Lesser Creatures Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  15 Years Later…

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  About the Author

  Join the Kindle Book Club

  First Edition

  Lesser Creatures © 2013 by Peter Giglio

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Philip K. Dick:

  I never knew the man, but his words and worlds sparked my young imagination and made me want to write. This one’s for him.

  “Love is magic. Which is just another way of saying we don’t know shit about it.”

  —Malcolm Wave

  PROLOGUE

  The cemetery was Glory’s idea, and it creeped Steve out.

  But who was he to refuse the company of the hottest girl in school? No one, he reminded himself. Any other pimple-faced geek would jump at the chance to spend so much as five minutes with Glory; would give their left nut for a sip of her dirty bathwater. And he was no different—a hormonal teen, out of his mind with thoughts of the precious, forbidden gifts beneath her sweater and tight jeans.

  Heaven.

  But Heaven this was not. The night air chilled his bones; the moon, ripped to shreds between slits in angry storm clouds. Crows cawed in the close-pressing woods, and gravestones cast ominous cruciforms across dying dandelions and other weeds. The lights of Horizon City, below the cliff where he and Glory rested (not so much rested in his case as fidgeted), were too distant for comfort.

  “What are you doing?” he asked sheepishly.

  Smiling like a mischievous child, she didn’t answer right away, just kept clicking buttons on her smartphone. Finally, she looked up and said, “What’s that, Stevie?” She insisted on calling him that, which made him feel like a stupid kid. But he was crazy about her and not in any rush to cause a fight.

  “Oh,” he said, “nothing. I was just wondering what you were doing?”

  “Updating my FriendSpace status,” she said. “I’m letting everyone know where I am.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  She shrugged, shook her head a few times, as if to say silly boy, then crawled closer, sending his already-thrumming heart into overdrive. He could barely breathe as she put her arm around him, the sweet floral scent of her shampoo replacing the dank night air. She held her phone in front of them. “Say cucumber,” she said, followed by a blinding flash.

  Without showing him the photo, Glory scooted back to her side of the beach towel, a relic from the one family vacation Steve had ever been on, a year before his sister Charity had fallen ill. Paradise Springs, the towel proclaimed in bright pink letters. He thought about the wonderful white beaches of that faraway land. The sweet tropical scents, not unlike Glory’s shampoo.

  The cold night rushed back; with it, a flash of his dying sister and her loving orange cat. His mind’s eye watched again as the loveable tom, at the exact moment Charity took her final breath, faded like a ghost from the world of the living.

  “What’s wrong?” Glory asked.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “You looked really far away,” she said, “like something was eating you alive.” She moved close to him again, holding the phone between them. His heart and lungs cooperated this time, and he actually eased into her touch and fragrance, which he decided was less floral than fruity. The phone’s screen showed their faces pressed together. She was smiling, as beautiful as ever, but he looked like an armadillo caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Still, this was nice. An image posted where everyone could see it, and she’d even tagged him. He was giddy with the thought of his friends, all three of them, looking at this. Relished in their impending jealousy, as only a kid who’d never had anything go his way could.

  She pressed a few buttons on her phone and it started playing a song he immediately liked. A steady, propulsive, though hardly angry, drum rhythm, sad horns, crying guitar, layered perfectly, nothing overpowering. For a moment he thought the song sounded familiar, but he was sure he’d never heard it. A bluesy but angelic voice provided the melody, one of sublime sorrow.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “It’s called ‘Lesser Creature Love Song.’”

  “It’s…”

  “Beautiful, I know.” She turned up the volume and placed the phone by their crossed legs.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But I’ve never listened to it before. Is it new?”

  She shook her head. “I bought an old Mp3 player at a swap meet my parents dragged me to.” She giggled. “Five bucks, and it had songs on it, too. Most of them were garbage, but not this one.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “I looked it up,” she said. “It was recorded in 1974 by a married couple in the Midwest. The Waves. Frankie and Malcolm Wave. She’s the singer. He played all the instruments.”

  “Wow, I’ll have to check them out.”

  She looked down and sighed. “You won’t find anything but this one song. They died a few weeks after it—their debut, I guess—was recorded. A big radio guy in Horizon City found the old record in the ’80s and made it a hit by playing it all the time. It’s been rereleased on a few compilations.”

  “That’s…” He didn’t know what to say. “That’s cool.”

  She laughed without joy, looked up. “Unless you’re them, I guess.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  She put a hand on his shoulder. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Just…just seems like I’m bumming you out.”

  “You’re not,” she said.

  “You smell nice,” he blurted.

  “You’re sweet,” she replied. Then she did something he never thought girls like her did with guys like him. She kissed him, and not on the cheek. His heart lurched back into overdrive as her wet tongue probed his mouth, then closed his eyes, fighting tremors like a soldier rushing into battle might.

  He didn’t know how long the kiss lasted—an hour, a minute, a second—but he knew, without hesitation, it was the most amazing thing that’d ever happened, a moment that he would replay in his mind for as long as he lived.

  “Wow,” he said, because what else could he say?

  She giggled and put her hand on his leg. “You feel better now?”

  He nodded like a dumb kid who’d been given his first taste of chocolate pudding and asked if he wanted more. She pulled him closer, and the cold night now seemed warm. She kissed his head, and the woods lost their dark mystery.

  All was well with the world, until…

  “Remember that story you wrote in English class?” she asked.

  He pulled away from her, his good feelings fading, and rubbed his face with the palm of his hand.

  “What’s wrong?” she said. “I was j
ust—”

  “What about it?” Looking down, he rubbed his face again and worried that she was just like all the others, ready to call him a liar, ready to bust his balls for his “poor hold on reality.” She wouldn’t use those words, of course; that was how his English teacher Mrs. Smithson framed it. But her words would sting worse. After all, he didn’t love Mrs. Smithson, actually detested her, but he did love Glory. In the here and now he’d decided that. Loved her with every fiber of his being, making her the first person he’d truly loved since Charity. Poor sweet Charity.

  “Look, Stevie, I—”

  “Don’t call me that,” he snapped. “It hurts when you talk to me like I’m a little kid. Everyone treats me that way and I don’t have to take it.”

  “I’m…I’m sorry.” Tears trembled in her eyes, and he hated himself for putting them there. But he couldn’t help feeling a little proud, too. If she was going to love him, she would need to respect him first.

  “I don’t see you that way,” she said. “Don’t see you like a little kid. I mean, I just…I just think you’re cute.”

  He put his arms around her and pulled her head into his chest. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t understand. When you asked me to hang out with you tonight, I…I worried that you were…I don’t know…playing some kind of trick on me. I just don’t understand why a girl like you would—”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” she said, nuzzling her face into his denim shirt. “I wish I was half as smart as you. And I loved your paper. I read it every night before I go to bed.”

  He pulled away from her and met her gaze. “Really?”

  “It moves me. The way you loved your sister. The way you took care of her.”

  “Everyone called me a liar. The assignment was to write a story based on a real-life experience. Mrs. Smithson called it fantasy.”

  Glory shook her head. “Not me. I believe you. Every word of it. How could it be anything less than true? I read a lot and can tell the difference between make-believe and reality. What you wrote was real. It has to be.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the love was real. Because it jumped off the page and grabbed me by the face and wouldn’t let go. I was so mad at Mrs. Smithson for not recognizing that, for not seeing that you’d written something better than I’d ever read in so-called bestsellers.”

  He smiled. Even though he’d only seen her reading zombie books, and seriously doubted they contained the crippling pain he’d experienced when his sister had died, he was humbled by her words. It felt something like victory, standing taller than guys like Brooks and McKinney and Maberry, at least in her eyes. After all, what other eyes really mattered? She was his. He felt it deep in his marrow. And he’d won her over with something that had drawn ceaseless ridicule from others. How cool was that? Dark clouds really could have silver linings.

  She fell back into his arms, and he wrapped her up tight. Unwilling to let her go…ever.

  “Every word in that essay was true,” he said, after a long moment of silence.

  “I know.”

  “The cat. He really did appear at the front door. The same cat she described to me. And he really did vanish when she died. That cat brought her so much joy.”

  “Sebastian,” Glory whispered, looking up at Steve.

  “He was the cat of Charity’s dreams, somehow made real in her final months. She said he took away her pain.”

  Glory nodded. “You made him real for her.”

  “I don’t know. I…I just don’t know. I want to believe that. I really do. But maybe Mrs. Smithson was right. Maybe something is wrong with me and I imagined the whole thing.”

  “No,” she insisted. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me, Steve. There might not be anything wrong with you, but I’m pretty sure there’s something wrong with me.”

  He considered the perfection of her face, her body. A work of art. No, he told himself, nothing could be wrong with Glory.

  “I hate this world,” she said. “Hate it. Hate what it does to people like you. People who are different. Truly…beautiful.”

  Not knowing what to say, he cried as he held her closer. If her illness was caring about him, he hoped a cure would never be found.

  “Those books I read,” she said. “I just wish they’d all come true.”

  “You want the dead to rise?”

  “Yes,” she said. “More than anything. Just thinking about all the stuck-up, my-shit-don’t-stink assholes getting their limbs ripped off by…”

  He couldn’t pay attention to her anymore. Not that he didn’t want to. But he felt it; the magic thing he’d only felt once before. Not an unpleasant sensation; a warm, electrical tingle that started in his neck before rushing through his head. And for a moment he was blind, as he’d been years before when Charity had shared her wish…

  “His name is Sebastian. He’s orange and fat and the best kitty in the world. And he sleeps with me at night, and he comes to me when I call his name…”

  He held Glory just as he’d done for his sister on that long-ago but never forgotten night, as the cancer ate her alive, her body frail, so unlike Glory’s.

  “And he purrs, purrs like a motorboat…and he smiles all the time…and he loves me…and I get to take him with me when I go…”

  Sight returning, Steve trained his blurry gaze on Glory’s warm, emerald stare.

  “I love you,” she said, and he knew it was true. Even if it wasn’t, that didn’t matter. What counted now were the feelings he had for her.

  He nodded, about ready to return the sentiment, when a low moan, a sound that neither he nor she had made, a sound that no living person could possibly make, caused him to turn abruptly.

  And what he saw caused his racing heart to nearly stop.

  15 YEARS LATER…

  CHAPTER 1

  The girl shed her paper clothes and deposited them in the bright orange bin, then she joined the line on the conveyer. Slowly, the belt trundled her through a dark rectangular channel where she and others of her kind were doused from above by chemicals.

  No one screamed. No one said a word. In fact, they couldn’t speak.

  All were dead.

  This was her daily routine: In, out, eat. She didn’t like it. Nor did she dislike it. It just was. Inexplicably, so was she.

  She’d met a tragic end at the age of twenty-seven, an event she barely remembered, and sensed she’d been some kind of loser in her first life. Now the scales had been balanced by death. Everyone else in her predicament (something no one ultimately escaped) was just like her. A shambling, gray mess.

  Equality, contrary to popular belief, wasn’t always fair.

  Near the end of the ride, she was blasted by high-powered shower heads. A few of the others moaned; they never seemed to like water, but she didn’t mind. And a half-life recollection of the past—the smiling countenance of a man she once knew—flickered at the edge of her reanimated brain for a second or two, just out of reach. Then, as if a switch were suddenly flipped, the fragmented memory died, and she was back outside, at the end of the line.

  She handed her Red Card to an angry-looking man. He gave it a cursory glance, said, “Monika Janus,” and she nodded. That name meant nothing, even though she knew it belonged to her, in so much as anything really belonged to her anymore. He swiped the card through a machine and handed it back. “Forty credits,” he said, then thrust a crisply folded set of new paper clothes at her chest. She took them, tried to smile, though she didn’t know why, and started dressing.

  The credits were needed to eat. No decontamination, no dole; simple as that, and damned effective. She’d never known a second-lifer, not that she really knew any of them, not to comply with the process. Even those with living families who brought them food followed the routine. Her kind were always hungry.

  Dressed, she moved on stiff legs to a nearby Burger Time and joined the second-life food line. The wait was always
long, but what could she do? The drive-through for first-lifers on the other side of the building moved fast, which made sense. People—real people—had jobs and places to go. Getting a burger, two large fries, and a medium whiskey, which would nearly erase her entire forty-credit allotment, would be her biggest accomplishment of the day.

  Finally, it was her turn. A bright female voice said, “Swipe your card.” She did. Then the voice said, “Make your selections.” She pressed the Burger button once, the Fries button twice, and the Medium button next to the image of a Jack Daniel’s bottle. Gears and motors churned and whirred from some unseen machine, then the voice said, “Thank you,” and a window whisked opened, revealing a bag and a paper cup. She took her order and slogged toward a nearby picnic table where others like her ravenously consumed burgers and booze.

  She never ate fast like the rest of them. Perhaps it was to stretch out time until she could return to her cramped apartment. Occupation hours were from four p.m. to five a.m. During the day, first-lifers in orange suits fumigated every inch of Lazarus Estates, a name that made the projects of Horizon City sound swanky, even though that notion couldn’t be further from the truth. The men in orange suits got a break on the weekend, a two-day period known as visitation. Monika had never received a visitor.

  Others came and went as she grazed on fries and sipped whiskey. She ignored them, as was always the case, placing a point in the middle of her cloudy gaze. A little red dot that held her focus.

  Soon the table was empty, and still she kept her eyes on that imaginary point without knowing if this ritual was an exercise in discipline or detachment. She certainly didn’t know how rare it was for a second-lifer to follow any process of their own design. Nor did she know that it would soon get her noticed, thus changing the course of her gray existence.

  * * *