Free Heraclix and Pomp: A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey by Forrest Aguirre

were earwigs and centipedes, which scuttled out from under the shack, then quickly retreated into an inch-high gap between earth and wood that ran the length of one side.
    Heraclix approached, knocked. Pomp, sick of riding on his shoulder, flew over to one of the misshapen windows. The glass sagged with age, distorting anything she might see inside, but she looked around this way and that, trying to discover who or what was inside.
    There was no answer. Heraclix knocked again.
    “I think you stop that,” Pomp said. “This man is, you say, dead.”
    “Dead? How do you know?” Heraclix turned the door handle and started to open the door.
    “He does not move. And he stinks.”
    They could smell alcohol on the man’s breath from the doorway.
    “He’s not dead,” Heraclix said. “He’s soused.”
    Nicklaus was everything Heraclix had expected—gaunt, but not broken, not completely—but he was no longer the boy who delivered the hand. That event must have taken place many years ago.
    Heraclix knelt down by the man’s bed, carefully removing the drunk’s slack hand from a bottle of vodka. He shook Nicklaus.
    “Nicklaus. It is time to awaken. We must talk to you.”
    Nicklaus’s eyes opened. He stared directly at Heraclix with not the least bit of surprise in his eyes, like it was no odd thing for a creature such as this golem to be rousting him from a hungover slumber. Perhaps he was still dreaming.
    “Who are you?” he asked with more curiosity than concern. He coughed, then gagged, almost vomiting.
    “I am the owner,” Heraclix raised his left hand, “of this”.
    A look of fascination, mixed with disdain, crinkled Nicklaus’s eyebrows. His expression soon became pained, though Heraclix couldn’t tell if the man was feeling the effects of a hangover or something else.
    “That,” he said, betraying his familiarity with and knowledge of the thing in one word, “I haven’t seen for a long, long time.”
    “That,” Heraclix mimicked Nicklaus’s inflection, “is exactly why we are here to talk with you.”
    “We?” the drunk looked around the room and outside the still-open door.
    Pomp appeared, with theatrical timing, on Heraclix’s shoulder. “He and me make we!” she said.
    Nicklaus looked down at the vodka bottle, then up again at Pomp, then back again at the bottle. He shook his head and took a deep breath as if accepting this strange new reality, steeling himself to act in it.
    Heraclix put a hand on his shoulder, and he jumped, as if he had just realized the enormity and hideousness of the giant in his room.
    “It has been a long time,” he said. “I have forgotten much.”
    Heraclix offered a gold thaler, which Nicklaus refused.
    “I do not need a bribe to try to remember. I don’t want to talk!”
    Heraclix put the thaler back into his pouch.
    “Talking helps us feel better!” Pomp said.
    “What’s there to talk about?” Nicklaus looked at the wall. “I have nothing left anyway.”
    “Things are left,” Pomp said, “inside you!”
    Nicklaus let the words sink in, staring at the floor for a long time. Then he sighed and nodded, as if acquiescing. “Okay. I’ll give it a try. Though it’s difficult. Why do you want to know, anyway?”
    “I have a strong interest in learning everything I can about this hand.” Heraclix held it up.
    “I don’t know if I can help much,” Nicklaus said.
    “Any information you can give will help us,” said Heraclix. “And anything you can get off your chest will help you.”
    “Okay. It was a long time ago, back when I lived with my poor old mother, God rest her soul.” He paused, as if trying to remember her face, but the fog of years and alcohol kept her from clearly revealing herself to her son.
    “Mother was desti-, destit-,” his face contorted as he tried to and failed to get the word out, “very poor. Father had died after a horse kicked him in the head, not many years after I was born. I had no skills, but I could run long