Lord of the Fantastic: Stories in Honor of Roger Zelazny

SUICIDE KINGS JOHN J. MILLER

The death of her cat gave Karin the idea.

Faffy was seventeen years old. Karin had had him for three-quarters of her life and he was the only creature in the world who loved her. Her mother had died when Karin was very young. Karin’s older sister, prettier, smarter, and much more successful than Karin had ever dreamed to be, told her once that their mother had been an alcoholic. One night she’d fallen in a drunken stupor and hit her head on the corner of the coffee table and bled to death from the resultant gash. Her father was still alive, but he never took much of an interest in Karin—or, to be fair, her sister. He was a scientist, a metallurgist whose specialty was malleable memory-retentive metals. Karin suspected that human beings were beyond his interest because he couldn’t hammer them into the shape he preferred and make them retain it.

Karin lived with Faffy in a tiny walk-up apartment, the only thing she could afford on her store-clerk salary. One day Karin noticed that Faffy was drinking a lot more water than he usually did, but it was summertime, hot, and she didn’t worry about him until she found him wandering around one morning on wobbly legs, dazed and obviously confused.

She took him right away to the vet’s. They told Karin that Faffy was dehydrated, put him on an I.V., and took a blood sample for tests. The results weren’t good. It was complete renal failure.

The last thing Karin wanted was for Faffy to suffer. When she went to see him that night, she’d already made the awful decision to put him to sleep. But when he saw her, Faffy looked up and meowed. He held up his taped paw to show her the I.V., then purred when Karin touched his head. She couldn’t do it.

The doctor told Karin she’d thought that Faffy was going to die that night, but gradually the cat got better. Karin kept him in the hospital for five days, practically wiping out her savings account, until the doctor told her it was safe to take him home. He wasn’t cured, however; he’d just survived the current crisis. Karin asked how much time he had left, days, weeks, or months, but the doctor couldn’t or wouldn’t say.

It turned out to be three months, then the poisons overwhelmed his system, and Karin had to take him to the vet’s again. This time, she came home alone.

Karin realized, after an eternity of an afternoon in her suddenly empty apartment, that Faffy had escaped the pain of life, and she could, too.

She considered, then rejected, a gun, a razor, and a leap from a tall building. She wanted to escape her pain, not create more for herself, no matter how transitory. She couldn’t gas herself because her oven was electric, and she didn’t own a car. Poisons were ghastly, and besides, she just didn’t know enough about them.

In the end it came down to sleeping pills, something she was an expert on anyway. It’d been three years since she’d been able to sleep without them. She had an impressive collection garnered from the prescriptions of the half dozen doctors and therapists she’d seen those three years. She didn’t know how many to take to ensure she’d never wake up, so she took them all.

She washed them down a handful at a time with the quart of orange juice she had in the refrigerator. Torn by pain, crushed by loneliness, she huddled in a pathetic bundle in the corner of her sofa, and closed her eyes.

Karin opened her eyes.

She was in a soft bed in a white room. The sheets were delightfully cool and the air smelled subtly of violets, one of her favorite fragrances. She was the only one in the room. As she glanced around, more bewildered than anything else, the door opened and a man came in with a clipboard in his hand and a smile on his face.

He was the most beautiful man Karin had ever seen. Tall, but not excessively so, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, with the unlined forehead of a god and the brown, thick-lashed eyes of a deer. He had high cheekbones and a full, sensual mouth with even white teeth.

He smiled at Karin and held out his hand for her to shake. Even his hands were beautiful. His grip was warm and powerful, comforting without undue pressure.

“How are you doing today, Karin?” His rich, deep voice made her feel as if she were the only woman in the world.

I’m in love, she thought, but managed to say in a quiet, timid voice, “I’m okay. I—I didn’t die?”

He laughed, creating a sound that could heal the world.

“No talk of that,” he said, eyes twinkling. “I’m Dr. Chamberlain. We’re going to take care of you here.”

“Just where am I?”

“Don’t worry about that. Just worry about getting better.”

He stifled any more questions by taking her right hand again. He put two fingers on her wrist and looked at the watch on his other hand.

The touch of his flesh was electric. The warmth of his hand spread into her wrist, ran up her forearm and shoulder. She could feel her face blush and her nipples stiffen. She was shocked to realize that she wanted him very badly. She had never felt remotely like this before.

He smiled again and released her hand. “Well, your pulse seems normal enough.”

Does it? Karin thought. It was racing like a set of electronic drums programmed for speed.

“I’ll be back to check on you later,” Dr. Chamberlain said.

Karin wanted to call out to him, to beg him to stay with her forever, but with a smile and a flourish of his lab coat, he was gone, striding out of the room into the hallway beyond.

“Wow,” Karin said aloud as she sank back onto the soothingly cool pillow. “Get a hold of yourself.”

She could still feel her heart pounding, could still feel the overwhelming desire that she’d never felt before. It wasn’t as if she’d never been in love. There’d been a few schoolgirl crashes, of course, but also two men she’d truly loved. Her sister had taken both men from her, used them up, then discarded them when she was tired of them. But Karin had never felt this instant, magnetic, almost magmatic attraction. It was as if—

The room’s other door, which led, Karin had assumed, to the bathroom, suddenly swung open.

“Who in the world are you?” Karin asked, more bewildered than frightened.

Not that she was totally without fear. It wasn’t every day that a man lurked in your bathroom. She probably would have been more afraid if he didn’t look so, well, innocuous.

He was good-looking in an unassuming, homespun kind of way. Maybe cute was the better word. He was young, about Karin’s age, with a round face, buck teeth, and the mildest blue eyes Karin had ever seen. He was rather small and lightly-built. He wore worn jeans and a faded blue workshirt.

“Call me Billy, ma’am,” he said as he approached her bed. “We’d best be leaving now.”

Karin gripped the sheet and shrank back against the softness of the bed. “Leaving? I don’t understand.”

“You will, ma’am. Let’s—”

The door to the corridor flew open again and Dr. Chamberlain stood in the entrance, looking heroically angry.

“How did you get here so quickly?” he ground out between clenched teeth.

Billy smiled. “I have my ways, Doc. Bye-bye.”

He reached behind his back and pulled out a gun that must have been stuck in his belt. It was big and clunky looking. He pointed it at Dr. Chamberlain and pulled the trigger. The shots sounded like explosions in the enclosed room. He fired so fast that Karin had only started to scream when he’d emptied all the gun’s cylinders.

He was a good shot, too. The first bullet took Dr. Chamberlain in the center of the chest. The next five were grouped in a palm-sized cluster around the first. The force of the multiple impacts blew the doctor out of the room and into the corridor beyond as Karin let go of her first scream.

Things happened so quickly that she was only drawing breath for her second scream when Billy stuck the gun into the waistband of his jeans, reached down, and scooped her into his arms. He raced toward the window and crashed through the glass, turning shoulder first to shield Karin from most of the flying shards.

As they fell Karin really screamed. Her abductor twisted in midair, so he took the brunt of the collision when they smashed into the ground. Despite being so insulated, Karin felt her whole skeleton rattle. Billy made an agonized, wordless sound beneath her, then took a deep breath and sort of sighed.

“Okay, ma’am,” he said. “We’d best be going now.”

She stared at him, her face inches from his. “You’re— you’re not hurt?”

“Course not,” Billy said. “Not much, anyway.”

“How . . .” She couldn’t finish the question.

“Well, ma’am, I’m dead. We all are, you know.”

Karin shook her head.

“No,” she said. “That’s impossible. Dr. Chamberlain...”

She remembered again the explosions erupting from Billy’s gun, the close spacing of the bullets as they struck the doctor in the chest, hurling him backward like a doll tossed against a playroom wall by an angry child. She looked at Billy, fear in her eyes. She jumped up and ran.

Billy stood, but made no move to follow. Karin heard him call out, but could scarcely understand his words in the face of the overwhelming terror that had seized her mind.

“There’s no use in running away, ma’am. There never is.”

The city was like no other Karin had ever seen.

At first glance it was just another faceless urban monolith like the one where Karin had spent most of her life. Buildings, streets, cars, 7-Elevens, taxis, pedestrians.

The differences were subtle. There was little trash. The buildings all looked new with none of the unavoidable buildup of grime that plagued all urban areas. The air was fresher than it had any right to be. Its smell reminded Karin of the few times she’d been in the country. It was clean, cool, somehow soothing.

The major difference between this city and the others she knew was the total lack of urgency in those she passed on the street. People moved slowly, not in a dream, but as if they were deep in thought, as if they were taking stock of their surroundings or themselves, as if they had questions on their mind that needed sorting, as if they had somehow lost track of things and were trying to figure out who they really were.

Since she’d woken up—at least since Billy had come out of her bathroom—nothing made sense. Nothing. Maybe Billy was right and she was dead. If he was, Heaven sure wasn’t paradise. It was a nuthouse.

If this was Heaven.

That thought stopped her cold. Karin had never done anything to send her to Hell. She’d always been a good girl, quiet and shy. She’d never hurt anyone. Only herself, when she tried to kill herself. But even then she hadn’t succeeded. Even then…

Karin suddenly realized that she wasn’t alone.

They stood before her, beside her, behind her. They were all younger than her. Some were just children, but all looked fierce and feral. Among them were enough leather to decimate a herd of cows, enough chains to supply a slave ship, enough hate and anger to fuel the return of the Third Reich.

She thought she’d been afraid before, but that was only the barest taste of what she felt now, the barest hint of the terror gripping her like the hand of a cruel giant. Her knees went so weak that they couldn’t support her and she folded down on the sidewalk while those watching snickered and grinned.

Two stood slightly apart from the pack, and Karin realized that they were the leaders. One was a man, white, with the size and appearance of a malignant dwarf. He looked almost as broad as he was tall, with a deep chest, thick shoulders, and hugely muscled arms left bare by the sleeveless T-shirt that he wore. His hair was shaved down to a sixteenth of an inch. His forehead had the word hate tattooed in big letters across it, and there was a swastika between his deep-set eyes. The other was a woman, black, tall and slim, almost elegant in her dark leather. She had a face that once had been beautiful, but was crisscrossed by scars from a bad slashing. Whoever had fixed her face had botched it, so that she looked like a patchwork girl whose pieces barely matched.

“What’s this?” she asked the tattooed dwarf.

“New meat,” he said.

“She shines,” a voice said from within the pack. It was a little girl speaking. She was a beautiful blond thing with a dirty stuffed bear half her size. “She has a bright rainbow all around her.”

The leaders of the pack glanced at each other, then back at Karin.

“I don’t know how the brat does it,” the black woman said, “but she’s always right.”

“She’s a clever little brat,” the dwarf agreed.

They looked at Karin again, and the black woman nodded. “Look at her eyes. She’s a weak bitch. Suicide.”

“Young,” the dwarf said. “Could have plenty of juice left.”

The black woman smiled and iron glinted in her mouth. Her teeth were filed and reinforced with shining metal. Karin pictured them closing on her flesh: and tearing out a bloody chunk.

She closed her eyes in despair. Dr. Chamberlain would help her, she thought, if that killer hadn’t shot him down. He felt the heat when he touched me ... the need . . .

Karin heard a hundred rustling sounds, a hundred clankings as they closed upon her. She was overcome with despair so deep she knew that it would last forever. Or at least until the pack reached her.

A big, meaty hand grasped her shoulder and she would have fainted if she knew how to, but it wasn’t as easy to turn off her consciousness as it was for the heroines in all those romances she’d read.

The dwarf pulled her upright and she heard the black woman say, “On your feet, bitch,” and then there was the sound like an angry lion roaring. She opened her eyes to a frozen tableau that was as bewildering as anything she’d encountered since waking.

She was stunned to see Dr. Chamberlain on the outskirts of the pack. He wasn’t dead. He didn’t even look like he’d been hurt. He’d changed out of his hospital whites to a beautiful custom-tailored suit that fit him like a king’s robe. He loomed above the pack, his anger cowing many of them into immediate submission, his wordless shout of command opening a path to Karin, the hateful dwarf, and the black woman.

Dr. Chamberlain, was all Karin could think. He’s come to rescue me.

He grabbed the dwarf’s thick forearm and squeezed, and the malignant creature let go of her shoulder and dropped to his knees with closed eyes and clenched jaws.

“You dare!” Dr. Chamberlain roared, and shook him as if he were a frail child.

Karin was astonished at the doctor’s strength and the awesome wrath he expended in her cause. No one had ever stood up for her before. No one had ever taken her part with such fierceness. She felt the heat burning in her. She wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anyone or anything.

The dwarf cried out, mewing like a cat in pain.

“No—no—we was just holdin’ her, like—”

The doctor threw him away contemptuously. He hit the sidewalk hard and lay there like a kicked dog. Chamberlain turned and looked right at Karin. His eyes were wide with anger and strange, exultant power, and something else she couldn’t read, but didn’t exactly like.

She forgot all that when he reached for her and swept her into his arms. The connection between them was so strong that it felt like a living thing. He smiled, his teeth white and even and beautiful, his eyes wide and bright with laughter.

Then, in his hand was a scalpel, shining in the sunlight. Karin stiffened as he showed it to her. She tried to pull away, but he was far too strong. He plunged it into her stomach and ripped sideways and she felt an explosion of pain like she’d never felt before.

Her mouth opened to scream and he closed his own upon it. She could feel him suck her life away as his hand moved around inside of her.

The pain was intense but she still couldn’t faint. The kiss went on and on and in a way was more painful than the knife ripping her stomach and the hand rooting around inside. It was taking something from her, what she didn’t know, but all her strength was draining away.

Finally he took his mouth from hers and looked at her with a wild, exultant expression. He pushed her away. She stumbled, but managed to remain on her feet.

He looked past her, to the tall black woman.

“Take her back to the hospital,” he said. “But first you may have some of her. Some. Remember—she’s mine.”

The pack cheered and shouted in voices only vaguely human as they crowded around like starving dogs. The black woman reached her first, her smile all sharp, pointed teeth,

“Come on, meat,” the woman said, fastening her teeth on the flesh of Karin’s shoulder.

She fell to the pavement as they overwhelmed her. The last thing she remembered was Chamberlain’s awful laughter, the press of bodies struggling to reach her, and the sight of the little girl, watching, hugging her pathetic stuffed bear to her chest.

Mercifully, then, she discovered that she could faint, after all.

Karin was surprised when she woke up, and even more surprised to find that she was whole. There was no sign of the gash Chamberlain had made in her stomach, no trace of teeth marks on her shoulder, no remains of the various bruises, welts, and abrasions she should have had from the pack’s beating.

It was a miracle, she thought. All right. It was just what she needed. She would change her life. She closed her eyes and made a deal with God.

You’ve given me another chance, she told Him, and I won’t let it slip away. I won’t foul up this time. Just let me open my eyes and let this dream be over and let me be safe in my apartment again and I’ll keep my end of the bargain. I’ll do better from now on, really, I’ll do better.

She opened her eyes and looked around to see that nothing had changed.

She was still in what seemed to be the hospital room where she’d first awoken. At least it seemed like the same room—the configuration and dimensions were the same and the same window was broken where the crazy man had grabbed her and leaped from the building. But everything else about it had changed terribly. It had been transformed into a trashed out, foul-smelling nightmare from a junkie’s worst trip.

The bed she was lying on was a mass of twisted, rusty metal. The mattress was torn and stained and stank of unguessable fluids. The walls were spattered with graffiti and blood, and garbage was scattered all over the floor.

The door to the outside lay broken off its hinges in the corridor, but Karin, stunned that God had refused her bargain and that her nightmare still continued, made no move to escape. She had nowhere to escape to, nowhere to go where it’d be any better.

The sound of footsteps echoing down the corridor drew her eyes to the open doorway. She stared hopelessly, not knowing what to expect, half-wishing, half-fearing that it was Chamberlain.

But it wasn’t the doctor. It was the little girl, her shadow looming like a monster ready to pounce, her dirty toy bear clutched to her chest. She stared at Karin with no emotion at all in her little girl’s eyes, no expression on her tight face.

“What’s your name?” the girl asked after a long moment.

“Karin,” she said, and asked the reflexive question, “What’s yours?”

“My name is Krystal. Mommy named me after the star of her favorite TV show. My Daddy didn’t like it, though. He didn’t like much, except hitting me and Mommy.”

Karin was vaguely aware of Dynasty. It had gone off the air when Karin was just a little girl, too little to remember much of it. And Krystal was at least fifteen years younger than she.

“Krystal,” she half-whispered, “what is this place?”

“You don’t know much, do you?” the little girl asked.

Karin shook her head. “No. No I don’t.”

Krystal made a sweeping gesture with her hand, encompassing the room, the building, and all that was outside.

“This is the Dead Place. Everyone goes here when they’re dead. I asked Billy if this was Hell, on account of my Daddy always said I was such a bad girl I was sure to go to Hell when I died, and when he killed me and I woke up here I thought I was in Hell. But Billy’s been here a long time and he says, No, this ain’t Hell. This is just the Dead Place where people go when they die.”

“But I’m not dead,” Karin said.

“Don’t be stupid. If you wasn’t dead you wouldn’t be here. I’m dead. Billy’s dead. The Doctor’s dead. Only Bearry isn’t dead, and he’s stuffed.”

Sudden anger flared through Karin. “What is this, God’s idea of a cruel joke?”

When she killed herself—there, she admitted it—it had been out of desperation to end her pain. But she’d also thought, mostly subconsciously, that maybe she’d be going to someplace better, someplace where she needn’t be alone. Maybe her mother would be there . . . maybe even Faffy. But this—this was a thousand times worse. She felt a great anger rising that she knew was beyond her control. It surprised and also frightened her, at the same time.

Krystal shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe Billy does.”

“Billy.” The man with the gun. The man who’d tried to get her away from Chamberlain in the first place. “Who is this Billy?”

“He’s my friend,” Krystal said. She held out her disreputable bear. “Bearry was my best friend ever when I was alive and Billy found him for me again. Do you want to see him?”

“I see him,” Karin muttered.

“Not Bearry. Bearry’s right here.” Krystal cast her eyes upward. “I mean Billy.” She leaned forward confidingly. “His name’s really Henry, you know. He told me. But he likes to be called Billy.”

“Yes.” She would like to see him. He might be able to answer some questions about the bizarre happenings in this horrifying asylum. “Can you take me to him?”

“Sure. He’s right down the hall.”

That was unexpected, but what wasn’t in this place?

They went out the door and down the corridor together. As Krystal had said, Billy was just a few doors down. His room was just as trashed as Karin’s. The only difference was that Chamberlain and his minions had not simply left Billy in the room. He was shackled to a wall, arms up-stretched, his toes dangling an inch from the floor. His face looked tired and pained, his clothing was torn as if he’d been beaten, but there were no marks on his lean body.

He managed a smile as Krystal and Karin came into the room.

“Hello, little darlin’.”

Karin was about to make an angry retort when she realized that Billy had spoken to Krystal, not her. The girl ran to him and, tucking Bearry into the crook of one arm, hugged him tightly around the waist, burying her face against his stomach. Billy smiled fondly at her, then looked up at Karin.

“How’re you doing, ma’am?”

“I’ve been better.”

“I can say the same myself,” Billy said. “How’m I doing, Krystal?”

The little girl released him and took a step back. She looked at him critically for a moment, then shook her head.

“Not so good, Billy.”

“I was afraid of that. How about the lady over there?’’

Krystal glanced at her.

“Oh, she’s still pretty bright. The Doctor took some of her color, then the pack took a little more. But she had plenty to start with.” She made a serious face. “Too bad she’s not smarter.”

“Hey!”

Billy smiled gently. Karin had the sense that he would have reached out and tousled Krystal’s hair if he hadn’t been manacled to the wall.

“Now, you know how confusin’ this place can be, little darlin’. Remember when you first came here.”

“I remember—”

“Just what,” Karin interrupted, “are you two talking about? What’s this ‘color’ business? What is this place, anyway? And just who the hell are you?”

She didn’t mean to shout, but the anger had taken control of her again. She was mad at everyone and everything. At Faffy, for dying and leaving her alone. At her mother, for dying when she was so young. At her father, so absorbed in his work that he never seemed to notice her, never cared what was happening in her life, never even bothered to ask. At her sister, older, smarter, much more beautiful, who only took from Karin and otherwise treated her as if she never existed. She was mad at the world, at the universe, at the entity who’d created such an awful place and left her alone and defenseless, sad and lonely, until she couldn’t take it anymore and killed herself to escape, only to find in this madhouse inhabited by evil creatures worse things than any she’d ever encountered in the real world.

“Well, ma’am,” Billy said in his slow, unflappable drawl, “you may find this kind of hard to believe, but my name—at least the name I go by—is Billy Bonney. People called me the Kid.”

“Hard to believe?” Karin said. She laughed, long and hard, and realized that she was teetering on the edge of insanity. “Hard to believe? Jesus Christ, why the hell shouldn’t I believe you? So who’s the Doctor?”

“Well, ma’am,” Billy said, “he was a doctor in life, but he used an alias, too, when he was out and about on his private business. He called himself Jack the Ripper. Still does, in fact.”

Karin’s laughter shut off like a valve turned tight.

“Oh my God.” She shot a glance Krystal. “And her?”

“Just a little girl,” Billy said tenderly. “Beaten an’ brutalized an’ finally killed by her no-good Pa.”

“What is this place?” Karin whispered.

“I call it the Dead Place,” Billy said. “The place where people go after they die, before they get all sorted out and move on.”

She looked at him. “But you died ...” She thought about it, and realized that she didn’t know when he’d died. “... a long time ago. Why are you still here?”

“People have various reasons for staying on, ma’am. Some people, takes them a long time to figure out their ultimate destination. Some others like it here. They prey upon newcomers, set themselves up like kings, especially ‘cause of folks like you. Then some others stay on because they have a job or two to do.”

“Some prey on others because of people like me?”

“Yes, ma’am. Suicides.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It works like this. When they’re born everyone has a certain amount of, I guess you’d call it energy, that they use to live life. When it’s gone, they’re dead. Simple as that. Some people get sickly and they use up their share faster than others. Some get killed by accident or design. They get to use what’s left, so to speak, when they move on.

“But suicides—well, suicides are special. They have energy, but they don’t want it no more. They reject the gift. When they move on, there’s people like Chamberlain who can take it from them, suck it away and use it for their own purposes. They like people like you, ‘specially young ones. You probably had, what, forty, fifty years left.”

“At least fifty,” Krystal put in.

Billy glanced down at her. “The young’un here is ‘specially talented. She’s tuned into the energy. She can see things, among which is the colors shining about you like a rainbow halo all over your body. That’s why the Doctor likes to have her around.”

“I . . .” Much of what Billy said didn’t bear thinking about, at least not now. To keep from thinking she asked more questions. “How about you?”

“Me?” The Kid tried to shrug. “Like I said, some folks stay on ‘cause they have a job to do. Now me, I wasn’t much like folks later made me out to be. I didn’t kill no twenty, thirty men. I killed, sure. Maybe I killed unwisely. Maybe I’ve got something of a score I have to settle before I move on. Maybe I just can’t plain stand scum like the Doctor and I stick around to make sure he don’t bully everybody and live like a devil king off of others. Maybe he treats Krystal a little better ‘cause he knows I’m around and while my guns can’t blow the bastard to Hell where he belongs, they can sure hurt him enough to make him scared of me.”

Karin remembered the agony of the Doctor’s scalpel ripping through her flesh, and she knew that there was indeed still pain in this world.

“But what happened?” she asked. “Why are you here?”

The Kid looked rueful. “Well, after we went out the window and I was watching you run off, the Doctor and his gang got the jump on me. And here I am.”

“Can he hurt you—I mean, I know he can hurt you. But can he, well ...” She didn’t know how to ask it.

“Kill him?” a voice asked.

Karin jerked around to see Chamberlain standing in the open doorway, the pack crowding on his heels.

“Close enough,” the Doctor said. For the first time she saw him as he really was. He’d abandoned the glamour that he’d cast to fool her and capture her. He was a small man, with dark, greasy hair and the face of an insane rodent. His eyes were wild, his yellow teeth crooked and sharp. His clothes were dirty and smelled of blood and gore. “I can make him suffer hugely. I can cut him and gut him and feast on his entrails so that it will be a long, long time before my Billy boy bothers me again.”

He approached slowly, the sliver of steel shining in his hand like a piece of painful, inescapable death.

Karin felt totally, completely overwhelmed.

The Ripper stalked by her without even a glance, marking her as beneath notice. A smile was fixed on his face and a line of drool ran down the left corner of his mouth. He advanced slowly on Billy, who hung placidly from his chains, as if awaiting the inevitable.

Krystal moved, stepping between them, holding her bear tight against her chest like a shield. Her face was screwed up in fear and it looked as if she were going to cry as she planted herself between the Ripper and the gunslinger.

“Don’t you hurt Billy,” she said. “He’s my friend.”

Karin realized that it took an immense amount of courage for the little girl to act. Perhaps it was the first time in her entire life, before and after her death, that she’d stood up for anyone, including herself. The Ripper looked at her, faintly surprised, and then he slashed with his scalpel in a motion almost too quick to see. It bit deep and cut long and Bearry’s head flopped to one side, stuffing leaking from him like wads of cottony blood.

“You hurt Bearry!” the little girl screamed. She dropped her bear and quick as a thought threw herself at the Ripper, crying and screaming as she pummeled him with her little fists.

Chamberlain laughed, and something broke in Karin.

The anger she’d felt before returned, multiplied by a factor near infinity. She shouted, drenched in an instant sweat. Her body felt super-hot. Her mind was devoid of conscious thought, except for her undeniable need to help Krystal vanquish the monster threatening her.

Krystal squeaked like a mouse and stopped pummeling the Ripper. The laughter died in the killer’s throat as he stared at the little girl’s face, and his own expression twisted at what he saw there. He shouted a wordless cry, and reached out to slice Krystal’s throat with his bright-bladed scalpel.

But fast as he was, and as strong, the little girl was even faster and stronger. She caught his knife wrist with a grip as unbreakable as a promise made with love.

“You’re a bad man,” she said serenely. “It’s time for you to go where you’ll never hurt anyone again.”

The Ripper tried to yank away, but couldn’t break the grip of her tiny fist. There was the sound of meat sizzling, like, Karin thought dizzily, fajitas brought to your table at a Mexican restaurant. It was the Ripper. He was burning at Krystal’s touch.

He screamed in pain and shook himself like a rat trying to break free from a terrier, but Krystal wouldn’t let him go. A terrible odor speared the air. It was more than the stench of burning flesh. It was as if something old and evil, something that had been steeped in rottenness for a long time, had suddenly caught fire. In moments the Ripper was covered with flame. He fell to his knees, face to face with Krystal.

“Please,” he begged before the fire ate his lips and tongue. “Please.”

Unaffected, Krystal wrinkled her nose. “You stink,” she said, and as they watched the Ripper burned to a pile of greasy, foul-smelling ashes.

The pack looked at each other. The dwarf took a single step forward, then Krystal fixed him with her stare.

“You better not try to hurt anyone,” she said, and then they all looked at each other again, and ran from the room.

“Help me with Billy,” Krystal said.

Karin shook her head, coming out of her astonished stupor, and realized that the anger had burned out of her with the Ripper’s demise. She felt awfully tired and almost fell when she helped Krystal let Billy’s chains play out so he could put his feet on the floor.

“How did you do that?” she asked Krystal as they unhooked the chains from their wall sockets.

“You gave me your power.”

“I did?”

Billy nodded. “It was a gift of strength freely given. Krystal used it.” He tousled her hair, then snapped the manacle on his left wrist with little effort.

Karin frowned. “You could have done that anytime, couldn’t you?”

“Maybe,” Billy smiled. “Maybe I figured the two of you should have a chance to sort things out by yourselves. You both had things to learn and decisions to make.”

Krystal nodded seriously. She picked up Bearry and looked at him. Magically, his head joined back to his shoulders and suddenly he was clean and bright and fresh looking. She hugged him closely.

“I’m glad,” she told Billy.

“So am I.”

“I’m tired,” Karin said. “Tired and sad . . . and still more than a little mystified.”

“Take your time, ma’am. Plenty of time here to figure things out.”

“I gave some of my energy to Krystal, didn’t I?”

The others nodded.

“Krystal has a talent for using it, like the Ripper had,” Billy said.

“What about the rest of it?”

“You’ve still got a lot,” Krystal told her. “You were awful young when you killed yourself.”

She sat down, suddenly too tired to stand. “What should I do with it?” she asked quietly.

Billy shrugged. “If it feels like too much of a burden, give it away.”

She looked at him. “To you?”

Billy shook his head. “There’s plenty of folk still living who could use it. Sick folk, fighting for their lives, desperate to stay in the world. It’s the best use of a suicide’s energy. Helps balance the accounts, so to speak.”

“I can do that? I can help someone that way?”

“Sure,” Billy said. He nodded to Krystal. “Take her hand.”

Krystal smiled at her and they held hands. Her tiny hand was strong for its size, and still warm, pleasantly warm, no longer burning. They looked at each other, then there was a moment of almost intolerable dislocation. Karin felt pain and suffering all around her and grief that was almost too much to bear, but the warm presence of the little girl steadied her. She didn’t know what to do so she just gave, and she felt her gift accepted all around her. Then they were back in the room and she was leaning on Billy and Krystal to keep from slipping to the floor.

“You’ll be all right in a moment,” Billy told her. “Giving like that takes a lot out of you. But you’ll be fine.”

“Did it work?” she asked. “Did I save someone?”

Billy nodded. “A man in New Mexico. A fine man, dying too soon of cancer. He was a writer, much admired. Now he’ll have another twenty-five, maybe thirty years. He’ll write a lot of fine books, help a lot of others along the way. He’ll live to see his grandchildren born and grow and the Earth will be a better place for his continued presence.”

“I’m glad,” Karin said.

“How about you?” Billy asked. “What do you want?”

She was tired and sad, whether from giving up her energy or just because she was tired and sad, she didn’t know. She shook her head.

“I know,” Krystal said.

Karin felt a familiar nibbing sensation on her legs and looked down. Faffy looked up at her and meowed. He wasn’t an old, tired cat, wasted by disease, but sleek and beautiful, as he’d been in his prime.

“Oh,” Karin said, and she went down to her knees as Faffy rose up on his hind legs to meet her embrace. She gathered her friend to her and Faffy purred loudly, love and contentment on his face. He licked the tears that ran down Karin’s cheek and rubbed his head against her chin.

“If you want,” Billy said, “you can see your mother soon. Some people just have too much put on them, and she’s in a place where she’s been resting and recovering.” He looked down at Krystal and smiled. “Ole Krys, here, will go somewhere’s where she can just be a kid for a while, but I suspect I’ll see her again.”

Krystal hugged her bear and smiled delightfully. “You sure will, Billy.”

Karin stood, cradling her cat to her breast. She smiled through her tears.

“I’m not totally useless,” she said. “I mean, since I’ve given all my energy away?”

Billy rubbed Faffy’s head and Faffy meowed at him.

“I should say not, ma’am. We can always use another hand around the place.”

Karin smiled, happy for the first time in a long time, content for maybe the first time in her life. She hoped she had a long, long time left.

I first read Roger’s work around 1970. In fact, Lord of Light was the first great novel that I ever read. There was also This Immortal, Creatures of Light and Darkness, the Amber books, and many, many other fine novels, short stories, and novelettes. I moved to New Mexico in 1976, and once I’d met Roger, it didn’t take long for me to realize that he was as fine a man as he was a writer. It was a true honor to work with him on the Wild Cards series. I regret more than I can say that I had cause to write this story. I’ll miss him forever.

In some small way, “Suicide Kings” is also my farewell to Fafhrd, our seventeen-year-old cat who died during the writing of this story. We miss her, too.

Necessity can make unlikely allies.