Cursed Read online

  I got to know Henry pretty well, during this time. After all, we were housemates. Living under the same roof, sharing all of life’s hurly-burly in a way that would make an excellent TV sitcom. I learned about his no-good father (abusive, then abominable, then absent), the shit he took from sociopathic schoolmates, his mother’s untimely… I’ll spare you. It was as boring as it sounds. The guy was a punchbag with a face. Good raw material, terrible company. I suffer for my art, is all I’ll say on that score.

  But now we were really gathering momentum. You always do, with unlimited wishes. The whole three-and-you’re-done deal was intended to land your wish-maker in a mess of unintended consequences and leave them there. Small potatoes, for a simpler time. Once we got our heads around the fine print in the laws of thermodynamics, we redefined our goals.

  Not that Henry was straining at the leash, exactly. Far from it. He needed a lot of nudging and coaxing along the way. So, Henry, I said, about three days in. Tell me something.

  “Yes, box?”

  This is a big house for just one guy. Have you always lived here by yourself?

  “No, my mum used to live here with me.”

  Got you. Wow, was it tough on you when she died?

  “I missed her lots. I still do. She always looked after me.”

  I’m sure.

  “I had a dog, too. Her name was Princess.” His eyes went wide. “Oh!” he said. “Oh!”

  What?

  “I could… I could wish for…”

  Anything, man. Anything at all. Do it to it.

  It came out all in a rush. “I wish Princess was alive again!”

  I would have preferred the mother, frankly, and that was what I was angling for. More energy to play with, because a human timeline is a bigger, more complicated thing. But a dog’s better than nothing. Princess appeared in the middle of the living room, tail going like a hairy metronome set to prestissimo, and bounded into Henry’s lap.

  Elsewhere, at the same time and not coincidentally, a sinkhole swallowed a house in Buenos Aires. I’d been meaning to do that for a while. The guy in the house was kind of a secular saint, with a limpidly beautiful, giving soul, and he pissed me the hell off.

  Much more importantly, Henry’s wish had opened up the alternate timeline window. I reached back into the past and tweaked a few things – most notably the Ermächtigungsgesetz in the German Reichstag in 1933, which now passed handsomely instead of failing by one vote. Abracadabra! A world war that hadn’t happened now suddenly had. The bad guys lost, but they got in some sick licks before they went down and the ripples didn’t stop for decades. I was on a roll.

  Henry may have been slower than treacle on an ice shelf, but he was starting to see at least some of the endless possibilities. If he could have his dog back, he could have some of the other comforts of yesteryear too. He still fought shy of bringing Mummy back from the dead. Maybe he’d caught a re-run of “The Monkey’s Paw” on Thirty-Minute Theatre when he was a kid, and it had left him with a vestigial sense of how badly wrong that transaction might go. But he could and did wish for lost toys, dead pets and the snows of fucking yesteryear. The dead pets in particular were a trial to me. The house was full of dogs, cats, hamsters and budgerigars, some of which had severe toilet-training problems and no respect at all for my mid-gloss finish.

  But I endured all this with a philosophical patience. The flipside was mine, and the sky was now the limit. Literally. I filled it up with greenhouse gases, flipping the whole world onto a timeline where they’d discovered renewable energy very late and mostly ignored it. The biosphere was taking a pounding, extreme weather events were happening every other day, and the fun was only just getting started.

  At the same time, I advanced the careers of bigots, hate-mongers and rabble-rousers, giving them the platforms they needed to spread their messages in a mainstream context. Rational discourse went out of style, and out of the window. Facts became an irrelevance. Hucksters and charlatans were revered as gods. It was a whole thing.

  Maybe I overplayed my hand a little. I thought Henry was too lost in his ever-growing menagerie even to notice the state of the world. But one morning I noticed him looking out of the window with what is sometimes called a corrugated brow. Corrugated cardboard, in Henry’s case.

  What’s the matter, champ? I asked him.

  “Everyone’s so unhappy, box.”

  Human condition. Don’t worry about it.

  “But they’re more unhappy than they used to be.”

  Not good, I thought. Not good at all. Better find some way to change the subject before…

  “Why, box? Why are they so unhappy?”

  Too late. Now he’d asked, I didn’t have a choice. Terms and conditions, et cetera. Under the geas, under the thumb. Fortunately, I reflected, the Brainless Wonder here was not remotely equipped for this ride. He just did not have the cognitive kit.

  Well, I said, here’s the thing, Henry. You remember when we first met? I told you I was a demon.

  “I remember.”

  But I also said that I wasn’t Maxwell’s demon. That was me trying to find a simple way of expressing a fairly difficult concept. It’s about entropy, and while I’m happy to try to explain I seriously doubt you’ll understand a word of it.

  “Tell me!”

  Okay, then. Sit down and pin your ears back, man. Give it your best shot.

  Henry did his best to look attentive. He looked ridiculous.

  Maxwell was just this guy, you know? Physicist. Mathematician. Serious public masturbator, but that’s by the by. Nobody ever caught him at it. Anyway, he got interested in the second law of thermodynamics. The one that says things fall apart, and no take-backs.

  Maxwell tried to come up with a take-back. Wanking never comes to good, in my experience. Or even when it does, it leaves a mess. Come to think of it, that’s as good an example of the second law of thermodynamics as any. In a closed system, entropy – disorder, dysfunction, mess – must always increase. It’s not an accident that the stars burn out and the quarks stop twitching and your freezer rolls over and dies in a heatwave. It’s the nature of things. It’s built-in.

  But hey, Maxwell says. Let’s posit a box, with two compartments. Atoms zinging around every which way. A turbulent system. A shit-storm. Like your bedroom, Henry, only without the one-eyed teddy bear. Or leave the bear in the mix, if that helps. It’s just a thought experiment.

  And now let’s posit a trapdoor, in the middle of the box. In the wall that separates the two compartments. And a demon, sitting right next to the trapdoor, with his little clawed hand on the doorknob. He can be holding your teddy bear, if you like. Whenever an atom zings past this little guy, he chooses whether or not to let it through. If it’s quick – and therefore hot – he opens the door. If it’s slow, and cold, he cold-shoulders it. Door stays shut.

  And so, over time, atom by atom, the box sorts itself out. One half of it gets hot, the other cools down.

  “Why does that matter?” Henry asked.

  I was surprised. That sounded like a pertinent question. Spooky. Just an accident, though, surely.

  It matters, Henry, because entropy has decreased. Order has been created, with no expenditure of energy. It’s magic, kind of. A friendly miracle. It means the universe doesn’t have to end up as a frozen, unavailing slab of shit-fuck-all. There’s a chance it might work out okay after all.

  But – stay with me, Henry – I’m not that demon. I’m a different kind of demon altogether. I like entropy. Fuck, I am all about that stuff. You could say I’m an entropy factory. Where Maxwell’s demon dusts the ornaments on the sideboard and puts out the milk bottles, I take a meat cleaver to the sideboard and use the milk bottles for Molotovs. You follow?

  Henry frowned hard, like he was seriously trying to. “No.”

  Well, that was a relief. A yes would have worried me a lot.

  Well look, Henry, I said. I grant wishes, right? That, in a way, is anti-entropic. Or it could be. It r
eorganises the universe in line with the desires of one of its current inmates, which increases order. Admittedly, that’s a gift that’s usually squandered on trifles. But it’s a fucking awesome thing, intrinsically. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that action? You can see why people sign up. But the recoil is a killer.

  “What’s recoil?” Henry asked, with the same look of intellectual constipation.

  Like, from a gun, Henry. When you shoot a gun, and you go over on your back. Because the energy that pushes that tiny little bullet a thousand yards is more than enough to push a much bigger object – you – into a hilarious somersault that lands you on your arse-bone. I do that. Only I do it better. Every time I grant a wish, I throw out a curse. And the curse is about a thousand times bigger than the wish was. I use the probabilistic power loosened by the wish to mess with the whole world on a scale that – no, I shouldn’t boast, but it’s good stuff. Which is to say, bad stuff. Bad stuff that gets me off.

  It was a long speech. I made it long on purpose, knowing that Henry’s attention span was short. But after I was finished, I could tell by the way the muscles of his face kept moving that he was trying to have a thought.

  Don’t sweat it, Henry, I said. Please don’t. You know what Oscar Wilde said. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit. Touch it and it’s fucked to shit.

  “But…” Henry said.

  No, man, no. Don’t do this to yourself. Just wish for something really nice, and let your brain drift off again. You can never have too many puppies, right?

  “No, but…”

  Bu-bu-bu-bu-baa-baa-baaaaa! Let’s focus on what we do best. What would make you happy right now? Tell me, and I’m all over it.

  “But if making me happy makes everyone else sad…”

  Shit! I’d broken Henry. How was that even possible? He was a one-piece moulding in high-impact stupid.

  No, I insisted. Henry. Listen to me. Unhappiness is the human condition. These people, if you don’t make them miserable, they feel like they’re missing out. And if it isn’t this, trust me, it’s just gonna be something else. Hey, remember the little fuckers who tortured you at school? Well, multiply them by a billion and that’s the human race. You don’t owe them anything, except maybe a little payback.

  Henry shook his head. Meaning he had the temerity and hitherto unsuspected balls to disagree with me. “My mum said you’ve got to reach out and help a stranger in need. She said we’re put here in this world to be good to each other.”

  Did she now? Wow! Quite the shitheap philosopher, your mum. Now let’s go along to get along. Make a wish. A nice big one. What do you say?

  Henry didn’t answer. He had a face on him like a mule with a thistle up its crack.

  Henry, I insisted. You’ve got to make a wish, man. You’ll feel better for it, and so will I.

  More mule/thistle musings followed. I was about to intervene, when Henry beat me to the draw.

  “I wish—”

  Finally! You had me worried there, champ. Let’s hear it.

  “I wish I was smart enough to understand everything you just told me.”

  Well, shit.

  It’s not a conditional thing, in case you were going to ask. You can’t just grant this wish and then filter out that other one. The system’s not designed that way. The defaults kick in, and the energy flows. A million tiny cogwheels turn. Reality shifts into a new shape, with a lot of creaking and clanking and the occasional hiss of escaping probability.

  Understanding suffused Henry’s face. It wasn’t pretty.

  “You used me,” he said.

  That’s an insulting way of putting it, Henry. We used each other, surely. I got to tilt the world on its axis, you got puppies. But if you’re not happy with the deal, we can end it at any time. Right now, even. Your call.

  “You gave me trivial gifts, and syphoned off… what, the existential residue? Then you used that power to make life significantly and irreversibly worse for millions of people.”

  Billions, I think you mean. I like that phrase, existential residue.

  That’s a neat way of putting it. Again, we can annul our bargain at any time, and there won’t be any hard feelings on my side. What do you say? Go our separate ways?

  “No.”

  Again, shit. Henry’s boosted brain was taking aim, and I was in the crosshairs. There was a reason why I’d chosen him in the first place. He was – what’s that phrase of Lenin’s? Oh yeah, a useful idiot. And now he was standing there having deep thoughts. Right at me. I didn’t like it one bit.

  “So a wish that creates a small increase in happiness for one person creates a recoil effect – a curse – that causes misery for millions.”

  And now I can see that doesn’t work for you. Respect. Say the word, Henry, and I’m out of here.

  “Would that work the other way? If I made a wish that caused me pain, would the recoil be a general increase in happiness?”

  Shit, for the third and last time.

  Yes, I said. I couldn’t lie. Couldn’t hide it. He’d found my kryptonite.

  Henry sat down. He stared at the snakewood box that is my material extension. He ran his finger along the forward edge of my lid.

  “Settle in,” he told me. “It’s going to be a long night.”

  He wasn’t kidding. It was a long night, a long morning, a long week, a long… Things have gotten long. Let’s leave it at that.

  My relationship with Henry has never been the same since that terrible, fucked-up day. I mean, it has its upsides. I get to roast the smart-arsed little bastard alive, in both figurative and literal ways. Whenever my rooted dislike of him, and the things he’s making me do, gets to be too much, I can take out every ounce of my frustration on him. No rules, no limits.

  But every time I do, the world gets that much closer to Utopia. He suffers, and the recoil churns up great waves of serendipity, joy and goodwill. The architecture of reality refines itself, relentlessly, into something dazzling and delightful and awe-inspiring, an omni-dimensional temple that sings in angelic harmonies when the winds of limbo break on its marbled vistas. It’s sickening.

  The other demons laugh at me behind my back. There goes Goody Two-Hooves, they say, with his magic wand and his sparkly tutu, bringing gifts for all the little girls and boys. Henry Mossop’s pet. The archangel Fucknuts. The fairy from the top of the Christmas tree.

  I’ve been drinking a lot. Two or three bars every night. Any place where they’ll serve a beer or ten to a snakewood box. Last night I bumped into Maxwell’s demon and we got wrecked together.

  He told me, it was never about thermodynamics for him. He was doing what he loved.

  SKIN

  JAMES BROGDEN

  Nearly home – she’d so nearly made it home.

  Hannah couldn’t have put her finger on the exact moment she became aware of the shuffle-slump of footsteps dragging on the pavement a dozen yards behind, following her. The night bus had dropped her in the aquarium brightness of shop-windows and headlights up on the main road, and she’d turned the corner onto her street, which was always perfectly well lit, with her house only a few doors down from the corner. If it had been any further, or darker, she’d have taken a taxi. It didn’t seem possible that anybody could have been aware of her long enough to want to follow her.

  Unless whoever it was had been on the bus too, watching her the whole time.

  She tried to remember what the other passengers had looked like, but she’d sat at the front, near the driver, nice and safe.

  Shuffle-slump. Shuffle-slump.

  It was blustery and cold, the wind tugging at her coat. She walked faster, brisk but not hurrying, she told herself, past terraced houses with bay windows and light spilling from around drawn curtains. Their front yards were tiny; if it came to it she could reach over any one of their gates and tap on the window, ask for help. Except that it was obviously just a harmless old man behind her and what kind of an idiot would she look, knocking on a stranger’s door for th
at?

  — shuffleslumpshuffleslump —

  His pace had quickened to match hers.

  She dug her hand into her coat pocket, finding her house keys and clutching them with a key between each knuckle. Two more doors – number 47 with their Christmas lights still up, and then number 49 with its wheelie bin sprawling like a drunkard and the low hedge that always had litter jammed into it – and she’d be home.

  “Hannah!” he called. Jesus, how did he know her name? She bashed the front gate open with her thighs, three strides up the path to her front door, the security light suddenly dazzling, her key out in her other hand and slotting into the lock when he called again.

  “Hannah, wait, please, I need to talk to you!”

  And here, suddenly, was the strangest thing of all: she recognised his voice.

  She stopped in the act of turning the key, and looked back over her shoulder. “Robin?”

  He’d stopped out on the pavement, hands jammed in his pockets, his face hidden in the shadow of a heavy, dark hoodie. A gust of wind swirled around them, making the litter in the street dance. He nodded.

  “Robin, is that you? Jesus, Rob, you scared the fuck out of me!”

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. This wasn’t like him; the Robin Saunders she’d known would never have apologised in such humble tones. He looked and smelled like he’d been sleeping rough. Now that she looked more closely, she saw that he was dressed in creased sweatpants and filthy trainers splitting at the soles – clothes in which the Rob of old would never have been seen dead – and the odour that rolled off him was thick and pungent. “That’s what I’ve come to say,” he continued. “That I’m sorry. For everything.”

  “Well…” She found herself at a loss for words. “Good, then.” She turned the key and started to open her front door.

  “And also!” he added, taking a step forward, but he then seemed to regret his eagerness and shuffled back again, ducking his head. Either that or he was trying to keep out of the light. She still couldn’t see his face. “To say that I’ve made something for you. A present. To make amends.”