The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [96]
The fishline pulls stiff between his legs, spool growing solid before his thigh, drawing him up short. The line breaks, he is thrown forward. Keys jingling, he tumbles down. Brey has run out of fishline.
[THREE]
Brey, at Rest.
He lies splayed near the spool. He rolls his body over, stares up at the ceiling. He lifts a hand to his face, tracing a crack running from the upper edge of the mask down to his eye. He draws a deep breath.
Perhaps it would be best to pretend to be dead. Perhaps it would be best to deceive the rats. Perhaps it would be best to wait until the rats approach his body, thinking it a corpse, and then kill them.
He has memorized the rat books. He has begun to think like a rat.
He hears the sound of footsteps at some distance. He lifts his head, straining to see through a mask gone skew. "You are lying in the middle of the hall, Brey."
Craning his neck, he glimpses the upper half of his father.
"Me?" says Brey.
"Is there anyone else?" says his father.
"You?" says Brey.
"Lying down, for God's sake," says his father. "Is there?"
Brey looks across the level of the floor. He turns his head to the other side, looks. He turns back to his father, shakes his head.
"Get up," says his father.
Brey does not move.
"Don't be difficult, Brey."
His father straddles him, reaching down to slide his palms under his back. Straining, he drags Brey to his feet.
Brey lets his knees turn to water, refusing to support his own weight.
Grunting and staggering, his father hugs him to his side with one arm. He strikes Brey in the throat with his other fist. He bares his teeth, bites Brey on the ear.
He lets go. He moves back his bloody mouth. Shaken, the boy stands.
The moment his father is out of sight, Brey lies down. He is not afraid of rats. He is protected by his boots, his keys, his mask.
The only thing he fears for are his eyes. The eyeholes of the mask are large enough to allow snouts. As he kills rats, he must remember to shield his eyes with one hand.
He lies in the hall, alone. The rats are clever. They have not come. They plan to starve him.
He turns his face to the floor. He pulls himself to the wall. Bracing his hands against the wall, he rises to his knees, sways to his feet.
His bones are sore. His tongue cleaves as if his mouth were packed with dust. The keys hang heavy upon him. He can feel his father's teeth still clinging to his ear.
He gathers the scattered keys, hanging them upon his hooks. Leaving the spool on the floor, he follows the fishline back.
If the rats are waiting in the darker hallways, he can do little to avoid them. It would be safer to take another route back, but he will not leave the fishline. Despite his father's misgivings, he must keep to the fishline.
The path turns away from the terminal wall. He follows the fish-line as it runs straight, turns, turns, continues straight, turns again. The path is not as he remembers it. Yet there are no keys in the intersections of his path. He is following the right path.
He continues. He stops when he reaches a dust-filled intersection. The dust was not here before. Perhaps the dust has been moved here. By the rats, to torment him.
He moves through three intersections filled with dust. He travels through each, stepping lightly.
He looks to one side. He sees that the intersections to either side of his path are free of dust. A second glance, and he sees that there are no keys in those intersections.
Logic: If he has not explored the intersections, there would be keys. If he has, there would be fishline. If not one, the other. Yet there are neither.
"Father?" Brey cries, turning circles. "Father?"
On Blame.
He waits in the middle of the hall for his father to come. His father does not come.
His father has lied. His father chose to collect keys. Otherwise, there would be keys in all of the intersections which Brey has not explored. His father has betrayed him.
Yet, suppose it were not his father but the rats?
Rats are collectors, according to Our Friend the Rat. If they