Unpossible and Other Stories by Daryl Gregory

Author:Daryl Gregory [Gregory, Daryl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, General, Science Fiction, Short Stories (Single Author), Fiction
ISBN: 9781933846309
Google: BFQzygAACAAJ
Amazon: 1933846305
Barnesnoble: 1933846305
Publisher: Fairwood Press
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The vintage rolled in and receded like a tide, the flow growing stronger each night. The longer Pax stayed, the longer they talked and sat together and ate together, the more Harlan produced. It usually came on in the evenings. His father would look down at himself, and say, “Ah,” as if he’d spilled something on his clothes. Then Pax would run to get the extraction kit.

He’d gotten the supplies in Lambert, ten miles away, where nobody was likely to recognize him and nobody had. In a drug store he’d picked up antiseptic wipes, a box of vinyl gloves, skin lotion. Syringes and needles, though, weren’t on any of the shelves, and when he finally asked for them the clerk looked at him like he was a junkie. Did he have a prescription? He went to a couple hardware stores and kitchen stores, inspecting caulk guns, bicycle pumps, turkey basters, frosting sprayers, looking for anything he could rig. Then in the JC Penny’s housewares department he found a nickel-plated monster called a marinate infuser. Eight inches long, with loop handles, a plunger, and a 30-cc needle. The tool Dr. Frankenstein would reach for to inject a couple quarts of spinal fluid. Pax used it in reverse, drawing the fluid out of his father, pressing it into tiny rubber-capped containers he’d found on the Tupperware aisle, each one holding a few ounces. After attending to his father he’d stack them in the freezer. Then, later in the evening, he’d remove one. One or two.

Hours later he’d wake up, not sure if he was in bed, on the couch, inside or outside. His first sensation was of his own mass, the vast bulk of his body stretched out across the dark like an unsteerable barge. And at the same time, he felt the brittle angles of wrists and ankles, the knobs of his knees like two river stones, the blades of his hip bones, the shallow pit of stomach. He stared at the walls of his bedroom, and up at the trees that lined the yard. He breathed and heard himself breathing.

The split, when it came, left him not just alone, not just half of what he’d been, but some smaller fraction. A shard. Near dawn he’d fall into a more fitful sleep, and by ten or eleven a.m. the cycle would begin again. He fed his father, moved laundry through the washer and dryer, cleaning the rooms. Each day he picked out something to do outside—mowing the lawn, clearing brush, washing the cars—just to get him into the fresh air.

“You don’t have to prove anything,” his father said. It was Thursday or Friday morning, and Pax was making his third attempt at scrubbing the kitchen floor. There seemed to be nothing he could do about the smell of the vintage. It was permanent now, baked into the walls and floorboards.

Pax had started the projects with a vague notion that he was preparing the house so that his father could get by alone, though Pax no longer had a clear idea of when he was leaving.

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