The Year's Best Fantasy by The Year's Best Fantasy 01 (retail) (epub)

Author:The Year's Best Fantasy 01 (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Year’s Best Fantasy Volume One
ISBN: 9781645060505
Publisher: Pyr
Published: 2022-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

BRICKOMANCER

TOBIAS BUCKELL

There’s a demon-possessed Karen stalking you as you set the waxed canvas ruck down on the sidewalk with a clink. She thinks you’re here to tag one of the walls out behind her remodeled brownstone, and you can see the self-righteous anger brewing in her posture: back rigid with indignation, Ray-Bans pushed up over the blonde highlights, and a confused but redolent Maltese pants from the heat of the Manhattan asphalt from its throne inside a chunky Graco stroller.

“I called the police,” the woman snaps.

The Maltese growls at you, and one of the yellow bows holding its hair back flops to the side.

Adorable dog.

“What do you have in there?”

You look down at the bag.

“You have spray cans in there?”

Her voice shakes. She’s scared. Looks on the edge of tears, and she’s pushing them down by shoving the white-hot poker of superiority, nosiness, and entitlement up to buttress the rigid, royalist bearing she projects out onto the world around her.

You look back at the canvas bag full of cheap Krylon cans.

This is going to make painting the anti-summoning symbols onto the corner of Chewie’s bodega really fucking hard.

“You’re live on video,” the woman says. Her head tweaks back and forth to emphasize her words. “This is why property values suffer here. There’s no pride of place—”

She has a lot to say, but you tune her out like you do the Mad Russian when he starts wandering up and down the D train. One hundred streets up the line and a thesis on satellites that take control of your minds. Fun stuff the first few weeks that you split rent with five roommates, but after a while it’s just the background noise of the commute, like metal-on-metal screeches, the sway of the car, and the tired look on the faces of all the houseworkers and nannies from seventeen different countries on the way back up the island to cook dinner for yet another set of hungry mouths.

You look down at the Birkenstocks you scored off the boutique thrift shop around the corner. All the best stuff in the used stores around this place now. Rich people toss out the best stuff. Nice shoes. You found a Gucci purse there that could hold a can for emergency touch-ups, but the ruck is best for more complex work.

But despite the comfortable shoes, you know if you leg it she’s gonna send your video to the local police and they’ll come knocking at the already-busted-in door on 205th, take you in, and then Yesse’s gonna fucking bail you out and tell you all about how you’re disappointing your poor, departed mother, God bless her soul and the Mother Mary—

No.

“It’s okay.” You fold your arms. “Let’s wait for the cops.”

It’s a gamble. A big fucking gamble. Where, you wonder, is Chewie? Because, you swear to god, you’re going to shit on his mother’s grave if he doesn’t show up soon.

You hear the siren warble around the corner. You feel the pit of your stomach lurch.

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