novembre

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and all of a sudden dragons make a lot more sense,

"It's always struck me as funny that it's a man's world," he said idly, glancing into a mug and blowing out some dust. "All through nature, it's the females calling the shots, in beehives and baboon troops, with lions. Species to species, males are lazy: drones built only for fighting and mating." He opened the top drawer of the cabinet, dug out a box of Lipton's tea bags.

Doors were opening in the Club-Footed Janitor's head.

"Different in humans, somehow," he remarked, selecting a bag. "Don't know why. Maybe that explains misogyny, spousal abuse, all these God-the-Father religions. We're the only species that's inverted the ladies-on-top order, and it takes a lot of crazy hoopla to keep the drones on top of a social order and the queens down." He deposited the tea bag into the empty mug, set it atop the cabinet, and gingerly poured in the boiling water. "But one thing is for sure: you hit your mid-twenties" -- he looked significantly at his brother, who was twenty-nine years old, and then rolled his eyes, as he himself was twenty-six -- "without killing or making a baby, then you've certainly become an evolutionary aberration."

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He sipped his tea reflectively. "You know those descriptions of the old monsters? Dragons and vampires, Bigfoot and the like? You ever notice what they have in common? The size and the fangs, the strength. Lotsa times they have scales, have wings. Just the sort of things tiny little mammals are afraid of, aren't they? Imagine what a hawk looks like if you're a deer mouse. Imagine what a four-inch rodent thinks of a four-and-a-half foot boa constrictor, and all of a sudden dragons make a lot more sense, don't they? You know the way people react to snakes. It's silly, for a hundred-ninety-pound man to scream and dance around like a little girl when he catches sight of a six-ounce snake, but they do. You ever seen how chimps react to snakes?"

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The next day he'd left his hotel -- with a middle-of-the-road digital camera and lots of sunscreen -- and gone sightseeing to a local preserve, had seen what chimps do to snakes. "They go nuts, whirling and screaming and smashing the thing with rocks and logs, even if it's harmless, even if it's dead. Hell, they'll go nuts and slaughter a garden hose. They hate snakes. They hate monsters. It's a deep memory, an old memory. Genetic. And good. There's more than just dragons and Bigfoots out there.

"But it isn't the females, even though they'll go wild and tear you apart if you come near their young. They're strong, and they have the capacity for violence. But they don't go after snakes. They don't hunt monsters.

"This is separate from fighting and fucking, another job just for us drones: killing monsters."

from You Were Neither Hot nor Cold, but Lukewarm, and So I Spit You Out, a short story by Cara Spindler and David Erik Nelson. Anthologized in The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet: Unexpected Tales of the Fantastic and Other Odd Musings, edited by Kelly Link (I love you, Kelly Link) and Gavin J. Grant.

8:06 pm - 05.21.08

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