The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell

by Brian Evenson

Genres: Literary Fiction; Horror

Synopsis

“Here is how monstrous humans are.”

A sentient, murderous prosthetic leg; shadowy creatures lurking behind a shimmering wall; brutal barrow men: of all the terrors that populate The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell, perhaps the most alarming are the beings who decimated the habitable Earth: humans. In this new short story collection, Brian Evenson envisions a chilling future beyond the Anthropocene that forces excruciating decisions about survival and self-sacrifice in the face of toxic air and a natural world torn between revenge and regeneration. Combining psychological and ecological horror, each tale thrums with Evenson's award-winning literary craftsmanship, dark humor, and thrilling suspense.

Release date: August 3, 2021

Publisher: Coffee House Press

Print pages: 254

Sample

Leg

The captain of the vessel was named Hekla, a name that in the language of her ancestors meant cloak, though she had never worn a cloak. One of her legs was not a leg at all but a separate creature that had learned to act like a leg. When she needed to walk about her vessel this served as a leg for her, but once she was alone in her quarters she would unstrap it and it would unfurl to become a separate being, something she could converse with, a trusted advisor, a secret friend. Nobody knew it to be other than an artificial leg except for her.

Hekla had found the leg before she became captain, a few moments after she lost her flesh-and-blood leg, severed cleanly midthigh in a freak accident. Hekla had the presence of mind to tourniquet what was left of her thigh. She was fading from consciousness, having lost too much blood, when it appeared.

It was bipedal but strange and glittering, made of angles and light. Each time Hekla looked at it, it seemed subtly different.

“What is that?” asked the creature.

“What?” Hekla managed.

“The dark substance puddling around you.”

“That is my blood,” said Hekla. “I will soon die.”

“Ah,” said the creature.

“You don’t exist,” claimed Hekla. “I’m hallucinating you.”

The creature ignored this. Instead it said, “Would you not prefer to live?”

And with this began a relationship that bound Hekla and leg tightly together.

“I’m bored,” she told the leg one day many years later, once she was captain of a vessel. “We do nothing but float. I want something exciting to do.”

The leg told her this: “On the winds of the darkness is a creature as long as this vessel, and that moves in a slow, undulating pattern across the currents of space. Its back is quivered with spines, and it is long and thin like a snake but has the head and metal-breaking bill of a bony fish. With a swipe of its tail it could destroy this vessel.”

“Why do you tell me this, leg?” she asked.

Leg shrugged. “It is a worthy foe. I thought you might like to hunt it.”

At first Hekla dismissed leg’s suggestion out of hand. It made no sense to endanger her crew and the passengers sleeping in the storage pods for her own amusement. But as the days dragged past, she began to favor the idea.

Eventually she listened to the leg with interest. When it told her where such a creature was most likely to be found, she directed the navigator to change their course.

“Why should I change course?” he asked. His name was Michael.

“Because I am your captain,” said Hekla, “and I tell you to do so.”

“We have a destination,” said Michael. “A new life awaits us.”

“Change course,” said Hekla.

“I will not do so without a reason,” said Michael.

So Hekla explained.

“That is not a worthy reason,” said Michael once she had finished. “If you do this thing many of us will die, perhaps even all of us. No, I will not alter our course. We shall continue to our intended destination.”

The captain asked again, and again he refused. In the end he made it clear that she would have her way only if she killed him first.

She returned to her quarters muttering to herself, “What use is it to be captain if I cannot have my way?”

Once back in her quarters, she released her leg. It unfurled and revealed itself.

“Did you hear him, leg?” she asked.

The leg simply inclined its head—for as curious as it seems, the leg, when unfurled, had a head—to indicate that it had.

“Who is the captain?” asked the leg in its strange voice. “Is it not you?”

“It is indeed me,” said Hekla.

“Then force him to do it,” the leg said.

“He claims he would rather die first,” said Hekla.

“Then oblige him.”

But the captain did not want to kill Michael herself. She knew it was wrong and that she would feel guilty doing so. And yet, perhaps if she were not the one to do the actual killing, it would not be as wrong and she would be able to live with what had been done. The only one she could trust to kill Michael and keep her involvement a secret was leg.

“Leg,” she said.

“Hekla,” said leg, bowing deeply.

“Will you kill Michael for me?”

“Yes,” said leg. “Here is what we will do: You will go to the navigation center when he is alone, and you will secure the door from within. When he asks you what you are doing, you will ignore him and release me, and I will unfurl and kill him.”

“I do not want to be there when he dies,” said Hekla. “I do not want to see it or for anyone to guess I am involved. Find another way.”

Leg thought. “Take me off in your room. Then I will unfurl, walk down the corridor, enter the navigation center, and kill him.”

“People will see you walking and see what you are, and they will shriek and scream. No one must know I have you, leg. If they realize you are more than a leg, they will destroy you, and perhaps me as well. Think again, leg.”

Leg thought long. “I will change myself,” said leg finally. “I will take on your countenance and in that guise I will kill him.”

“Can you do that?” asked Hekla, amazed. “Can you become just like me?”

“Yes, and act like you too. But only if you grant me permission.”

And so Hekla did.

As she watched, leg underwent a transformation, taking on first her height and figure and then the specifics of her features. In the end, there was nothing to tell the two of them apart except that the captain was missing her prosthetic, and leg, in becoming captain, had thought to give itself what seemed to be an artificial leg.

When Hekla looked upon this perfect replication of herself, a shiver ran through her.

“Go,” she said. “Kill him.”

“I go,” said leg, and left.

Leg went through the door and into the passageway. It walked slowly toward the navigation center, where Michael was. This was the first time it had been out of the captain’s quarters on its own. This was the first time it had been away from the captain since leg had found her. Leg enjoyed how this felt.

Leg arrived at the navigation center. Michael was there, alone.

“It’s no use trying to convince me,” said Michael. “I won’t change my mind.”

“I’m not going to try to convince you,” said leg, and killed him. To do this, leg turned itself inside out and engulfed him so that the blood, when it came spattering forth, would be hidden inside. Then leg released the exsanguinated body and turned itself right side out again. Inside, it was spattered with Michael’s blood. On the outside, the false Hekla looked clean and untouched.

And so leg killed Michael and left his body on the floor. Then it bent over the body and stared at it long and hard. Slowly it took on the shape and form of Michael, for once someone was dead, leg did not need their permission to become them.

Leg went back to the captain. At first she thought it was Michael, since Michael was whom it resembled. The captain drew back as leg came closer, afraid, until the moment Michael’s features began to smooth out and leg became itself again. Then it folded up tightly and became her leg again, though now it was aslosh inside with a dead man’s blood. Wherever the captain walked, she heard it.

And after? Some believe that, once Michael was dead, leg was satisfied to remain as it was, hidden, the captain’s confidant. Others believe leg acquired a taste for being human and did not want to give this up. At night, while the captain slept, it would take on her form or that of Michael and wander the ship. Occasionally, as a special treat, it would turn itself inside out and kill someone, then dispose of the body, at times jettisoning it into space, at others incinerating it with a mechanism incorporated into its body. There are those who say that by the time the vessel reached the vast creature Hekla intended to hunt, leg had destroyed the crew manning the vessel and many of the passengers suspended in the storage pods. Only the captain and leg were left awake and alive, and soon the ship was destroyed and the captain killed.

And leg? Soon it reached its mature form and became snakebodied with the head of a bony fish, as it had always been meant to do. It is no doubt out there still, swimming alone along a current of darkness.

In Dreams

He heard a buzzing in his head that he took at first to be a dream, but of course he could no longer dream. What was it then? Was it in his head after all?

He called up his familiar. Almost immediately, the noise stopped.

What was that? he wondered. Though he had not spoken aloud, the familiar read the flexion of his jaw and determined the likely words, and he felt it rummaging lightly about within his memories until it had hold of what the sound had been to him.

Nothing to worry about, it responded. He heard nothing but still felt the words form in his head. These are merely the noises of the body, misheard. Similar to other noises you have asked about before.

I didn’t used to hear them.

No, you didn’t.

Why not?

Because you used to be someone else.

When he did not reply, after a moment the familiar offered, Let me manage putting you to sleep and waking you again. I shall make sure you won’t worry about any sounds.

No, he mouthed. And when he sensed it mustering evidence for why this would be best for everyone: “No!”

It was a shock to hear his own voice aloud, at night, alone, in the dark.

He submerged the familiar again, down to where he wouldn’t have to be consciously aware of it. He knew where to find it if he needed it. It would always be there, until he was dead.

He lay staring into the dark.

One day, he worried, the familiar would simply take charge of his sleep whether he requested it do so or not. Surely it had programs and protocols that would activate if, one night, he was too anxious or too panicked or just seemed otherwise not right in some measurable way. Perhaps that night was tonight.

Yet another part of him thought, Why not let it put me to sleep?It could do so instantly, and awaken him instantly as well. It could, so it had informed him, regulate his sleep cycle with an exactitude calibrated for maximum benefit. Conveniences such as these were among the few things he had gained from having the familiar wedged into his brain, though they were next to nothing compared to what he had lost.

No, he couldn’t trust it, even if it was part of him now.

He felt it fluttering upward.

Feeling paranoid? the familiar asked. Would you care to be soothed?

He ignored it. After a time, he felt it sink down again, but of course it was never quite gone.

After a while, he gave up on falling back to sleep. He got up. He did not turn on the light because of the others sleeping in the house. Besides, it did not matter; the familiar was expert at helping his brain make the most of whatever limited visual input his eyes received from the darkness. It was nothing like seeing in daylight, but it was enough.

The tile floor was cool beneath his feet. The familiar began to rise to inform him of precisely how cool, but he tamped it down. There was no advantage in knowing so much about the world around him. He padded barefoot across the tile, exactly sixty-five degrees, then over the synthetic wool rug, then over the tile floor again.

In the hall, near the foot of the stairs, he hesitated. He had intended to go to the living room and find his tablet and read in the dark, but he wasn’t sure anymore.

I can read to you, the familiar said. Can even project the words before you if you so desire. You don’t need a tablet. You only need me.

He hadn’t felt it rise, but there it was, insisting on being heard.

No, he told it. I’ve changed my mind.

He climbed the stairs. He traveled from bedroom to bedroom as silently as he could. He opened a door and stepped in, regarding the dim shape in the bed and listening to it breathe. The shape was positioned just right, the face exposed to the moonlight streaming through the window, and he could see the flutter of eyes moving quickly under lids. A little envious, he wondered what the dreams concerned.

Or at least he thought he could see the eyes moving beneath the lids. Maybe this was just his familiar extracting data from the darkness and modifying it according to his wishes, filtering it, showing him what it thought he desired to see.

He went through all four bedrooms, regarding the sleeping bodies. He stayed in the last room the longest, hesitating, not because it had anyone special in it but because it was the last room. My progeny, he thought, and tried and failed to feel anything. Then thought, Why call them that? Why not offspring or descendants or simply children? Though children wasn’t the right word either, since he was so different from them now. Almost as if he and they were two different species. They did not experience the same world as he did.

He had been told the repurposing of the brain was safe. ...