The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy Read online

  Then he was on the yacht.

  “Uh, sorry we killed you once, Mister Spaceman.”

  The man brushed some dust off his rubberoid lapels. “I am as human as you, Mister McGhee. I am a resident of your future.”

  Catalina had ceased crying. “Juh-gee, you must come from pretty far in the future.”

  “Fifty years,” said the man. “But they’re going to be wild ones. Now, may I have back my unit?”

  Jay Dee surrendered the Master Remote.

  Tracey asked, “How come you didn’t arrive one second after you were killed to claim it, and prevent all this mess?”

  “The unit disturbs the Fredkin continuum in a chaotic manner. I had a hard time zeroing in on it.”

  “What’s going to happen to us?” said Jay Dee.

  “Oh, nothing much. Say, did you ever see a tie like this?”

  They all stared at the time-traveller’s paisley tie. The border of each paisley was made of little paisleys, and those were made of littler paisleys, and those were made of even littler paisleys, on and on and on, forever–

  That night the Li’l Bear Inn was as crowded as the last copter out of Saigon.

  But the atmosphere was a little more pleasant.

  Above the sounds of clicking pool balls, thwocking darts, ringing bells, exploding aliens, kazoo, farts, Hank Junior, and the bug-zapper hung outside the screen-door that gave onto the gravel parking lot, the calls for drinks were continuous.

  “Tracey, two shots!”

  “Tracey, another pitcher!”

  “Tracey, six rum ’n’ cokes!”

  The woman behind the bar smiled at the deluge of orders. It meant more profits in her till.

  A man with two tattoos emerged from the back office. “Catalina just called, Trace. She’s stopping by soon as Gene gets off work at the exterminator’s.”

  Tracey said, “It’ll be good to see her. I’ll have a frozen daiquiri and a saucer of cream ready.”

  The man looked around. “Lord, it’s jumping tonight. We should be able to pay off the mortgage next month.”

  A large neutered tomcat stepped fastidiously among the pools of spilled beer. A patron reached down to pet it. It hissed and scratched the offered hand.

  “Jay Dee, you should get rid of that mean animal!”

  Jay Dee just smiled.

  There was a muffled noise from the moose-head mounted on the wall behind the bar. The moose-head had a rope tied around its snout. Its eyes tracked furiously.

  Jay Dee gave Tracey a kiss. “I’ll relieve you in a minute, hon. But I got to do something first.”

  He went back into the private office on the far side of the bar, picked up a board – and gave Larry another whack on the ass.

  ALMOST HEAVEN

  Tom Gerencer

  I remember that first morning clearly, because I woke up with a headache that was somehow larger than my head. I went to the medicine cabinet and rifled around for a while, looking for some painkillers that didn’t exist, and then the prophetic and usual knock came on the door.

  Only it wasn’t a salesman this time, or a kid with a flat tire, or even couple of young guys trying to convert me to Shintoism, but a big, greasy looking man in biballs who said his name was Lester.

  “Can I help you?” I asked him, and he smiled an ingratiating smile and said no, thanks, he didn’t think so, and he pushed his way inside.

  He seated himself at my kitchen table, smiled, looked around, and appeared to be fairly pleased with things, in a general sense.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “uh, Lester, is it?”

  He smiled again, and he said that it was.

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling somewhere halfway in between silly and afraid, “could you please leave?”

  “I could, yeah,” he told me, nodding emphatically, “Only I’m not going to.”

  “I gotcha,” I said, gauging the distance between myself and the telephone. “And why’s that?”

  “Because,” he said. “I kind of like it here. It reminds me of someplace else I was once, that I liked almost as much, but not quite. For one thing, I really like your wallpaper.”

  It was nice wallpaper. Only a fool, a blind man, or an aesthetic moron would fail to concede the point. But I was having trouble understanding why wallpaper, however well conceived, should serve as an excuse for such an uninvited intrusion, and I said so.

  “There are many things we don’t understand,” Lester told me, drumming his fingers on the tabletop, “and to try to change this often results in the destruction of the beauty of the moment. For example, look at this gourd.”

  He pulled, then, from the front pocket of his biballs, a little orange gourd, pumpkin-shaped and smaller than an apple.

  “That’s a nice gourd,” I agreed. “But what I’m saying is, you could enjoy the beauty of the moment, and the gourd, and so forth, outside, or in your own house, or apartment, or wherever it is you live.”

  “I don’t have a house,” he told me, “and if I did, it would not have wallpaper as nice as this, I can assure you.”

  He tossed his gourd up in the air, then, and caught it.

  “Do you have an apartment?” I asked.

  “No,” he told me. “I was thinking of living here.”

  I told him, in so many words, that this was out of the question, impossible, and not to be considered.

  “And why is that?” he asked me.

  “There are many things that can’t be explained,” I told him, “and to try to change this often results in the destruction of the beauty of the moment.”

  “Touché,” he admitted, and then he derailed the natural flow of events by telling me he was the god of hors d’oeuvres.

  “Hors d’oeuvres?”

  “Just simple ones,” he admitted. “No sushi. There’s another god for that. His name’s Skip.”

  “What would the god of hors d’oeuvres want with me?” I asked him.

  “With you? Nothing,” he said. “It’s the wallpaper I like, really. That and the linoleum. You don’t see linoleum like this every day.”

  How can you argue with a guy like that? I considered calling the police, but I decided against it. I try to keep an open mind. And anyway, how did I know the man really wasn’t the god of hors d’oeuvres? I mean, if the only true knowledge lies in knowing you know nothing, I’m a genius. Either that or a moron. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which.

  All speculation aside, the guy did make a hell of an hors d’oeuvre. He whipped one up for me with avocado slices, tomato, melba toast, and a really delicious, flavored cream-cheese spread he’d brought along, just in case. I was leery of eating it at first, but it smelled so good I let myself have a little nibble, and after that I couldn’t resist eating the rest.

  “Many such sandwiches are possible,” he told me, and he walked into the living room, tossing his gourd into the air and catching it.

  I was about to follow him when another door-knocker did his thing outside, and I went to see who he was.

  “He” turned out to be a she, actually. A lady with a naugahide purse and a heck of a permanent, and she cut right to the chase by asking for Lester.

  “Yeah, he’s here,” I told her. “He just made me a sandwich.”

  “Has he got his gourd?” she wanted to know, and I told her he did.

  “Thank God,” she said, and before I could ask which god, she had pushed past me and stomped off into the house, wrist-bangles bangling.

  I followed her to see what would happen next.

  I found her standing over Lester, who had seated himself in front of my television set and turned on the home-shopping network.

  “Ida!” he shouted at her.

  “Lester!” she shouted back.

  The big man leveraged himself up out of my wingback, and the two of them proceeded to hug. When they had disengaged, Lester turned to me and said, “Ida, this is Moe. Moe, Ida.”

  “My name’s Bill,” I told her.

  “Hi, there,” she sa
id, and she smiled at me.

  “Ida is the goddess of taking out the trash,” Lester explained.

  “I come in very handy on Thursdays,” she told me.

  I was on the verge of throwing the both of them out when I realized I might’ve hit upon something big, here.

  “You don’t,” I said, “by any chance know the goddess of full-body massage, do you?” I asked them.

  “Actually, it’s a god,” said Ida.

  “Never mind,” I told her.

  The next day was a busy one at my house. First came the god of annoying interruptions, followed by the god of reconstituted meat-by-products, followed by the god of persistent nighttime coughs. The goddesses of relaxation, on-the-job safety, and stereo systems came next.

  “Could you take a look at my Hitachi?” I asked the last one, but before she could answer me, the god of annoying interruptions, whose name was Zeke, cut in and had us both look at his boil.

  “I hope it goes away,” he said. “I’ve heard stuff like this can go system wide and kill you. By the way, nice linoleum. And where did you ever get those bathroom light fixtures?”

  I excused myself and hunted down Lester, who was in the kitchen, working on a number of little olive and cream-cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

  “You like cream cheese, don’t you?” I said.

  “Cream cheese is a wonderful medium,” he told me, “but I enjoy anything that is edible and can also be spread.”

  “I can appreciate that,” I said, “and, not to spoil the beauty of your moment or anything, but what’s going on?”

  “I’m making some hors d’oeuvres,” he said, gesturing at the tray-full.

  “I can see that,” I assured him, “but I was referring to the gods and goddesses who keep showing up. I mean, why?”

  “‘Why’ is a question full of pitfalls,” he admonished. “It is a word not conducive to the proper, joyful preparation of sandwiches. I try to avoid it whenever possible.”

  I took an hors d’oeuvre, nibbled, and found it to be excellent.

  “But,” I said, and then Zeke turned up and asked me where I’d got the wallpaper.

  The following weeks brought more of the self-proclaimed deities, whom I would have evicted at the drop of just about anything (since I do not own any hats) save for the intriguing fact that they all pulled their weight to an astonishing degree.

  The goddess of flower arrangement, for instance, added an aesthetic depth to my home it had never before possessed. The god of healthful-yet-inexpensive-main-dishes took the tedium out of suppertime, and I probably don’t even need to expound on the benefits of playing host to the god of cleaning-the-toilets. Of course, there were problematical areas, like the goddess of pointing-out-minor-personality-flaws or the god of irritating laughter, but you’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelette, a fact that was demonstrated to me every Sunday morning by the god of tantalizing breakfast treats.

  All things, good, bad, and otherwise, however, invariably come to an end. One day, while I was putting in some quality time with the goddess of sympathetic conversation, the goddess of answering-the-door did so and ushered in a tall, no-nonsense looking guy in a deep black suit.

  He explained that he was the minor deity of total agnosticism, and that was, pretty much, that, except that he went on to compliment my taste in kitchen cabinetry and countertops.

  A RUDE AWAKENING

  Gail-Nina Anderson

  With one bound, she was free! As usual, the opening of the first bloom brought her winging into existence, fresh as spring, hardy as a perennial. While some flower fairies yawned and stretched themselves into their annual manifestations, emerging from the bud like a dragonfly from a chrysalis, Lily (of the Valley) always favoured a more sudden appearance, taking everyone (often including herself) by surprise. She put this down to being such an early arrival in the year’s panoply of floral delights. She was also the kind of personality who liked to get things done.

  Despite her dynamic incursion into the world, she made a surprisingly light and elegant landing, twirling slightly and appearing almost to float to the ground. It was really all a matter of brace and thrust, of course. She was a very experienced flower fairy and, like most of her kind, much tougher than she looked.

  And when she did look, it was down to her feet, which were so surprising that she almost fell over them. What was this – another bad joke on behalf of the Celestial Garden Centre? She was wearing sandals. This was not in itself entirely surprising. She usually appeared in some tasteful if basic combination of green and white, which she would then adapt to suit her mood, the weather and the year’s fashions. She did this by – well, by thinking what she would like to be wearing. There were limits, of course, but she had long ago given up wild dreams of rose-red silk or buttercup yellow. You could, after all, do a surprising amount with green and white. But sandals she didn’t much like under any circumstances. They tended to trip you up in the wet grass and if, as so often happened (for reasons, she imagined, of poetic consistency), you had manifested in a bosky dell, then roots and errant stalks got caught up in your straps. Fairies were not supposed to tumble inelegantly to the ground, and still less were they encouraged to swear colourfully as they twisted an ankle. So she favoured sturdy green ankle boots or, for eveningwear, tight-fitting little pumps of white kid. Not sandals, and certainly not this pair. They were silver and had an exaggeratedly high platform sole and wedge heel, which quite altered her balance. They were also woefully out of date. Lily was not a dedicated follower of fashion – her dip into shoulder-pads in 1983 had been enough to convince her that power dressing was not for fairies. But she remained tactfully aware of what the rest of the world was wearing and tried not to go against the trend. Floaty fairy stuff was always a classic, of course, but a girl could be usefully unobtrusive in a white jumper and green trousers. And silver platform sandals were decidedly not her look for this or any other season.

  Tacky, tacky, tacky – they suggested all the fashion excesses of the late 1960s, when she had resolutely stuck to her own Cicely Mary Barker look specifically in order to avoid engaging with the hideous clashes of style. She thought hard about elegant walking shoes of dark green leather, and for a moment they flickered into existence on her feet, only to be replaced again by the silver platforms. Right, there was a glitch, and she had better get it sorted out now before it spoiled her all too brief season. Usually these things were caused by location. Flowers didn’t get much choice as to where they grew, and that could have the most unappealing results. She still remembered with distaste the year she had appeared early in a conservatory of tropical heat, and had expended most of her energy on manifesting in something more substantial then a green bikini and wet T-shirt.

  She took stock of her surroundings. Nothing suggested stupid sandals or (as she had now ascertained) an alarmingly short dress in hallucinogenic swirls of green and white. She was in a long, narrow garden at the back of a Victorian terrace. Indeed, she was in one of a row of long, narrow gardens, each attached to one of the houses. On this early spring morning none of the plots was exactly a riot of blossom, but most of them had a more kempt look than hers, the last and wildest of the set. It meandered down to a disused railway track and was bordered on one side by an old wall. It had unpruned trees, unweeded paths and a large compost heap abutting onto what might have been a shed, but what was certainly an exciting residential opportunity for the local woodlice. The garden wasn’t exactly uncared for, but it had been cherished with a free and liberal hand that let Nature play a large part in the process. And Nature was never a neat housekeeper. Lily’s own particular corner was near the compost heap, which made the silver sandals even less suitable. She picked her way gingerly across to the shabby path and froze in annoyance and surprise.

  Humans couldn’t see her unless she wanted them to, but she could certainly see them, and there were far too many bustling around for her liking. Policemen tended to ask questions that an annual flora
l manifestation couldn’t readily answer. (“Address please?” “Well this year it’s the mossy patch near the ornamental fish-pond.”) So she would remain unseen and out of the way. She scuttled (in a suitably elfin manner) behind the woodshed and almost tripped over Violet, who was lurking there in a sullen mood and a bad hair day. They bumped, parted, looked each other up and down and laughed. Violet had considerably longer tresses than a fairy’s limited hair-dressing resources could deal with, plus a mauve scarf worn bandanna-style round her head. She was barefoot and wearing a long, shapeless garment of patchy purple velvet embroidered in what could only politely be described as a freeform pattern. It looked vaguely ethnic, which Violet decidedly did not. She was the sort of neat, organized fairy who had been wearing tasteful variations of Chanel for years. Something was affecting their morphic field, but before Lily could voice all her questions, Violet had opened the subject in that husky, Fenella Fielding voice she had assumed for the past few decades.

  “It’s awful, darling, positively bloody awful! This isn’t me and I’m sure that’s not you. Oh, it isn’t is it? You’re not just trying something new, are you?”

  Lily shook her head.

  “Well thank heavens! – but it’s quite beyond control. Even a perm would be better than these-these-these tendrils on my head! Whenever did anyone dress like this?”

  “About thirty or forty years ago,” said Lily. “We’re stuck in some sort of time-warp.”

  “Style warp, darling, style warp. But why can’t we just change the way we always do? I was dying to look round Harvey Nichols and choose something really crisp for the new season, but I can hardly let myself be seen like this.”

  “We can’t let ourselves be seen at all,” hissed Lily, pulling Violet further behind the shed just in case their invisibility was on the blink too. The policemen had spread out into the garden, and a couple of them, wearing not the regular uniforms but the curious cocoons of crime-scene coveralls, had approached the compost heap. Lily caught snatches of their conversation and a hideous possibility began to form in her mind.