Nemesisters by Matthew R. Davis

You couldn’t possibly have known, but oh, you’ve seen them: lingering at deserted bus stops, walking down darkened alleys, sitting on night-shrouded park benches – always outside the uncertain safety of the light-cones cast by sodium streetlamps, and always alone. Not two entirely alike, all kinds and creeds, but always women, always waiting. 

You might have felt uneasy as you passed by, recalling the endless list of horror stories that began this way; you might have respected these women for braving the corners of the world, as is their right. Or maybe you’re one of those men, those pretenders to the mantle, anyway, who sees such situations not as a cause for concern but as an open opportunity. If you are, you will find that these women do not scream, they do not struggle, they do not weep. You can give and take what you want without complication, almost as if they’re allowing you to, though of course without the explicit consent that might ruin this magical manly moment for you. It won’t matter what happens next, whether you leave your prey in a huddled heap and hope for the best or capitulate to desperation and kill it to conceal your crime – you’ll never see this woman again, and the incident will never be reported, and you may go on with your life as though nothing untoward has happened. But with that irredeemable act, a seed is planted. Not guilt – people like you, or as you may be, always find a way to justify your actions so that you may sleep at night – no, this seed is literal, and it is inside you now. Whatever you did, however careful or calculating you were, you will find a tiny wound you don’t recall sustaining – from your zipper, you will think, or the studs in her belt, or the dry burn of unlubricated friction. You will dismiss it as ephemeral, unimportant. But one night you will dream that you wake to searing agony, watching as your dearest weapon stands and erupts once more, only this time what emerges is a swarm of tiny, spiny spores not dissimilar to the wispy wig of a dandelion, so harmless and delicate and unlike you, hundreds of these things, each one of them the pupal form of a woman such as the one you found in the dark, and they will drift away to take root in dank, distant places, gestating in wet, shadowy wombs beneath bus stop benches and behind alleyway bins, never any two together, always alone and silent and waiting, waiting. 

You will shake it off as a bad dream, but the spilled seed remains, though you will not know this for months or years; it will remain hidden in your body, curled away like a secret lover of whom even you are not aware, and then one day there it will be, lurking in your calculating brain or an ignorant organ or subverting your dearest weapon, alone at first but multiplying, metastasising, malignant as your soul. And somehow you’ll know why, even if you never admit it to yourself, and you’ll cry that you would do anything to take it back – regret, at last, but only for yourself. You will reap what you have sown, and they will still be out there, beneath failing streetlamps or inside remote phone booths or at deserted taxi stands, waiting. Perhaps if you have sons, you will show some wisdom and advise them to hold hard – not just in the dark but in the well-lit lounges, bedrooms, offices, cars, bathrooms – else they too may fall foul of their worst impulses and work an evil upon something that might not be a woman but instead… What, a decoy? A trap? A monster? Yes; no. They are your daughters, born of hurt and obscenity, and they are a mirror, reflecting the enemy’s evils. They are Balance, righting the scales of justice. They are Nemesis, they are Vengeance, and they are just what you fucking deserve.

About the author
Matthew R. Davis is a Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author and musician based in Adelaide, SA. His books include IF ONLY TONIGHT WE COULD SLEEP (horror stories, 2020), MIDNIGHT IN THE CHAPEL OF LOVE (novel, 2021), and THE DARK MATTER OF NATASHA (novella, 2022). Find out more at matthewrdavisfiction.wordpress.com.