Bent (Story)

Hi! So, during a creative slump a while back, I wrote a short story for a post-apocalyptic queer fiction submission call. Just got back that I didn't make the cut! Not the first time, but darn. However! That means y'all get to see it without paying anything extra! Since it's not lewd and short, probably won't upload it to Lit. 

This story has some dicks misgendering a trans girl, so heads up. But it also has Gender Witchery. Which is rad.

Enjoy! I hope!

***

Kyla’s foot sank into the mud so deep she nearly rolled her ankle yanking it out. The earth stole her flagging strength as she pulled with weary hands to free herself. With an unsatisfied squelch, the patch of mud relented. She leaned against the damp bark of a tree and caught her breath. She breathed in the loamy, damp air. Over and over she swiped at her eyes to clear her sight. The Hag had to be around this bog. She was sure of it.

This far into the Natpark, there were none of the old roads to follow. Those that had been here before the Sky Cried were long washed out, overgrown, or otherwise reclaimed by an uncaring nature given license to restore what had been taken. Kyla’s journey had no guide beyond the general look of the land and the assurance that somewhere around here was her salvation. Or so the stories had gone.

Her Mother had been the storyteller, the homemaker. Her Father had passed down a legacy of hard work and easy answers. She kept her head down. She obeyed. She subsumed her entire self until the dam broke. And then she ran.

If they were still following, she could not hear them. The miserable drizzle that had lingered for a day and a half had not relented for more than an hour. Her fingers were equal parts pruned and bruised. Only the momentum of her run was keeping the shivers at bay, and she was running out of the energy to keep that up for much longer. She limped forward, pushing off from the tree. Only a little further, she thought to herself, only a little further.

Her pace was slow, the terrain beyond treacherous. Kyla had not been some Guile Town clerk before her flight. She was a worker. But a lifetime of sawing and planing wood did not build endurance for a marathon. Any urge to go on had almost left her when she heard the first shouts.

“The dogs smell him! The dogs have him now!”

Kyla winced through the pain and stumbled forward. How long had it been? The sun had been setting when the Measure came for her. It was still blackest night, and the clouds had long since swallowed the moon. Daytime would make her capture a forgone conclusion. She had to make it. That or die.

She’d almost chalked up the first light she saw ahead for the torches of her pursuers. In the darkness, it would have been easy to get turned around. But it wasn’t. The fire burned a pale green, something Kyla had never seen. It licked at the rain around it, flickering but never dimming. Like water meant nothing to its task. No matter the strangeness, she lurched her aching legs into motion toward the beacon. Had she found it? Had her wish come true?

Rising from the dreary mud stood a massive metal construct. Three pairs of arms stretched out at its sides like an aberrant scarecrow. Getting closer revealed that it was sagging. Rust was claiming the ancient structure, but it hadn’t collapsed under its own weight like so many structures of the Old World had. It was bent, but unbroken.

Standing at its feet and amidst the pale glow of the verdant torches waited a human figure. Cloaked in flowing robes, she beckoned Kyla forward. The face in the hood she wore was not the unkind scowl that her Mother had warned her about. Nor was it the luring temptress that her Father had cursed. Round features and a generous smile implied a caretaker’s countenance, but her deep set eyes gleamed with a wily intellect.

“What has brought you here, my child?” she asked.

All this running and Kyla hadn’t thought of what to say. She had only half believed the stories about the Hag in the Water, let alone that she could have found her way to her. Kyla opened her mouth to start with her life story, but the howls of the dogs and the coaxing of her searchers brought her back to the matter most pressing.

“They’re after me,” Kyla began. The voice she spoke with wasn’t hers, but it was the only voice she knew. “I’m…I need safety. And I need your help.”

“Safety I can provide,” she said with a smile. “A Hag’s home is sanctuary for all but the hateful and the wicked. But you could have fled in any direction. Why did you seek me?”

“My Mother told me stories. Told me about how you could change a person’s appearance, if they wanted to look a different way.” Kyla looked down at her blunt features. “I was born the wrong way.”

The Hag furrowed her brow. “No one is born wrong, child. But I can see what you are trying to say. The bodies we are given are not always the ones we want. But that doesn’t mean we are trapped.”

Kyla’s eyes lit up. “Does that mean I can be changed?”

“If that is what you want.” The Hag looked over the weary woman’s shoulder. “And the ones following you?”

“They found out what I am. I made a mistake. I trusted the wrong person.” Kyla thought of her betrothed. The love she might have felt for her had curdled and rotted away the moment she’d realized who had told the Measure her secret. The hurt must have been visible, as the Hag wrapped her up in an embrace. Even though they were both drenched, Kyla had never felt so warm.

“I’ve found him!”

The familiar voice cut through the night. Jeremah had been the one who had taught Kyla’s class when she still went to school. When she joined her father’s trade, she had attended ever weekly sermon. And when the town’s Measure ruled against an aberrant act, or a dissident word, or even an undisciplined thought, she had thought his judgment tough but ultimately for the benefit of the judged. After all: what would make a kind man like Jeremah so angry?

Thunder rolled overhead as he approached. The armour of his station had to weigh forty pounds, but he moved in it like it wasn’t there. His hand clutched the bright burning lantern of his station, the same one he lit at the start of service and put out at the end. As he stalked forward, his flanks filled in with the barking hounds and grim-faced men of her village. She knew each face. Terren had made her a small cake every birthday. Lar had scolded her for running through his vegetables but had turned his back when she’d picked some for herself. And Merris had been the one to tell her that her Father had died. 

None of them looked familiar now. Some had torches. Others had clubs. The rest held tight to the leashes of the hounds. Beni had raised them from pups. He was about Kyla’s age. They had played together when they were kids.

“There’s no place to run, Yoren,” Jeremah said. That name. That damnable name. Kyla had run from it as much as she had from the snapping jaws of the hounds. It wasn’t her. It was just some ghost who looked like her.

Kyla gripped the arm of the robed woman. “I’m sorry I got you into this. I thought I could make it stop if I just looked the way I should. But…I was stupid.” More than rain slid down her cheeks. She wiped it away.

But the Hag did not run from the men and their beasts. She stepped forward slightly, putting her body between her and Kyla. 

“What purpose do you have in my home?” 

Jeremah sneered. The other men exchanged jovial looks. Like this was just a game. “Keep out of this, Hag.” The Measure tightened his grip on the lantern. But the woman did not move.

“You’re hunting this one because she doesn’t fit in, am I right? I can take her. You’ll never have to see her again.” Tears fell freely from Kyla now. Why was she risking herself?

“Yoren is one of us. He’s just…confused. We want to give him the help he needs. Prayer. Communion. Isolation, if necessary.” His voice sounded a lot like it had during his sermons, but there was nothing protective or familial there. That mask had been cast aside the moment the chase had started.

The cold turn to the cloaked woman’s voice was subtle, but Kyla was close enough to hear the change. “I’m well aware of what your methods are. They’ve never changed. Leave, now. This girl is under my protection.”

The hounds pulled at their leashes, baying for blood. The men were no better. 

“My dear,” the Measure said while holding his hand out to the minions at his side, “Do you not see how many we are? Your blasphemous ways may impress the occasional traveller, but they do nothing against the righteous. We don’t fear you.”

“You don’t fear me?” the Hag asked with a curve of her lip, “My dear, that was the second worst mistake you’ve made all evening.”

A mirthless laugh. “And the first?” Jeremah asked.

“You stepped foot into my home. And my home is not safe for the hateful. Or the wicked.”

The bog lurched. The first scream was from Beni, the baker’s son, whose lower body vanished into the earth in a blink of an eye. In his mad flailing to escape the sucking mud, he let go of the leash in his hands. His hound bounded away, whimpering. 

Terren dashed over to free his kin from the ground. But the mud claimed him too, sucking down his arm before he could swipe with his club. The rest of the men tried to free their comrades, but soon learned that the mud was insatiable. The dogs all fled, and soon their masters joined them. After some deliberation, the Hag moved her fingers and the bog freed those it had claimed already. 

But when the mud moved to claim Jeremah, his armor blazed to life. It burned as bright as midday sun. The fluidic tendrils grasping at him turned to dirt then faded to dust. A power unlike any Kyla had seen had come to life. Had the Measure been telling the truth? Was he chosen by divine hand? Kyla tripped backward and watched in frozen terror while the glowing knight of the faith that scorned her marched in her direction.

But it had rained for a whole day. The ground was a morass. And the armour of his faith was so heavy. For every ten tendrils that disintegrated, one found purchase. That was enough.

His pace slowed. He began swiping clumsily with his lantern. Streaks of fire cut through the air, burning the mud. But that made it turn to brick, slowing his progress even more.

“You’ve no power over a Measure,” he seethed. Each step forced more mud in through the many exposed areas necessary to keep his joints in motion. The viscous fluid filled his armour, stretching itself to peel it away from his form like a shattered eggshell. Plates slid away from him. The glow of the armour faded as he sank deeper into the morass. “I’ll see you burn!”

“It’s true. You people never change,” the Hag said, and with a twist of her wrist, the mud sucked him under. Smoke trailed up from the place that he had disappeared.

Kyla got back onto wobbly legs, eyes locked onto where her tormentor had been moments before. But the Hag paid it no mind.

“Come, now. This is no weather to be standing around in. I have a nice fire inside.” She pointed to the squat, grey building next to the strange metal construct. The glow of more green fire from within offered the prospect for a chance to dry off, something that felt closer to heaven than Kyra thought possible. But her mind still reeled from what she had seen. 

“How?” she asked, the single word filled with so many queries. 

That strange air of motherhood returned to her face. “Their likes have always existed. So have we. This world changed when the Sky Cried and the old engines fell silent forever, so have we. It was no accident that you found me, Kyla. We are drawn to one another. We keep each other safe. There are others…so many others. But that’s for later. Please, come. I wouldn’t want to see you catch a cold.”

They walked together in the shadow of that strange titanic structure. Dawn’s light made the mass of dark clouds above them visible. The storm wasn’t over. But Kyla didn’t have to trudge through it alone.