Mothwing

Short excerpt from my story included in Give Us This Day

Here’s a short extract (the beginning) of my story “Mothwing” as it appears in the collection Give Us This Day, edited and published by Dylan Bosworth over at Drek Death and Doom Publishing

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SIXTEEN wonderful stories in this anthology, apart from the story excerpted here!

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The lepidopterist arrived in a helicopter. This is documented fact. I didn’t just make it up because it sounds—what is that damned word?—mellifluous. The lepidopterist came in a helicopter. Sounds very good, but (I repeat) that’s not why I said it. I state that because it’s true.

The lepidopterist, Professor Luko P.D. Kunkelmannn PhD, touched down at the helipad after a long journey from the Isingbor Institute of Natural History Studies on Wednesday September 17, at 11.43 am by my wristwatch (which admittedly hasn’t been running reliably for some years now). So I may truly say, regardless of any suspicions to the contrary: the lepidopterist came in a helicopter.

There—done, set down for the record—I won’t say it again. Because this journal ain’t supposed to be for the aimless witterings of a paleobotanist-turned-tracker of the likes of such as me, no sir. Pencil and paper are far too scarce for that kind of thing these days. It’s meant to record the findings of an important scientific expedition into a possible remedy for our ills, some way to reverse the outcome of The Krash and return the ragged survivors of humanity back to normal. The old pre-Krash normal, not the new normal. Normal normal.

The old gent clambered out of the century-old Huey that we use for transport here at Gellibert Station. He was clearly excited at the sightings of the Nightmare Moth that had been reported in the upper Michigan taiga forest to the north. When we radioed those routine reports over to the Isingbor Institute, we certainly didn’t expect an urgent visit from the world’s last remaining moth specialist. Yet here he was.

He looked exactly what a lepidopterist is supposed to look like: grey pointed beard, little oval spectacles, corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches, buff tweed trousers, suede boots, old battered brown Tyrolean hat with a hawk-feather in the band. The consummate moth-man, all butterfly-net and quizzical determined gaze.

I limped over to the helipad to welcome him, remembering to keep my head down as I flashed back to Barakaldo’s opened-up brainpan from the previous month. No need for more rotor-based unpleasantness this particular morning, I was thinking. Let’s get this show on the road without more cerebral mishaps. Sure enough, the Prof was all business. Not sure if he even caught my name as he strode away from the Huey and started asking me about moth sightings. Any dust from the wings? Red fluting or purple fluting? Diurnal or nocturnal? So on so forth.

I halted. He halted. I slapped him hard, once, round the chops.

“Listen, Prof,” I told him. “This shit’s just not gonna wash up here at the Gellibert Station. Don’t come the high-and-mighty lepidopterist with me. You’re on my turf now, big guy. I run this station, or at least if not literally run it, I have a fairly large say in how it’s administered.”

I motioned with my eyes towards my .38 revolver in its holster. He was unarmed except for his butterfly net. I had his full attention now.

“I’ll take you to see the Nightmare Moth,” I said, “but you need to fix your ‘tude, dude. There’s wolves with weirdnesses out there in those forests. There’s marsupial voles can chew a hole in your skull and lay their tiny eggs in your cranium. There’s mosses that can wreck your very ontology, and there’s a whole buncha things that haven’t yet been subjected to a rigorous taxonomical classification. Get me, buster?”

Sure ‘nuff, the Prof got the picture rápido. He seemed close to tears now. His pale gray-goateed face drooping low, left cheek empinkened by the blow, little oval specs all askew. He was a sad sight indeed. Time for me to reconcile, to be the bigger man.

“I know I’ve been harsh with you, but it’s for your own good. This is not the campus. It’s not the peer-review board. It’s something even more savage and pitiless than that. If you wanna survive up here, Prof, you really gonna haveta buck up your ideas and take instruction from them that know. Like yours truly, Michaela Malley, MSc, research botanist, tracker, and bounty hunter.”

I gave my revolver a finger-spin and struck the hipcock posture I’d seen in those old BluRays of Cleopatra Jones.

“Professor, I’ma keep yo’ ass alive out in the forest –” pistol cock, krrrrck! – “you better believe it, sucka!”

A slap upside the head and a good pep talk can work miracles.

He was all co-operation after that.

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