Best of Palace Corbie
edited by Wayne Edwards

Page 1 from Best of Palace Corbie
Keepsake
by Gemma Files

There is no such thing as evil, just the gradual removal
of good until nothing is left.

It's funny how the hardest moral questions only ever occur to you long after you've lost the power to answer them. Or to put it another way:

How many times have I asked myself what it is with some people, but not given much of a fuck either way? Because the plain fact is, nobody can cure themselves of someone else's disease. The world's full of dying parasites; you can't hold them all, wipe their eyes and their asses, change the channel, and tell them one more time how they're going to a better place. Sure, we all talk a good game—but no one actually has the time for that kind of love, let alone the strength.

And I only ever really loved one other person on this whole rotten planet, anyways, aside from my own stupid self.

Now it's long past five in the morning, and I'm still crouched out here in a nest of long grass, halfway into the junk-choked sump that passes for a yard between the Tar Baby dance clubóheavy metal and formative rock cover bands all night, every night—and its nearest neighbor, Calypso Heaven. Sitting back on my heels with Jos' second-best gun in my hands, last night's frozen mud already seeping through the seat of my jeans. Sitting here listening to the distant cries of my little brother Loren as they seep up through those six-plus feet of dirt I piled on top of him last night—after I dragged his limp, rug-wrapped body down all three flights of rusty fire escape from our former mutual home and rolled him ass-up into a shallow grave.

Thinking about how he's already been dead for a year and a half, and the only difference now is he'll finally have to start acting like it.

Page 134 from Best of Palace Corbie
Deadipus Rex
by Bentley Little

The nursery of the hospital was filled with decedent babies. He could smell the slightly cloying odor of chemicals in the white sanitized room and, below that, the subtly indefinable scent of decay he always smelled around decedents. He glanced at the row upon row of sickly, grey-skinned infants, tossing and jerking unnaturally in their see-through cribs. The babies were crying, but instead of the obnoxious wailing of living infants, he heard a series of high-pitched strangely syncopated hiccup-cries.

"You realize," the doctor said, "that this can only be temporary. The infant will be a foster child, staying with you until such time as a living baby can be found for adoption."

"We know," Wynona said. She looked over at Len, encouraging him to respond, but he said nothing.

The doctor led them through the rows of the nursery to the crib of a young boy. "Jess here was abandoned by his mother three years ago. He died of hypothermia at age six months. He is available, should you decide to go this route."

Len was not at all sure he wanted to go this route, but Wynona was already bending down to touch the decedent baby. He watched her finger press against the cold, lifeless skin and felt a wave of nausea pass through him. He shifted his weight uncomfortably. The fumes were starting to get to him. In a few moments he would start gagging. "Come on," he said. "Let's get out of here."

Wynona looked up at the doctor. "And he'll never get any bigger," she said, wonderingly.

"Never. All of his tissue, all of his organs, down to the cellular level are functionally dead."

"That's amazing." She picked up the grey infant, who immediately opened his mouth to cry and began hiccuping quietly.

"We find this is a good practice run for those considering the adoption of newborns." The doctor motioned toward the door. "Shall we go into my office and sign the papers?"

Wynona smiled "Yes."

Len put a hand on her shoulder. "We'd like to discuss it first, if you don't mind."

She shrugged his hand away. "We'll sign the papers," she said.