The Wyrms of &alon

Letty Kathaldri stood by the window in an arm-crossed silence, watching the world that had passed her by. The walking sticks she’d been given lay discarded on the floor. By medical standards, given how long Letty had been comatose, she shouldn’t have been able to stand on her own two feet, let alone throw people across the room with powers that broke every law of physics known to man. In the best of circumstances, it would have been weeks, if not months, before walking even with the aid of a cane was anywhere near the realm of possibility. But, apparently, I’d been spirited away from that realm on the fateful morning, mere days ago, when Merritt had asked me to kill her. In all honesty, Letty should have been dead—though, if Merritt, Kurt, or myself were any indication, I imagined Letty already thought she was. And, looking at her, you’d certainly be forgiven for thinking so yourself.

The celebrated actress was now a living skeleton, barely more than bones, clad as she was in a ragged, wrinkled gown, with her hair—long, discolored lanyards—draping down her back in an inverted crown.

She didn’t bother to turn to face us.

“You niknak nurses have got two seconds to skedaddle. After that, I’ll scream.”

Letty started her countdown.

“One.”

“Letty, I’m Dr. Howle. I was—”

She turned around, turning time along with her, and I couldn’t help but stare. I could see Letty at both ends of her life. I saw the crone she had become, standing before me, just as surely as I saw the young woman she’d once been. The beloved actress was still there, preserved in her prime—picture-perfect—in a framed photograph that someone had placed on the nightstand beside her bed. The picture sat next to the blue-on-white porcelain vase with its fill of fresh daisies. Her lips were rubies, succulent and full on her not-too-ivory skin, her face staring sunward beneath the shadow of her hand. Her hair tousled about as she laughed into the wind.

Across the room, the old woman who stood by the window had been time-ravaged beyond all reckoning. A once-cheeky birthmark had swelled with age until it had turned into a gravid wart punctured by a single crooked candlewick hair. Her skin was little more than a wet rag hanging from her visage’s pointed bones. Time had leached the joy from her face. Dark rings circled her sunken eyes.

“—I remember,” she said. “I remember everything. Mama getting drunk and letting me sip wine before I even knew how to walk. Prelate Zinker’s vapid, snot-nosed brats stinking up the playroom with their damn dirty diapers while the adults sat in the dining room, scheming and laughing. I remember it. I remember the bright light shining up Mama’s hoo-ha while she screamed her head off and shat me out into this merciless little rock of ours.”

Letty’s posture was striking: she stood tall, stalwart, and defiant. It’d be easier to find water in the Buguri desert’s sand-blasted stones than it would be to find a hint of humility in Letty’s time-twisted body.

She bent her head toward Dr. Marteneiss.

“Who’s this matron?”

“Marteneiss,” Heggy said. “Dr. Heggy Marteneiss”

“Marteiness, eh?” Letty said. “Like Colin Marteneiss?”

“That’s my grandad,” Heggy replied.

Letty cackled. “Vebern’s puppy-dog, eh? Now there was a man who knew how to torture… not that I ever saw the finished product.” She snorted. “Not that there was much left to look at once he was through with ‘em.”

Dr. Marteneiss just glared at her in silence.

“So,” Letty said, “what are you doing here?”

“I was going to ask you the same question,” I said.

“You attacked your physical therapist,” Heggy said, sternly, “and threatened the staff. They’ve only been tryin’ to do their best to help you. What have they done to deserve your vitriol?”

Letty stepped toward us. She moved like a puppet in a child’s hand. Her feet were turned inward, and her arms jostled oddly. Her muscles had atrophied; those legs of hers weren’t fit for standing. She snorted. “Trying to help, my ass!” she said, with a sneer. “They’re just trying to patch up a bunch of lies, even though they can’t. They just wish they could.”

The once-actress surveyed Heggy and I. Her tangled hair swished side to side with the turns of her head.

“I’ve been wondering if this might be Hell,” Letty said. “I mean, I look dead, and I certainly feel that way…”

Fudge.

The hag sputtered like a wind-up toy about to go off, tilting her head to an ungainly angle.

“This past day has been… revelatory.”

“I know I never gave it much credence,” she continued, “but… maybe the Lassedicks were onto something. I’ve stretched my imagination plenty far already. What’s the harm in stretching it more?” Letty ginned, flashing teeth stained by the barest hint of green. “Maybe this is Judgment Day,” she said. “Maybe the Triun has returned. The Angel has spirited away the good little boys and girls, leaving the rest of us to rot. Rot and burn.”

Letty raised a trembling arm. Short waddles of skin drooped in her gown’s wide sleeves. She stared at her limb with revulsion and loathing.

“Whatever the reason, I’ve already been reaped. It feels like the day before yesterday, I was on top of the world. Sixty-something years ago, a couples day… it doesn’t matter.”

Heggy narrowed her eyes. “Ma’am, I don’t think you’re in your right mind right now.”

Letty scowled. She pointed her bony finger at Heggy. “Didn’t your godforsaken murder-daddy tell you not to interrupt your elders when they’re talking, Little Miss Marteneiss?”

Heggy’s eyes bulged in her sockets. Her posture went stiff. My eyes darted to her tightly clenched fist. But she kept herself from striking the old hag.

“As I was saying,” Letty continued. Coquettishly, she flicked her skeletal hand through her hair. “What matters is that when my car crashed, a clock somewhere struck midnight and a spell was broken. All that made me happy, beautiful, and loved vanished. There are no more illusions.”

Lowering her arms, Letty took a bow. “Other than the dead whistles and this resting witch face of mine, I’m still the same gal on the inside.” She leered at me. “Mostly. Unlike before, now, I’m living in the truth, just like the ‘Demptist televangelists like to say. I might still feel like a pretty young thing, but, well,” she gestured at her face, “this face doesn’t lie. This is who I am—who I always was—beneath Daddy’s money, and the showbiz glitz and my winsome smile. But now, all that padding is gone. I’m just a broken doll, no different from anybody else.”

I glared at the old woman. “What does that have to do with shouting racial epithets and harassing and assaulting the staff?”

Letty glared at me. “I’m angry, Dr. Howle. Angry at everyone. Angry at this lying, broken world. Angry at all the broken dreams. Most of all, I’m angry at myself for having been dumb enough to believe it, and not see it for the con it really was.”

“Letty,” I said, “I know there’s no way I can fully grasp the horror of the circumstances that were thrust upon you—”

“—Like hell you can!” Letty trembled.

“You’re not the only one who’s scared, Ms. Kathaldri.” My words were stern. “You’re not the only one who wishes none of this ever happened. Can’t you see you’re hurting people? And not just any people, but people who’ve gone out of their way to help you when no one else would?”

“If they wanted to help me,” Letty said, “they should have just let me die.”

“—Why would you say that?” Heggy rebutted.

“The world is meaningless,” Letty said. “We’re born, we live, we suffer, and we die. There’s no plan. There’s no hope. From dust to dust—that’s all there is. Ephemeral pleasures are all we have. When I was in my prime, I was in the spotlight and I drank up the fame like it was milk and honey. But now I’m not. I”m just an afterthought, and I want to disappear, but you fuckers won’t let me, just like dear old dad.” She scowled.

Heggy returned the hag’s outrage.

“How can you say that!? Of course there’s a purpose to lives; there’s a purpose to everythin’. No matter deep we sink or how high the dark might rise, that purpose will always be there, waitin’ for us to find our way back, because it’s home. It’s what we’re meant to be.”

“Has she always been like this?” Letty asked. Quietly, the old woman clicked her tongue and shook her head.

“What do you expect me to say?” I asked.

“I guess that’s as good an answer as any.” Letty pressed the back of her hand on her hip. She sneered at Dr. Marteneiss. “Heggy, is it? Well, I regret to inform you that you’re a phony; another robot, just like your grandpappy.” She lowered her voice and adopted a faux-military pose. “Just following orders. Bah!” She spat. “They were all fuckety fucks. Grandpappy Marteneiss was complicit in all of the regime’s crimes. The lynchings. The false flags. The torture camps.

Heggy glowered. “You take that back…” she growled. “My family has always valued honor, life, and service!”

I could almost hear Dr. Marteneiss grinding away at her tightly gritted teeth.

“Heggy,” I urged, “calm down! Don’t let her get in your head!”

“Your whole goddamn brood was nothing but a bunch of twisted yes-man for the Prelates’ indecencies.” Letty cackled bitterly. “Of course, they still got medals from one end of his shirt to the other, though.”

“And your great granddaddy… high up in the Church hierarchy, right?”

“Angelic Doctor,” Heggy said, “not that scum like you would care.”

Letty cocked her head back. “Yep, that’s it,” Letty said, pointing a bony finger at Heggy. “All the theobabble. It’s just an excuse to torment the folks you don’t like and to oppress the ones you do.” The crone fluttered her eyelashes. “I’ve always wondered: what is it with organized religion that makes grown men ogle little boys and their rectums?”

“Authority isn’t authority when it cares only about its own self-preservation,” Heggy said. “Authority isn’t authority when it never budges a finger to do something good.”

“Authority?” Letty scoffed. “Don’t make me laugh. I lived through the tail end of the Prelatory, though only a shit comedian would call that living. Being trapped in a narrow box of decrepit preconceptions isn’t ‘life’ by any stretch of the imagination. You don’t know what it was like. You can’t. No one came. No one left. Movies were a joke—I should know, I was in ‘em. You could see any flick you liked, so long as it was two hours of preening evangelism or thirty minutes of whatever disjointed nonsense the censors had left over after they’d had their way with anything that might have actually been good.”

“You sure talk a lot,” Heggy said.

“I’m just making up for lost time,” Letty quipped.

As thick as the tension in the room already was, a twinge in the pit of my stomach told me it was getting worse—and fast. There wasn’t any time to waste.

While Heggy and Letty talked, I slowly and quietly crept closer to the vile crone. Every few seconds, I’d shuffle a couple of inches closer, hoping she wouldn’t notice. If push came to shove—and, from the looks of things, it almost certainly would—I needed to be close enough to inject her with the sedative before she could toss me across the room like a toy.

“Restaurants weren’t safe. Food was just another means of control. They stuck drugs in it. And school cafeterias?” She shook her head. “If your eyes shined with so much as even a spark of curiosity, they’d make sure to have you good and wasted. It made us more malleable. And if that didn’t work, they’d poison you and make you froth at the mouth and call you Night-Touched—any excuse to lock you away would do. And when the end finally came—when word of the coup got out… it was like the sun finally swept all the fog away. Or so I thought.”

I crept closer. Letty approached Heggy, tilting her head at a different angle with every step.

“I had dreams,” Letty said. “I had a vision for myself, for my life. I wanted to see the world, to drink in all the sights and sounds that I’d been denied; to leave no “no” un-defied. I was going to be the greatest actress this side of history. But what did it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Something would go wrong—my looks would take a hit, I’d pop one too many pills—and it would all come crashing down. ‘Cause that’s what life is: suffering. Tragedy and suffering.”

Glancing at Heggy, I made my move, pulling the syringe out my breast-pocket, and making a dash toward Letty.

Letty’s head turned toward me so quickly, I swore I heard it snap.

“What do the slant-eyes call it? Enlightenment? Something like that?” Letty cackled.

I lunged at her.

“Well, guess what?” Grinning, she shrieked: “I’ve found it!”

Sweeping her arms upward and pointing her fingers at the sky, Letty conjured up a sheet of power. I could barely see it. It quivered in the air like a quilted mirage. I heard the sound of air rushing, but before I could even react, a wall of force slammed into me in an uppercut blow, like the surface of a pool had dived right at me. The blow flung me several feet back, smacking me back-first onto the opposite wall. But it didn’t stop there. The force didn’t just lift. It pushed. It pressed against me with all the weight of the sky; pressing, pressuring, plastering—smothering. I couldn’t move. Not my legs, not my arms, not my head.

“It’s all a game, hon,” Letty sneered. “The only way to win is to stop being a fucking loser. And look: look how much I’ve won. Look at what I can do!”

“Put him down!”

My eyes darted to the side to see Heggy brandishing a pistol. She’d aimed it right at the witch’s head.

“Or what?” Letty craned her neck at Heggy, “you’ll wave grand-papah’s medals at me?” She scoffed and then set her sights back on me, lunging her arms forward.

The invisible sheet of power pressed down on my chest like a vise, squeezing the breath right out of me. My muscles burned.

“It’s not nice to interrupt someone when they’re ranting!” Letty howled.

I croaked and wheezed. My arms trembled, desperate to pry the sheet of force off my body. But they couldn’t move.

Maybe… maybe…

Thoughts!

I tried with my thoughts. I dreamed of a thousand imaginary fingers sprouting out of the walls and ripping the constrictor off me piece by piece by piece. Everything burned. Everything—

—I felt something, like a distant spark. Invisible rivulets scribbled up and down my chest, dragging tracks in my PPE gown. Somehow, the pressure bearing down on me loosened just enough for me to suck down a single gasp.

Air.

It rushed into my chest, cool and life-giving. My battered chest twitched. I drowned in breath. Relief crossed Heggy’s face as she heard my breathing return to normal.

Strangest of all: the darkness in Letty’s expression had suddenly broken. Her lips curled in a genuine smile, filled with childlike curiosity.

“Oh my god.” Letty spoke slowly, clearly enunciating her words, savoring them one by one. “Something interesting. I can hardly believe it.”

Heggy’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?” She didn’t take her aim off Ms. Kathaldri, not even for a moment.

Letty cocked her head toward Dr. Marteneiss. “You can put the gun down, lady.”

Heggy didn’t move a muscle.

The crone turned to face me. “You’re like me now, aren’t you, Dr. Howle?” she said. “You’re a witch.” She cocked her head back. “No—a warlock. That’s the word, isn’t it?”

The crooked crone flicked her knotted, raggedy hair with a coquettish shoulder-roll. I could have sworn I heard bones crack.

“No,” I barked, locking eyes with Heggy, “that’s not true. That’s not true!”

Letty smirked. “Please, young man, don’t lie to me. I’m living in truth now, remember? I can see it. It’s wrapped around you like a cloak of fog.” She pursed her lips. “It’s widdle ’n’ fuzzy ’n’ pudgy like a pig. It’s almost cute.” She tilted her head to the side. “So stop lying to yourself. You’re a preheated corpse just like me. Well,” she shook her head, “at least you weren’t overcooked.”

I flailed my legs, but Letty used her powers to press them flush against the wall. The bones quivered and ached.

I screamed. “Heggy!”

“Let him go!” Heggy bellowed.

The hag grinned from ear to ear. “Make me, bitch!”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Heggy pulled the trigger several times in quick succession. The sound made me scream. Tinnitus pealed inside my zombie ears. I squeezed my eyes shut. Screams broke out in the hallway. I heard the door to the room get thrown open, only to slam shut an instant later. At the exact same time, the witch’s invisible hold on me dissipated, and I fell forward onto the floor, hands first, still panting for breath.

Fists banged on the door.

“Ha-ha!” Letty laughed, exultant. “Take a look! Look at that, shit-stains!”

“What the hell…?” Heggy whispered.

I pushed myself up with one arm, raising my head and opening my eyes.

My dead blood ran cold.

There, right above me, hung three bullets. They floated in the air, trembling like bumblebees mid-flight. The bullets had been caught in what looked like a vertical puddle that rippled in front of the witch like a magic barrier.

Letty blew a kiss at them. The ripple evaporated and the bullets fell, clattering softly on the vinyl floor.

Fists continued to batter at the door, but something held it shut.

Letty.

“Stop banging on the door, ya damn ingrates!” Letty yelled. “You’re not getting in!”

The light fixtures that dangled overhead flickered and swung. The staff outside gasped and shrieked, and, the next thing I knew, the banging on the door ceased.

The crone looked at Heggy and I.

“I must thank the two of you.” Grinning, she bowed. “I knew if I caused enough of a ruckus I’d get someone who had the balls to try and pull a gun on me. Though didn’t expect it to be grandma over here.” She pointed at Dr. Marteneiss. “That’s feminism, right?” She waved her hand dismissively.

“I’ll shoot again!” Heggy yelled. “I mean it!”

Scoffing, Letty flicked her hand. Heggy fell forward as the witch’s power ripped the gun right out of Dr. Marteneiss’ hands. It flew across the room, crashed through the glass window and disappeared into the inner courtyard beyond.

Letty looked down at me with a mix of pity, disappointment, and amusement. “It’s sad you haven’t been training like I have, Doc Warlock. What a waste of talent.” She turned to Heggy. “But enough playing hard to get.”

Letty Kathaldri did the last thing I’d have expected her to do: she held out her knotted twig arms and waited. It was like she was asking to be put in handcuffs.

She upturned her nose. “Take me where you will.”

“What?” The question puffed out of me.

Turning to me, Letty grinned, flashing her shriveled gums and greening teeth. “Everything is horrible, Doctor,” she said, “everything and everyone. You don’t know how goddamn long I’ve wanted to burn this crapsack world down to the ground and laugh as it all turned to ash. Thing is… now I actually can. I’ve got the power. You two morons have helped me confirm it. So, now, I don’t care what happens next. I’ve got nothing to worry about. I might as well start with you.” She beamed. “It’s the end of the fucking world, and I’ve got a front-row seat. It’s gonna be a real wild ride…”