks like thirty.

Half of Tanya’s neck is gone.

Tanya’s head bobs at an obscene angle as the rocking chair silently tilts back and forth.

Back, drip.

Forth, drip.

Betty gags. She’s covered in Tanya’s blood. She screams. Backs away. Her feet slip out from under her. She clutches the light’s chain on the way down.

For a second, the chain remains taut. The light is extinguished. Betty’s weight rips the chain, the entire fixture, from the ceiling in a shower of blue sparks.

She smells burning insulation and, finally, the blood.

Betty rolls over and vomits. Painful spasms fill her mouth with sour bile and the sting of old alcohol.

She’s bent over, clutching her stomach.

She hears a footstep.

###

Larry said that he was still Johnny’s friend. Larry said that he would “appeal” the decision. Larry also said that he would do what he could about the “empathy” treatments that Larry said were “cruel and unusual.”

Larry said a lot of things that Johnny couldn’t understand.

What Johnny understood was the fact that he had to meet Larry in a small gray room that separated them with a giant sheet of glass as thick as Johnny’s thumb. What Johnny understood was the fact that Larry could no longer pat his hand. What Johnny understood was the fact that Larry might not be his friend.

While Larry appealed, Johnny would have to endure at least one empathy treatment.

The treatment was supposed to be like one of those video games, but more. They not only put that funny helmet on you, but they also put wires into your head.

Johnny didn’t like that. If Mosh was in his head, they shouldn’t put wires there. It might get Mosh angry—

Worse, they might let Mosh out.

Johnny tried to explain this to them, but they shaved his head anyway.

###

Beyond the door next to her, on the porch, Betty hears him.

(John Schaefer.)

She scrambles to her feet, smearing her own vomit on her hands and her knees. She gasps for breath and her heart wants to tear from her ribcage.

Mosh is a maniac.

(John Schaefer is a maniac.)

Betty’s thoughts fly in crazy directions. She scrambles through the dark. The windows down here are shuttered and curtained. She’s as blind here as she was on the stairs. She stumbles away from the sounds by the door. She can hear it opening, behind her.

In her dash to get away she grabs something soft and wet. She screams again and stumbles off in another direction. Behind her she hears Tanya’s body fall.

Drip.

Thud.

The door creeks and a widening sliver of moonlight folds open across the blind TV ahead of her. A shadow crosses the rectangle of light, and Betty runs for the barely visible kitchen doorway.

###

After the first treatment, Johnny cried for weeks.

The first appeal failed.

Johnny screamed all the way to the second treatment. They had to restrain him. He whipped his head so much that they had to inject a sedative to fit the helmet on him.

After that treatment, Johnny tried to kill himself. They placed him in solitary confinement for six months.

The second appeal also failed.

As the time for the third treatment came, Johnny became violent for the first time he could remember. He clawed, and bit, and the guard sprayed mace in his eyes. They jabbed a needle in his arm before taking him from his cell.

After that treatment, Johnny didn’t move for two months. The doctors said he was catatonic. The guards said he was faking.

Five Supreme Court justices said that empathy treatments weren’t “cruel and unusual.”

The treatments were supposed to make him realize what those women went through at his, Mosh’s, hands. Johnny had thought he’d understood that. But he’d been wrong.

The treatments were worse than anything Johnny had ever experienced. The drugs wiped his mind, and voices in his ears convinced him that he wasn’t him. It was worse than thinking Mosh actually lived inside his skull. Johnny could believe that Mosh was in his own head and still know that he was Johnny.

But when they had finished whispering in his ear, he was no longer Johnny.

When the voices finished whispering, he was one of the fifteen. He was in their reality, his brain locked behind the mask and the wires, not knowing the world it inhabited was no longer the world Johnny lived in.

First they made him Ginger Harper.

Then they made him Pauline Dickinson.

Then they made him Tanya Gideon.

While he was strapped into a sickbed, wired to New York State’s computers, he lived their last moments. Wires triggered their fears in him, ignited their pain in him. And, each time, they took a little more of Johnny away from him, leaving nothing but death to replace what they had taken.

For his fourth treatment, four guards and a doctor came for him. Johnny tried to fight, but he was skinny and weak from years in prison. The needle found his arms before he had barely a chance to struggle.

The worst part of all—

Each time, it took the voices less time to convince him he was someone else.

###

She’s trapped. There’s no other way out of the kitchen and the killer is coming toward her. She sees a window over the sink and she dives for it. Outside there’s blowing snow and blue moonlit drifts, but she doesn’t think of the cold. All she thinks of is escape—

(John Schaefer is after me.)

Mosh is after me.

—but her fingers scrape against a handless frame, painted shut. Her eyes water as a nail peels back to the quick. She grabs a frying pan from the sink and throws it against the window.

The window shatters.

The wind claws its way in with icicle scalpels.

The blue night outside turns dead black as light floods the kitchen.

Reflexively, she turns around to see—

(John Schaefer.)

NO!

—to see Johnny. He’s bundled for the weather, but she sees blood on his jeans. He’s holding a shovel, not a snow shovel, but a spade for turning earth. The blade is caked with mud.

Johnny holds it like a weapon.

She knows that Johnny is going to kill her with the shovel. Time slows as Johnny raises the shovel above his head. Betty tries to scream, but her breath is like molasses in her throat. Her body doesn’t move. The deja vu is back, a shade gripping her heart.

It’s Johnny.

Not Mosh.

His face is wrong. His height is wrong. His clothes are wrong.

This isn’t the man that killed her.

The shovel reaches its apex. She can’t move, rooted by the same force that moved her hand when she dislodged the mason jar. The same force that drove her down the stairs.

The same devil’s whisper that’s been moving her all along.

She fights it.

She can almost hear the voice, now. It tells her to stand still, wait for the shovel to impact her skull. Tells her to feel the full force of the impact driving bone fragments through her brain. Tells her to feel what it’s like to be murdered. Tells her to feel what it’s like to die.

The voice is dark, seductive. . .

Her heart shakes her ribcage like a prisoner trying to escape.

The shovel whistles through the air, arcing toward her head.

She forces herself to move.

The scene slows even further as she resists the voice. The shovel’s blade screams closer. She feels, knows, that she’s been here before.

She’s died here before.

The devil with the dark, dominating voice drives her through this circle of Hell, again, and again, and again.

Betty is no longer even sure of who she is. She could be a nineteen year old prostitute named Ginger Harper. She could be a twenty-six year old waitress named Pauline Dickinson.

She could even be Tanya Gideon.

That thought, knowing that Tanya’s body is only a few yards away, allows her to move. Events snap back to normal speeds as she ducks to the side.

The shovel clangs into the sink.

The gong of impact shatters the devil in her ear. She can direct her own body for the first time.

Johnny—

(The killer. My killer. Tanya’s killer.)

Johnny is frozen in shock. He isn’t supposed to miss. Betty knows that he is the devil, supposed to kill her over and over, until the end of time.

But she can move, and her devil is gone.

Johnny lifts his shovel, but it is an unwieldy weapon. Betty sweeps a counter full of crusty dishes to shatter in his path. Johnny steps back, raising his shovel.

Betty sees a dirty butcher knife.

Like a machine, Johnny raises his shovel. Betty knows that it is the only attack he can perform, because Betty Dupree’s body was found with a shattered skull. She doesn’t know how she knows this, but she knows that the muttering devil will only allow Johnny to follow his program. Johnny must kill her. He must kill her with the shovel.

She won’t let him.

She grabs the knife and closes on Johnny.

His shovel hasn’t reached its apex, and Johnny’s eyes widen as she plunges the knife, two-handed, between his collar bones. Even as blood sprays from his mouth, his shovel still travels upward. He is as much the devil’s slave as she was.

She yanks the knife and stabs him again.

He backs and tries to bring the shovel to bear, but she closes and stabs him again.

And again.

And again.

She stabs him until the shovel drops.

She stabs him until he drops.

She kneels over him and stabs him repeatedly. She yells at the devil, “I’ve killed him. I’ve killed your torturer. No more! No more death!”

Betty Dupree stabs Johnny. “No more!”

Ginger Harper stabs Johnny. “No more!”

Pauline Dickinson stabs Johnny. “No more!”

Tanya Gideon stabs Johnny. “No more!”

Finally, as the kitchen fades into darkness, Johnny stabs Johnny. “No more!”

Then there’s only Johnny.

Then nothing.

###

It hurts when they yank the helmet off. The doctor leans over with a look of concern. It is the only sympathy the man’s shown in four separate treatments.

“Are you ok? Can you understand what I’m saying?”

That’s the voice, the devil’s voice. It seems a victory, remembering that.

The room is cold, and there are more people here than usual. More than the guards. They must have come from beyond the massive one-way mirror that forms one wall of the empathy room.

“I’m so sorry, Johnny.” The doctor says. “You shouldn’t have gone through this.”

“Wha?” My voice is slurred. Still drugged.

“You’ve been granted clemency by the governor.”

“Cold.” The word sounds choppy through chattering teeth. “I need my clothes.” All these people.

The doctor looks puzzled.

Sitting up sends the room spinning. “God, I’m going to throw up again.”

“You shouldn’t sit up so fast,” says the doctor. “This last treatment has been a bad one. No one’s gone through four of them in so short a time.”

The room keeps swaying. Memory’s an unstable black fog. People talk but the words melt into one another.

“Treatment? Pardon?” Those words should mean something.

The doctor’s expression shows concern and, maybe, guilt. “The California Highway Patrol found a biker named Eric Frazier in a trailer park— three bodies were on the property.”

“Eric Frazier?”

“They found Mosh, Johnny,” says one of the prison guards.

The doctor nods.

“Why are you calling me Johnny?” asks Betty Dupree.

Everyone freezes. In the suddenly silent room, the doctor says, “That’s your name, John Schaefer.”

Betty knows the devil’s voice, and she knows it lies. She looks the doctor in the eyes. “Johnny tried to kill me.”

All the color drains from the doctor’s face. He reaches for her arm and says, “please, Johnny—“

“That’s not my name!” She yanks her arm away from him. Johnny Schafer, the man who tried to kill her, is dead.

When she pulls away from the doctor, she faces the giant one-way mirror that forms one wall of the empathy room. Betty Dupree sees her reflection in the mirror.

For a moment she doesn’t believe what she sees.

Then she screams.

END

---

S. Andrew Swann is the pen name of Steven Swiniarski. He’s married and lives in the Greater Cleveland area where he has lived all of his adult life. He has a background in mechanical engineering and— besides writing— works as a computer systems analyst for one of the largest private child services agencies in the Cleveland area. He has published 17 novels with DAW books over the past 14 years, which include science fiction, fantasy, horror and thrillers. His latest novel is “The Dwarves of Whiskey Island”, a fantasy set in Cleveland, published in October 2005. He is currently working on a sequel to the “Hostile Takeover” Trilogy, an epic space opera.

“‘You are cordially invited to eat me.’ Well, this is certainly an evocative invitation, Carl.” Charlene tipped her glittering invite into the crystal bowl just inside the door, and it vanished in a puff of smoke.

“Well, I’m all for truth in advertising,” Carl said, and laughed musically, his chest plumage fluffing through the navel-deep vee in his dress.

Charlene held an elegant seven-fingered hand to her diamond-crusted bosom and asked, “Is that new?”

“Mmm hmm. Just had my vocal cords turned into vocal ‘chords’.”

“How utterly stunning.” She handed her spun platinum wrap to the tuxedoed clone of Carl standing obediently by the door. “I should look into that for myself.”

“Oh, you can’t,” Carl said. “I had the surgeon’s memory erased. It’s so hard to stay unique, especially with bitch friends like mine.”

They shared a pointed chuckle.

She laced her arm through his, gently ruffling the iridescent feathers on his bare arm, and asked, “So, might I assume that this invitation is to be taken at face value?”

He led her into the opulent dining room, the train of his vidsilk dress trailing behind them as it silently played Siamese twin porn. “Yes, my dear. I thought I’d fricassee up a few of my clones and share them with my close, personal friends.”

“I see you’ve brought out the small table,” she said, running her pinkie³ along the polished mahogany surface. “Only three chairs?”

“I didn’t feel like inviting anyone who wouldn’t appreciate it. Champagne?” He waved another mute clone butler over, and the clone held out a tray of champagne flutes.

“Thank you!” Charlene delicately held all three pinkies out as she took a dainty sip. “So, fricassee?”

“Well, barbecue, really. We slaughtered two babies and a teenager this morning, and I thought barbecue would be best for such tender meat. We’ve been marinating the teenager all day. My chef says the babies’ meat is perfect as it is.”

“You beast!” Charlene swatted at him with her free hand. “You should have told me it would be a barbecue. I’d have worn something more appropriate.” She gestured down at her translucent white caftan. Her swirling red skin tints glimmered and winked through the sheer fabric.

“Well then, you’ll just need to eat in the nude,” Carl said with a feathered leer.

“Oh, you don’t fool me. I know you only have eyes for yourself.” She cast her arm in the direction of the nearest tan-skinned, dark-haired clone and asked, “What I don’t understand is why you never had them reupholstered to match you?”

Carl wrinkled his nose, his plumage crinkling into waves. “Oh please. I need to be the prettiest.” The doorbell chimed, and Carl groaned and said, “Would one of me please get that?”

The clone closest to the door turned to leave.

From the hallway, they heard a voice call, “Carl? Dearie? Your toy here won’t let me in.”

“You invited Tony?” Charlene gasped. “But he has no style! He’s still wearing the same face he was born with!”

“Yes, but he’ll eat anything.” Carl and Charlene ducked back into the entry hall and saw Tony and a strange woman standing together at the door, a clone blocking their way. The woman gave a shy, bewildered wave. Everything about her was maddeningly brown, all the way down to her boring, store-bought clothes and off-the-rack face.

Tony waved them over. “Carl, my boy. Can you please tell me what the problem is here? Your mute butler won’t explain it to me.” The fiber optics on his jacket spelled out unspeakably rude and violent thoughts about the clone in question.

Carl rolled his eyes. “I didn’t say you could bring guests.”

“Well, I assumed this was a sex party and I didn’t want to spend all night fending off your cloned mitts, so I brought something of my own to bang.” He squeezed his date tighter than seemed comfortable.

“Oh fine. Let them in,” Carl said. The clone stepped aside. “It’s not a sex party. It’s a meal.”

“Oh!” Tony’s face split into a wide grin. “Even better. Everyone, this is Rebecca. Rebecca, this is Carl and Charlene.”

Rebecca hesitantly held her hand out and said, “A meal? But the invitation–”

Charlene took the proffered hand and gave it a dainty shake. “He’s barbecuing up a few of his clones.”

“Clones?” The woman paled and looked at the silent man currently standing aside to let them pass. “Is he a clone?”

“All the boys in this house are clones of me,” Carl said. “They’re clean copies of my original form. I like to keep them around as a reminder of how far I’ve come.” Carl’s iridescent chest feathers fluffed proudly.

“And as playthings,” Tony said. “And now meals? You dog! I just wish I’d thought of it first.”

Carl laughed, chords echoing off the obsidian walls.

Rebecca’s gaze darted between the clone and Carl. “But…is this legal?”

“Of course!” Carl said. “The laws are clear. You can clone yourself all you want for therapeutic purposes so long as you don’t give your clones fully functioning brains.”

Rebecca looked at the clone beside her in clear disbelief. “This isn’t therapeutic.”

“Sure it is! They give great massages to keep my stress levels down, and keep the house nice and clean so I won’t catch any nasty germs.”

“But…eating them?”

Carl flung his arms out theatrically. “Well, without food, I’ll die! What could be more therapeutic than that?”

Tony chuckled and gave his nervous date another squeeze. “Someday, the law’s going to catch up to people like you. But until then, keep inviting me to these parties!”

Carl clapped his hands together and said, “Well, now that everybody’s here, shall we dine? I’ll have the cook toss the meat on the grill now.” He fingered a button on his jeweled bracelet. “There.”

Rebecca’s eyes went wide, and she pried herself from Tony’s embrace. “Are you insane?”

Tony patted her on the arm. “Now, now, these clones don’t even have the brains that God gave cows.”

“But it’s cannibalism!”

Charlene ran her seven fingers through Carl’s head plumage. “Carl dear hasn’t met a taboo yet that he hasn’t wanted to break, has he?”

Carl emitted another musical laugh.

Rebecca pointed a shaking finger at Carl. “Oh, that is not natural. Nothing about this place is. I mean, why feathers? And you–seven fingers? Diamonds sticking out of your face and chest? And are those really your eyes?”

Charlene’s eyes flashed, literally. “No dear, but they’re much prettier.”

“I don’t see what you’re complaining about,” Tony said. “You certainly haven’t complained about my enhancements.”

Rebecca stepped away from him and looked him up and down in horror. “What enhancements?”

Tony chuckled and grabbed at his crotch. “You certainly didn’t think I was born ribbed for your pleasure, did you?”

“Oh God,” Rebecca moaned. “I had no– Look, I want no part in this. What you’re doing is wrong.”

Carl glared at Tony and snapped, “This is why I always specify ‘and guest’ on my invites when it’s appropriate to drag along clueless people.” He turned back to Rebecca and said, “Look, darling, if you’re not hungry, why don’t you go upstairs and play with my boys? There’s half a dozen of them chained to the bed. This one will show you up.” He waved the nearest tuxedoed clone over.

“Chained?” She started to back towards the door. “What kind of monster are you?”

Carl stepped forward, his train dragging behind him, and said, “Trust me darling, they love it up there. They may be brain-dead, pleasure giving drones, but they’re happy brain-dead, pleasure giving drones. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. They are me, after all!”

“But…you’re willing to eat yourself.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

“Oh honey, go upstairs and play,” Charlene said. “Those boys have an oral fixation like you wouldn’t believe.”

Rebecca flushed.

“Go on, they’ll be so happy to have a guest,” Carl said. “Keep the poor boys company.”

“Well…” She looked up the staircase. “Just to keep them company.”

Carl patted her on the arm. “You’ll make them very happy.”

Rebecca nodded, seemingly in a daze, and let herself be led away by the clone butler.

“I’m terribly sorry about that,” Tony said. “I should have realized your invitation was literal.”

“Oh, she’ll be no trouble now that the boys have her,” Carl said. “In a few minutes, she’ll be so preoccupied that she won’t even remember her own name, never mind what’s on the menu. Come on, let’s dig in. I can’t wait to see how I taste!”

The three of them settled around the tiny dining room table. “Now, where could the food be?” Carl looked around the unusually empty room. “I swear, I’m going to have to paddle someone. There’s supposed to be at least one butler in the room with me at all times.”

A breathtaking moan wafted down from the upstairs bedroom.

“Oh good,” Tony said. “I was worried she wouldn’t actually go through with it. Still, she’s a spitfire in the bed, so I’m not particularly surprised. Insatiable!”

“Is that what you see in her?” Charlene asked. “Because she seems so dreadfully plain.”

“Nary an enhancement in sight,” Carl said, wrinkling his nose.

“I know! It’s fascinating!” Tony said. “It’s been so long since I’ve slept with a woman with all her original factory parts, especially one who can keep up with me. The date rape complaints were really becoming a nuisance.”

Charlene rolled her eyes and ran her fingers across her bejeweled chest.

Another moan, higher, louder.

“Oh, she’s quite close now,” Tony said. “She’s really quite deafening at times. Her cries go right through the walls. The complaints we get from her neighbors!”

The moans turned to screams.

Charlene crossed her arms over her breasts. “Does she usually do that?”

“No, this is new.”

Abruptly, the screams cut off.

“And more than a bit creepy,” Carl said. “Is she toying with us?”

“I suppose she could be,” Tony said. “I haven’t really bothered getting to know her.”

“No, of course not. Why would you?”

“Where are those butlers?” Charlene asked. “I’m famished! I came here for a meal, and by God, I’m not leaving until I eat you.”

Six clones walked through the door, each holding a covered plate.

“Finally!” Tony said, then sniffed at the air. “Odd, I don’t smell barbecue.”

The clones put the platters down on the table, lifted the lids, and each picked up the steak knife lying within. Three more clones walked in from the hallway, dragging the bloody bodies of Rebecca and the chef behind them.

Carl let out a faint musical whistle. “Well, it looks like the gang’s all here.”

Charlene glared across the table at him. “Quite the prank, Carl. Quite the prank. Brava. You can stop now.”

Carl gently shook his head. “It’s not a prank, my dear. Oh, how I wish it were.”

One clone handed Carl a slip of paper.

“What does it say?” Charlene asked.

“It’s a printout of the legal decision that states that therapeutic clones are not subject to prosecution if they commit a crime.”

“And how is it that your supposedly brain-dead clones can read?”

“Well, I needed the butlers to be able to tell the difference between a bottle of Bolli and a bottle of Taittinger and that really was a mistake, wasn’t it?” He sighed and sat down heavily.

Charlene rested her elbows on the table and plunked her chin in her hands. “Well, this was a hell of a party, Carl.”

“One for the record books,” Tony added.

Carl looked at the ring of knife-wielding clones. “Indeed.”

And the clones fell upon them.

Several hours later, the general consensus was that barbecued Carl was, indeed, a taste to die for.

END

---

Jennifer Pelland lives just outside Boston, sharing her home with an Andy and three cats. She’s been a published short fiction author since 2002, with stories appearing in such venues as Strange Horizons, Abyss and Apex, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Tales of the Unanticipated, and, of course, Apex Digest. She’s also completed two science fiction novels that she’s currently shopping around to agents and editors. Heartbroken that Hollywood likes their women skinny and straight-toothed, Jennifer turned to radio theater, appearing in The Fantastic Fate of Frederick Farnsworth the Fifth (link: http://www.haven.org/~mdm/FantasticFate), and the Post Meridian Radio Players’ version of Chicken Heart (link: http://www.pmrp.org/bin/audio/drafts/chickenheart/ch-drafts.htm). Her web site at http://www.jenniferpelland.com contains links to all her online fiction, plus if you look hard enough, pictures of the aforementioned cats.

Buy Unwelcome Bodies by Jennifer Pelland from Apex Publications.

She watched as the bus crested the hill and cut a silver blur across the burnt landscape. Her name was Tamara, and she had survived when the rest of her family had passed into eternity or oblivion, whichever came after death. Her husband, Terrance, had died in the fields, toiling to bring forth fuel from the red earth. Her mother and father had died in one of the subway attacks—a bomb or a terrorist or a derailing—she could no longer remember which. Her brother disappeared with the wind, and her sister died last winter, giving birth.

Tamara shuddered as the bus drew closer. When Terrance had been alive, they’d had a car, and he had taken the bus, but she had sold the car months ago for next to nothing. Now she saved her money for bus fare, and waited in the South Alabama heat for a bus without air conditioning. But that wasn’t all. She could tolerate the heat. What she hated, what she dreaded was the bus itself. The driver. He frightened her most of all.

Once Tamara had asked her seatmate if she thought the bus driver was strange.

“Strange?” the woman, whose name Tamara did not know, said. “No. Just broken down. All of ours talk gibberish. I’ve heard up in New York that those things are spit-shined and polished every day. I’ve heard those robots never say anything that isn’t interesting.” The woman had nodded her head vigorously before falling silent again.

But Tamara knew the difference in gibberish and something, well, something more sinister.

She took a deep breath as the bus slowed and the air brakes hissed and locked. The door creaked open wide, a sideways leer, inviting her in. The robot’s head swiveled on his neck and he gazed at her through slits that weren’t eyes as much as razor blades, cutting her skin, peeling her open like a husk of corn, laying her wide with sharp strokes and exposing her naked center. She wanted to turn and run back to her house, but that meant certain death. The sweepers would come and take her temperature and find her healthy but useless, vigorous but lazy, unworthy of breathing the oxygen, consuming the fuel, or riding the bus.

So she kept her eyes down and stepped onto the bus. She did not look as she placed the coins in his slotted hand. As the robot shut his hand over the money, sucking it down into his belly, a silver fingertip grazed her hand and she felt sick inside. “Welcome,” the bus driver said, “to the last stop.”

Tamara hurried past, sliding into the first available seat. She closed her eyes and counted slowly, until she convinced herself that it was only her imagination, and that if Terrance were alive, she wouldn’t even be worried.

“The damn government will be by today,” a voice next to her croaked. Tamara opened her eyes and saw she was seated next to Missy Faye. “Be by today to take my check and slit my neck. The damn government will be by today to feel my cooter and bug my computer.”

Tamara looked to see if any other seats were available, but the bus driver announced that they should fasten their belts. “Next stop, nowhere.”

She glanced around the bus to see if anyone else noticed the ominous words. The man across the aisle from her slumbered, a shiny coat of drool sparkling on his chin. A seat in front of her sat a woman and her baby. The baby, mercifully, slept. Tamara couldn’t bear to think of babies awake. It always made her feel better when she saw one sleeping rather than languishing in this world. The mother was silent, her head lolling from side to side in the rhythm of the road, though the bus had not yet started to move.

No one but me, Tamara thought. It is only my fear.

“. . .break my mind and realign my spine. The government, lawsy mercy. The government.”

Tamara closed her eyes. This was the easy part. The hard part came later.

She slipped in and out of sleep for miles, never missing an ominous proclamation from the bus driver: “Today is fair and dark. Tonight there will be a slim chance of moon and the rain will be full. Franklin Thomas! This is your stop. On this date in history the great state of Alabama slipped between the cracks. The low tide is pulling us out to sea, and the undertow is making us forget.” She opened her eyes and watched the bus driver’s steel-trap mouth clanging out prophecy and stop times, trivia and destinies.

Missy Faye slept beside her, her mouth slackening out into a formless bag, and her words turned to breathing, her eyes rolled back like hard soulless marbles.

“Next stop, Babylon!” the bus driver said.

The bus groaned to a stop, red dust exploding into the air. The driver jerked the door open. “Wendell Patrick this is your stop,” came the voice. He never got this part wrong. Of course, this was the essential part, Tamara thought. So many people sleeping or drugged. They would miss their stop without the bus driver telling them. Then the sweepers would come in with their questions and their guns.

She wished the government had just kept the real bus drivers. She would never understand why they had bothered to send all the robots down here to southern Alabama. Tamara remembered, Mr. Ayers, the fat old man that had driven the bus before they sent the robots on their silver, terrorist proof buses. He had whistled while he drove, and nodded politely at her each morning. Told her to have a nice evening each afternoon. But this bus driver, with his vibrato voice and soulless eyes. This bus driver had never been right. He had never even been like the other robots she knew, which had always left her feeling cold and lonely no matter how many other people were around.

She looked at him, using the big rearview mirror in the front of the bus. He was looking back, all jagged metal teeth, smiling at her.

The bus lurched. “Arlie Sherman!” he shrieked. “This is your stop.”

Robots don’t smile. This thought and she closed her eyes again. Better not to think.

“Missy Faye! This is your stop.” Missy Faye jerked awake and continued babbling as if she had never stopped. “The government gave us silver buses with bots so the terrorists can’t shoot us full of hots. The government took my guns away, sent me a robot that can’t think like my pistol on a bad day. Senators, congressmen, the Governor, the President, robots all rot.” She climbed off the bus and went along her way on Main Street, which was mainly deserted these days, except for the women like Missy Faye who picked up trash and swept the gutters free of rats.

Tamara watched her amble down the sidewalk. “She should be retired somewhere,” Tamara muttered.

The man beside her was awake now. He grunted his assent. “We should have all retired by now.”

“Edward Smile! This is where you get off.”

One by one they left her, until she was alone with the driver. Tamara sunk down in her seat. She hoped he wouldn’t look at her.

“Next stop, Oblivion!”

Oblivion. What did that mean?

She straightened up to see the bus driver and he saw her right back through the rearview mirror. She stifled a gasp. I’ll make it today just like the others, she told herself. Except each day lately she’s noticed the bus driver acting more and more strangely.

“A few more miles,” she said beneath her breath. Her stop would come soon and he would thrust open the silver doors and shout her name. She had made it so many other days. Why not today?

Her nails dug into the vinyl seat.

“On your right, just out your window,” the bus driver said, pleasantly, “You can see the fields of death. Men toil day and night only to die! We are all driving into oblivion.” Then his head swiveled until she could see those razor blade eyes. Tamara pushed back in her seat, trying to escape his line of vision. Those slits, the way they narrowed on her—she looked away.

The bus sped up.

“What are you?” she said, her eyes still shut tightly.

“There are ghosts in the machine and ghosts in the government and ghosts online,” the driver said. “Ghosts on the moon, ghosts under the sea, ghosts everywhere for you and me.” She could have sworn that he cackled.

Her stop was on the horizon, beyond that she knew there was a vast wasteland where the sweepers took the bodies of the useless people.

“My stop,” she said.

She forced herself to look at him. The steel-trap mouth was grinning at her. “Your stop is coming right up, Tamara Teasdale.” The bus speed up.

“Look at the road!” she said.

As in answer the head swiveled a little farther around. He seemed to study her, and all she wanted to do was run away from the iron grin and the sharp inhuman eyes.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” he said, his mouth moving in a garish parody of human speech.

The bus hurtled through the brown landscape very fast now. Her stop flashed by in a colorless blur. She got out of her seat and tried to run to the back of the bus for the emergency exit. Before she reached it, she heard it click shut. He had locked it. She couldn’t even choose suicide and somehow this was the worst. She would have to try to take the bus over. She turned back and saw the bus driver was no longer driving the bus. He was standing in the aisle, his stilt legs planted like metal pegs, his narrow humps of shoulders squared in her direction, his mechanical mouth working back and forth from snarl to smile, from robot to bus driver to something more.

“Oblivion!”

She closed her eyes, trying to find eternity before oblivion found her.

END

---

John Mantooth’s work has appeared in the following publications: Future’s Mysterious Anthology Magazine, Thirteen Stories, Feral Fiction (www.feralfiction.com), Smokelong Quarterly, NFG, and Stephen D. Rogers Presents. His nonfiction piece, “Going to Dalton,” won first place in the Alabama School of Fine Arts Literary Contest. He lives in Alabama with his wife and two children, Joy and Luke. He is currently working on landing an agent for his young adult novel.

Jennifer Pelland has been a fan favorite and Apex staple since issue three when her breakout story, “Big Sister/Little Sister”, hit the markets. The story that features a pair of sisters with an unfortunate history has chilled many and played havoc with the squeamish. She followed the success of “Big Sister/Little Sister” with a frightening story of “Erasure”, a piece that shows you that sometimes the source of evil is not what you think it is.

Besides her Apex sales, Jennifer has had stories appear in Strange Horizons, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Abyss & Apex, and more. She runs a popular blog that details her successes, failures, and philosophies regarding genre writing.

We are proud to present this interview with Jennifer Pelland and to have her as our April ’06 Featured Writer.

Apex Online: Your issue three short story “Big Sister/Little Sister” has been one of the best received stories by the readers of Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest. Yet, you say you’re not really a horror writer. Explain yourself?

Jennifer Pelland: In my mind, “BS/LS” is a dark science fiction story. To me, horror is about either things that really can happen (monstrous serial killers, rabid attack dogs, sadistic torturers), or things that we don’t want to believe can happen, but in our hearts, are afraid might actually be real (poltergeists, the undead). It’s about the things that leave us lying awake at night with the light on. So while I agree that “BS/LS” is creepy, I don’t find it scary, because waking up with my sister’s face protruding from my belly isn’t something that leaves me lying awake at night. I’m certainly glad that people like it and are creeped out by it, but I just don’t see it as a horror story. It feels more like a dark version of the classic SF “what if?” scenario.

Oh, and for the record, my sister and I get a long smashingly.

AO: While I won’t label you with the ‘horror writer’ brand, much of your work tends to focus on the darker aspects of humanity. Both your Apex stories fit this description (“Big Sister/Little Sister” and “Erasure”), “Flood” (in Abyss & Apex), and “MarsSickGirl” in ASIM…why do you think your writing treads darker ground than most traditional science fiction writers?

JP: I’m sure it’s because I’m a rampant pessimist. Optimism looks like so much fun, but I’ve always been one for envisioning the worst in any situation. So when I sit down to write a serious story, it tends to be fairly dark in tone because that’s just where my brain lives. I hear you can take pills to go to Happy Town, but what would I write about then? Besides, happy stories are boring. Dark places are where the interesting emotions live. It’s much more interesting to try to get into the head of someone who isn’t stable or nice than it is to get in the head of a grounded, happy person. And it’s fun, too.

You know, for a while now, I’ve felt that writers are just sociopaths with a really good coping mechanism. I get to sit around and think up all sort of horrid things to inflict on other human beings, but I then inflict them literarily on my characters rather than inflicting them physically on a real person. The dark thoughts are the same, but the outlet is far more socially sanctioned.

AO: Your story “The Burning Bush”, available at EscapePod, contains one of the funniest bits of dialog I’ve read…

“The thing is,” he said, gesturing at the book, “there’s no proof in here. It’s all just faith. My scientific mind demands rational proof!”

“What will it take?” I asked. “A burning bush?”

And then my pubic hair caught fire.

Tell us a little bit about the origin of this story?

JP: Up to the part where the pubic hair caught fire, that was a real conversation between me and my husband, conducted in bed, in the nude, on a hot summer night. He was studying world religions in the hopes of coming up with answers to life, the universe, and anything, and was ranting about how none of it stood up to the scientific method. When I asked, “What will it take? A burning bush?” I immediately covered my pubes with my hand, just to be safe. After we finished laughing, I realized I needed to write a story. By the way, can you tell I was raised Catholic?

AO: You run a popular blog that I would encourage anybody looking to make a run in the highly competitive world of genre writing to follow for a period of time. You wear your heart on your sleeve and aren’t afraid to share your thoughts, disappointments, and successes. Do you find that the support you receive from your readers helps or adds more pressure to your desires to succeed?

JP: Hey, thanks. And if you think I wear my heart on my sleeve in the public entries, you should see the private ones.

The support is great. I have enough pressure to succeed applied to me by my own ego, so the blog is where I go to let off steam. I’d say that about half the comments I get are from non-writer friends of mine who are rooting me on to succeed, and the other half are from writer friends who are in the same boat who are glad to have someone to commiserate with. I suspect the latter want me to succeed as well, but not before they do. They have egos too. And that’s not a bad thing. Writers without egos don’t shop their work around.

AO: If I recall, you attended last year’s Viable Paradise workshop. Can you share something you learned from your peers and/or teachers while there?

JP: Actually, I was there as support staff last year and will be again this year for both the workshop and the tenth year reunion. I was a student back in 2002.

I think the most important thing I learned at VP was the reality of the business. Most people who succeed do so through a long, slow slog that takes them through hundreds of rejections (I’m over 200 myself). Only you don’t usually hear their stories. The people you hear about are the ones who hit it out of the park on their first try. But they’re in the minority, and you can’t model your career path on theirs, because that kind of success can’t be replicated. A writing career is a marathon, not a sprint.

Okay, how many sports metaphors did I mix in that answer?

AO: Do you have a writing mentor? If so, who would that be?

JP: I don’t have an official mentoring relationship with anyone, but I’d say that I come awfully close to having one with Jim Macdonald. He’s one of the Viable Paradise instructors, and he’s been a great teacher and supporter of mine. He’s always happy to answer questions for me, give me a boost when my spirits are flagging, and introduce me to other writers as someone to watch out for. He and Debra Doyle, his wife and writing partner, make their living as writers, which is very inspirational. I love them both. It’s wonderful to have someone so successful believe so strongly in you.

AO: Who’s your favorite science fiction writer? Horror writer?

JP: My favorite living SF writer is probably Lyda Morehouse, who wrote the Archangel Protocol series. Alas, it didn’t sell well enough, and now she’s writing non-SF under a pen name, but if there’s any justice in the publishing world, she’ll get back to writing SF again real soon now. My favorite SF writer of all time is Octavia Butler, who died too damned soon. She also wrote about the dark places in life, and wasn’t afraid to tackle difficult and painful stories. I aspire to someday write half as well as she did.

As for horror, I’m a wimp. I can’t read it, I can’t watch it. A Stephen King story about a mobile washing machine kept me awake for a month, so I haven’t touched the genre since. Although I did watch the TV version of The Shining several years back and thought it was pretty good. And I still managed to sleep, mostly. But you’re talking to the woman who kept the lights on after seeing Jurassic Park in case there were any velociraptors in the house. Velociraptors! Sheesh. I am a wimp.

AO: It’s agreed among publishing circles that you’re a writer on her way to great and bigger things. Who do you think is a rising star in the genre field?

JP: Which publishing circles are you talking about? Are there any agents in those circles? I have a couple of novels that they might want to take a look at. Seriously, though, I do appreciate the sentiment, but I think I still have a long way to slog before I’m recognized as a potential up-and-comer.

As for new writers who are on their way to greatness, I’m so bad at keeping current on my reading that I really can’t tell you. But you know who should be? N.K. Jemisin. She’s a member of my writing group who garnered an honorable mention in one of last year’s Year’s Best anthologies. And she’s written a knock-out novel that landed her a terrific agent. The only reason it doesn’t seem to have found a home yet is because it’s so distinctive and unique that no one’s quite sure how to market it. I love her work, and am always astonished when she has trouble selling it. Another star from my writing group that I’m sure you’ll be hearing a lot from is Margaret Ronald, who is revising a novel that she’ll have no trouble selling. I feel funny singling out just two people from my writing group, because they’re all so good, but N.K. and Maggie are on the fast track to Successville. The rest of us will catch up eventually.

AO: One day you’re relaxing at home re-watching the pilot episode of the new Doctor Who for the twenty-third time, when your house is suddenly rushed by a large group of angry, right-wing neo-con Christians. They’re toting pitchforks and torches and have taken self-rightous offense to your ‘burning bush’ reference and demand retribution. You realize you must make your escape, but you have time to save one book in your collection. What book would that be?

JP: Just one book? *Gibbering* But…but…I have so many! Actually, it would be my idea book. Everything else I can buy again, but if I lose my idea book, then I lose nuggets of my imagination. Besides, it’s amazing how easily you can diffuse Christian ire when you point out that you were raised Catholic. People like that seem to get that people like me might have issues with the faith.

AO: I once wrote an editorial about you and Bryn Sparks. It was titled “A Love Letter to Bryn Spark and Jennifer Pelland.” Were you honored, or just plain creeped out?

JP: It was amazingly flattering, and I’ll have you know that I immediately saved it to my hard drive. But you know what stood out most for me? I’d never been referred to solely by my last name before. It was a weird professional moment to have finally reached a point where I was referred to as “Pelland” without a “Jennifer” or a “Jen” tacked in front of it. It made me feel like an official writer.

AO: Twenty years from now, you win the Hugo, Nebula, and Stoker awards for best novel. This prompts your fans to dig up the “Jennifer Pelland” time capsule that was dropped into a dirt pit outside the Supreme Court in 2006. Tell us what you placed in this time capsule.

JP: If we’re talking this Supreme Court, then probably an empty packet of birth control pills and a copy of the Bill of Rights. But putting aside politics, perhaps a thick stack of rejection letters from both editors and agents, along with copies of all my published stories. Maybe also printouts of the two completed novel manuscripts as they currently stand. I don’t know. I’m such a pack rat that I wouldn’t want to give anything away. You know what would be funny? Putting in a stack of novels that I hated with post-it notes on them explaining why each one sucked. I wouldn’t mind getting those out of my house.

AO: Robert Reed should: A) Make room for more female talent in Fantasy & Science Fiction and give up writing or B) Hell yeah, keep on keepin’ on, my man!

JP: How about C) switch genres? I don’t want the man to give up writing, but couldn’t he, say, try his hand at gay cowboy stories? Look at how good that genre was to Annie Proulx! Yes, the world needs more gay cowboy stories, and Robert Reed is being awfully selfish by not sharing his gift with the gay cowboy loving world. Shame on you, Robert Reed! Shame!

---

Jennifer Pelland is a Nebula-nominated author who currently lives in Waltham, MA. Her first collection of short fiction titled Unwelcome Bodies was released by Apex Publications in February ’08. You can discover more about Jennifer at her website www.jenniferpelland.com.

Unwelcome Bodies is available directly from the Apex Shop or from the Apex aStore (Amazon).