Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

The sun climbed higher, but the angle of the light was still good for taking pictures. Because the air was still, the leaves didn’t move, and sand didn’t get into the camera.

“I like photographing women,” said Zekhe, to be polite, having no particular desire to immortalize Linda. She wasn’t fat but seemed on the dumpy side to him. “They make the best subjects. If you like, after you get a little more color from the sun, I’ll take some shots of you.”

“You can now.”

He put her in his finder. She sat in profile and smiled over her shoulder at the camera. He clicked the shutter once, twice. Something wasn’t right: a pale horizontal across her shoulder blades from the strap.

Linda, smiling, turned more toward the camera, and removed her top. Her bosom was unimpressive, but at least she had one. Some women didn’t, all ribs. Linda’s breasts had a nice soft curve to them, though the moles and nipples were too large.

She had taken off the rest of her swimsuit as well, he noticed. He stepped back to get a lengthwise shot, to fit her whole body in. She was more attractive than he thought.

“I can run on the beach. You can get me in motion. But why don’t you also take off…” She stopped, sat, covered her hips with the skirt that was lying in the sand and quickly put her top back on. Jack and the Rottmans were approaching from the house. At that distance he was the only one who failed to see that she was getting back into her suit.

“Ozza, come to the truck,” said Hobeth’s voice in the speaker. “It’s creepy being here by myself. It’s so dark.”

Ozza stopped reading. “I’m in the middle of a chapter,” she said.

“Please, come… I’ll tell you what happens to them.”

Ozza sighed with exasperation, got up from the sofa, and tucked the book under her arm.

The seat by the driver was uncomfortable. The fake leather, though patched with care, was too hot.

“You can’t manage on your own, you old hag?” she grumbled.

“Sit with me a little. Tell me what they’re doing.” Hobeth wasn’t in the mood for crossing verbal swords.

“This evening Jack plans to develop Zekhe’s roll of film. It contains three, maybe even four, pictures of Linda without a stitch.”

“I read that too,” said Hobeth. “So many times I stopped the scene, stopped reading… so that Zekhe could take more pictures of her naked. With each picture he sees her body better, and she appeals to him more. He’s taken a whole roll of film.”

“What happens?”

“Jack develops it but says nothing to Zekhe.”

“It must not be pleasant for a photographer to have someone else develop his film.”

“It isn’t supposed to be pleasant for Zekhe. Jack’s not stupid, though he pretends to be. He’s been suspecting Linda for a long time. When he sees those pictures, he’ll kill her, in cold blood. He’ll stab her with the sewing scissors, trying to make it look like an accident, though it won’t.”

“And Zekhe?”

“I haven’t got that far,” Hobeth said. “Jack intends to kill him too, even though Linda’s affair with Taylor went on much longer.”

Now Ozza was driving. The voices of Fnorrah could no longer be heard. The buildings of Zatr loomed ahead. It was dawn already, yet the windows of the oasis town were all dark. Not one car went by. The remarkable thing about Zatr was that it maintained three tram lines for its narrow streets—but no tram went by either.

Ozza parked the truck in front of a store. When the engine was turned off, the silence was unbroken. No wind at all—otherwise there would have been rustling leaves or the stir of paper litter in the street, or the bang of a loose shutter somewhere. Everything around her—the parked cars, the trees along the street—was covered by a thick layer of red dust.

The dust had silenced the town. Like soundproofing, Ozza thought. “We should move our bones,” she said.

“My uterus practically fell out from those bumps,” Hobeth grumbled. “I have to piss.”

“What do you need a uterus for, at your age?”

“I’ve grown accustomed to it.” Hobeth, scowling, went to the toilet.

Ozza slowly climbed down the ladder. She was no longer strong, though she was still slim, and didn’t look that bad when she stood up straight.

She held onto the door handle so her heart would stop hammering and return to its normal place beneath her breastbone. The reddish deposit on the sidewalk and street was more like dried mud than dust. Perhaps a drizzle had wet down the dust carried by the wind.

Hobeth, bent over a cane, joined her.

“I heard something plop in the john,” Ozza said. “Your uterus, bitch?”

“No, it’s where it belongs.” Hobeth started to pat her belly with her free hand, but instead she clutched her side because of a spasm.

There was the wreck of a car resting against a twisted road post—no one had removed it. Bits of glass were strewn under a shattered store window.

They went inside. On the floor, in different positions, lay more than a dozen people. The cashier leaned on the register, her head against it.

Ozza trembled. Usually she was confident, ready to taunt her sister, but that was only in the absence of real danger. Hobeth was braver: she went up to the register and poked at the cashier with her cane. The body slipped backward but was stopped by a chair. The face that now turned up at them was hideous, blue, its gaping lips as black as tar, its bugged eyes red and covered with a network of black veins.

“Ahh,” Ozza said, hoarse with horror.

The stiffened fingers of the cashier, raised in some gesture, were as dark as her face.

Hobeth lowered the cane, but the corpse held its new pose.

“No point moving it,” she said. “And I’ll bet the others look the same. Must be a plague. We shouldn’t touch anything. Let’s go.”

Ozza let herself be led out.

In the silence they heard a knocking, or perhaps a scraping behind a door, then what seemed a weak groan. Someone in Zatr still lived and was calling for help.

Again they were on their journey’s endless road. The truck bounced so much over the ruts that the patched seats creaked and groaned. Ozza drove, Hobeth sitting beside her. They felt good today. The sky was without a cloud.

Hobeth held her new possession on her knees to warm her wrinkled hands. It had long, fluffy, dark-violet fur. It was missing a front paw, the left one—a casualty of some bygone adventure. The possession then gently but firmly slipped out of her hands and, limping, began to crawl across the dashboard. It purred quietly and arched its supple back. Ozza looked at it uneasily.

“If it pisses, that could ruin the ignition.”

This anxiety notwithstanding, the new possession delighted her tremendously. She was constantly giving it milk to drink or offering it a spool of yarn, though the creature didn’t seem interested in games. Now it curled itself into a ball, yawned, revealing a thin, tiny tongue, closed its green eyes, and fell asleep.