Seek

by Angela Slatter

Pale and weak, I wake.

Another night of failure.

For a while, I said it wasn’t my fault. Nathaniel was too sensitive. Then guilt, that hollow sensation in your heart, in the invisible chamber where feelings reside, seeped in. I thought there would be an echo if someone knocked on me.

Nathaniel ran when he found me with Ben. I remember the devastation in his eyes, like he’d cracked inside. He didn’t come back. Eventually I was certain he was dead.

I had to apologise. I needed the doorway between the living and the dead. So I took to the streets.

The vamps live among the junkies and hookers. They don’t draw attention but everyone knows they’re there. Some go to turn, some for the thrill. Others go because the vamps stand one foot on either side of the doorway.

It’s hard to find one who will take you right to the edge. A death brings the cops. You need someone who doesn’t care.

I don’t want to turn. I just need to get closer.

I drink juice straight from the bottle. I wolf down stale danishes: sugar and carbs keep me going. Coffee would make me vibrate.

Outside, the sun is turning dark orange, sinking low. I leave the apartment. Last night’s suckhead only made me pass out. He wouldn’t risk it, but said there was someone who might. A new vamp, bereft of feeling.

The alley is a crack between two buildings. I take a deep breath and enter.

Water pools on the asphalt; moisture seeps down walls. A forgotten dumpster is wedged at the dead-end. It stinks of rotten food.

What do I say? The previous vamps knew what I wanted. Here I feel stupid. Noise, movement behind me; I turn.

Tall, big, the hood of the sweatshirt pulled well down over the face. I swallow.

‘What do you want?’ A low voice, rough with ill use.

‘I want the doorway.’

‘Why?’

‘To … apologise.’

He pauses, nods, pushes me against the dumpster. My neck is already dotted with wounds. He drinks deep and quick.

I slip out of my body, see the doorway. I call ‘Nathaniel’, but there’s no answer. I call again, but no one comes.

I drop back into my flesh. He’s taking too much. I hit out, dislodge the hood.

Devastated blue eyes flash; my blood bubbles. Soon it is dark.

A Change in Government

by Kat Beyer

There was a little stir among the people in the longhouse when Seven Fights came in; “they didn’t expect you,” whispered her brother with approval. As if propelled by the murmuring air, a solarbot swished over to her and blinked its one eye suspiciously, then revolved and shot upward and away into the blackened roof beams.

“Did that thing just moon me?” She whispered back.

“It’s decided you’re safe.” He chuckled. “The council’s about to find out different.”

He led her to a place against the southern wall, where the other speakers waited. Someone passed a plate full of corn scones, croissants, sesame balls, and five other kinds of snacks she couldn’t name. A French delegation was speaking, so she had to keep her eyes and ears on the Onandaga translator.

“White guys are all the same,” she heard someone mutter behind her. “The only way to keep a treaty with them is to make sure you have enough ammunition.”

“And vaccine,” somebody whispered back at him. An old woman turned her head, slowly, and they both went quiet.

After the French were finished, the Speaker slammed his staff down and looked at her, and she realized with a shock that that was all the introduction she was going to get. She stood up and walked to the center of the dirt floor.

“Grandmothers and grandfathers,” she began, facing the elders sitting against the East wall, her throat dry. “Guests of the Seventeen Nations,” she added, turning to the delegations from Paris, Beijing, Cairo, and Harare. “Fellow sachems of the Haudenosaunee—” she went on, before her voice was drowned in the roar of surprise that had accompanied the words “fellow sachems.” They hadn’t heard, then. She waited until they fell silent.

“I come before you as the newly chosen Sachem of the United Tribes of the Southwestern Deserts. Among my people, it has always been considered strange that the women of the League choose the leaders but are not the leaders. Therefore they have sent me, in token of this time of change.”

This time the roar in the longhouse seemed to take on a variety of textures—the roughness of anger, the high pitch of delight, all mixed together. She stood still, looking straight into the eyes of one grandmother who sat against the wall, gazing at her and smiling faintly. “This is how it starts,” she thought.