Darker Than Weird: Fourteen Tales of Horror

The Key to Your Heart Is Made of Brass

Wake up. Something is wrong.

Greasy orange light smears the dark. Only one of your optical lenses is functional. The walls are slabs of corroded metal with rust patterns like dumb staring phantoms. You lie awkwardly across the oily flagstones of an alley where curtains of black chains obscure the night. Bronze lanterns hang from those chains, but most of them are dead. Lightless. Like your left optical.

Struggling to hands and knees, you realize your porcelain face has been shattered. White shards gleam on the alley floor between puddles of greenish scum. You lift a gloved hand to explore your ruined visage; the upper left side took the brunt of the blow. Your fingers brush across the silver skull beneath the missing porcelain.

This won’t do at all. To be seen without one’s face. It could damage your reputation.

It might even be illegal.

That same blow — the one you don’t quite remember — must have dislodged your left optical. There it is now, lying among the porcelain fragments, a thumb-sized orb of blue glass. Removing your gloves, you wipe the scum from its glistening surface and carefully reattach it to the vitreous filaments inside your left socket. Much better. Your depth perception is restored. Inside its silver casement, your tender brain begins processing images from the repaired optical. You slide the blue orb carefully back into place, grateful it wasn’t damaged.

Now at least you can see. And perhaps remember…

The girl…the Doxie…you remember her ceramic face, exquisitely formed with tiny lips painted crimson. The gentle amber of her opticals peeking through the beautiful mask. Her gown, a flowing affair of scarlet satin and black lace. The red fabric hugs the supple curves of her torso before spreading out to engulf her lower body. You met her in the alley, beneath the dead lanterns. By that fact alone, you know what she must be.

She is a Beatific, like you…but not like you at all. She’s a prostitute.

Your bodies are sculpted to the same degree of slim perfection, your faces designed for maximum aesthetic value. Yet she is a creature of the streets, the gutters, a plaything of her nameless clients. It dawns on you with a sick familiarity that you are one of those clients.

You snap out of the vision, frightened by rushing memories. Your waistcoat is stained by the filth of the alley, but you brush off the grit as best you can. Near a receptacle of eroded copper tubing you find your top hat. Your expensive walking stick appears to be gone…stolen. Perhaps it was the bludgeon that shattered your face; the pommel was a bronze orb sculpted in the likeness of a grinning toad. A formidable weapon, but it had done you no good. Your attacker, however, had found it a useful tool.

The purple neon glow of the street is a watery vision at the end of the alley. Before you can go out there and find another face to wear, you must look presentable. There are certain rules of Beatific conduct, and you must adhere. Reputation is everything in the Urbille.

Checking your neck kerchief, you discover the emptiness in your breast pocket. A shock of panic runs through your lean limbs, and the gears of your joints grind like creaking doors. Your fingers invade the pocket, searching but finding nothing. The key to your heart is gone. Horror rushes down your throat like a bitter oil. The gentle whirring and clicking in your chest cavity is now the sound of ticking dread.

You sink to your knees, searching the alley. Where is the key? You remember inserting it into the narrow slot in your bare chest last morning, turning it full round ninety-nine times, enough to power the gears and cogs and wheels and springs of your Beatific body for another twenty-four hours. Winding the clockwork mechanism that is your living core. The key is made of shining yellow brass, and like all Beatific heart-keys it is one-of-a-kind, a customized symbol of your status.

It’s not here!

You paw at your trousers and find that ironically your pocket watch has not been stolen. It is almost three a.m. You have six hours to get a replacement key made. The alternative is unthinkable…winding down to an inanimate collection of useless parts while your brain rapidly dies inside its silver casement.

The Doxie…she must have taken the key. But that makes no sense. She…or someone with her…clubbed you over the head with your own walking stick and stole your heart key. Why would anyone else want it? It will not wind the heart of any other Beatific. Its only value is the daily function it plays in keeping you, and only you, alive. This is the course of your existence: Wake, wind the heart-key, get dressed, and go about the business of your day.

You had never considered the possibility of a day without your key.

You have never considered what that would mean.

Duplicating one’s heart-key is a High Crime. Beatifics have been dragged off to prison for contemplating it aloud. The Potentates’ decree was One Key for One Heart. “We must preserve our individuality or risk becoming soulless copies of one another.” The words of Tribune Anteus, as broadcast on high-frequency transistor during the last key duplication scandal.

Fear breaks the icy stillness of your reverie.

The key isn’t here, so there is only one option.

You must solicit the Keymaker.

And you have six hours.

You pull the top hat down low to disguise your shattered cheek. At this late hour no one of any consequence is likely to be about. At least not in this quarter of the Urbille, where Beatifics seldom wander. Here among the decaying spires of ancient metal, the bulwarks of rust and corrosion, the moldering and brittle bones of bygone industrialism. Decrepit factories have become squatter’s kingdoms, and iron bridges span brackish waterways where finned, scaly things slither and swim.

Lanterns gleam atop iron posts, the flames of viridian gas dancing in their soiled globes. This is the Rusted Zone, where the metals of previous ages have gathered like flotsam washed upon a dirty beach. You would never come here in the light of day. But you have needs, and your wife has been dead thirty years. A man…even a Beatific man…can only hold out so long.

As you shuffle into the deserted street your elastic skin tightens. The sign of a brewing rabidity in the atmosphere. A storm will break soon.

Your time with the Doxie comes back to you now. A shameful memory of fulfilling base desires. This isn’t the first time you’ve crawled among the rust to seek the company of whores. You always feel pity for them, even as you enjoy the pleasures of their trade. You remember this one well…your gloved fingers against the base of her skull, the golden glow of her opticals behind the porcelain facade. Revulsion intrudes as you remember the slick softness of her thoughts…the way your consciousness slid hungrily into hers. You almost feel sorry for her, and all her kind, those who open their minds to the nearest paying stranger. Until you remember what she did to you…broke your face and stole the key to your heart.

Her psyche was a red and pulsing universe. You soared there like some winged beast, looking down upon the nooks and crannies of intellect from the lofty cloud-realm of her thoughtsphere. You did not consider the countless number of other men who had invaded her mentality. Somehow this never matters in the throes of psychic ecstasy.

You played with stray impulses, gnawed on the raw assumptions of her personal reality, dominated her cognition. Such a satisfying conquest of the female mind by the lusty intelligence of the male. She was sweet, this one…yet something untouchable lingered beyond the curtains of her memory…something she refused to share with any client, including you. Your thoughts slammed against those gates like battering rams…you wanted to know her every secret. You wanted to claim her utterly, never caring that you might discover what caused her to fall from grace, why this Beatific maiden became a Doxie trollop. In the heady grip of your blind need, you strove to penetrate deeper.

That’s when it must have happened…someone in that dingy alley grabbed your bronze-topped cane and brought it down against your forehead with all force. The mental link was broken immediately as you lost consciousness. Your mind yanked from hers as your body fell to the filthy flagstones. She must have had a partner. But why? What could she…they… possibly gain by stealing your heart-key? If they wanted you dead, they could have killed you right there.

The wind picks up, pelting you with clouds of sandy rust. The twisting street (you never caught the name) is narrow, and few other figures move in the pre-rabid gloom. Outside the doorway of a ramshackle saloon a pair of Clatterpox ramble noisily. The neon placard above the door reads THE DISTENDED BLADDER. Three more Clatterpox lumber across the street ahead of you, heading for the tavern. Their cylindrical bodies rumble and clang, supported by thin iron legs and metal-slab feet. Their chest furnaces burn hot, exuding foul vapors and smokes from the various holes, tubes, and vents placed about their grotesque frames. They turn oval heads toward you as you walk past, staring with flat optical lenses of gray glass.

Poor souls. You do not envy their mean existence, hearts fueled by chunks of burning anthracite, their days spent working mindless jobs just to afford the black rocks that keep them ambulatory. They are the poor of the Urbille, the wretched working class. If they recognize you as a Beatific, they may assault you. Class distinctions are dangerous among the rust. If they knew you were the head of House Honore, what would they do? Tear you apart and sell your gears for scrap?

Now it comes to you: Could the Doxie have known? She might have been someone important at one time. She might even be an ancestral enemy. Someone your father or grandfather ruined in some forgotten business dealing. Could the theft of your heart-key be some form of belated revenge?

One of the Clatterpox shouts something as you hurry past, but you turn the corner without looking back. The sound of their rattling bodies follows you down the street, but you turn and turn again, finally losing them in the shadows of a lightless thoroughfare. Here the sky is clear, and you see the swirling constellations of night. Unfortunately, this welcome sight does you no good because the rabidity has arrived.

It swoops down upon the dark streets like some predatory bird of legend. A tightening of the air itself, a freezing and cracking of atmospheric forces. It keens in your ears like a wailing tea pot, and the wind takes your hat into the night. Fissures in the fabric of space/time erupt along the street. You’ve walked right into the heart of this one. The air splits open not six yards away, and you see another world revealed beyond the throbbing gash.

It’s green and steaming…a jungle like the ones from ancient botanical texts. Colossal lizards feast on one another, tearing flesh, skin, and tendon with terrible fangs. The sounds of their shrieking flows from the vacuity. The gravity of that primeval world pulls at your lapels. If you let it, it will pull you through and your life will wind down in that nameless wilderness. The gears of your legs grind as you pull away from the hovering fissure. The wind screams. You walk against it and pass another vacuity, a rip in existence that pulses and expands, bleeding gravity. Beyond this one you see a night-dark sea and a distant shore lined with luminous towers.

Golden-skinned beings sail the waters in skiffs of pale wood. They must see the vacuity from their side as well because their glowing emerald opticals turn toward you as you walk past. The vision dies as the vacuity begins to shrink.

You stumble into the dying wind as the storm subsides. A dozen more vacuities glimmer in your vicinity. You ignore them. At a meeting of four streets ahead, you see a Clatterpox staring at one of the fissures as it closes completely. Then his round head turns toward you with a fresh burst of vapor and a hissing sound. Is it the same one, who called after you? He stares uncertainly in the post-rabidity calm. You step toward the windows of an all-night merchant on the corner.

Above the doorway the name HOFFSTEIN’S gleams in torrid blue neon. You walk inside and find yourself hemmed by rows of crowded shelves. The proprietor is a handsome Beatific, but he greets you with a suspicious glare as you approach the display of porcelains. No time to be choosy. You pick the first masculine face on the stand and carry it to the counter.

“You’re out late, Sir Honore,” says the proprietor. “Some wild party, eh?”

“Something like that,” you say.

“Must have gotten a bit rough…” He nods toward your busted face.

You say nothing, avoiding his glare.

“Anything else?”

“No,” you say. “Yes…a hat. That one.” You pick a simple black topper. It’s been nearly an hour since you awoke in the alley. You must move quicker.

“Seventeen brilliants,” says the merchant.

“Put it on my account,” you say. Earlier tonight you emptied your pockets to pay the Doxie.

“Very well. Have a good morning, Sir Honore.”

You cast your old face into the store’s dustbin and replace it with this splendid new one.

New hat sitting firmly on your head, you head back into the street.

Making for the Steeple Road, you notice a shadowy figure trailing a block behind you. You stop near a pile of metal sculpted into a hideous beast and stare back at the pursuer. A Clatterpox, of course. Now you can hear his hissing, rattling locomotion as he draws nearer. He carries a club or a dark blade in one of his metal fists…you cannot tell which.

Now you run. The Rusted Zone becomes a blur of gray, brown, and dirty neon, and you ache to put it all behind you. The Clatterpox could never move as fast as you. Soon you see the Steeple Gate, and the faces of its stone gargoyles glare at you like old friends. You speak the word of command and the gate opens. On its other side the streets are well-lit with spherical lanterns kept shiny and clean. As the iron gate closes behind you, you realize the Clatterpox might know the command word as well. So you hurry, shuffling between the houses of ornate stone and their lawns of crushed glass until you see the spiked fence of the Keymaker’s estate.

A great brass bell hangs at the gate, and you hate to ring it so late. Your pocket watch says 4:03 a.m. But it can’t be helped. You ring the bell once. Wait. Again. No lights go on inside the stone mansion. You ring it a third time and notice the front gate is ajar. You pull it open just enough to creep inside. The lawn is immaculate, filled with sculptures of glass and stone in the shapes of skulls, fantastic machinery, and abstract forms recalling the Organic Age. Your shoes sound far too loud as you walk across the crushed glass toward the Keymaker’s door. He will be annoyed to be awakened so late (or so early), but you will offer him whatever price he demands to cast a mold of your chest lock and make a new key before 9:00 a.m. You have little choice. His workshop is attached the mansion, a domed miniature factory of green stone, possibly jade. Certainly you cannot be the first panicked Beatific who has come to him after hours with a lost key emergency.

The front doors are hanging open and a single lantern burns somewhere inside. Something is not quite right here. The estate is not large, but the nearest neighbor is several hundred yards away. Perhaps someone out there heard you ring the gate-bell, or perhaps not. But the front door should not be open.

You almost stumble over a lump of metal at your feet. A two-headed canine lying on its side. A lean body of iron and bronze covered in fuzzy, elastic skin. Both its necks have been broken, and the inner workings of its guts have been torn out. A scattered mess of cogs and gears litters the foyer.

You walk cautiously toward the dim light, already knowing what you will find. Ahead lies the parlor where the Keymaker keeps his bookshelves. You were here twelve years ago for a party honoring his fourteenth decade of service. You remember his great easy chair, where he sat and entertained his guests with stories of his youth. Now you slip into that curtained room and see him sitting in the same chair, dressed in a satin night-robe. The lantern flickers unsteadily on the table beside him. He is headless, his body reclining on the cushioned velvet, gloved hands resting on his lap. His head lies a few feet away, fractured porcelain cheek against the burgundy carpet. Scattered bits of copper and wire spill across his chest and lap. Once again fear steals your ability to move.

The Keymaker is dead.

You press your ear to his breast, but you hear no mechanized whirring, no clicking of cogs or sighing springs. The lantern oil burns low; this happened hours ago. You know his brain has died inside that severed skull. He is gone.

You stumble backwards until you fall into the soft embrace of a couch.

The Keymaker was not a true Beatific…he did not inherit his title…he worked to earn it. He was a laborer, basically. He had no fortune or noble lineage. But he was a man of honor. And he was the only man who could save your life.

A noise breaks the silence of the dead man’s study. Something heavy, moving on the terrace. No, in the foyer. You glance around for a weapon, an exit, something, anything…an ancient cutlass hangs on the wall, blade eaten by rust. You pull it down and brandish it, fists wrapped around the hilt. You have no idea how to fight with blade or pistol.

The sound moves nearer. Heavy footsteps. Now the hissing of steam through a vent.

You remember the sound of the Clatterpox following you, and sure enough he stands in the doorway of the parlor. A terrible thing of corroded iron, leaking pistons, purple vapors, and swiveling joints. He stares at you with his flat gray opticals. His mouth is a horizontal slit, dividing round chin from oval head. He sighs at you…no, it’s the sound of hot air leaking from his heart-furnace. The grill of his chest emits orange light where the anthracite burns hot.

“Honore,” he says, voice flat like the ringing of tin. “We have something you want.”

Now you recognize the weapon he carries in his left hand.

It is your walking stick with the bronze toad head.

“Who are you?” You wave the useless cutlass at the Clatterpox like some protective talisman. But you know it offers no protection.

“My name is Flux.”

“You’re with the Doxie.”

“Yes.”

“You assaulted me and stole the key to my heart.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The Clatterpox shrugs its rusted shoulders. Something pings inside its whirring guts.

“Because you have wealth. We need it.”

“Extortion…the device of cowards.” Your words sound brave. But terror swims in your chest cavity, runs along your plastic skin like spilled oil.

“That may be, but we have your brass key. We want a hundred-thousand brilliants. Bring them to the Well of Bones at sunrise. Or we will drop your key in the well and you will never find it. You’ll wind down. Your brain will rot and die.”

You consider this. Your ancestral fortune is vast. You won’t miss a hundred thousand brilliants. Besides, there are no other options.

“You…you killed the Keymaker.”

“Of course,” says the Clatterpox. “Don’t be late.” He thumps across the foyer and out into the courtyard, then beyond the gate and down the road into the Rusted Zone.

You lay the ancient sword down at the Keymaker’s feet. There is no time to mourn for him. The sun will rise in less than two hours.

You run along the winding avenues of the Good Hills, ignoring the stone domiciles of your fellow Beatifics. Rarely do any lights glow in the oval windows at this rude hour. You dash north, heading toward your manor house, and the fractured moon rises above the palace of the Potentates at the top of the great hill. Its crumbling walls and crenellated towers are older than the Urbille itself, and large enough to house a second city, which according to rumor, it does. The Potentates live inside its walls of mossy stone, and not even Beatifics are allowed to sully its precincts with their presence. Once per year the Potentates emerge for the Parade of Iniquities, carried by clockwork horses through the streets of the Urbille, wrapped in their dark robes and chains of gold, their bulbous heads veiled, the dark shadows of their opticals scanning the populace in silent judgment. They are terribly tall, the Potentates, hence the immensity of their stone citadel. Rumors speak also of the labyrinth below that towering fortress…a dungeon into which only the most evil and unrepentant of lawbreakers are cast. You imagine the Doxie and her murderous Clatterpox cast into that dark maze, pursued by terrible ancient things.

The Honore Estate lies three miles from the outer wall of the great palace. You reach it an hour before sunrise and race through your front doors toward the sealed portal that guards the lower vaults. Once the house was full of servants, semi-organic toadlings imported from stabilized vacuities. They kept the manse from disintegrating and the cobwebs from accumulating. Now, many years after Siormah wound down and left you, your outer garden is a hideous collection of weeds and vine. Your walls are clammy and the stone crumbles a bit more each year. You often sit here, in the heart of your inherited power, and contemplate the transitory nature of things. At times you can almost feel the pillars and the stone slabs of your walls decaying slowly into blackened sand. Stone is no more permanent than metal. You realized this long ago. Your stone mansion will one day collapse, as will all the Beatific dwellings, and eventually the stone palace itself will tumble down upon the bloated skulls of the Potentates. Will anyone still be alive when that day comes?

At the bottom of the spiral stair you speak the Word of Lineage and the round vault door swings open. Inside a hung lantern lights itself automatically and a world of clashing colors fills the chamber. The floor is hidden under pile after pile of brilliants, precious stones in all the shades of ruby, amber, emerald, topaz, sapphire, violet, opal, and diamond. Here is the great fortune that your ancestors built. And on the four walls of this chamber, emerging from the gray stone in bas-relief, are the faces of those ancestors.

Your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, and a dozen more, going back a thousand years to the last Organic Age. Their opticals open and stare at you with flame-bright lenses. Somehow, as you wade into the room and begin scooping brilliants into an iron chest, their stone lips move and they speak in whispering voices. You try to ignore them, you know their cruel wisdom. You’ve long passed the days when you would come down here for advice. You learned eventually that your ancestors were just as ignorant of the world as you. Their accumulation of wealth and title was their only virtue.

“What are you doing, René?” asks the stone face of your father.

“You fool!” seethes your grandfather’s visage. “Wasting our wealth again!”

“I need this…all of it,” you say, not bothering to meet their radiant opticals. “Leave me alone.”

“Leave him alone, he says!” Your father again. “Still haven’t learned to respect your elders?”

“What are you doing?” asks another face, some older predecessor. Each succeeding member of the family lived longer than the one who came before. “What could be so costly?”

“I’ve lost the key to my heart!” you shout, overcome by strange emotions. “I have to buy it back.”

“By all the Gods That Never Were,” swears your grandfather’s face. “That old scam again. You are being taken for a rube, boy.”

Another stone face speaks, someone from terribly far down the line of ages.

“All of these stones are worthless, you know,” says the face. “Bits of worthless glass. The Potentates manufacture these by the million.”

“Nonsense!” says your father’s visage. “Their worth is what made us a great family.”

“No, he is right,” says another ancient face. “The last true jewels were lost ages ago. This is all fakery. Our wealth is an illusion.”

You scrape more armloads of the brilliants into the chest, hurrying. To stay in this chamber too long will drive you mad. Don’t listen to their babble. They are liars and fools. And they are dead.

“René,” says another nameless face of stone. “All wealth is an illusion. When you join us you will understand.”

“Join us,” says another face. “You are so close already.”

“Join us,” says another, through stone lips.

“Shut up!” you shout.

The faces grow still, but their fiery opticals stare at you.

You close the chest of brilliants, heft it to your shoulder, and leave the vault. The door slams closed behind you like the thunder of a collapsing empire.

You race up the stairs and check your pocket watch.

Less than an hour until sunrise.

You run out the front door, cross the overgrown courtyard, and head down the hillside.

Early risers are lighting their lanterns as you pass the gates of Beatific mansions.

Once through the Steeple Gate you head into the Rusted Zone, directly toward the Well of Bones, clutching the chest in your tireless arms, a precious ransom of a hundred-thousand worthless brilliants.

Along the Avenue of Copper Lungs you nearly stumble into a fizzleshade as it manifests in a haze of wispy hair and antique clothing. It stares at you with transparent opticals, pleading for help. They always want the same thing…the completion of unfinished business. Something left undone before they perished.

Please…this one moans…my name is Enri…I left two children behind when I died. Will you find them and tell them about my hidden gold?

“You died three-thousand years ago,” you mutter, shuffling along under the weight of your burden. “Your children are long dead, too.”

The phantom follows you, blinking in and out of existence, losing its purchase in the living world.

Pleeaaaasssse…it wails. The children will starve! You must help me. I bled to death in this gutter…don’t leave them alone.

“Piss off!” you shout, a stab of guilt in your clicking chest.

Behind you the fizzleshade blinks into nothingness.

The light of pre-dawn limns the corroded skyline with an amber glow. The exact shade of the Doxie’s opticals. You scurry along the streets of twisted metal, avoiding crowds of Clatterpox on their way to the factories. Gendarmes in black trenchcoats and stove-pipe hats patrol the streets now. Their faces are clusters of optical lenses, swiveling in multiple directions at once, observing the early morning activity, always alert for anything out of the ordinary.

Suddenly you realize that you are out of the ordinary. You are exactly the kind of anomaly the gendarmes look for as they enforce the laws of the Urbille: a lone Beatific carrying a heavy chest through the pre-dawn rust. And if that chest were to be inspected, a fortune in brilliants. You walk quietly now, hoping to avoid their attention. If there were time, you might tell them of your blackmailers’ plot and let the Potentates’ justice fall upon the Doxie and her confederate. But by the time they investigated your claims the sun would rise, your heart-key would be lost forever, and you would be dead.

No other course now but the Well of Bones.

You rush past steaming grates, the crooked frames of aluminum huts, and cross a bridge painted with the sigils of feuding Clatterpox gangs. Luckily, at this hour only working citizens will be up and about.

There it is. The walled plaza containing the Well of Bones. You walk through the open gate, glad there are no guards here. Who would care to guard a worthless pit of bones? This place is haunted by the lowest of scavengers, those who climb the sheer walls of the pit for miles deep and crawl back up with a bag of bones to sell for a few copper bits, or trade for drugs. Bone used to be highly valued in the Urbille, but nobody wants it anymore. It is a relic of the organic times.

Now you stand before the great pit, among the piles of scrap metal and the crude huts of bone-divers. There is no time to think about how completely vulnerable you are in this place because the sun has broken the jagged horizon, and you see the Doxie and her Clatterpox enter the plaza.

She moves gracefully across the muddy scrapyard, as out of place as yourself. Today her fine gown is green, the color of damp moss. Her black hair is a tall oval, secured with a spiral of copper wires. Her face is the one you remember: superb with its tiny red lips, arcing painted eyebrows, and the delicate curve of perfect cheeks. Her opticals glimmer at you, although with malice or amusement you cannot say. The Clatterpox named Flux shambles beside her, filling the air with his noxious exhalations.

“Sir Honore,” she greets you, her voice that of a high-bred Beatific. You would never guess she was a mind harlot if you met her on an avenue in the Good Hills. “So glad you could make it.”

You sit the chest of brilliants at her feet. You don’t bother to return her greeting, or to remove your hat. She deserves no respect from you.

The Clatterpox opens the lid of the chest and looks inside. He nods his bulky head, and the Doxie reaches inside her cleavage. She produces the brass key that means your life. She offers it to you in the palm of one white-gloved hand.

“Why?” you ask, taking the key from her. You need to wind your gears soon, but you have about two hours left. And you must know…if she will tell you.

As the Clatterpox lifts the chest in its metal arms, she reaches to caress its grimy cheek.

“You would not understand, Honore.”

“I doubt that I will,” you say. “But I’ve paid a heavy price. I deserve an explanation.”

The Doxie smiles and turns her amber lenses toward you again. “I did it for my lover,” she says.

Your neck gears nearly slip. “You love this Clatterpox?”

“Yes,” she says. “So you do know the concept of love…”

“I am well versed in matters historical, Madame. As well as the poetic arts.”

She nods, the morning light glinting off her delicate nose. “But do you know that love is real? Have you ever felt it?”

“You mock me.”

“No, Honore,” she says. “Not at all. Extort yes, but never mock. I, too, am a Beatific.”

“Your behavior suggests otherwise.”

“We are this way, you and I, only because we could afford the process.”

The process. Beatification. You recall it, three centuries past. A rite of passage, your father called it. The shedding of useless organic bulk, everything but the all-important brain, center of the living intellect.

“Beatification is open to anyone,” she reminds you. “Anyone who can pay a Surgeon’s fees.”

She looks at the Clatterpox Flux again, and he seems to smile, though his iron jaw will not permit such an action.

“You did this for him…” you say it for her, accepting the preposterousness of it. “You wish to Beatify him…so you two can be together.”

“You are wise, Honore,” she says.

“It is…abominable,” you say.

“According to whom?” she asks. “Once Flux’s living brain rests inside a Beatific body, he will be no different than you or I. We really cannot thank you enough, Sir Honore.”

She turns to walk away with her Clatterpox lover and your stolen brilliants, and you want to say something. A last comment or condemnation…but your mind is blank. You squeeze the brass key in your hand, taking comfort from its firmness.

The Doxie’s head erupts like a burst lantern. A shower of porcelain shards, silver fragments, and brain tissue assaults your waistcoat and shirt. The Clatterpox drops the chest and it cracks open, spilling brilliants across the muddy ground.

You stand there numb, paralyzed by shock and confusion, as the black-coated gendarmes rush into the plaza, leaping from walls and gates. Bone-divers scamper from their illegal habitations and climb the walls like pale spiders. The gendarmes carry pistols and rifles, one of which has ended the Doxie’s life.

The enforcers turn their clustered opticals toward the Clatterpox. The rusted monstrosity falls to its knees before the dead Doxie, cradling her headless corpse. Inside the open hollow of her neck, gears and springs pop and grind into stillness. The Clatterpox pulls something from his side…a key that he inserts between her sculpted breasts. The gendarmes believe it a weapon and begin firing. You leap to the ground to avoid the hail of bullets. Lying there, so close to the Doxie and her lover, you watch him turning her heart-key, trying to restart her life. But her head is ruined, her brain — the center of all life functions — spread across the ground, a litter of shredded blue flesh. Yet why is there is no blood or cranial fluid? Her Beatific brain wasn’t alive at all. The organ was dried…congealed…preserved.

Is every Beatific brain like hers — nothing but dead, decayed flesh?

The implications of this question run through your mind yet refuse to take root.

The gendarmes’ bullets bounce off the Clatterpox’s iron body, or create holes like ruptured pustules. He turns the heart-key again and again, heedless of their assault. Eventually, they stop shooting and approach him on foot. The vapors from his vents and exhaust pipes flow black and heavy now. They tear him away from the Doxie’s corpse and secure his arms with titanium shackles.

You start to rise, but two tall gendarmes lift you sharply to your feet. One of them stares at you with his cluster of opticals, nine blue-green lenses bright with the caress of dawn.

“Sir René Honore?” the gendarme asks through some mouth aperture hidden below his high collar.

You nod, still too stunned to speak.

“By order of the Tribune, you are under arrest.”

“What? I have done nothing. I was blackmailed…”

“We understand,” says the gendarme, his anterior opticals already scouring the rest of the plaza. “To blackmail a Beatific is a High Crime. As is the paying of any funds to blackmailers. You broke the law. You will face justice.”

You watch as they gather up the body and assorted remains of the Doxie and cast her into the Well of Bones. You know she will fall for several minutes before she reaches the bottom. There she will lie among the antediluvian bones, until perhaps some bone-diver gathers up her parts to sell as scrap. All that is left of her are the shards of an exquisite face, a few slivers of porcelain lying in the mud.

The Clatterpox Flux wheezes and coughs as they drag him away.

The gendarmes leave the brilliants lying trampled in the muck. Mere bits of colored glass beneath their notice.

You remember what the elder stone face said about the jewels, and you laugh as they lead you out of the plaza and into the rust.

You’re still laughing when they haul you before the veiled Tribune on his high bench, and later when they drag you across the stone bridge and deep beneath the walls of the crumbling palace. In the endless dark of the labyrinth, your laughter draws nameless things closer.

Soon you will join your ancestors on the wall of the sunken vault.

A laughing face of stone.