Secret Magic in Small Places by DeAnna Knippling

Author:DeAnna Knippling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, paranormal, magic, zombies, womens fiction, science fiction, contemporary fantasy, mmorpg, circus geek, optical nerve, cure for cancer, hhdl
Publisher: Wonderland Press

The Debt

I like zombie stories. I like subversive zombie stories. Zombie stories are already subversive—they deal with what happens when social mores get broken. But they’re also about dehumanizing the people who disagree with you. I like zombie stories that tell you about what happens when social mores get broken, and when the zombies are disturbingly human. You should side with the humans, right? Right?

As I hid under the bridge, I noticed there was a sliver under my skin that had come from the coffin of the last grave I dug up for Dr. Skalos. Dr. Skalos is the kind of doctor that you hope you never have to consult, but somehow you always do. And then you have placed yourself in his power.

I had had to consult him on the matter of my brother, who had not yet died, even though he was dead. I had tried everything from bathing him in milk and attar of roses to hitting him on the head with a shovel, and still he moved and hungered, even after the sickness stopped his breathing.

I had finally tied him up and stuffed his mouth with rags to keep him from moaning, and brought him in a cart to Dr. Skalos’s back door.

Dr. Skalos took him inside, chanted and waved burning feathers over him, and laid in him stone-dead in a coffin within the hour. I assumed guardianship of the two brats that my brother had not yet consumed and the debt of having him put, finally, to rest.

And so I dug up corpses when Dr. Skalos requested it. Oh, he paid me, just as I had had to pay him to lay my brother down, but there were debts other than money that neither of us had yet deemed paid.

I pulled the sliver out of my thumb with the tip of my knife, and a yellow ball of pus welled up. The last thing I wanted was for it to get infected and have to be cured; for then I would be even deeper in Dr. Skalos’s debt. Finally, the guards passed over the bridge under which I waited, and I was able to drag the cart with the body and the sacks of potatoes up from the cobbled sewer ditch, across the street, and into Dr. Skalos’s shed.

The sound of the ocean echoed up the cliffs, and I wondered what it would be like to be able to leave this island, to leave my brother’s brats and my other obligations behind. However, it is impossible to live without incurring obligations; this is one of the necessities of life. Unless we owe other people something, we will never be bound to them, that is, we will be alone. Alone, we are monsters.

I left the cart in the shed and locked it, then went around the side of the house to the kitchen door, the back door, the door of secrets, to collect my pay for the night. Two growing boys ate more than I could provide but for the work I did for the doctor.

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