The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [142]
They had died quickly. Too quickly. Their cries had been silenced before they could summon the breath to make them. Two broad cuts across their throats had silenced them forever.
These men had been assistants to the Information Master. Their true purpose in life, however, was to act as his protectors.
Clearly, they had failed.
The Gutter had the Information Master by the throat, the Gutting Knife poised against his belly.
"Rest assured," he said, "that you will speak." He cocked his head. "Unless, of course, you prefer to be gutted."
The Information Master wheezed because the Gutter was gripping his throat too tight. The Gutter slackened his grip.
"Speak," he said. "Or." He applied a miniscule amount of pressure on the Gutting Knife.
It was enough.
This time, the Information Master didn't refuse to tell the Gutter everything he needed to know ― about the Psychomatics, about where he must go to find them, and about where he might go to finish them off.
"So this is the fucker who likes to fuck all the other fuckers," said Little Sister.
"Looks like he's fucked himself with a fucking claw hammer." Big Sister scowled like her mouth was full of sour milk. "His face shows years of experience of being ugly."
Whorefrost smiled, and it was, as Big Sister had said, a truly awful sight.
"I will take great pleasure in dipping my oar in your waters," he said, rubbing his baton against his groin to emphasise the point.
"The only thing that'll be getting dipped is our blades in your blood."
Little Sister drew her long sword. Big Sister drew her short sword.
Whorefrost unstrung his greatcoat made of wild heifer and threw it behind him. He was bare-chested, his torso glistening like a chunk of lard. His tight pantaloons showed the full measure of his excitement. It was big.
"Pretty soon," snarled Little Sister, "we'll be ramming that cock of yours down your own fucking throat."
"Oh," said Whorefrost, "I think that me and my cock'll be doing the ramming." His huge mouth formed a broad, lascivious sneer. He raised the baton, rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb, and took a step forward.
Little Sister spat an unintelligible curse. Big Sister slapped the flat of her blade against her palm and positioned herself in a crouch.
No wonder Whorefrost was aroused. The Sisters of No Mercy were an impressive pair who did little, clothes-wise, to conceal the fact. Little Sister was short and extremely curvaceous, her thick arms and solid thighs betraying an immensely powerful strength in one so small. Big Sister was sinuous and agile, her flat breasts taut and masculine alongside Little Sister's sumptuous orbs. But anyone with any pretensions of fucking them was asking for trouble. The only people the Sisters had sex with was each other, and anyone who tried to prove otherwise would pay a very heavy and painful price.
Except for Whorefrost.
As far as he was concerned, their cunts were his.
Once, they had been three, clutching each other as they slept. In the recollections of their dreams, they would walk again in the Forest of Sores, hand in hand through trees as thick and closely knit as they were.
But these trees were of no ordinary caste; nor were they the product of the functions of Nature as they are normally perceived through linear means of scientific enquiry.
The trees of the Forest of Sores were a corruption of the basic elements of form ― with whips and flails instead of branches, razor-wire instead of leaves, and shards of glass instead of blossoms.
Corruption, however, is of itself a consequence of Nature.
And so it was with the Sisters. With every step they took, their naked bodies were shorn of skin or cut to the bone or flayed of flesh; and their blood would turn to puss instead of scabs because of the constant rawness of their wounds.
At night, they wept together in the darkness, shivering on beds ofwet moss, soothing each other's wounds with tears. In the morning, when they woke, they would begin again their aimless migration through