Strange Afterlives

STRANGE AFTERLIVES

Edited by A. Lee Martinez

Published by Fire-Breathing Rat Publications

Copyright 2015 Respective Authors

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Mouse Trouble -- A. Lee Martinez

After the Invasion -- Russell C. Connor

Seated Woman with Child -- Rosemary Clement-Moore

Roots -- Brooke Fossey

The Late Mrs. Buttons -- Sally Hamilton

An Undercover Haunting -- Kristi Hutson

Gimme Shelter -- David C. Whiteman

01001110 -- Nik Holman

The Runner -- John Bartell

Night Witch -- Shawn Scarber

The Scavenger Hunt -- John Sanders Jr.

From the Editor / Contact Info

MOUSE TROUBLE

A. Lee Martinez

A Lee Martinez has been a professionally published fantasy / science fiction writer since his first novel, Gil’s All Fright Diner, was first published in 2005 and was a frustrated, aspiring fantasy / science fiction for 13 years before that. He has had 10 standalone novels published along the way, and is currently embarking upon his first trilogy for Simon & Schuster. He enjoys stuff and things, lives with an indeterminate amount of pets (and his wife), and is a pretty cool guy according to his mother and anyone he dared allow us to ask.

There’s your problem, said the exterminator. You’ve got enchanted mice.

Oh, hell, said Tim. I didn’t think that could happen here.

Nobody does. The exterminator scratched his rough chin and tapped the wall with his knuckles. Regular mice are no problem. I could get rid of those for you, but enchanted mice, those are tricky.

How?

Have you had any wizards move into the neighborhood lately?

There’s just that old hippy down the block. Long beard. Always hanging out in his garage with the weird music and the multicolored smoke coming out of his windows. Tim groaned. Well, this is his fault.

Most likely, but, word to the wise, I wouldn’t go filing a complaint with the homeowners association just yet. Not unless you want to end up with a curse on your head. Wizards don’t take well to things like that.

So what am I supposed to do? Ignore them?

Wouldn’t recommend it. Enchanted mice only get worse. At first, they’re crawling along in your walls. Then they start getting more ambitious. I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who was offered up as a sacrifice to whatever unholy gods mice worship. Mind you, that’s a worst case scenario. Usually, they’ll just mesmerize you to make them sandwiches or burn the house down trying to turn lead into cheese.

I didn’t think mice actually liked cheese.

Enchanted mice do.

They’re be that dangerous?

Sometimes. It’s a crapshoot. Maybe one in a ten thousand enchanted mice has any significant power, but the ones that do . . . throwing a little cheese their way isn’t going to keep them satisfied for long.

Tim did not need this hassle. His divorce was barely finalized. All he wanted to do was revel in the relief of it. Now he had magical mice carving runes in his walls and mixing potions with pilfered cleaning supplies.

I’ve got something in the back of the truck that can help, said the exterminator.

He returned with a small, wooden sarcophagus.

What’s that? asked Tim.

Enchanted mice. You need an enchanted cat.

I’m allergic to cats.

Doesn’t matter with this one. This one is as low maintenance as you can get. You don’t have to feed it or clean its litter box. You just put it in the corner of a room and forget about it.

Tim tried opening the sarcophagus, but it was sealed shut.

It opens and closes on its own, explained the exterminator. All you need to do is put on this necklace and recite a short chant.

I’m no good with magic.

In college, Tim had tried animating a doll in an aptitude test. His doll had taken a single step before exploding. Twice.

It’s fine, said the exterminator. This is hardly magic at all. A baby could do it so long as the baby could read ancient Sumerian.

I can’t read Sumerian.

The exterminator chuckled. I’m kidding. It’s all phonetically broken down for you already.

Tim hesitated.

You’ve got two choices, pal, explained the exterminator. Use this cat or move. But good luck selling a house with an enchanted mouse infestation.

Tim wondered if Maureen knew about the mice, and if that was why she hadn’t fought him harder for the house. Probably not. They had their problems, but she’d never been spiteful.

He took the cat.

The only complicated bit was the incantation, which took three minutes to read in full. Tim kept worrying he was saying it wrong, and that some terrible curse would befall his house because of it. Nothing exploded. He took that as a good sign.

He put the necklace on. The ankh warmed against his skin and the sarcophagus rattled ever-so-slightly. It didn’t open. It didn’t do anything else. It only sat there. Tim placed it by his refrigerator, where he’d seen some mice, and promptly forgot about it until bedtime.

When the house was quiet, he could hear the mice crawling in the walls. Sometimes, he heard the little explosions as they performed secret magics. The paint on one bedroom wall had spontaneously peeled away one night, and there was water damage from when a tiny rainstorm had drifted through his living room.

He rolled over, closed his eyes, and tried to get some sleep.

He awoke a little while later with a chill running through him. Some unnamable terror seized him. He sat up, but he didn’t turn on the light. Something told him he shouldn’t dare.

In the darkness, a thing slipped across his dresser. The shadow, silent and black, stared at him with two bright green eyes. Eyes that held him in their hypnotic grasp. The malevolent, unnatural power within them caused him to break out in freezing sweat. The thing turned away, slinking from the room, and only when it was gone did Tim have the will to reach for the light switch.

He didn’t flip it. Not right away. He didn’t want to risk seeing the thing in the light. When he finally did, a pile of dead mice were stacked on his dresser. A dozen corpses offered up to him by his dreadful servant.

It would’ve been nice if the cat had eaten the mice, but the undead probably didn’t eat. He cleaned up the mess, and while throwing away the corpses in the kitchen trash, he nodded to the sarcophagus, now sealed for the night.

Glad you’re on my side, buddy.

The cat continued to wake Tim every night. It never made a sound, but its presence alone was enough to stir him. He learned to not look at it, and he started waiting until morning to dispose of the mice.

Within a week, things were looking up. He still heard the mice, but they were quieter, more cautious. No miniature explosions. No weird supernatural goings on.

He did start to feel bad about the mice. He wasn’t sure how intelligent they were. Most experts agreed that they weren’t sentient. They just had a knack for magic and did these sort of things by instinct.

Even if that was true, it didn’t always sit well with Tim. He had nothing against mice. He didn’t want them living in his house. He didn’t want to end up sacrificed. He told himself it needed to be done, but it still bothered him sometimes. Especially when he found a mouse corpse wearing a tiny cape and pointed hat.

He woke up, like always, with that supernatural chill of death in the air, but something was different this time. He closed his eyes and waited for the cat to go away. It didn’t. Its cold green eyes burned into his back. He could feel it as surely as if the thing was poking him with a knife.

He turned around and glimpsed the thing lurking silently on his dresser.

Okay, he said. Good job. As always. Shoo now.

The undead minion stayed put.

Something scurried at the cat’s feet. A mouse. Still alive, somehow. The cat ignored it.

What the hell?

The cat turned and vanished. He lost sight of it, but it must’ve gone back to its resting place. Maybe the magic was winding down.

Tim turned on the light. There wasn’t any offering this time. Instead of a small mound of corpses, there was only a single, living mouse, twitching its whiskers, holding a silver ankh in its paws.

His hand went for the necklace around his neck. It wasn’t there.

Oh, shit.

The cat jumped on the foot of the bed. The dreadful thing was withered and gray. Its face was a twisted skull, and its eyes, so cold and green in the darkness, were two empty sockets in the light. Cracking of old flesh accompanied the swish of its long, malformed tail. Its claws were long and black, like miniature sacrificial daggers.

It opened its mouth as if to hiss but made no noise.

Now wait a minute, said Tim, not to the cat but to the mouse. We don’t have to do this. We can work out a compromise.

The mouse wiggled its nose and chortled with a squeaky cackle.

The cat pounced. Tim threw his blanket over it, but that wouldn’t work for long. Already, the thing was tearing through it with its terrible claws. Tim grabbed one end of the blanket and smashed the cat against the wall. Over and over again. Until he’d smashed a hole in