What You Make It

Cover illustration by Eygló

Michael Marshall Smith

Contents

Copyright

What You Make It

WHAT YOU MAKE IT

Copyright © Michael Marshall Smith 1998

All rights reserved.

Cover illustration

Copyright © Eygló 2015

All rights reserved.

Published by

ememess press

What You Make It

Finding a child was easy. Like always. You just waited outside one of the convenience stores that lined the approach, or trawled a strip mall at the nearby intersections for half an hour. There were always kids hanging around at night, pan-handling change for a burger or twenty minutes on a coin-op video game in one of the arcades. Or sometimes just hanging there with nothing in particular in mind. You have to have seen something of the world to know what’s worth looking for. These kids, the just-hanging kids, had seen nothing — and were often willing to be shown pretty much whatever you had in mind.

The only question was which one to pick.

Too old, either sex, and it looked weird at the Gate. Too young, and people tend to wonder where the kid’s mother is at. And of course sometimes it depended, and you had to find one that looked just right for the night. Early teens was usually best. Acquiescent, not too scuffed up.

It only took Ricky ten minutes to find one.

She was sitting by herself on one of the benches outside the Subway franchise, looking at her feet or nothing in particular, alone in a yellow glow. Ricky cruised by the sandwich store twice in the twilight, noted that though there were two groups of kids nearby, one a little along the sidewalk and another loitering outside Publix, the girl didn’t seem to have a link to either. She was all by herself. Mistake.

He parked the car up, let the motor tick down to silence, and watched her for a while. The nearest group of kids walked right by her, in and out of her pool of light, without a word being exchanged. She didn’t even look up. She wasn’t expecting friends.

Ricky grabbed his cigarettes off the dash, locked the car, and walked over. She glanced at him as he approached, but without much curiosity. Something told him this wasn’t indifference but a genuine ignorance of the kind of situations the world could provide. That meant she was even more likely to be what he needed, and it was good luck for her that it was Ricky’s eye she’d caught, instead of some kind of fucking pervert.

‘Waiting for someone?’ he asked, stopping when he was a couple of yards away.

She looked up, then away. Didn’t even shake her head.

He sat down casually on the next bench along. ‘Right. I know. Just a good place to sit.’

Ricky took out a cigarette and lit it, unhurried. She looked maybe twelve years old, pretty face. Blue eyes, fair hair in a ponytail. White T-shirt, blue jeans. Both recently clean. He noticed her eyes follow his discarded match as it skittered across the way and went out. Despite appearances, he had her attention.

‘You hungry?’

She blinked, and her head turned a little toward him. Something changed. It always did. It’s an elemental question. Even if you’ve just eaten enough to kill a man, you think about it. Am I hungry? Have I had enough? Will I be okay? And if you’re really hungry, the question comes at you like you’ve been goosed, like someone’s guessed your worst secret, how close you are to being cancelled out. Ricky knew how it worked. He’d been hungry in his time. Often, and very. You answer the hungry question quietly, so the vultures don’t hear.

‘Kinda,’ she admitted, eventually.

He nodded, looking across the parking lot. Partly to check how many couples were hefting grocery bags to their breeder wagons; mainly to let the conversation settle.

‘I could buy you something,’ he said, casually. ‘What’s the matter? Your mom didn’t feed you tonight?’

‘Don’t have a mom,’ she said.

‘What about your old man? Where’s he at?’

The girl shrugged. Didn’t matter whether she didn’t know, or didn’t want to know. Ricky knew now that she was his.

Ten minutes later, as he watched her wolf down her sandwich and fries, Ricky asked the question.

‘How’d you like to visit Wonder World tonight?’

It was after eight by the time they got to the entrance. The line was pretty short. Ricky had known it would be: there was a parade every night at eight thirty, down 1st Street, and anyone with park-visiting in mind made sure they were already inside by then. Even the girl, whose name was Nicola, knew about the parade. Ricky told her this week it was at nine fifteen because it was a special parade. She looked at him dubiously, but seemed hopeful.

As he turned into one of the lanes and pulled up to the gate Ricky felt a familiar flicker of anxiety. This was the part where it could all go wrong. It hadn’t yet, because the kids had always wanted what they thought they were getting, but it could. It could go wrong tonight. It could do wrong any time. He wound down the window.

The gate man’s head immediately bobbed out to grin at him. ‘Hi there! I’m Marty the Gateman! How you doing?’

Marty the Gateman was in his fifties, and dressed in an exaggerated version of the uniform of a cop from the 1940’s. His face was pink with good cheer and makeup. Or alcohol most likely. The gatemen in all the other lanes looked the same, and said exactly the same things.

Ricky grinned right back. ‘I’m good. You?’

‘Me? I’m great!’ the man said, and laughed uproariously. When he did this, he leant back from the waist, placed a splayed hand on either side of his ribcage, and rubbed them up and down with each chortle, like a cartoon.

Nicola giggled, twisted in her seat.

Ricky let one hand drop to where the gun rested between the seat and the door, waited for the man to stop. Fucking loser. He imagined the guy going home after his shift, removing his stupid fucking costume, whacking off in front of the Internet. He had to do something like that, surely. Rick knew he would have done, that’s for sure. Couldn’t be any other way.

Eventually the man stopped laughing, wiped his eyes. ‘Shee! So! Two happy travellers bound for the Wonder World! You just here for rides and fun and all the magic you can find?’

‘No,’ Nicola said, leaning over Ricky so she could smile up at the guy through the window. ‘We’re visiting Grandma too!’

Ricky relaxed. The girl was going to behave. Better still, she’d got into the part. They did, sometimes. Kids loved make-believe.

Marty winked. ‘Lucky grandma! She know you’re coming?’

‘It’s a surprise,’ Nicola said, confidingly. ‘She lives in Homeland 3.’

‘Okey dokey!’ the gate man yelped joyously, pulling a deck of tickets out of one of the oversize pockets on his uniform. ‘So, Mr. Dad – how long you going to be spending with us?’

‘An hour, maybe two,’ Rick smiled. ‘Depends on how strong Grandma’s feeling.’

‘Why don’t we say three? Can always get you a rebate when you come out if she’s too tired.’

‘Sure, Marty. That’d be great.’

‘All-righty!’ Tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, Marty the Gateman tapped some buttons on the control unit on the side of his booth. As he tapped, the buttons got a little larger, and started moving around, so he had to keep his hand darting back and forth to keep up. Two twinkling animatronic eyes appeared at the top of the control unit, and one of them winked at Nicola. Within a few seconds, the buttons, brightly colored in primary hues, were a few inches long and bending every which way, evading Marty’s fingers. Still the man poked at them, huffing and puffing.

‘Hey — no fair!’ he protested, and Nicola laughed, when a couple of the buttons got even longer and started poking him back. When this gag was done, the gate man held a ticket out towards the machine, a slit opened in the unit in the shape of a cheerful mouth, and the ticket was popped inside, chewed for a moment, and then spat out, authorized. The eye winked at Nicola again, and suddenly the control unit returned to normal and Marty was waggling the ticket right under Ricky’s nose.

Any other time or place, Marty would have lost his hand. But Ricky gave him the money, and the gate opened. The gate man waved at Nicola through the back window.

As the car started to pull forward, all of the faces in the gate structure — each a classic character from a Wonder World cartoon, every one hand-tweaked by liars into joyous perfection — swivelled their eyes towards the car and started to sing.

China Duck was there, Loopy Hound and Careful Cat, Bud and Slap the Happy Rats and Goren the fucking Gecko and countless others, every face already hot-wired into your mind, no matter how hard you’d always ignored them.

‘The magic is what you make it,’ they sang, a sonic tower of saccharine harmonies, ‘Make it, make it... The magic is what you...’

Ricky wound up the windows.

Lit a cigarette and stepped on the gas.

The kid was quiet as they headed towards Homeland 3. She had plenty to look at, and she drank it in as though — even in darkness — it was the greatest thing she had ever seen. Maybe it was. Ricky had seen it all before.

Monorails tracks arced gracefully in all directions, linking park to park. Mostly quiet for the evening, but occasionally a streamlined shape would swoosh past the road or over their heads. Taking happy families out for the evening, or back: out to ridiculous themed restaurants, or back to dumb-looking resort hotels where over-excited kids would make so much noise you’d want to throttle them, and parents would reconcile themselves to yet another night without screwing and send out for overpriced room service booze instead. Probably even this would be delivered by a fucking chipmunk.

In fact, Ricky had never stayed in one of the hotels. Never even been in one: the security was too good. But he felt he knew exactly how it would be. A great big stupid con, like everything else in Wonder World. Set up fifty years ago and now so vast and sprawling it put most cities in the shade. Rides and enclosures and parks and theatres and ‘experiences’ and crap, all based around a bunch of cartoons and some asshole’s idea of the perfect world. There was a fake big game reservation. A bunch of fake lakes, where fish and dolphins and shit swam about, like anyone cared. A fake downtown strip the size of a regular town, where people who were too scared to walk to the corner store in their own stupid bergs could wander around and buy up all the crap they wanted. Some sort of stupid futuristic park, where it was supposed to be like what it would be in a hundred years: as if we were all going to be shopping from home and wearing pastel nylon and using video phones — standing in tight little nuclear family groups and talking to Gramps on Mars.

Ricky knew what it was really going to be like in a hundred years, and it wasn’t going to be cutesy characters posing for photographs and making the little kids laugh. It wasn’t going to be restaurants where the family could go and get good food and great service for ten bucks a head; it wasn’t going to be endless fucking stores full of t-shirts and candy in painted tins, and being able to leave your door unlocked at night and no litter anywhere. It was going to be guns and stealing things. It was going to be dog eat dog, like always, and he wasn’t talking the kind of dog which had some dumbass pimply kid inside, earning chump change for pot. It was going to be taking what you wanted, and fucking up anyone who got in your way. It had been that way since the dawn of time, and only fools pretended otherwise. That’s what kids needed to learn, not bullshit with talking bunnies.

Wonder World pained Ricky personally, which is one of the reasons why he did what he did for a living. He hated the bright colors, the cheer, the stupid, kiddie nonsense, the lies about how the world was, the conspiracy to believe there was magic somewhere in the world. He hated it all.

It was an crock of utter shit.

The kid was good as he drove, even though weird and miraculous buildings kept appearing in the darkness, each promising fun and games. She didn’t ask to stop at every single one, like most of them. She kept quiet until the car swung around in the front of the massive portal into the heart of Wonder World, the original Beautiful Realm park. The gate was like a massive googie castle, every ludicrous 50s drive-in and coffee shop-erama mashed joyously together into an eight-story extravagance that would have taken the Jetsons’ breath away. Whirling spotlights sent beams of light chopping merrily through the night, and characters capered around the entrance, beckoning people inside. The girl had wound her window back down by then, and could hear in the distance the sound of drums and music, the singing and dancing inside.

‘The parade,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘Fuckers did it early. Or maybe it’s just starting.’

She was calm, reasonable. ‘You said we’d see the parade.’

‘We will. It goes on for, like, an hour. We’ll just do this thing, and then we’ll go catch the end. It’s better that way. Most of the people have gone home, you get closer to all the characters.’

‘Really?’ She was looking at him closely, her mouth wanting to smile, but wary of being let down. Just then one of the lights cut through into the car, showing her in every detail. Pretty little face, red lips that had never been kissed. Big eyes, wanting him to tell her good news, wanting to see nice things. And tiny new breasts outlined in a T-shirt that was one size too small.

She was perfect, all the more so because she wouldn’t even understand what he was thinking.

Ricky decided this one was going to play the game a little longer than most of the others, that she going to learn the facts of life. The facts that had to do with taking whatever he wanted to put inside her. A training session. Save some guy time and effort later on, except Ricky knew there wasn’t going to be a later. Usually he lay the kid over the back seat on the way out, put a blanket over them like they were sleeping, winked at some guy at the gate and laughed with him about how the child had too much excitement for one day. Tonight he’d find a way of getting this one out alive. He’d work it out.

‘Really,’ he said. ‘Trust me.’

She smiled.

Ten minutes later he was scanning street names as he cruised down Homeland 3’s main drag. Every now and then they’d pass a toon character who’d stop and wave at Nicola. Ranging from three foot dancing toadstools to six foot ducks, they were freaking Ricky out. You didn’t normally see characters roaming this late: they were there to magic the place up through the day, the most popular visiting hours. Ricky was having trouble sorting through the names of the streets, which were also the names of fucking characters. Loopy Drive IV, Careful Crescent VI, how the fuck were you supposed to keep track? Nicola wasn’t helping, having decided to tell him her life story. She was thinking of shortening her name, and spelling it Nicci, because she thought it was classy. She liked cats, like Careful Cat, but dogs were sometimes cute too. She didn’t know where daddy was because she’d never known. She said she didn’t have a mommy because real mommies didn’t do what hers did, and so two days ago she’d ran away and she wasn’t going back this time.

Jesus, only two days, Ricky was thinking. You’re lucky you ran into me so quick. Going to save you six months of turning into your mommy and then a short lifetime waiting for the hammer to fall. You’re a lucky girl, little Nicola. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Part of him was also shaking, because of what he knew he was going to do later. He didn’t normally. He just disposed of them. Take a drive down to the ’glades, dump the body, no-one’s going to know or give a shit. He didn’t like doing anything else, made him feel like a pervert, though he wasn’t, he was a professional. Every now and then was okay though, even if the prospect was clouding his mind, making it hard to make out the street names. Some guys bought themselves new guns, went on a coke bender, hired a couple of whores. Everyone needs a treat. Incentive scheme. Keeps your wheels turning.

Ricky gripped the wheel tightly, tuned out the noise of the kid’s nattering, got himself straight.

Eventually he got himself in the right direction. Found his way down the grid of streets, each lined with houses, some streets like the 1940s, some the 1950s or 1960s. Or like those times would have been if they hadn’t been shit, anyhow. Like those decades were if you looked back at them now and forgot everything what was wrong with them. The streets were quiet, because mostly the people in the houses were too old to be out walking this late.

Homeland 3, along with the four other near-identical districts which spread in a fan around the Beautiful Realm, was one of the newest parts of the Wonder World. Five years ago, the suits who ran the parks realized they had another goldmine on their hands: managed communities of old farts. Cutesy little neighborhoods in the sun where the oldsters could come waste their final years, safe from the world outside and bad afternoons where they could be walking home from the store and suddenly find three guys with knifes standing on the corner. Not only safe, but coddled, living somewhere their grandkids could be guaranteed to want to come see them. You want to go visit granny in Roanoke? I don’t think so. Wonder World? – that’s a very easy sell.

They built the houses, any size, any style, so everyone from trailer trash to leather-faced zillionaires had somewhere to hang their trusses: houses that looked like whatever you wanted — from a space podule to a mud hut on the planet Zog. All this and stores and banks and shit, all built to look like what they sold. That’s what made it so difficult to find your way around. It was like wandering around a toy store on acid.

It got so popular that even the smaller houses started getting expensive, and a year ago Ricky had an idea. You’ve got house after house of old people. With money. People who can’t defend themselves too well. With things worth stealing. You get yourself into one of the Homelands – with a cute kid, who’s going to question you? – and you help yourself to some stuff, using the kid’s voice to get the door open. You’re in and out before anyone knows there’s a few old people who’ve just gone to meet their maker: the kid’s the only living witness, and not for long. All you got to do is make sure you never get recognized at the gate, and with millions of people going in and out every week, that’s never going to happen.

And the kicker – Wonder World covered the burglaries up. Of course they did. Very bad for business, because they showed the magic retreat was a crock of shit. Plus — and here Ricky witnessed something which made perfect sense to him, something which placed the whole world in context as he understood it – the families often didn’t make too much fuss. Why? Same reason that, after a couple months, Ricky had a new idea and moved onto a different line of business, made himself a professional.

Lot of times the families weren’t too sad to see the old folks go, because they wanted the old people’s money.

Which is why Ricky didn’t bother to steal any more. Ricky took contracts instead, and made it look natural. Safer, more secret, more lucrative – for the time being. Sooner or later the suits would catch on and increase security, and Ricky would work the change-up... and instead start black-mailing the families he’d already done jobs for. The kind of people who’d pay to have gramps whacked had to be living in a Wonder World of their own, if they didn’t realize it would come back to haunt them some day.

Ricky finally found Gecko Super Terrace III, drove a little way along. Pulled over to the curb, looked up at a house and checked the address. Grunted with satisfaction. He was in the right place.

Margaret Harris, eighty four years old, was worth maybe six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, all told, including the Homeland house. Not such a hell of a lot, but her son and daughter-in-law could get the bigger boat, without working all those unsociable hours and missing cocktail hour. Upgrade the car, too, put that down payment on the beach house even. Maybe they’d throw their children a bone too. A games station. A better bike. A last visit to Wonder World. As John Harris, Margaret’s son, had put it — while slurping a large scotch to blur his conscience: they were merely realizing an asset a little early. That’s all.

Margaret Harris had herself a kind of tiny storybook Tudor cottage, dark beams and whitewash, exaggerated leans in the walls and gingerbread thatch. There was a light on in a downstairs room behind a curtain. The grass in the yard was all the same perfect fucking length. Maybe it was animatronic grass. Maybe it sang a happy wake-up call in the morning, a million blades in unison.

Nicola looked at the house. ‘Is this where she lives?’

‘That’s right. You remember what I want you to do?’

She looked away. ‘I had a grandma,’ she said. ‘I saw her twice. She gave me a ring, but Mommy took it and sold it. She died when I was six. Mommy got so drunk that night she wet herself.’

Ricky nearly hit her then, but stopped himself in time. It was like that with the ones like her. Part of wanting to fuck them was finding them too fucking irritating to bear. He forced himself to speak calmly.

‘This isn’t your Grandma, okay? Do you remember, Nicola? What I want you to do?’

‘Of course,’ the girl said. She opened the door and got out.

Swearing quietly, Ricky got out, slipped the gun into his pocket, and followed her up the path to the Harris house.

Nicola rang the doorbell a second time, and Ricky heard someone moving inside the house. He stepped back into shadow. Nicola stood in front of the door, waiting.

‘Who is it?’ The voice was old but functional, cracked but not quavery. The kind of voice that says I’m pretty ancient but not ready to drop just yet, thank you.

‘Hi grandma!’ Nicola piped, leaning to peer through the diamond of swirled glass in the door. She waved her hand. ‘I’ve come to see you!’

‘Theresa?’ The oldster’s voice was uncertain, but Ricky caught the sound of locks being tentatively drawn. This was the second key moment. This was the one where the kid had to be good enough so that the old woman didn’t press the Worry Button beside the door of every Homeland house. The button that would alert Wonder World’s version of security to the fact that something was sharp and spikey in the dream tonight.

The final slide bolt, and the door opened a crack. ‘Theresa?’

Margaret Harris was small, barely over five feet tall. She was grandma-shaped and had white hair done up in a curly style. Her face was plump and lined and she was wearing one of those dresses old bitches wear, flowers on a dark background. You opened a dictionary and looked up ‘Grandma’, she was pretty much what you’d see.

‘You’re not Theresa,’ she said.

‘Oh no,’ Nicola laughed. ‘I’m Theresa’s friend. Theresa said if we were passing we should call in and say hi.’

Ricky stepped into the light, an apologetic smile on his face. ‘Hey there, Mrs. Harris. Hope this is okay – Theresa’s telling Nicola here about you all the time. John said you probably wouldn’t mind. Meant to call ahead, but you know how it is.’

‘You’re a friend of John’s?’

‘Work right across the hall at First Virtual.’

Mrs Harris hesitated, but then smiled back, her face crinkling in a pattern which started from the eyes. ‘Well I guess it’s okay then. Come on in.’

The hallway looked like a painted background from an old Wonder World cartoon: higgledy stairs, everything neat, colors washed and clean. When the door was shut behind them, Ricky knew the job was done.

‘You can’t be too careful these days,’ the old woman said, predictably, leading Nicola through to the kitchen.

Right, thought Ricky, following at a distance: and you haven’t been nearly careful enough.

He hung back for a moment, scoping the place, listening with half an ear to Nicola chatting with the old bag in the kitchen. Jeez, the kid could spin a story: what’s happening at school, party she went to with Theresa last week, Theresa borrowing her shoes. Listening to her, you’d think she really did know the woman’s granddaughter. More make believe, he realized some better life she wished she had.

Ricky debated disabling the Worry Button, decided it wasn’t necessary. Difficult to do, anyhow – and smashing it would leave a clue. This one was too easy to make it worth the risk.

The kitchen was small, cozy, tricked up to look like the kind of place where there would always be something baking in the oven, instead of ready-made shit from the microwave. Pots, pastry cutters, a rolling pin. Probably Wonder World sent someone into everyone’s house every day, made sure the props looked right.

Grandma Harris turned as Ricky entered and handed a cup of coffee up to him. She smiled, twinkle-eyed, relaxed – the kid had put her at ease.

Ricky made a mental note that the cup and saucer would need wiping when he was done. Nicola had a glass of Dr. Pepper – that would need washing too. He sipped the coffee – might as well – and deflected a couple of questions about working with the great John Harris. Pathetic, really, the way the old woman was eager for any snippet of news about her son, wanted telling how much people liked him. Ricky wanted to lash out and shove his cup right down the old fart’s throat. It would be a whole lot quicker, and put her out of misery she didn’t even know she was in. But he knew how it had to look, and death by ingestion of china tea set wouldn’t play.

Meantime Nicola and grandma sat at the table, yakking nineteen to the dozen. Nicola had a lot of grandma-talking to do, even if she had to make do with someone else’s. Ricky let his eyes glaze, mulling what he was going to do to the kid later. He enjoyed doing that, getting the comparison, just as he liked looking at girls in the street and imagining them on the job, their hands or mouth busy, face wet with sweat. They’d never know, but they’d been his. Ricky rode that line, that fine line, between the life they lived and the life that could come and find them in the night.

‘Isn’t that right, Daddy?’

‘Huh?’ Ricky looked at the girl dully, having missed the question. ‘What’s that?’

‘Nicola was saying how you and John were planning a joint vacation for the families later in the year,’ Mrs Harris said. ‘That’s wonderful news. Do you think you might be able to make it up here? We’d have such fun.’

‘Sure,’ Ricky said, abruptly deciding this had gone on long enough and was getting out of hand. ‘No question. Hey, Mrs. Harris – meant to ask you something.’

‘Of course.’ Grandma was beside herself at the prospect of another visit later in the year. She’d have agreed to anything. ‘What is it?’

‘John told me about some pictures, old photos, you’ve got at the top of the stairs? Kind of an interest of mine. He said you might let me take a peek at them.’

‘I’d be delighted to show you,’ the old woman said. ‘Come, let’s go up.’ Nicola jumped to her feet, but Ricky flashed a glare at her.

Grandma raised an eyebrow. ‘Wouldn’t you like to come too, dear?’

Nicola avoided Ricky’s eye. ‘Could I have another Dr. Pepper first, please?’

‘Help yourself, then follow us up. Now come on – Rick, isn’t it? – let’s go take a look.’

Ricky sent another ‘Stay here’ look at the kid, and followed grandma out. Made interested grunts every now and then as the old woman talked and led him across the hall to the stairs. A couple of sellable-looking objects caught Ricky’s eye on the way, and he planned on picking them up later, before he left. Little bonus.

Up the stairs behind her. Feeling no fear, no excitement. Just watching for the moment. Mrs. Harris took the stairs slowly, hitching one leg up after the other. Her voice might be strong but her body was saying goodbye. She wouldn’t be losing much.

They got to the landing and Ricky saw there were indeed a whole bunch of really fucking dull-looking black and whites in frames on the wall. John Harris had the whole thing planned out, gave Ricky this way of getting her up to the scaffold. Ricky debated telling the old woman about this, letting her see what lay beyond her wonder world, that the son she’d raised had sat in his study one night drinking scotch and working out how she would die.

But by then Margaret Harris was standing right by Rick, and he knew the time was right and he wanted to get it over with. The real bonus was waiting for him in the kitchen. He didn’t need any cheap thrills first.

This picture was her mother, that one her grandpapa. Gone-away people, stiff in fading monotone.

Ricky leaned toward her, ostensively to get a closer look at a bunch of people grouped in front of a raggedy farm building – but actually to get the right angle.

For a moment then he was distracted, by a scent. It seemed to come from the old woman’s clothes, a combination of things: milk and cinnamon, rich coffee and apples cooking on the stove. Leaves barely on the trees in Autumn, and the smell of sun on grass in Summer. These things weren’t a part of his life, but for a moment he had them in his mind – like they were part of some story he’d read long ago, as a child, and dismissed.

Then he pushed her down the stairs.

Palm flat against her shoulder, feeling the bones inside the old, thin flesh. He straightened his arm firmly, which was enough – and wouldn’t leave a bruise that some CSI smartass might be able to talk up into evidence.

The old woman teetered, without making a sound, and then her center of gravity was all wrong and she tumbled over sideways, over the edge and down the stairs.

Thump, crash, thud, splat.

Like a loose bag of old, grey sticks.

Ricky walked briskly down the stairs, reached the bottom bare seconds after she did. Held back from kicking her head, which would have been risky and was clearly unnecessary. Huge dent in the skull already, eyes turned upwards and out of sight. Arm twisted a strange way, one leg bent back on itself. The usual anti-climax.

Job done.

He stepped over the body and to the kitchen, stopping Nicola already on her way out. She ran into him, crashed against his body. He grabbed her shoulders, warm through the thin T-shirt.

‘What happened? I heard a crash.’

Usually he killed the kid at this point, before they got hysterical and made too much noise or ran out of the house. Ricky pushed Nicola gently back into the kitchen, felt his temperature rising. He needed her alive to do things with, but he couldn’t do them here. ‘Nothing. Just an accident. Mrs. Harris fell down the stairs.’

‘Grandma?’

‘She’s not your grandma, sweetie. You know that.’

‘We’ve got to get help...’

Ricky smiled down at her. ‘We will. That’s exactly what we’ll do. We’ll get in the car, go find one of the security wagons. They’ll help her out. She’ll get fixed up and we’ll catch the end of the parade.’

The girl was near tears now. ‘I want to stay here with her.’

He pretended to think about it, then shook his head. ‘Can’t do. Security gets here while I’m away, finds you with an old lady at the bottom of the stairs, what are they going to think? They’re going to think you pushed her.’

‘They won’t. She was my grandma. Why would I hurt her?’

Ricky glared at her, good humor fast disappearing. ‘She wasn’t your fucking grandma. Just some old woman.’

Nicola pushed hard against him, momentarily rocking him back on his heels. ‘She was too. She knew about me. She knew things. She said not to worry about my mom any more. She said she loved me.’

Ricky lashed out with his hand, shoved the kid hard. She flew back, ricocheted off the table and knocked the coffee pot flying. It struck the wall, spraying brown gunk everywhere, as Nicola crashed to the floor.

Ricky cursed himself. Not clever. It was just going to make it more difficult to get her out of the house, plus now there were signs of a struggle.

He took a deep breath, stepped towards her. Maybe he was going to have to simply kill her after all.

‘Nicola? Are you okay, dear?’

Ricky froze. Turned slowly round.

Grandma stood in the doorway. One eye fluttered slowly, the one below the huge dent which pulled most of the side of her face out of kilter. The arm was still bent way out of place. Her body was completely fucked up, but somehow she’d managed to drag herself to the door, and to her feet.

Nicola struggled into a sitting position against the wall behind Ricky. ‘Grandma – are you alright?’

Of course she’s not fucking alright, Ricky thought. No way.

Grandma leant against the door frame, as if tired. ‘I’m fine, dear. Just had a little fall, isn’t that right, Rick?’ Her working eye fixed on him.

Ricky felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise, like a thousand tiny erections.

Then her other eye stopped flickering. Closed for a moment, re-opened – and he had two strong eyes looking at him. Tough old bitch.

Ricky reached for the table, grabbed the rolling pin lying there. This job was getting badly fucked up, but he was going to finish it now.

‘Close your eyes, dear,’ Grandma said. She wasn’t talking to him, but the kid. ‘Would you do that, for Grandma? Just close your eyes for a while.’

‘Close them tight?’ Nicola asked, voice small.

‘Yes, close them extra tight,’ Grandma said, trying to smile. ‘I’ll tell you when you can open them again.’

Ricky saw the girl shut her eyes and cover her ears. He shook his head and turned back to the old woman, rolling pin held with loose ease.

He took a measured stride toward her, not hurrying. Ricky had been in bad situations all his life, been beaten up and half-killed on a hundred occasions, starting with the times that happened in his own bedroom, a room that had no posters on the walls or books on the shelves or little figures of cartoon animals. Ricky’s old man hadn’t believed in make-believe; was proud of being cynical — ‘That’s what I am, boy, I’m nobody’s fool’ — and working the angles and telling God’s honest truth however fucking dull it might be. His lessons had been painful, but Ricky knew he’d been right.

Ricky wasn’t afraid of an old woman, no matter how tough she was. He grinned at her, looking forward to seeing what extra damage the pin was going to do to her face.

She looked back, head tilted up, grey hair awry and skin papery, and then her head popped back out.

One minute her skull was caved in, the next it was back where it should be, like someone pumped exactly the right amount of air back into a punctured balloon. It made a sound like cellophane.

Ricky gawped, arm aloft.

Grandma swallowed, blinked, then did something with her fucked-up arm. Swung it around from behind – and as it came it seemed to become more solid, finding the correct planes to rotate on once more. She bent it experimentally, found it worked, and used it to pat her hair more-or-less back into place.

‘You’re a very bad boy, Ricky,’ she said, softly, too quietly for Nicola to hear. ‘And bad boys never see Santa Claus. Hear what I’m saying, motherfucker?’

Before Ricky could even process this, Margaret Harris hurled herself at him.

He tried to turn, to bring the rolling pin down, but only managed to twist halfway at the waist. She smacked into him sideways and the two of them span off the corner of the table to crash into the wall. Ricky felt his nose bend and melt, and realized now there was going to be blood to clean up, as well as everything else.

He tried to push the old woman away, but she looped a fist straight into his face. It cracked hard against his cheekbone, far too hard.

The rolling pin went spinning across the floor.

Ricky kicked and scrambled, lashing out with his feet, hands and elbows a flurry of compact violence. Each time he thought he was going to be able to dislodge her, she seemed to gain a notch in strength.

They rolled back and forth under the table, smashing a chair to firewood, and out the other side. Ricky heard Nicola squeal, and part of his mind was able to hope their neighbors hadn’t heard. Then he found himself with two gnarled hands tight around his throat, and almost wished they had, and were sending help. For him.

He finally managed to pull his knee up under the old bitch, and gradually forced his hands in between hers. When they were in position he steadied himself, got his breath – and threw everything he had, chopping his hands in opposite directions, and kicking out hard.

The old woman flew a yard and hit the stove like an egg.

Ricky was on his feet immediately, hands on his knees and coughing. When he swallowed, something clicked alarmingly in his throat. Nicola was still squeaking, eyes shut, but he heard it as from a great distance. He could taste his own blood, see it spattered on the wall and floor – in amongst the coffee and a few lumps of grey hair that he managed to yank out of the robot.

A fucking animatronic. Had to be.

He’d been set up.

John Harris had changed his mind, or more likely been a plant from minute one and there’d never been a real grandma Harris. Fuckers. Wonder World weren’t working with the cops. They were settling things their own way.

And so would Ricky.

The job was over, and it didn’t matter how much mess he left. He was getting out, and then he was going to find Mr. John Harris. The fee for this fucked-up job had just accelerated to include every single thing the asshole owned, including his wife. And daughter.

Grandma Harris was slumped on the floor, back against the cooker. Her throat was arced up like a twisted branch, a perfect target, but then jerked back into position as Ricky pulled out his gun.

No matter. The face would do just as well.

He held the gun in a straight-arm grip, sighted down the barrel.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ the rolling pin said.

Ricky turned very slowly. ‘Excuse me?’

The rolling pin had grown legs, and was standing with little hands on where its hips would be. Two stern eyes glared out of the wooden cylinder of its body. It looked like a strange, wide crab.

Ricky stared at it. Knew suddenly that it wasn’t a machine, but an actual rolling pin with eyes and arms.

He fired at it. The pin flipped out of the way, then switched direction and flick-flacked towards him, like a crazy little wooden gymnast.

Ricky backed hurriedly away, fired another shot. It missed, and the rolling pin flicked itself into the air like a muscular missile. Ricky wrenched his head out of the way just in time, and the pin embedded itself in the wall behind him.

‘Careful,’ said the wall, slowly opening its eyes.

Over at the stove, Grandma Harris was pulling herself upright. Ricky blinked at her. She smiled, a sweet old lady smile that wasn’t for him.

Ricky decided he didn’t have to mop up this mess after all. He’d go straight to talk with John Harris instead.

He fired a couple of rounds into the wall, between its huge eyes. It made a grumpy sound, but didn’t seem much inconvenienced. A huge mouth opened sleepily, as if yawning, as it was only just getting up to speed.

The pin meanwhile pushed itself out with a dry popping sound, and turned its beady eyes on Ricky.

‘Shit on this,’ Ricky muttered, as it scuttled towards him. He swung a kick at the rolling pin, sent it howling across the room. Fired straight at Margaret Harris, but didn’t wait to see if it hit.

He turned on his heel, bounded down the hallway and yanked at the front door. It wouldn’t open, and when Ricky tried to pull his hand away, he saw the handle had turned into a brown wooden hand and was gripping his like he was a prime business opportunity and they were testing each other’s strength. Ricky braced his foot against the wall and tugged, for the first time hearing the sound of the beams whispering above. He glanced up and saw some of them were wriggling in place, limbering up, getting ready for action. He didn’t want to see their action.

The door handle wasn’t letting go, and so he placed the muzzle of the gun against it and let it have one.

It took the tip of one of Ricky’s fingers with it, but it let go. Ricky reared back, kicked the door with all his strength. It splintered and he barrelled through it, tripped and fell full length on the lawn.

Face to face with the grass, he saw he’d been right, and there was a tiny face on every blade. He heard a noise like a million little voices tuning up, and knew its song wasn’t likely to be one he wanted to hear.

He scrabbled to his feet and careened down the path towards the car, bloody hand scrabbling for the keys. Before he got half-way there, two trash cans came running from next door. They made it to the car before him, and started levering one side off up the ground.

Meanwhile the rolling pin shot out of the house from behind him, narrowly missed his head, and went through the windscreen of the car like a torpedo. Barely had the spray of glass hit the ground before the pin emerged the other side, turned in mid air and looped back to punch through a door panel. It kept going, faster and faster, looping and punching, until the car began to look like a battered atom being mugged by a psycho electron.

Ricky began to realize just how badly his hand hurt, and that the car wasn’t going to be a viable transportation option. He diverted his course in mid stride, heading toward the road instead, for a straight line to run in. He cleared the sidewalk barely keeping his balance, and leant into the turn. Ricky could run. He’d had practice, down many dark streets and darker nights, always running away from something, instead of toward. The way was clear in front of him.

Then a vehicle appeared at the corner, and he realized what the grass had been singing.

It hadn’t been a song, but a siren.

Wonder World’s designers hadn’t stinted themselves on the cop wagon. It was black, and half as big as a house, all retro fins and intimidating wheel arches spiked with chrome. The windows in the sides were blacker still, and the doors in the back might as well have had ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’ scrawled across them.

Ricky skidded to a halt, whirled around. An identical vehicle had arrived just the other side of the remains of his car. Behind it a bunch of mushrooms and toadstools were moving into position.

The doors of the first wagon opened, and a figure got out each side. Both seven foot tall, with long tails and claws that glinted. Bud and Slap, though rats, had been friendly rats in the countless cartoons they’d appeared in over the last thirty years. They were almost as popular as Loopy and Careful and China Duck, and even Ricky recognized them. Cute, well-meaning villains, they always ended up joining the right side in the end.

But this Bud and Slap weren’t like that.

These toons were just for Ricky. As he held his ground, knowing there was nowhere to run, they walked toward him with heavy tread. They were stuffed into parodies of uniforms, torn at the seams and stained with bad things. Bud had a lazy, damaged eye, and was holding a big wooden truncheon in an unreassuring way. Slap had a sore on his upper lip, and kept running his long blue tongue over it, to collect the juice. Both had huge guns stuffed down the front of the pants of their uniforms. At least... that’s what Ricky hoped they were. From five yards away he could smell the rats’ odor, the gust of sweat and stickiness and decay, and for a moment he caught an echo of all the screams and death rattles they’d heard.

‘Hey, Ricky,’ said Slap. His voice was low and oily, full of unpleasant good humor. ‘Got business with you. Lots of different kinds of business, matter of fact. You can get in the wagon, or we can start it right here. What d’you say?’

Behind him, Bud giggled, and started to undo his pants.

Nicola stood at the window with Grandma, and watched the parade in the road. It wasn’t the real parade, like the one in the Beautiful Realm where they had fireworks and Careful Cat and Loopy, but they were going to see that tomorrow. This was a little parade, with just Bud and Slap, and Percival Pin and Terrance and Terry the Trash Cans: sometimes they put on little parades of their own, Grandma said, just because they enjoyed it so.

They laughed as they watched the characters play. Nicola had thought the man she’d come with had been a bad man, but he couldn’t have been as bad as all that. Bud and Slap the Happy Rats were each holding one of his hands, and they were dancing with him, leading him to their wagon. They looked as if they liked him a lot. The man’s mouth opened and shut very wide as he danced, and Nicola thought he was probably laughing. She would be, in his position. They all looked like they were having such fun.

Finally the wagon doors were shut with the man inside, and Bud and Slap bowed at Grandma’s window before getting back into their police car. The trashcans went somersaulting back to next door’s yard, and the rolling pin came hand-springing up the path, leaving a trail of little firework stars in its wake.

Nicola clapped her hands and Grandma laughed, and put her arm around the little girl.

Now it was time for supper and pie, and tomorrow would be a new and different day. They turned from the window and went to start cooking, in a kitchen where the tables and chairs had already tidied everything up, as if nothing bad had ever happened, or ever could.

Meanwhile, well outside Wonder World, over on a splintered porch hanging off a small house the other side of the beltway, Marty the gateman sat in his chair enjoying his bedtime cigarette. His back ached a little from standing up all day, but it didn’t bother him too badly. It was a small price to pay for seeing all the faces as they went into the parks, and when they came out again. The kids went in bright-eyed and hopeful, the parents tired and watchful. You could see them wondering how much it was all going to cost, and whether it would be worth it. When you saw them come out, hours or days later, you could see they knew that it had been. For a little while the grown-ups had realized cynicism was an emotional short-cut which meant they missed everything worth seeing along the way, and the children had proof of what they’d already believed: the world was cool.

The gateman’s job was very important, Marty knew. You said the first hello to the visitors, and you bid them goodbye at the end. You welcomed them and helped them acclimatize; and you sent them on their way again afterward, letting them see in your eyes the truth of what they believed — they were leaving a little lighter inside.

Marty’s house was small, and he lived in it alone. As he sat in the warmth of the evening, looking up at the stars, he didn’t mind that very much. His wife now lived with someone who was better at earning money, and who came home after a day’s work in a far worse mood. Marty missed her, but he’d survive. The house he lived in could have been fancier, but he’d painted it last summer and he liked his yard.

He had the last couple of puffs of his cigarette, and stubbed it out carefully in the ashtray he kept by the chair. He yawned, sipped the last of his iced tea, and decided that was that. It was early yet, but a good time for sleep. It always is, when you’re looking forward to the next day.

As he lay in his bed later, gently settling into the warm train which would take him into tomorrow, he dimly wondered what he’d do with the rest of his life. Work for as long as he could, he supposed, and then stop. Sit out on the porch, live out his days bathed in the memory of all the faces he’d seen, lit for a moment by magic. Smile at passers by. Drink iced tea in the twilight.

That sounded okay. Better than okay.

It sounded good.