Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(87)



I lived in a hotel on the beach while it was done. Miami! TV prophecy, humidity like a wet sheet, an airport where they won’t rent you a baggage trolley. You wouldn’t think this listening to Bob Seger. Unless you are constantly approaching it from the sea, Miami is less a dream—less even a nightmare—than a place. All I remember is what British people always remember about Florida: the light in the afternoon storm, the extraordinary size and perfection of the food in the supermarkets. I never went near the clinic, though I telephoned Alexander’s team every morning and evening. I was too scared. One day they were optimistic, the next they weren’t. In the end I knew they had got involved again; they were excited by the possibilities. She was going to have what she wanted. They were going to do the best they could for her, if only because of the technical challenge.

She slipped in and out of the world until the next spring. But she didn’t die, and in the end I was able to bring her home to the blackened, gentle East End in May, driving all the way from Heathrow down the inside lane of the motorway, as slowly and carefully as I knew how in my new off-the-peg 850i. I had adjusted the driving mirror so I could look into the back of the car. Isobel lay awkwardly across one corner of the rear seat. Her hands and face seemed tiny. In the soft wet English light, their adjusted bone structures looked more rather than less human. Lapped in her singular successes and failures, the sum of her life to that point, she was more rested than I had ever seen her.

About a mile away from the house, outside Whitechapel tube station, I let the car drift up to the kerb and stop. I switched the engine off and got out of the driving seat.

“It isn’t far from here,” I said. I put the keys in her hand. “I know you’re tired,” I said, “but I want you to drive yourself the rest of the way.”

She said: “China, don’t go. Get back in the car.”

“It’s not far from here,” I said.

“China, please don’t go.”

“Drive yourself from now on.”

If you’re so clever, you tell me what else I could have done. All that time in Miami she had never let go, never once vacated the dream. The moment she closed her eyes, feathers were floating down past them. She knew what she wanted. Don’t mistake me: I wanted her to have it. But imagining myself stretched out next to her on the bed night after night, I could hear the sound those feathers made, and I knew I would never sleep again for the touch of them on my face.





A Little Bird Told Me

PAT CADIGAN



Everybody in the flat is dead. Even the plants are dead. Welcome to Croydon.

I’m a big girl; this is nothing I haven’t already seen like a thousand times, except for the plants—I mean, jeez. I want to turn around and go straight back to central London. Instead, I take the iPad out of my shoulder bag and make a walk-through video before I photograph individual faces. Getting full-face photos can be tricky because I’m not supposed to touch them. But if there’s no other way, I have these things like oven mitts so I won’t mark them or vice versa. Eight people in the room, six on the sofa or in chairs, two on the floor. One of the latter, man about forty, forty-five, trickle of blood drying on his upper lip, is staring right at me. I hate that. I leave him for last.

The iPad doesn’t lessen his stare. Changing the angle a little doesn’t help, either—he’s like one of those creepy portraits where the eyes seem to follow you around the room. I try looking at a point past the edge of the iPad but his gaze keeps pulling at mine. This is partly because the soul is still in the body and partly because, like everyone else here, he’s a cheater and all cheaters are tenacious bastards. This guy, however, seems to be especially bad and I think I know why.

Recognition software confirms it: Staring Guy was a double dipper. You don’t find a lot of people who can cheat Death twice, but they aren’t as rare as they used to be. This is the third one I’ve had in less than a year. Feh. Damfool didn’t have a clue how much trouble he caused. Cheaters never do. They’ve got this idea they’re badass rebels, striking a blow against the one thing no one’s supposed to be able to beat. Like, Death be not proud, I kicked your ass.

Only they’re wrong. Cheating isn’t kicking ass and it isn’t winning. It’s more like dine-and-dash. I step over the double dipper and head down a short hallway, stopping at the first door on the left. It’s the bathroom; occupied. Damn.

If people knew how often the average mortal dies while on the toilet, they’d all probably hold it till they exploded. I’m not grossed out—it ain’t plutonium, just waste. What gets me is the total loss of dignity. Even when it’s a cheater, it bothers me.

I do my job—video, then head-shot. Recog software IDs her as the owner of the flat and the facilitator for this little group of cheaters. She showed them how to slip by the Big One. Not for free, of course; judging by the size of the flat and the decor, she was doing better than okay and still managed to elude Death for an exceptionally long time, longer even than the double dipper.

Still, I feel sorry for her. I mean, isn’t it enough she’s freakin’ dead? Why does she have to be found on the floor in her own waste with her pants down—to teach her a lesson? Like what—“Cheaters never prosper”? “Nobody lives forever”? “When you gotta go, you’re gonna go”? Kinda late for that.

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