Neil Gaiman - Fragile Things - Short Fictions and Wonders

Still later they dug her up for one last time, at the request of the church authorities, who had heard rumors of what had been found in the grave. Her stomach was flat. The local doctor told them all that it had just been gas and bloating as the stomach swelled. The townsfolk nodded, almost as if they believed him.

The Chariot

It was genetic engineering at its finest: they created a breed of human to sail the stars. They needed to be possessed of impossibly long life spans, for the distances between the stars were vast; space was limited, and their food supplies needed to be compact; they needed to be able to process local sustenance, and to colonize the worlds they found with their own kind.

The homeworld wished the colonists well and sent them on their way. They removed all traces of their location from the ships’ computers first, however. To be on the safe side.

The Wheel of Fortune

What did you do with the doctor? she asked, and laughed. I thought the doctor came in here ten minutes ago.

I’m sorry, I said. I was hungry.

And we both laughed.

I’ll go find her for you, she said.

I sat in the doctor’s office, picking my teeth. After a while the assistant came back.

I’m sorry, she said. The doctor must have stepped out for a while. Can I make an appointment for you for next week?

I shook my head. I’ll call, I said. But, for the first time that day, I was lying.

Justice

“It is not human,” said the magistrate, “and it does not deserve the trial of a human thing.”

“Ah,” said the advocate. “But we cannot execute it without a trial: there are the precedents. A pig, that had eaten a child who had fallen into its sty. It was found guilty and hanged. A swarm of bees, found guilty of stinging an old man to death, was burned by the public hangman. We owe the hellish creature no less.”

The evidence against the baby was incontestable. It amounted to this: a woman had brought the baby from the country. She said it was hers and that her husband was dead. She lodged at the house of a coach maker and his wife. The old coach maker complained of melancholia and lassitude, and was, with his wife and their lodger, found dead by their servant. The baby was alive in its cradle, pale and wide-eyed, and there was blood on its face and lips.

The jury found the little thing guilty beyond all doubt, and condemned it to death.

The executioner was the town butcher. In the sight of all the town he cut the babe in two, and flung the pieces onto the fire.

His own baby had died earlier that same week. Infant mortality in those days was a hard thing but common. The butcher’s wife had been brokenhearted.

She had already left the town to see her sister in the city, and, within the week, the butcher joined her. The three of them-butcher, wife, and babe-made the prettiest family you ever did see.

Temperance

She said she was a vampire. One thing I knew already, the woman was a liar. You could see it in her eyes. Black as coals they were, but she never quite looked at you, staring at invisibles over your shoulder, behind you, above you, two inches in front of your face.

“What does it taste like?” I asked her. This was in the parking lot, behind the bar. She worked the graveyard shift in the bar, mixed the finest drinks, but never drank anything herself.

“V8 juice,” she said. “Not the low-sodium kind, but the original. Or a salty gazpacho.”

“What’s gazpacho?”

“A sort of vegetable soup.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“No.”

“So you drink blood? Just like I drink V8?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “If you get sick of drinking V8 you can drink something else.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Actually, I don’t like V8 much.”

“See?” she said. “In China it’s not blood we drink, it’s spinal fluid.”

“What’s that taste like?”

“Nothing much. Clear broth.”

“You’ve tried it?”

“I know people.”

I tried to figure out if I could see her reflection in the wing mirror of the truck we were leaning against, but it was dark, and I couldn’t tell.

The Devil

This is his portrait. Look at his flat, yellow teeth, his ruddy face. He has horns, and he carries a foot-long wooden stake in one hand and his wooden mallet in the other.

Of course, there is no such thing as the devil.

The Tower

The tower’s built of spit and spite,

Without a sound, without a sight.

The biter bit, the bitter bite.

(It’s better to be out at night.)

The Star

The older, richer, ones follow the winter, taking the long nights where they find them. Still, they prefer the Northern Hemisphere to the South.

“You see that star?” they say, pointing to one of the stars in the constellation of Draco, the dragon. “We came from there. One day we shall return.”

The younger ones sneer and jeer and laugh at this. Still, as the years become centuries, they find themselves becoming homesick for a place they have never been; and they find the northern climes reassuring, as long as Draco twines about the greater and lesser bears, up near chill Polaris.

The Sun

“Imagine,” she said, “that there was something in the sky that was going to hurt you, perhaps even kill you. A huge eagle or something. Imagine that if you went out in daylight the eagle would get you.

“Well,” she said. “That’s how it is for us. Only it’s not a bird. It’s bright, beautiful, dangerous daylight, and I haven’t seen it now in a hundred years.”

Judgment

It’s a way of talking about lust without talking about lust, he told them.

It is a way of talking about sex, and fear of sex, and death, and fear of death, and what else is there to talk about?

The World

“You know the saddest thing,” she said. “The saddest thing is that we’re you.”

I said nothing.

“In your fantasies,” she said, “my people are just like you. Only better. We don’t die or age or suffer from pain or cold or thirst. We’re snappier dressers. We possess the wisdom of the ages. And if we crave blood, well, it is no more than the way you people crave food or affection or sunlight-and besides, it gets us out of the house. Crypt. Coffin. Whatever.”

“And the truth is?” I asked her.

“We’re you,” she said. “We’re you, with all your fuckups and all the things that make you human-all your fears and lonelinesses and confusions…none of that gets better.

“But we’re colder than you are. Deader. I miss daylight and food and knowing how it feels to touch someone and care. I remember life, and meeting people as people and not just as things to feed on or control, and I remember what it was to feel something, anything, happy or sad or anything…” And then she stopped.

“Are you crying?” I asked.

“We don’t cry,” she told me. Like I said, the woman was a liar.