Каарон Уоррен - The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

“See this?” he said, pulling one of the flowers clear of its receptacle. An aperture in the ovule wept clear fluid over Ricardo’s fingers. He licked it clear.

“Hideous,” spat Sheila, her voice cracking with amused disgust.

“Not at all,” Ricardo insisted. He took hold of the ovule with both hands and teased it open. There was a clearly audible suck. “This plant she is known as ‘Mothers Tears’,” he said. “Because, look, she is so crying all the time.”

He pulled up a few more of the plump hearts and passed them around. Everyone regarded each other blankly. Graham was reminded of the kids in his class when he handed out musical instruments for the first time.

“Now, you are watching,” Ricardo continued. He lifted the parted ovule and sank his mouth into it. Sheila dropped the plant she was holding and turned her back on their guide. Her face was pale and pinched.

Ricardo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Like all tears of the mother, she is sweet.” He looked straight at Graham. “Now you must try.”

It wasn’t a request. Graham had to persuade himself that he would have looked directly at whoever was standing the closest to him. He realized now that Ricardo, though young and lean, was in fact taller and broader than him. He felt a prickle of nervousness—the same loathsome fear that came calling when he had been a child—at the idiotic thought of what the Portuguese man might do if he did not partake of the plant, which now, he recognized, possessed a musky, earthy odor. An animal smell. A human smell, even.

“I don’t—” he began, but Ricardo only smiled—revealing white teeth interleaved with pale grey fragments from the ovule—and pressed Graham’s hand towards his mouth. He saw the others turning away, surreptitiously ditching the plants they had been given, wiping their hands on their shorts and heading back to the bikes.

He took a bite of the flesh and felt his stomach rise to meet it.

“It’s good, yes?”

Graham said nothing, but swallowed the mouthful. It was sweet, but there was a disagreeable taste too, of earth, of rust. But that was nothing next to the texture, which reminded him of the slither of tripe, eaten when he was a child, with onions. Never again.

“If you are in the hot place, and no potable water, this is saving lives.”

They went back to their bikes and Graham concentrated on keeping his breakfast where he’d put it. He was irked that Felix had not watched him swallow the plant. At least Ricardo seemed to hold him in higher regard. He told Graham to hold back, that the three of them would bring up the rear.

“Your wife,” Ricardo said, once they’d struggled through the remaining sandpits and found a more agreeable rhythm. “She no like the bike?”

Graham balked, convinced the man had just likened his wife to a bicycle. But then he factored in Ricardo’s struggle with the language, and saw how the ambiguity had snared him. “She’s not much of a cyclist, no,” he said.

“You like her ass? It’s nice and round, no? Perhaps too much heft.”

“My wife…”

But Ricardo was staring at Sheila’s backside as she struggled with the incline. Graham looked around at Felix, who was concentrating on his pedaling, and watching the butterflies flirt in the hedgerows.

“It’s a little inappropriate, don’t you—”

“Me, I like a big ass. I like the curvy. I’m skinny as rakes but my girlfriend? She’s built like the fucking tank. Your wife. She is the nice shape. Plenty to grab on to when she take you for a big ride.”

Ricardo was close enough now for Graham to be able to see his teeth again. They were small and gray, packed tightly into a mouth that seemed far too capacious for them. His lips sagged, the color of the strawberry daiquiris Cherry ordered before dinner. Juice from the plant had dried to a glaze on his chin. Shock had shrunk Graham’s windpipe straw narrow; he could produce no noise from it.

“You watch your child,” Ricardo said.

Graham hauled on the brakes and slid to a stop; Felix almost collided with his back wheel. He pulled up a few feet ahead, and stared back at his dad, concern pulling all of his features into the center of his face.

Ricardo seemed genuinely nonplussed. “What is it that went wrong? Your bike, it is old and unresponsive?”

Now he read a very definite slight in their guide’s words. Ricardo knew the language better than he was letting on. Graham’s arms and legs were shaking with anger. He felt weak and febrile, as if he were suffering from low blood sugar. “What do you mean, ‘watch my child’?”

“It is in all the news in the Alentejo region. You have heard of O Sedento?”

“No.” Graham shook his head. His breath was as empty as the dry, pallid drift of seedpods collected at the side of the path. “What is it?”

“Not it. A him. A person. O Sedento. Meaning the English, it is the thirsty .”

“The thirsty?”

“This is the correct.”

“Thirsty for what?”

Ricardo licked his lips and his tongue was like an undercooked steak, far too big for his mouth. He winked. “O Sedento de Sangue. The thirsty of—”

“The bloodthirsty,” Graham corrected him.

“It is like the Draculas coming out of Pennsylvania shadows, no?”

Any other time, Graham would have found Ricardo’s abject malapropisms funny; endearing even. Now they gave him the creeps. He pressed on against the pedals, trying to put some distance between him and the guide. His stomach churned.

They completed their bicycle ride at a car park where a minibus was waiting to take them back to their hotel. While the others stood around admiring the view, Graham told Felix to stand with Sheila while he paid a visit to the toilet. Once there, he urinated lustily, but was appalled to see his stream of urine was the color of rust. Hadn’t he drunk a good liter of water that morning, in preparation for this arduous task? Then it must be the plant’s fault. Yes, there was the same mealy smell; it had gone through him like the odor of asparagus. No more bush tucker. He was looking forward to the evening. Steak all the way. And a carafe of wine.

He left the cubicle and washed his hands; he felt his heart perform a little tumble in his chest.

Remember that time…

Stop it. The one thing he hated about Cherry was the way she was constantly harking back. She never seemed to look forward. Forget that he had lost forty pounds over the last six months. Forget that his cholesterol levels were the lowest they’d ever been, or that he treated his body to a mainly Mediterranean diet these days. No. He imagined her at the table tonight casting disgusted looks at his red meat and chips. You’ll not be needing the dessert menu after all that?

Remember that time …

He didn’t need the reminders. It hadn’t even been a proper cardiac arrest. If anything, it was a shot across the bows. He’d been at school, patrolling the playground with his usual cup of tea (milk, two sugars) when the first signs arrived. He’d been annoyed because he’d been asked by the Head to attend a meeting that evening in his stead, and there was also a problem with Felix who was either being bullied or bullying others depending on the rumors knocking around. Also, that morning he and Cherry had somehow got into an argument during sex, and she had pushed him away. There was an ache in his jaw and a pressure growing—like indigestion—around his breastbone. Later he felt breathless climbing the stairs to the gym after work. He’d decided then, feeling mild palpitations, that exercise was not something he should be doing. A visit to the doctor the following morning led to his GP calling for an ambulance.

A cardiologist conducted an ECG and gave him the all-clear, but there were lifestyle choices to make. He made them. Now his mid-morning tea was sugarless and, invariably, green. He cut down on calories and stepped up the exercise. Butter became olive oil. Battered cod became grilled salmon. He ate salad and brown rice. The pints turned into occasional glasses of red wine. The weight fled from him. But Cherry was unimpressed. Maybe it was jealousy; as they both approached middle age, it was she slowly being overcome by avoirdupois.