Substitutions - Michael Marshall Smith Michael Marshall Smith recalls: "This story came about in the simplest way, the way I always enjoy most - something happening in real life that makes you think 'What if?' "Our household gets a lot of its food via an online delivery service, and one day when I was unpacking what had just been dropped at our house I gradually realised there was something...not quite right about the contents of the bags."There's two things that are strange about that experience. The first is that - given that every household is likely to buy at least some things in common - you don't realise straight away that you've been given the wrong shopping. You don't immediately think 'This is wrong', more like . . . 'This is weird'. The second is how personal it is, gaining accidental access to this very tangible evocation of some other family's life. You can't help but wonder about the people the food was really destined for."In real life, I just called up the delivery guy and got it sorted out: but in fiction, you might tackle things slightly differently . . ." Out Back - Garry Kilworth"'Out Back' was written for a group of friends," Kilworth recalls, "who appear as characters in the story under their initials, as I do myself. Those who know me well will recognise the protagonists."Iken is a real village on the edge of the marshes behind Snape Maltings in Suffolk. Two years ago I wandered along the periphery of the reed beds which stretch down towards the coast as a green and golden sea, the waves created by the winds that blow across the flatlands. Looking at the church that sits on a knoll above the marshes I thought, 'This is a perfect setting for a horror story.' And so . . ." City of the Dog - John Langan"This story arose from my desire to see what I could do with the figure of the ghoul," reveals Langan, "and as I've tried to indicate within the narrative, I drew inspiration both from H.P. Lovecraft ('Pickman's Model') and Caitlín R. Kiernan ( Daughter of Hounds)."The miserable years in New York State's capital, though, were mine alone."
Release date:
July 26, 2012
Publisher:
Little, Brown Book Group
Print pages:
160
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MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH IS a novelist and screenwriter. Under this name he has published seventy short stories and three novels – Only Forward, Spares and One of Us – winning the Philip K. Dick Award, International Horror Guild Award, August Derleth, and the Prix Bob Morane in France. He has also won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction four times, more than any other author.
Writing as “Michael Marshall”, he has also published five international best-selling thrillers, including The Straw Men, The Intruders, Bad Things and, most recently, Killer Move. The Intruders is currently under series development with BBC TV.
He is currently involved in screenwriting projects that include a television pilot set in New York and an animated horror movie for children. The author lives in North London with his wife, son, and two cats.
As Smith recalls: “This story came about in the simplest way, the way I always enjoy most – something happening in real life that makes you think ‘What if?’
“Our household gets a lot of its food via an online delivery service, and one day when I was unpacking what had just been dropped at our house I gradually realised there was something . . . not quite right about the contents of the bags.
“There’s two things that are strange about that experience. The first is that – given that every household is likely to buy at least some things in common – you don’t realise straight away that you’ve been given the wrong shopping. You don’t immediately think ‘This is wrong’, more like . . . ‘This is weird’. The second is how personal it is, gaining accidental access to this very tangible evocation of some other family’s life. You can’t help but wonder about the people the food was really destined for.
“In real life, I just called up the delivery guy and got it sorted out: but in fiction, you might tackle things slightly differently . . .”
HALFWAY THROUGH UNPACKING THE second red bag I turned to my wife – who was busily engaged in pecking out an email on her Blackberry – and said something encouraging about the bag’s contents.
“Well, you know,” she said, not really paying attention. “I do try.”
I went back to taking items out and laying them on the counter, which is my way. Because I work from home, it’s always me who unpacks the grocery shopping when it’s delivered: Helen’s presence this morning was unusual, and a function of a meeting that had been put back an hour (the subject of the terse email currently being written). Rather than standing with the fridge door open and putting items directly into it, I put everything on the counter first, so I can sort through it and get a sense of what’s there, before then stowing everything neatly in the fridge, organised by type/nature/potential meal groupings, as a kind of Phase Two of the unloading operation.
The contents of the bags – red ones for stuff that needs refrigeration, purple for freezer goods, green for everything else – is never entirely predictable. My wife has control of the online ordering process, which she conducts either from her laptop or, in extremis, her phone. While I’ve not personally specifi ed the order, however, its contents are seldom much of a surprise. There’s an established pattern. We have cats, so there’ll be two large bags of litter – it’s precisely being able to avoid hoicking that kind of thing off supermarket shelves, into a trolley and across a busy car park which makes online grocery shopping such a boon. There will be a few green bags containing bottled water, sacks for the rubbish bins, toilet rolls and paper towel, cleaning materials, tins of store cupboard staples (baked beans, tuna, tinned tomatoes), a box of Diet Coke for me (which Helen tolerates on the condition that I never let it anywhere near our son), that kind of thing. There will be one, or at the most two, purple bags holding frozen beans, frozen peas, frozen organic fish cakes for the kid, and so on. We never buy enough frozen to fill more than one purple carrier, but sometimes they split it between a couple, presumably for some logistical reason. Helen views this as both a waste of resources and a threat to the environment, and has sent at least two emails to the company about it. I don’t mind much as we use the bags for clearing out the cats’ litter tray, and I’d rather have spares on hand than risk running out.
Then there’s the red bags, the main event. The red bags represent the daily news of food consumption – in contrast to the contextual magazine articles of the green bags, or the long-term forecasts of the purple. In the red bags will be the Greek yoghurt, blueberries and strawberries Helen uses to make her morning smoothie; a variety of vegetables and salad materials; some free-range and organic chicken fillets (I never used to be clear on the difference between the non-identical twin joys of organic and free range, but eleven years of marriage has made me better informed); some extra-sharp cheddar (Helen favours cheese that tastes as though it wants your tongue to be sad), and a few other bits and pieces.
The individual items may vary a little from week to week, but basically, that’s what gets brought to our door most Wednesday mornings. Once in a while there may be substitutions in the delivery (when the supermarket has run out of a specifi ed item, and one judged to be of near equivalence is provided instead): these have to be carefully checked, as Helen’s idea of similarity of goods differs somewhat from the supermarket’s. Otherwise, you could set your watch by our shopping, if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor – and this continuity of content is why I’d turned to Helen when I was halfway through the second red bag. Yes, there’d been spring onions and a set of red, green and yellow peppers – standard weekly fare. But there were also two packs of brightly-coloured and fun-fi lled children’s yoghurts and a block of much milder cheddar of the kind Oscar and I tend to prefer, plus a family pack of deadly-looking chocolate desserts. Not to mention a six-pack of thick and juicy-looking steaks, and large variety pack of further Italian cured meats holding fi ve different types of salami.
“Yum,” I said.
I was genuinely pleased, and a little touched. Normally I source this kind of stuff – on the few occasions when I treat myself – from the deli or mini-market which are both about ten minutes’ walk away from the house (in opposite directions, sadly). Seeing it come into the house via the more socially condoned route of the supermarket delivery was strangely affecting.
“Hmm?” Helen said. She was nearing the end of her email. I could tell because the speed of her typing increases markedly as she approaches the point when she can fire her missive off into space.
She jabbed SEND and finally looked up properly. “What’s that you said?”
“Good shop. Unusual. But I like it.”
She smiled, glad that I was happy, but then frowned. “What the hell’s that?”
I looked where she was pointing. “Yoghurts.”
She grabbed the pack and stared with evident distaste at the ingredient list. “I didn’t order those. Obviously. Or that.” Now she was pointing at the pile of salamis and meats. “And the cheese is wrong. Oh, bloody hell.”
And with that, she was gone.
I waited, becalmed in the kitchen, to see what would unfold. A quick look in the other bags – the greens and purples – didn’t explain much. They all contained exactly the kind of thing we tended to order.
Five minutes later I heard the sound of two pairs of footsteps coming down the stairs. Helen re-entered the kitchen followed by the man who’d delivered the shopping. He was carrying three red bags and looked mildly cow. . .
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