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| The Amoralist:
a Grotesque Romance
-- Conrad Jaynes Rose ran hard on her spindly nine year old legs, weighed down by her rubber boots and rain slicker; the wet, mucky sand dragging each footfall. She pushed on, ignoring the beach thicket and driftwood, the shells and sea detritus. A harsh Northeastern wind slapped at her face as a fine mist blanketed the beach, beads of water coalesced on her cheeks and forehead and tiny rivulets dripped off her nose and chin. Her keeper, Mrs. Gordon, huffed away behind her, the old woman's thick, puffy body rebelling against the exertion. "Rose, my darling," yelled Mrs. Gordon, who called Rose darling because she was the type of woman who liked to keep her threats intimate, "you better run now," she bellowed between gulps of raw, salty air, "you better run now and you better run far!" Rose didn't slow down, she gritted her teeth and tried to forget about the stitch forming at her side; she lowered her head and willed each footstep, one after the other, until the fat woman dwindled into the distance. She stopped long enough to gain her bearings; her eyes twin squints surveying the horizon. In her heart, the place felt right; she closed her eyes and said his name under her breath. "You're late," said a muscular voice over her shoulder. She whirled around; he was a vast, broad shouldered man in black, and his eyes bore through her. She knew better than look the man straight in the eye; he could slice her wide open with a single glance, exposing her secrets and lies. She grinned warily and stared out over the ocean; digging a trench in the sand with the side of her right foot, an old nervous tic. "Stop that," he said, his voice a velvet rumble. "Look at me." Rose refused; she pursed her lips and clasped her hands behind her back. The man harrumphed; Rose couldn't help but grin, he was such a soft touch. "I have something for you," he said, "a treat." Rose looked at the man sideways, cocking her head around and then shifting her weight from one foot to the other, rocking from side to side. The man reached into his overcoat and pulled out a chocolate bar. Rose nearly squealed, snatching the chocolate and ripping most of the metallic wrapping off with a simple twist; she took a greedy first bite, nearly devouring the bar; milk chocolate soiled the corners of her mouth. "When you smile like that, you nearly glimmer. Like your mother, I think." The mere mention of Rose's mother snuffed out the budding moment and her eyes went back to the sea; she took a smaller, tentative bite from the candy bar. There was a long awkward silence, before the man spoke to no one in particular: "A storm is brewing." "I'd rather not speak about my mother, if you don't mind," she said, her voice simple and quiet. "Of course, I apologize." Rose nodded, finished the candy bar and tucked the crumpled wrapper into her pocket. "I like the ocean," she added. "It makes me feel good, even when it's raining." "Yes, it is majestic." "It just makes me feel good," she said, barely shrugging her shoulders. "Rose Marion McAlister," hissed Mrs. Gordon as she stumbled over the dune, a wheezy elephant in galoshes; Rose winced at her name and tiny thorns of panic gripped her brain. But she could smell the electric blue scent of ozone, the man had already left. Rose felt her keeper's calloused hand grab her by the arm; the woman reeked of cabbage and beer and Rose wrinkled her nose. "Don't you make that face at me, dear heart," said Mrs. Gordon, as she cuffed Rose's ear. "What's this on your face?" Mrs. Gordon thumbed the corner of the girl's mouth with a dirty thumbnail, then rifled through her pockets until she found the chocolate wrapper. "Now, where do you suppose this came from?" Rose rolled her eyes; the fat woman grabbed her by scruff of the neck and dragged her home. From the Journal of R. Robert Orton While taking in provisions in a tiny Sherpa village, our man Q. (can this overmatched sod actually be the King's man up here on the roof of the world?) was put upon by a pair of rum Sherpies. Stinking drunk, they told us they wanted him to meet their holy man, and knowing Q. to be quite incapable, Begbie and I tagged along; our interest peaked by the offer. After a bit of a walk, we came to the center of the village, a hut with tanned yak hides and a single chimney belching a queer smelling smoke. I followed Q. and Begbie inside and nearly choked, the air was thick with the stench of smoke, dung and a stark herbal aroma akin to cannabis. It took a moment or two before our eyes adjusted to the interior darkness, when they finally did, we could make out a figure sitting in the corner, dressed from head to toe in filthy rags, smoking a long, intricately carved bone pipe. Although his skin was darker then even our hosts, when his eyes caught ours, I was supremely startled to find them the color of burnished steel; I realized these were the eyes of a White Man. Begbie immediately started to speak to him in English, asking the grimy beggar his name, but this only enraged the man and he barked a curse at the two Sherpa; I have never seen grown men so traumatized in all of my life, I'm sure they would have dropped dead right there on the spot if they were offered the choice. I tried speaking to the man in Hindi and the Sherpa tongue, but he ignored me. Instead he stood up, and I found myself gasping at very size of him, he seemed so contemptuous of our presence that I felt like a fly pricking the hide of a buffalo. The man set a steely gaze on our man Q. and he whispered something guttural in a tongue I didn't recognize. This was too much for the poor blighter; Q. fainted dead away and started to convulse. Begbie and I rushed to his aid, and while Begbie fought to keep the poor soul from swallowing his tongue, I turned to confront the giant, fellow White Man or not, but he was gone like a ten penny Devil into the night. Begbie eventually settled Q. down, but he was in no condition to continue, being utterly traumatized. We left him behind, continuing on, unsettled and vaguely fearful. Strange things are to be expected when one travels far from home, and I am convinced that we have encountered something far beyond the veil. Note: The two Sherpas who led us to our steely eyed devil were found the next morning, frozen solid through and through; with the dread look of utter horror affixed to their faces. I don't like to think about what they saw during their last moments on Earth. Rose stood at the foot of a hand wrought brass bed, watching her mother sleep; her eyes tracing the awful geography of pain and suffering etched onto the woman's face. She lay still, almost perfectly so, breathing softly, head framed by a halo of auburn hair. Rose's mother stirred and smiled at her daughter and for a moment, the briefest of moments, Rose almost loved her for that. "Mrs. Gordon says you acted fresh today, Rose," said the woman, her voice a thick, weary whisper. "Mrs. Gordon's head is full of rocks," replied Rose. "Don't say such things," said her mother, her cheeks growing flush. Rose suspected the morphine had worn off as her mother grimaced; the dark needy thing inside of the woman beginning to stir. Her mother struggled to her elbows, winded from the pain, and fixed her eyes on Rose; the intensity of the gaze shocked her daughter. "Promise me one thing, Rose," her mother asked, calmly. "Promise me that you won't go with him." Her mother shook her head, as if something loose was rolling around, she tried to smile, but the grin turned wan and she sank back into herself with a tiny, quivering sigh. "He's something you'll never understand," she whispered. But Rose had stopped listening, she ran out of the room sobbing, her tears soaking the collar of her blouse. It was, by her recollection, the first time she had ever cried in the presence of her mother. London, April 24, 1925 Mr. H. L. Pinkston Dear Sir: I am an American abroad (Albany, N.Y.) and at the present, I am scouring the British Museum Library for more data on our 'stranger.' For a month or so, I received correspondence from a Captain S. R. Quint of So. Croydon, he claimed to have seen the man once while serving at his Majesty's discretion in the Himalayas. Unfortunately, the day before I was to take the train to meet Quint, he took ill and died suddenly that evening. According to his family, he was in reasonably good health for an epileptic. Again, my investigations have fallen into a most sinister pattern. Charles Fort Rose lay in bed, her night gown covering the raw skin from the scouring administered by Mrs. Gordon, who preferred a coarse horse brush for bathing ("We are at war, dear heart," she would say in a sing song voice, "at war with grime and dirt, now let me see your pits.") The room was bare, save for a few books, her desk where she wrote out her daily lessons and a bronze and ivory telescope, perched by the windowsill, an heirloom from her dead grandfather. Rose stared at the ceiling, her mind adrift amid a swirl of emotion. She closed her eyes, said the name out loud and started counting under her breath; she got to the number eleven when she smelled the electric aroma and opened her eyes; the man stood in the corner, the shadows cloaking his large, bearish frame. "You called," he said. "My mother knows that you've been visiting me." "Really?" "It was that brute, Mrs. Gordon, she found the chocolate wrapper. Mrs. Gordon says a piece a chocolate can make a girl subversive." "That's a bit reactionary." "I hate the old goat." "Well, I guess we're going to have to do something about that, then." The man looked up at the ceiling, his eyes falling on the spot right where her mother had set her bed in the room above. He reached out and absent mindedly patted Rose's head, his eyes never leaving the spot in the ceiling. "Rose, my dear, I think I'm going to have to have a chat with your mother," he said, sitting down on the bed next to Rose. "You won't hurt her, will you?" "I won't hurt her." "I only ask that because she says you murdered my grandfather." The man took a moment, and then asked: "Do you believe her, Rose?" "Yes," she said with an even certainty, "I do." The man fixed his eyes on the girl, but Rose didn't look away, instead she returned the gaze, full bore. Wells did harbor thoughts of publishing the The Amoralist towards the end of the Second World War, a bitter time for a man who saw many of his dire predications become horrible reality. Oddly, Wells refused to characterize The Amoralist as a scientific romance like his earlier works; he called it, in conversations with his agent, a thinly veiled expose, keeping in spirit with the articles and pamphlets he wrote during his later years. Unfortunately, Wells died in his sleep on August 13th, 1945, two weeks before he was to have sent the book to his publishing house in London. No one knows what happened to the manuscript; the loss of The Amoralist ranks as one of the true tragedies of world literature. -- Conrad Jaynes Rose's mother awoke with a start with a metallic blue taste in her mouth; addled from that evening's dose of morphine, she looked around the room until she saw the figure looming in the dark. "You're here," she said, fighting the slur in her voice. "Hello, Claire," said the man. "Look at you, as beautiful as Lucifer himself." "Thank you," he said, taking a slight bow. "How is the pain?" "Unbearable. But there is nothing like a stiff narcotic." She paused, as tiny beads of sweat formed on her forehead. "It has been awhile." "Since your father died." The woman savored the moment, drawing a bead on the man. "You knew this would happen to me." "Yes," replied man. "I knew. From the moment I first kissed you." The woman snorted, a chuckle welled up in her chest, but she choked on it. After the spell subsided, she cleared her throat and said: "Knowing how I would end up and then impregnating me, regardless. Sometimes I think you did it all to spite him, that you never really loved me." "I loved you, Claire." The woman sighed. "My father called you a monster." The man's eyes flickered. "I have no regrets, Claire. Your father knew that. He knew what I was and what I stood for. Believe me, there was a time when he even approved of me." The man let the intensity of the moment slip away. They sat in silence, soaking up the moonlight. "I won't let you have her," she said, her voice flat and devoid of any emotion. "She's my daughter, Claire." The woman turned on her side and winced from the pain, keeping her back to the man. He reached out, brushed her hair with his fingertips and leaned in, kissing her gently on the back of the neck; the woman closed her eyes and wept. Eventually the sound of the wind blowing outside her window and the scent of a spring shower lulled her to sleep. Rose's mother died quietly on a Sunday morning, and she learned of her mother's passing over a bowl of porridge. Mrs. Gordon blubbered uncontrollably as she ushered the girl into her mother's room, to pay her final respects. Rose remembered studying the corpse, touching cold hands and thinking her mother's skin looked pale and waxy. She felt odd standing before the body, cold and remote, an unbiased observer studying a life not quite her own. Her mother was buried in the family garden, among the yew trees and rhododendrons. An Anglican minister from a neighboring island droned on and on about the beauty of paradise and the worn, ragged tragedies of life. Rose looked up and saw a crow flapping its wings in the wind, flying lazy circles over the funeral procession, agitated by the strangers in his garden. Mrs. Gordon stood next to Rose; the fat old cow wouldn't stop wailing; she clawed at Rose and professed an ungainly, mawkish affection that left her disgusted to her core. She had grown to hate the woman with a passion surpassing every other emotion since her mother's death. After the services, she unclasped her hand from Mrs. Gordon's and told the old woman she needed to be by herself. Mrs. Gordon nodded, her eyes moist and bloodshot, and walked back to the house with the minister. When Rose saw the door close behind them, she walked further into the garden, past the rose bushes and cowl lilies, the evergreens and mums, to a vast, weathered oak tree. She took her shoes off and sat down on an exposed root, staring into space, lost in thought. A light breeze blew through her hair, and she smiled at a familiar fragrance. "Hello," he said. "Hello." The man looked up at the sun, shading his eyes with an outstretched hand. "One almost forgets how glorious a sunny day can be," he said, to no one in particular. He looked down at the girl and smiled at her. "Are you here to take me away?" she asked. "Yes." "Why?" The man paused for a moment, mulling the question before choosing his answer carefully. "You are something unique, Rose. I can tell that by looking at a person, did you mother ever tell you that?" Rose shook her head no. "Most people, when I look at them, they're dull, like an old copper penny," he said, turning away from the girl, "but you, Rose, you glimmer like stardust." Rose looked down at the ground, counting nine rotten corns before she found her voice. "Grant me one wish." "Anything." Rose closed her eyes and grabbed her father by the hand. One of the best documented cases of spontaneous human combustion is Constance Gordon, of the Isle of Hope, who departed this life by fire on September 23rd 1954. While serving an Anglican vicar afternoon tea, Mrs. Gordon went to the kitchen to fetch biscuits and scones. The vicar, Charles Cambridge, claimed to have heard a loud whoosh before rushing into the kitchen, where he found a large grease spot, a charred liver and a skull shrunk to the size of a fist. -- Mary K. Reser The End Bio Jason is a freelance journalist working in New York City. He originally hails from Kansas City, MO and the loves of his life include Roberta, James Ellroy and classic Green Lantern comics.
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Herbert
George Wells' four scientific romances The Time Machine (1895),
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897)
and The War of the Worlds (1898) pioneered the field of speculative
fiction, but few know there was a fifth book, long since lost; the novel
entitled The Amoralist (1899). The story riffed on the themes that
fueled his quartet: a brilliant scientist, driven to the brink of madness,
tampers with the natural order and finds himself transformed into a something
other then human - he could be two places at once, read men's minds, foresee
the future and kill a person by merely wishing their destruction. Wells'
Amoralist was a morally challenged anti-hero who tried to change the world;
only to find that his actions had unforeseen repercussions that eventually
led to his exile in the Himalayas and his eventual (implied) suicide…