Blood Queen & Other Stories Page 2

  As Jeff suckled, fresh bugs swarmed over his body, bit their way through his skin, resumed the nests already carved out by their brethren. A fresh army for him to take him, to live with, to commute to different parts of the city, to donate with his blood. Each bug was filled with the Queen's pure blood to replenish the bugs still nested in the wood, cloth and paper of Jeff's apartment.

  The other people, men and women, who also suckled detached their milkblood-swollen lips from the nipples and slipped from the Queen's thorax.

  Their sleep-entombed steps led them from the cave. Jeff followed after he had taken his fill of the blood-milk of the mother to keep his senses deadened to his journey. They all headed back into the darkness of the tunnels. Each person would emerge into a different subway station, some walking the subterranean tunnels for hours to head to the station closest to where they lived.

  The bugs inside them would lead each to their residences, homing in on their individual nests, where their hosts would begin the morning with an amnesia of the night before.

  The plague spread, acquiring new hosts spread across the city. When a host's body had become too worn by the massive swarm coming and going from their interior organs and muscles and grey matter, they were directed one last time to the underground cave, drained of their last drop of blood by the Queen, the husk of their flesh left on the cave floor to be eaten by the young, worn down to bone.

  There would always be more bugs than human beings, even in a city of millions. But there would always be cities across the world not yet invaded by the vermin.

  And the bugs could travel for weeks, months, in the tiniest square of cloth or scrap of paper or splinter of wood.

  Circus Maze

  There was one in every town. A guy who hated the circus, and who visited only to mock it. Usually a middle-aged male, unmarried, no girlfriend, no kids, who came in drunk, trying to impress someone else's girlfriend, thinking he could tempt her away, despite having nothing with which to tempt. He liked to fight and argue, but fighting with another patron was one thing, fighting with a circus performer completely different. It led to different consequences other than a black eye and a night in the drunk tank.

  The circus had been around for a long time, had travelled the world, knew humanity in all its variety. A circus clown was an astute psychiatrist, the lion tamer could give excellent relationship advice, an acrobat could tell you what career you were best suited for, and the dwarf could engineer the world.

  The dwarf was often the most attacked. Bolo was two-foot-three-inches tall and had been with the circus since he was sixteen. Abandoned by his parents when he was an infant, he lived in various Catholic-run foster homes, suffering the ridicule of other children and the prejudice of adults. He quickly grew a thick skin. Discovered ways to manipulate others for reasons of personal gain or revenge, but he learned also to be just. He fought for others who were picked on due to their differences.

  He ran away from the last foster home, mature enough in his teen years to make it on his own. He became a thief to feed himself and get the basic necessities to stay alive; rode the rails to travel the country, looking for work, but no one would hire him. When he happened across the circus in a town where his train had stopped, he saw nothing but advantage. It was perhaps the only industry in the world that saw him as an asset to its business and a natural member of its community, so it gave him a real home. He was finally treated like a human being.

  Except by the usual suspects. In this town, Perdix, Pennsylvania, he watched the man get drunk and go on the attack. Bolo kept out of the man's way as much as possible, but at two-feet tall, it was astounding how visible a dwarf could be to a vicious drunk. The man quickly found him.

  "Goddamn!" the man began, words starting to slur. "I've owned dogs bigger than you! Can you sit and stay and fetch like a good boy?"

  Bolo walked away, into the tent of the bearded woman, but the man followed, pushing the ticket-taker out of the way.

  "Hey, I'm talking to you!" the man yelled, holding still but wavering as his eyes adjusted to the colored lights inside the tent.

  People filed passed Althea as she sat on a stool in front of a vanity mirror, combing her beard, weaving small bows into it. She stopped to peer into the mirror, seeing the man looking at people's legs, trying to find the dwarf. He was under Althea's table, a finger to his lips. She giggled at him and he slid a hand up her thigh. She squeaked and batted away his hand.

  Which drew the attention of the man. He pushed through the spectators and hoisted a leg over the low circular barrier separating Althea from her audience.

  "You can't come in here," she yelled, spinning on her stool to shoot a glare at the man.

  "Don't get your fur in a knot, honey," he said, stooping, trying to grab Bolo under the table.

  "Hey, asshole, leave her alone!" a voice called from the crowd.

  The man lifted a middle finger, waved it at whomever had challenged him.

  "Sideshow business, buddy. My freaks are out of line. Mind your own shit."

  The spectator in the crowd stepped over the barrier, grabbed the man, lifted him to his feet, and swung a hard right across his cheek. The man crashed into Althea's table, knocked it over and smashed the mirror.

  Althea followed Bolo out of the tent's back way as the two men fought, dispersing the crowd. They escaped to the trailers of the circus crew parked behind the scenes, finding the ring master, Gorgios, having lunch.

  "We've got another one for the maze," Bolo told the head of the circus.

  Gorgios cracked a leg bone of the bird he was consuming and sucked out the marrow. The dwarf and the bearded woman told him what had happened, Bolo adding that he watched the drunken man verbally attack some of the other performers, calling them fakes and scam artists, even ridiculing patrons who spoke up in support of the circus folk.

  Licking grease off his fingers, the ring master said, "We'll put him in the maze tonight."

  *

  The man's name was Randy Howler. He woke on hard earth surrounded by high walls made of brushed steel. He could almost see his hazed reflection in the metal walls. They extended high over his head – far above the extent of his arm's reach – and the smoothness of the walls would help to ensure that he could never climb them to ascertain the layout of the maze which had him trapped.

  Sparks flashed across his vision as hammers beat against his temples. He didn't recall much of the night before, except that he had drank a lot. The knuckles of his right hand were swollen and bruised, blood spots appeared on his fingertips when he touched certain sensitive parts of his face, his upper lip swollen, and his gums felt cut. He rose to his feet like an old man, ribs and back muscles shooting spasms as he straightened his posture.

  He leaned back against a steel wall to catch his breath, to take account of his surroundings. The walls stretched in either direction, then stopped – possibly turning at right angles – the corridor to his left larger than that to his right.

  But directly across from him, a piece of wall slid up. Three feet of wall to be exact, enough to allow a two-foot-three man to take a single step into the maze.

  "Do you remember me?" Bolo asked Howler.

  With thumb and forefinger digging into his temples, eyes squinting away the pain, Randy shook his head. "Don't remember much, little guy. You from a dream I had? Or a turd I shit out?"

  Bolo's grin widened into a full-mouthed smile and erupted into a laugh. He buckled over as laughter took him, joined by Howler, though the larger man didn't know what he was laughing about.

  "You like that one, hunh?" Randy asked.

  Bolo nodded back and let his laugh wane. "You just don't know when to quit. Can't even blame it on being drunk right now. Looks like we got the right one."

  "Right what, little –"

  "Enough with the little shit!" Bolo yelled, eyes locked on his opponent, his enemy. He had been here before – they all had – whichever circus employee had been attacked the most was given the pri
vilege of being the Maze Host. He offered Althea the spot, but she said Bolo had gotten it the worst. She just hoped her vanity and mirror could be fixed. It was a part of her show's set, not to mention an heirloom handed down to her by her mother and grandmother. She just wanted to make the culprit pay in the age-old tradition of the circus.

  Which no one but life-dedicated circus folk knew about. No one but they knew where the maze was located, and the magic that made it function.

  "I'll be merciful," Bolo said to Howler. "And tell you why you're here, since it happens that you're too stupid to figure it out. There's one of you at every circus in the world. Someone who refuses to enjoy the carnival – who instead ridicules other people who try to bring a world of joy and fantasy into people's mundane lives. We offer a beneficent fantasy to adults and children alike. You shit on our happiness. So here you're going to get shit on in return. You'll have a chance to escape with your life. There is an exit on the other side of the maze … but, of course, you have to go through our hell to get there."

  "Fuck off, asshole – get out of my way," Howler said as he stumbled toward Bolo and the gap in the wall.

  The dwarf took a step backwards and the door closed in front of him. His voice was still audible from the other side of the wall.

  "We are not the weakened members of the human race – you are. Yet we are shoved to the fringes, despised by those who call themselves normal. We are not toys. You're about to see what it's like to be us."

  Howler slammed palms against the steel and yelled for the wall to open. But there was no magic password. He was in one of the oldest prisons mankind and myth ever created – but a prison with a chance at freedom.

  A small chance.

  *

  Randy Howler pounded on the steel and yelled until the lion rounded the corner of the maze down its longest corridor. He froze. The lion trod slow steps toward him, eyes on its prey. Primal instinct took hold as adrenaline shot through Randy's veins and he ran. Intellect couldn't help him, telling him not to run – if that was what one was supposed to do when confronted by the king of the jungle. Soreness and pain left his body as panic took over, and he sprinted like a track star down the shorter corridor, slowing only to make the turn and glance back to see the lion at full gallop.

  The maze wound in a zigzag tunnel, giving Randy a false sense of security. He slowed his sprint to wait at a corner of a short corridor, breath heaving, sweat pouring into his eyes, trying to hear the sound of the lion's gallop, or worse, a roar. But he heard nothing, and assumed he had lost the beast.

  A whip snapped down and wrapped around his neck, braided snakes of leather cutting his windpipe and pulling his boots off the ground. He kicked heels against the wall until he had been hoisted to the top edge and sat down. He choked as he glanced down and saw that the lion had caught up to him, licking its fangs as it sat and waited for him to drop.

  Mako wore a stovepipe hat bearing a checkerboard pattern, his black moustache and caterpillar eyebrows twisted to points. The lion tamer looked at Randy upside-down, the handle of the whip still in hand, the leather cords digging into Randy's neck.

  "How do you like fear, my son?" Mako asked with a smile. "My lion loves you … you're not afraid of a little pussy, are you?"

  Randy tried to speak but the words choked in his throat. Fingers pried under the leather cords digging into his skin, but he wouldn't be able to free himself until Mako decided he deserved freedom.

  Randy was able to glance across the tops of the walls, seeing the extent of the maze. It stretched before him like a vast mathematical pattern, reaching out to the horizon, endless. He realized there would be no way to survive the maze, especially if its torments had begun so early and been already so vicious.

  "Who's the king of the beasts, old boy?" the lion tamer asked, twirling an eyebrow. "Man, of course. You show that kitty who's boss."

  With a single hand, Mako lifted the whip, edging Randy off the wall to dangle in mid-air, lowered slowly toward the waiting lion. The lion leapt, swept claws through the air, catching one of the dangling man's boots.

  Randy's neck bulged with red veins as he kicked and tried to unhook the lion's claw that pierced his boot and through his foot. Screams lodged in his chest as pain flowed from his foot up his leg.

  Mako dropped from the sky and landed on his feet in front of the lion, and Randy collapsed to the earth. The whip snapped off of his neck and cracked in the air.

  The lion sat, didn't move, licked its fangs while it gazed at the man on the ground struggled to pull air back into his lungs. The jungle cat salivated from the smell of blood draining from the toe of the boot.

  Mako leaned over to smile into Randy's bulging eyes. "Don't take too long catching your breath. I won't be able to hold him off forever."

  Randy saw the lion's mane and eyes and mouth looming over him. He backed away, ignored the pain in his foot, kicked soil to put space between himself, the lion, and the lion-tamer. Got to his feet and trotted a hobbled jog down the maze corridor rounding a curve.

  At the far end of the corridor, he saw the dwarf again, smiling and waiting for him.

  Bolo pointed at Randy's boot. "The pretty kitty caught you?"

  Randy sagged back against the wall, sat on the ground, touching lightly the friction burn marks around his throat. "What are you people doing? I could've died! That was a goddamn lion!"

  Bolo stepped within four feet of Randy, arms crossed and nodding. "You're a genius. But it's too early to take five. Did you get a good look at the maze when you were on top? Endless. You've got a long way to go."

  "Fuck you," Randy wheezed out.

  Bolo winked. "No thanks," then stepped around the corner of the wall.

  Randy crawled along the wall and peered around the corner. The dwarf had vanished. Instead, a bull elephant stampeded towards him, its trumpet blasting an echo against the steel walls.

  "Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus," Randy as he squeezed low to the wall, folding in his arms and legs, hoping the behemoth would charge passed him. But if he was the target, wouldn't it try to crush him? There was no man on the wall with a whip about to save him by a noose. His only chance was to rush past the pachyderm, crouched through the clearance beneath its belly, avoiding the tree trunks of its legs.

  He squatted and peered around the corner. The elephant was closing in. Randy made a run for it, keeping low as he slipped around the animal's trunk and tried to skitter under the beast's belly.

  Instead, his wounded foot twisted and he dropped to the earth. The monolith passed over him, its left hind foot an inch from his chin, kicking dirt into his eyes.

  As the elephant slowly turned its bulk at the right angle of the maze branch, Randy knew he shouldn't be lying in its path. How many chances would he have before just one of the flat feet crushed a part of his anatomy into the ground?

  He kicked himself to standing and raced down the corridor. Impossible for a man to outrun an elephant, but the maze slowed down the giant's thundering stamp.

  The maze twisted a few more times until Randy could rest against a wall to catch his breath. But not for too long. A sleeve wiped sweat from his eyes and Bolo appeared beside him again.

  "Still alive? I guess we're not doing our job."

  "Who are you people? Why the fuck are you doing this to me?"

  "I explained that to you. You are vermin and you must leave our world."

  "Fine!" Randy yelled with what little air he had inside him. "Show me the way out – I'm gone!"

  Bolo pointed down the next corridor of maze. "Maybe if you ran real fast, you'll avoid the next bit of hell."

  Randy looked down the corridor, hands resting on knees, then swung his eyes back to the dwarf.

  About to say something, but Bolo interrupted. "Don't stare at me – that just pisses me off more. Now run, fool!"

  Bolo vanished around the edge of the wall. Randy looked down the corridor he had left and couldn't see the dwarf. He hobbled further through the maze, his pace s
low, exhaustion and pain in his limbs, keeping a hand close to the wall to align his staggered steps.

  He turned down another long corridor to see a trapeze swinging without a passenger, strung from wall to wall. Randy approached with caution, assuming the bar would slow its pendulum sway, but it didn't. He stepped close enough that it swung over his head and higher than the top of the wall.

  Gave him an idea – it looked like a shortcut. It could swing him up to the top of the wall where he could possibly be out of danger from whatever the maze could throw at him on the ground. Plus, he could perhaps carefully walk across the walls of steel to shorten his trek through the labyrinth.

  But what was the catch? It must be a trap. Still, what choice did he have? Stay on the ground and walk into whatever hell the maze presented around the next corner, or swing to the upper reaches and avoid at least one peril. It would be worth it.

  Catching the trapeze on the down swing, he swayed and swung his legs up to hook on the bar, then sat on it and held the ropes. He hadn't been on any kind of swing since he was a kid. This one, however, didn't need any coaxing sway to get going. It swung Randy on its own.

  Up and down in an arc, Randy was pushed higher and higher, watching the lip of the wall reach his eye level, then sink below him. He saw the stretching, endless maze once again – better this time – the labyrinth shone like silver in all directions. He couldn't tell where the exit could possibly be, nor where the entrance lay behind him. It was as though he couldn't possible have run or walked so far into it in so little time.

  The maze was magic. It was hell. Logic fell apart within its walls. One just had to persevere and hope an end to it eventually arrived.

  He straightened his posture while watching the top of the wall, trying to time his jump to land – if not on his feet, then clinging by his fingers to it, staying above the action.