Nightmare Magazine, Issue 119 (August 2022) by Wendy N. Wagner

Author:Wendy N. Wagner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adamant Press
Published: 2022-07-27T16:22:51+00:00

Chapter 2

Seth

A gust of dry desert air—somehow worse than the heat from our woodburning stove—washes over my face when the front door swings open. The Professor stalks into the living room as my trout sizzles on the pan. He hasn’t bothered to change his button-down shirt, which is flecked with dried blood, and his shock of white hair is even more unruly than normal, telling me it’s been another frustrating night in his lab.

With his shoulders slumped, he shuffles to the couch, tosses a sheaf of papers onto the coffee table, and flops down on his back. A pill bottle rattles as he opens it and tosses a handful of tablets into his mouth.

“You hungry?” I ask.

He grumbles something indiscernible, then, clear as a canyon stream, “Are you planning to check the pit today?”

“I was thinking tomorrow.”

“Make it today. I need another subject, preferably a female.”

“Want to tell me why?”

I know better than to ask, but I can’t help myself. As expected, he gives me his patented You’re not a scientist look. “Just bring me a female.”

“You know I have no say in what we trap, right?”

Another grunt, followed by, “Keep your guard up out there.”

I will—always do. Up here on the butte, which towers above the desert floor, we can move freely. But the pit is part of the world below, and that belongs to the Andes.

I eat half the fish at the kitchen counter, then bring the other half to the Professor, but he’s already snoring on the couch, large nostrils vacuuming up motes of stuffing from a tear in the plaid fabric. I know he’s been rationing what little remains of his supplements—nicotinamide riboside, a precursor vitamin for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD+. It’s just about all that keeps him going anymore, but he still sleeps fifteen, sometimes sixteen hours a day. I lay the plate on the coffee table, knowing the food will likely remain untouched when I return this evening.

In my room, I scoot around the bed frame before reaching underneath the sagging twin mattress and pulling out my “stink box,” a sealed cube containing a pair of green cargo pants, a tan T-shirt, my dead father’s belt, and several bundles of sage. In the decade I’ve spent traversing the desert, never once have I washed these clothes, which has let my body odor saturate the fabric and blend in with the Andes’ thick musk. But the Professor is repulsed by the smell. Hence the box and the sage.

As I pull on my pants and T-shirt, the tight fit reminds me both will soon need yet another round of tailoring. Like all my clothes, they’re the Professor’s hand-me-downs. With my last growth spurt having abruptly halted three years ago, I’ll probably always remain three inches shy of his six-foot-one, but my body wasn’t built at a desk like his. It’s still being built by the desert, whenever I dig a pit or climb a cliff or carry a corpse to the pyre.

I grab the jar

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