Underland Press

By Simon Drax
August 10, 2009

(Be sure to check out The Simon Drax Blog for supplemental reading)

And now the seventh installment of Simon Drax's Exit Vector, in which Trista concludes her tale of Cantara...

* * *

"How," Trista said, as if to herself, "how in the world would this stupid, selfish girl be able to kill the child growing inside her—if all the evil in the world was taken away?"

"Hey, whoa," Mori said. "Hang on for a second, Astral Goddess." Every trace of drunken foolishness had evaporated from Mori's face. "Abortion and Evil are not, like, automatic partners in crime. Just because this chick didn't want to have a damn baby doesn't make her evil by default."

"So you say," Trista said. "And spoken like a true citizen of your world, with every iota of the selfishness you consider a virtue. But in my world, in Cantara... oh, Mori..."

Trista shook her head.

"I told you of our one true faith: that the good of the Cantaran tribe as all. What this... stupid, selfish, foolish little coward wanted to commit was a crime that not only ran counter to everything we held holy, it was... blasphemy. Unspeakable. Again, we had no word for it. What you blithely term 'abortion' was a concept that did not exist for us. We had no stories or parables to dramatize such a sin, no tales of forbidden fruit or a slain sibling, nothing. This little bitch had dreamt something entirely new and hideous."

"Yeah, yeah, bullshit," Mori snapped. "What about the value of her life?"

"We could joust in this troublesome little arena for a million nights, girl, and still you would not understand. So before you sit in judgment of my world and my people, save your breath, drink your toxic broth, and listen, for my question has not yet been answered.

"Long ago, a Cantaran female learned that she was with child, and she conceived a new conception: un-conception. She did not desire to see her child brought to term. This, as I indicated, was a very, very bad thing. How could she reconcile this mad and wicked impulse?

"The answer was simple.

"The little cowardly bitch didn't have to do anything.