The Last Supper Before Ragnarok, page 8
“What do you mean is it safe?” Naree evacuates her daughter from the backseat while the rest of us extract ourselves. “Of course it’s safe. It’s a house.”
“That’s not a house.”
“No, that’s definitely a house.”
“A house is made of bricks. This is made of cardboard.” I retort. “You could drive a car through that.”
Naree’s brows ruck, ridging the corners of her eyes. She ushers Bee into Cason’s custody, the latter already so charmed with the girl that they’re devising little stories, fables dense with what I can only hope are the names of Bee’s plush animals. Otherwise, well, Cason owes us an explanation about the depths of his personal depravities. Whatever Mr. Rubber Rainbow is, it can’t be good if it sprung full-grown from an adult man’s subconscious. Fitz yawns and stretches as he unfolds from the car.
“The houses in Malaysia look like Alcatraz,” he offers, mildly.
“Really.” Naree makes a moue of her mouth, tapping a finger against her lips, beringed with a key chain. “I guess that explains—”
“That is patently untrue.” I close the door behind me and lean back against the car, looking up at the house, the land surrounding it. To date, no one has, in any meaningful fashion, explained who or what Tanis is. It stands to reason that she is as preternaturally gifted as we are. I wonder, though; why is Amanda so dead set on back-up? More important yet, where on the earth is she?
“Your houses look like prisons,” Fitz shoots.
“Our houses are built to stand monsoons.”
“Monsoons, prison breaks, what’s the difference?” His levity stutters as he says this, expression shuttering: diluted and then drained entirely by whatever memory his words conjured.
Naree goes immediately for compassion: an arm unfurls, ready to clasp Fitz in an embrace, but she stops at the precipice of being too familiar and her hand closes. She shrinks back, fist pressed to her mouth, face submerged in thought. Before I can meddle, voice reassurance or encouragement to either parties, Naree does a one-eighty and explodes forward, flings both arms around Fitz.
Although not in any way respectful of personal space, it does its job. Fitz ricochets out of his reverie, yipping as Naree’s embrace constricts. “Hey, what—ow, geeze, you’ve got a grip.”
“I’ve been doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu,” Naree announces with unconvincing haughtiness, nose tipped back. “Tanis is a complete bad-donkey, so I’ve—”
“Bad what?” Fitz and I say in unison.
“It’s parent speak for a very tough person.” Cason looks up from where he’s supervising Bee’s attempt at chalking hopscotch squares into the driveway. “You know. Donkey. As in, another word for.”
Naree twirls her hand. “Standard precautions against the sort of you-know-what that just happened you-know-where.”
“Haven’t forgiven us yet, huh?” says Fitz.
She lets go. “Nope.”
We are about to enter the house when a tall woman slinks out of the gloom, her fingers embedded in Amanda’s collar, who she’s holding up like a disobedient kitten. The new arrival is tendons and teeth, black leather and a walk that clinks each time her heel hits the pavement, revolver and knives and Guan-Yin-knows-what-else bouncing against her lean hip. In contrast with everything else, the woman’s soft halo of short dark curls seems out of place, like a scrap of lambswool the wolf decided to convert into whimsical millinery. “She says she knows you.”
“You must be Tanis.” I take an automatic step back as her gaze passes over my face, hands held up placatingly. Her eyes chill infinitesimally when they take notice.
“You must be Naree’s friends. If you’re not...” She glances at Naree, still folded around Fitz. “Babe. Nod once if this is a scenario that you did not consent to, because—”
“No, no, no.” Naree lets go and bounds over to Tanis, an arm hooked around the lankier woman’s waist, her cheek laid against her ribcage. Despite the fact Tanis is still holding Amanda an inch above the ground without even a glazing of sweat, an act so natural Tanis might as well be a housewife modelling an empty tote bag for our inspection, the sweet domesticity of the sight isn’t lost on me: Tanis and Naree belong together, a fit as perfect as the letters of the name of God. “They’re the guests.”
“Please tell me they’re not staying.”
“We’re not staying,” Amanda says glacially. “And will you put me down?”
“Listen. If you ever become a house-owner, you’d understand. Something about furtive strangers skulking around, looking for entry, just gets to you.” Tanis releases Amanda, nonetheless. Just for the half of a second, I see her tongue flick out and lap at the air. “Especially if they’re people like you.”
“That’s kinda racist,” Fitz remarks from a safe distance.
“You are only here by grace of my partner.” If looks could kill, Tanis would have us minced, seasoned, neatly pleated into little dumpling wrappers. “Don’t push it.”
“I’m just saying—”
“In that case, you need to stop talking.” Tanis presses a kiss onto the apex of Naree’s head, lingering there, face buried in the gleaming black mass of her hair, before exhaling noisily and peeling away. She drops to a knee beside Bee, both arms outstretched, and I watch as her expression gentles into love. Maybe that’s all it takes when it comes to parents. One glimpse of their offspring and the walls come down, the swords are lowered, and—
“And you need to move away from my daughter before you regret it.”
Maybe not.
Cason doesn’t take the bait, omits the wisecracking, just duck-walks backwards with a gracious expression on his open face. “I totally understand that. I’d be the same if I saw a stranger keeping company with my kids. Especially at this age.”
Tanis spreads her arms and Bee trundles into reach, cooing nonsense noises, like a contented dove. “Sorry, but I’m not really interested in bonding exercises.”
“Come on, babe. They’re guests.”
“I get that they’re guests. But it is also possible to—” Tanis stops herself, lifting Bee into her arms as she unfolds, and begins counting down from ten at a nearly inaudible volume. Naree giggles into a hand. “Let’s just get everyone inside. Don’t want the alligators eating up the tourists.”
“Too late,” I mutter, slouching past.
“We’ll explain.” Fitz twitches his shoulders and slopes along behind me.
The spell breaks; the standoff ends. As is always the case, it is irreverence that whittles the savage beast into aggrieved surrender. Tanis sucks at her teeth and then sighs the long-tormented sigh of a woman who’d given up on the world making sense.
“He actually did get eaten by an alligator,” Cason notes.
“Crocodile,” I correct.
“I didn’t ask.” Tanis sighs again but imparts no further comment.
Naree unlocks the front door and ushers us inside. Washed in the glow from the fairy-lights threaded across the door frames, the interior isn’t big, but it is pleasant. There’s a post-collegiate quality to the furnishings: IKEA couches, do-it-yourself shelving; a stack of books on quantum physics, the pile crowned by an unused ashtray. Potted shrubbery is everywhere, as well as hampers full of toys, a stray LEGO set, and Bee’s artistic masterpieces: a spread of luridly crayoned papers depicting houses, stick figures, and what may well be the end of the world. You can never tell with kids.
But the hardwood surfaces gleam and the few antiques, carefully positioned out of reach of a child, look old as omens.
Still radiating cataclysmic quantities of resentment, Tanis marches Bee into one of the side rooms. Naree gazes after her partner, wags her head once, and meanders to the kitchen. The light in her expression switches back on as she beams at us.
“There’s just about enough beer for two rounds, but if anyone wants more, they’re going to need to hit up the gas station around the block.” She hooks a finger through the empty ring of a six-pack, the cans tall and obsidian and gleaming. I don’t recognize the label scorched onto their surface.
“Do they take credit?” Fitz sprawls over the two-seat couch.
Amanda seats herself opposite him on an armchair that is probably older than anything else in the room, a last-generation monstrosity of paisley and stuffing, its corners fretted, gnawed-down by a currently-absent cat. Cason tails Naree into the kitchen, only to be shooed back into the living room, the latter tsking as she pads back over with the beer,
“I’m not an ATM,” Amanda says.
“You wound me. Do I look like the kind of guy who would take advantage of the fact you have, quite literally, a limitless capacity for rebalancing the books?”
“Do you really want an answer to that?”
Fitz cackles uproariously but adds nothing more.
Naree pops the tab of a can, perches herself on the armrest of Amanda’s chair, looking at her with mild curiosity. “Can you really do that?”
Colour flutters onto Amanda’s cheeks as she ducks her head, a tendril of hair smoothed behind an ear. “More or less. It really is more my brother’s province than mine, but I have some control of the digital.”
“‘Some,’” Fitz says.
Amanda ignores him. “But I try to avoid tampering with the flow of the Internet as much as I can. It’s an ecosystem delicate as any other. You can’t just fuck with that. Not without consequence. These days…”
“Fake news,” Naree declares.
“Exactly.”
“I’m too old for this shit.” I pinch the bridge of my nose and grab a beer.
Cason remarks, settling on a chair. “Age is a number.”
“Don’t start with the wise-dad shit.”
A two-count of silence as we pass looks between each other. I crack open my beer and take a sip. The cold molasses-black brew tastes like chocolate and smells like a coffee shop, decadent almost to a fault.
“Anyway,” says Fitz, between swallows of his beer. “We should probably get this show on the road.”
“By that I assume you mean someone explaining what the fuck is going on.” Tanis steps back into the room utterly silently. She shucks her leather jacket and drapes it over the hook on the door behind her, revealing an efficient frame, no excess in any direction, whether fat or muscle.
Her eyes make an orbit of our expectant faces. “Seriously. What the fuck is going on?”
“This is Amanda.” Naree points at the woman beside her.
“Wait. Same Amanda that went Terminator on you ages back?”
“Terminator?” I say, in perfect unison with the rest.
“When Naree was about fifteen, she had a friend on the Internet. Someone named Amanda. Amanda was—correct me if I get any part of this wrong, babe—having a conversation with Naree one day, and suddenly, there was a disconnected printer spitting out papers full of the words How do you like it?” Her voice dips into something dangerous. “Then, it was Naree’s phone, her TV, her DVD player. All screaming. ‘How do you like it?’”
Silence unrolls over the room like police tape.
“Wow,” says Fitz.
“Everyone had a rebellious phase,” Cason says. “It’s natural.”
“I was young,” Amanda says, before anyone else can speak, cheeks florid. The colour travels up her forehead and down in capillaries along her throat. She sits with both hands wrapped around her can of beer, seemingly mesmerized by a picture on the wall. “You do stupid things when you’re trying to show off.”
“What the fuck are you?” Tanis whispers.
“That’s not important.”
“What. The. Fuck. Are. You.”
Naree withdraws from Amanda and skips backwards—three quick hops—into Tanis’s proximity. As though on auto-pilot, the taller woman extends an arm and drapes it over Naree’s shoulders. “You’re… the god of technology, aren’t you? Something like that.”
“The Internet,” Amanda says, sotto voce. “I’m the Internet. At least, the part of me that created this body.”
“What do you mean ‘this bo—’”
“She’s a clone.” I stab a finger at Amanda. “The Internet makes clones that, I guess, are microchipped like cats? Because I don’t know how else you download information into a brain. Sometimes, the clones get overloaded. Sometimes, they look different. And sometimes, they apparently blow up because there’s too much input or something, and their intelligence is dependent on whether they have access to satellite signal? I don’t actually understand the full specifics. But that is the general gist of it. Everyone caught up?”
There’s an awkward silence.
“Please don’t smite my credit record.”
“There is nothing I can do to your credit record that you haven’t already done to yourself.”
“Fair.” I evaluate the climate of the room. So far, no one has contradicted me, laughed, choked, supplied a snide comment, or even endeavoured to put a bullet through my head. This is an improvement on my usual situation. “Did I get all the facts right?”
“Eh.” A seesaw motion of Amanda’s hand.
“Good enough.” I shrug, slamming back at least a quarter of my beer.
Meanwhile, Tanis has her forehead cushioned in her free hand.
“Okay,” she says, sighing. “Okay. Fine. You’re the Internet. You’re—” Her eyes alight on each of us in turn.
“A prophet, for want of a better word,” says Fitz.
“Grandson of the Devil,” says Cason.
“I’m just a cook.” When the weight of their combined scrutiny becomes too much, I hunch down into my shoulders, adding in a small voice, “Also, I can’t stay dead and I worked for Hell.”
“So,” says Naree, pointing at Cason. “You worked for his granddad?”
“No. The Chinese Hells,” I clarify. “There are a lot of hells. Which, in retrospect, is incredibly fitting given the direction our species is heading.”
“We’re moving away from the subject.” Another sigh from Tanis, longer, louder than the first, less patient than the first batch. “Okay. So. We have the grandson of the Devil, the Internet, a prophet, and an undead cook—”
“I prefer the phrase ‘reluctantly immortal.’”
“I’d prefer if you shut up, but we can’t get everything we want.”
“Touché.”
“Anyway,” says Tanis, pointing at us all with both hands, like an irate conductor conducting the cacophony of an ill-trained orchestra. “What the hell does any of this have to do with me?”
“You’re the fourth part of the prophecy,” says Fitz.
“Oh. Great. Prophecies. No.” Tanis drops her arms and turns to walk out. “I’m done already. I’m not going to be part of any of this.”
“I don’t think we really have a choice here…” Fitz begins.
“There’s always a choice. And my decision is to stay out of this—”
“You have a daughter.” And I can’t tell if it is a trick of Amanda’s, or if the world itself is leaning into her words, but whatever is going on, the light seems to dim where Tanis isn’t standing. The colours desaturate, melt. Only Tanis is in high-definition, speared by the attentions of fate itself. “If you don’t come with us, you’re condemning her to death. There won’t be a future. There won’t be a world.”
“Bullshit. I know how prophecy works—”
“Because you ate the heart of Cassandra. We know. But you have to understand. Prophecy accounts for small variances, but certain aspects are immutable. In this case, we need your visions—”
“Wait. She ate what now?” I start.
“You can have them for free. How about that?” Tanis inhales, about to pontificate on what she’d seen, only to interrupt herself. “Also, why the fuck do you need me when you already have an actual prophet?”
“Because the Chronicler,” growls Amanda, “hears the words of the gods, but Cassandra was different. She wasn’t intended to be a loudspeaker. She was a mistake. Cursed. What she saw, what she knew—it was meant to make her go mad.”
“Again. Bullshit and completely irrelevant. I—”
“I have something to say.”
All eyes go to Cason.
“Go ahead. Ignore the cook. The grandson of the Devil is much more important.”
“I’m sure your contribution is important.” Tanis digs the nail of her middle finger into her forehead and begins massaging slow circles into the skin. Naree pats her sympathetically on the shoulder. “Say whatever it is you need to say. Why don’t we get a talking stick while we’re at it? Make sure everyone has a turn.”
“I—you know, that’s kind of offensive, but we can come back to that—I just wanted to point out that this isn’t about the world. I can understand not wanting to give a damn about strangers. I get that. But we all stand to lose something here. And if we don’t stop this, Amanda’s going to become the mother of monsters.”
“With all respect,” says Tanis. “If she’s the Internet, that’s a bit late.”
“Wait.” Naree lays a hand on her partner’s shoulder, worry luminous in her expression. “What do you mean ‘mother of monsters’?”
“The creepypasta gods”—Cason rakes a hand through his hair—“are parasites. As far as I understand it. They’re incubating inside Amanda, somehow. If they’re not stopped, they’re going to rip her apart.”
“If you think I’m going to give a shit about what happened to the living incarnation of 4chan, you’ve got another thing—”
“Tanis.” But not even Naree’s scandalised interjection is enough to diminish Tanis’s ire.
The lines of Amanda’s jaw draw tight and the light in her gaze goes flat. The smile that follows is functional, plastic, at odds with the blanched knuckles of her fists. She hesitates for a millisecond and then says, in an equally bland tone: “My personal connection to the problem isn’t important. Just… You called me the living incarnation of 4chan. Think about what that implies.” She starts blotting her fingers on the upholstery, as though trying to mop away something repulsive. “When we said the world would end, I think we may have misphrased it. The world won’t end. It’d still be there. It’d just be under the stewardship of a new pantheon, worse than anything else you’ve seen. The creepypasta gods are every dark impulse you’ve seen on social media, every word of hate, every cruel joke, every scrap of fear stirred up into rage. When humanity breathed faith into the old gods, it was to make sense of a world they feared, to make it safe. The new ones? They don’t care. They want you afraid.”
