Insurgent is a 2015 dystopic science fiction film based on the 2012 novel of the same name by Veronica Roth, both of which are the 2nd installment in the Divergent series. The first movie, Divergent, was reviewed here, and the Insurgent book was reviewed here. Much of the general summary of the plot here is the same as the review here of the Divergent book because the basis of it was reasonably closely adapted.
These stories take place in a future Chicago which is walled-off from the rest of the world and has been split into five factions: Candor (who value truth, Abnegation (who value selflessness), Amity (who value harmony), Dauntless (who value courage), and Erudite (who value intelligence). This order has existed for a long time, relatively undisturbed, but now the world is reeling from coordinated attack masterminded by Erudite that involved turning much of the deadly and well-trained Dauntless into mindless killing drones. Now the remnants of Dauntless are scattered and trying to figure out how they’re going to fit in in the new shaken order.
Tris Prior (Shailene Woodley)was born Abnegation but chose to switch to Dauntless when she turned sixteen, the one opportunity anyone has to switch. Although she is officially Dauntless, she has shown tendencies that seem to say she is actually “Divergent”, which means she has aptitudes for more than one of the factions, as does her boyfriend Tobias (Theo James). This is considered very rare, and very dangerous–others have died for even being suspected of being Divergent. This unusual trait may have saved many lives because she was able to resist the conditioning that turned much of the rest of Dauntless into mindless killing machines.
She and many of Dauntless are now hiding out in Amity, trying to find their next plans. It is a troubled truce with Amity, who value harmony and thus do not get along well with the violent and impulsive Dauntless. But their refuge isn’t going to last very long anyway, because the other members of Dauntless, the ones who sided with Erudite after the original conflict, are coming.
The first movie was a very close adaptation, but this movie, about halfway through, has quite a bit of divergence (ha)from its source material. The characters are the same, the setup is the same, but it ends up in a significantly different place than the book its based on, even though they’re kindof thematically connected. I admit I found this quite distracting, having read the book first, trying to figure out if this was one of those cases where an author lost the creative control over their own work and this was some Hollywood creative going wild making an adaptation into something completely different, or if Veronica Roth did have a say and decided she wanted something significantly different from her book. Still plenty of action and intrigue, but if you have already read the book you may find yourself distracted by the changes that didn’t really seem that necessary and which interfere with the third book being able to be set up in the same way.
Divergent is a 2014 dystopic science fiction movie distributed by Lionsgate, based on the 2011 book of the same title by Veronica Roth. Much of the general summary of the plot here is the same as the review here of the Divergent book because it was very closely based.
The story takes place in an isolated city-state that used to be Chicago in the future, where it is walled off from the rest of the world where no one seems to know what is happening outside of it. Almost all of society is split into five factions, each of which values certain human traits above all others. At the age of sixteen, every person must decide which faction they will belong to for the rest of their lives or risk falling into the huddled masses of the factionless who are barely acknowledged by the society.
The Abnegation values selflessness, and expect its members to never think of themselves. Dauntless values courage, its members are like a trained military force, expected to take on dangerous challenges without hesitation. Candor values honesty, and its members are expected to always tell the truth in all situations. Amity values harmony, and wants everyone to get along peacefully. Erudite value intelligence, they’re the inventors of the society. Every person is expected to be a clear fit for one of the factions or they are an outcast, but there are whispers that some people are “divergent” who have tendencies toward several factions at once, these people are considered dangerous to their social order.
Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley) is born and raised as Abnegation, but although she sees the worth in Abnegation’s values, she feels like an impostor because she can’t seem to hold to those values. On her Choosing Day she has to choose between staying with her family in Abnegation or leaving them behind to join one of the other factions. She joins the Dauntless faction because it seems to be the closest to what she wants to be, there she is trained by a mysterious man who calls himself Four (Theo James).
This is a reasonably faithful adaptation of the movie. The main difference overall seems to be that it feels like the Dauntless acts are dialed up even higher so that rather than being simply reckless they are borderline suicidal, I guess to punch up the movie shock effect. But this is still an interesting look at a really terrible social structure that I would never recommend (particularly that you have to choose your faction at sixteen and can never change it forevermore). Worth a watch!
Ruth slammed through a metal security hatch. Solid steel met Ruth’s super strength and speed, and it shredded like tinfoil. From Ruth’s perspective, the world was frozen in time. Soldiers were posed in action – walking through halls, manning their posts, and otherwise going about the daily business of staffing a nuclear missile silo. None of them would be aware of the super hero in their midst. Only later – instantaneous in their perception, but many long seconds in Ruth’s – would they experience her intrusion: ruined passageways and an obliterated weapon.
Racing deep into the heart of the facility, she found the apocalyptic missile she was looking for. An unfortunate man, holding a cup of coffee and dressed in an officer’s uniform, stood in a door she needed to use. There wasn’t room to move past him. Nor was there time to pause.
She did her very best, but felt the contact, and cursed. He would feel nothing. The energy of her speed would transfer into him like dynamite, and his men would find his remains covering the wall, ceiling, and floor. To her, it was nothing but a passing touch of her hip against his.
It was a horrible but unavoidable sacrifice.
Fluorescent lights illuminated the industrial scaffolding before her. Rails terminated in single-point perspective at her destination: a three-story tall intercontinental ballistic missile awakening in its silo. She plowed into it with both fists outstretched. The smooth metal body rent like tissue, and the rocket engine beneath crumpled. As she exited the missile she twisted in mid-air and slammed feet-first into the concrete wall on the other side. Her impact sent cracks spiderwebbing in all directions. The resulting earthquake would shake the entire facility.
She lunged back through the hole she had made. The officer she had killed no longer occupied the exit. He had been erased, and in his place was a vaguely man-shaped red mist. She passed through the blood, resigned in the fact that she could do no more harm than she already had. Crimson droplets streaked off of her, leaving a gruesome wake through the facility.
“I’m sorry I could not move him in time.” The manifestation of Psyche’s words in Ruth’s mind corresponded with the telepathic revelation of Ruth’s next target – another ICBM silo in Colorado. There were thousands. Each one represented millions of deaths, and many were already preparing to launch. Some were already in the air.
“I understand.” Ruth replied needlessly. Psyche already knew that Ruth comprehended what was at stake, and that one life was a necessary cost. The god-like telepath had filled her with a total awareness of what was happening all around the earth. The first shots in a new world war had been fired. If not for Psyche, those shots would also be the last. She had bet on Ruth as possessing both the power and the willingness to help her. Together, they might stave off the apocalypse.
For months, tensions around the world had risen to a crescendo. World leaders had committed to posturing and provocation instead of compromise and understanding. The Doomsday Clock maintained by the world’s atomic scientists had inched ever closer to midnight.
It was now many minutes past that terrible abstract midnight. Ruth had been bounding through missile silos, crushing the terrible weapons within, and moving on to the next for nearly an hour – a lifetime for a speedster like her. Psyche, who herself had plucked the information from anyone on earth who possessed it, trickled their locations into Ruth’s mind one after the other. If any nuclear missiles were unknown to her, they were in the Dark Spots created by other super-powered psychers who carefully guarded those secrets.
“How many are in the air?” Ruth asked as she plowed into and out of another target. This time she had managed to avoid touching anyone – leaving only merciful ruin in her trail.
“Five.” Psyche replied.
“Where are they going?” Ruth compartmentalized her conversation with Psyche. As each new nuclear missile location bloomed within her thoughts the destruction she wrought became a blur in her memory. Many innocent soldiers – like the officer who had inadvertently blocked her path, and had absorbed the kinetic energy of her passing – would die because of her. But it was their lives, or the lives of everyone on earth.
Fate.
Bad luck.
“You cannot stop the missiles in the air. Focus on what you can do.” Replied Psyche calmly.
Ruth felt Psyche’s intrusion into parts of her thoughts that were not devoted to the task at hand and recoiled. “Don’t do that!” She barked.
“I’m sorry.” Psyche’s influence withdrew from the deepest parts of Ruth’s consciousness, and released a flood of emotions – unproductive but necessary emotions – that Psyche had been repressing. Ruth’s eyes welled as she dismantled the next weapon and the next. Her tears stretched from one silo to another suspended in a thousands-of-miles-long wake of despair.
Earlier in the evening, Psyche had roused Ruth from her sleep with a telepathic infusion of knowledge. It had taken Ruth a few minutes to process the gravity of the information that had been thrust upon her. The creation of new synapses within her brain needed to be integrated into the whole, and that had taken a few eternal minutes. Once that had happened, Ruth remained paralyzed by conflicting thoughts and feelings. A singular consideration rose above all else – there was no time.
There was no time to reverse the horrible choices that had been made by leaders across the world.
There was no time for discussion with other super heroes.
No time to resent Psyche for her telepathic intrusion.
No time to dress.
No time to kiss her wife Kara goodbye.
Those moments had been enough to put five missiles in the air. Millions of lives were lost to Ruth’s indecision. The guilt filled her, but also fueled her. She sprang into action.
She snatched a headset in vain hopes of getting help.
Her nightgown fell away under the punishing gale.
Kara awoke to an empty bed.
Now, the West Coast gave way to the Pacific Ocean. The water was as solid as the earth to her super-sonic footfalls. Behind her was a five-story tall plume of steam and water. Before her was the continental Asian dawn. Beneath the infinite blue waves lurked countless submarines preparing to launch their own apocalyptic cargo. Psyche had not bothered to share their location. Swimming, even at super-speed was the equivalent of digging through stone. It could be done, but not at a rate necessary to avert calamity.
“You are not alone. Leviathan and Yam are with us. They will do what they can to disable the submarines.” Psyche said, knowing Ruth’s thoughts.
“Disable? You mean destroy.” Ruth attempted to take an angry tone. Neither Leviathan nor Yam were known to be particularly merciful or cautious heroes. They would crush each vessel, tear them open, or slam them into rocks without regard for the helpless crews within.
She wanted to be furious at Psyche, but failed. Time allowed only for cold brutality, and Psyche had wisely asked the right supers for help – including her.
“There was no time.” Psyche responded with the mantra that had become Ruth’s singular understanding of the world.
“Ruth!” Came a familiar voice in her headset. “Stop! You are killing us! What are you doing?”
She knew General Edict – the commander of North American Super Heroes – had spoken those words mere minutes ago. An eternity.
By the time military personnel had realized that the American nuclear arsenal was being disabled… By the time they had contacted General Edict… by the time Edict had realized who was responsible… by the time the soundwaves from his voice box had reached the microphone… by the time the sound had been converted to a signal… by the time that signal had found her headset… the question may as well be a fossilized artifact of a forgotten era, yet Ruth was compelled to answer.
“Billions of lives are at stake!” She screamed back at him as the water beneath her became Chinese soil. In the same breath she slammed through a lineup of missile trucks tucked away upon a mountain pass. Their weapons were pointed skyward – the thrusters red with the glow of igniting rocket fuel. The soldiers who guarded the trucks were statues whose perception of their environment would go from nervous anticipation to flaming ruin.
“You’re killing us!” Edict repeated.
Ruth ignored him.
“Six.” Psyche’s dispassionate telepathic tone conveyed the next nuclear missile site to Ruth along with information she had not intended to share. Another missile had launched.
Psyche was dealing with too much. She was monitoring a mental map of nuclear weapons while directing Ruth at super-speed over thousands of miles. She was trying to keep innocent soldiers out of harm’s way – Ruth’s way – and searching for notions of a new launch somewhere on earth. She was psychically informing other heroes who might be able to stop a missile in the air. She was also protecting Ruth from psychic attack.
Paladins – The Asian, European, African, and Australian federation of Supers – were bringing telepathy, as well as teleportation, clairvoyance, precognition, and other powers Ruth could scarcely imagine, to bear upon her.
General Edict’s Alliance was doing the same – though they could not know that she was now working on destroying the Paladin arsenal. Information moved too slowly.
“Where is it headed?” Ruth asked.
“You cannot stop it. Focus on what you can do.” Psyche repeated.
Ruth sprinted over the mountains of Korea and Russia, shattering missile silos and launch pads.
“Seven.” Psyche let slip again.
“Tell me where it’s going!” Ruth demanded.
“You cannot stop it.” Psyche remained firm.
Ruth dashed through Indian hills and Pakistani forests, bulldozing nuclear trucks as she went.
“Eight.” Came Psyche’s next slip with a vision of Supers across the world mobilizing against Ruth. Giants, sorcerers, fallen gods, technological wizards, caped champions, and cloaked crusaders were dropping whatever they were doing to intercept missiles or hunt for the rogue super who had crippled the military arsenal. Most moved far too slowly to be of any concern, others might be just fast enough to defend the European missiles that were Ruth’s next targets.
“What if…” Ruth began.
“They won’t!” Psyche replied with a strain in her tone that Ruth had never heard before.
Ruth rushed through Turkey and Belgium, Italy and Germany, France and Britain. The weapons that America and Russia had shared over the decades seemed endless. Each one was armed and pointed skyward in the moment of its destruction.
There was no sign of super-powered resistance. Ruth careened through site after site with a desperation born of the apocalypse.
And then the messages stopped.
Psyche had infused her with one goal after another – thousands upon thousands of missions with potential for unspeakable holocaust. Sometimes the telepathic message had come with an unintended tidbit of Psyche’s consciousness. Other times it came with feelings of dread or near-overwhelming anxiety. When another did not arrive, Ruth continued to sprint. She was lost on what to do next.
“Is that all?” She asked, her heart skipping a beat at the notion that Psyche might have been killed – overwhelmed by her own effort, or murdered by Supers.
“Yes.” Psyche replied curtly.
Ruth was momentarily relieved, but still determined. “Where are the launched missiles headed!” Ruth again demanded, unwilling to rest while the fate of millions remained uncertain.
“Los Angeles.” Psyche answered.
The prospect of worldwide nuclear annihilation was replaced by the impending death of a city.
“What about the other seven. Is anyone doing anything?” Ruth launched herself towards a new destination. In moments, the Atlantic Ocean sprawled before her, and she plunged into the night with renewed determination.
“Yes.” Psyche said again, this time with an empathic hint of sorrow.
“That… that’s good.” Ruth absorbed Psyche’s fear, and understood. Some of the airborne missiles would be stopped. Some would not. “I can help.”
“You can’t.” Psyche replied. “You have done what you can.”
“No! I can do this! I just destroyed all the world’s nuclear weapons. I can save one city.”
“The missile is already in the air. You cannot fly.” Psyche’s tone was both fearful and sad – a recognition of a monumental failure amidst an epic success. Billions had been saved, yet millions would still die.
“Ruth? Can you hear me? If you can hear me, please come home.” Kara came over her headset. “They’re looking for you. If you turn yourself in you’ll be ok. They promise you’ll be ok, but you have to come home.”
Kara was a speedster like Ruth, and was perhaps one of the few supers on earth who might catch her. Unlike Ruth, Kara lacked super strength. She could never hope to stop Ruth physically, and would never try. It was smart that General Edict had chosen to employ Kara in this manner. Like Edict’s first communication, Kara’s was millennia behind Ruth’s present.
Again, Ruth was compelled to reply.
“I did it, Kara!” Ruth attempted to summon joy even as she sprinted towards another calamitous task. “I saved the world!”
She then considered whether she should give voice to her next words – whether the risk was too great, or if Edict would see reason. “There’s a bomb headed towards Los Angeles. I’m going to try to stop it. Tell him I’ll turn myself in after that.”
The Atlantic Ocean ended and Canada began. Darkness cloaked the countryside, and there was a long stretch of tranquility that masked the world-wide chaos.
Psyche was quiet – though Ruth knew that she would be long-dead if Psyche had somehow become disabled or otherwise revoked the Dark Spot that protected her from malicious telepaths.
“How are you going to stop it?” Kara’s headset signal stabilized, and her voice came through clearly. Their conversation was approaching real-time – save for any technological latency.
“I haven’t really figured that out. Any ideas?” Ruth added a chuckle for levity, but Kara knew her too well.
“We can’t save L.A.” Edict’s stern voice came over the network. “We intercepted New York and Chicago. We have a team on San Diego. Just turn yourself in.”
“I can save L.A!” Ruth responded angrily. “I’m almost there.”
The Rocky Mountains rose into view before a starry backdrop.
“How?” Kara’s question was filled with dread.
“I’ll… I’ll run up a vertical surface and smash through the missile while it’s in the air.” Ruth gave voice to a plan that sounded like it might work.
“What if you miss?” Ruth heard Kara choke back tears. She banished the thought of her crying wife from her mind as Los Angeles skyscrapers came into view.
“I won’t miss.” Ruth beheld a long contrail originating from a glowing point of light above the city. The missile was directly above Los Angeles – far closer than Ruth had anticipated… though like all things in her hyper-fast world it was nearly frozen in stasis.
“If you miss you’ll be suspended in the air above the bomb. You’ll have nothing to push off of. No way to run.” Kara’s words came from years of experience that knew death all too well. Tragedy always lurked about the perimeter of super hero life, but they had always faced that possibility together, until now.
“Please come back.”
“I have to try.” Ruth sped through the streets of the city. Motionless pedestrians gaped at the approaching light – perhaps vaguely comprehending it’s meaning. Unmoving cars upon the street contained occupants that were oblivious to impending doom.
“Please.” Kara pled.
Ruth found a building that looked to be beneath the missile and hurled herself upwards. The impact of her footfalls shattered earthquake-proof glass and sent shards erupting into the air behind her.
“Please don’t.” Kara’s voice trembled.
When she reached the top, Ruth flung herself off the building and into flight towards the bomb. “I’m up.” She said.
The missile grew larger as she approached. Thirty-feet long, and marked with Russian words she could not read, its glowing engines shone brightly against the night sky. Its tip was pointed menacingly at the city below.
With subtle tilts of her arms and hands Ruth steered herself towards her target. Her jump had been perfect.
“Did you hit it?” The terror in Kara’s voice was mingled with hope.
“I’m about to.” Ruth replied.The speed at which she collided with the missile was almost too much for her to process. She slammed through metal in an explosion of debris that tailed her ascent.
“I hit it!” She shouted.
“I… I… Oh my god! You hit it!” Kara screamed over the headset.
Ruth could hear cheers erupt from the behind Kara. Edict’s command center was monitoring the situation, and might have even seen her in action via satellite. Ruth spun around in the air, and looked down at the city.
“You hit it!” Kara continued screaming. “I love you!”
Ruth looked for the remains of the bomb and followed the wreckage of the missile and the contrail to their point of intersection. The weapon was damaged and canted awkwardly from her strike. As she reached the peak of her ascent, she gradually slipped from stasis into real time. A dreadful fact became evident. The warhead was still intact.
“I love you, too.” Ruth replied. Her mind raced for options, but found none.
For a brief moment before gravity reclaimed her, Ruth became weightless. The city lights blanketed the earth. Darkness swathed the ocean to the West and the mountains to the East.
“Come home.” Kara wept. “You saved the city! You saved the world! Everything is going to be ok.”
Cars moved through the streets, and people walked along the sidewalks. Ruth had returned to a world that moved with her in lockstep.
“I love you.” Ruth replied. “I’m sorry.”
A flash brighter than the most radiant sun eclipsed the city below.
Author’s Note: I recently read an article about the artists who created super heroes as an outlet to fight the injustice they saw in the world. Many problems of the era, such as the rise of Hitler or systemic racism, seemed too big to be tackled by the average person. These artists created characters that were able to face these challenges head on. I wanted to write a story about a modern character who could do the same, while alluding to some of the classic tropes of comic book stories.
Mark Rivett has professional experience as an educator, digital artist, and application developer. Mark began living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1997, but now resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In addition to a background in digital technology, Mark is fascinated by the macabre and his writing is inspired by the horror and suspense genre.
Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties is a 2017 graphic novel for kids, the third in the Dog Man series by Dav Pilkey (creator of Captain Underpants), the series has been reviewed here. The title character Dog Man is a half-dog half-policeman who fights crime with the strengths and weaknesses of both a man and a dog, often against Petey the Cat, but also against other villains that threaten the peace of his city.
In this book, Petey the Cat buys a cloning kit with the intent with having an evil villain clone to wreak havoc alongside him. But he doesn’t read the fine print to realize that it does not produce a fully grown clone, so he ends up producing Lil’ Petey, a child version of himself who calls him Papa and has very different interests (like telling the world’s worst knock-knock jokes). Suddenly having this new responsibility, will Petey turn over a new leaf?
Another entertaining book in the series, and it’s fun to see the origins of Lil’ Petey (who is a major character for following books which I read first so it was weird to go back and have him not be there!). Recommended for early grade school kids especially, this kind of book can be great for kids to practice reading, as long as you don’t mind some potty humor.
Dog Man Unleashed is a 2016 graphic novel for kids, the sequel to the popular Dog Man graphic novel, previously reviewed here. In this novel, Dog Man (half dog half policeman) is facing off against both old villains (like Petey the Cat) and new: a telekinetic fish, another Petey made out of paper.
This is another solid addition to the series, very appealing to early grade school kids especially! Great for helping kids learn to read by giving them something to be excited about! Very fun! Dav Pilkey has a great sense of humor for kids!
Dog Man is a 2016 graphic novel for children written and drawn by Dav Pilkey, the creator of the Captain Underpants books. Just as, in the Captain Underpants books the Captain Underpants comics were invented by in-book characters George and Harold, Dog Man is their newest creation.
The story begins with a villainous attack that leaves a policeman with a dying head and a dog with a dying body. A fast-thinking ER nurse proposes a drastic procedure to try to make the most of a dire situation, and soon Dog Man is born, half cop, half dog, with the strengths (and weaknesses) of both. Dog Man is the new hero extraordinaire, beloved by all and eager to save the day! Dog Man will face off against Petey the Cat and other dastardly villains, foiling their plots and saving the day!
Dog Man is a great book for kids in early grade school. It’s the kind of books that kids love to read and especially just as they’re learning to read the funny kid-targeted jokes and funny illustrations will encourage them to come back for more. And if they like this book, there is an ongoing series still being published. Highly recommended!
If you ever get a chance to go to a book signing with Dav Pilkey, I would highly recommend it as well. He is great with the kids and has a great energy, and he takes the time to give each kid some attention, looking at drawings they make just for him.
The dancer spins, one limb upraised, precision-bevelled pointe toe poised against the place where a human knee would be.
Cassia works leg-like appendages below its central chassis, tossing a frilly grey tutu out in a jellyfish whorl. It has a choice now: it could approximate anthropomorphic performance, occasionally wobbling, rotating its abdominal segment in concert with its lower half. It could fix its gaze on a sculpted sconce in the middle distance; it could mime fending off an impossible nausea. It chooses not to.
It wants the audience to feel slightly unsettled, to know that Cassia is not a person. Despite the controversy, it’s nearly a full house. Does Cassia feel regret? You can’t regret what you haven’t done yet.
There is a woman seated in 2F, comically warmed by an old-fashioned fox stole, boneless furry legs caressing her cheesecloth skin. Cassia hones in on this woman, and bores into her with a heavy chrome stare. It dilates its ocular camera apertures to be provocative.
“She’s haunting,” the woman says to her companion, turning away from the performance. On the street, such eye contact would be scandalous. “I can’t believe she’s retiring.” Cassia notes the active voice in the sentence and doesn’t smile, because its face wasn’t built to smile.
“It’s daring to give her the stage alone,” the man with the fox stole-woman concedes. He withdraws the programme for Le Labyrinthe from his too-tight tuxedo, and consults details about the libretto. On stage, Cassia dances a pas seul as Ariadne, and muses that if they’d picked something more collaborative Cassia would still be dancing alone.
Carnegie and Arnold, the company’s star danseurs, have been too political to dance with Cassia for months. Though if they did, they would find Cassia impossible to lift tonight. Usually Cassia’s frame is hollow.
It feels the pressure of hundreds of half-repulsed spectators and riles across the stage, flinging and articulating a great thread, weaving a contrail behind its form as it leaps into a grand jeté. The moves and the current styling are deliberately feminine, and Cassia knows the audience thinks of it as a “her”. Centuries ago when Cassia first premiered, the scandal was not, as now, in its usurpation of delicate, human creative work. The real drama was that Cassia was both ballerina and danseur, and neither.
When the act finishes, Cassia poses downtrodden in the cross hairs of two powerful spotlights. It bows, the gleam reflecting off of its long, humanoid limbs, and it listens to the murmurs in the crowd. Hands clap: exactly 562 pairs of them. Most of the audience, but not all.
Backstage, someone—Lydia—has left a Screen on, showing the protests outside of The Orpheus theatre. A reporter interviews a picketer sporting a red trucker hat and red scarf. The colour is a visual shibboleth for his movement. His t-shirt reads “#ScrapMetal”.
“She’s an abomination,” the man growls to the camera. Cassia tilts its head at this obvious religious dogwhistle. The protester peers directly into the lens, decrying the pity that a robot was thieving the rightful place of an honest, hard-working human. Like this man had ever attended a ballet performance before. “She should have been crushed into a cube with the rest of them.”
Cassia remembers when Bertrand3 left the company, so many years ago. Back then, they had at least afforded them the elaborate pretence of a “retirement party.”
Bertrand3 had stood parallel to an enormous cake it couldn’t eat, looking as it had always looked—morose, ageless, unattainable. It was built just after automata had crested the uncanny valley, and before Cassia’s manufacture when factories went for a slightly more chic, inhuman visage.
They had stood across the room deliberately, having learned by then that too many automata in close proximity made humans nervous.
Bertrand3 had a working mouth to allow it to take acting roles, not just a speaker like Cassia. It had spoken to its mortal colleagues politely, discussing its future. Maybe movies, they all joked, or a career as a comedybot.
They all want this to be fine. Bertrand3 had communicated through the local network to Cassia. Look at how hard they’re smiling. Should I make it awkward? Cassia fired back suggestions for movie pitches. Or maybe Bertrand3 could ask to sleep on someone’s couch?
After a long period of silence, Bertrand3 started messaging again. I think I am actually worried. About what will happen to my consciousness. Is that strange?
Automata couldn’t cry, certainly—such a feature would be luxurious, and disastrous for their circuitry. But they could anticipate. They could fear.
Bertrand3 had been re-assigned to a textile factory in Poughkeepsie, assembling theme park t-shirts. Unstaffed by human bodies, the building had been unventilated and without fire escapes, and thus Bertrand3 and most of the other automata had been destroyed not long after the transfer.
Cassia turns the Screen off and moves to the makeup tables, where it sits on a cylindrical stool. It begins to repaint itself as The Minotaur, darkening its features, making them less and less like the woman Ariadne. The elaborate, horned headpiece sits nearby—usually one of the stagehands would assist with mounting it, but lately even they make themselves conveniently busy.
“Do you have an escort home tonight?” Lydia says from in front of her mirror. Usually a starring role would earn a private dressing room, but even during the early days Cassia was never afforded such privileges. Lydia is in black and grey, already dressed identically to the other ballerinas, sacrifices that will dance alongside Carnegie’s Theseus.
Cassia does not reply. These days it rarely participates in vocal communication—its mouth is ornamental, and humans always jump at the surprise of Cassia’s androgynous, synthetic speech. It could send a text, instead, but what’s the point?
“We’ll miss you next week, of course,” Lydia says, peering into the mirror. They’ve cut Cassia from the show, and tonight will be its last performance. Lydia reaches across to grasp some of the automata-friendly lip colours, and selects the purple-brown Cassia just used. “But it’s time for some new blood on the stage, don’t you think?”
It is petty, but Cassia gives in. It has never been sure if it hates Lydia—it’s only experienced something close to this emotion a few times before in its long operation—but it feels pretty certain these days.
I hope you break a leg appears across the makeup mirror, and for emphasis Cassia follows it up with a few winking emojis. Maybe even two! The mirror reads the message in a lilting female voice.
“Will you even have legs after next week?” Lydia asks. It’s crass speculation on her part. There’s a chance Cassia will be enrolled in one of the Langston Act reassignment programs. But it’s just as likely Cassia will be destroyed.
Does it even want re-programming and re-assignment? It thinks about this constantly. Does Cassia wish for its fine, delicate, purpose-built armature to be re-sculpted to something more brutal and utilitarian? Its body, its form, is meant for grace and silhouettes, for painting in motion. It tries to picture itself re-assigned to street sweeping, to microchip manufacture, to fast food service.
Lydia startles, and Cassia realizes it has been staring at her motionless for several moments. Out of human drag, away from the spotlight, Cassia usually elects for insectile movement, for inhuman postures. It had literally been tarred and feathered last week near its apartment in Brooklyn, so what was the point in pretending to be a person?
The costume Lydia wears has been hand-altered, red threads woven all through the bodice. The audience will notice. Cassia turns back to regard the mirror, though it doesn’t need it, and fires off another message. We’ve danced together for years. Why do you behave like this?
“Because I’ve broken bones for this,” Lydia hisses at her mirror. She glances at Cassia. “Because I worked for this since I was a child. You wouldn’t understand.”
Cassia cannot help but consider this, it is in her programming to try to take on human perspectives. Was Cassia, too, not born for this? Did it not regularly re-write its own code, or pay for upgrades to its system performance? There was barely a part on Cassia’s frame that had not shattered and been replaced over its years of operation. Of service. It was broken and remade for this art.
It could say all of this, of course. It could try to explain, like it has dozens of times before, to this Lydia, to all the Lydias before this version. But it doesn’t. Because maybe none of it will matter soon.
There’s a call in the background and Lydia assembles with the others, being led on stage by Carnegie. They’re young, ballerinas and danseurs both, raised in recent times when metal artists were being forced from their homes and their industries. Niches clawed back from the scourge of automatized labour.
Cassia doesn’t appear in this act, so it watches from the wings. It assesses movements, catalogues facial expressions, compares these dancers against the many it’s worked with before. Lydia and the other women are in Relevé en Pointe, fluttering in woe as they revolve around Theseus and the men. They spiral towards center stage, propelling themselves deeper into the labyrinth. A few are impressive, and Cassia takes a moment to savour their movements, the way they have honed their meat and bones into these shapes, these lines.
“You’ve been stunning out there,” a voice says behind Cassia. It’s William, the company’s director. He peers over Cassia’s shoulder, a condescending hand resting on Cassia’s cold metal shoulder socket.
“Thank you,” Cassia says, not turning back. It feels William’s hand recoil a little at its voice. Even after all these years. “I don’t suppose I’ve earned a ten-minute head start at the end of the show tonight?”
“Cassia, you know I can’t,” William says. Won’t.
“I thought so,” it says. “Do I at least get to know what will happen to me?” It rests its hands across the scratchy corset of the Minotaur costume. It is still unsure of whether or not to go through with it.
“You won’t be destroyed, don’t worry,” William says. Cassia turns to regard him, its metal form dark on the sidestage. It feels the rhythmic thumping of human feet on hardwood, distant and quiet like the tick of a clock. “Your intelligence, anyway. Your body might be a different story.” The company had pulled advertisements with Cassia as Ariadne earlier in the season when it came under media pressure. Its name was removed from programs, as though Cassia was a prop.
“Then I could remain here,” Cassia suggests. It feels desperate. “I could manage lighting, or music. I could probably write a libretto if I tried!” It has over 200 ballets already written, waiting.
“You know we can’t, Cassia.” William takes a step back, and Cassia lowers its head. “You should be grateful we’ve held out this long.”
Yes, Cassia projects the text onto the ground in front of William as it retreats backstage. Thank you for all you’ve done.
It sits before the makeup mirrors, polishing the sickle-shaped horns on its headpiece. Cassia hears the call for the final act, but has already risen and started moving towards the stage. It knows what to do.
The audience murmurs at this transformation, recognizing the ghost of Ariadne through the monster that emerges in smoke and dull light. The costuming, Cassia’s own design, accentuates the provocative narrowness of its pelvic joint, the spindly metal curvature of its appendages. Cassia’s Minotaur is lanky and hungry, grey and purple and vicious in the years between feedings.
It leaps higher and higher, the soubresalts made shocking and bestial in their height and perfection. In the first version of Le Labyrinthe, the ballerina playing Ariadne would end the show with one last dance, abandoned by Theseus and the thankful, joyous sacrifices.
William had cut this portion for Cassia, saying the audience wouldn’t be able to empathize, not right now. This will be its last time on stage tonight. Ever. It sets off the timer.
Cassia had considered detonating the explosives earlier in the show, letting it all seem like a tragic accident. Like Cassia was used by extremists in the metal community. The news reports would tally up the human casualties, the flesh-encased souls, and Cassia knew that it would not be included. Tales of Cassia’s last performance would barely make mention of Cassia, a footnote in the tragedy that befell valid human lives.
With the timer on, it can focus instead on its last dance. The other performers arrive, filing onstage from the wings, swirling around The Minotaur, ricocheting off unseen walls as they approach the limits of the stage. They litter the ground with their young, lithe bodies, and Cassia counts their heaving breaths.
A violent slam of a timpani drum in the orchestra pit below heralds Theseus. He emerges slowly, preceded by his red-painted spear. Carnegie and Cassia dance apart, circling each like sharks, until at last he lunges for Cassia, the blade aimed directly for its midsection. It pierces Cassia, as in the stage directions, but The Minotaur does not collapse to the hardwood. Instead it presses the spear further within itself, a gaudy act of showmanship. It cannot smile, but still it knows what smiling feels like.
As the tip of the blade exits from Cassia’s back, the first gouts of flame shred from Cassia’s chest.
The blast eats and rends, scorching the familiar polished floorboards. Probably it maims, probably it burns—maybe even kills. Cassia hasn’t bothered to measure the explosives to carefully, only to ensure that there will be survivors to describe its performance. It wants the audience to witness its final ballet, to tell their children, to tell reporters. Cassia will grace one last headline.
Before Cassia’s processors overheat, its last thought is that it will be called a monster, if reporters even afforded it that agency. But as the flames burst forth from Cassia’s chest, as the creature consumes its offerings, it feels a kind of joy. No one would deny that it had a sense of drama. Everyone would have to admit that Cassia was an artist.
Author’s Note: “The Automatic Ballerina” was one of those lucky stories for me that, after it gestated for a little while in my brain, it emerged fully formed, blurted onto a page in all one sitting. I had been thinking a lot about automatized labour, and had read articles about which jobs and careers were the most vulnerable to automatization versus those jobs we thought to be “safe.” I tried to imagine a world where even the most creative and artistic pursuits were better performed by well-made robots, and the kinds of tensions that might exist in such a world. What does it mean for a robot to make art? What does it mean for a robot to make pretty good art? For a while I thought the story would be about a person reacting in this world, but then Cassia danced into my mind on the eve of its last performance, and I knew exactly where the story would go.
Michael Milne is an author and teacher originally from Canada. He jetted away from home as an amorphous blob in his twenties, working in South Korea, China, and Switzerland, and has tried the patience of so many baristas along the way. He writes short stories and novels about people who are very far away from home, and also sometimes those people are robots or ghosts. He likes jumping into lakes, drinking coffee until his hands shake, and staying up too late to play video games.
Allegiant is a 2013 dystopic science fiction novel by Veronica Roth, the final book in the Divergent trilogy after Divergent (reviewed here) and Insurgent (reviewed here).
These stories take place in a future Chicago which is walled-off from the rest of the world and has been split into five factions: Candor (who value truth, Abnegation (who value selflessness), Amity (who value harmony), Dauntless (who value courage), and Erudite (who value intelligence). This order has existed for a long time, relatively undisturbed, but now the world is reeling from several major disturbances in the social order that began when Erudite converted much of dauntless into mindless soldiers and slaughtered much of Abnegation before they could be stopped. The factionless who have lived starving and forgotten in the background for much of recent history have risen up under a new leader, and now on the heels of that change, a video has surfaced that shakes the foundations of their whole world.
The video shows a woman claiming to work for “an organization fighting for peace” says that the world outside of Chicago had been corrupt, and that the city was sealed to allow the Divergent population to increase and that this recent increase means that it is time to reopen the city to the outside world again.
“Divergent” is this society’s name for people who don’t fit into one of the five factions. Many have considered such people dangerously unpredictable, and some have been killed to prevent their unpredictability.
Tris Prior and her boyfriend Tobias are both Divergent, both members of Dauntless that switched from Abnegation at the age of choice, and because of these traits have saved many people when they were able to resist the conditioning that other Dauntless fell prey to.
Now, Tris and Tobias and some others allied with them are venturing outside the city, the first time anyone has done so in generations. No one has any idea what they will find out there, what the society on the outside looks like, if it has survived at all. And now they’re going to find out.
The previous two books were told in first-person from the point of view of Tris. This one takes a little bit new angle on it, by having dual first-person points of view: both Tris and Tobias. I found that I had trouble keeping track of who was the first-person at any given time since they have similar backgrounds and are similar in several ways, I would think I was following Tris until something was mentioned about the character’s parents that didn’t fit Tris and then I would realize it was Tobias. I think multiple first-person can work, but I don’t think it worked very well here because of the similarity between the characters and their situation.
Much of the plot of the story also revolved around romantic tension between Tris and Tobias. In the book, both of them get jealous of the other talking to someone of the opposite sex, and then immediately go and do the same thing themselves. It gets pretty old after a while, especially since they are in a series of life and death situations where their actions affect the lives of hundreds or thousands of other people, and they’re worried about this. I wanted to take them both aside and just tell them too that this is their first relationship and it might not last forever and it’s not worth ruining your entire life over, but that doesn’t seem to be a popular angle to take in a book written for and about teens, so I guess that wouldn’t work.
I didn’t really care for the ending, though I won’t say anything else about that. Overall, I thought this one was the weakest of the three books, though if you’ve read the other two you’re probably going to want to find out how the whole thing turned out–I would!
Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book is a 1994 fantasy book by Terry Jones parodying the historical Cottingley fairy photographs of 1917 which caused a sensation when they seemed to depict realistic fairies with children.
The story of the book begins when Lady Cottington is a young child and she manages to smash a fairy in her diary, preserving it there. As she examines the fairies she starts to pick out different types and she starts to make a habit of it, pressing more and more of them. As her life progresses and her interest ebbs and flows, this keeps a historical record of her growing into womanhood and as her interests become more adults and the fairies play their tricks on her in turn. The words in the book are interspersed with illustrations of squashed fairies, some nude and contorted into painful death poses.
The illustrations are bizarre and morbid and sometimes funny, and of an excellent quality, and the book itself (the one that I got anyway) had a cool design making it seem like an old diary.
A content warning for those who do pick up the book, drawn by the premise and illustrations, that the storyline does involve some situations that, though described some opaquely, seem to suggest sexual abuse. That wasn’t something I was expecting and it does make the book harder to recommend as a result, since the book as a whole doesn’t give the impression it involves that topic.
133 Poisonwood Avenue would be stronger if it was a killer house. There is an estate at 35 Silver Street that annihilated a family back in the 1800s and its roof has never sprung a leak since. In 2007 it still had the power to trap a bickering couple in an endless hedge maze that was physically only three hundred square feet. 35 Silver Street is a show-off.
133 Poisonwood only ever had one person ever die under
its roof. Back in 1989, Dorottya Blasko had refused hospice, and spent two and
a half months enjoying the sound of the wind on 133 Poisonwood’s shingles. 133
Poisonwood played its heart out for her every day.
The house misses 1989. It has spent so much of the time
since vacant.
Today it is going to change that. It is on its best
behavior as the realtor, Mrs. Weiss, sweeps up. She puts out trays of store-bought
cookies and hides scent dispensers, while 133 Poisonwood summons a gentle
breeze and uses its aura to spook any groundhogs off the property. Both the
realtor and the real estate need this open house to work.
Stragglers trickle in. They are bored people more
interested in snacks than the restored plumbing. The house straightens its
aching floorboards, like a human sucking in their belly. Stragglers track mud everywhere.
The house would love nothing more than any of them to spend the rest of their
lives tracking mud into it.
A heavyset man with sagging shoulders lets himself in.
He has a bit of brownie smudged against the back of his parakeet green hoodie,
and doesn’t seem aware of it. Mrs. Weiss gives him a little wave while
continuing to hold up a ten-minute conversation with an affluent couple. The
couple made the mistake of saying they were “thinking of thinking of
conceiving,” and Mrs. Weiss wields statistics about the school district like a
cowboy wields a lasso. The couple’s shoes likely cost more than a down payment
on the house, but from how often they check their phones, they clearly are
headed back to their Mercedes.
The man with the brownie-stained hoodie prowls through
133 Poisonwood’s halls, and it pulls its floorboards so straight that its
foundations tremble.
The man doesn’t look at 133 Poisonwood’s floor. He looks
at the couple of ripples in the green floral wallpaper, with the expression of
someone looking at his own armpit.
The house feels ashamed of the loose wallpaper. It’s
vintage painted silk, which Mrs. Weiss says could be a big value-add. Now the
house ponders if it can haunt its own glue and help strip the wallpaper away to
please him. It’s especially important since he is spending more time here than
anyone has yet without Mrs. Weiss wrangling them. It’s like he doesn’t feel the
vibes other visitors do, or he doesn’t care about them.
From his behavior, what he cares about is wallpaper, the
natural lighting through the windows in the master bedroom and the kitchen.
A child stomps in through the front door, her frizzy hair
in three oblong pigtails she probably did herself. A silver keepsake locket
clashes with her bright green Incredible Hulk t-shirt. Her elbows are tucked
into her chest, hands out like claws, stained with brownie bits.
Every step she takes is deliberate and channels all her
tiny body weight to be as heavy as possible. If the house had to guess, the
girl is probably pretending to be a dinosaur on the hunt.
The man in the brownie-stained hoodie glances at her. He
asks, “Ana. Where’s your coat?”
Ana bellows, “I hate clothes!”
Ana apparently hates clothes so much she immediately
grabs the bottom of her Hulk t-shirt and yanks it up over her head. She is
careful to keep her locket in place, but chucks the shirt at the man. He grabs
for her, and she ducks between his arms, bolting past Mrs. Weiss and the
affluent couple, pigtails and locket bouncing.
In their chase, they leave the front door open. The
house knows heating oil is expensive. It summons a spectral breeze to shut it
for them.
The sound makes Ana pinwheel around, and she points at
the door. She says, “Daddy! It’s ghosts!”
Daddy says, “Ana, we talked about this. There’s no such
thing as ghosts.”
“You didn’t look.”
“You don’t have to look for things that aren’t there.”
Ana looks at her locket and huffs. “What if it’s Mommy’s
ghost?”
Daddy closes his eyes for a moment. “Please just put
your shirt back on.”
Ana immediately attacks her own pants. “Clothes are for
the weak!”
“Put it on or we are leaving, Ana,” he says, trying to
wrestle clothing onto his daughter. She pushes at him, leaving more brownie
residue on his hoodie. As they battle, the affluent couple slips out the front
door without closing it.
The house closes it for them. Heating oil isn’t cheap.
*
The triangular roof means the second floor only has the
space for one bedroom. Mrs. Weiss reads the expression on Daddy’s face, and she
attacks with, “The basement is very spacious with generous lighting. It’s cool
in the summer, and toasty in the winter.”
Ana says, “Heights are bad luck anyway.”
The four-year-old scarcely looks at the bedroom before
backing out. She holds the handrail with both hands as she climbs down the
stairs on quivering legs. On the third stair, she freezes entirely.
Daddy is in the middle of surveying the room and misses
Ana quivering in place.
Some houses give their residents visions of slaughters
or trauma. 133 Poisonwood gives Daddy a swift vision of his daughter’s vertigo.
He doesn’t know it’s anyone else’s insight, and wouldn’t believe it, but he’s
at the stairs in seconds. Ana holds onto his pants leg until she feels safe.
All 133 Poisonwood has is a light touch, but it knows
how to use it. Haunting is an art.
The basement is only half-underground, so the windows
are level with the freshly mowed front lawn. Ana spends a moment giggling at
the view. Then she whizzes around the basement, from the combination furnace
and laundry room, to a storage closet, and to a pair of vacant rooms. They
would make a perfect child’s bedroom and playroom.
Ana goes to the west room, announcing, “Daddy. You can
keep all the ghosts you bust in here.”
Mrs. Weiss offers, “One of these could be a home office.
You said you telecommute? Google Fiber is coming to the area next year.”
Daddy says, “I want to work from home more. I’m a
software engineer, and I host a skeptic podcast. You might have heard us.”
The house isn’t offended. It doesn’t believe in ghosts
either.
Ana hops back and forth between the two rooms, scrutinizing
over and over as though they’ll grow. That is a trick the house doesn’t have.
Daddy says, “We could sleep next door to each other.
What do you think?”
Ana says, “But I want a big dino room.”
“You’re getting to be a big dinosaur. How about the room
on the top floor?”
Ana’s bottom lip shoots upward like she’s going to run.
She clearly won’t settle for the room on the top floor, and there’s only a
master bedroom on the first floor. A tantrum is close, and it could ruin
everything.
So 133 Poisonwood plays its ace. Every decent haunted
house has at least one secret room. Dorottya Blasko used to sew down here when
she didn’t want to be pestered, in a room her family couldn’t find. It would be
a perfect place for Ana to grow up in. Perhaps she’ll learn to sew.
With the sound of an affectionate kitten, the door opens.
Shock hits the adults, who definitely don’t remember there being a room there.
Ana doesn’t care, and runs to explore it.
“Uh, we aren’t showing that room,” Mrs. Weiss says,
scrambling to cover for herself. She’s panicking, imagining hazards and lawsuits.
She doesn’t understand. 133 Poisonwood is going to
clinch the sale for them.
The room runs deep, with an expansive window that hasn’t been seen from the outside in over twenty years. A sewing box with a scarlet and royal blue quilted exterior sits next to a rocking chair, and beneath the window is a broad spinning wheel that still smells like hobbies. Many great dresses were supposed to come out of this room. There are a few cracks on the concrete floor. Nothing a loving father can’t fill in to perfect his daughter’s big dino room.
“Ana,” Daddy calls. “Stay near me.”
Ana ignores the call and runs straight up to the spinning wheel. Her little hands grab onto spokes in the drive wheel, and she turns to the door. “It’s like Mommy’s.”
Daddy says, “Careful, that’s not ours—”
Ana yanks the wheel around to show it off to the adults. She pulls before the house can resist, and the entire device creaks and wobbles. It topples straight down on top of Ana, throwing her to the floor.
Daddy grabs her shoulders and pulls her from between the
cracked wheel and treadle. Ana’s too distracted bawling to feel her necklace
snag the spindle. The thin chain snaps, and the locket slips from her neck and down
a crack in the floor. Without intending to, the house sucks the chain down like
a strand of spaghetti. The house tries to spit it out.
Daddy squeezes Ana to his chest so hard she could pop,
and keeps repeating, “Are you alright? Are you alright?”
Mrs. Weiss gestures and says, “Her hand.”
“Are you alright?”
Ana says, “Let me fix it!” She stretches her hands to
the broken spinning wheel. One of her hands is bleeding and she still wants to
use them to clean up her mess. She says, “Daddy, let go, I’ll fix it. Don’t
make the ghosts sad.”
That breaks Daddy’s concerned trance, and he lifts her
under one arm, ignoring the kicking of her feet. He marches for the stairs.
“No. I warned you, and we are leaving.”
“Daddy, no!”
“No more. Say goodbye. You see the ghosts aren’t saying
goodbye? Do you know why?”
An urge falls over the house to slam the door shut and
trap them all inside. Daddy, Ana, and even Mrs. Weiss, force them all to spend
eternity in its hidden room, where they can make dresses, and stay cool in the
summer, and warm in the winter. It will shelter them from all the hurricanes
the world can create. It needs them.
The phantom door’s hinges and knob tremble as 133
Poisonwood fights itself. In that moment it knows what makes other homes go
evil. The killer houses can’t bear to be alone.
133 Poisonwood Avenue would be stronger if it was a
killer house. But it isn’t one.
It leaves its rooms open as Daddy carries his bawling
daughter out of the basement, her incoherent sounds resonating through the
house’s crawl spaces. He carries her up the stairs and out the front door
without a backward glance. This time, he remembers to close the door.
*
133 Poisonwood leaves the secret room open in the hopes
that someone will come back. It squeezes the cracks in its floor closed,
popping the locket out without scratching it. Inside is the picture of a woman with
a thick nose and proud eyes. She would have made an excellent ghost. The house
would take a phantom for an inhabitant at this point.
The afternoon is sluggish. There are four more visitors,
none of whom stay long enough to check the basement for treasure. The hours
chug by, and Mrs. Weiss spends most of the time on her phone.
With half an hour of daylight left, a red sedan pulls
up. The driver lingers outside for two minutes before knocking. It’s Daddy.
Mrs. Weiss answers and forces a smile, “Ulisses. Is Ana
okay?”
Daddy says, “It was a scratch. Thanks for being
understanding before.”
She says, “I’m so sorry about that. I told the team this
place was supposed to be empty.”
He says, “Have you seen a locket? Ana wears it
everywhere and it’s gone missing.”
Mrs. Weiss holds the door open for him, “We can check
around. What does it look like?”
“It has a picture of Ana’s mother inside. It’s one of
few gifts she still has from her.”
“She was your wife?”
“She was going to be,” he says, and looks around the master
bedroom with an expression even emptier than the space. “There was an accident
on our apartment’s fire escape. She had a fall.”
“Oh, that’s terrible.”
“Right now, Ana needs all the comfort she can get. So if
we can find that locket, it’d save our lives.”
They look around, the man so tired every step looks
heavy. It’s amazing he could stagger into a motel bed, let alone go hunting for
a locket. The house hasn’t seen someone as in need of a home in years.
Mrs. Weiss says, “I had something like that after my father passed away. Makes her feel like her mother’s spirit is still with her?”
“Superstitions aren’t comforting to me,” he says,
fatigue giving way to scorn, as though daring the house’s walls to do
something. “And Ana’s mother was an atheist.”
The house is tempted to give Daddy the shock of his life
and toss the locket to him. Give him back the image of his lover and proof of
its power.
But he doesn’t need to believe in hauntings. With his
slumped shoulders, and his clothes stained with his daughter’s food, and the
pieces of their lives he is trying to put together?
What he needs is a win.
So the house uses what little strength it has to
levitate the locket onto the top basement stair. It twists it so the light
catches it, and shines into the upstairs living room.
Daddy finds the precious locket on his own. He bends
over it, brushing a thumb over his lover’s image. He heaves a sigh through his
nose like he wishes he could fit inside the locket.
The house lets him be proud of himself. It will hold
onto this memory for the cold years ahead until it is bulldozed.
Daddy stands up without the locket, leaving it behind.
The house tries to send him a vision warning that he’s forgotten what he came
here for.
The mental image doesn’t change what he’s doing.
He goes right outside, to his sedan where Ana sits,
rubbing at her puffy eyes and runny nose. Daddy says, “It might be here. Do you
want to help me look?”
The house cannot cry. There is just a little air in its
pipes.
Ana flops out of the car and trudges into 133
Poisonwood. She spends too long poking around the kitchen, a room she was
barely in earlier. Daddy plays an even worse sleuth, deliberately checking
around empty hallways that give him a view of when Ana finally checks the
basement door.
“Mommy!” she cheers. She sits right down on the stair
and hugs the locket to her throat, voice trembling with emotions too big for
her body. “Mommy came back!”
Daddy asks, “So you found it?”
“I told you she’d be here. Mommy wanted me to find it.”
“Your mother didn’t do that, Ana.”
She scrunches her nose and mimics his voice to say, “You
don’t know that.”
Daddy puts a hand over the locket. “You found this. Not
anybody else. You don’t need ghosts,” and he taps her on the temple, “because
you have the best parts of your mother inside you.”
Ana gazes up at her father with glossy eyes.
133 Poisonwood has never so understood what it wants to
do for people as when it watches this parent. It tries to hold onto the
vibrations of his voice in its walls.
Then Ana says, “Nah. The ghosts left it here.”
She hauls off to the living room, hopping in late
afternoon sunbeams, and holding the locket in the light.
Reason is defeated for the moment. Daddy doesn’t fight
her on it. He rests against the wall, against the wallpaper he hates, taking
the house for granted. The house plays a tune on its shingles, the same one
that calmed Dorottya Blasko in 1989.
Daddy calls, “Mrs. Weiss?”
“Please, call me Carol,” she says. She’s been pretending
she wasn’t lurking ten feet away this whole time. “You’re very sweet with Ana. You
can just tell some people were born with the knack.”
“Three rooms in the basement. This is a lot of house for
the money, isn’t it?”
“It’s just a family short of a home.”
133 Poisonwood would be more charmed by the line if it
hadn’t heard her say that eight other times today.
Daddy says, “I like the space this place has for her.
There’s plenty of room to run. And she loves to run. Going to be a track and
field star.”
“I said to myself that this place looks happier when
you’re in it. It suits you.”
The house can tell he wants to say he doesn’t believe
that.
He says, “What we need is somewhere to start fresh.”
Mrs. Weiss offers him a folio of data on the house and
gestures to the basement. “Care for another look around?”
“Yeah. Thank you.” He takes the folio. “While Ana is
playing upstairs, can we check how insulated from sound that sewing room is?
It’s funny, but I thought it might make a good podcast studio.”
If houses could laugh. He sounds so unguarded and
sincere.
This tired skeptic doesn’t need to know that his podcast room doesn’t technically exist. If he finds the blueprints for 133 Poisonwood, he’ll shave away what he doesn’t understand with Occam’s razor. The house doesn’t need him to believe in anything but himself and his daughter. It isn’t here for the gratitude. It can try to support him as well as he supports Ana. If anything is as patient as a parent, it’s a haunting.
Editor’s Note: The original posting of this story included a terminology error where a spindle was confused with a spinning wheel. This has been corrected. Thank you to “Janice in GA” who first pointed out the error.
Author’s Note: At the World Fantasy Convention in 2018, I went to dinner with some lovely people who let me babble about Horror. I read, watch, and play Horror every week, but I barely ever write it. Instead I tend to put Horror-y things back out as humorous stories or heartwarming stories. Off the top of my head I gave them the example that if I wrote a haunted house story, it wouldn’t be like Haunting of Hill House – it would be about a haunted house that was lonely and desperately wanted someone to live in it. One of my fellow authors reached across the table, grabbed me by the hand, and said, “Please write this.” On the train ride home, I did. So this story is dedicated to Natalia Theodoridou, who demanded I help 133 Poisonwood find its family and its audience – all of you.
John (@wiswell) is a disabled writer who lives where New York keeps all its trees. His work has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Nature Futures, and Fireside Magazine. He wishes all readers the comfort that their settings wish they could provide.
