Hesitantly, the doorman raised his hand

by David

1. The mysterious stranger stepped out of the limo and into a gutter full of water.

23. “Besides the three of us,” her sister began, “who knows that Papa exterminated, in 1922, a race of albino dwarf landwhales near the headwaters of the Amazon?”

2. Carla let the curtain fall back into place; he was here.

22. “Josephine,” Carla gasped, “does this mean what I think it does?”

3. Willie dreamed of quitting his job as a doorman, leaving Lucille, and never entering a condo again.

21. “It’s a mask, you moron,” Josephine snarled, ripping the disguise off her head and throwing her pistol on the sofa.

4. The revolving door disgorged the black-cloaked figure like a gut-punched Linda Blair ralphing the Devil.

20. “We don’t see many Kurds in these parts,” Robin quavered, staring at the man’s distinctive schnoz.

5. With trembling fingers Carla spelled “extreme danger” on the telephone keypad and then hung up.

19. Willie had been meaning to tell Mr. Hood that the pet deposit didn’t cover jaguars, but he’d have preferred doing it with dry pants.

6. Willie noticed the wet footprints on the lobby carpet just as the elevator door closed.

18. Robin wasn’t home, so she stepped out into the hall, saw two people and a large cat enter her own apartment, and followed.

7. The phone rang again: Robin would never finish reading “Nostrilia” at this rate.

17. Willie sent the boys home with a promise that he would check out the fourth floor.

8. Carla raised the window and stepped out on the ledge.

16. Robin turned away from the door to find himself nose to nose with a menacing figure.

9. The leash was missing, not that you can really walk a 40-kilo cat, anyway.

15. The two boys were sure the woman who’d just climbed in a fourth-floor window had not been wearing underwear.

10. Willie dreamed he and Carla cuddled on a blanket nice as you please, until she poured hot coffee in his lap.

14. Her doorbell rang, but Carla was already almost to the next apartment.

11. “Cheeto! Come back!”

13. There was only one place the cat could be headed for.

12. A high-pitched scream ululated through the lobby like the ring of a phone in an empty house.

Wish

by Angela Slatter

I sit on my favourite rock at the edge of the lake and watch the girl with the clever fingers. She has come to ask a boon and knows there’s a price. I am uninterested, for they all fail.

A leather satchel is clasped in her arms. When she reaches the edge of the lake, she kneels down, heedless of grass and dirt stains on her skirts. She opens the bag, the metal clasp giving a snick that sounds loudly in the stillness of the night. She takes out an ancient book, the gold lettering on its spine reads Murcianus’ Little-known Lore.

Next: a pair of large silver shears; a small ball stuck with silver pins and needles; a spool of fine thread, silk, flax and spider’s web, bound by sheer dint of magic.

Blood covers the moon this night and there is both a weird clarity and a murkiness, shapes at once sharp and blurred.

I feel unaccountably excited.

The girl takes the shears. The water’s surface shines like quicksilver. She leans far out over it then proceeds to cut.

I can see the fabric of night and fluid ruche and crumple. She lays the pieces on the grass beside her. Reaching into the lake she pulls up long ribbons of water plant. The she begins to sew and continues for hours. Finally she bites the eldritch thread and holds the dress up.

It has long skirts and a tight bodice, fitted sleeves with bows made of lake-weed. It is the colour of my eyes, green and black and blue and all shades in between.

Once when maidens made offerings of dresses I marvelled over them looking so lovely up in the light. In the water, I would find that bereft of air and sun, they had somehow died. I could not swim in them.

She slips it over my head, laces the stays tight. The touch of it is cold and damp and it feels like a second skin. It moves ever-so-slightly with a current.

I dive in and my new dress does not hamper me; it flows and floats, part of the water and yet still separate from it. There is no gentle sluggish sensation of being wrapped in a wet winding sheet and thinking ‘So this is how they feel when they drown’.

Finally, I head to the surface. I have a wish to grant.