This month’s stories are by authors Jeffrey Ford, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Kat Howard, and Eugenia Triantafyllou. The first story of the month is free to read, but it’s our paying subscribers who allow us to keep publishing great stories week after week.
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For May’s first, free, story, we are thrilled to share a magical and slightly gritty new Jeffrey Ford tale that kept surprising us at every twist and turn. ~ Julian and Fran, May 5, 2024
In Bludd
by Jeffrey Ford
Hartly, in a rumpled brown suit and orange tie, sat on his bed and stared out the tall, open window before him. A breeze lifted the gauze curtains, and in the distance the sun was setting out at the edge of the ancient city. He smoked a slow roll-up and, after tamping it out in a half a clamshell, rose and went to a table sitting between himself and the view. Atop that table there was a blue enamel carrying case—three foot by three by three. The entirety of it was covered with crudely painted flowers, perhaps pansies. At the front, facing the open window, was a makeshift door contrived from chicken wire. When Hartly leaned over and unlatched it, it swung open on straight-pin hinges.
“Now, Abelard,” he said. “Come forth.”
There was a bustling in the case, and it tipped slightly from side to side. Eventually something pale began emerging from the cube. It dragged itself forward, huffing and puffing quietly in its struggle to be free. From out of the dark appeared a human head with a long, morbid face, a rubbery visage the color of a toad’s stomach. The bottom lip was large and gaped open to reveal three cracked yellow teeth as if the thing had been decapitated mid-snore. Its lids were nearly closed, but slivers of pure black were visible beneath. It wore a headpiece, like a jester’s cap, a coxcomb, with two instead of three tentacles of cloth. These were missing the requisite bells and, instead of the party colors of the classic fool, it was the precise ill shade of its wearer’s complexion.
It spoke as it came clear of its cage, a deep resonant grumbling. “Hartly, damn you.”
“Now, now, Abelard, you know how this works.”
“Too well,” he muttered. Now that the creature was out in the open, it was possible to see a pair of short, feathered bird legs that grew down from beneath the chin, each ending in four yellow toes with curved claws like fishhooks. A disturbing sight, but nothing compared to when he suddenly shook his head and bat wings appeared from behind his ears. How he managed to fold them back there wasn’t visibly evident. He flapped the wings and lifted off the tabletop. Moving up toward the high ceiling, past Hartly’s face, he said, “Turd.”
Hartly laughed. “Abelard, your drooping death flesh puts me to shame.”
The flying head took a few turns around the apartment and then came to land back on the table where its owner had laid out a small pile of crickets. Abelard’s gray tongue shot out and took up every one of the insects before they could leap away. Chewing commenced, and a dark brown juice dribbled down over his thick bottom lip. “Tasty,” he groaned.
“For god’s sake, you’re making a mess on the table.”
“Okay, Hartly, give me the itinerary for the evening.”
“Well, I thought—”
“Let me guess. You want me to fly by Verbena’s house and check up on her.”
“Yes.”
“Hartly, I’m telling you, give it up. She’s been married for twenty years now.”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” said Hartly.
“Look, you’re a person in possession of a flying head, and all you can think to do with it is to spy on your girlfriend from twenty years ago? No wonder you’re alone.”
“I have you.”
“Don’t I know it.” Abelard’s black bat wings swept the air with a quiet hum, and he lifted up and across the room toward the open window.
“Keep an eye out for me,” he said as he headed into the night. The curtains billowed and he was gone.
“Fly like the wind,” said Hartly, and stepped over to the kitchenette to fix a drink. He made it a strong one and took it with him back to his bed. Again, sitting on the edge, he stared out the window at the city lights—some electric, some neon. In the most ancient part of the ancient city only fires burned. In a few moments, he was out over the rooftops, winging along. He heard voices in the street and looked down upon the shadowed canopies of giant trees. Abelard had opened his shining black eyes, and now Hartly saw all he saw, heard all he heard.
The heights and swooping barrel rolls frightened his master, and the flying head knew it. Hartly’s balding, late-middle-aged figure on the bed, sitting ramrod straight, gasped and occasionally made a peeping noise as his surrogate weaved between the trees in Gotts Park. “Are you trying to send me to an early grave?” he thought. And the response came back: “Should I be so lucky.” Out of the park and along the Boulevard of Fallen Warriors, past the statue of Commander Musgrave, whose sword tip pointed the way to Verbena’s neighborhood, they glided stealthily above tree-lined streets. Abelard dodged and weaved away from the oncoming headlights of automobiles while Hartly forgot his fear in anticipation of a glimpse at his old flame.
They dropped from the height of the lamppost across the street in a tightening gyre and came in for a landing on the picnic table out behind Verbena’s home. Hartly’s memory reeled with images of all the evenings he’d sat with her there, drinking wine and laughing. A giddiness replaced the fear. Recalling one night in the heat of the heart of their dalliance, a memory gone a little dim with Time, he saw her in a yellow sundress that gave off a faint glow against the dark.
“Hartly, keep it in your pants,” said Abelard with a booming thought. His master snapped out of it just as her face came into view, and then its smooth youth vanished into the night like the last puff of a roll-up. “Onward,” said the flying head, and it took off, bat wings flittering like those of a hummingbird. The kitchen window was dark, no sign of movement. From there, they swept down along the back of the house and found the place completely dark—the living room and bedroom up front, the same.
“I guess they’re not home.”
“The automobile is gone.”
“Down the chimney,” commanded Hartly.
“You’re a sick man with a sick heart,” said Abelard as he ascended past the gutter of the roof. This wasn’t the first time he’d invaded the house through the fireplace. Hartly would direct him through the rooms, have him turn on lights with his bottom lip, make him stop and study certain small objects and articles of clothing, ask what they smelled like. “This is wrong,” Hartly often heard his servant whispering during an inventory of Verbena’s house. It was usually when his master had him pause over some inconsequential trinket, a creamer in the shape of a cow, a brush with hair in it, and study it for minutes on end that Abelard would break into laughter. “Hartly, you’re a dodgy old creeper.”
“I’m a scientist studying the archaeology of a lost love.”
Abelard flew up past the chimney, and then like a cliff diver plunged into the dark well and its ancient aroma. His echolocation allowed him to stop short of smashing into the andiron at the bottom. Hartly felt his stomach flip. Like a moth, they hovered in the empty firebox long enough to notice the basement den was also dark. Then Abelard left the fireplace and rose to within two feet of the ceiling. Before he could even imagine where the switch might be, someone flipped it and the sudden light temporarily stunned him. He cried out like a barnyard beast, and when he managed to blink away the blindness, he saw a small woman with short graying hair dressed in a flannel nightgown, squirming back into a lounger.
“Good lord,” cried Verbena, then aimed the pistol in her hand and fired. The bullet entered directly into the middle of Abelard’s gaping mouth, out the back of his head, and splintered the wood paneling behind him. His black eyes went wide, he coughed up some cricket mess, and dropped to the floor like empty luggage.
Hartly cried out to his servant, but not in thought. The connection had been severed. His hoarse voice echoed through the apartment, and the curtains came into view. “Rubbish,” he said. He got to his feet and went to the kitchenette. This time he poured an even stronger drink. Returning to the bed, he settled down for a long night. He was certain the bullet wouldn’t be enough to finish Abelard. “His noggin is three-fourths sawdust, for god’s sake,” he said aloud as if appealing to the city just beyond the window. So he waited, sipping and worrying and keeping his eyes trained on the distant ancient fires.
It had been in the most ancient part of the ancient city that Hartly had purchased Abelard. Twenty years ago, soon after Verbena had given him the air, he went to that decrepit sanctuary among the ruins of the original fortress where the way of life clung to forgotten realities. The greater city of Bludd was like a living embryo that included in its physical growth all the evolutionary stages of its “ascent” through the centuries. As in contemporary parlance, there is the concept of humanity’s reptile brain and so that decrepit zone beside the sea, where fires burned day and night and no one could tell who started or tended them, where the quiet ones, bundled in quilted robes and sporting halos, contemplated the infinite and trafficked in a wicked, primeval magic, was the coiled, poisonous snake at the center of everything.
He’d gone there in search of a love potion he might use to win back Verbena’s attentions. The magi he’d found his way to, a hairy fellow in a hooded robe, no doubt some part dog, told him love potions were a ruse. “Love is its own magic,” he’d said. “And a powerful one at that. You can’t control it.” The venerable one rested a paw upon Hartly’s shoulder to either comfort him or cast a spell. The next thing the heartsick lover knew he was on an ox wagon, heading through increasingly modern neighborhoods toward home, resting Abelard’s blue cage on his knees. Only when he’d left the cart to get on a tram did he recall that he’d spent thirty dollars on a flying head in a box and a large packet of live crickets.
Of course, there was much more, but Abelard’s view broke in to replace Hartly’s memory. There was Verbena, her green eyes, her smile. He grew weak at the sight of her so seemingly close. Tears welled. It appeared as if she were sitting across the kitchen table from him. He realized she must have set Abelard down across from her in order to keep him at a distance. He could see she still had the gun trained on him. He was elated to find that after all the years with that blockhead husband, she’d retained her kindness. Anyone else having discovered such an abomination hovering in their den would have beaten it to death with a fireplace poker or at least shot it four more times. Not Verbena. Upon seeing it still had life, she’d no doubt treated the horrible thing like an injured bird that had hit her porch window.
He saw her lips move and heard her say, “But why are you here?”
“Hartly sent me,” said Abelard with some difficulty. “Sent me to spy on you.”
“Who the hell is Hartly?” asked Verbena, squinting and shaking her head.
Abelard’s laughter was like a cat choking on a hairball, but his master knew its depth and scorn. “You know Hartly. You were in love with him twenty years ago.”
“That jackass,” she said. “A brief, unfortunate flame. I was never in love with him.”
Abelard grunted in pain and said, “That’s not how he sees it. In fact, he’s seeing you right now through my eyes.”
“What are you doing to me?” thought Hartly.
“Saving you another twenty years of anguish,” came his servant’s reply.
“Please don’t.”
“Then close your eyes,” she said, and lifted the gun a little higher.
“Tell me this,” said the flying head, lids shut. “Is it your practice now to sit in the dark with a loaded gun? This is how you spend your nights?”
“It’s quite unnerving sitting here talking to a flying head, but since it seems I’m part of this nightmare, and this is a nightmare, I’ll tell you. I’m divorced three months now. My ex comes sometimes at night to take out his rage at his own ineptitude on me. The last set of bruises only recently cleared up. That nightmare is far more frightening than even yourself.”
“You’re ready to kill him?”
“Well past ready. Men are such a disappointment.”
“Having been one myself,” said Abelard, “and having wound up in my current situation, I can only agree.”
“What kind of man were you?” she asked.
“Oh, I think you would have liked me. I was the live-and-let-live sort. Ever calm. Happily married with twin girls. I was a singer at Club Cisco. My specialty was love songs.”
“Did you dress well?” she asked.
“What do you think?” He opened his eyes to find Verbena smiling, and believed he’d amused her, but it was the only sane reaction to a conversation with a disembodied head.
Hartly broke in, “You’re a fraud. A death’s head full of dark magic. A monstrosity.”
“Please, master, you’ve spent your quota of melodrama for the evening,” thought Abelard.
“You poor thing,” said Verbena.
Hartly drained his drink and choked.
“How did you come to this?” she asked.
“I think it’s fairly well known, even in this more modern zone of the city, that the magic makers out where the fires burn need live specimens for their infernal work, and they send out their brutish henchmen to impress citizens into service. I was taken off the street one night on my way home from the club. They severed my head with a golden guillotine, caught it in an ivory basket, and kept it alive in a vat of liquid the color of jade. Then they filled it with insane magic and gave me wings and the legs of a bird of prey, albeit a short one.”
“Did it hurt?”
“All lies. You were a goddamn criminal due to hang and you volunteered yourself to the Magi of Bludd,” shouted Hartly in his thoughts. “I’ll kill you.”
“The pain was excruciating, but nothing compared to the fact that when they made me this chimera, they stole my memories of my wife and daughters, but left me with the knowledge of having been part of a family.”
“Insidious,” she said, and meant to express her sympathy for him when yet another voice sounded. Abelard looked up behind where Verbena sat and saw her ex-husband entering the kitchen, head like a rectangle of meat, red in the face, eyes wide.
“What the fuck is that?” he yelled.
Verbena spun around, not having noticed his entrance. The instant she saw him, she brought the gun up to aim at his chest.
“What the fuck do you have going on here?” he bellowed. “What is that thing?”
“As you can see, Marty,” she said, “I’m getting some head.”
Her ex lunged at her and she wasn’t quick enough to fire before he knocked the gun out of her hand. One of his huge mitts wrapped around her throat and the other slapped her face.
“Attack,” cried Hartly. It was a command that his servant could not refuse. Abelard lifted off the table with effort, the wound from Verbena’s bullet still smarting. His bat wings undulated furiously, and with a shrill screech he shot forward and dug his fishhook talons into the side of Marty’s considerable neck. The oaf quit smacking his ex and reached up to grab Abelard’s left wing. Reeling backward, Marty looked for the gun on the floor. Still defending against the claws ripping at his flesh with one hand, he bent and picked up the gun with the other. He took aim next to his ear, which the flying head now had clamped in its three yellow teeth. Before the shot was fired, though, Abelard reared back and freed his now slightly damaged wing, tearing away a chunk of flesh as he retreated. Blood squirted and sprayed, and the blockhead yowled in pain and confusion. As he pulled away, the flying menace shot a big wad of cricket juice into Marty’s eyes, blinding him.
The gun went off and Verbena dove for the floor. Abelard joined her under the table while bullets flew around the kitchen, shattering dinnerware, exploding knickknacks, and burying themselves deep in the plaster and refrigerator door. When they heard the boom of a body hitting the linoleum, they knew it was safe to emerge. Blood was everywhere and had pooled around the maniac’s savaged head. Abelard flew with great difficulty above the corpse and released his talon’s grasp on the chunk of meat. “I return to Marty what was Marty’s,” he said.
Verbena stood over her ex, showing no visible sign of remorse. She nodded slowly. “He was a real controlling asshole,” she said.
Abelard, who’d taken up a position back on the table, said, “I’d say.”
“I’ve got to get out of here,” said Verbena. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to explain this.”
Abelard said, “Wait, Hartly wants to speak to you.”
“For god’s sake, I was just wondering, How can this night get worse?”
The servant channeled his master. “Verbena, my dear, escape to my place. You can stay here as long as you want. Forever. I’ll take care of you.”
She laughed. “Are you serious? I’ve had all the taking care of I can deal with. There’s gotta be more to life than this.”
“We’ll give it another go,” said Hartly through his second. “What do you say? I’ll make no assumptions, carry no expectations, rid myself of all arrogance.”
“I’d rather be a flying head. Hartly, he told me you keep him in a cage, this poor, sensitive soul. If I were to choose between the three of you—Marty, you, and the head—I’d be making plans with Abelard this moment. I’m heading for ancient Bludd, where one can live in anonymity. The police will never follow me there amid the eternal fires. Goodbye.”
“It was my command that saved you,” said Hartly, but Abelard didn’t voice it. Verbena picked up the gun and left the room.
Later that night, when Abelard returned to the apartment through the open window, he found an extra portion of crickets in a bowl on the table near his crate and a tall gin and tonic with a straw. Hartly lay in his bed, his head on the pillow, smoking a roll-up.
“My reward for a job well done?” asked the servant.
“And you need never go in the crate again if you don’t want to.”
“What’s become of you, Hartly?”
“I succumbed to the power of love.”
With that, the spell was broken, and Abelard, and his blue home and all but one cricket, vanished, leaving Hartly alone with his heart.
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Thank you for joining our journey this week.
Jeffrey Ford is the author of numerous novels and short story collections, including The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Girl in the Glass, The Shadow Year, Ahab’s Return, Out of Body, The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, Crackpot Palace, and Big Dark Hole. Ford’s fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies, such as Tor.com, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, McSweeney’s, and The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, and has been widely translated. It has garnered World Fantasy, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and Nebula Awards and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
“In Bludd,” © Jeffrey Ford, 2024.
The Sunday Morning Transport: Selected Stories 2022 is now available at Weightless Books!
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Great story!
Fascinating!