Debris & Detritus Read online

  Ahhh!

  This is the problem with modern times. In the old days, a misfit like Johnny Valentine would just live in his mother’s back bedroom and be eschewed by his community. Now there is the internet, and village idiots have friends. What a disaster.

  “We have to move.” I didn’t like saying it, but someone had to. So, I did.

  Austin is a city where someone whose clothing is a little off can really blend. A lot of people in Austin are touched when it comes to fashion. This was convenient for us because DT is a little touched when it comes to fashion, too. DT has just never quite recovered from the loss of the toga era and tends to waif about in long flowing garments looking a bit too Helen of Troy. But that does not stand out when a pale spindly man on the corner with an arresting white thicket of chest hair wearing nothing but a green sequin Speedo and stars and stripes top hat is hopping about.

  I can’t blame DT for her toga fixation. When our mother turned up knocked up, our war lord grandfather married her off quick to another war lord, and we were born into war lord royalty and treated like the princesses we were—right up until some of our “oops, someone has been making it with a god” traits appeared. Little things. Like lifting too heavy furniture and, um, vaporizing the hired help. (This is a very bad habit DT has had for a very long time, this vaporizing thing.) Then “Dad” knew he had been had, and we were not daughters of his loins, and he was . . . let’s say a mite vexed. So, there was a war.

  (I told you my family members were excitable and murderous, right?)

  Still, we were demi-gods, and we did get a temple for a while, and handmaidens, and that was fun. But all things must end, and the temple was burned. I’m pretty sure the war god’s full time goddessy wife instigated that. So jealous! So we traveled. But DT still clings to happier times. You know, human sacrifices, handmaidens, flowing robes. She’s never snapped back from the burning of the temple.

  I, on the other hand, embrace new fashion. I was wearing a cute little number I picked up online from Forever 21 when the rock salt debacle occurred. And. Those. Shoes. Were. Prada!

  But it still had to be said.

  “We have to move.”

  “I’m not doing Portland again.”

  DT was right. Portland was terrible. Togas and Birkenstocks? Never again.

  “Greece?”

  “Fire and refugees. No.”

  We sat and thought. Johnny was getting his second wind and starting to yell downstairs again. Nerve-wracking!

  “Are you sure I shouldn’t vaporize him?” (DT loves to vaporize people. It’s a character flaw.)

  “No.”

  I pulled out my smokes, lit another one to quell vaporizing fantasies, and perused Johnny’s iPhone some more. Who on earth has pizza on speed dial? Also, he had managed to snap a couple shots of DT in her flowing gowns looking all Medusa and upset and hurling yellowed New York Times and green ceramic frogs about. And uploaded it to some conspiracy ghost hunters nut site. Shit.

  I fried the website and photos but had to put the phone down when I found a locked file full of really unfortunate nude photos of Johnny. Sweet Medusa, my eyes!

  DT brightened? “San Francisco?”

  “No.”

  DT is crazy for San Francisco, and it is easy to blend in San Francisco, but San Francisco is too packed with humans. Buildings are side by side with only a foot between them. You cannot keep some closet nudie ghost buster strapped to a chair in a house with neighbors one foot away, hearing him shout about mauling you with a Norwegian tree.

  “We could do an Irish castle again.”

  “No, we can’t. Too many tourists. And they are priest-happy.”

  And then I had it. “New Orleans. We’ll do a plantation again.”

  “Yes!” DT started to glow. DT loves New Orleans. So do I. Talk about party streamers and plastic drink cups. Yay! Also, it’s not that hard to find a big old packed plantation or manor boarded up in NOLA, set away from the neighbors.

  They don’t really hunt ghosts in New Orleans either. They put ghosts on the tourist circuit. When we lived there before, DT used to just for fun pop over to some house on the ghost tour and appear to tourists for sport and frolic. I told her the toga didn’t really work and she should try a hoop skirt, but she just said they’d think it was a night gown. It kept her happy. And away from places like the Valentines’.

  New Orleans it was.

  We still had to do something with Johnny Valentine, who was still caterwauling downstairs.

  “He really won’t negotiate?” DT was being very civil now we were headed to NOLA. (DT used to totally kick in the womb, she was not a good womb mate at all, and we don’t really like each other. But we are linked by blood and history, and DT can be very civil when she is happy—or is being devious.)

  “He really won’t. I tried.” I really did too. But all that talk of stabbing me with the branch of some archaic tree put me off negotiations, and I just gave up on him.

  “We could just leave him here.”

  “Well, that seems crueler than vaporizing him. What if he dies of dehydration?” (Of course, I was thinking he sort of deserved it.)

  DT is really fast. Once she makes up her mind, it’s hard to catch her. One second she was there. The next she wasn’t. And in that instant, Johnny Valentine’s fate was sealed.

  I sat on the roof, looking out over the city that for a while had been home. Johnny’s yelling stopped.

  New Orleans is good. New Orleans is full of hoarders. And ghost tours. DT would be happy. And street debris. So would I. For a while.

  About the Story

  * * *

  I do not get to write short fiction too often these days. It was a real joy writing “The Night I Shot Johnny Valentine.” I hope you enjoy time with Bris and DT as much as I did.

  * * *

  Max Adams

  2

  That Sweetest Cup

  Michelle Muenzler

  Mortals often mistake me for my brother—hungry times have worn both our frames to the bone, like sun-scoured bits of driftwood. It does not help that we wear our mistakes the same. Or our needs.

  Yet some still have eye enough to tell the difference between us.

  “You’re not Detritus,” the girl says.

  Ragged as a crow, she pecks at the tossed-aside heel of a baguette from the Vietnamese deli down the street. She’s built a crude shrine of cardboard boxes and greasy sneakers in the alley’s recesses and perfumed it with discarded packets of fish sauce and the weeks-old sweat of her labor.

  “No,” I say, savoring the scent of her offering, “I am Debris.” Less is more when speaking with mortals. Their kind has little respect for chatty deities.

  Her beady eyes pick me apart while she ponders my usefulness. “Hmm, well I suppose you’ll do. Not much difference between the two of you anyway, far as I can tell.”

  My cheek twitches in annoyance. Once, everyone knew the difference between us, but now . . .

  Mortals can be such fools.

  “I want my stuff,” she says. The stale baguette crumples in her fist, spilling crumbs across her knees. “All the crap my parents threw away when they kicked me out was my crap. A part of me. They had no right.”

  Oh, how my brother would have loved this girl, had he bothered to answer her call. He is a flighty soul, though, too much the son of the river that birthed us.

  “And you wish me to retrieve them for you?”

  “Of course,” she says. “Can you do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you do it?”

  I smile knowingly. “Yes.”

  This poor lost girl—I understand her far too well. We were born, my brother and I, of a sea nymph’s trickery. Of the ejaculate of Ares thrust unsuspecting into the still waters of Lethe, the action forgotten as soon as it was begun. Discarded by our own parents. Left unclaimed on that tepid shore with only stones to comfort us.

  My brother embraces the simpler aspects of our adrift nature. He c
ollects the easy discards—potshards dredged from old shipwrecks, plastic bottles floating unwanted in the southern currents—and creates beautiful art. Sculptures so haunting in their loss as to make the Erinyes weep.

  It is unfortunate it was not my brother the girl drew here with her need.

  He would have served her better.

  When I deliver the first bits of flotsam from her previous life, the girl is pleased. She praises my ability, burns discarded fast food wrappers in my honor. It is a glorious and heady feeling to be worshiped once more. To be wanted. I grow fat on her offerings.

  It isn’t until the ring she becomes suspicious.

  “Why’s there blood on it?” she asks. She has a room now, a small efficiency apartment paid for by the careful hocking of her more valuable belongings.

  The ring in question is a bit of silver wire twisted into the shape of an Ouroboros. Her mother had intended to toss it out, but it slipped free from the trash bag under the rough handling of the garbage collectors and settled comfortably in the curb’s cracks to await a new owner. If I were my brother, I’d lie to the girl—words are as easily thrown away as children, after all. But desire, that fatted bleating lamb, sings too loudly in my veins.

  “The ring was claimed,” I say, “and so for you, I made it lost again.” It is my nature, after all. You cannot have debris without destruction.

  Oh, how her face twists! How her chest heaves!

  And how unexpected the gossamer threads of innocence spilling from the newborn cracks in her self-righteous shell.

  The scent of that particular loss blooms headier than any ambrosial draught; it intoxicates in a manner matched only by Dionysius’ debauchery of old. Sweetly, ever so sweetly, I pool its fragrant nectar in my palms and drink until my teeth ache and my stomach’s full to burst, and even then I do not stop.

  Let my brother have his art; let him have his trash and lonely hours combing a thoughtless sea.

  This mortal dreg belongs to me.

  About the Story

  * * *

  I have a fondness for the lost, for the broken dreams of old gods. In Debris and Detritus, I found two twins, seemingly alike until the layers are peeled back, until their very names are unraveled to their core essence. And that is where this story emerged, a tale of one twin in particular being true to his nature in a world that seems to have little use for gods made flesh and much less understanding of the damage in thinking them tame servants for mortal whims.

  * * *

  Michelle Muenzler

  3

  Expense Claims Are Hell

  Antioch Grey

  Susan liked Mondays.

  Weekends were busy, filled with exorcisms, banishings, removing curses, and general works of goodness. Monday was the day that the forces of darkness took the day off, slept in, and planned for the week ahead. Even werewolves stayed at home if a full moon fell on a Monday, catching up on whatever it was they did when they weren’t out hunting rabbits or people.

  The added fillip was thinking about all those people who went to work on a Monday to battle their own forces of darkness—the boss, the commute, the annoying colleagues, and all the aggravation of a nine-to-five office job.

  Susan had none of that. She had waking up late, a sturdy breakfast, and staying in her pyjamas until lunchtime, and the smug sensation of being ever-so-slightly a force of darkness herself. It was only ever-so-slightly though, so she could wear sensible flannel pyjamas, unlike true evil, which tended to wear slinky black negligees—all the better for entrapping men and stealing their souls.

  Stealing something anyway, something that would pass for a soul in today’s crass world.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t the forces of darkness that she had to contend with that Monday.

  Her phone gave that constipated chirp that signalled that a message had arrived asking her to deal with something nasty.

  She punched the pillow.

  “What?” she said.

  “You have one message,” the phone replied.

  “I know that. Tell me what it says.”

  The phone recited a post code for the location, a general code for the Local Difficulty, and then made a spluttering noise. Susan plucked the phone from the bedside cabinet and peered at the message through half-closed eyes.

  There was a specialised emoticon at the end of the message to show that it was authentic and had been sent by one of her bosses. It looked like an emoticon for constipation, which brought to mind her boss’s face when reviewing the expenses claims.

  “Bugger,” she said.

  Adding, after concentrated further thought, “Double bugger. There’s only one set of gits who don’t keep to the Monday truce.”

  The post code was at the ends of the earth, or at least the Northern Line. The Tube was hot, overcrowded, and delayed due to overrunning engineering works. She wondered idly what that announcement was covering up and which one of her colleagues had been sent out to deal with whatever it was that had blocked the line.

  She made a surreptitious offering to the Dark Gods of the Railways, and the Tube train passed through safely.

  The post code led her to a garden.

  It was a big garden, attached to a fine house that had been there before the city swallowed it up. It ran to acres of woodland, sculpted topiary, and long borders, but it fell well short of the usual Wild Places that attracted the strange and unearthly. It was also open to the public three days a week and every other weekend.

  A man was waiting for her by the gate with the anxious look of a person who had seen too much and was looking for someone to take over responsibility for dealing with whatever it was.

  “I’m Susan,” she said. “I believe you have been expecting me.”

  “Adrian,” he said. He held out his hand uncertainly to be shaken, imposing a sense of order on things by following the rote politenesses demanded of two Brits meeting on business.

  “So, what’s the problem?” she said.

  Adrian’s unease deepened. “I don’t know what they told you . . . ”

  “Not a lot—they don’t like to give us any preconceptions.”

  “We have some fine statues here, brought back from Greece by one of the family six generations ago when they did the Grand Tour.”

  Susan nodded.

  “They’ve started talking.”

  Adrian had the look of a man who expected to be disbelieved, because he didn’t believe it himself. Susan didn’t tell him that talking statues was low down on the pecking list of strange things she had dealt with because there was a fine line between instilling confidence in someone and completely rearranging their world view.

  In her experience, people wanted to think that their problem was an aberration and that the world generally made sense. This was obviously nonsense and not true, but Susan understood the need to cling to comforting illusions.

  It was, after all, why she still completed her expenses claims.

  She put on her best expression calculated to soothe the general public—a little stern, a lot competent, and a tiny soupçon of self-deprecating humour.

  “Ok. So, I assume you’re familiar with the history of the place—is there any suggestion of human sacrifice, or any sort of ritual cult activity?”

  Adrian’s expression brightened. It wasn’t just that someone believed him, but someone was going to take the problem off his hands. “The only thing that has been sacrificed in this vicinity is a couple of cans of Special Brew, or a packet of crisps and—very possibly—someone’s virginity in some cheap bunk-up against a tree,” he said. “We do get teenagers breaking into the garden after hours for that kind of thing, but there’s never been anything more exotic than that.”

  “Right. Well you had better show me the statues, and I will see what I can do.”

  Adrian opened the gate and stood back politely to allow her to pass through first.

  It was probably politeness, but she still paused to check that the gate was a simple door and not
a portal and that there was nothing hungry lurking behind it. She stepped through smartly and then shifted to the side, away from Adrian, just in case he had been possessed and was waiting for her to turn her back so that he could pounce on her from behind.

  No portals. Nothing lurking. No stunning blow from behind. So far, so good.

  Adrian moved around her and then led the way down a narrow garden path flanked by meadow grass and the sort of flowers that farmers called weeds but which trendy gardeners loved to put in long borders.

  It was pretty, she thought. It would be a shame if something happened to it.

  The path wound its way down through the meadow to a gap in a serpentine green hedge and then into a lawned area surrounded by elegant white statues in various states of undress. They were a little worn, but enough detail remained to identify them from their attributes: Athena with her owl, Hera and a peacock, Hermes and his winged sandals, and a big burly chap with lots of facial hair and a thunderbolt who could only be Zeus.

  “Which ones have started talking, then?” she asked.

  Adrian pointed to the far end of the lawn where two large lumps of stone were squatting in front of a statue of Demeter.

  Susan stared at Demeter. “She’s not talking now . . . ”

  “Not her,” Adrian said, interrupting her.

  Susan looked at the statue again. “Oh.”

  Whatever the lumps were, she’d never seen anything like them before. Mind you, in this job, you didn’t tend to get much repeat business, apart from the vampires, and that truce seemed to be holding for now.